Fire safety in common areas: the board’s annual checklist

Fire safety equipment is used once — and on that day it has to work. Here is how to check it every year.

Fire safety in a residential building rests on a chain, not a single device: clear escape routes, a stairwell that does not fill with smoke, doors that close, lighting that stays on when the power drops, and a way to raise the alarm. One missing link and the rest loses much of its value.

The exact obligations depend on the building’s height, age and layout. The board’s job is not to decide what is mandatory — it is to check that what exists is maintained, accessible and working.

The annual walk-through checklist

• Extinguishers: present, pressurised, recently inspected, unobstructed, clearly signed.
• Emergency lighting: do the units come on when power is cut? Dead tubes show up in a single pass.
• Fire doors and closers: do doors close fully, or are they wedged open by a mat or a block?
• Stairwell smoke venting: control accessible, not painted over, not obstructed, periodically tested.
• Escape routes: corridors, landings and exits free of bikes, prams, furniture and boxes.
• Signage: street number visible, instructions posted, fire-service access clear.
• Risk rooms: bin store, bike store, boiler room, car park — doors closed and nothing flammable stacked against them.

The list folds naturally into the annual building walk-through: one round, one report, photographs to back it up.

Problem number one: clutter

In most buildings the main risk is not a missing extinguisher: it is the corridor turned into a bike shed, the landing full of furniture, the wedge under the fire door. These situations are ordinary, tolerated by habit, and they compromise evacuation.

The board has no policing power, but it does have the power to flag and explain. A written, illustrated, non-accusatory reminder usually works better than a formal demand: see how to communicate with owners. When it persists, it becomes a neighbour nuisance matter.

Inspection contracts

Extinguishers, smoke venting, emergency lighting and dry risers are inspected periodically by contractors. The board can ask to read the intervention reports: they are often more instructive than the contract itself.

• Have the reservations raised year after year been cleared?
• Could the contractor access every room, or are some points marked "not inspected" for years?
• Does the contract cover inspection only, or replacement parts as well?
• Is the annual cost consistent with the size of the building?

It is the same work as on any recurring contract: see the cleaning contract specification — the logic transfers.

What belongs to the flat, not the common areas

Smoke alarms inside flats are the occupant’s and owner’s responsibility, not the association’s. The board can remind everyone in an information note, but it has no business inspecting inside apartments.

The private/common boundary keeps coming back on these topics: it is detailed in private works and common areas.

An inspected extinguisher behind a stack of boxes is useless: safety depends as much on how the space is used as on the equipment.

Keep a record of your checks with CoproHarmony

CoproHarmony records each check with its photos, tracks reservations until they are cleared, and stores contractor reports. The board’s annual report then picks them up automatically. Create your free space.

Two related points to check on the same round: doors and access and balconies and railings.

One electrical point deserves its own check: the rising mains.