The Building Safety Bill: what housebuilders need to know

The Building Safety Bill (BSB) and the Fire Safety Bill (FSB) are the direct result of recommendations made in the Grenfell enquiry and the Hackitt Review. This insight provides an overview of the BSB.

Sweeping changes are proposed by the BSB which will result in direct accountability and responsibility for the “lifecycle” of a building, including the design, construction and occupation of a building. At the same time, new enforcement and regulatory powers will be brought into effect which will create a much tougher regime in the event of a breach of the new rules. 

The Building Safety Bill (BSB) and the Fire Safety Bill (FSB) are not yet law, do I need to be concerned?

In a word – yes. You need to be preparing for both pieces of legislation now. The framework proposed by the BSB is going to require fundamental changes to how you design, construct and manage high rise buildings and the FSB significantly increases the responsibilities of the designated “Responsible Person” in multi-occupancy buildings. Whilst it is still in draft format, the fundamental building blocks of the legislation as set out in the BSB are unlikely to change. 

The Three Gateways

Gateway 1

• Gateway 1 is created at the planning stage. 
• Information will need to be submitted to the Local Planning Authority demonstrating that the fire safety requirements which impact upon planning have been considered at an early stage and incorporated into the proposal. This will be known as “The Fire Statement”. 
• The Building Safety Regulator will become a new statutory consultee. 

Gateway 2

• This supplements the existing building control system. Gateway 2 provides a ‘hard stop’ where construction cannot begin until the BSR is satisfied in relation to the Building Regulations, safety and fire safety. 

Gateway 3

• This is the current final certification/completion phase.
• All prescribed documents must be handed over to the Accountable Person. 
• Duty holders are required to submit prescribed documents to the BSR (maintaining the “The Golden Thread”.)

Mandatory occurrence reporting 

• Duty holders throughout the lifecycle of the building will have an obligation to report structural and fire safety occurrences, which could cause significant risk to life safety, to the Building Safety Regulator. This begins with the construction phase and continues with the “Accountable Person” (See below).

New Homes Ombudsman

• A New Homes Ombudsman will be created giving householders direct access to the Ombudsman process. It is intended to create a new Code of Practice in consultation with developers to govern sales, marketing, standards and quality, and complaints/enforcement of the Code. 

Construction Product Safety

• New powers will be prescribed to govern the safety of all products used in construction and governing the competence of architects.

Enforcement 

• Non-compliance with Building Regulations is currently dealt with by Sections 35 and 36 of the Building Act 1984. Currently, the time limit for enforcement action is one and two years, respectively. This will be extended to 10 years in the case of breaches of both Section 35 and 36. 
• Power to prosecute individual directors/officers etc. where the offence is committed by a corporate entity with their consent/connivance/neglect.
• New powers by the BSR to issue Compliance Notices (for remedial work by a certain date) and Stop Notices (to cease work until defects remedied). Non-compliance with Notices is a criminal offence carrying a maximum sentence of 2 years in prison. 
• The BSR will have the power to replace the Accountable Person with a Special Measures Manager if there are serious failures which endanger life safety.
• The BSR will hold building control bodies to account and will have the power to suspend or remove building inspectors from the register and prosecute them.