The Building Safety Bill has finally received Royal Assent, and become an Act of Parliament on 28 April 2022 (“The Act”).
The Act has been introduced following a whole-scale review of the fire and building safety regime undertaken by Dame Judith Hackitt (the former Chair of the Health and Safety Executive) following the Grenfell Tower tragedy. This new legislation is set to tackle many of the wide-ranging issues that have been encountered across the built environment in some of the major fire incidents, from build through to occupation and building management (in particular for ‘high-rise’ and ‘high-risk’ buildings).
The Act introduces new legal requirements, roles and responsibilities, intended to improve building safety and management. To summarise, some include (although are not limited to): the golden thread, and building safety cases (which involves gathering and passing on vital safety, construction and ‘as built’ information); new roles and competency requirements; the promotion of avoiding ‘race to bottom’ on any associated construction costs (which is likely to impact supply chain selection, vetting and appointment); encouraging risk be better ‘designed out’ at source; new planning gateways, as well as a new building certification process.
There is also the introduction of two new regulators, and changes to the time period to bring defective premises building claims, the approach taken by developers to remediation, and the limits on the overall level of costs that may be passed on to leaseholders. Brabners Property Team regularly support many housing and registered providers on a wide variety of issues; and some of the most topical and current issues were explored in detail with business leaders in our ‘Ask the Leaders’ series.
At the end of March 2022, the ‘Cultural Change in Construction’ Conference (as part of the UK’s ‘Construction Awareness Week’) also took place in London. Key stakeholders and leaders, including Government Minister of State for Building Safety and Fire, Lord Greenhalgh and Dame Judith Hackett, from across industry, gathered to discuss relevant issues that arise from implementation of the Act – some of the key themes and messages from the day, included:
- Commitment / evidence of compliance – ensuring that you comply and understand the true impact of the Act for your business, will be vital! Carrying out impact assessments, increased training or health checks may assist. Duty holders may also wish to consider signing up to, supporting or reviewing its operations alongside the ‘Building a Safer Future Charter’ (‘the Charter’) (which is part of most major procurement frameworks) as a means of demonstrating its commitment to the Act, or indeed, the Code for Construction Product Information (CCPI) – developed by the Construction Products Marketing Integrity Association; again, to set a credible and measured standard for building products, and the extent and quality of information to be passed on in procurement and to end users;
- Contractual review / clarity – further changes may take place in the way contracts are drawn up, or how projects’ are organised or structured, to reflect new roles and responsibilities, or express legal duties for fire and building safety. As a result, commercial landscapes may become more adversarial. Moving forward, the message was to try and address this carefully and collaboratively (trying not to simply re-assign key responsibilities during the contractual process, without a considered approach of what this will mean in practice) – this will be particularly important within the context of health and safety (H&S) law, given that any legal H&S duties (whether under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015, or now the Act) are non-delegable;
- Pro-active leadership – finally, there is a clear expectation across the entire industry to see demonstrable leadership, from the board level down and throughout organisations, in terms of everyone (not just those acting in the key roles) to know about fire and building safety, and what steps and approach their business is taking to comply with the Act.
We highlighted the likely importance on the above areas, in our blog last February - “Building a Safer Future: Are you doing enough?”. To conclude, the Act is likely to be viewed by many as some of the most fundamental reform of regulation of the construction and residential property sectors. Inevitably, this will have a sizeable impact on business, commercial considerations and the regulatory landscape and enforcement that we are likely to see moving forward. We will continue to ‘horizon scan’ and circulate some further updates that will help to navigate this new landscape in due course.
If you need any further specialist advice, support or clarity in relation to your own circumstances or in relation to any of the issues raised above, please do not hesitate to contact our Regulatory, Real Estate, or Housing Teams.
