Building Safety Cases: Lessons Learnt So Far

We know by now that the requirements of the Building Safety Act 2022 are extensive, though absolutely necessary to ensure that people remain safe in their homes and in your buildings.

Included in these requirements is the need to submit a building safety case report to the Building Safety Regulator (BSR). To quickly recap, a safety case is all the information and systems required to manage the risk of fire spread and the structural safety within your buildings. Your safety case will demonstrate that building safety risks have been identified, assessed, and are being prevented or managed to an acceptable level. A safety case report is the document that summarises your safety case and is the main way the BSR will hold Accountable Persons to account for identifying risks and hazards in the buildings they are responsible for.

Here are the top lessons we’ve learnt so far having supported several clients with developing their building safety cases.

Building Height

How tall is your building? Does it fall within scope of Part 4 of the Building Safety Act? I.e., is it at least 18 metres or seven storeys in height?

Whilst this might seem an obvious question, not knowing the height of a building, or not accurately counting the number of storeys, has been a stumbling block for some of our clients – especially when buildings are six storeys and on the threshold of being within scope of the legislation. You should be absolutely clear whether your buildings fall within scope or not. Even if your building is clearly seven storeys and above, knowing your building height will also be important to form an overall assessment of risk as the higher the building, the more residents to consider and the greater the scale of a potential major event.

Key Building Information

The second thing we’ve noticed is that gathering all the key building information that is required at building registration stage, which is happening now, has been difficult for some. The BSR has outlined the specific types of information that it will need when conducting an initial assessment of your buildings, including things such as: whether your building has an evacuation lift or a lift that can be used by the Fire and Rescue Service, the level of resistance of your fire doors, the buildings structure type, whether your roof has a layer of insulation, and so on. It is important to address any gaps in key building information as a priority because this information will eventually also form part of your building safety case.

Underestimation of Time, Effort, and Resource

Thirdly, we’ve noticed that clients are underestimating just how much time is needed to successfully develop their building safety cases and building safety case reports. We’re finding that a lot of the information they need is not readily available due to needing to speak with other colleagues/departments, search through paper archives, or even commission brand new surveys to retrieve the information.

For some, there is the need for additional information if there are other Accountable Persons involved. For example, you may need to take additional time to communicate with an Arm’s Length Management Organisation (ALMO), council, local authority, and/or any management agents involved. You will be reliant on those other parties to cooperate with you, and you will need to be mindful of their timescales.

We recommend that you identify who the other Accountable Persons are early on. If you haven’t already, start opening those communication lines and building those relationships because there will be an ongoing requirement to ensure that all parties cooperate when it comes to building safety.

Who is the Principal Accountable Person (PAP)?

Agreeing and understanding who the Accountable Persons (APs) are and who the Principal Accountable Person is has been another struggle we’ve seen.

APs could be an individual or an entity, likely the latter, who owns or has responsibility for the building and maintaining the common parts. They have a duty to prevent building safety risks from happening and to reduce the seriousness of an incident if one happens.

• If there’s one AP they are automatically the PAP.
• If there’s more than one AP, then the PAP needs to be determined. The Building Safety Act 2022 defines the PAP and states that they will be the AP responsible for the structure and exterior of the building, or the AP responsible for repairing obligations relating to the building’s structure and exterior. Click here to read the official government guidance.

If in doubt, our advice would be to seek legal advice. Ultimately, disputes can be resolved by a tribunal and a relevant party, such as stakeholders, or the BSR can apply to the tribunal to determine who the PAP is.

So what?

As we review several safety case reports for our clients who are seeking assurance around their approach, we are frequently having to ask, ‘so what?’, due to seeing a collection of information that doesn’t provide a narrative to show why it has been included within the safety case. We therefore recommend that as you develop each section of your safety case and safety case report, you ask yourself, why is this content relevant? And how does it support the overarching claims of safety that you’re trying to make?

We recommend using the claim, argument, and evidence framework to help make sure your safety case report remains focused on demonstrating how you ensure your building is safe/safely managed and excludes any unnecessary information.

For more information about the claim, argument, and evidence framework, alongside more expert insight into the lessons we’ve learnt so far when developing building safety cases, watch our dedicated webinar on-demand below. You’ll hear from our knowledgeable consultancy team, accompanied by our expert fire technicians, who share their experiences and highlight the most effective ways to tackle your own safety cases.

Not sure where to begin and need some support in preparing your building safety cases? Or perhaps you’ve got your safety case drafted, but need it reviewing to be sure it’s as effective as it can be? Whichever stage you are at on your building safety journey, we are here to help.