“You could be booking into a hotel which could be a death trap,” as you have no idea whether it has been properly inspected.
This is the verdict from fire safety expert Alan Cox, who appeared this week on the BBC’s Inside Out programme. The documentary investigated the fire safety of several hotels in the South West in the wake of the Penhallow Hotel fire that caused the deaths of three people in 2007.
Cox and the BBC team undertook an undercover investigation into 14 older-style hotels in the South West of England to find out whether they would pass his fire safety investigation. Of the 14, 11 failed the inspection, with examples shown of rotten wooden fire escapes, service pipes not sealed, piles of flammable junk in the basement of one hotel, and fire doors that did not close properly.
Many of these sights will be no surprise to anyone who has inspected properties regularly, but Cox is concerned that customers will have little or no idea of the potential scale of fire breaches until it’s too late and that inspections from fire services are not doing enough. He said:
Clearly we’ve seen some significant problems, and the danger is that if the fire authorities don’t increase their inspection ratios and enforcement action then unfortunately multiple death fire will occur again in hotels.
He added that, “In my view the system’s not working.”
One solution that could be used to raise awareness of hotels with poor fire safety is for customers to take a more pro-active approach. Ask the hotel about its fire-risk assessment, and if the staff are unable to help you, then a TripAdvisor review should reflect the fact. When a hotel sees its bookings start to drop from the internet, it will soon sharpen up its act.
Phil Martin, from Devon and Somerset Fire Service, denied the problem was as bad as the BBC suggested:
The vast majority of premises do take fire safety very seriously, and what we’ve found in the last six years is a diminishing number of fires in that type of property, and we’ve had zero fire deaths in six years in non-domestic properties.
Now that’s not something that we get complacent about, and we do everything that we can to help businesses to comply with legislation. But the responsibility sits fairly and squarely with the people who know and manage the building.
You can watch Inside Out South West’s investigation on the iPlayer until Monday 16th September.
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You are not alone, Out of the approx 150 buildings I have performed a mechanical smoke control test on, in QLD Australia, only 1 has passed assessment. This is only mechanical smoke control let alone all the other fire safety requirements which I believe are sadly lacking.
Wow, one out of 150, that’s truly shocking!
As a fire-safety consultant you can imagine this isn’t so surprising. However I couldn’t agree more about the public’s ignorance. I published a blog last year in which I suggested a Fire safety rating for hotels (like food safety and a michelin star etc.). Wanting the public to be more pro-active and ask questions won’t work. Make it easy for them i.e. this Hotel has a 1 star fire safety rating … I’m not staying there! My Blog post is here: http://bit.ly/OP0VRu
I like the line from Devon and Somerset Fire Service about responsibility sitting fairly and squarely with the people who know and manage the building. You would like to think that if a mother and her boyfriend killed their child, the responsibility would sit fairly and squarely with them. They are, after all, the people who ‘know and manage’ the child. However this wasn’t the case in the London Borough of Haringey where Baby Peter lived his short life. After Baby Peter’s death in 2007, the child protection services of Haringey and other agencies were widely criticised. Following the conviction… Read more »
It is similar situation with new hotels as well as old ones..
They may have sprinklers, fire doors, extinguishers which are normally common with all inspections but pop your head above the suspended ceilings and there will no passive fire protection or very little.
Penetration are rarely properly fire rated but unfortunately not many people know where to look or what to look for..
I think the situation is much worse that this program will show, but its a start.
I have stayed at hundreds of hotels on business (fire safety training) for 20 years, mainly 3 & 4 star graded. Some have been so bad I have checked out the next morning and I have reported about 20 to the F&RS. One in Hants had a plugged inand switched on iron on an ironing board in the corridor on every other floor. One in Surrey had no detection anywhere across 3 floors. Most recently a chain hotel had detection wrongly sited and fire doors not closing properly. This was the first serious fault I have found in such hotels… Read more »
I am afraid this is also a problem very much for the chain hotels !
Pity that I missed that program. My girlfriend has just about accepted that the first thing I will do after checking into the hotel room is to note/inspect the room, including door seals, penetrations, hazards, then the floor that I am on, especially corridor fire doors, detectors, furnishings and those little cubby holes that house ice machines, etc. Then the escape routes (and I insist that the girlfriend is with me on this bit) – I look for at least two different routes and so often find chained or locked doors or partially blocked routes/final exit doors. This is where… Read more »
I totally
agree. The Fire and Rescue Services are struggling with limited resources and
they will never pay a visit to a high proportion of businesses.
In the
premises that they do visit there
is no reason for them to be seen as too keen, which may lead to a dispute
rather than getting good references they are after, for the same pay.
This
is how the current system works playing a Russian roulette waiting for the next
tragedy to happen.
“Fire and Rescue Services are struggling with limited resources…” Hopefully they are limited by personnel and not funding. But if funding is the case then it may be time to purpose new business regulations that stipulate that these types of inspections are mandatory and the certifying agency should charge for it. This is an additional cost for the business but if you pass I am sure you will proudly tell your customers about it and that will raise awareness. In many places vehicle inspections are mandatory and the fee is paid back to the state why not for this as… Read more »
Agree with both comments below and struggle to know where to go with this as there is a distinct lack of interest as soon as costs are involved.
We have many times advised main contractors of issues at site level but are ignored or in worst case asked to leave the site.
It would seem that life is very cheap and we all understand the issues but there is no one to take them to.
I’d back that, but in lieu of it, I’d suggest that Trip Advisor (or equivalent) would be a good start for hotel customers.
Fair poit Rob. It would certainly be quicker to implement. Only trouble is many people wouldn’t recognise how poor the fire-safety is. So if we are relying on people in the trade to comment rather than all guests the volume will be quite low.
Interesting analogy. The justification that fire services give to the public for fire service cuts is that their increased fire safety visits are bringing the number of fires down. So is that cliff-edge approaching?
MPs perhaps? Would they listen though?
It would make sense that the independent hotels would be more likely to have problems, as a chain will have top-down direction on their systems enforced across the business. However, where a chain often falls down is employee behaviour, with staff blocking, locking, or propping open fire exits, not understanding the rules as they’ve been told to them.
Rob,
The problems we see are in the costruction of the hotels.
The passive fire protection is often over looked and at time more worryingly on purpose.
This is not a one off issue but one we see on many projects.
so add this to the issues you just mentioned its not good.
Thanks Robert. Do the hotel managers pay much attention to your actions or are they blind to the faults?
I see, yes, that makes sense. As is shown in the programme, the fire stopping in the utility areas in particular was lacking, so it would make sense that it is these older buildings where the problems are common. Thanks
To answer JonathanL’s comment; personnel and funding are the same thing. If your funding is cut, you have to cut personnel (and please don’t anyone mention “back office”). On the idea of businesses paying for fire service inspections of their property, they already do. They pay business rates, and taxes. These go to the government and government pays for fire and rescue services. To answer Rob’s question “is that cliff-edge approaching?”. The thing about cliff edges is that you don’t know you are approaching them until you fall! If Rob had read the article properly he would have noticed that… Read more »
@Robert Brown, I think I could argue that perhaps a chain hotel could potentially be worse than an independant. Just think if I have a cookie cutter layout because if you stay at one of my hotels then I want it to seem familiar and inviting then a flaw in my original model is present in all of them with they are based on that one design. So instead of owning one death trap I own a dozen.
This is the sad reality.
Rob, few people will probably read it, or realise the importance of the comments made and could be open to challenges and claims that one is trying to damage the hotel’s business – unfortunately. The right place is the local fire service as they would have adverse publicity if they failed to investigate a serious complaint that later became an incident.
Yes Rob they do seem to pay attention but I can be a fairly forceful person especially if unnecessary risks to my life/welfare are involved! The merest hint that I am happy to accept they don’t care about their clients and the general public but other authorities might have a different perspective on the faults that I have found and a thorough investigation by the local fire service and/or HSE might find more than I have and the resulting prosecution and fines are not unsubstantial, further the loss of business might exceed the cost of ensuring that there are… Read more »
How many of us knowingly pay a third party to put our life in danger? We expect planes to be maintained and pilots to be competent. We expect public buses to be serviced and maintained so they are fit for the road. We expect rail companies to have checked and maintained their trains and tracks. We don’t buy a ticket for one of those forms of transport and expect to be put in any danger through incompetence or preventable mechanical failure. If there is an accident and the driver/operator is at fault we expect the book to be thrown at… Read more »
True, but I still feel that such a risk is less likely to exist in the first place. But I see your point, jonathonl
Great comment Simon. As well as European regulation, they may have European competition to deal with too perhaps? If the UKs hotels are seen internationally as being unsafe, then that would be bad news for UK plc.
I might have to read it all back again next week, robert! You’re right that this issue is a programme in and of itself, not just a 10-minute item on a regional programme. In fact, doesn’t that sum the whole problem up? A small investigation limited to a regional showing. What hotel fire safety needs is national awareness.
This is sad, however there are still more to be done as individuals and encouraging government to do more
That’s a good way of looking at the issue, Jonathan. I agree as well. The more establishments there are, the greater the risks. The increased number of “death traps” should be a tell-tale figure. It pays to check the safety measures in the hotel that you may have booked a room at.
But then how does one test things like fire doors that are marked ‘this door is alarmed, only use in an emergency,’ or check that manual call points work? Or a smoke detection system? You have to take some of these things on trust.
One should not attempt to open a final exit fire door under normal circumstances but certainly one inspect to ensure that it looks as though it would open from the inside in an emergency, i.e. no chains or secured locked bars across the door. Most “alarmed” doors can actually be opened a few millimetres between the detector is aware of the opening. Of course one should be able to check from the outside that no builders equipment is not stored there (particularly pots of inflammable solvents with paint brushes soaking), giant wheelie bins are not parked there, no skips… Read more »
Robert, I thought that I would comment on your point about they had missed a great opportunity to make a longer program by showing the viewer a typical breach and then following it up with what the breach could cause/allow in a fire” I agree that it would have been nice to make a longer programme and I think that everyone would agree with that but the constraints are set by the BBC and believe me they are very strict and I for one would have liked to include a lot more but at the end of the day it… Read more »
I completely agree that 5 minutes on national TV is better than nothing at all! A full-length programme would be nice, yes, but would people necessarily watch? Who knows?
Good investigative journalism is one of this country’s great institutions. While we only ever seem to hear about the investigations that went wrong or didn’t get aired (Saville, Lord McAlpine for example) we should give more praise for successful investigations. I didn’t realise the extent of the BBCs work on Penhallow, so bravo!
You make a great point in that there is rarely a single point of failure, so we certainly have to be vigilant towards as many weak points as we can.
On an aside, I have a slightly comical image in my head of someone running out of a fire exit and straight into a skip. Wouldn’t be funny if it happened to you, but I can see that in a Benny Hill skit or something!
I fancy if there could be something like star ratings for fire safety in hotels as discussed in another blog regarding hospitals’ fire safety. Hotels and hospitals are places where people stay for some time at least if not some days. They have to be more than vigilant in protecting people they host because these people bring business to them.
@ JonathanL, you made a peculiar but pertinent point about chain hotels. Often we tend to overlook these issues with chain hotels just because we are complacent about them and look at them as some standard places for just about everything. Besides, more power of money on their back lets them escape quality visits by fire officials. Unobserved favorable reports are made by officials even if being visited.