The team from 4Site Consulting let us know how RMC directors can help their appointed Managing Agents to make sure their building is as safe as possible.
If you are a Director of a block of flats or Residents Management Company, you may very well have an appointed Managing Agent on hand to assist you with many aspects of managing your building; including health and safety.
Using a Managing Agent can save you a lot of time and offer a huge amount of support in the management of your block but, as a Director, how can you assist your appointed Managing Agent in ensuring that the building you live in (and manage) is safe?
Risk Assessments
One of the most important aspects of Health and Safety in Block Management is ensuring that all of your Health and Safety Risk Assessments are up to date and managed effectively.
Not only is it important to ensure your block has a Health, Safety and Fire Risk Assessment, it is also important to consider whether there is a need for a Legionella Risk Assessment and an Asbestos Survey.
RMC Directors, Landlords or appointed Managing Agents should ensure that building’s Risk Assessments are carried out by a competent person or organisation.
RMC Directors can assist in ensuring that any hazards or non-compliances highlighted in the Health and Safety Reports are managed effectively. For example, you can ensure any contractors on site are communicated with and given any relevant safety information, such as Asbestos Surveys/ Asbestos Register. In addition to this, you can ensure that an accident book is available on site and ensure that Risk Assessors and any other essential contractors have access to the communal areas when needed.
Flat Entrance Doors: Fire Door Inspections
In a block of flats, front entrance doors and any other doors leading onto the communal areas are required to be fire doors. This is because fire doors are crucial for the compartmentation of a building and each flat should be a self-contained, fire-resisting compartment.
Historically, many Property Professionals have taken the view that, because non-communal doors were outside of their usual remit of maintenance obligations, they could not manage or influence the adequacy of the doors’ fire integrity.
However, the introduction of the Fire Safety Bill, which is currently progressing through Parliament, will give Freeholders, RMC’s and their appointed Managing Agents a clearer legal obligation to ensure that the residents’ entrance doors are suitable and sufficient in preventing the spread of smoke and flames.
As an RMC Director, you can ensure that your flat entrance door is sufficiently fire-rated and also that the other residents in the block are communicated with about the importance of having fire-rated doors.
Fire Door Inspections should also be arranged and considered as important as your Fire Risk Assessment.
Communal Areas
Items in the communal areas are one of the most common health and safety issues in residential blocks.
Whilst Managing Agents can write to residents and remind them to keep communal areas clear, it is also helpful and often more efficient if the Directors take more of a “hands on” approach when speaking with their neighbours and other residents of the block.
Directors of the block can assist their managing agents by ensuring fire escapes are kept clear at all times and will be on hand to ensure there are no items in the communal areas that cause a health, safety and fire issue.
Communication With Residents
Co-ordination, co-operation and communication with residents is highly important. After all, they are the ones living in the building!
Residents should be communicated with regarding their individual flat entrance doors, fire safety within non-communal areas, and the emergency plan for the property and RMC Directors, as a resident themselves, can help to ensure that this happens.
In her Building a Safer Future Consultation, Dame Judith Hackitt states that:
“The more that residents are informed about the fire safety strategy for the building, the better they will be able to play an active and informed role in helping to ensure that it remains safe, and the more they will in turn feel safe in their homes.”
If you are residing in a building where your safety is managed by others, then why shouldn’t you have ready access to information that may one day save your life?
Under the new Building Safety Regulatory Regime, Residents are given more of a voice, entitling them to access relevant safety data. Residents will also be able to report unsafe practices to the Building Safety Regulator, if they feel that their concerns are not being listened to.
It will be a requirement under the new regime for the Building Safety Manager to initiate and facilitate this process through a Residents Engagement Strategy.
At 4site, we have developed a Free Residents Voice App that can help aid this process. Please get in touch for further information about this (or anything else we discussed here).
