Your Building Safety Team
Your safety is our priority.
Hannah Dunford (Building Safety Manager) is your dedicated Building Safety Manager at Balliol House.
Hannah works as part of our building safety team, and works closely with the fire safety teams, your neighbourhood team and Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service to make sure your building is kept safe.
Hannah enjoys talking to residents to hear what you think. If you see Hannah at Balliol House, do say “hello”.
If you have a safety question about your building, or you want to raise a safety concern, please contact us using one of the options below.
- Email buildingsafety@sanctuary.co.uk (type ‘Balliol House’ in the subject line)
- Phone 0808 168 3473 and ask for your message to be passed to Hannah Dunford.
- If you have a hearing impairment you can access our text facility on 07800 006781 or connect to a British Sign Language interpreter.
About Your Building
We want you and your neighbours to feel safe in your home.
If we find a fire safety fault that we know will take us more than 24 hours to fix, we will make the local fire and rescue service aware and review the Fire Risk Assessment to see if we need to put any additional safety measures in place.
Remember, we need your help to keep everyone safe. Please keep your building’s fire doors closed, the corridors and exits clear, and report any faults with fire doors or other safety equipment as soon as possible.
Fire Evacuation Procedure
The evacuation strategy for Balliol House is ‘Simultaneous Evacuation’.
- Get everyone out of your flat.
- Leave immediately, closing internal doors and your flat door behind you as you make your way outside.
- Phone 999 to alert the fire brigade - tell the operator who you are, your flat number and your full address.
- Make your way outside to the assembly point (on the street outside the front of the building) and await instructions from Sanctuary staff or the fire service.
You will be assisted to evacuate the building safely by the fire service if needed. If you think you would need help evacuating and we are not already aware, please contact your building safety manager or your accommodation manager. Hannah’s contact details can be found at the top of this page.
Building Safety Features
The table below sets out the features of your building that help keep you and your neighbours safe.
| What | Where | Why | When |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fire Doors | Throughout the building, including the front door of every flat. | Fire doors slow down the spread of smoke and fire within the building. Most of these doors are designed to resist fire and smoke for at least 30 minutes. This includes all flat entrance, lobby, staircase and cupboard doors. | Flat front doors are inspected annually. |
| Fire Detection System | Balliol House has detection installed throughout the building, including flats bedrooms & kitchens. | Provides early warning in the event of a fire. In this building, as well as the alarms sounding, they also control the smoke control system, return the lifts to the ground floor so they can’t be used, and unlock the exit doors to allow everyone to leave the building quickly and safely. | Detection inspected every six months. |
| Emergency Lighting | Emergency lighting is installed throughout Balliol House. These look like ordinary lights but work for at least three hours if the power to the building fails (a common event during building fires). | The lights show residents the way out of the building, lighting the escape route. | These are checked on a monthly basis, and tested and serviced every six months. |
| Smoke Control | Balliol House has an AOV (Automatic Opening Vent) system in the common stairwell. The vents are controlled by smoke detection and manual operation. | These open when smoke is detected, allowing smoke to leave the building. This clears the stairwells of smoke, allowing residents to leave the building safely and firefighters to locate the fire. | Checked monthly and serviced every six months. |
| Lifts | The building has 1 passenger lift. | Monthly test. Lift servicing every 6 months. |
Keeping Your Building Safe - Who Is Responsible?
Sanctuary will:
- carry out a regular Fire Risk Assessment (FRA). If you would like to see the most recent FRA, please ask your Building Safety Manager to give you a copy.
- regularly check the communal fire alarm, emergency lighting, fire doors and escape routes.
- make safe any faults with the fire alarm within 24 hours.
- remove household items from corridors and communal cupboards, to reduce the risk of fire and likelihood of residents being obstructed.
- display your building’s Fire Evacuation Procedure on each floor.
- review this document every 12 months, and use feedback from residents to make sure the content remains relevant and accessible.
We need you to:
- report any fire risks that you are worried about to us straight away by phoning 0808 168 3473. This could include things like a broken fire door or items blocking a means of escape.
- make sure everyone who lives with you knows what to do if there’s a fire. Please memorise your building’s fire evacuation procedure to help keep you and your household safe (see the Fire Action Notices displayed throughout the building).
- read the fire safety information we give you and test your smoke alarms as instructed.
- never barbecue on your balcony (if you have a balcony), and make sure anything stored on the balcony is fireproof.
- clean the filters in your cooker hood regularly – if grease or oil builds up, it could catch fire.
- clean your tumble dryer’s filter of lint after every use.
- if you smoke make sure you stub out cigarettes and cigars in an ashtray – don’t put them into plant pots or throw them from a balcony as this can cause a fire.
For more detailed fire safety advice please visit our dedicated webpage.
Resident Engagement Strategy
Our 2022-2025 Resident Engagement Strategy, ‘Shaping our Future’, sets out how Sanctuary works with customers to improve our services.
Read our Resident Engagement Strategy (PDF 580KB).
We have three priorities:
1. Local engagement
We know our residents want to talk to their local Sanctuary team about local issues.
2. Strategic engagement
We want to strengthen the influence of our residents on significant decisions.
3. Customer experience
We know residents want a better experience when raising day-to-day issues.
We’ll keep you informed through the dedicated Balliol House page on our website, and by regularly updating your building’s notice boards. We may also engage with you and your neighbours through the use of online surveys, awareness events, drop-in sessions and walkabouts. You can contact your Building Safety Manager at any time using the contact details above.
Consultations
We will consult with you and your neighbours every time we plan to carry out certain work at Balliol House. This could include us making improvements to the building, or replacing old or broken materials and equipment.
There are several ways we consult with residents, and the methods used depend on the type of work we need to carry out. We may consult with you by post, email, phone or through face-to-face resident events.
Please speak to Hannah if you would like to know more, using the contact details above.
We will make sure your views are both heard and considered before any decisions are made.
Complaints
We have made it easy for you to tell us if you are unhappy with how we are keeping Balliol House safe. If you have a complaint relating to risk to the safety of yourself or others in your building, or if you feel we aren’t meeting our responsibilities relating to building or fire safety you can raise this with us through the following channels.
The easiest way to complain is to use the complaints form on our website by:
- visiting our dedicated complaints webpage
- phoning our Customer Service Centre on 0808 168 3473.