Are you risking fire safety to fulfil your safeguarding needs?

Comment by SCOTT CRICHTON, Senior Risk Management Consultant, Endsleigh Insurance

In the realms of school safety, the issue of leaving doors open poses a complex challenge. On one hand, open doors can foster a welcoming environment and be a comfort to teachers with safeguarding concerns. On the other hand, they can compromise security, potentially exposing students and staff to various risks. Striking a balance between these competing interests is essential to ensuring safety within educational settings.

Teaching with open-door policy
During the pandemic the advice was to wedge open doors to allow ventilation and fresh air. In recent visits to schools, we noticed teaching staff are becoming more concerned with safeguarding when teaching in their classrooms, and are teaching with an open-door policy. In both these scenarios, the doors may very well be fire doors.

Legislation tension
Duty holders/responsible persons may be conflicted when trying to fulfil their legislative responsibilities between fire and health and safety, equality, and safeguarding. The fire and rescue service advice is not to wedge open fire doors. Doing so, can be seen as not complying with the relevant fire safety legislation and the school is in danger of finding itself on the wrong side of the law, as well as potentially making insurance policies void.

It’s important to know whether a door is indeed a fire door, how to handle the above conflict and what can be done to balance legislation to maintain safety and compliance.

Life safety and property protection
Fire doors are life safety devices and shouldn’t be propped open, that is fact. It is important to recognise that fire risk assessors will always focus fire risk assessments upon life safety and ensuring that occupants of buildings have an escape evacuation procedure in place. This evacuation strategy may rely on fire doors to support the safe egressing past a fire, especially in buildings of multiple floors. Fire doors are installed in buildings to assist with life safety purposes – i.e. occupants escaping premises, particularly where there are extended travel distances over multiple floors.

Most schools can evacuate their building(s) within several minutes, but there is also the property protection element to consider, and it is important to understand both aspects when considering fire doors. Where fire doors are installed, insurers will always want these to be kept closed overnight given this stops fire spreading from one area to another and will limit damage and ultimately any subsequent claims. With more and more schools now becoming the subject of arson attacks (known as wilful fire raising in Scotland), it is important that doors play their part in a proactive approach to fire safety.

During term time and holidays, in addition to staff, contractors and contract cleaning staff may prop open doors to move goods through your school. So, what can schools practically do:

• Don’t just write it, practice it. Within your fire safety policy ensure that you include arrangements for teaching staff to remove any door wedges prior to evacuating the premises. Pay particular attention to closing of fire doors in high-risk rooms – kiln, kitchens, science labs etc. It is important that when premises are closed, doors are not left wedged open. Facilities teams responsible for locking the premises must ensure all doors are closed and teaching staff can support in making this task more manageable. Insurers would never advocate that fire doors are propped open.
• Educate teaching staff, contractors, and cleaners of the dangers of wedging fire doors open – particularly when leaving rooms unoccupied. During school holidays, ensure that contractors are told not to wedge open doors and to remove any wedges.
• Consider installing automatic door hold open devices that are connected to your fire alarm system. Ensure that these doors are not wedged open.
• Install fire suppression systems in kitchen canopies, particularly where deep fat fryers are used. Systems are generally installed to satisfy insurers, and most will require these to be installed.
• (57%) of the UK public couldn’t spot a problem with a fire door, leading to a failure to report issues. Fire doors in schools, typically like other buildings of this type, can suffer abuse and damage. Facilities teams/specialists should undertake visual inspections of fire doors every six months, record any defects, and arrange suitably competent trades to repair. Particular attention should be paid to fire doors installed to protect stairwells, kitchens, kilns, plant rooms and riser cupboards.

The Fire Door Inspection Scheme (FDIS)’s data, based on more than 100,000 fire door inspections carried out by its approved inspectors, found that 75% of fire doors failed to meet the required standards, putting lives at risk in the event of a fire.

What doors are fire doors?

Diagram of a fire resisting and smoke stopping door. Fire Safety Risk Assessment Educational Premises

Telltale signs of fire doors:

• Self-closer, 3 hinges (to BS EN 1935 standards), any identifying marks (labels on the top).
• In newer constructed schools, you will have a fire strategy that will denote exactly what doors are fire doors.

Beware of signage or where attempts have been made to upgrade doors that aren’t fire doors.

Further guidance can be found at https:// assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/ media/5a79a9b9e5274a684690b2f7/fsraeducational-premises.pdf (see image above).

Do I have to upgrade existing doors?
This depends upon the type of door installed and the starting point would be your fire risk assessment. Subject to having a suitable and sufficient fire risk assessment, you should already know what doors within your premises are critical doors required for life safety purposes – generally those accessing stairwells, cross corridor doors to allow egress from one compartment to another. Any door will offer some degree of fire and smoke barrier – however fire doors are specifically designed to stop the passage of fire and smoke.

Remember, even smoke damage can cause significant insurance damage claims, not to mention a fire can lead to the loss of coursework, disruption to learning and the knock on affect to parents.