Fire safety in communal areas

To comply with some new requirements under the Building Safety Act and other fire safety regulations, we need to issue some key building safety information to all new customers (whatever tenure and including mutual exchanges and resales) in flats/maisonettes/rooms etc within blocks where we're responsible for the Fire Risk Assessment.

We will write to customers at least once a year with this information. If there are concerns about fire safety within a block (for example, where items are being kept in the communal areas), we may write to you about these specific issues more frequently.

Even if you’ve had permission in the past to store something like a pushchair in an internal communal area, this no longer applies as nothing can now be stored in these areas. (Please contact us on 0300 5000 926 if you have a disability that would need us to consider making reasonable adjustments.)

Door mats are not permitted unless they're recessed in to the surrounding flooring. This is because we need to control the items in these areas to:

• reduce the potential for accidental fires to start and develop
• reduce the risk of deliberate fires being started
• make sure escape routes are free of any obstructions - these could impact on people evacuating the building safely or affect safe access for the fire service to help with an evacuation and tackling a fire.

We appreciate some residents like to personalise communal areas and we’re sorry this change may cause inconvenience, but the policy applies to everything in internal communal areas. You can no longer keep pictures, small tables, cupboards, shoe racks etc in the hallway or any other communal area.

As part of our landlord responsibilities, we carry out inspections of our communal areas to make sure they're safe. These will continue and we will take action if we find items in the hallways or other communal area. Customers, members of the public, contractors and partner agencies may also report items to us.

If items could be an immediate danger, we may remove them without notice. Otherwise we’ll take photos of them and make sure the correct legal notice is displayed in the communal area. We’ll also take reasonable steps to find out who the items belong to. We may do this by knocking on doors, leaving calling cards or writing to customers.

We will visit again to see whether the communal areas are clear. If items remain, we'll request their removal and disposal. In exceptional circumstances we may temporarily store certain items. We may charge customers for the cost of removing, storing and disposing of any items.

We ask for your co-operation with this - and please don't wait until an inspection or notice to clear these areas of your possessions.

Most items we remove, we will dispose of immediately. We will store some on a short-term temporary basis (for example, if they are of high value). To find out about storage and collection, you will need to contact us on 0300 5000 926.

We’re very sorry if some customers find our approach difficult and don’t want to remove items from communal areas. But we want to protect residents and make sure everyone is as safe as possible in the event of an emergency, such as a fire. As such, we won't be making any exceptions or changing this policy.