The www.gov.co.uk website is generally not prone to hyperbole in descriptions of new legislation. But it bills the Building Safety Act (BSA) as making “ground-breaking reforms to give residents and homeowners more rights, powers and protections …. so homes across the country are safer”.
The BSA was given royal assent last year and over the next two years a raft of associated Statutory Instruments (SIs) follow. For the construction industry and its product suppliers it makes for a colossal ask. There’s a huge amount of information to absorb and new obligations to adapt to and comply with. Some feel the sector on the ground is still not aware quite how far reaching the Act is and that many businesses are not ready for it. Hence the new legislation was the topic of a Structural Timber Association (STA) roundtable discussion during Futurebuild, attended by STA members and representatives of other building industry bodies and associated sectors.
Construction Industry Council (CIC) chief executive Graham Watts, gave a blunt appraisal of industry preparedness for the Act and the urgency of getting heads around it.
“The wider industry is frankly not aware of what’s coming down the track, which is a steamroller of change to the regulatory processes in construction,” he said. “And it’s not in 10 or five years’ time, it’s now.”
Alongside the 2021 Fire Safety Act, the BSA is an outcome of the Grenfell Tower fire disaster, the subsequent Hackitt report on building regulations and fire safety and, in part, outrage that inhabitants of other buildings adjudged unsafe faced paying for remedial work on their homes.
Business law firm Norton Rose Fullbright (NBF) describes the BSA as ushering in the “biggest swathe of regulatory changes to the UK built environment since the 1984 Building Act”.
NBF picks out a range of key changes made by the BSA to obligations and responsibilities of construction, design and management duty-holders. “Alarmingly” for developers, contractors and building sector consultants, NBF says, it extends the period in which retrospective claims can be made under the Defective Premises Act (DPA) to 30 years – and the DPA has been broadened to cover refurbishment works as well as new build.
The BSA also introduces a new “cause of action”, enabling retrospective claims to be brought against construction product manufacturers and suppliers where products are mis-sold, found to be inherently defective, or are in breach of construction product regulations.
A particularly stringent regime comes into force for buildings over 18m/six storeys. For these, duty-holders must maintain a ‘golden thread’ of ‘digitally captured’ information about building design, build and management throughout the building’s lifecycle.
The BSA creates three new bodies to provide oversight of the new regime: the Building Safety Regulator, the National Regulator of Construction Products and the New Homes Ombudsman.
“Together these [regulatory] changes mean owners will manage buildings better, while the building industry has the framework it needs to deliver more, and better, high quality homes,” states the government.
Opening the STA roundtable, chief executive Andrew Carpenter said the BSA represented “huge change for everyone”.
“There’s an assumption post Grenfell that it’s all about high risk, high rise building,” he said, “It’s not – the whole industry is affected.”
He described the building safety regime to date as weak. “There’s a general competence deficit and, as a result, the majority of buildings don’t perform as they should. The industry now faces really moving to a different gear.”
But he stressed he was not negative or pessimistic. He welcomes the BSA and the changes it brings.
“After Grenfell, there was a loss of confidence in UK construction. But the goal of government is an industry that works better. I see the BSA resulting in an industry that works in a more joined up way, is more competent, efficient and productive and better understands what it’s required to do. It will also mean paying more attention to training and looking after our people – which will improve our image and attract new talent.”
The CIC’s Graham Watts highlighted a number of industry initiatives focused on driving safety standards, but didn’t fight shy of pointing out areas for improvement. He said the Construction Leadership Council, for which he is a Building Safety workstream lead, is focusing on four key topics of relevance to BSA implementation and compliance; competence, products, clarity/ transparency and insurance.
He is also on the board of the governmentbacked not-for-profit Building a Safer Future (BSF), which is committed to driving safety standards and transparency. It has just announced the first nine companies – signatories to the BSF Charter – to be awarded the status BSF Champions. While welcoming their achievement Mr Watts said more businesses needed to sign up to demonstrate the sector’s safety commitment.
“After three years of the Charter, still not all its early adopters have signed up to it,” he said. “There’s a massive reputational risk to the industry if it fails. If you’re from a company that’s eligible to sign – a contractor, engineer, product manufacturer or architect – I urge you to do so.”
He also described the work of the industry-led Competence Steering Group (CSG), established to develop proposals for increasing competence in design, construction, inspection, maintenance and management of buildings. “New frameworks have been developed for 12 key areas and, while progress has not been as fast in some as we’d have hoped, in others we’re ready to go with new competence standards,” he said.
With the roundtable opened for discussion, participants shared views on the challenges in the BSA, but also potential benefits.
“It will make for a more costly industry, but it will be the true cost of construction – so far we’ve massively undervalued how much it costs to build things,” said one. “Either clients will pay more, or it will give us that nudge to finally understand what productivity actually means for construction and shift it into that digital future we’re all talking about.”
The challenge to raise building sector competence proved to be another hot topic.
“As a contractor and quantity surveyor I’ve visited many sites and often walked away shaking my head because competency was so poor,” said another attendee. “The bar we’ve set ourselves is so low. To raise it, and take holistic responsibility for the quality of buildings – safety being a part – we must set an entry level that’s a minimum standard for competence.”
Mr Carpenter said that the STA and the rest of the industry was increasingly focused on improving skills and competence and the BSA would drive still greater efforts.
“Anyone who thinks it will mean current bad behaviours will vanish overnight is in cloud cuckoo land,” he said. “But under the Act someone will be accountable for them, with a responsible person at each stage of the process, from principle designer, through contractors, to health and safety professionals.”
Construction Products Association chief executive Peter Caplehorn said the appointment of the HSE as new Building Safety Regulator under the BSA would also have significant impact. But he pointed out that the Construction Design and Management Regulations already give a clear steer on the industry’s obligations.
“It’s about sensibly planning work so risks involved are managed start to finish and having the right people for the right job at the right time,” he said. “It also entails communicating the right information about risks and their management to those who need to know.”
Some participants felt the growth in modular homes and offsite construction could help drive building safety and quality.
“But UK MMC/modular capacity is currently 20,000 units a year and government is targeting 300,000 hew homes annually, so there’s a huge challenge, but also opportunity to upscale it,” said one attendee.
Mr Carpenter said that strengthening skills and competence in the sector was also core to increase timber construction output, but added that raising levels was a key priority area too for the Timber in Construction Working Group, on which he sits. “The Group has until the end of the summer to come up with a roadmap on the topic with metrics and milestones for improvement,” he said.
The www.gov.uk summary of the BSA concludes that it delivers “far-reaching protections for leaseholders from the cost of remediating building safety defects and an ambitious toolkit of measures to allow those responsible for building safety to be held to account”.
Mr Caplehorn elaborated on this theme, tying it in with the Grenfell disaster.
“A key issue with Grenfell, was inappropriate, bad product substitution,” he said. “In future, if someone makes a change that’s inappropriate [on a building project], there’s a duty holder who is answerable to the Building Safety Regulator. If anyone in the supply chain, says fine, make the change, just bear in mind that you have signed off on it and are liable.”
