Navigating the Building Safety Act

After the Grenfell Tower fire, major changes were needed on building safety. Five years later the changes are here in the form of the Building Safety Act, which aims to ensure a tragedy such as Grenfell never happens again. With help from the Health and Safety Executive, Mark Lawrence looks at the key areas of the act, where providers need to improve and what the perfect provider looks like on safety.

Ignored and underestimated for far too long by politicians and industry, the passing of the Building Safety Act was welcomed by residents and many in the sector as a fresh start and an opportunity to create a new safety regime after the tragedy at Grenfell Tower.

Coupled with the new Fire Safety Act and incoming Social Housing Regulation Bill, there’s a lot for providers to be aware of.

On the Building Safety Act, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) points towards the establishment of the new Building Safety Regulator as one of the key elements of the new legislation.

The new regulator has “responsibility for oversight of the entire built environment, to promote competence across the industry and deliver the new regulatory regime for high-rise buildings”.

As the building control authority for high-rise buildings, the regulator will oversee the planning, design and construction of new buildings. It will come with a new regulatory regime that will mean new legal responsibilities for buildings over 18m in height (or of at least seven stories) to ensure they’re managed safely. Other key components of the act are:

• Building owners won’t legally be able to charge qualifying leaseholders for any costs in circumstances where a building requires cladding to be removed or remediated

• Qualifying leaseholders will also have robust protections from the costs associated with non-cladding defects, including waking watches

• Introduction of the ‘accountable persons’ which allows residents to raise safety concerns directly to the owners and managers of their buildings — the Building Safety Regulator will step in if resident(s) are being ignored

• All homeowners have 15 years to claim compensation for sub-standard construction work

• The principal designer and principal contractor will be required to manage building safety risks, with clear lines of responsibility during the design, construction and completion

• Those who don’t meet their obligations may face criminal charges

• A new, clear and proportionate framework for the design, construction and management of safer, high-quality homes

• A strengthening of the construction products regulatory regime, with new requirements to make sure all construction products on the UK market are safe for their intended use

• A new developer tax and levy on developers to ensure the industry contributes to setting things right

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities’ (DLUHC) guidance on the act can be found here.

There’s a lot of work going on behind the scenes in housing providers and local authorities across the country, but where are providers currently not meeting regulations? And what more does the Health and Safety Executive believe can be done in these areas?

In her Building a safer future report, Dame Judith Hackitt highlighted that “the lack of complete, accurate and maintained building information causes a number of challenges”.

These include changes that may have been made between original design stage and final construction, building owners not having safety information for the whole lifecycle of the building, and how changes to the building postconstruction may alter its safety.

So, how can housing providers make sure they get that right? It all starts with good data and strong management.

The HSE say the sector needs to “start thinking about their buildings holistically and how they can ensure they remain safe for the people who live in them”.

And top of making that happen is the importance of accountable persons and developing a safety case for high-rise buildings.

This will complement existing building and fire safety legislation, requiring that those responsible think critically about the potential fire and structural hazards in their buildings and show how they’re keeping their buildings safe.

The HSE says the safety case approach will help housing providers “implement measures that are proportionate and effective” and ensure that people in and around high-rise residential buildings are safe and feel safe.

As for the accountable person, they will be expected to “really get to know the building they’re responsible for, understand what risks there are, and how they manage them”.

This includes engaging effectively with residents and involving them in decisions about the safety of the buildings they live in.

The new safety regime will be expecting preparation for this to be starting now, with some key questions for providers:

• Are the measures you have in place to prevent and limit the consequences of a major accident sufficient and effective?

• How will you make sure they remain effective?

• What practical measures can you put in place to enable effective communication with your residents? How will you seek their views?

• How can their concerns be raised and managed?

It’s always a case of continuous improvement when it comes to safety, with new challenges and changes occurring constantly. The Building Safety Regulator has been clear about what it wants to see in terms of the industry as a whole, but what does it believe a “good social housing provider” looks like?

It urges providers to “engage with and learn from each other’s experiences as the new system beds in”, with best practice sharing key, as it promotes competence.

As for providers with high-rise residential buildings, it says: “Social housing providers will need to meet the new legal requirements around safety cases.

“In practice this means considering each individual building as a whole, assessing its risks, and developing a safety case approach to managing those risks.

“It also means sharing key information on the buildings characteristics with the regulator and having a robust storage of any important information necessary for managing the building safely.”

But, most crucially, the new regulatory regime comes back to the importance of a “good engagement strategy with residents”, ensuring the views of residents are considered and that complaints are dealt with effectively.

With the Building Safety Act a huge 265 pages long, there are many changes coming into force. But the Building Safety Regulator and new regulatory regime, being overseen by the Health and Safety Executive, is on hand to ensure that the social housing sector keeps its buildings and residents safe.

While many providers will already be doing some of the work outlined in this piece, the sector as a whole needs to step up and share any learning it can – as well as build each other up to ensure a safer future for all.

• A duty to register high-rise residential buildings with the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) between April and September 2023

• All other duties commencing from October 2023

• BSR then intends to assess the estimated 13,500 existing buildings in scope over a five-year period from April 2024, with rolling reassessments.

The recently published safety case ‘toolbox’ guides sets out what providers will need to know and do to meet the new requirements of the safety case approach.

The Building Safety Act secondary legislation consultations are currently live and the Health and Safety Executive is encouraging the industry to have its say.