The Building Safety Act 2022
Following the tragic Grenfell Tower fire in 2017, the Building Safety Act 2022 overhauled building regulations and introduced strict accountability for high-rise residential buildings.
The Grenfell Tower fire in June 2017, which claimed 72 lives, exposed catastrophic systemic failures in the UK construction industry, particularly regarding the use of combustible cladding and inadequate fire safety regulations.
In response to the ensuing public inquiry, the government introduced the Building Safety Act 2022. This legislation represents the biggest overhaul of building safety regulations in a generation. It created a new Building Safety Regulator and introduced the concept of the 'Golden Thread'—a digital trail of information tracking a building's safety from design through to occupation.
Leaseholder Protections
Crucially, the Act also introduced complex protections for qualifying leaseholders, placing the financial burden for remediating historic cladding defects back onto developers and freeholders, rather than forcing individual flat owners to pay ruinous repair bills.