An Assisted-Living Conversion in Sandwich: A Wireless Fire Alarm Fitted in a Day

Sandwich doesn't look like a town in the middle of a building boom. But look past the medieval streets. You'll find Discovery Park on the doorstep - 220 acres of labs and offices. Its own 2023 economic report values it at more than £324 million a year to the UK economy (Discovery Park, 2023).

New businesses are starting up around that growth. One of them is a care company called KCT Care, run by Christopher (Chris) Thomas, converting a house into assisted living accommodation. Chris was new to running his own business. He'd just had his website built when he first called Syndicate Fire Protection Service about the job. Spoiler: it ended with a five-year contract, not just a one-off job. Here's how we got there.

It's a small, local story. It's also a useful one. Converting a house for care use changes what the law expects of the person running it. And it changed what the fire safety installation needed to look like, too.

In short: this is a wireless fire alarm installation and an emergency lighting installation, carried out together, for a care conversion in Sandwich, Kent.

Discovery Park has said it wants on-site jobs to roughly double over the next decade, from around 3,500 towards 7,000. That's an announced ambition (Discovery Park via Lab News, Dec 2022), not a figure achieved yet. Whatever the final number turns out to be, the direction is clear. More businesses are starting up in and around Sandwich. Some of them, like KCT Care, are opening premises that didn't exist as a business a year ago.

Turning a house into a care setting changes your legal duty

The moment a building becomes sleeping accommodation, the stakes go up. Under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, the person running the premises becomes the Responsible Person. That's a specific legal role, not a job title. It means carrying the duty for fire risk assessment. It also means keeping fire safety equipment in working order. That duty doesn't shrink just because the building used to be an ordinary house.

For a care conversion like Chris's, that duty is heavier than for most commercial premises. Residents may need staff help to get out. A fire alarm and emergency lighting that are kept working, reliably, matter more here than almost anywhere else.

None of this is legal advice - it's an overview. Your own fire risk assessment and a competent fire safety professional should set out exactly what your specific premises needs.

There's a practical knock-on effect, too. A house being converted for care use usually can't simply inherit whatever fire alarm and emergency lighting the building had before. A domestic smoke alarm setup, fitted for a family home, isn't designed with staff-assisted evacuation in mind. That's why the design work for KCT Care started from scratch, during the building's conversion - not as a bolt-on once the builders had gone.

Against that backdrop, the job started with a site survey. Then the plans changed.

The plans changed between the quote and the go-ahead

Our first visit to the house was during the design stage, while the building was still completely gutted. We quoted for a shell. That's normal - most fire alarm and emergency lighting design starts before the walls go back up.

By the time Chris agreed to go ahead, the build had moved on. The house was finished. Walls were plastered, floors were down, decoration was in place. The design we'd priced for a shell didn't fit a finished building any more. So it changed.

We're not going to tell you we solved a drama here. Terry, who led the job, described it simply as "nice and simple" - and it took one day. In a finished building, a wireless system is one way to avoid reopening walls that have just been completed. If you're picturing wireless as corner-cutting, that's not the reasoning here. It's a design choice suited to a building that's already finished - a shell still being built out might call for a wired system instead.

What a wireless fire alarm installation actually involved

The system we installed was an EMS wireless fire alarm. No cabling to chase through newly plastered walls. No conduit runs to hide. That's the practical case for wireless in a building that's already finished: less disruption to work that's just been done.

It's a mainstream choice for finished buildings precisely because it avoids the cabling disruption a wired retrofit would need, not a shortcut.

The whole installation, alarm panel and detection devices, took one day. For a Responsible Person mid-conversion, with other trades still moving through the building, that's not a small thing. One day in, one day sorted, is a different proposition from a job that drags across a working site for a fortnight.

We installed emergency lighting on the same job. Escape routes in a care setting need to stay lit if the power fails, whatever the cause. That's how residents and staff see their way out. Getting both systems from one supplier, on one visit, meant Chris wasn't coordinating two different contractors around a finished building.

One supplier, start to finish

Chris didn't need a fire alarm specialist and a separate emergency lighting contractor - that's the personal touch of working with one supplier. Our engineers cover both. That's less scheduling, less explaining the site twice, less risk of two trades getting in each other's way on your doorstep. If the worry is yet another contractor on an already busy site, that's exactly the problem one supplier for both systems avoids.

Chris left a Google review that puts it better than we can:

Installed a fire panel and emergency lights for my business. Very professional, great experience working with them

Christopher Thomas, Google review

It's a short review. It's also exactly the outcome a Responsible Person wants from an installation: get it done, get it right, no fuss.

What happens after the install: a five-year relationship

Chris signed up for a five-year servicing contract with us after the installation was finished. That matters. For Chris, that means service visits happen on schedule, without him having to remember to chase anyone. A fire alarm and emergency lighting system installed once and never looked at again is a liability waiting to surface. Usually at the worst possible moment. Regular servicing doesn't remove that duty from the Responsible Person - it keeps the record that shows it's being met.

Fire alarm systems need a service visit roughly every six months. The IET, reporting on the 2025 edition of BS 5839-1:2025, says that gap can now stretch to five or seven months without the system being treated as non-compliant. Emergency lighting has its own servicing pattern under BS 5266-1:2025.

We can't tell you which specific category Chris's system falls into under either standard - that's a question for his fire risk assessment, not for a blog post. What we can say is that ongoing servicing, logged and documented, is what keeps a Responsible Person's duty met year after year. Not just on installation day.

That ongoing record matters beyond the Fire Safety Order, too. Many commercial insurance policies expect evidence of regular fire alarm and emergency lighting servicing, and a documented contract is the kind of record insurers commonly ask to see. Check your own policy wording for what yours requires.

That servicing relationship is where our fire systems maintenance work comes in. That's separate from the installation itself and specific to keeping a system working over time.

Chris mentioned he'd like to use Syndicate Fire again as his care business grows into other premises. We'd like that too. It's a better way of working than turning up once and disappearing. It's also why a Responsible Person doesn't want to start that search from scratch every time a new site opens. Next time, it's the same number, the same engineers and no survey starting from zero.

What this means if you're converting a building for care use

A change of use is the moment to get fire alarm and emergency lighting design right. It's not an afterthought bolted on once the builders have gone. If your plans change mid-project, as Chris's did, a wireless system can be a practical way to avoid undoing finished work. It depends on the building.

Whether you're starting a care conversion in Sandwich or anywhere else across Kent, the same principle holds. Get your fire alarm system and emergency lighting designed by people who'll still be answering the phone in five years' time.

If you're planning a conversion or a new fit-out, we can talk through what a wireless install might look like for your building. No obligation, no hard sell. Call Syndicate Fire on 01843 265 389 or get in touch through our contact page.

Frequently asked questions

Why does converting a house into a care setting change the fire safety requirements?

Once a building is used as sleeping accommodation for people who may need help to evacuate, whoever runs the premises becomes the Responsible Person under the Fire Safety Order 2005. That role carries the duty to carry out a fire risk assessment and keep fire safety equipment in working order - a duty that doesn't shrink just because the building used to be an ordinary house. A domestic smoke alarm system, designed for a family who can get themselves out, isn't designed around staff-assisted evacuation. That's why a care conversion typically needs its fire alarm and emergency lighting designed from scratch, rather than inheriting whatever the house had before.

Why was a wireless fire alarm chosen over a wired system for this installation?

By the time the KCT Care job was confirmed, the building had already been plastered and decorated - the design priced during the gutted shell stage no longer fitted. A wireless system, in this case an EMS wireless fire alarm, avoided reopening walls and chasing cable runs through finished work. The full installation, panel and detection devices, took one day. That's a practical reason specific to a finished building, not a shortcut on the underlying system - the right approach depends on what's in front of the engineer on the day, and a different build might call for a wired design instead.

How often does a fire alarm or emergency lighting system need to be serviced after installation?

Fire alarm systems need a service visit roughly every six months. The IET, reporting on the 2025 edition of BS 5839-1, says that gap can now stretch to five or seven months without the system being treated as non-compliant. Emergency lighting follows its own servicing pattern recommended under BS 5266-1:2025, alongside monthly checks the Responsible Person is expected to carry out between professional visits. Neither standard is itself a legal requirement - it's the Fire Safety Order 2005 that requires equipment to be kept in working order; BS 5839-1 and BS 5266-1 set out what competent servicing against that duty looks like. A signed, ongoing servicing contract is what keeps that record current, rather than a one-off installation with nothing checked afterwards.

Is installing a fire alarm system the same as maintaining one?

No - they're two different pieces of work. Installing a system is a one-off job; maintaining it is an ongoing commitment to keep checking it works, visit after visit. For a Responsible Person, this distinction matters: a system can be installed competently and still fail later if nobody is contracted to keep checking it, which is why a servicing contract follows on from an install rather than replacing it.

Why use one supplier for both the fire alarm and emergency lighting?

Fire alarm and emergency lighting are separate systems with separate standards behind them, but on a live building site they create one scheduling problem if they're handled by two different contractors. Using engineers who cover both meant the fire alarm panel, detection devices and emergency lighting were installed on the same visit, without a Responsible Person coordinating two trades around a building that was still being finished. It also means one point of contact for the five-year servicing relationship that followed - the same engineers, not a different contractor chasing a different schedule for each system.

Last reviewed: October 2026