UK building safety
The Building Safety Act: what owners and managers must evidence
What is the Building Safety Act?
The Building Safety Act 2022 is UK legislation, introduced after the Grenfell Tower fire, that creates a stricter safety regime for higher-risk buildings in England. It establishes the Building Safety Regulator, sets duties for the Accountable Persons who own or manage those buildings, and requires them to register each building, assess its safety risks, and keep a digital golden thread of building information.
Building Safety Act glossary for operators
The regime is written around roles rather than job titles, so the first practical question in most buildings is who holds which duty. These are the terms that decide it.
- Higher-risk building
- In England, a building that is at least 18 metres tall or has at least seven storeys and contains at least two residential units. The same height threshold also captures care homes and hospitals while they are being designed and built, but the occupation regime is aimed at buildings with residential units.
- Accountable Person
- The organisation or individual that owns, or is legally responsible for repairing, the common parts of an occupied higher-risk building. A building can have several Accountable Persons where a freeholder, a head lessee and a management company hold different repairing obligations.
- Principal Accountable Person
- Where a building has more than one Accountable Person, the Principal Accountable Person is the one responsible for the structure and exterior. That role carries the building-wide duties, including registration, the safety case report and the residents engagement strategy; where there is only one Accountable Person, they are also the Principal Accountable Person.
- Building Safety Regulator
- The regulator created by the Building Safety Act 2022 to oversee higher-risk buildings in England. It maintains the register of those buildings, directs Principal Accountable Persons to apply for a building assessment certificate, acts as the building control authority for higher-risk building work, and can take enforcement action.
- Golden thread
- The information about a building that must be created, kept accurate and up to date, and held digitally so it can be found and shared when it is needed. It is a duty about the quality and accessibility of information, not simply an instruction to keep a folder of files.
The golden thread is the duty most portfolios underestimate, because it is judged on whether information can be produced rather than on whether it exists somewhere. See what the golden thread requires .
Which duty applies to whom, and when
Most of the occupation regime is continuous rather than a single deadline. The dated milestones are registration and the point at which the regulator became the building control authority for higher-risk work.
| Duty | Who holds it | When it applies |
|---|---|---|
| Register the building with the Building Safety Regulator | Principal Accountable Person | Existing occupied buildings had to be registered by 1 October 2023. A new higher-risk building must be registered before it is occupied. |
| Apply for a building assessment certificate | Principal Accountable Person | When the regulator directs you to apply, within the period set out in that direction. |
| Prepare and maintain a safety case report | Principal Accountable Person | From registration onwards, revised when the building, its use or its risks change. |
| Keep the golden thread of building information | Accountable Persons, led by the Principal Accountable Person | Continuously and in digital form, for as long as the building is occupied. |
| Assess and manage building safety risks in the parts you control | Each Accountable Person | Continuously, with the assessment reviewed rather than treated as a one-off exercise. |
| Operate a mandatory occurrence reporting system | Principal Accountable Person, with Accountable Persons reporting into it | Continuously, so that safety occurrences reach the regulator. |
| Publish a residents engagement strategy and a complaints procedure | Principal Accountable Person | From registration onwards, and reviewed over time. |
| Obtain building control approval for higher-risk building work | Client and the appointed dutyholders | Since 1 October 2023 the Building Safety Regulator is the building control authority for higher-risk building work, with approval needed before work starts and at completion. |
A separate charge on new residential development, the Building Safety Levy, sits alongside these duties and is due to take effect in England in October 2026. Read who pays the Building Safety Levy and when . Energy performance runs on its own timetable: MEES and your EPC rating .
Almost every duty is an evidence duty
Read the duties together and a pattern appears: a safety case report has to be supported by information, the golden thread has to be current and accessible, and a building assessment certificate application has to be answered from records. None of that is satisfied by a building that is safe but undocumented.
In most portfolios the information exists. It is spread across SharePoint sites, contractor handovers, email attachments and legacy drives, filed under names that describe the sender rather than the content. The work is not creating information, it is finding it, proving it is the current version, and seeing what never arrived in the first place.
Classify what you hold
Findable reads the documents you already have and classifies them by content and by building, not by filename or folder.
Find the gaps
Missing and expired certificates are surfaced per building, so a gap is a task rather than a surprise during an inspection.
Assemble the evidence
The result is a golden thread evidence base you can hand to a regulator, an insurer or a buyer without a six week document hunt.
Building Safety Act questions
Which buildings does the Building Safety Act's occupation regime apply to?
It applies to higher-risk buildings in England: buildings that are at least 18 metres tall or have at least seven storeys, and that contain at least two residential units. Buildings below that threshold are not registered with the Building Safety Regulator, although fire safety and building regulations duties still apply to them.
Who is the Accountable Person for a building?
The Accountable Person is whoever owns, or is legally responsible for repairing, the common parts of an occupied higher-risk building. Where different organisations hold different repairing obligations, a building can have more than one Accountable Person, and the one responsible for the structure and exterior is the Principal Accountable Person.
What is the golden thread in practice?
In practice it is a digital, current and accessible set of information about the building: design and as-built information, the fire and structural safety strategy, the assets that keep the building safe, and the records showing those assets have been inspected and maintained. The test is whether the information can be found and relied on.
Does the Building Safety Act apply outside England?
The occupation regime described here, including registration, the safety case report and the Accountable Person duties, applies in England. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland set their own building safety arrangements, so a portfolio spread across the UK can sit under more than one regime at the same time.
What happens if the documentation is not there when the regulator asks?
The duties are continuous, so a gap is already a compliance failure before anyone asks about it. The Building Safety Regulator can take enforcement action, and some breaches under the Act are criminal offences, which is why knowing what is missing is safer than discovering it during an application or an inspection.
Find out what your buildings can actually evidence
Findable classifies the building documents you already hold, flags what is missing or expired, and assembles the evidence base behind the golden thread.