The tragedy of Grenfell Tower was the catalyst for the announcement of the Building Safety Bill in the Queen’s Speech, December 2019. Its purpose is to put in place new and enhanced regulatory regimes for building safety and construction products, and to ensure residents have a stronger voice in the system. It sets out how residential buildings should be constructed, maintained, and made safe.
As part of planning applications for new builds or refurbishments, developers will need to demonstrate that fire safety, relevant to land use planning for the proposed building, has been considered at an early stage and incorporated.
New duties have been given to the people responsible for the safety of these buildings. Owners are required to manage safety risks, with clear lines of responsibility during design, construction, completion, and occupation. Developers are mandated to belong to a New Homes Ombudsman scheme.
At the heart of the reforms is the Building Safety Regulator (BSR). They are the regulator for buildings of over 7 storeys or 18 metres in height and will include residential or mixed-use buildings.
At set decision points during design, construction, or major refurbishment, the BSR will assess whether the duty holders are properly considering building safety and meeting the regulations. There will be a final decision point when the building is completed to ensure it is safe for occupation.
Accountable Persons are required to identify and assess building safety risks and take reasonable steps to ensure those risks are reduced and controlled to a proportionate level on an ongoing basis. This information will need to be documented and kept up to date and submitted to the BSR through Safety Case Reports. These are supported by the wider safety case, and it will be the duty of the people responsible for a building to put in place and maintain a ‘Golden Thread’ of information which provides the full body of evidence regarding assessment and management of building safety risks.
The Golden Thread enables someone to understand a building and keep it safe. Accountable Persons should be regularly and systematically reviewing building safety risks and the measures in place to manage them, while taking further appropriate actions to ensure they are meeting their legal responsibility.
Currently 52% of the 12,500 higher-risk buildings under the regulators jurisdiction are private sector residential and student accommodation.
The need for greater accountability is exemplified by ‘Electrical Safety First’ data which reveals that in UK student accommodation the equivalent of 5 fires, during a typical academic term, occur every week. 80% of them in kitchens. The most common sources of kitchen fire include the build-up of fat and oil around the hob; cookers left unattended; equipment left switched on; and excessive cooking temperatures. 15% of students questioned admit to having fallen asleep while cooking. These figures make stark reading as these circumstances are all avoidable, particularly if simple power cut-off devices are installed on hobs, such as HobSensus. When connected to a centrally controlled energy management system, if triggered, the power is cut to multiple hobs throughout a building, reducing the risk of secondary ignition within an evacuated property.
Under the new regime, occupants will have access to more information about their building’s safety and become more involved in the management of risks. They will be provided with effective routes to challenge the owner of their building on issues of fire and structural safety and if necessary, escalate any concerns directly to the BSR.
During 2022 increasingly stringent fire safety regulations and new responsibilities will take effect. The BSR will work closely on enforcement with other regulators and partners such as local authorities, fire and rescue services and building control bodies. The HSE is cautionary in its tone – for those responsible, measures to meet the forthcoming legal requirements cannot be initiated soon enough – being ill-prepared is not an excuse.