Croydon has more office floorspace turned into homes than almost anywhere in the country, and an assessor arriving at one of those buildings is not assessing a block of flats. They are assessing an office that has had dwellings put inside it, usually without the compartmentation, the second stair or the riser arrangement a building designed as flats would have had. That inheritance is the subject of the assessment, and pretending otherwise is how these buildings get a report that reads fine and means nothing.
What a converted office actually gives you
An open plan floorplate subdivided into flats, so the compartment walls are new and the evidence for them is whatever the conversion recorded. Service risers designed to run through an open floor, now passing through the line between one home and the next. A core sized for an office population leaving together during the day rather than for a stay put strategy at night. The assessment's first job is to establish what compartmentation exists and what evidence there is for it, and to record honestly where there is none.
Stay put is a conclusion, not a starting point
A block of flats gets a stay put strategy because the compartmentation is good enough to hold a fire in the flat it started in. A converted building has to earn that, and where the assessment cannot evidence the compartmentation it cannot recommend stay put. Changing the strategy to simultaneous evacuation is a serious step because it needs detection throughout and a way of telling everybody at once, so it is the conclusion that most often produces argument with a freeholder. It is also the one that should never be softened to avoid the cost.
The commercial floor underneath
Many of these buildings kept a shop, a gym or an office at ground and first floor with homes above. That is a vertical mixed use building, and the fire it is most exposed to starts in the part nobody living there controls. The assessment has to cover the separation between the two uses, who holds the fire safety duty for each, and how information passes between them. Where the commercial unit changes hands every few years and nobody tells the residential managing agent, that is the finding.
What the borough's tall blocks add
Croydon has a long standing concentration of tall residential buildings, and in a high rise residential building the 2022 Regulations add duties the assessment sits alongside: floor plans identifying the lifts and the key firefighting equipment, information for the fire and rescue service, and the fire door check regime. Greater London is London Fire Brigade's enforcement area, and for higher risk buildings in occupation the Building Safety Regulator asks for the same evidence from its own direction.
Questions people ask about fire risk assessment Croydon
What is different about assessing a converted office block?
The compartmentation is retrofitted rather than designed in, and the evidence for it is whatever the conversion recorded. The assessment has to establish what is actually there before it can recommend an evacuation strategy.
Can a converted building use a stay put strategy?
Only where the compartmentation between dwellings can be evidenced. Where it cannot, stay put is not available and the alternative needs detection throughout and a means of alerting everybody at once.
Who holds the duty in a building with shops underneath flats?
Each part has its own responsible person, and the separation between them is a shared problem. The assessment should say how information passes between the commercial occupier and whoever manages the homes above.
What extra duties apply in a high rise residential building?
The 2022 Regulations require floor plans identifying the lifts and the key firefighting equipment, information to be given to the fire and rescue service, and a check regime for fire doors, alongside the assessment itself.