Housing Trust

[JakeNcfc1]

Good Morning,
i was wondering if i can have some advice with the below question:
We are a housing trust, there are no employees just 5 trustees. we have 5 semi detached 1 bedroom bungalows that elderly single people rent. the residents are not provided with any care or emergency pendant alarms. These are completed by the resident.
We have smoke detectors in the kitchen only - Which i am now going to put detectors in the hallway and bedroom
I have completed a booklet on fire safety - explaining the use of candles, don't overload sockets, don't leave items cooking, shut doors at nights, keep front and back doors clear of obstruction, no smoking Etc.

what else do i need to complete for a fire risk assessment?

[WillPool]

Hi Jake

Welcome to the forums

Even as a seasoned Health & Safety Professional, I do not have the competency to complete a Fire Risk Assessment. This is usually a specialist area and I would expect housing trusts/associations have competent persons to complete a FRA.

In my opinion, I would question if you are the right person to be completing the assessment if you are asking what else is to be contained within the FRA.

We have many 'fire experts' on the forums who may be able to give you pointers and disagree with my point of view

Once again welcome to the forums

Will

[stephen1974]

What you are doing doesn't sound like a Fire Risk Assessment to me, more of a safety advice list.

For smoke detectors, you dont need them in every room. You only need one per level and as these are bungalows, thats just a single level. Of course, you can have more, thats not a problem, but in a kitchen can lead to lots of false alarms depending on sensitivity. In my building, the alarms are in the hallway just outside the kitchen and still the damn things go off all the time. Bare in mind that elderly people may not be physically well suited to grabbing a broom handle to beat the alarm in to submission, sorry, turn it off.

Also, if you have elderly people, how is their hearing? My nan is deaf and wouldnt hear an alarm go off so have you looked at fitting ones with visual alarms?

If you have gas appliances you will also need a Co2 Monitor fitted.

You can read up on the regs here. https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... nd-tenants

As for a Fire Risk Assessment, as these are single household properties, i'm pretty sure you do not need to do a fire risk assessment for them. You can if you want to, but I think you'll find it quite hard to do as a lot of the normal things for prevention, protection and escape dont apply. This might help you understand the requirements better https://fireriskassessments.com/landlor ... sessments/

If you do decide to do one, you'll have to do it on the property when its empty and then essentially audit the property when (if) you do inspections because a properly built house in itself isnt going to carry an great deal of inherent risk. Its what the tenents do that will have the biggest impact. Your fire saftey advice is a good idea though for sure.

Where might things go wrong? The elderly get cold, Hows your heating? They might bring in portable fan heaters which are a bad thing. Maybe have a policy of no fan heaters, but other types of heater, such as oil filled radiators might be a safer alternative you allow. Old people love to hoard as well, lots of extra things to go poof. Do you have a plan to tackle that that doesnt involve giving them a telling off? Another nan example, she cant walk properly and cant take the rubbish out. Could you support a resident with that kind of thing so there isnt an unecessary build up of rubbish, probably left in the kitchen, where most fires start.

At least, thats my take on things. Could probably go in to a lot more, but it would intrude very much on the residents lives to do so, which is one reason why its not a requirement to do an FRA on single house holds.

[witsd]

Yeah, I'm very confused by a lot of this.

Kitchens should have heat detectors, and these ought to be interlinked with smoke detectors in the hallway and the living room. Not the bedroom unless you want to upgrade the house to an LD1 system (detection in every area over 1 square meter except the bathroom) but that would likely be overkill.

Otherwise, what are you doing inside these people's homes? There's no legal requirement to do an FRA inside their house (Legionella and PAT, sure (and maybe now a lead water test - not sure about that one yet!) but not an FRA).

Also, you told them "no smoking"? In their own flat? Not sure anyone is going to pay attention to that rule.

[stephen1974]

Also, you told them "no smoking"? In their own flat? Not sure anyone is going to pay attention to that rule.

Thats been pretty standard practice in rental properties for quite a while now. Im sure some people dont comply, but you can pick that up on inspections and it can breach their tenancy agreement. I know where I am I see people hanging out of windows smoking but a good few do go outside to smoke - right oustside my fething window.


We did get a guy evicted for cooking his dinner and leaving the house to go shopping on more than one occasion. His food was burnt on several occasions and required two visits from the fire department. In the second visit they were just about to break down his door when he strolled in with two tescos bags in this hands. Muppet.

[witsd]

We did get a guy evicted for cooking his dinner and leaving the house to go shopping on more than one occasion. His food was burnt on several occasions and required two visits from the fire department. In the second visit they were just about to break down his door when he strolled in with two tescos bags in this hands. Muppet.

I am once again reminded that it's much harder to evict people in Scotland!

[JakeNcfc1]

Hi,

I may have waffled on a little bit! So These 5 bungalows are 1 bedroom and the residents rent these the the trust. so there is no need for a risk assessment? Would it be checking 5-year hardwired checks, fire detection? What about fire procedure or assembly point? I understand about the standard smoke detection may have to be upgrades to strobe lighting etc depending on the occupant. It just seems a little gray area.

Yeah, I'm very confused by a lot of this.

Kitchens should have heat detectors, and these ought to be interlinked with smoke detectors in the hallway and the living room. Not the bedroom unless you want to upgrade the house to an LD1 system (detection in every area over 1 square meter except the bathroom) but that would likely be overkill.

Otherwise, what are you doing inside these people's homes? There's no legal requirement to do an FRA inside their house (Legionella and PAT, sure (and maybe now a lead water test - not sure about that one yet!) but not an FRA).

Also, you told them "no smoking"? In their own flat? Not sure anyone is going to pay attention to that rule.

[witsd]

Hi,

I may have waffled on a little bit! So These 5 bungalows are 1 bedroom and the residents rent these the the trust. so there is no need for a risk assessment? Would it be checking 5-year hardwired checks, fire detection? What about fire procedure or assembly point? I understand about the standard smoke detection may have to be upgrades to strobe lighting etc depending on the occupant. It just seems a little gray area.

Are there any internal common areas shared by residents? If so, those may well require an FRA. If all flats have their own external front door and there are no common rooms, corridors or stairwells then probably not, no.

5-year / change of tenancy EICRs are required, certainly. Fire detection is (I think) technically not required to be maintained by the landlord, however it is usually done as part of annual gas safety checks, if you have a gas supply. A Legionella risk assessment is normally done annually, as is PAT if you've supplied any white goods.

Again, if there's no shared common room or anything like that, I see no reason to have a written fire procedure* or an assembly point**. Who is going to be counted at the assembly point? Does Mrs Smith leave her house as it's on fire and go to the assembly point, where she then confirms that she is indeed present?!

* All tenancy agreements ought to have a short statement on fire safety. Usually something like "In the event of a fire within your neighbour's house, [stay put / leave] (depending on building structure). In the event of fire within your home get out."

** Unless you have some reason to evacuate multiple flats in the event of a fire inside one of them. If that's the case, then you'll have much bigger problems as you'd need a fully linked alarm system, so let's hope not!