Building Safety Act
New Buildings: Planning, Design, construction

The 1st October 2023 marks the point at which many of the key provisions of Building Safety Act 2022 (BSA), in so far as they relate to High-Risk Buildings (HRBs), comes into force.

The Building Safety Regulator (Regulator) has published its guidance on how it intends to work with the built environment sector, the accountable persons (ref: BSA) and responsible persons (ref: FSO) as we move forward.

The Building Control: An Overview of the new regime, is also a useful official guide to the changes ushered in on 1st October 2023.

The review stages undertaken by the Building Safety Regulator, together with the stop-go 'gateways' may be summarised as follows:

• Planning and Design: Applicants will need to submit a design design application to the BSR to obtain permission (Gateway 1) to proceed to the next stage of construction
• Construction: Work cannot start until approved by the Regulator. During the construction phase, there will be site inspections at key milestones, reporting certain circumstances, managing change, and identifying and storing the golden thread of key information about the building.
  
  At completion, the Regulator will assess the application against building regulations, undertake final inspections of the completed building work, and assess the documents to be given to the new owner.
  
  When the Regulator is satisfied, they will issue a completion certificate (Gateway 2).
• Registration:
  
  Once the completion certificate has been issued, the designated accountable person must successfully register the building with the Regulator (Gateway 3).
• Occupation: Residential units must not be occupied until the Regulator confirms the registration of the building is complete.

The Building Safety Act 2022 received Royal Assent on 28th April 2022.

Information published by the Building Safety Regulatory (BSR) relating to the Building Safety Act 2022 (BSA).

This link provides a comprehensive list of the Secondary Legislation published by the Building Safety Regulatory (BSR) relating to the Building Safety Act 2022 (BSA).

At the time of writing the next significant pieces of secondary legislation to be enacted includes:

• The Building Safety Act 2022 (Commencement No. 4 and Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2023
  
  On 1st October 2023, this Regulation enables Section 156 of the Building Safety Act to amend key sections of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, with the exception subsection (4). It imposes a range of additional duties on the accountable person(s) and responsible person(s), not least of which is the obligation to begin an on-line application to register a High-Risk Building with the Building Safety Regulator by the 30th September 2023.