THE BUILDING SAFETY ACT
Helping NHS Trusts comply with the BSA
With the Building Safety Act a significant legislative change which impacts both new and existing hospital buildings undergoing building work, Helen Sturdy, the NHS England Estates team’s head of Construction, and the procurement framework lead at ProCure23, Andrew Rolf, Mott MacDonald’s Healthcare Technical Advisory lead, and Louise Mansfield, a Legal director at commercial law firm, Bevan Brittan, discuss NHS England’s recent publication of several NHS-specific guidance documents to inform hospital Trusts of the new requirements, and help ensure they comply.
Right: June 2017’s Grenfell Tower fire has led to fundamental reform of the building safety system.
The Building Safety Act (BSA),1 introduced in response to
the Grenfell Tower tragedy to fundamentally reform the building safety system, is a significant legislative change that impacts new and existing hospital buildings undergoing building work during both design and construction. It strengthens the regulatory framework for building safety, ensuring greater accountability and responsibility throughout the lifecycle of buildings under the new regime. It also requires any occupied hospital buildings that contain residential accommodation (meaning key worker or student accommodation, but no patient wards or ‘on-call rooms’) to be registered and managed. The BSA introduces new responsibilities for existing
Helen Sturdy
Helen Sturdy CEng, MSc, BEng(Hons), FIHEEM, CIWFM, MCIBSE, MAPM, MAfH, NEC4Reg, is the NHS England Estates team head of Construction, and lead on the £9 bn ProCure23 (P23) – an award-winning procurement framework which provides the vehicle for NHSE to support Trusts throughout their projects, ‘from concept to construction and beyond, driving innovation, best practice, and consistency in construction’. Most recently she has been leading on the response to the Building Safety Act and Grenfell Inquiry, and the understanding of what it means to Healthcare.
stakeholders involved with the design and construction of new and existing buildings. It also introduces new stakeholders for occupied buildings with residential accommodation (Accountable Persons and Principal Accountable Persons), and a new regulator, the Building Safety Regulator (BSR), sitting within the Health and Safety Executive, that oversees all buildings, but in particular the safety of higher-risk buildings (HRB). A HRB is any building at or above 18 metres or seven
storeys that contains two or more residential units, and for the design and construction requirements, also those buildings that are at or above 18 metres or seven storeys and are hospitals or care homes. The changes to HRBs include a new requirement to apply, with a much larger amount of information, to the Building Safety Regulator for building control approval where any building work is proposed. This is causing Trusts both additional expense, and major delays in projects, as construction cannot commence until design approval has been given, with potential impacts on patient care, safety, project funding, and capital cost.
Helping the NHS understand the BSA’s requirements NHS England ProCure23 recognised early on that the legislation and existing guidance were difficult to apply to the complex nature of hospital sites, which often consist of
multiple connected buildings with varying heights and uses. It is important that hospital Trusts develop a comprehensive understanding of the BSA’s requirements, and – if required – appoint competent advisors to support them. To help inform hospital Trusts of the new requirements, and, equally to help such organisations comply with them, NHS England has published several NHS-specific guidance documents. These include PRN01337 – NHS Estates Technical Bulletin (NETB) No. 2024/2 Building Safety Act 2022 (BSA) – application to healthcare buildings,2
A higher-risk building is a building at or above 18 metres or seven storeys that contains two or more residential units, and for the design and construction requirements, also those buildings that are at or above 18 metres or seven storeys and are hospitals or care homes
26 Health Estate Journal January 2025
AdobeStock / burnstuff2003
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