St Davids Crescent, Cardiff

External mobility scooter stores help resolve FRA warnings

A demand to meet the requirements of the authority’s Fire Risk Assessments led to Cardiff City Council commissioning metroSTOR to install secure external mobility scooter stores on two residential locations.

Safety and convenience of residents is of critical importance for John Thomas, Property Condition Assessor at Cardiff City Council, who followed the National Fire Chiefs Council’s guidance on scooter storage.

Sites in St David’s Crescent and Cymric Close were selected to have the latest design of mobility scooter store with features including recharging points, fire-resistant features and internal motion sensor interior lighting.

Cardiff City Council specified key-operated locks for the six-scooter store at St David’s Crescent and two-scooter store at Cymric Close, while PIR activated LED lighting ensures the safety and convenience of residents walking into the shared scooter store facilities on either of the locations.

John commented: “Our main aim was to meet the requirements of our Fire Risk Assessment, also to improve the environment and ensure the safety and security of our tenants. The financial cost cannot be calculated in comparison to injury and death of a resident, but the works have also made our tenants more aware of their own safety and how inconsiderate actions affect everyone within the property.”

While mobility scooters have many benefits for their users, giving them a level of freedom that couldn’t otherwise be achieved, they do unfortunately represent a significant fire risk because of their batteries. There are recorded cases of these catching alight both when charging and being stored and unfortunately some of these fires have caused fatalities.

The NFCC recommend that mobility scooters should be stored and charged a fire-resistant room if inside a building, and if this isn’t possible an external facility for the storage and charging of scooters should be provided. This should be constructed from fire resistant materials if it is within 6m of a building.

Mr Thomas added: “We have successfully improved the safety and security of our residential properties, having exceeding our statutory obligations.  Visual impact within our open spaces has not been compromised. We now intend to improve on this and work with metroSTOR moving into new areas with new products. Feedback has been favourable on the numerous projects undertaken to date.”