APS: ‘Safety up front’ paramount for Building Safety Bill

by Featured NewsSafety

The Association for Project Safety (APS) has proposed several suggestions for improvements to the proposed legislation for residents, other users, Government, and the construction industry.

The APS wants to see ‘safety up front’ with building safety made an explicit requirement in the Building Safety Bill. There’s also a desire to deliver government-backed professional indemnity insurance and clarify the principal designer roles.

Jonathan Moulam, president, APS said: “As it stands, the Building Safety Bill represents something of a wasted opportunity when it comes to making the built environment safer for everyone. The concentration on structural fire risk replays a disaster that should never have happened without looking ahead to how safety can be improved more generally.

“In its current state, the Building Safety Bill creates dangers of its own and is likely to make homes less affordable, while also pushing small firms out of business. Potential costs could make the existing skills crisis worse.”

According to the APS, if the management of building safety risk was to be made an explicit requirement of the Building Safety Bill, this would ensure residents will not be forced to bear the costs of managing building safety risks that could have been avoided, or otherwise reduced, during design or building works.

The APS believes this change would make a ‘second Grenfell Tower Tragedy’ less likely by removing any possible confusion over responsibility. Products would be cheaper as safety would be fully costed from the outset and residents would be financially better off.

The current version of the Building Safety Bill would allow developers to choose and install fire alarm systems and emergency lighting that may be inherently less safe and require physical testing with all the implicated costs, as well as all of the associated risks (such as tests not being done) rather than deploying self-testing systems that can be remotely monitored. Only the minimum requirements would be met, and residents would face hidden costs.

London Mayor consults residents on guidance to improve fire safety

by Building ManagementFeatured NewsIndustry Sectors

London Mayor Sadiq Khan is spearheading important fire safety improvements
in the capital. The London Mayor has launched a full public consultation
on innovative draft guidance to ensure all new developments are designed with
the highest standards of fire safety from the earliest stage, keeping
Londoners, their property, and the fire service safe.

Following the Grenfell Tower tragedy, in which 72 Londoners tragically lost
their lives, Dame Judith Hackitt’s Review highlighted the need to transform the
fire and building safety regime. Dame Judith recommended that ‘some minimum
requirements around fire safety will need to be addressed when local planning
authorities are determining planning applications and will require input from
those with the relevant expertise’.

Khan has a strategic planning role for the city and his ‘London Plan’ sets
out guidance for development and building across the city.

He has also reiterated that the fire safety requirements in existing
national Building Regulations are not fit for purpose and the progress of
reform is too slow. With this draft Fire Safety London Plan guidance, Sadiq is
leading the way in London to ensure fire safety is embedded in the early stages
of all planning processes.

This guidance sets out how developers should demonstrate compliance with the
Mayor’s detailed London Plan policies to achieve the highest standards in fire
safety and ‘safe and dignified’ evacuations. This is in addition to the
Government’s fire safety considerations that apply only to a limited number of
buildings at the planning application stage.

The draft guidance also highlights that it is the responsibility of
developers to demonstrate that their developments can be constructed and
occupied safely with regards to the highest standards of fire safety, in a way
that won’t impact neighbouring buildings. To ensure this, the design of the
development needs to consider fire safety and the safe and dignified evacuation
for all from the outset – for example, where a fire engine will park in the
event of fire, whether there is a safe and accessible evacuation route for
occupants, whether the external walls are made of non-combustible materials and
what fire safety measures will be incorporated into the buildings.

Building Safety Bill to clamp down on unsafe cladding

by Building ManagementConstructionFeatured NewsIndustry Sectors

The Building Safety Bill has added new powers that will see unsafe cladding clamped down on.

Under the new measure developers risk losing planning permission should they refuse to pay the costs of removing unsafe cladding. Projects can also be blocked under government plans.

The measures will also allow for cladding companies to be sued, with defective products earning fines. The proposed measures are part of a Building Safety Bill following the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017, the BBC reported.

People who are currently facing bills of thousands of pounds to fix their homes welcomed the move.

Michael Gove, Housing Secretary, said: “We cannot allow those who do not take building safety seriously to build homes in the future, and for those not willing to play their part they must face consequences.”

Last month, Gove announced that leaseholders living in buildings high than 11 metres will not face costs for fixing dangerous cladding. In turn, developers would be expected to fix dangerous buildings. Failure to do so will result in legal or tax changes, he added.

Leaseholders now have up to 30 years, from the current six years, to sue builders and product manufacturers for defects in England, but there are plans to extend it UK wide.

New survey says landlords ‘need at least two years to comply’ with building safety bill

by Passive

A survey of landlords found that one in three expected to need ‘at least two years to comply’ with the changes outlined in the building safety bill.

In July, the government published the draft bill, which included mention of the new role of the accountable person, who will ‘have to listen and respond’ to concerns and ensure resident are heard, called the accountable person. There will also be resident and leaseholder access to ‘vital’ safety information about buildings, and new complaints handling requirements for ‘effective action’.

The BSR will ‘oversee all this and make sure that accountable persons are carrying out their duties properly’, and ‘ensure that high rise buildings and the people who live in them are being kept safe’, with ‘new powers to raise and enforce higher standards of safety and performance across all buildings’. Resident panels will be appointed to have a voice in developing the regulator’s work.

The government will also be ‘speeding up’ its work with finance and insurance sectors to protect leaseholders from fire safety costs ‘without relying on tax payers’ money’, while a new building safety charge will make it ‘easy for leaseholders to see and know what they are being charged for’. To ensure these costs are affordable, the government has ‘deliberately included powers to limit’ costs that can be re-charged to leaseholders.

‘For the first time’ new build buyers will be able to complain to a new homes ombudsman, and developers will have to be a member of the scheme, with the ombudsman having the power to require they ‘pay compensation’. For construction, the bill will ‘fully establish’ the BSR to ‘enforce new rules and take strong actions against those who break them’, ensuring they are ‘accountable for any mistakes’.

The BSR’s three functions including overseeing safety and standards of all buildings; ‘directly’ assuring safety of higher risk buildings; and improving the competence of those ‘responsible for managing and overseeing’ works. A ‘more stringent’ set of rules for high rises will apply when buildings are ‘designed, constructed and then later occupied’, with each stage making it ‘clear who is responsible for managing the potential risks and what is required to move to the next stage’.

This ties into the “golden thread” of ‘vital information about the building’, and buildings need to be registered with the BSR as well as apply for a building assurance certificate. The accountable person will then need to ‘conduct and maintain’ a safety case risk assessment and appoint a building safety manager ‘to oversee it day to day’, with building inspectors ‘responsible for signing buildings off as safe for people to live in’ also having to follow the rules and register with the regulator.

Additionally, the government will have the power to ‘better regulate’ construction materials and products, and ‘ensure they are safe to use’. Ministers will appoint the UK’s first chief inspector of buildings, who will lead the new regulator ‘to make sure effective action is taken where concerns are raised’.

It was later reported that a survey of 1,000 leaseholders across the UK found that 70% were ‘reluctant and worried’ over the plans for increased responsibility for flat block safety, before leaseholders in Leeds stated the plans had caused them ‘enormous alarm’. In August, more details were provided, including planned new penalties of up to two years in jail for breaching the bill, while other information on fire related elements was provided.

Inside Housing has now reported on a survey of social and private landlords of 1,048 high rise buildings undertaken by software platform TrackMyRisks on behalf of the Building Safety Register. The survey found that a third of landlords believe they ‘will need more than two years to get up to speed’ with the bill’s requirements, with 33% expecting it would take ‘more than 25 months to demonstrate compliance with all parts’ of the bill.

Issues with compliance identified by the respondents included the bill’s ‘complexity’ and ‘absence of clarity’, alongside ‘competing organisational priorities’ and the volume of high rises that some wold ‘need to submit to the new regulator’. Compliance costs were also identified as a problem, with 45% stating that the bill would have a ‘significant negative impact on their organisations’ finances’, and another 33% saying it would have a ‘moderately negative impact’.

Over half, or 56%, of respondents had fewer than 20 high rises in their portfolio, with 33% having 20 to 150 high rises and 11% having over 150; 78% said that their organisations had not yet written any ‘building safety cases’, while 22% said they had written ‘between one and five’, with these cases part of the new building safety regime proposed – no respondents ‘could provide an estimate for the average cost of producing each building safety case.

Matt Hodges-Long, co founder of TrackMyRisks, commented: ‘Much of the media attention relating to [the] building safety bill impacts is understandably written from a resident’s perspective. We felt it was important to understand the scale of impact on the supply side of the equation so we surveyed senior housing execs representing more than 1,000 higher risk buildings.

‘The overwhelming narrative through all of our one-to-one interviews was the absence of guidance, the scale of the implementation challenge and how long it would take to achieve the required level of cultural change.’