Your Building Safety Team
Your safety is our priority.
Peter Gordon is your dedicated Building Safety Manager for Blashill Court. Peter works as part of our building safety team, and works closely with the fire safety teams, your neighbourhood team and the London Fire Brigade to make sure your building is kept safe. Peter enjoys talking to residents to hear what you think. If you see Peter, 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 ‘Blashill Court’ in the subject line)
- Phone 0808 168 3471 and ask for your message to be passed to Peter Gordon.
- 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 Blashill Court is ‘Stay Put’.
Our guidance is to stay put unless your flat is being affected by fire or smoke. This is based on the fire protection provided in the building and the walls and doors of each flat. The building is designed to ensure that a fire cannot spread from one flat to another and allows enough time for the Fire Service to attend and deal with the fire in the one affected flat.
When you stay put, you reduce the risk of entering a smoke-filled corridor unnecessarily and potentially being overcome by smoke. Staying put also means firefighters can tackle the fire safely and quickly without being delayed by many residents evacuating down the stairways.
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 housing officer or building safety manager,
Building Safety Features
The table below sets out some of the features of Blashill Court that help keep you and your neighbours safe.
| What | Where | Why | When |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fire Doors | 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. | The doors are inspected 3 monthly for Communal doors and flat front doors annually. |
| Fire Risk Assessment (FRA) | An FRA is an inspection of the common areas of the building. | To check that fire safety arrangements meet legal fire safety requirements. It also identifies what else we can do to prevent fire and keep residents safe. | Once a year. |
| Sprinkler System | Blashill Court has a sprinkler system fitted throughout all residential dwellings. | Sprinkler systems put out fires just after they've started and are proven to be highly effective. | We service the sprinklers once a year and visually check them monthly. |
| Fire Detection System |
Blashill Court has mains heat and smoke detection installed throughout all residential flats, in the communal areas there are detectors within the refuse store, offices and plant room which control the smoke ventilation within the building. |
Fire detection systems provide early warning detection of smoke and fire. |
Communal detection is inspected every six months. For resident flat detection, guidance on how to test alarms and other fire safety advice can be found here: https://www.london-fire.gov.uk/safety/the-home/ |
| Smoke Control System |
Blashill Court has an AOV (Automatic Opening Vent) system installed. 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. | These are serviced every six months and checked monthly. |
| Communal Electrics | A full test and inspection is carried out every five years by a qualified electrician. | ||
| Emergency Lighting | Emergency lighting is installed throughout Blashill Court. 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 serviced every six months. |
| Dry Riser | Blashill Court has a dry riser inlet which has the ability to provide water to outlets on each floor. | A dry riser is designed to help firefighters easily access water on all floors and compartments during firefighting emergencies. It’s made up of a system of water inlets, pipes, and outlets spread out through a building across all levels. |
Checked monthly and serviced every six months. |
| Compartmentation | Compartmentation works have been undertaken at Blashill Court, these works ensure the compartments between the walls and floors retain fire and smoke resistance by design. | Blashill Court compartmentation works have been completed to ensure compartments are retained for fire safety following a comprehensive survey of the building. | N/A |
| Lifts |
N/A |
The building has 2 lifts, one of which have firefighting function of 'Lift recall' in the event of an emergency. |
Monthly testing. Lift servicing every 6 months. |
Communications about cladding work to your building
Works are due to take place to remove and replace the insulation behind the external walling along with cavity barrier works. We are working with the original building developer to carry out these works which are due to commence in November 2024. We will liaise with you to advise what works are taking place and the timescales. You will be written to every three months with an update on the cladding remediation works and we will also keep the building’s resident website updated. If you require an update on progress, please use the emai address claddingenquiries@sanctuary.co.uk.
Keeping Your Building Safe - Who Is Responsible?
We want you and your neighbours to feel safe in your home. 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.
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.
- check any fire detection equipment in our tenanted homes works as intended.
- 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 3471. 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.
- never use a wallpaper steamer. The heat from the steamer may activate your sprinkler and cause water damage to your home.
- never paint your home’s sprinkler, as this may stop the sprinkler from working.
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 Blashill Court 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 and Building Safety Coordinator 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 Blashill Court.
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 Peter, your Building Safety Manager, if you would like to know more, using the contact details in this document.
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 Blashill Court 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 Hub on 0808 168 3471.