DoorTRACE in Care Home Magazine: what CQC and the fire service expect to see on your fire doors

Care Home Magazine has published a bylined article by Kemble Nagan, Managing Director at DoorTRACE, titled What CQC and the Fire Service Expect to See on Your Fire Doors. It went live on the magazine's website on 11 September 2026 and appears in print too. Care Home Magazine is a CPD-accredited title read by care home owners, registered managers and group estates teams, with regulation and CQC among its editorial pillars.

It is the latest in a run of DoorTRACE trade press placements this year, and the first written for care providers specifically. It follows pieces in ThisWeekinFM, LABM Weekly, News on the Block, Public Sector Build Journal and Fire Door Journal.

Two regulators, one door

The article starts from a situation every registered manager recognises. A CQC inspector and a fire safety officer can walk the same corridor in the same week and ask completely different questions about the same door. The inspector wants to know whether the home is safe and well run, and whether the manager can show it. The fire officer wants to know whether the door will hold when it counts, and whether someone competent has been keeping it that way. Both will ask for records.

The stakes in a care home are higher than almost anywhere else, because the evacuation strategy usually depends on moving residents a short distance into the next compartment and keeping them there. If the doors between compartments fail, the strategy fails with them.

What the piece covers

Written for care home operators rather than fire professionals, the article walks through:

• Where fire doors sit in CQC's framework: the regulations on safe care and treatment, premises and equipment, and good governance, and the Safe environments quality statement that inspectors assess against.
• What the fire and rescue service enforces: the duties under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, including the fire risk assessment and the maintenance duty that covers every fire door in the building.
• Why Regulation 10 does not apply to care homes: the quarterly and annual check duties under the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 are written for residential buildings with flats, so a care home's check regime comes from its fire risk assessment rather than a fixed statutory interval.
• What happens when the evidence is missing: including the July 2024 prosecution of the directors of Care Pro (Southeast) Limited, ordered to pay £124,455 after East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service found damaged fire doors without self-closers and other failings across four Bexhill care homes.
• The five parts of a defensible record, and how a care group keeps that evidence consistent across sites so a head office can answer for every home, not just the one that was inspected last.

Read the full piece

The article is free to read on the Care Home Magazine website: What CQC and the Fire Service Expect to See on Your Fire Doors. Our thanks to James Davies and Chief Editor Tani Farinacci Johnson for the space and the care taken with the piece.

How DoorTRACE helps

DoorTRACE gives a care home one record per door, updated from every inspection and repair, with the certification, defect history and photographs attached. Managers can produce the evidence a CQC inspector or fire officer asks for from the portal in minutes, and a group can see every home's position from one dashboard. See how the inspection software works, or get in touch to talk through your homes.