Problem with fire alarm sounder

[Guest Pitusa]

Hi everyone !

I need help, we have a problem and I don't have a clue on how to act. I do apologise in advance for the long post ?

We live in a block of flats, the fire alarm was going off all the time for no reason several times a week so when there was a fire earlier this year no one paid attention to it as we were so used to it, until the fire brigade came and told everybody had to leave. Luckily there were no human victims, but the poor doggy in the apartment that fired up died.

The alarm kept sounding a lot for months, day and /or night.

Since that day our 6 year old started having panick attacks whenever the alarm went off, one of those days she was really upset shaking crying her eyes out and I don't know what happened to him but my husband  normally a very peaceful, quiet and kind man went outside the flat and took the sounder off the wall.

There's cctv in the building and obviously they caught him on camera, we received a letter from the lettings agency stating we'd have to pay for repairs, we said we would and apologised.

It took a while for them to come and fix it, and the sounder was different from the one that was on the wall before

Now we have received an invoice for over £600 in that invoice there are two devices ( in our floor they only changed one) and a charge for 4,5 working hours. 
I phoned the company on the invoice to enquire about the invoice and the person that answered told me that they first cam in to check the alarm as something was wrong with it, then came another day to keep investigating and then they realised our floor's sounder was off the wall, they came in a 3rd time to sort it and the fault they found on the 3rd floor's smoke detector, which was the one triggering the alarm.

I then told the lettings agency the block's management company was making us pay for our liability and for the repair on the 3rd floor and we didn't agree with that. 
The agent called them too and was told the same thing he then said he was going to ask for written confirmation  from the contractor, now the email from the contractor states that the overhaul cost of the invoice is attributed to irresponsible actions of a tenant at site, ( this action endangered the safety of all tenants in the block and possibly the fire and rescue service, should they have been a fire, this action could have ended up with criminal proceeding)

We attended site for a call out, to establish the extent of the damag, and then returned with the appropriate equipment installed and comissioned.

But that's not the same they told me and the agent on the phone! 

Can please someone advice me on this, I think it's too cheeky of them to make us pay for the repair of the smoke detector on the 3rd floor. They took so much time to fix the fault and they also put us up at risk  ? We do realise he didn't act correctly but we just want to pay what we must, not the management's company repair.

Thank you for your time reading this and for the help you may be able to provide

[Tom Sutton]

The lettings agency the block's management company would be the Responsible Person under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 and would have had a duty to sort out the false alarms but your problem is not a fire safety problem it is a legal matter. It would depend on any tenants agreements or any contract you have signed or any other legal considerations, so I would suggest you contact a property lawyer.

[Tom Sutton]

Pitusa may be worth checking out http://www.safetylawyers.co.uk/fire-safety/.