For the Scottish grans.

I had a leaflet through my door at the beginning of the year and nearly binned it as junk mail. We have hard wired smoke alarms but have to replace them. There is little publicity about this requirement and no financial help as far as I know. Not sure how it affects house insurance if the new alarms are not fitted. However, OH has ordered them and there is a waiting list for delivery.

Thanks marydoll I had heard about it but put it to the back of my mind as you do. I'll look into it now.

We’ve had leaflets through the door about this. It was delayed from last year because of the pandemic.

It won’t really become a problem until one comes to sell a property, as I don’t think they’re going to go round checking on peoples houses.

It’s a shame they aren’t offering financial help as I understand it will cost about £200 for an average sized house.

We had new alarms wired into the mains a few years ago, as it was was required for the building warrant on our extension. Even ones not in the extension were required to be replaced.
However, we will still need to replace them, in light of the new regulations.
I was asking DH about it and he too agrees, we never received any leaflets. We thought we were on the ball with these things, obviously not!

I did wonder how it would affect your household insurance, in light of a fire claim.

I think you can get battery operated alarms that "speak" to each other and they are acceptable and a lot less expensive.You an fit them yourself .We're obsessive about fire after an arson attack 30 odd years ago so we've had the hard wired ones for a while but the guy who fitted them said the battery ones worked just as well.He also said he'd lost count of the number of homes he'd been in where the people had disconnected the alarms and the landlords had to replace them ...why would anyone be so stupid as put their lives at risk?

Good point about home insurance. That would require different policies for different parts of the UK, I guess. We will get around to doing it, though finding someone is like finding a needle in a hay stack right now!

We have been told that they are easy to fit with no wiring involved so are doing it ourselves. Getting the Bluetooth connections working might be another story but we have a son who sorts us out with techie problems.

When we had our extension built, we were told that mains ones were mandatory in order to get the building warrant and that we had to replace our battery ones.

In the past people were known to take batteries out to use for other items and there were fatalities, because the alarm failed to go off.

We have had our fitted and it was over £200 .

We got battery ones and they are fine. Cheaper and you can fit yourself.

Thanks very much, Marydoll. Another job to add to "The List "?
Hope you are keeping a wee bit better now.

I thought everyone had been informed of this by letter long ago?

Elegran

I thought everyone had been informed of this by letter long ago?

Certainly not, Elegran.

I was.

This legislation was passed in February 2019 following the Grenfell tower disaster. It was due to be implemented a year ago but was postponed due to the pandemic. Postponement was widely covered in the media as it required action from Holyrood

I have a tenant who is extremely anxious about covid and doesn't want to have a worker in her home.

Despite what is being said, I still wasn't aware, despite reading/ watching the news daily, I'm sure others weren't either. However, that doesn't mean we won't implement it, we are very vigilant in that respect and already have a fair number of smoke alarms and a carbon monoxide detector, so we are going to be busy.

Perhaps the letter coverage varied from one local authority to the next.

I had several leaflets from various hopeful suppliers too. So far I haven't taken any of them up on their offers. There are non-wired ones which can be installed by DIY. I shall look into those before shelling out hundreds to a contractor.

We certainly had info about this. Our block of flats is on the case.