Council fire safety signs

[spark67]

My partner & I own a property and also (with our two neighbours) the freehold of the building our apartments are in.

A couple of weeks ago a couple of Southwark council workers came around and asked to be let into the communal hallway shared by the two flats upstairs, just a small hall, no bigger than your average houses hall way to the front door. Our neighbour didn't know what was going on ! and the two guys proceeded to drill holes in the wall and screw in two Southwark fire safety signs into it.

As the freeholders and owners of the management company we were not notified or contacted about this, or informed why they decided to do this.

I understand councils are now on the back foot after Grenfell and leaving nothing to chance, but not sure if they can go into non council property and just stick massive signs where they want without asking us first (if it was required we would happily comply but would have at least liked to be notified)

Ours is not a huge block, a house converted into three flats, the communal hallway has the stairs which would have been used to go to original bedrooms (used to be just one flat upstairs at first) So can't see us being a huge safety risk... Also a big sign is up saying its illegal for anyone to smoke in the hall... can you tell private owners they can't smoke in their own property ? (no one smokes btw, just interested to know what the law is)

Anyhoo (very) long story short, I can't find out who I need to contact about this on the southwark website.

If anyone else has had this happen, or know if this is a new policy, I'd be interested to know

[Angelina]

No reason Southwark would or should enter a privately owned building.

Try calling their main switchboard.