I’m dealing with my own fire safety related conflict at the moment. Maybe I am the asshole in the story but my building recently announced its annual fire inspection to all residents of the ~350 apartments, by email, the day before it was to happen. They said there was no choice. They provided no information about the pandemic response plan of the contractor or the infection control measures they would be taking.
Since both myself and my wife are quite serious immunocompromised I objected. I told them I couldn’t let them in with all this lacking and instead to call me when they reached my apartment and we could do it via phone or video call or I could separately take videos of what they need. Now I’ve seen these guys when they do this work before (having lived here for a number of years) and they just open the door step in and then slam it behind them. They don’t knock and wait. It’s absurd. I stuck a notice on my door telling them to call or video call first when arriving. They didn’t enter but didn’t call.
Fast forward a week. They’re now giving me notice they’ll come in against my objection. They won’t answer any questions about the pandemic response plan or what vetting they did of their contractor and it seems the contractor doesn’t have one (or it’s embarrassingly bad). They said for PPE they use cloth masks, which are quite inadequate for protecting us. They said they take their temperatures but as the UK’s Chochrane review showed that is next to useless in screening infected people.
I provided thorough videos of me testing every alarm in the apartment and showing every sprinkler head in detail. I captured a video of the building alarms sounding in every room on the day of the inspection. They will not view these and tell me what is inadequate about them. They simply say they must do a physical inspection but won’t tell me who says or what regulation says it must be physical.
Now by my very napkin math these inspectors - if they’re doing inspections like this day in day out - could comfortably enter up to a thousand homes in a week. In the middle of the worst peak yet in this pandemic. Without proper protection for both protecting themselves and if they are infected from protecting the occupants. And without any testing regime in place to catch them early if they are sick. No plan in place to notify buildings or residents they have visited if an employee does get sick. None of that. They don’t even ask the residents if they have any symptoms or are sick before barging in. It seems like a high risk job and a poorly controlled vector of transmission. Entirely because the corporate landlord is lazy and doesn’t care. And the fire inspection contractor company is lazy and doesn’t care. And they can all get away with being lazy and not caring.
Is this in the uk? Assuming the parent is renting I'm pretty sure the parent can just refuse and the landlord will need an injunction to get in. Good luck getting one in this period.
The right of quiet enjoyment of your home trumps any contractual provision of inspection.
Whilst it's true that even with contractual access rights landlords may not have an actual right to enter (absent an emergency), I'd be careful here... (1) if the landlord or agents turn up anyway and have keys then you'd be relying on calling police to turf them out - who may not side with you whatever the rights and wrongs, (2) it's actually not completely certain legally that quiet enjoyment trumps other rights - as I don't think there have been recent test cases (bear in mind that almost all tenancy agreements do include pretty broad access rights for the landlord to undertake maintenance these days) and (3) if you do refuse access unreasonably and despite a contractual right of the landlord then the landlord may be entitled to damages from you if that delay harms them financially.
Since both myself and my wife are quite serious immunocompromised I objected. I told them I couldn’t let them in with all this lacking and instead to call me when they reached my apartment and we could do it via phone or video call or I could separately take videos of what they need. Now I’ve seen these guys when they do this work before (having lived here for a number of years) and they just open the door step in and then slam it behind them. They don’t knock and wait. It’s absurd. I stuck a notice on my door telling them to call or video call first when arriving. They didn’t enter but didn’t call.
Fast forward a week. They’re now giving me notice they’ll come in against my objection. They won’t answer any questions about the pandemic response plan or what vetting they did of their contractor and it seems the contractor doesn’t have one (or it’s embarrassingly bad). They said for PPE they use cloth masks, which are quite inadequate for protecting us. They said they take their temperatures but as the UK’s Chochrane review showed that is next to useless in screening infected people.
I provided thorough videos of me testing every alarm in the apartment and showing every sprinkler head in detail. I captured a video of the building alarms sounding in every room on the day of the inspection. They will not view these and tell me what is inadequate about them. They simply say they must do a physical inspection but won’t tell me who says or what regulation says it must be physical.
Now by my very napkin math these inspectors - if they’re doing inspections like this day in day out - could comfortably enter up to a thousand homes in a week. In the middle of the worst peak yet in this pandemic. Without proper protection for both protecting themselves and if they are infected from protecting the occupants. And without any testing regime in place to catch them early if they are sick. No plan in place to notify buildings or residents they have visited if an employee does get sick. None of that. They don’t even ask the residents if they have any symptoms or are sick before barging in. It seems like a high risk job and a poorly controlled vector of transmission. Entirely because the corporate landlord is lazy and doesn’t care. And the fire inspection contractor company is lazy and doesn’t care. And they can all get away with being lazy and not caring.