New survey suggests fundamental flaws in fire door use

A new survey conducted by Horbury Property Services has found that many fire doors in commercial and public buildings are not being used properly and could lead to safety risks in event of a fire

To mark Fire Door Safety Week, the survey suggests that 95% of respondents said they had seen a fire door propped open in their own workplace or a public building in the last three months. A further 36% said they had seen this almost every day and 32% had seen it at least once per week.

Even more surprising is that 57% of residents living in a flat or apartment building said they had not been given any fire safety information by their landlord, while 33% had only been given the very basic information about fire safety precautions in their building.

Despite this lack of information, fire safety knowledge has improved since the last 2017 Fire Door Safety Week survey.

This year’s survey saw a whopping 68% of respondents who knew that a fire door should be inspected every six months. Whereas in the same survey 12 months ago, only 40 per cent of those asked answered correctly.

Richard Sutton, General Manager at Horbury Property Services, said: “We run this survey every year, with a number of different questions, yet we are always surprised at the results.

“This year, it was noticeable how much people actually know about fire safety and fire doors, compared with previous years. However, we are concerned how many fire doors were being used incorrectly, for example, by being propped open, which would make them ineffective in the event of a fire.

“This may have been due to bad habits during the warmer weather, but is something that should not be done with any fire door.

“It was also interesting to find out people’s thoughts about what would make them feel safer in their buildings, with such high numbers mentioning building regulations, fire sprinklers and greater checks on fire doors. This was a very positive survey and showed just how much landlords, contractors and the general public do know about fire doors.”

When asked what would make them feel safer to prevent fires, the top answer of 45% thought that tighter building regulations on fire safety were needed, the second most popular answer was fire sprinklers (36%) and thirdly, more regular fire door checks (18%) on their properties.