Staying safe at home
As your landlord, your safety is important to us . We are responsible for keeping the areas where you live safe, and we need your help to do this. Please make sure you read these safety guidelines and advice on these pages to help avoid risk to yourself, your family or your home.
The information on these pages explain what you can expect from Brighter Places to prevent problems and support you with any safety issues you might have. It also explains your responsibilities to keep you, your family and neighbours safe.
Read about what we do and what you need to do to keep your home safe
- Fire safety
We carry out regular rigorous fire alarm and fire safety checks of all blocks and communal areas.
You must let us in to your home to do these checks. We try hard to arrange a time that suits you. If we cannot arrange a time with you we can take legal steps to access your home to carry out the work and charge you the legal costs. This can be up to £1,000.
Within your home, it is your responsibility to avoid fire risk.
The fire action notice in your block will tell you what to do if a fire breaks out in your home/building.
Remember, never try to tackle a fire yourself – if a fire starts in your home, call 999.
- Safety in communal areas
We have a legal obligation to ensure all shared blocks and communal areas meet fire safety requirements.
Communal areas are spaces that everyone in the building can access:
- entrance lobbies
- landings
- corridors
- stairwells
- meter cupboards
- lifts
- open walkways
We have to make sure effective fire evacuation arrangements are in place. It is important that communal areas are kept tidy so that if there is a fire there is nothing that could prevent people from escaping, stop the fire services carrying out their duties, cause the fire to spread quickly or give off toxic smoke and gas.
To help prevent this happening you cannot store your possessions, leave unwanted goods to display decorative items (e.g. pictures and plant pots)
If items are left in communal areas we will give you notice to remove them. If items are not removed by the specified date we will remove it a charge of £50.We will dispose of it if it is not claimed after 28 days.
If you are a resident living in a block of flats with a communal area or corridor please read view and download our Safety in communal areas leaflet
Read more about our communal hallways policy.
- Safety checks we do to keep your home safe
By law we must carry out regular checks to keep your home safe You must let us or our contractors into your home to do these checks.
We try hard to arrange a time that suits you. If we cannot arrange a time with you or you won’t let us in we can take legal steps to access your home to carry out the work. We will charge you the legal costs which can be up to £1,000.
Essential safety checks we do:
- Every year:
- heating (gas boiler or heat pump, check and service)
- smoke, heat and carbon detectors (we usually do this when we check your heating, in some properties we check every six months)
- stairlifts
- hoists
- fire doors (for buildings more than 11 metres tall)
- Every six months:
- through the floor lift (if you have one)
- Every five years:
- Extra checks we may do:
- asbestos
- shared water systems e.g. for legionella bacteria
- damp or mould – find our more on our damp and mould page
- serious damage
- ventilation
- solar panels
- tree surveys (at some properties and blocks)
- Every year:
Brighter Places Safety Assurance Strategy (2025-30)
Our five-year strategy helps ensure our customers have safe homes and our colleagues have safe workplaces.
In Year 1 (2025-26) we focused on establishing a robust health and safety management framework and achieving external certification to ISO 45001, the internationally recognised standard for occupational health and safety management. We achieved certification in January 2026 and will continue to maintain it.
In Years 2 and 3 (2026-28) our focus is on improving the quality and accessibility of our property safety data. This will help us make better-informed decisions, respond to risks effectively and support the new requirements under Awaab’s Law.
In Year 4 (2028-29) we aim to introduce Behaviour-Based Safety so colleagues and contractors capture safety observations consistently, learn from them and use this insight to make safer choices.
By Year 5 (2029-30) our aim is to underpin safety decisions and behaviours with trusted property and customer data, continued ISO 45001 certification and improved assurance reporting. This will mean we can identify risks earlier, make better decisions and continually improve safety for our customers, colleagues and contractors.