Bournemouth's building stock leans heavily on tourism and hospitality: seafront hotels and conference venues cluster along the coast, backed by a dense town-centre retail core and a growing office cluster around the town centre and Lansdowne. BCP Council alone manages fifteen buildings over 11 metres in height across the conurbation, and that's before counting the hotels, retail units, and offices spread out toward Christchurch and Poole. Every one of these buildings relies on fire and smoke dampers to stop fire and smoke travelling through ventilation ductwork between compartments.

A damper that's corroded, obstructed, or simply never been tested won't close when it's needed — and in a hospitality-heavy town full of guests unfamiliar with the building, that's a risk most owners only confront during a fire risk assessment, an insurance audit, or worse.