The fire service is warning about the risk to lives from cluttered common areas in apartment blocks and haphazard parking outside these buildings.

The warning was issued at the House interior committee on Thursday as MP began discussing a bill to regulate jointly owned buildings to “end the absolute anarchy that prevails,” chairman Akel’s Aristos Damianou said.

Damianou said this anarchy causes constant friction between owners and tenants and leaves thousands of buildings unmaintained.

Testifying at the committee, fire service spokesman Andreas Kettis spoke about the dangers, saying stairwells are often blocked with old furniture and even emergency doors of buildings are sometimes locked, plus there are buildings that are hard to access because there are so many cars parked in the way.

“At some point we may mourn victims and then we will look to place blame as to who is responsible,” Kettis said.

He said the new bill mentions safety issues, but at the same time there was no mention of fire safety “which the fire department considers inconceivable”.

Addressing Damianou, he said: “Do you know, that after the final approval for any building, from that time it is not checked at all for fire safety issues?

“The issue is that there is no legislation that provides for a fire safety check or who will carry it out.”

Asked to cite some examples, Kettis said there were stairwells full of dirt, furniture, and bags of charcoal, and locked emergency doors.

“In the event a stairwell is filled with smoke it simply means that everyone is trapped and it also means that we will lose people,” he said.

Kettis said the issue of the security of the tenants is reason enough for regular checks to be carried out and for the appropriate certificates to be present and updated by the building owners.

Damianou pledged that the new bill would be pushed through quickly.

One of the main innovations of the bill, he said, lies in the fact that it gives the management committees the power to set reasonable expenses for the maintenance and proper operation of the common areas, which residents often don’t pay.

“This particular bill upgrades the role of building management committees and those who have ignored them until now, if they continue the same tactics, it is very likely that they will be called to account before the Court,” Damianou said.

The problem is in most cases there is no management committee, the MP added.

“It won’t be easy given that the financial aspect will be a thorn in the side, which has created and creates friction,” he said.

While some tenants take care of their spaces, others don’t want to spend a cent, he said, “either because they don’t have the financial ability or because they don’t care and they expect others to cover their share”.

Damianou said the existing legislation has many loopholes and the new bill aims to plug these gaps.

He said the land registry had identified some of these as the need to define the rights and obligations of the owners as well as the need to ensure more effective implementation of management “considering that unit owners evade their obligations and many properties are not adequately maintained, resulting in risks to their safety and the safety of third parties”.

With the proposed bill, a service for registration of co-owned buildings and supervision of the operation of administrative committees will be defined, as will its powers.

It will also define the rights and obligations of owners and provide for compulsory insurance of co-owned buildings and supervision of the compulsory insurance.