Licensing Consultation in Southwark

Reply to the comment left by "Jay Jay" at "05/10/2014 - 21:22":

Hi Jay Jay,

I am Private Sector Licensing Manager at Southwark

Are we likely to get Southwark confirmation of the LFB official position on the proposals? Victoria has highlighted their recent opinion on the issue - seems pretty clear they don't consider it a mandatory requirement.

Reply to the comment left by "John Daley" at "06/10/2014 - 11:27":

Thanks John.

Are you a direct council employee or a consultant to the council for a project to implement licensing proposals?

Reply to the comment left by "Victoria Morris" at "06/10/2014 - 09:14":

The mandatory fire improvement proposal from Southwark is at odds with recent comments from - James Cleverly chair of the fire authority,

"The brigade's figures show that the number of fires in London has fallen by fifty per cent in the last ten years, and latest figures show that they continued to fall at the same rate last year."

Its worth nothing the Southwark fire station closed this year.

It's also worth noting one of the worst areas for setting fires in the UK has an additional HMO scheme and they haven't enforced any changes to kitchen doors like Southwark is proposing

Hi,

I have a response from my colleagues and this expresses our position clearly.

I think we need to be clear that we aren't enforcing the RRO, only the Fire Brigade can enforce that. We are enforcing fire precautions based on an HHSRS assessment of the property and using the Lacors fire guidance. We do consult with the fire brigade before we give the schedule of works required to the landlord but the Fire Brigade themselves also refer to the Lacors Fire Guidance during that consultation. The consultation is to check that we have assessed the fire risk adequately and are interpreting the guidance appropriately.

If a landlord, in compliance with the RRO, decides to employ a fire safety specialist to carry out a fire safety assessment the company will recommend works to comply with the Lacors guidance based on their own risk assessment and that is also an acceptable way for a landlord to proceed as an alternative to asking us for help and advice. I would only add the proviso that, based on past experiences, we would recommend the landlord ask us to look over the works recommended by the fire company (we can also get the Fire Brigade to check it's contents) to ensure we would not require anything different on licensing the property.

The Lacors guidance is therefore the best place to seek guidance on fire precautions in residential properties and also contains within it a national agreement that the LA will be the enforcing authority in Houses in Multiple Occupation. The Fire Brigade is the enforcing authority when there is a large element of commercial occupation or the property is completely commercial use.

In previous years we have not included fire precautions in our HMO standards because they are complex and very property specific and we deal with a large variety of HMO's of various risks and sizes. We felt it would be helpful to give a basic guide on the standard we expect without simply referring the landlord to the Lacors guidance, which is a large document.

Whilst we want to give landlords an idea of the fire precautions that might be applied to their property, without a professional risk assessment the fire precautions part of the HMO standard is only to give a guide on what to expect as a requirement.

With regard to the issue of the direction of fire doors, this only applies to doors that have been added to separate a corridor, not room doors, and is only required in properties where there is a very large distance of travel to a 'safe place' and would not affect the large majority of HMO's in our borough. We would also weigh up any risk caused by a fire door opening in the direction of the route of escape and if the hazard from opening a door that way was greater than the risk it posed to the means of escape we would put forward an alternative.

It is helpful to get feedback on this part of the document in particular so we can gauge how helpful landlords find it and if there is a better way of presenting the information. It might be that we need to address the language in this part of the document to make the message clearer.

So we still dont have the official LFB position on Southwark proposals to enforce the fitting of glass kitchen doors in the addtional scheme HMO's

Reply to the comment left by "Jay Jay" at "06/10/2014 - 19:42":

Any reply John?

Reply to the comment left by "Jay Jay" at "10/10/2014 - 10:19":

Jay Jay

I work for Southwark Council, my terms and conditions are between us and therefore no concern of yours.

Reply to the comment left by "chris wright" at "10/10/2014 - 09:15":

Chris,

On the first page I commented that we have consulted on the proposals, LFB have been consulted along with all the rest of the stakeholders. If they have a view on this I am sure they will comment along with everyone else, as I stated earlier.

Reply to the comment left by "John Daley" at "10/10/2014 - 11:37":

Indeed you did John - so what's clear now is that as it stands the LFB haven't approved of any proposed changes to the fire doors for small HMO's in the designated licensing area.

Strange way to hold a consultation - get them in and don't get a response to the meat of the issue namely is this or that change going to be ok.

So to be clear you're saying the LFB will give a view but are we to take it if they don't (as per the current situation) then you won't proceed to enforce the changes to the kitchen doors etc?