The award-winning
Fire Door Safety Week campaign reached a new high in 2018, gaining support from
more than 350 individuals, organisations and businesses, and reaching millions
through press coverage and social media activity.
The week is run by
the British Woodworking Federation (BWF), the Fire Door Alliance and the Fire
Door Inspection Scheme, in partnership with the Home Office’s National Fire
Safety campaign.
It aims to stamp out
the legacy of neglect of fire doors across the UK, while raising awareness of
the crucial role that fire doors play in protecting lives.
This year’s campaign
was particularly successful online, where the Fire Door Safety Week website
traffic increased by 44% to nearly 30,000 visits to date. On Twitter, posts
sharing vital campaign messages reached over 1.5 million users and the hashtag
#FireDoorSafetyWeek achieved 500k impressions through impressive user
engagement which resulted in more than 550 mentions and 1,000 retweets.
As part of the
campaign, a poll of 1,000 UK adults in rented accommodation was conducted to
highlight attitudes towards fire safety – and results demonstrated that there
is still much more to do to ensure that standards within the industry are
raised. The shocking responses showed that only a quarter of tenants have been
reassured or had discussions with their landlord about fire safety in their
building.
With so little done
to address the concerns of tenants, landlords still have a long way to go meet
their fire safety responsibilities. In addition, almost three quarters of
flat tenants would ignore the guidance to ‘stay put’ if there was a fire in
their building and their particular flat was not affected, indicating a lack of
confidence in their building’s ability to stop the spread of fire or
smoke.
Supported widely by
the media, the campaign has so far resulted in more than 90 national, regional
and trade pieces of news coverage including an article on page two of The Times
on the first day of the campaign. In addition, 12 radio interviews with campaign
spokesperson Hannah Mansell reached a potential audience of 31.7 million
through outlets including Sky News Radio.
A series of five
powerful films formed part of the week, one of which was a tribute to the
victims, survivors and bereaved of Grenfell. So far, the films achieved over
5,000 plays.
Hannah Mansell,
spokesperson for the Fire Door Safety Week campaign, as well as BWF Head of
Technical Research and Insight, Chair of the Passive Fire Protection Forum and
a Trustee of the Children’s Burns Trust, said “This year’s campaign reached a
new high. Gaining our largest number of supporters to date, it brought together
supporters from the construction supply chain, housing associations, fire and
rescue services, action groups as well as members of the public.
“But even with this
year’s reach and engagement, it’s clear that our work is not done. It’s easy to
see that fire doors remain an area of neglect across the UK, with poorly
installed and maintained doors regularly reported to us.
“Fire doors play a
critical role in protecting occupants and the emergency services in a fire.
It’s disgraceful that such a low number of occupants have been informed by
their landlords about the fire safety plan for their building. We are
talking basic information, but information that could make the difference
between life and death.
“Over the next 12
months, the BWF will continue to raise awareness of the lifesaving role of fire
doors and importance of third-party certification to help improve building fire
safety as we move into 2019 and begin planning for next September’s campaign.”
