The curious case of safety in HRBs

In order to understand why safety case reports have been causing such issues, it is best to start from the beginning.

Managers of residential buildings with seven or more storeys must maintain and update records to manage the risk of fire or structural failure as part of the Building Safety Act 2022. The Principal Accountable Person (PAP) for an existing high-rise residential building was required to have registered their building with the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) by 1 October 2023. As part of the registration, they needed to have submitted key information about the building such as its address, height, number of floors, number of residential units and completion date.

This registration acted as a census of sorts for the BSR to identify which of the more than 12,500 higher-risk buildings (HRBs) in England needed prioritising for safety assessments (the tallest and those with most residents, for example).

The Accountable Persons (APs) were informed that, starting from April 2024 and lasting for five years, the BSR would make contact to direct them to apply for a Building Assessment Certificate and that they would need to submit a safety case report as part of this application. A safety case report is required by law to cover the building’s height, when it was constructed, relevant design codes or standards, refurbishment details, information on construction materials, building control body completion certificates, fire prevention and structural information.

On receiving the direction to submit the application, the APs would have a period of two weeks. Failure to submit, or the submission of an incomplete report, is an offence, with potential penalties including imprisonment. It led to an unfortunate scramble to get things in place for the perceived ‘deadline’ of April 2024. It has also presented an opportunity for unscrupulous companies to charge inflated fees to prepare safety case reports on behalf of the APs who were not confident in what was being asked of them.

All of which rather missed the point of what the BSR was actually asking of APs. The fundamental principle at work that APs need to consider: how do you know the building you are responsible for is safe to live in?

Accountable Persons
APs have responsibility for managing the fire and structural safety of residential HRBs. Depending on the ownership of the building, an AP can be either:

• an individual or organisation that owns or has repairing responsibilities for any of the common parts of the building (such as corridors and staircases); or
• an individual or organisation that is required to repair or maintain any part of the common parts of a building under the terms of a lease or by other legislation.

Where the AP is an organisation, a named individual will be required to act as the point of contact; however, this does not make them the AP, as the AP is the organisation. If the leaseholder is required under the terms of the lease to repair or maintain any of the common parts of the building, the leaseholder will be an AP for those parts.
An AP can be a:

• freeholder or estate owner
• landlord
• management company
• resident management company
• right to manage company; or
• commonhold association.

Read the guidance on APs and PAPs at b.link/GOV_APs

Data management

Many experts in the field were quick to point out that it was not really about producing a report in time for the April start date (in case you were one of the first ones contacted by the BSR). Rather, it was about being able to show an understanding of the fire and structural safety risks of your building and show a proportionate ongoing process for meeting them.

Adam Sanders, Technical Director at RiskBase, writes: “The safety case is a live management system (or systems) that demonstrates all reasonable steps are being taken to manage risk and that those steps are effective. The safety case report is a documented output of the safety case. It is a snapshot of the building information and status of its management system. [It] does not need to declare the building as perfect – it is about persuading the regulator that the regulations and their intent are being met, gaps are identified and there is a plan to manage them.”

It forces property owners to consider how they store historic records for buildings across their portfolio and requires property owners to digitise information, structure data and automate processes wherever possible to ensure they have all the necessary information for ongoing management of the building’s safety in electronic form.

However, this has given rise to the perception of the Golden Thread as simply a data management system; a filing cabinet for a building’s paper trail. Plenty of software companies have been left with this impression and offered solutions for accessible, easy-to-use, searchable databases with AI capabilities to automatically classify and sort documents, suggest files that may be of use and even summarise entire pieces of content. While digital information management is vital, it is not the sole purpose of the Golden Thread – its purpose is to help understand a building.

The Golden Thread

In November 2023, the BSR published its Safety Case Toolkit, which gave APs reasonable steps and practical examples to help prepare a safety case. It was a useful guide, giving APs something tangible to aim for when putting together the information about their building and presenting their understanding of its risk factors.

In August this year, the Construction Leadership Council published its Golden Thread Guidance, with a focus of going beyond the issue of safety case reports and seeing them in context of a holistic consideration of safety. Its Working Group Chair Hywel Davies says: “We wanted to broaden it out to non-construction people, which APs often are. This isn’t a pro forma or a checklist – we wanted APs to really stop and think about what is being asked of them.”

And what is being asked of them is to take responsibility for the safety of the residents of the building, something that does not really lend itself to a checklist. For example, the Building Assessment Certificate application should include, alongside the safety case report for the building, a copy of the resident engagement strategy and information about the mandatory occurrence reporting system that is in place.

Davies notes: “Resident engagement is a significant part of the building’s safety. As an AP you not only need up-to-date information on where the fire doors were manufactured, who fitted them and when they were last tested, you also need information on whether the residents have replaced any of them with ones that they considered looked nicer.”

There’s a view that resident engagement is listening to residents, noting any complaints and showing what you will do to action the complaints; however, it is also educating residents on safety issues. “This includes replacing their front door or putting welcome mats in the corridors to make the place feel like home, but not considering these as a fire or trip risk to the other residents and the building as a whole,” he says.

In addition to understanding that residents bring variables to the safety issue, APs are not often building engineers (see Accountable Persons) so they need to seek advice from competent building professionals on the kind of questions they should be asking. Where there is scarce information on the structure and material details of an existing building, they will have to employ chartered fire engineers and chartered structural engineers to help them identify the structural and fire safety information that is required for the safety case. In so doing, this will help the AP get a better understanding of their building, its risks and their responsibilities to residents.

To date, the APs of about 250 HRBs have been directed to apply for a Building Assessment Certificate – these are ones that the BSR clearly considers to have the most significant risks. It leaves 12,250 still to be worked through during the five-year plan, although an incident could mean that an HRB that had fewer risks on paper becomes higher priority. There is a sense that there is a sword of Damocles hanging over APs with regards to safety cases, but perhaps this is not so. Perhaps the Golden Thread is actually an opportunity to set out a professional stall.

“APs are being asked to stop and think about what it means to be safe,” says Davies. “While safety is not an absolute, the BSR wants those responsible for HRBs to understand the risks they are responsible for, to be empowered to take reasonable and proportionate steps to ensure the safety of residents, and to do all this to be able to sleep at night.” 

Further reading: BSR’s Safety Case Toolkit: b.link/HSE_safetycase 
Construction Leadership Council’s Delivering the Golden Thread: guidance for dutyholders and Accountable Persons: b.link/CLC_Golden

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