Fire door inspection in Rickmansworth

When did anyone last look at the side door of a shop with flats above it?

It is the narrow one, in dull paint, with a bell panel beside it. Behind it a staircase climbs past the stockroom. If the shop catches fire, that stair is the only way down for the people upstairs, and in a town centre like Rickmansworth it is where we would start.

The shop and the flats usually have different owners. The shop carries its own insurance and stock and its own risks, a fryer say, or a till room stacked with cardboard. All that stands between it and the stair is one door. Wedge it open, break the closer or cut a big letterbox through it and the stair has nothing left to protect it. We check that door, the door at the top into each flat, and what is stood against them, because boxes stop a door closing as well as any wedge.

Stairs like these collect things. A bike, flattened cardboard waiting for collection, a crate on its way to the stockroom. Each one goes in the report on a line of its own, since it blocks the way out even when the door is fine. The flat doors at the top are usually in better shape than the street door and the shop door.

Who is meant to look after that door? Usually nobody has asked. The stair belongs to the freeholder and the shop door to the shopkeeper, and a door that sits between two people who rarely talk can go years unchecked. A written report puts the same list in front of both of them.

Small blocks and offices around the town get the same checks. In blocks over 11 metres there is a three-monthly check on communal doors, which our page on quarterly communal checks covers.

Rickmansworth sits in Three Rivers and the fire service is Hertfordshire's. If either has written to you about doors, forward the letter. We drive over from Luton, about 50 minutes, and fold the visit in with other jobs around Chorleywood or Watford. A street, a flat count and a note on whether there is a shop below is all we need for a first figure.