After the government’s recent announcement that the role of Building Safety Manager – a key part of the Building Safety Bill – will be scrapped in response to complaints from leaseholder groups about the potential costs of such a measure, IFSEC Global investigates what this means for tenants and building owners.
The Building Safety Regulator will publish guidance to help Accountable Persons understand and meet their obligations as set out in the bill.
The Building Safety Bill – which is at an advanced stage in the parliamentary process – is the key piece of legislation aimed at implementing the recommendations of Dame Judith Hackitt in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire. The bill originally included the provision that landlords managing high rise residential blocks must recruit a Building Safety Manager to oversee fire and structural safety.
The amendments remove the requirement to appoint a Building Safety Manager, and put a dent in the government’s aim to ensure there are clearly identified people responsible for safety of high-rise residential buildings.
The Building Safety Manager would have been the person appointed by the Accountable Person to plan, manage and monitor fire and structural safety duties. Additionally, individuals could only be appointed Building Safety Managers if they had the “skills, knowledge, experience and behaviours” to carry out such duties.
Announcing the changes, Levelling Up Secretary, Michael Gove, said: “No leaseholder should pay the price for shoddy development and we have listened to their concerns, removing the requirement for a separate building safety charge and scrapping compulsory building safety managers, to help avoid unnecessary costs.”
Other amendments include extending protections to leaseholders who own up to three properties, scrapping the standalone Building Safety Charge, and expanding leaseholder protections so that those in lower value properties pay nothing for non-cladding remediation works.
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