Common Sense Versus The Door Mat (Round 2)

Remember the door mats? A few months ago I wrote an innocent-enough post about the humble door mat and how it had been thrust centre-stage in a row about fire safety. The essence of it was that communal areas in buildings were having to be stripped of any and all personalisation (including welcome mats) and I questioned the sanity of it all. The reaction to the post was sizeable and showed that the majority of people would rather see some common sense exercised, than have to follow an endless series of nit-picking legislation to the absolute letter. At the time I said that we were committed to finding a better way and, by Jove, we might have something.

The come in/go away door mat.

Before this begins to sound like I'm taking umbrage at having to follow fire safety it’s worth remembering the tragic Lakanal House fire in Southwark. Not only does it serve as a vivid and terrifying reminder of why fire safety is something that we have to pursue doggedly (even when people say that we’re being a bit of a bore), it is also – hopefully – going to be the catalyst for change. A new report into the fire has produced some new guidance for landlords which sets out two basic options.

The first is the one that the fire service would rather see us pursue, which is one of zero tolerance. That’s what we’ve always followed and what caused the fuss over the door mats. The second option is to pursue what’s being termed a “managed approach”. Judging from feedback from the last post I would say that this is the preferred option for tenants and certainly was for the tenant who pursued his complaint about this subject right through to our final stage with the involvement of our Board. Under this option it’s possible, under certain conditions, to have pictures, doormats, even bikes and prams in areas that are not likely to cause an obstruction.

The simplest (and therefore most economic option) would be to keep to what we are doing now (even if it means donning hard-hats when we enforce it with tenants) and say that it’s just not possible to keep anything in the common areas. After all, this is what the fire service say they would prefer and they are the experts. However, working with our excellent team of caretakers we want to trial the managed approach and see just how workable it is.

The plan is to trial the managed option at Stretford House and train our caretakers for that building to exercise their skill and judgement to make sure that these areas are primarily kept safe and that they are also attractive and useful spaces for tenants. This needs our tenants and the caretakers to work together – we’ll give it a go, but if it leads to too many things being put into the shared areas, or they start to get used for storing things that might make any fire worse, we’ll need to go back to zero-tolerance. I’m not going to jump the gun because we’ve yet to see how this works in practice, but this looks like it might be one of those rare victories for common sense.

I thought that was worthy of shouting from the rooftop – but good old ‘elf and safety might have said I’d damage someone’s eardrums, so I thought I’d blog it instead!