Care home fire doors: a compliance guide for managers

Care home fire doors carry more responsibility than almost any other doors in the building stock. In most buildings, a fire door buys people time to get themselves out. In a care home, many residents cannot get themselves out at all, and the whole fire strategy depends on doors holding back fire and smoke while staff move people to safety or protect them where they are. That is why the law expects the responsible person to keep every fire door in efficient working order, why the doors need checking more often than in a quiet office, and why propping them open is never an acceptable shortcut.

This guide is for care home managers, owners and estates teams. It covers the legal duty, the defects we typically find, how to let residents keep their doors open safely, how often to inspect, and how to keep records that stand up to scrutiny from the fire and rescue service and the Care Quality Commission.

Your legal duty as the responsible person

The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 places the duty on the "responsible person". In a care home, that is usually the registered provider, the owner, or the organisation that has control of the premises. The responsible person must carry out a suitable and sufficient fire risk assessment, act on its findings, and keep fire safety measures, including fire doors, maintained in efficient working order and good repair.

The fire risk assessment ties it all together. It should identify which doors are fire doors, what each one protects, and what checks are needed to keep them performing. Amendments made by the Building Safety Act 2022 strengthened the expectation that the assessment and your fire safety arrangements are recorded in writing.

The quarterly and annual door checks in the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 are aimed at blocks of flats. For most care homes, the inspection regime flows from the fire risk assessment rather than a fixed statutory interval, which puts the onus on you to set a sensible frequency and show you have kept to it.

Why care home fire doors carry so much weight

Care homes are usually designed around progressive horizontal evacuation. Rather than moving everyone down the stairs at once, staff move residents away from the fire into an adjoining protected area on the same floor, then further if needed. Approved Document B sets out this approach for new and altered care homes, and it only works if the fire doors between those protected areas close, latch and seal every time. A cross-corridor door that is propped open, or one with a failed closer, can let smoke into the very area residents are being moved into.

Bedroom doors matter just as much. Residents in rooms away from the fire are often best protected by staying where they are while staff deal with the affected zone. That approach relies on the bedroom door closing fully and sealing against smoke, because smoke, not flame, is usually the first threat to someone asleep or unable to move. A bedroom door that no longer closes into its frame turns a place of relative safety into a route for smoke.

Heavy use and the defects it causes

Few buildings put fire doors under as much strain as a care home. Corridor and bedroom doors are opened many times a day by staff pushing trolleys, wheelchairs, hoists and, in nursing homes, whole beds. Every knock takes a toll on the leaf edges, frame, seals and closer, so doors that would last years in an office can drift out of specification far sooner.

When we inspect care home fire doors, the same issues come up again and again:

• Self-closers that no longer close and latch the door, either through lost tension or because they have been turned down so far that residents can open the door easily but it no longer shuts properly.
• Damaged or missing intumescent strips and smoke seals, knocked off by trolleys or painted over during redecoration.
• Impact damage to leaf edges, faces and frames from wheelchairs, hoists and beds.
• Gaps out of tolerance where the leaf has dropped on worn or loose hinges.
• Protection plates, locks or fittings added without checking that they are compatible with the doorset's certification, and holes left behind when old fittings were removed.
• Hold-open devices that do not release when the fire alarm is tested, or doors held open with wedges and furniture.

Most of these are fixable if caught early. Our guide to common fire door inspection failures explains the wider picture, but in a care setting speed matters, because a defect on a well-used door gets worse quickly.

Keeping bedroom doors open the right way

Many residents want their bedroom doors left open. They may feel isolated with the door shut, want to see and hear staff, or find a closing door hard to manage. Staff often want doors open too, so they can check on residents without disturbing them. These are genuine care needs.

The dangerous answer is the wedge. A fire door held open with a wedge, a chair or a hook provides no protection at all, and it puts extra strain on the closer and hinges.

The correct answer is a device designed for the job and linked to the fire alarm system, covered by BS EN 1155:

• Free-swing closers let the door move as if no closer were fitted, so a resident can open it with little effort and leave it at any angle. When the fire alarm sounds, the closer engages and the door closes.
• Hold-open devices hold the door in a fixed open position, often with a magnet on the wall or floor, and release it when the alarm activates.

Whichever device you choose, it should be specified through your fire risk assessment, installed to the manufacturer's instructions, and compatible with the doorset's certification. Where a separate overhead closer is fitted, it should meet BS EN 1154 so the door closes fully once released. Staff should also confirm that every device releases each time the alarm is tested.

How often to inspect

Because the law does not fix one interval for care homes, the frequency should come from your fire risk assessment and reflect how hard the doors work. Care home doors are used far more heavily than those in most buildings, so they need looking at more often.

Common good practice is a formal inspection by a competent person at least every six months, working to BS 8214 for timber fire doorsets. Between visits, trained staff should make regular visual checks of closers, seals, gaps and hold-open devices, and any door that has been struck should be checked straight away. Our article on how often fire doors should be inspected sets out the wider legal picture.

A formal inspection looks at the whole doorset, references its certification, and produces a record a fire risk assessor or enforcing officer can rely on. Our inspections are FIRAS certified, which gives independent third-party assurance rather than self-declaration.

Records the fire service and the CQC will expect

The local fire and rescue service is the enforcing authority for the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, and its officers may audit your premises and ask to see evidence that fire doors are being maintained. The Care Quality Commission looks at whether your service and its premises are safe, and fire safety records form part of the evidence it may ask about.

A defensible record for each fire door should show:

• Its location and reference, its fire rating, and whether it needs smoke seals.
• The date of each check or inspection and who carried it out.
• What was found, with photographs where a defect was identified.
• The action taken, when it was completed, and by whom.

Keep these records with your fire risk assessment and fire safety logbook, so anyone who asks can see not only that doors were inspected but that defects were closed out.

Planning fire door work in care homes across Norfolk

Fire door work in a care home has to fit around the people who live there. The practical approach is to work one compartment or corridor at a time so protected areas stay protected, with replacement doorsets measured and ordered in advance so each door can be swapped in a single visit. Working around meal times, medication rounds, personal care and rest periods keeps disruption to a minimum, and residents living with dementia are often more settled when a familiar member of staff is nearby.

We are based in Wymondham and work with care homes, nursing homes and supported living settings across Norfolk, including Norwich, Great Yarmouth, King's Lynn, Dereham, Thetford and Cromer, as well as into Suffolk. Our installers are NVQ Level 3 qualified and our inspections are FIRAS certified. You can read more about our fire door services for care homes, or see how we support providers through our fire door services in Norwich.

If you manage a care home and are not sure whether your fire doors, hold-open devices or records would stand up to scrutiny, call us on 07717 751004, message us on WhatsApp, or send us an enquiry through our contact page. A rough door count and the layout of your home are enough for us to talk through a realistic inspection and maintenance plan that works around your residents.

The Access Fire Doors team