FIRESAFETY • 47
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New chairman
sends stark warning
about fire safety
The new chairman of the UK’s largest fire door certification scheme
has sounded a stark warning about fire safety in UK buildings.
»»David Oldfield, head
of joinery at Arnold Laver,
has been voted as chairman
of the BWF-CERTIFIRE
Scheme. He replaces David
Paxton, technical director at
Premdor.
David Oldfield said that
safety had seen major
breakthroughs in the last
few years thanks to the
overall improvement and
simplification of third-party
certification of fire doors
and the work of the Fire
Door Inspection Scheme
(FDIS). However, he was
very worried still about a
culture of complacency
among those responsible
for specifying, installing and
maintaining passive fire
protection measures such as
fire doors.
In particular, he pointed
to recent research by FDIS
which discovered that 61%
of fire doors inspected had
problems with fire or smoke
seals, and fines for breaches
of the Regulatory Reform
(Fire Safety) Order which
included fire door failures
had reached almost £1million
this year. The ’75 facts
about fire’ produced by the
BWF-CERTIFIRE Scheme for
this year’s Fire Door Safety
Week also showed a dossier
of safety failures across the
country.
David Oldfield said:
“The scale of the problem
is huge and ap X\