It's been over a year since the Building Safety Act 2022 (BSA) became law, 28 April 2022 to be exact. Since then we have seen big changes, including on 28 June 2022 (you may remember those limitation periods being extended from 6 years to up to 30 years), and there have been so many consultations since then that at times it has been hard to keep track of them all.
We are now about to see another significant set of changes, when several pieces of legislation and new rules come into force on 6 April.
What are they? Here's an overview of the key developments for you.
The government has made the Higher-Risk Buildings (Descriptions and Supplementary Provisions) Regulations 2023 (HRB Regulations) which come into force on 6 April 2023. (The government published a draft of these HRB Regulations in December 2022 and the final HRB Regulations are substantively the same as this December draft).
Under the BSA, the building safety regime is changing for "higher-risk buildings" (HRBs) and to a lesser extent non-HRBs – but while the BSA gave high level definitions of a "HRB" for the design and construction phase (under section 31 of the BSA) and separately for the occupation phase (under section 65 of the BSA 2022), it was always anticipated that the detail would be filled in by supplementary, or what we lawyers would call "secondary", legislation.
The new HRB Regulations referred to above are that secondary legislation. Very broadly, they provide that HRBs are buildings that are 18m or seven storeys high or more, and have two or more residential units. In the design and construction phase, hospitals and care homes are included, but once built and occupied, they are excluded as they are covered by different, pre-existing legislation (the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, if you must know). However, buildings comprising entirely of hotels, secure residential institutions (like prisons), or military barracks, and buildings containing living accommodation for military personnel, are excluded from being HRBs.
On top of that, there are other nuances to consider when working out whether your building is an HRB or not. The HRB Regulations contain a lot of detail, including about:
How you work out where to measure your 18m or seven storeys from (eg where there is a basement level)
When floors with plant rooms and machinery or galleries are included or excluded
Which parts of the property or development are a "building" (eg where there are different extensions or independent sections to the property or development)
As such, while we now have the detail to determine whether a building is an HRB, it's not necessarily going to be a straightforward "yes it is" or "no it isn't", and so getting familiar with the terms of the new HRB Regulations as soon as possible is going to be crucial.
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