LETTER: Is Brent Council ready to be called in by the Building Safety Regulator?

 Dear Editor,

We are now less than a week away from the deadline of 1st April 2024  for Brent Council to comply with the Building Safety Act, but because of Easter, it will be by the 28th March 2024.

There are several sections of The  Building Safety Act coming in from the start of April 2024 but the key one is the publication of the Safety Case Reports and safety cases for each of the 41 buildings in scope.

 

A Safety Case Report requires the council to carry out assessments of all the safety risks in each of the 41 buildings and publish them by the deadline.

 

They also need to publish a new Reporting Safety Issues Occurrences policy and The Golden Thread.

 

But the key publication for tenants and leaseholders is the new Resident Engagement Stategy.

 

So to recap, almost all the Buildings Safety Act will be in force by the 6th April 2024 apart from Building Control which has been given a 3 month extension to the 6th July 2024.

 

From the 1st April 2024 the Building Safety Regulator will start calling landlords for them to provide him with Safety Case Reports and Resident Engagement Strategies, Occurrence Reporting and The Golden Thread.

 

However, no one knows who will be called first but most commentators believe it will be those buildings built with Large Panel Systems (LPS) with three of them in South Kilburn. So the council needs to have everything ready just in case they are called first and failure to comply could lead to fines, or imprisonment.

 

As well as LPS buildings, those over 12 floors will be at the top of the Regulators call in list and that applies to two in South Kilburn that are still occupied, plus Hereford House which now has no tenants.

So based on this criteria, Brent Council could be called in from any time after the 1st April, 2024

 

 

A local resident 

 

 

Thank you for your letter and your monitoring of the Council action on this important issue. Readers wil be interested in Brent Council's own risk assessment on this issue (March 2024):

 

 

Failure to comply with statutory Housing management service requirements and deadlines, may result in a serious health and safety incident or non- compliance with legislation, which may lead to serious injuries and/or fatalities, reputational damage, fines and/or imprisonment. 

 

As a landlord we have to ensure we are complying with all of our statutory duties and health and safety compliance particularly Fire, Legionella, Asbestos, Gas and Electric (FLAGE) form part of those duties. Failure in any of the areas would be a breach of the consumer standards and the Council would be subject to sanctions from the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH). 

 

Following the Grenfell Tower inquiry findings published in October 2019, there was a number of recommendations made to prevent such a tragedy from ever happening again. The Government undertook to introduce new regulations based on these recommendations. These regulations take the form of the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 and extend duties imposed by the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. 

 

The Building Safety Act 2022 was introduced to improve the housing safety standards for residents giving them more rights and protections. The Building Safety Regulator (BSR) will oversee the safety and performance of all buildings with a special focus on high rise buildings. 

 

The above have stipulated actions that have to be completed by certain deadlines to show assurance that our buildings are safe and to avoid any further actions by the Building Safety Regulator. One example is the preparation of Building Safety Cases for our 41 High Rise Blocks by April 2024. 

 

The Building Safety Act working group was formed in September 2023 and currently meet fortnightly to assess progress on adherence with the Act. The group has developed a process for updating vulnerable resident’s details that are held in the secure information boxes. The group have also started to engage with residents in high-risk buildings. The first three block meetings were held in December to discuss building safety and the fire strategy for each block. All high-risk building were registered complete with structural and safety data within the deadline. 

 

We have not been successful in the permanent recruitment of the Building Safety Manager however we do not expect this to have an impact on any of our deadlines. We have commissioned a Building Safety Case pilot with consultants Penningtons Ltd with a view to instructing them on the other 39 blocks if the pilot is successful. 

 

Meetings are being held with consultants to assist the Council in determining how to receive, use and manage  Building Information Management information. The draft Building Safety Engagement Strategy has gone out to residents’ consultation and will go out again when the wider Engagement Strategy is published.

 

Pennington's have published a useful guide on what should be in a Building Safety Report HERE