Your Building Safety Team
Your safety is our priority.
Laura Mills (Building Safety Manager) is part of Sanctuary’s dedicated team for building safety at Margaret House.
Laura works closely with Sanctuary’s fire safety teams, your housing officer and your local fire service to make sure your building is kept safe. Both Patrick and Sabrina enjoy talking to residents to hear what you think. If you see Laura at Margaret 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 ‘Margaret House’ in the subject line)
- Phone 0800 131 3348 and ask for your message to be passed to Laura Mills.
- 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 Margaret House 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 smoky 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 would like West Midlands Fire Service to confirm your flat’s as safe as it can be, please complete the online referral at https://www.wmfs.net/our-services/safe-and-well.
Someone from West Midlands Fire Service will contact you for a phone chat or home visit if your answers suggest you are at a higher risk of harm. If you can’t access West Midlands Fire Service’s online form, you can still get free safety advice by phoning West Midlands Fire Service on 0800 389 5525 or by emailing homesafety.centre@wmfs.net.
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 | Fire Doors Throughout the building, including the front door of every flat. | Fire doors help to prevent the spread of fire, smoke and fumes. | The flat front doors will be inspected every year, and the communal doors are inspected at regular intervals by the Housing and Building Safety teams. |
| Sprinklers | Within communal areas and in every flat. | Sprinklers help to control fires. | We service the sprinklers once a year and visually check the communal sprinklers once a month. |
| 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. |
| Fire Detection System | Smoke detectors are located in some plant and communal areas, as well as in each flat. | Provides early warning in the event of a fire within your flat. If the communal detectors detect smoke this is monitored by an offsite receiving centre, returns the lifts to the ground floor so they can’t be used by residents, control the smoke control system, and unlock the exit doors to allow everyone to leave the building quickly and safely. | The communal fire alarm is serviced every six months and inspected monthly. |
| Smoke Control System | This building has an automatic opening vent (AOV) built into the skylight window in the communal stairwell. | 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 annually and checked monthly. |
| Heating | There are district gas boilers in the basement plant room that supply heating and hot water to the building including your flat. | The most recent gas safety check is displayed on the communal noticeboard. | |
| Electrics | A full test and inspection is carried out every five years by a qualified electrician. | ||
| Emergency Lighting | Emergency lighting is installed throughout Margaret House. These self-testing devices should work for at least three hours if the building’s power fails. | These light up the way out if you need to leave the building. | These are checked on a monthly basis, and tested and serviced annually. |
| Bin Chute | The bin chute room is located off each level of the stairwell. | The bin chute is protected by fire-rated ‘hoppers’ (the metal drawer where you place your waste into the chute). | We service the hoppers and shutter every year and check them regularly. |
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.
- 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 0800 131 3348. 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 Margaret 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 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 Margaret 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 Laura, your Building Safety Manager, 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 Margaret 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 0800 131 3348.