The new building safety regime

concern has been the potential for confusion over roles, responsibilities and the

interface risk of failures in communication.

The Government’s response partially addresses these concerns by suggesting that

they do not expect separate duty holders for CDM purposes and for building

regulations purposes. The same duty holder can hold principal designer status under

each regime.

That said, they do foresee situations where the two roles might have different

incumbents and therefore communication and careful delineation of roles and

responsibilities will be critical.

Implementation of ‘Higher Risk' building control regime

Alongside some of the other secondary legislation, the new building control regime

for higher-risk buildings and other work came into force on 1 October 2023.

In keeping with established practice with changes to the building regulations, there

will be a transitional period for higher risk building work.

The broader, simpler and more important point is that the Building Safety Act is here

and everyone will need to quickly begin to understand how they can comply with it.

Competency

There is much in the documentation relating to:

• competency of duty holders;

• enhanced competency rules for those working on higher risk projects; and

• the requirements for checking and declaring competency.

We’d note a number of points:

• Clients making appointments to undertake design or building work must take

‘all reasonable steps’ to ensure they have the right competence or

‘organisational capability’. ‘All reasonable steps’ will be construed in light of

the complexity of the project. For higher risk projects, clients will be required

to go further. The corollary of this is that all those appointed to undertake