42 INDUSTRY VIEWFINDER - BUILDING SAFETY BILL


BUILDING SAFETY INTO LAW


Have you heard of the Building Safety Bill? How well do you understand the Building Safety Bill?


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY T


he harrowing disaster of the Grenfell Tower fire shocked the nation – with the questions on everyone’s lips being, how could this have been allowed to happen, and who


was responsible? Following the June 2017 fire, a series of investigations were undertaken to answer these questions – including public inquiries, civil lawsuits, and an Equality and Human Rights Commission Report – all of which pointed to one thing: building safety in the UK is severely lacking.


Intended to prevent such a disaster from happening again in this country, in 2017 a review of the Building Regulations was commissioned by what was then the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), led by Dame Judith Hackitt, former Chair of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). Termed by many the ‘Hackitt Review,’ the team published a scathing initial report, which described the entire building regulatory system as “not fit for purpose,” imploring the industry that the mind-set of doing things “as cheaply as possible” and passing on responsibility for problems and


shortcomings to others “must stop.”


While interim measures were introduced – with the Government targeting aluminium composite material (ACM) cladding in particular – in order to enact Hackitt’s wider recommendations, the Building Safety Bill was announced as Whitehall’s full response.


Only recently (April 2022), more than four and a half years after the fire, the Bill has finally received Royal Assent, and the 262-page Act has been released. Introducing sweeping changes across the industry, from a new construction products regulator to refreshed regulatory framework for builders, the Building Safety Act is argued to be the biggest change in building safety for over 40 years. As ever, such changes bring fresh challenges to an already stretched industry. But, with such dire consequences apparent – and huge swathes of people across the country feeling unsafe in their own homes – there were relatively few standing in the way of its assent, considering the weight of the moves. Despite the near-universal understanding for its need however, there remain many barriers to the adoption of these


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