Hackney shifts fire door replacement target

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

In 2018, Hackney Council said it would install 17,000 new doors across its housing portfolio that could withstand fire for 30 minutes.

But after new laws introduced in 2022 said only high-rise blocks standing at seven storeys or higher needed to have their doors replaced, the council changed its target.

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

The Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) asked the council for an update on the project's progress after the local authority awarded a £1.2m contract for a similar programme to replace fire doors in 10 Hackney schools.

A council 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.

Hackney Council had originally estimated it would cost roughly £1,500 to replace a single fire door, but added that 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.

The council now anticipates it will take "around three years" to change the remaining doors.

In 2023, the LDRS 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".

In March 2023, 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.

Seventy-two people died in the fire in Grenfell Tower in west London in June 2017.

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