Keeping you safe – what we are doing on fire safety

We are committed to providing homes that are safe for you to live in and have been following Government guidance and are working in partnership with the London Fire Brigade.  

We’ve carried out in-depth fire risk assessments on all our residential blocks, and last year invested over £6 million in strengthening our fire safety measures. To make the work we've done as transparent and accessible as possible we built an on line portal so you can quickly access the Fire Risk Assessment for your block or building.

Our team regularly review progress on completing fire risk actions and carry out compliance checks (for example on gas, water, electricity and lift installations) so if we identify a risk we immediately put in place measures to reduce that risk until we are able to get it fixed.  We are complete estate inspections quarterly and have a contractor who is installing and maintaining fire doors where needed.

Whilst we wait for detailed legislation from the Government we are starting to gather information on all of our buildings to fully capture the construction and design details and all external materials used.
 
If you are a homeowner, leaseholder or a shared owner – please get in touch with us if you are thinking of selling your property.
 
Mortgage lenders are looking for detailed information on the construction and safety rating of your building if it has external cladding and / or a balcony.
 
We are committed to providing all information currently available and working to establish further detailed information, but this will take some time. This may not at this stage be enough to satisfy lenders’ queries. The lack of this information is a national issue, and not just one that Origin and our residents are facing.
 
Any questions please email enquiries@originhousing.org.uk, call 0300 323 0325 or use the contact form.

If you or any member of your household would like any information on building safety, fire safety  or any other information translated into another language please let us know by filling in the form on our Contact Us page, emailing enquiries@originhousing.org.uk or call us on 0300 323 0325.

Residents' flat entrance doors

Flat entrance doors play a critical part in ensuring fire safety of your block, it is important maintaining and not interfering with the operation of the self-closing devices on flat entrance fire doors. Fire doors must not be altered as that can reduce their fire resistance.

To make sure flat entrance doors are in good condition and provide the correct fire resistance, please give us or our contractors access to inspect/maintain fire doors as part of our legal obligations.

It is critical that your flat entrance door has a self-closing device – please let us know as soon as possible if this is missing or does not work so that we can repair it.

If you have any questions please get in touch by emailing enquiries@originhousing.org.uk 

For all residents please do not change anything on your fire door. 

Our fire evacuation procedures

If you live in a block, fire safety guidance is available in the common areas such as in corridors and stairways.

Stay Put Policy (Defend in place) 

In the event of a fire, only residents in the area of the building affected by fire or smoke, or in the area where the alarm was raised, need to evacuate. Residents in other areas do not need to leave the building.

You will only hear an alarm if there is a fire within your property. If your building has a Stay Put policy in place and there is a fire in another property or the communal area within the building, you will not hear an alarm. This is to prevent confusion wso people do not  evacuate the building unnecessarily.

This evacuation strategy has been chosen for buildings where compartmentation has been verified as able to contain a fire. Compartmentation means a building is divided into ‘compartments’ that are separated from one another by fire resident walls, floors, ceilings and doors. These compartments help to contain a fire in the area where it started. The external walls of buildings have also been checked to ensure that they do not pose a fire hazard.
 
Simultaneous Evacuation (Full evacuation) 

The alarm system is designed to alert all residents within the building to evacuate and not just those immediately affected by the fire, this is via the communal alarm system which will alert all residents in the event of a fire so they can evacuate the building. e.g. Flat 20 on the 5th floor activates their heat detector situated in their hallway. The fire alarm system is designed to sound the alarm in all areas on all floors alerting the residents throughout the building to evacuate.

Origin Housing provide fire action notices within the communal areas that provide detail on evacuation strategy for your block.