Sue Ryan
Partner
Article
8
On 17 August 2023, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing, and Communities (DLUHC) published a suite of secondary legislation implementing the more stringent building control regime for higher-risk buildings established by the Building Safety Act 2022 (BSA).
It also published its long-awaited response to the consultation on implementing the new building control regime for higher-risk buildings and wider changes to the building regulations for all buildings – which, as we reported in our earlier insight, closed in October last year.
Importantly, these confirm that the new building control regime will come into force on 1 October 2023.
We outline below some of the headline issues covered by each of the five statutory instruments published on 17 August, as well as the key takeaways.
There are three new sets of regulations which relate to the design and construction phase:
1. The Building (Higher-Risk Buildings Procedures) (England) Regulations 2023
These set out the details of the building control regime for higher-risk buildings (HRBs), specifying the procedural building regulation requirements when a new HRB is being designed and constructed or when building work is being done to an existing HRB. Amongst other things, they provide details of:
2. The Building Regulations etc. (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2023
These amend the Building Regulations 2010 to support the new higher-risk building control regime. These requirements will apply to all building work, including that undertaken on higher-risk buildings. In particular, these regulations:
3. The Building (Approved Inspectors etc. and Review of Decisions) (England) Regulations 2023
These regulations primarily amend the Building (Approved Inspectors etc.) Regulations 2010 (the AI Regulations) to support the new higher-risk building control regime – under which the BSR will be the only building control authority for all HRBS - local authorities and approved inspectors will not be able to supervise higher-risk building work.
In addition, on 17 August 2023, the DLUHC also published:
We will be reporting in more detail on some of the key issues covered by the new regulations in due course. In the meantime, our top takeaways are as follows:
In short, the suspense is over - but there is much still to digest, and more work to be done to prepare for the 1 October deadline.
If you have any questions about this article, please contact Sue Ryan or Gemma Whittaker.
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