Theale is a village with the M4 on its doorstep.
Round a place like that you find offices, warehouses, trade counters and small business units. They are not buildings where people sleep, but they have fire doors all the same, and the same law applies to them.
Which doors count in a workplace
Start with the stair. If there is a protected stair in the building, the doors onto it are fire doors.
Then the doors that keep a fire in one place. Riser cupboards. The door to the server room. The plant room. A store full of stock.
Then the doors across corridors.
Many of these are not on anyone's list. They sit in the back of the building, and the only people who open them are the maintenance man and the cleaner.
What goes wrong
In an office, a stair door is propped open with a fire extinguisher. It is quicker for people carrying boxes.
In a unit, a plant room door is left ajar to let the heat out. Cables are run through the leaf and through the frame, then filled with foam.
A fit-out leaves the door with new paint over the seals and a new lock cut into the edge.
Signs are missing, or the wrong sign has been put on the wrong side.
Duty holders
The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 applies to the whole building except for the insides of private homes. If you control the premises, you are the responsible person. That could be the landlord, the tenant or both, depending on the lease.
Where a building is split between several tenants, we try to note which doors are in the landlord's common parts and which are inside a tenant's suite.
Theale is in West Berkshire, so the council is West Berkshire Council. Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service is the fire authority.
Working hours
Offices and units are easier than homes, because nobody has to be at home to let us in. We can come out of hours if that suits the business.
A small office is usually under two hours. A larger unit with several floors is a half day or a day.
Fire doors are not exits
A fire exit and a fire door are not the same thing.
An exit door is a door you use to get out of the building. A fire door is there to stop fire and smoke. They can be the same door, but they often are not.
We check fire doors. If you want exits looked at too, tell us when you ask for a price.
What you get
A report with each door, its location, photos and measurements, and a note on what to do about it. You can pass it to your landlord, your insurer, your fire risk assessor or a carpenter.
We can price repairs from the report. Repairs are not compulsory.
From Luton
We come over from Luton, about an hour and a bit. We do not have an office in Theale. We book a visit and send a price first.
Questions we get asked
Does the landlord or the tenant pay?
That depends on the lease. We can write the report so the doors are grouped by who looks after them.
Do you inspect warehouse roller doors?
No. We inspect fire doors, which are hinged or sliding doors rated for fire.
Send us the postcode and a rough door count and we will come back with a price the same day.
Get a price