What is the Building Safety Act 2022?

Following the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017, building safety regulations have been a topic of concern
and reform and, in the UK particularly, the government has been working on introducing new
legislation to improve building safety and standards.

The Building Safety Act 2022 is one of the regulations created as a result of the disaster that struck
the nation and it defines residential buildings of at least 18m or 7 storeys high with 2 or more
residential units as high risk, including care homes and hospitals, and sets out safety requirements
for landlords of these buildings.

The Act outlines a series of duties imposed on landlords (building owners) and it’s designed to
provide residents with the assurance that they live in buildings where their landlords prioritise
building safety.

The Bill sets out a new Building Safety Regulator run by the Health and Safety Executive to oversee
building owners of higher-risk buildings are carrying out their building safety responsibilities and also
the responsibilities for the design, planning, construction and in-occupation stages of a building and
provides a process for managing and minimising risk, including all fire safety risks.

One of the main aspects of the Building Safety Act is that it focuses on the responsibility of clients,
designers and contractors to ensure compliance with the Building Regulations and establishes a
requirement for a ‘golden thread’ of information which is originated to act as an accessible digital
audit trail throughout the life of a building.

Under the Act, the client, designers, main contractor, subcontractors and anyone who might create a
risk during their involvement in a construction process or refurbishment, is expected to manage that
risk and its associated compliance demands through a set of responsibilities.

The Bill also defines the requirement for a person to oversee and manage the building post-build
including registering the building with the Building Safety Regulator before it can be occupied and to
regularly logging information about the building to allow risk assessments.

The Building Safety Act introduces that all building works, new build, extension and refurbishments
will be subject to the control of the Building Safety regulator. The Act sets out a requirement for
designers to provide a Fire Statement as part of their planning application and to obtain Building
Regulation Approval for the project before commencement and also to ensure that buildings are
correctly built and that a Completion Certificate has been obtained before the building can be
registered and occupied.

The decree sets out that tenants and leaseholders in higher-risk blocks will receive a resident
engagement strategy and also outlines what tenants and leaseholders must do around personal
building safety responsibilities for their home and communal areas and regarding ongoing building
safety costs.

The Act has also introduced protections for qualifying leaseholders, including not paying towards the
cost of removing dangerous cladding on buildings and capping the amount that leaseholders will
contribute to the cost of fixing non-cladding defects on buildings.

Deemed the biggest change to building safety legislation for nearly 40 years, the Building Safety Act
of 2022 has been designed to raise the bar on responsibility across the construction industry and the
safety of living standards. The Act became legislation on the 28th April 2022 and has become fully
enforceable this month, October 2023.

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