Navigating the UK Building Safety Act: Emphasising Clarity, Responsibility, and Compliance in Complex Projects

In this Insight paper, Chapman Taylor Associate Director Peter Hegarty discusses Navigating the UK's Building Safety Act.

With the UK Building Safety Act now fully implemented and the transitional period for new projects over, attention is shifting to the practical application of the duties and responsibilities introduced by the Act and how to meet its rigorous requirements.

Regulators and Building Control bodies, who now face new duties and processes, are navigating the complexities of building designs while avoiding becoming designers themselves. A key element of this new approach is ensuring that the approval body no longer offers advice, as they have in the past. This shift presents a challenge: without the extended dialogue traditionally seen with approved inspectors, regulators must comprehend larger projects from a cold start and in a shorter time frame. We consider that the solution is the development of detailed project explanations or strategies—an approach that aligns with the new regulations. Andrew Moore, Head of Operations Planning and Building Control at the Building Safety Regulator, emphasised the need for clarity, stating that when dealing with hundreds of documents in a submission, the priority must be "Narrative, narrative, narrative."

Currently, review periods for Gateway 2 Building Control applications are significantly exceeding the predicted 12-week timeframe. This makes structured, clear submissions and explanations all the more essential.

While requirements for non-higher-risk buildings are simpler than those for high-rise residential developments, many projects we handle present their own complexities, even if they don't exceed 18 metres in height or involve residential elements. For example, lower-rise residential projects may include podium access, secondary ground-floor uses, or basement parking. Similarly, mixed-use shopping centres and large infrastructure projects, such as airports and rail hubs, often require adherence to stringent design and construction standards due to public access and security needs. Our approach is to address these complex buildings with the same thoroughness and rigour as higher-risk buildings (HRBs).

At Chapman Taylor in our early-stage design work, we prioritise developing a clear narrative that outlines the flow of spaces or the experience of scale in our masterplans and concept designs. Now, we also focus on telling a story about how the building will function and meet the vast array of interdependent regulations. A regulator cannot easily grasp a project after experienced designers from multiple disciplines have spent months negotiating its intricacies. However, Registered Building Control Approvers and Regulators must also reach an understanding of the project, and one effective way to achieve this is by asking designers to demonstrate how their work complies with the regulations.

This narrative-driven approach includes strategies that demonstrate how we plan to meet regulatory requirements. For example, we may adopt a fire-engineered approach instead of relying solely on Approved Documents. In fact, for Higher-Risk Buildings, regulatory guidance suggests that addressing the functional requirements of the regulations directly—rather than following prescriptive guidance in Approved Documents—is necessary. These functional requirements call for a first-principles approach, such as designing a building to ensure appropriate means of escape in case of fire rather than simply following a set formula for escape routes and sizes.

The explanation must begin from this foundational point, considering what might occur, who might be affected, and how the building robustly answers their needs. The Grenfell Inquiry and the Phase 2 report recommendations focus on vulnerable persons and how they were ill-served; our narratives must be inclusive.