As the public inquiry into the events leading up to and during the night of the Grenfell fire starts to reach a conclusion, there are three new key pieces of legislation to be aware of: the Fire Safety Act, Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 and the upcoming Building Safety Act. Dorian Lawrence at Façade Remedial Consultants, an RSK Group company, explains how, rather than being an additional burden, the changes offer a level of assurance, safety and security to everyone from tenants and freeholders to contractors and emergency services.

The legislation coming out of the Grenfell tragedy introduces the most stringent fire safety regulations that have ever been in place in the UK, and between the three acts we are introduced to a range of new terms: ‘responsible persons', ‘duty holders', ‘accountable persons', ‘building safety managers' and more, with each piece of legislation overlapping and building on the others. For developers, freeholders and other service providers, this can be very intimidating, but rather than looking at what duty holders need to do, at Façade Remedial Consultants (FRC) we think it is better to focus on the assurance that these rules give those same people.

The new regulations

There are three main points of legislation arising from the Grenfell tragedy.

• The Fire Safety Act: this makes assessing the external walls, including cladding and structure, mandatory. Essentially, this act is about preventing an uncontrolled fire. As we know from Grenfell, the cladding and the way it was installed were key causes of the fire spreading.

• Fire Safety (England) Regulations: these bring the fire service in as a duty holder and create rules around oversight of fire safety precautions. Previously, as a building manager, you would have had a checklist, but this was not overseen by anyone else. Now, you have to submit this information to the fire service and keep it on-site. Think of it as making sure that in the event of a fire, everything is in place to keep the situation controlled. Had this been followed pre-Grenfell, the likelihood is that the effects would have been far less tragic.

• The Building Safety Act: when finalised, this act is expected to introduce further requirements to new and existing buildings over 18 m tall and, crucially, to be extended to all high-risk buildings regardless of height. It will move the responsibility for fire safety to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) in the guise of the building safety regulator for building control and will create new requirements around safety cases to obtain a certificate of occupation before the building can house residents. In addition, it will introduce new requirements for manufacturing, an industry that was largely self-regulated.

The Grenfell inquiry has highlighted that no one wants to take responsibility for the tragedy. Each person or persons feel as though they operated legally. The manufacturer did what was asked, the contractor claims that they were told the material used was correct and the building owner says the manufacturer and contractor assured them that everything was safe. So who is responsible?

Responsibility throughout

With these new pieces of legislation, every one of these people will have some degree of accountability and responsibility for the building. No building can be without someone who is legally accountable and responsible. Obviously, the tenants' safety is at the core of it, but this legislation provides assurance to the duty holders and responsible people: contractors know that they are working with safe materials, freeholders know that the contractor is working to the right standard, the fire service knows that everything in a building functions correctly and tenants can be comfortable that there is accountability and clear duties of care. Everyone has a duty to maintain fire safety, so everyone has assurance in the safety of the building.

Dorian Lawrence, Managing Director of FRC, has over 30 years' experience in the building industry and is a Chartered Building Engineer. Working nationwide, FRC has developed a full end-to-end solution to assess and remediate buildings, providing everything from fire risk assessments and alarm design to complete project management of remedial work.

https://www.frconsultants.co.uk/