Fire door failures
Case reference FOI2026/00233
Received 27 February 2026
Published 17 April 2026
Request
I would like to request the following information covering the financial year 2024/25.
1. Fire door-related failures The number of fire safety inspections carried out under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 where the outcome recorded included non-compliance specifically due to deficiencies relating to fire doors. For the purposes of this request, a fire door-related failure should be counted where any non-compliant building had fire doors recorded as either the primary reason for non-compliance, or a contributing factor to non-compliance. Fire door non-compliance should be understood to include (but not be limited to): inadequate fire resistance of fire doors, damaged, poorly fitting, or incorrectly installed fire doors, missing, defective, or disabled self-closing devices, missing or defective intumescent or smoke seals, inappropriate fire door specification for the location, inadequate maintenance of fire doors.
2. Reasons for fire door failures Based on inspection records, enforcement records, or deficiency categories held, the five most frequently recorded reasons for fire door-related non-compliance during the timeframe above. Please base this response only on existing recorded categories or descriptions used by your service, and not on new analysis or interpretation.
3.Building types affected Based on inspection or enforcement records, the five most common building types in which fire door-related non-compliance was recorded during the timeframe above. If building types are categorised by your service (for example, residential, care homes, commercial, educational, etc.), please use the categories already recorded.
Response
By way of background, fire door failures can be recorded under many different articles of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 and there is not a singular article that fire safety systems (such as fire doors) fall under.
When conducting a Fire Safety Audit, LFB Inspecting Officers would record any fire door failures against the relevant specific article on the Fire Safety Audit form. It is worth noting that during every Fire Safey Audit there can be (and usually is) non-compliance of some description found during an audit (although not necessarily due to fire doors). The vast majority are of a low level and be dealt with through advice and guidance with the risk score resulting in an overall ‘broadly compliant’ audit outcome. There may be instances where there is non-compliance recorded on a Fire Safety Audit form due to a fire door but, the overall audit is compliant, and no notices issued.
We are unable to run a report, from the system that Fire Safety Audit forms are stored, that can identify failures with individual fire safety systems such as fire doors. To obtain the information you have requested we would have to manually check all Fire Safety Audit forms completed in 2024/25 to see if there were any failures with individual fire safety systems such as fire doors and look at the reason recorded for the failure and the premises type.
LFB undertook over 4,500 fire safety audits in 2024/25, of which just over 1,100 resulted in resulted in a Notice of Deficiencies (NoD) letter or an Enforcement Notice (EN) or Prohibition Notice (PN) being issued.
As mentioned above, the number of fire safety inspections carried out under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 where the outcome recorded included non-compliance specifically due to deficiencies relating to fire doors could be recorded in the 1,100 unsatisfactory audits that resulted in a NoD or an EN/PN or, it could also include any of the remaining 3,500+ premises recorded as ‘satisfactory’ as that is not actually an indicator of no defects/contraventions.
Our Fire Safety department have let us know that, for a simple straight forward file to locate the last fire Safety Audit form, review the form to see if any fire door failure information was recorded, then extract that data you have requested would take a minimum of 10 minutes per audit form but it could easily take longer for some more complex premises. For some premises there will have been multiple audits during the year (inc. follow-ups) and each audit form would need to be considered.
Even if our Fire Safety department only looked at the 1,100 records that resulted in resulted in a Notice of Deficiencies (NoD) letter or an Enforcement Notice (EN) or Prohibition Notice (PN) being issued, if they used the average of 10 minutes (1,000 cases), it will take 183 hours (10 minutes times 1,000 records, divided by 60 minutes equals 183 hours) to review all of the relevant records, retrieve and extract the information. I therefore confirm that the cost of providing the information you have requested is in the cost range of £4,583 which is greater than the “appropriate limit” of £450 as defined the FOIA fee regulations. In setting this out in full this now serves as a formal ‘refusal notice’ based on section 12 of the FOIA. As you may be aware, if the cost exceeds the appropriate limit to comply with a request, a public authority is not obliged to comply with it.
If you are able to further refine your request then please let us know however, please do bear in the mind the manual nature of any search that may need to be carried out to obtain this information as detailed above.
Documents
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