The Building Safety Act
The Building Safety Act was granted Royal Assent on 28 April 2022 with the Government publishing key secondary legislation on August 17 2023. For quite some time, the Building Safety Act has been anticipated as an upcoming change, but the time is now—it is in effect and legally binding.
After the Grenfell disaster of 2017, the Government tasked Dame Judith Hackitt with conducting an independent review of the UK’s building regulations, giving particular attention to safety. This initiative resulted in the Building A Safer Future report, highlighting the imperative for a substantially revised regulatory framework that encompasses the design, construction, and maintenance of high-rise residential buildings. At the time, Dame Judith Hackitt said: “Transparency of information and an audit trail all the way through the life cycle of a building, from the planning stage to occupation and maintenance, is essential to provide reassurance and evidence that a building has been built safe and continues to be safe.”
Achieving this requires a shift in industry behaviour and culture, with a heightened focus on all stakeholders across a building’s life cycle actively demonstrating and prioritising safe working practices. That is where Salisbury Glass comes in as a manufacturer and installer of products such as windows, doors and curtain walling systems. We consistently review the materials we use and have also committed to meeting the Golden Thread of information standard on our projects. The Golden Thread will use digital tools and systems to store and use key information effectively. It will support duty holders and accountable persons throughout the building’s lifecycle, incorporating all necessary information for safe management. It ensures the building information is kept digitally, kept securely, is a building’s single source of truth, presented in a way that people can use, available to people who need the information to do a job and available when a person needs the information.
We are currently working on Canada Water CWA1 sub-contracted by Wates and this is a pilot project for the Building Safety Act. We track all our key suppliers to source, can calculate carbon footprint related to all our deliveries and our information is digitally stored in line with the Golden thread of information. Wates are part of the Early Adopters Group that launched the New Building Safety Charter along with some of our clients namely Kier, United Living and Willmott Dixon.
