Capital welcomed the commencement of The Fire Safety Act 2021 last week, which provides greater clarity on the areas of multi-occupied residential buildings to which the Fire Safety Order applies.

The Fire Safety Act 2021 (the Act) received Royal Assent on 29 April 2021 and commenced on 16 May 2022.  The Act amends the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 (the Fire Safety Order). 

The Act clarifies that responsible persons (RPs) for multi-occupied residential buildings must manage and reduce the risk of fire for the structure and external walls of the building, including cladding, balconies and windows, and entrance doors to individual flats that open into common parts.

Essentially it extends the existing scope of Fire Risk Assessment obligations of the “Responsible Person” under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, to specifically include:-

• The building’s structure and external walls (including balconies, cladding, insulation and sun-shading devices) and any common parts

• All doors between domestic premises and common parts such as flat entrance doors (or any other relevant door)

The extended obligation applies to any building with 2 or more residential premises.

PAS 9980 has been designated as the risk-based guidance methodology to be used for the basis of assessing the external walls and attachments, it is likely to be relied on as a way of demonstrating compliance with the Act.

“What about EWS1?”

As of 16^th March 2022 the RICS updated the EWS1 form, the updated EWS1 assessment now has to follow the PAS 9980 methodology, the two types of assessment are now fully aligned in their approach.

Competency – PAS 9980 itself states that it is essential that persons conducting assessments of external walls are “competent”, whilst no specific description is given, the PAS does emphasise that industry professional body memberships and professional qualifications do provide “Responsible Persons” with confidence regarding those they engage.

Building owners who are designated as a “Responsible Person”, should give urgent consideration to their responsibilities under the Act, in order to avoid any enforcement action from the Building Safety Regulator

“What if my building requires remediation?” 

Landlords can apply to the Governments Building Safety Fund (BSF) to pay for cladding remediation costs to non-ACM cladding for buildings over 18m.

In addition and in order to protect leaseholders from the cost of cladding repairs, two new schemes are being created by the Government with funds it expects to raise from the house building industry.   As of the 12^th May 2022 under the “Building Safety Repairs Pledge”, forty-five developers have signed the pledge to commit £2Bn to fix buildings they have played a role in developing in the last 30 years.  In addition, the Building Safety Levy is expected to raise £3Bn over ten years, to fund life critical fire safety works remediation to buildings over 11m in height where no developer can be traced.  Buildings under 11m are not considered to in a be high or medium risk category.  However, how the fund will be accessed and distributed is currently unclear.

At Capital, our staff are professionally qualified & we are experienced in working with our partners and clients to achieve desired outcomes, including:-

• Identifying buildings that fall within the PAS 9980 scope and require further investigation

• Carrying out external wall investigations using our experienced in-house investigations team

• Providing EWS1 / PAS 9980 assessments in conjunction with our specialist partners

• Carrying out measured surveys to provide plans and drawings for the Premises Information Box (PIB), where none currently exist

• Supporting our clients to make BSF applications for remedial works identified

• Procurement and delivery of remediation works through to completion and sign off