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Legislation, Regulations & Guidance

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  • New Guidance on Mandatory Occurrence Notices and Reports

    The Health and Safety Executive (HSE), under whose auspices the BSR operates, has now published three resources to assist with mandatory occurrence reporting (MOR). 

    The Building Safety Act 2022 introduced a stricter safety regime for higher-risk buildings (HRBs), encompassing work to an existing HRB, work to an existing building that coverts it into an HRB or the construction of an entirely new HRB.  Among other things, this requires the principal designer and principal contractor on an HRB construction project to operate a mandatory occurrence reporting system during the works and to report any "safety occurrence" to the Building Safety Regulator (BSR).

    A safety occurrence is an aspect of design or an incident or situation relating to the structural integrity or fire safety of an HRB that would be likely, unless remedied, to present the risk of a significant number of deaths, or serious injury to a significant number of people. Outside the construction phase, an accountable person or principal accountable person must submit a mandatory occurrence notice in relation to those parts of an HRB for which it is responsible.

    The new MOR system guidance resources can be accessed below: 

    • Building Safety Regulator
    • Mandatory Occurence Reporting

  • Seventh Commencement regulations laid to provide for the switch from approved inspectors to registered building control approvers

    The government has made the Building Safety Act 2022 (Commencement No 7 and Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2024 (SI 2024/104), which come into force on 6 April 2024.

    The regulations will bring into force various provisions of the Building Safety Act 2022 (BSA 2022) that amend the Building Act 1984 (BA 1984) to:

    • Provide for the switch from approved inspectors to registered building control approvers under the building regulations regime in England 
    • Set out transitional provisions dealing with projects that are ongoing under the auspices of an approved inspector.

    The Welsh Government has separate powers to commence these aspects of the BSA 2022 for Wales.

    Industry will be unsurprised by the coming into force of these new regulations on 6 April 2024, which had already been publicised as the date by which approved inspectors would be replaced by registered building control approvers. It is also a significant date in relation to ongoing projects because it marks the deadline by which work must have "sufficiently progressed" in order to continue to benefit from the transitional arrangements that apply to building projects under the new building control regime.

    • Building Safety Act
    • Legislation, Regulations & Guidance

  • View the TPI HSE webinar on ‘Building Safety Regulator TPI Member Q&A Session – Occupied Buildings' (24th January)

    This webinar was about occupied residential buildings that meet the definition in Part 4 of the Building Safety Act and was delivered by Andrew Saunders and Josh Paulin of the BSR. It was delivered to TPI members as part of our building safety series with the HSE.

    You can view the webinar, and find links to resources discussed during the session, here.

    • Building Safety Act
    • Legislation, Regulations & Guidance

  • Sixth Commencement Regulations of the BSA laid (Part 4)

    On 13th January 2024, new Regulations (the sixth commencement regulations made under the Building Safety Act 2022) have now brought into force various sections in Part 4 of the Act,  as of 16th January 2024.

    Sections now enacted include:

    • Sections 79 to 82 which impose requirements with regard to registration of occupied higher-risk buildings and obtaining and displaying a building assessment certificate for such a building; 
    • Sections 83 to 86 which impose duties with regard to assessing and managing building safety risks, the safety case report and its provision to the regulator; 
    • Sections 87, 88 and 90 which impose and are in relation to duties to report certain safety information, keeping prescribed information and documents for higher-risk buildings and for sharing that information and documents with various interested parties; 
    • Sections 91 to 94 which impose requirements in relation to a resident engagement strategy for a higher-risk building, requests by residents for further information or documents about their building, and the complaints procedures to be operated by the principal accountable person and the building safety regulator;
    • Sections 95 to 97 which impose duties on residents and provide for contravention notices when those duties are breached and for access to residential units; 
    • Sections 98 to 101 which impose requirements in relation to enforcement by the regulator; 
    • Section 102 (and the accompanying Schedule 7) which creates the special measures regime, an enforcement tool of last resort; and;
    • Section 111 which makes provisions in relation to articles of associations of resident management companies.

    Read the regulations here

     

    • Building Safety Act

  • Leaseholder Protections: Qualifying Leases and the Qualifying Time

    The Property Institute was one of a number of stakeholders who flagged what appeared to be a rather obvious error with section 119 of the Building Safety Act 2022. As agents will know, where a lease is extended, by operation of law the original lease is surrendered and a new lease is then granted. The original drafting of section 119 explained that a qualifying lease had to be held at the qualifying time, i.e. 14th February 2022. This meant that if a qualifying leaseholder extended their lease, that they surrendered their existing lease and were granted a new lease.  As the new lease will not have been granted before 14 February 2022, the statutory leaseholder protections in the Building Safety Act 2022 could not apply. 

    DLUHC proceeded to update their guidance, indicating that they were “..looking to legislate to resolve this issue as soon as Parliamentary time allows”.  We now have the legislation in the form of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, which received Royal Assent on 26th October.

    Section 243 of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 inserts a new section 119A into the Building Safety Act.  It introduces the concept of a “connected replacement lease”.  A connected replacement lease will also be a qualifying lease where the new lease replaces a qualifying lease.

    This new provision will have retrospective effect.  This means that any losses of qualifying status will be reversed.

    The new provision will come into force at the end of the period of two months beginning with the day on which the Act is passed (i.e. 26th December 2023).

    • Building Remediation
    • Leaseholder Protections
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