legends · 6 min read ·
Fire Safety Inspection
A fire safety officer counts seven landings in a stair that the plans say has six.
**Fire Safety Inspection — Lowell House, 41 Bramwell Street**
**Inspector:** A. Mensah (Fire Safety Officer) · **Date:** 21 October · **Building:** 6 storeys, 18 flats, 1 stair (B)
- **Item · Result · Notes**
- Escape routes clear · Pass
- Stair B lighting · Pass · Emergency lights tested
- Final exit doors open freely · Pass
- Number of storeys matches plans · **Fail** · Plans: 6. Stair B has 7 landings.
- Fire assembly point sign · Pass
- Flat 6C occupancy · **Fail** · Occupancy recorded as 1. Occupant not listed on tenancy records.
· · ·
I had inspected Lowell House three times in four years. It was an old building with a new fire alarm, and it had always been well run. The tenants kept their corridors clear, and the managing agent answered emails within a day.
On the morning of the twenty-first I walked up Stair B with my clipboard, checking the landings. Each one had a window, a fire door, a red sign. Each sign said the same thing: *Ground*, *1*, *2*, *3*, *4*, *5*, *6*.
On the sixth landing I stopped to take a note. Above me, the stair kept going. There was another door, grey and unmarked, and a seventh sign, blank, lit by a single emergency lamp.
I checked the building plans on my tablet. Six storeys. Stair B ended at the sixth floor. The plans showed a flat roof, sealed, with no access.
I climbed the seventh flight. It was narrow and cold and smelled faintly of cut grass. At the top there was a door, painted to match the stairwell, and beside it a small brass plate with a number stamped into it.
*7.*
I didn't open the door. I wrote the finding down and went back to the ground floor.
· · ·
**Inspector's notes (A. Mensah, 21 October, continued)**
*Flat 6C: recorded occupancy 1. Name on tenancy: R. Lowe. On visit, door was answered by a woman in a grey cardigan who gave her name as Ruth. She said Mr. Lowe had moved out in 2019. She said she had been living in the flat for six years and had never received any post.*
*I asked to see her fire escape plan. She showed me a sheet of paper with one route marked on it, from her front door down the stairs to the ground floor. The route had a second line drawn beside it in pencil, going up instead of down. At the top of the line someone had written *7*.*
*I asked her whether she had a second means of escape. She said she did not need one. She said the stairs were always clear for her.*
· · ·
**Tenant complaint (Lowell House, Flat 4A, submitted to managing agent, 22 October)**
*The stairwell in Stair B has been changing. Last Thursday I came home and there were eight flights between the ground floor and the sixth, not seven. The seventh floor door was open, and I could see a corridor I've never seen before, with carpets in a pattern I didn't recognise. There was a lamp on, and the smell of cut grass.*
*I've been told that Flat 6C is empty. I hear someone moving about in it at night. They walk very slowly, and on the stairs they stop to let me catch up, every time I come home, before they go on up.*
*Please inspect the stairwell. I'm not sure I want to know what's at the top of it.*
· · ·
**Managing agent's reply (23 October)**
Thank you for your complaint. We have checked the building records. Stair B has six floors, as shown on the plans and the fire certificate. There is no seventh floor.
We have also checked Flat 6C. The tenancy was terminated in 2019. The flat has been vacant. There is no record of an occupant named Ruth.
We would ask that you do not go up to the top of Stair B. If you hear someone on the stairs, please continue on your way and do not stop to see who it is. The building is inspected every year, and the inspector has been asked to note any irregularity in the number of landings.
· · ·
**Inspector's note (A. Mensah, 4 November, follow-up)**
I returned to Lowell House to check the seventh floor, as I'd been asked to. The managing agent had given me a key to the grey door on Stair B. It did not fit.
I found a second key taped to the inside of the letterbox of Flat 6C. The door behind the grey door opened without resistance, onto a corridor carpeted in worn green, with a lamp at the far end and a row of doors on either side. The doors were all numbered, from 1 to 18.
The corridor was longer than the building. I walked down it counting doors, out of habit, and at door 18 I stopped. Behind the last door, a woman was singing, very quietly, the way you sing to someone who is trying to fall asleep.
The woman in the grey cardigan opened the door of Flat 6C as I passed, and looked at me, and smiled.
"Inspector," she said. "You've found the stair. We were wondering when someone would come up and check the number."
She was holding a sheet of paper. It was a fire escape plan, the same as before. The route went up, and at the top of the route, beside the seventh landing, she had drawn a small square labelled *Ground*, and written beside it, in neat pencil, *Please evacuate to here.*
· · ·
**Revised inspection report (A. Mensah, 5 November)**
- **Item · Result · Notes**
- Escape routes clear · Pass
- Stair B lighting · Pass
- Final exit doors open freely · Pass
- Number of storeys matches plans · **Fail** · Plans: 6. Stair B has 8 landings.
- Fire assembly point sign · **Fail** · Assembly point is recorded at ground level. Assembly point on the seventh floor is unlisted.
- Flat 6C occupancy · **Fail** · Occupancy: 2 (Ruth, unregistered).
*Recommendation: Stair B should be closed until the number of storeys has been corrected on the building plans. Any occupant of Flat 6C should be asked to evacuate.*
· · ·
**Note from the managing agent (6 November)**
The revised report has been received and filed. We have decided not to close Stair B. The building's fire certificate has been amended to show eight storeys, and Flat 6C has been listed as occupied.
We have also noted that the fire escape plan for the building now shows a route from the top floor down to the ground. The route is clear. Every tenant on Stair B has been asked to use it, every time they come home, and to count the landings as they go.
*Please do not stop on the seventh landing. Please keep moving. The assembly point is where you were always going.*