Safety cases for high-rise buildings: a summary

The law relating to building safety in England is changing. Proposed reforms currently making their way through parliament will introduce a safety case regime. This will mean new roles and responsibilities for high-rise residential building owners and management, including accountable persons (AP) and building safety managers (BSM).

Building on the safety case principles we published last year, we have continued our work with partners in the public and private sector to develop information that we hope will form a toolkit for building owners and managers.

The first part of this toolkit is a short summary of the key things they can do to prepare.  It’s intended to be a quick read to help people and organisations to understand what they can do.

HSE has now published this headline document on its website: https://www.hse.gov.uk/building-safety/how-to-prepare.htm

In the coming months this will be followed by further information that builds on the safety case principles from last year. This will include new material that we have introduced following the very helpful suggestions and comments we received from early adopters, private landlords, social housing providers, and other industry consultees.

Tim Galloway, Deputy Director of the Building Safety Programme at HSE, encouraged organisations and people to start preparing: “I am really pleased that we’ve published this information in such a digestible form.  I want to thank all our partners for their invaluable contribution. We all want safe buildings and I would encourage building owners to start their preparations for the new regime now rather than wait for all the details to be developed. I think the existing principles, this headline document and the further information to come will really help.”

Source HSE Website 26/01/2022