Fire safety: How to overcome the errors in compartmentation.

This webinar series will continue to offer actionable insight on fire safety and educating by filling the knowledge gap on compliance in particular compartmentation.

Last month, following on from recommendations published in the Hackitt report, the government has issued a proposal, Building a safer future: proposals for reform of the building safety regulatory system, that sets out areas for fundamental reform of building safety standards so that residents are safe.

This includes the new role of a duty holder who will have responsibilities through the building’s design, construction and later, maintenance with residents. There are several housing associations that have already moved forward on this, including Peabody.

One of the essential elements of fire safety design that requires assessment is fire resistant construction and fire doors between flats and communal areas. Compartmentation will restrict fire spread to the flat of origin for an amount of time – for blocks up to five storeys this is 30 minutes and for those with more levels, it is 60 minutes. The idea of such a design is that fire cannot spread so it leaves escape routes accessible for residents of the flat of the fire source to vacate while other residents can safely stay in their flats. This allows for the ‘stay put’ policy of evacuation most commonly used in blocks of flats. This means the fire service would be able to deal with the fire in a controlled manner.

The event will be chaired by Inside Housing's editor Martin Hilditch.

This Inside Housing webinar, supported by Rockwool, taking place on Thursday 18 July at 12 noon will cover:

• How fire is known to spread
• Quality and effectiveness of fire doors and materials
• Issues with openings and suggested retrofit solutions, such as sprinklers
• How to risk access in order to find breaches
• New role of building duty holder