The Building Safety Bill purpose is to implement and enhance regulatory regimes for building safety and construction projects.

The bills also aims to give residents ‘a stronger voice in the system, ensuring their concerns are never ignored and they fully understand how they can contribute to maintaining safety in their buildings’.

It will learn from the lessons of Grenfell Tower fire and will strengthen the whole regulatory system for building safety. This includes fundamentals changes to the regulatory framework for high-rise residential buildings. What’s more, the bill strives to change the industry culture to promote accountability and responsibility which will allow residents to be and feel safe in their homes.

‘To ensure residents are safe in their homes, we will bring forward measures to implement the most urgent recommendations from the first phase of the Grenfell Tower Public Inquiry. We will also publish a draft Building Safety Bill to implement the recommendations of Dame Judith Hackitt’s review of building regulations.’

“Dame Judith Hackitt’s review found that the current regulatory system is not fit for purpose in relation to high-rise and complex buildings. We are taking forward all 53 of Dame Judith’s recommendations and in some areas going further.”

With National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) chair Roy Wilsher saying: “I was pleased to see the vitally important area of building safety referenced in the Queen’s Speech.”

“It is essential this work happens at pace to ensure people feel safe in their homes, while dealing with the broken building regulations system. This simply cannot be allowed to continue; I will be pushing for this to happen.

“NFCC will continue to work with the government to push this area of work forward, while calling for increased protection resources to make it a reality and to ensure fire services are given the additional resources to undertake this work.

The Fire Safety Bill purpose is to deliver meaningful change to ensure an appalling tragedy like Grenfell can never happen again. The bill will put beyond doubt that the Fire Safety Order will require building owners and managers of multi-occupied residential premises of any height to fully consider and mitigate the risks of any external wall systems and fire doors.

The Fire Safety Bill claims its main benefit is ‘providing residents in these properties with the reassurance that the Government is learning lessons from the Grenfell tragedy and taking steps to improve their safety’.

“The work to remove dangerous cladding needs to move much more quickly, as people across the country are living in clad buildings. The recent student accommodation fire in Bolton was a stark reminder of the need to build and maintain buildings properly and the need to address timber-frame building fires which have also been prevalent this year.

Sources:

Fire Safety Matters

Queens Speech