Wales to align building safety measures with England

Adopting many of the proposals in the Building Safety Act, Wales is to align building safety measures with England.

The Welsh Government has adopted many of the proposals from the Building Safety Act 2022 into their own building reforms and will introduce new fire safety duties for Responsible Persons that will commence on 1 October 2023, which is the same time it is enacted in England.

The Act came into force in June 2022, establishing a range of new requirements on construction companies, freeholders and managing agents to ensure the safety of residents in high-rise buildings. Building safety is largely a devolved policy, however, the importance to align legislation was paramount and Propertymark has been calling for greater consistency especially for members who work across borders. 

When Section 156 of the Act, that covers changes to the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, is enacted, all appointed Responsible Persons in Wales will have the following new duties:

• • All responsible persons make a record of their fire risk assessment and reviews
  • Where a responsible person ceases to be a responsible person for a premises and another person takes over as a responsible person for the premises, the outgoing person must give the new responsible person any relevant fire safety information they hold about the building
  • Where a building has two or more sets of domestic premises the responsible person must give residents information about “relevant fire safety matters”, which include identified risks, preventive and protective measures and the name and a UK based address for the responsible person
  • Where there is more than one responsible person for a building, that they cooperate with each other including providing their name and a UK based address

This will apply to all buildings where the Fire Safety Order already applies, which are all non-domestic premises and all buildings containing two or more sets of domestic dwellings.

Fire risk assessors

The only exception to this is the requirement to ensure that fire risk assessor is competent, due to a current lack in trained professionals in this field. This has approach has also been taken in England, and this requirement will not be enacted on 1 October 2023.

Henry Griffith, Policy and Campaigns Officer for Propertymark, said:

“When addressing Building Safety, consistency in approach across the UK will help professional agents as well as existing residents, tenants, owners and home movers to understand the different roles and responsibilities.

“It is therefore encouraging to see that the Welsh Government has agreed to commence Section 156 at the same time it commences in England.”

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Main article photo courtesy of Pixabay