Less than half of 17,000 new fire-resistant doors to be installed, council reveals

Hackney Town Hall

Hackney Council has shifted its target to replace thousands of front doors with fire-resistant models after changes to building safety regulations.

In 2018, the local authority committed to installing 17,000 new doors that could withstand fire for 30 minutes across its housing stock.

But this number now stands at less than half the original figure (7,086) after the Building Safety Act 2022 mandated that only high-rise blocks standing at seven storeys or higher needed to have their doors replaced.

In 2018, the minimum height was six storeys.

In May, the Citizen asked the council for an update on the project’s progress after the local authority awarded a £1.2 million contract for a similar programme to replace fire doors in 10 Hackney schools.

A Town Hall spokesperson said that, so far, 3,398 new doors had been installed across the borough, at a cost of £15.5m.

They said the new regulations only covered 5,973 doors in the 137 council blocks which had been registered with the Building Safety Regulator and were affected by updated fire safety rules.

The regulatory changes had “caused supply challenges across the whole sector”, the spokesperson added.

The Town Hall had originally estimated it would cost roughly £1,500 to replace a single fire door, but added that since 2018 this had risen to £4,000 due to “changes in the construction industry and material price inflation”.

“The cost of the scheme has also increased due to the fee charged by the regulator for each block,” the spokesperson said.

While the council originally expected it would take five years to complete the planned 17,000 installations, this was delayed due to disruption from the Covid-19 pandemic, rising costs, and “additional work needed to facilitate the work”.

The Town Hall now anticipates it will take “around three years” to change the remaining 3,148 doors.

In 2023, the Citizen reported that the council expected the installation of roughly 6,000 doors in its “highest-risk” blocks would take a year.

At that time, the council told residents that fire safety tests put the doors through extreme temperatures “unlikely to unfold in real life”.

The programme to replace fire doors for thousands of Hackney households came in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017.

In October 2018, the Town Hall told the Citizen that the London Fire Brigade had judged that no residents were at immediate risk and that current doors provided “protection and valuable escape time in the event of a fire”.

Then group director for housing, Kim Wright, said at the time: “It is important to remember that the Grenfell tragedy related to the cladding on the building, which assisted the spread of the fire, and not the fire doors.”

In March that year, the Metropolitan Police revealed that the fire doors installed as front doors of the flats inside Grenfell Tower, manufactured by Manse Masterdor, had failed under test conditions in 15 minutes, when they were supposed to act as a barrier for 30 minutes.