Building Safety Act: meaning in UK construction

The Building Safety Act 2022 is the legislative response to the Grenfell Tower fire and the Hackitt review that followed it. It creates a substantially stricter regime for higher-risk buildings in England and changes parts of the wider building control system as well.

A higher-risk building, for these purposes, is at least 18 metres tall or has at least seven storeys, and contains two or more residential units. Hospitals and care homes of that height are also captured during design and construction.

The gateways

The Act introduces three points at which a higher-risk project must satisfy the Building Safety Regulator, which sits within the HSE.

Gateway one applies at planning, requiring fire safety to be considered at the design stage rather than resolved later.

Gateway two comes before construction begins. Work cannot lawfully start until the Regulator has approved the application, which is a hard stop rather than a notification.

Gateway three comes before occupation. The building cannot be occupied until the Regulator is satisfied the work complies and the required information has been handed over.

The practical consequence is that late design changes and undocumented substitutions have a cost they did not previously carry, because the evidence has to satisfy an external body at defined points.

The golden thread

Running through all three gateways is the golden thread: accurate, accessible, up to date information about the building and the decisions taken about it, maintained digitally and handed on through the building’s life.

This is the requirement most likely to change day to day habits. A change agreed verbally on site and never recorded, a product substituted for an equivalent without the evidence, or a set of as-built drawings that were never reconciled are all normal enough on a traditional job and are not acceptable within this regime.

Beyond higher-risk buildings

Parts of the Act reach much further. Limitation periods for claims under the Defective Premises Act were extended substantially, including retrospectively, which lengthens the tail of liability on work already completed. Competence requirements now apply more broadly. And dutyholder roles under the building regulations were reshaped to mirror the structure already familiar from CDM 2015.

For most contractors the practical answer is the same either way: record decisions as they are made, keep the evidence against the project rather than in people’s inboxes, and make sure what is handed over at handover matches what was actually built. That is what Sync’s compliance management is built to support.

Common questions

Which buildings count as higher-risk?

In England, buildings at least 18 metres in height or with at least seven storeys, containing two or more residential units. Care homes and hospitals of that height are also captured during design and construction. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own arrangements.

What are the gateways?

Three hard stops in the life of a higher-risk building. Gateway one at planning, gateway two before construction can start, and gateway three before occupation. Gateways two and three are approval points with the Building Safety Regulator, and work cannot lawfully proceed past them without it.

Does the Act apply to work that is not on a higher-risk building?

Parts of it do. The Act also changed the wider building control regime, extended limitation periods for claims under the Defective Premises Act, and introduced competence requirements. So its effects reach well beyond the higher-risk category.

Who is the accountable person?

For an occupied higher-risk building, the person or organisation that owns or has responsibility for the structure and common parts. They must register the building, assess building safety risks and keep the safety case under review.

Building Safety Act