Today, the Building Safety Bill received Royal Assent. The Bill has completed all the parliamentary stages in both Houses and now becomes an Act of Parliament.
An important milestone, paving the way to build a more rigorous and robust regulatory regime for high-rise buildings in England, the Building Safety Bill is now in effect – although many of the new Act’s provisions are not expected to come into force for at least another year.
The Act brings into life the Building Safety Regulator, with powers of enforcement in terms of the new building regime system, a Construction Products Regulator, with new powers over construction products, and a Home’s Ombudsman, to assist residents.
Although debate and amendment of the 252 page Act has seen numerous alterations, including notably the removal of the Building Safety Manager, the substance of many of the Independent Review of Building Safety report’s other recommendations remain. The concept of the ‘golden thread’ approach to secure building information and duty holders requirements for accountability remain together with other clear duties for wider building safety. Secondary legislation to implement the Act’s many provisions will now follow.
Competency, especially related to fire risk assessment, has been one feature of this work and the Act does include a requirement for those employed to assist others make a fire risk assessment to be “competent”. The expectation now is for development of the further regulations and guidance required to bring into force the Act’ provisions, which should start to emerge from this autumn.
Minister for building safety Stephen Greenhalgh tweeted that the Building Safety Bill, which started its progress through parliament with its first reading in the Commons on 5 July last year, is to get Royal Assent on 28 April 2022.
The landmark Building Safety Bill will now gain Royal Assent tomorrow bringing about the biggest changes in building safety legislation in our history. The bill also introduces the waterfall with these #leaseholder protections: https://t.co/ITkUwnRsb8
— Stephen Greenhalgh (@team_greenhalgh) April 27, 2022
Read more here:
https://www.housingtoday.co.uk/news/building-safety-bill-to-become-law-tomorrow/5117240.article
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