Property & Real Estate Barristers
Fire safety update – a quick review of secondary legislation
26th July 2022
Yesterday (Monday, 25 July 2022), the Government published an updating guide to the Building Safety Act 2022. The guide included the now-familiar assurance that many of the detailed provisions of the Act will be implemented over the next two years through a programme of secondary legislation.
This is a fast-moving area. Advising clients is often hindered rather than helped by a plethora of notes and social media noise.
As of today’s date (Tuesday, 26 July 2022), there are three key pieces of secondary legislation of which practitioners in this area of work need to be aware (there are others but these are the essentials).
The first is 2022 No.561 – The Building Safety Act 2022 (Commencement No.1, Transitional and Saving Provisions) Regulations 2022. This statutory instrument made regulations pursuant to the powers conferred by various provisions in section 170 which concerns commencement. It contains regulations which state that certain provisions come into force on 28 May, 28 June, 28 July and 1 October 2022.
The second is 2022 No. 711 – The Building Safety (Leaseholder Protections) (England) Regulations 2022. This statutory instrument made regulations pursuant to various powers in the Act including those contained in sections 117, 121, 124 and 132, and in Schedule 8. Section 124 concerns remediation contribution orders. Schedule 8 concerns remediation costs under qualifying leases etc. The statutory instrument came into force on 20 July 2022. In all, it contains 13 regulations including those relating to leaseholder owned buildings (regulation 2) and remediation contribution orders (regulation 4).
The third is 2022 No. 859 – The Building Safety (Leaseholder Protections (Information etc.) (England) Regulations 2022. This statutory instrument made regulations pursuant to various powers in the Act including those contained in section 123 (remediation orders) and in Schedule 8, specifically paragraphs 12 (recovery of service charge amounts from landlords), 13 (presumptions: qualifying leases) and 15 (information from tenants). The statutory instrument came into force on 21 July 2022. In all, it contains 8 regulations. Regulation 2 concerns remediation orders and, notably, provided that the FTT may, on an application made by an interested person, make a remediation order under section 123 and that such an application must: (a) state it is an application under section 123 (b) identify the building to which the application relates (c) identify the defects to the building for which a remediation order is sought and (d) identify the landlord which the applicant considers is responsible for repairing or maintaining anything relating to the relevant defects.