Ayo Allu FCIOB, Principal Consultant at AAA Project Services, is the new Chair of the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) Client Steering Group, which oversees the CIOB Client Strategy established to provide practical resources for construction clients. Here, Ayo emphasises the far-reaching changes wrought by the Building Safety Act 2022. If you thought it only applied to higher-risk buildings, think again.
Local authorities and registered housing providers in England are under intense pressure. You are managing shrinking budgets, rising expectations, new consumer regulation duties, Awaab’s Law, and the long march toward net zero carbon.
At the same time, the regulatory landscape around building safety has changed more in the last five years than in the previous 30. The result is a daunting combination: more responsibility, more scrutiny, fewer resources, and greater personal and organisational exposure.
Against that backdrop, the Building Safety Act 2022 (BSA) and the changes it brought to the Building Regulations 2010 (BR) represent a decisive shift. For senior managers responsible for capital works, asset management and facilities management, the central message is straightforward: you now hold new legal duties and longer-lasting liabilities, and they apply to all building work, not just work in higher-risk buildings.
This article sets out what has changed, why it matters, and what your organisation needs to tighten up on — across both the design-and-build phase (Part 2A duties) and the occupation phase (Accountable Person duties). It also draws out the difference between duties for ‘normal’ building work and those connected to higher-risk buildings (HRBs).
New client accountability for all building work
Part 2A of the Building Regulations now applies to almost every project you commission, no matter how small. For local authorities and housing associations, this is a sharp break from the past. Rather than being a passive bystander, you are now required to take active, documented steps to appoint competent and properly resourced people, able to manage compliance from start to finish.
This includes appointing BR principal duty-holders and checking that each has the right competence and organisational capability to carry out their roles. The duty to run these checks is yours; it cannot be transferred.
The expectation is clear. You need a governance structure that shows, potentially years later, that you made rational, documented decisions and that your oversight was more than just a tick-box exercise. In asset-rich organisations with large capital programmes, this means updating your assurance processes and redesigning the way you vet, procure and supervise professional teams.
Competence: the centrepiece of the new regime
The new dutyholder roles under Part 2A hinge on competence. The onus is on you to appoint professionals — such as CIOB chartered companies — with the skills, knowledge, experience and behaviours that match the complexity of the work. For your internal organisational appointees, this now includes ensuring they have the systems, procedures, capacity and internal governance to deliver compliant work.
Thus, appointment decisions are bound by statute. You must be able to evidence how you assessed competence, what you considered, and how you satisfied yourself that your appointees could deliver safe, compliant work.
Management oversight: moving from passive to active
The days of ‘appoint and step back’ are over. The BSA expects clients to stay involved throughout design and construction. You must ensure that your BR principal dutyholders plan, manage and monitor compliance, and that they coordinate with everyone involved.
For senior managers, the implication is that oversight must be structured and ongoing. You will need clearer internal reporting lines, regular technical gateways, escalation routes and documented interventions when issues arise.
The BSA expects you to give informed, active oversight from concept to completion — a theme central to CIOB’s Client Guide and its in-depth focus on health and safety.
Duties when work relates to HRBs
Work connected to HRBs comes with a second layer of obligations. For work related to HRBs, the relevant authority is the Building Safety Regulator (BSR).
The regime is more tightly controlled, using hold points for approvals to proceed. Gateway 2 approval is needed before construction starts, and Gateway 3 approval required before occupation. You must supply detailed information, create and maintain an information management system, and keep a clear record of design decisions, risk assessments, change control and errors identified and resolved.
Importantly, these duties fall on you as the client, not only on your appointed representatives. You must ensure the project team understands the HRB procedures, and you must keep firm control of scope changes, design variations and material substitutions.
Duties during occupation: the Accountable Person regime
For existing HRBs, the occupation-phase regime is now fully in place. If your organisation owns or is responsible for maintaining the common parts of an HRB, you are an Accountable Person (AP). If you are the only AP, or are responsible for the structure and exterior, you are the Principal Accountable Person (PAP).
Your duties during occupation include assessing and managing building safety risks, preparing safety case reports, putting effective resident engagement systems in place, recording and reporting safety related occurrences, and maintaining the golden thread of information for the life of the building. You may delegate these responsibilities, but you remain accountable for ensuring they are executed according to the regulatory standards.
This is a separate and continuing set of obligations from the Part 2A duties during design and construction. Together, they form a continuous regulatory chain from design to decommissioning.
Longer liabilities and harsher penalties
The BSA has also lengthened the time during which clients can face prosecution. Liability for breaches of the Building Regulations can now extend for up to 10 years. Criminal penalties include unlimited fines and, in the most egregious cases, custodial sentences.
For senior managers who sign off programmes, approve budgets and oversee delivery, this changes the risk profile considerably. The decisions made today may be retrospectively judged under a tougher enforcement framework.
What this means for you
Organisations with large portfolios must — more than ever — treat building safety as a strategic risk. You need clearer internal accountability, stronger assurance processes, more rigorous competence checks, and better-defined oversight. Procurement, asset management, operations and building control liaison must work together more closely than ever.
The framework is demanding because the stakes are so high. The BSA was created to prevent future catastrophes like the Grenfell Tower fire, and to place responsibility where it belongs: on those who commission and oversee projects and are ultimately accountable for the safety of their residents and assets.
In that sense, the Act is not just another layer of regulation. It is a call to tighten governance, sharpen oversight and embed safety as a core organisational priority. The law now expects nothing less.
