Entrance fire doors to apartments

[Guest Peter Lewis]

I have an apartment in a three story block of flats, that was built in the 1980s. Do I have to replace the entrance fire door to my apartment with one that meets the new standards. As the management company want me to pay over two thousand pounds to replace it.

[AnthonyB]

Potentially not - depending on the layout of the block and the status of the existing door - is it a fire door to the standard of the time and is it in good order.

The official government guidance for existing blocks (& the draft for the new guidance) allows a risk based approach to fire doors such that in certain circumstances original doors may be retained or upgraded.

The new guidance, if followed, will have special status under the Fire Safety Act amendments to legislation in England & Wales meaning that if followed it will tend to establish that there was no contravention of legislation meaning that it would be unlikely to be prosecutable except in extreme circumstances.

Without seeing the block and the doors (essentially doing an FRA) it's impossible to give a definitive answer, but it's not an automatic 'must replace'