Fire risk assessment in Croydon

Croydon town centre has a notable cluster of 1960s and 1970s residential and mixed-use towers, many refurbished or reclad over the decades with varying documentation of what was actually installed. Alongside these, permitted development rights have converted a large number of office buildings into residential use across East Croydon and the surrounding business districts, often retaining commercial-grade compartmentation never designed around sleeping risk. Purley, Thornton Heath and Addiscombe are more suburban, with Victorian and Edwardian terraces and semi-detached houses, some converted into flats or small HMOs. Newer build-to-rent schemes have also appeared near East Croydon station in the last decade.

Croydon operates additional licensing for HMOs across much of the borough, one of the more extensive schemes in outer London, though exact boundaries and renewal dates should be checked directly with the council before an application is submitted, since designations are reviewed periodically. Office-to-residential conversions under permitted development also frequently trigger licensing thresholds that landlords do not always anticipate, which we flag explicitly where relevant.

Croydon sits partly outside ULEZ boundaries depending on the exact site, so we always confirm the postcode before a visit, and parking around East Croydon and the town centre is metered but generally easier to find than in inner London. Office-to-residential conversions are often managed by specialist build-to-rent operators who hold detailed building information, which speeds up the desktop review before the visit. Tower blocks are typically managed by the council or a housing association, requiring caretaker coordination for access to plant rooms and risers. Turnaround for straightforward buildings is within 24 hours of the site visit.

Permitted development rights have converted a significant number of office buildings around East Croydon into residential use over the past decade, and these conversions frequently retain the original commercial-grade fire doors, corridors and compartment walls designed around daytime office occupancy rather than the sleeping risk of a residential building. We check specifically whether fire doors have been upgraded to residential specification, whether compartment walls between former office floors now correctly separate individual flats, and whether the landlord is aware that a permitted development conversion of this kind can trigger HMO licensing thresholds they had not anticipated, particularly where units have been subdivided further than the original planning consent envisaged.

The cluster of residential and mixed-use towers built across Croydon town centre in the 1960s and 70s has generally been refurbished or reclad at least once, sometimes more than once, and the paperwork trail for exactly what was installed during each phase is often incomplete. Where cladding or external insulation of uncertain composition remains on a building of this age, we record this explicitly and note it as a matter requiring further specialist investigation, since a standard fire risk assessment cannot itself determine the fire performance of an unidentified external wall material. Refurbished common areas in these towers sometimes show a mismatch between newly installed finishes and older, unreplaced fire doors or emergency lighting.

Purley retains a number of older blocks served by external escape stairs, some showing visible corrosion after decades of weather exposure, which we assess structurally as well as for fire performance since a corroded stair is both a fire safety and a general safety concern. Addiscombe and Thornton Heath combine Victorian and Edwardian terraces, some converted into flats or small HMOs, with post-war estate blocks, and the recurring finding across this suburban stock is fire doors fitted at some point in the building's history without self-closing devices, a straightforward but frequently overlooked defect that undermines an otherwise adequate compartmentation strategy.

Under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 and the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022, the freeholder, managing agent, landlord or employer must ensure a written fire risk assessment exists, is acted upon, and is reviewed at least annually. Buildings over 11 metres also require quarterly communal fire door checks, annual flat entrance door checks and wayfinding signage. We can deliver all of it in one visit.