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BS7671 and Serviced Apartments and Aparthotels

Sergio Fernandez

Can the terms be formally defined for BS7671 and BS5839 in a cohesive manner?
What is a Serviced Apartments 
What is a Aparthotels

As an example some people see Aparthotels as used for shorter term occupancy Caveat time hotel bedrooms do not usually include the cooking facilities thus impacted by BS5839 part 1 and 6


What happens IF building includes a combination of short term and long term occupancy?

Could/Would/Should serviced apartments be treated as High Risk Building?



As always please be polite and respectful in this purely academic debate.





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  • Could/Would/Should serviced apartments be treated as High Risk Building?

    I'm not sure about BS 5839, but as far as BS 7671 is concerned, I think that depends (only) on the height of the building (18m or 6 storeys) - so the type of occupancy doesn't come into it (unless new legislation says otherwise, then it's down to that legislation to define).

    Otherwise I don't recall any BS 7671 provisions that depend on these sorts to terms, so I'd have to ask why we'd need any such definitions?

       - Andy.

  • I don't think we have any such definitions at the moment, but is there anything we would change if we did?
    To my mind the situation is very similar to say a block of leasehold flats, where the contents of the flats (consumer units, fire alarms sockets and switches) are the responsibility of the leaseholding owner/occupier, who may or may not sub-let to a tenant ocupant, but things in the common area (supply submains to flats and maybe meter enclosures and earthing and incoming mains bonding) are the responsibility of the freeholder.
    I suspect we need more clarity on that very common situation, where responsibility is split, and the issues in these cases may well be a subset of the same. (Tensions commonly arise when the speed of the free holders maintenance program moves at a far slower pace than that of the leaseholders, for example and again when tenants have concerns that fall under the free holders area, when they have no direct contract with the freeholder.)

    Mike.

  • Its a lot more complicated than others have stated.

    You need to decide first if the premises are domestic (household) premises. AJJewsbury was almost right but an HRRB needs 2 or more of these in the building in addition to the 7 or more stories and 18m or more high.

    Are the individual premises owned or rented?

    The freeholder may not be responsible for the common areas, as with leashold premises under the right to manage legislation the lease holders can appoint their own managment company to carry out all the maintainance activities. 

    What should be in place for these buildings should be a fire strategy for the building produce by a fire engineer. Any changes, say to the electrical installtion such as adding EV charging or PV, would need the approval of the fire engineer. 

    There would also be an ongoing fire risk assessmnets under the Regulatory Reform(Fire Safety) Order 2005 for the common areas but not for individual flats.

    For HRRBs the requirements of the Building Safety Regulator would need to be applied. There are some good requirements on comptence of persons in the Building Safety Act. The BSR is not restricted to HRRBs but also other higher risk buildings.

    Local enforcing bodies and insurance companies requirements will need to be applied.

    Every building will have site specific requirements so there is no generic solution that can be applied for all buildings.

    Hope this helps?

    JP

  • Another thing to consider is that BS 7671, like BS 5839 series, has to be capable of being applied throughout the devolved nations of the UK. 

  • Sergio Fernandez said:
    What is a Serviced Apartments 
    What is a Aparthotels
    John Peckham said:
    You need to decide first if the premises are domestic (household) premises. AJJewsbury was almost right but an HRRB needs 2 or more of these in the building in addition to the 7 or more stories and 18m or more high.

    I would suggest that the correct order is to define, "Serviced Apartments" and, "Aparthotels" (you tell me) and then ask whether or to what extent BS 7671 applies. In other words, whether they are, wholly or in part, within scope - 110.1.1.

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