The new Building Safety Bill – a pragmatic view

Homes should be safe and neither damaging to occupants or neighbours, nor the environment, both in aesthetics and in respect of the climate or ecosystems. This is why we have planning and building controls.

Over recent years there have been many individual and disparate changes to the regulations that impact on buildings, whether in private ownership by occupiers, or private landlords or in social housing. From the relaxation of planning restrictions, to the strengthening of requirements around energy use and accessibility. All of these can be bewildering, at times contradictory, and costly to implement or ignore.

In an attempt to rationalise these requirements, the Building Safety Bill (England and Wales) has been conceived and developed, and drawing upon the findings of the Hackett Review. It brings together a range of requirements and introduces a raft of new measures, including:

• A new Building Safety Regulatory, with associated committees;

• Reforms of building control and building regulations, with new accountabilities and management responsibilities;

• Increased regulation of construction products;

• Building safety levies to be paid by developers, and building safety charges to be paid by leaseholders in high rise buildings.

As Ive indicated above, its starting point is that current processes require review and reform to bring years of overlapping changes and pressures into line.  I have been in the building maintenance industry for a long time and have seen change before. My bones tell me that this time round we will see some of the largest policy adjustments I have witnessed in my career.

The Bill is is complicated in structure but that said, is essential as its intent is to change the way the ‘life of the building’ is managed, from design to maintaining the structure and eventual decommissioning. It will be so big that the initial body of legislation will require additional Acts and future amendments. It must also be weaved into the existing Building, Health and Safety and Housing legislation.

It’s not envisaged that the Bill will become law until late 2022 or early 2023, but my strong advice is don’t delay in preparing for what’s coming. It will affect everybody who builds or owns housing, private or public. Admittedly it will be directed towards structures of 11 metres high in England up from the current requirement of 18 metres, but all homes will be influenced by the changes.

The Welsh government is looking to follow the scope of the legislation, including anything within multiple dwelling footprints but have the Welsh Local Authorities regulate, with input from the HSE. Scotland is going down a different path with improving current safety legislation and Northern Ireland are also following the Bill but at this moment in time are not looking to create a Regulator using the Homes Ombudsman scheme as the regulator. They have also not set a date for the implementation.

A brief résumé so far of what we are talking about

There are five distinct sections to the Building Safety Bill (England and Wales):

• Part 1: Introduction

• Part 2: The Regulator and its functions

• Part 3: Building Act 1984

• Part 4: Higher Risk Buildings (HRB)

• Part 5: Supplementary & General

The Bill creates a Building Safety Regulator within the current Health and Safety Executive structure. The Regulator will expect Landlords to put in place clear accountabilities on all assets. Accountability means all positions of impact and authority, from designers and contractors to Board members. The Bill will include:

• A strategic understanding of a landlord’s housing stock and the impact of operational management. For example, the puncturing of elevations to install telecoms will need a pre-approval process. Assessment will be required on how the management impacts on the safety of the whole asset.

• A major overhaul of Building Regulations pulling together years of ‘tinkering at the edges’ and removing conflicting requirements.

• Clearing up the ambiguity around the duties of the Fire service in relation to Building Regulations.

• Setting out how to regulate new buildings, including the design expectations and competencies.

As I write, this important Bill is progressing through its legislative stages. The housing sector should be preparing for its introduction as it will be introduced and 70% of the content is known.

This is the link to the Bill content.

Keep watching this blog for a second installment … what the housing sector should be doing to get ready for these changes.

Tim Hayton

Strategic Asset Specialist