The Building Safety Regulator
The Building Safety Regulator (BSR) has published more official guidance on how an accountable person (Building Safety Act 2022) and/or the responsible person (Fire Safety Order) can meet their legal obligations in managing building safety in practice.
- The Golden Thread:. BSR guidance on the information organisations will need to maintain the Golden Thread.
The BSR's road map is:
- Year One (to March 2024) - Implementation
- Year Two (to March 2025) - Consolidation
- Year Three (to March 2026) - Steady state
We can access how the BSR's views on what best practice and compliance enforcement will look like in future.
October 23 saw in the mandatory registration of all occupied HRBs, and the start of the registration of building inspectors (RBIs) together with building control approvers (RBCAs).
The BSR is lining up the targets and putting in place the professional human resources to enforce the regulations starting in April 2024. Their plan aims to have assessed 20% of high-priority buildings by March 2025. A long way to complete the process, but the actions taken by the BSR's initial endeavors will be more than sufficient to inform all accountable persons what compliance means in reality, and the consequences for failing to meet those standards.
The telling hinge-point, that may see a major shift in the sense of urgency many observers feel has been noticeable by its absence on the part of 'accountable' and 'responsible' persons, will be the opening of the Residents complaints system. There will be no shortage of well informed and extremely motivated resident-groups ready to vent their frustration at the lack of progress they perceive they have suffered since Grenfell. It is likely the Grenfell Phase 2 Report will be published next year, and that could well set off an escalating sense of indignation that landlords have got away with too much, for too long.
By the end of Year 3, the BSR aim to have assessed about 40% of occupied HRBs, representing 65% of all residential dwellings. It is anticipated that the remediation of all HRBs with dangerous cladding will either be completed or underway.
The BSR's strategy also includes expanding its attention to looking at the safety in all relevant buildings (More than 5-storeys with two or more residential dwellings). This includes the cost-benefit or mandating regular electrical installation inspections and testing; looking at stairs and ramps; emergency egress if disabled persons, and the installation of automatic water fire suppression systems.
The built environment now has an insight as to how quickly the scope of the provisions of the Building Safety Act, and its intention to make all buildings safe to live and work in, will expand beyond the HRB axis.
We expect the motivation to force early adoption and full compliance with the building safety standards currently being only applied to HRBs, right across the built environment, will not come from the BSR's activities. We suspect the insurance sector will demand full compliance with the new standards being set as part of normal property renewal cover.