Fire Safety

The thoughts of everyone connected to South Lakes Housing go out to all those affected by the tragic fire at Grenfell Tower in West London.

In light of this tragedy, SLH wish to reassure our tenants and leaseholders that we take Fire Safety and Prevention extremely seriously and wish to take this opportunity to advise you about our robust procedures for managing fire safety within our homes and communal areas.

SLH is part of the County wide Grenfell Tower Post Incident Working Group and is liaising closely with Cumbria Fire & Rescue Services and Building Control authorities. This includes a range of precautionary actions such as; advising on evacuation procedures, carrying out checks on some of our blocks of flats and sheltered schemes, reviewing fire risk assessments and testing timber cladding. Joint working will also include ensuring that leaseholders install fire doors to their flats.

Fire Safety

The safety of our customers is an absolute priority and we comply with our legal responsibilities to keep you safe. This includes carrying out fire risk assessments in all buildings where they are needed, including blocks of flats and at our twelve sheltered housing schemes. Wherever fire alarms, fire doors and safety equipment are needed in communal schemes, we fit them and they are checked regularly.

Fire safety is also a resident responsibility and we require your assistance to keep your homes safe. Click here to see how you can help keep your homes safe.

Fire Risk Assessments (FRAs)

This is a term that you may have heard about during recent news articles. Fire Risk Assessments are carried out on behalf of SLH by external experts, Savills. They survey all our communal areas on a two year cycle, with sheltered housing schemes, community centres and leasehold centres assessed annually.  The latest fire risk assessments were carried out in March 2017 which recommended minor works at a couple of schemes which are currently underway.

Our heating maintenance service provider, Rogersons carries out an annual check of all smoke & carbon monoxide alarms during the annual gas or solid fuel service of general needs & sheltered homes, replacing failed out of date alarms during the same visit. Properties with electric heating receive an annual visit by our service provider to check the smoke alarm. Failed or out of date alarms are replaced during the same visit.

Evacuation Policy

In blocks of flats, the type of evacuation will be clearly stated on the Fire Action Notice in the communal area.

If there is a stay put policy in place, this is because your building is designed to restrict the spread of fire and smoke between flats.

If the fire is somewhere else in the building, it will usually be safe for you to stay in your flat with the front door closed for up to an hour while the emergency services tackle the fire and/or evacuate people safely. If  there is a need to evacuate, the fire service will supervise this. Please click here for information concerning Assisted Evacuation.

Residents of individual homes, shared ownership and leasehold properties are responsible for their own safety within their private homes, including carrying out regular tests of any smoke alarms.

We will keep our policies under review and will be improving safety regimes in line with any recommendations which arise from the initial investigations and resulting Public Inquiry into these tragic events.

As always if you have a specific concerns about fire safety within your home, please contact us on 0300 303 8540, live chat with us at www.southlakeshousing.co.uk, or send an email to customerservices@southlakeshousing.co.uk

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