Resident responsibilities in the Building Safety Act 2022

Answer

The Building Safety Act 2022 (the BSA), which consists of six parts and 11 schedules, received royal assent on 28 April 2022. Following the date of royal assent, the government brought into force various parts of the BSA, most of which are now in force.

The aim of the BSA

The BSA aims to give residents and homeowners more rights, powers and protections to ensure that homes across the country are safer. It also seeks to deliver an ambitious toolkit of measures that allow those responsible for building safety defects to be held to account and protect qualifying leaseholders from the costs associated with remediating building safety defects.

Also included in the aims of the BSA is overhauling regulations, creating lasting change and promoting engagement with residents in high-risk buildings (HRBs) so that the residents have more input on how their buildings are kept safe. The residents also have the ability to raise building safety concerns directly with the owners and managers of their buildings.

While the BSA imposes significant obligations on those responsible for the buildings, there are also obligations on the residents and owners not to act in a certain way and to comply with certain requests.

The duties

A resident (aged 16 or over) of a high-risk building or an owner of a residential unit in a HRB must not:

• act in a way that creates a significant risk of a building safety risk materialising; and
• interfere with safety equipment that’s in the common parts of the building (unless there’s a reasonable excuse for doing so).

‘Safety equipment’ is specifically defined within the BSA and means anything in, or which forms part of, the common parts of a building that’s intended to improve the safety of anyone in the building, or its vicinity, in relation to a building safety risk. For example, signage, fire extinguishers or sprinklers.

Residents are also required to comply with a request for information by an accountable person (AP), where that information is needed to carry out their duties. An AP is a person who holds a legal interest in the common parts of a HRB or a person who doesn’t hold a legal interest in any part of the HRB but who’s responsible for repairing any part of the common parts of the building.

Enforcement powers

The BSA provides APs with enforcement powers in respect of the residents’ duties. In the event of a breach of the residents’ duties, APs are permitted to serve a contravention notice. A contravention notice must contain:

• the alleged contravention (including the statutory provision contravened);
• details of any previous correspondence between the AP and the relevant person relating to the alleged contravention;
• details of any guidance issued by the regulator that’s relevant to the alleged contravention;
• any steps that the AP considers the relevant person should take in order to remedy the contravention, including an explanation as to why such steps should be taken;
• where the AP requires the relevant person to pay a sum, details of why the sum is required and evidence of the amount specified;
• details of the complaints procedure available to the relevant person to dispute all or part of the contravention notice; and
• the name and contact details of the AP giving the contravention notice.

A contravention notice may also include details of anything that the relevant person should refrain from doing to avoid further contraventions and an explanation of the steps available to the AP if the notice isn’t complied with.

The contravention notice must be in writing and in a form that allows the relevant person to understand the content and aims of the notice.

If the relevant person (resident/owner) doesn’t comply with a contravention notice an AP may apply to the court. The court may make an order if it’s satisfied that a contravention notice has been given, the alleged contravention has occurred and it’s necessary to make an order. Such an order may:

• require a relevant person to provide specified information or do a specified thing by a specified time;
• prohibit a relevant person from doing a specified thing; or
• where a sum is required to be paid, require payment of a specified sum.

Conclusion

While the BSA aims to provide additional protections and rights to residents of HRBs with a view to them feeling more empowered and involved in building safety decisions relating to their buildings, it also imposes duties on them. These duties require residents to:

• not act in a way that creates a significant risk of a building safety risk materialising;
• not interfere with safety equipment that’s in the common parts of the building, unless there’s a reasonable excuse for doing so; and
• comply with a request for information by an AP where that information is needed to carry out their duties.

A failure to comply with these duties may result in an AP serving a contravention notice. If, following service of a contravention notice, a resident still doesn’t comply then an AP can apply to the court for an order requiring and/or prohibiting a resident to comply.

The residents’ duties are a lesser-known facet to the BSA and appear not to be used often in practice, but it’s important that residents and APs of HRBs are aware of the residents’ duties.

Hannah Keane is an associate at Devonshires Solicitors.