The Building Safety Act (2022) has created additional responsibilities regarding protecting residents within High Rise Buildings.

Under the Act, Accountable Persons must apply to register high-rise residential buildings (buildings over 18+m/seven storeys with two or more residential units) with the new Building Safety Regulator.

This article details the approach that we are taking towards ensuring the High Rise Residential Buildings that we manage on behalf of our clients are compliant with the Act and ready for their invitations to apply for a Building Assessment Certificate.

Aiming for a Resident-Centric, Cost-Conscious Approach:

Over the past year, our team in Operations and Communications have been working to create a building safety assessment certification process that is:

• Clear to understand for all residents, owners, and directors of management companies within High-Rise Residential Buildings;
• Replicable and scalable.

As Agents of Property Management Companies, Freeholders and Building Owners, our primary role is to protect the funds of those companies and ensure transparency to Company Directors and Leaseholders.

Additionally, Jennings & Barrett must be formally instructed under the management agreement to provide Building Safety Act related services in order to begin compiling a Safety Case for each building.

Within these agreements, we act as an agent of the Principle Accountable Person and the Accountable Person. We are not able to make decisions – or spend money – without appropriate sign off from our clients. We want to ensure that we can be as thorough and transparent as possible when presenting our fees for this important additional service.

Without the agreement, we cannot begin any part of the building safety beyond the initial services agreed in the original management agreement, due to the implications this has with liability.

Whilst scoping out what our High Rise Residential Building Safety Services would entail and building that service, our team have been closely following the progress of the guidance and legislation to ensure that no miscommunication occurs about the obligations of residents, residential unit owners, and accountable persons, particularly regarding:

• Responsibility and enactment of Personal Emergency Evacuation Plans;
• What is appropriate to communicate to residents, when;
• What information from residents is appropriate to collect and when, why and how the data collection occurs;
• How much is this going to cost, and who is responsible for paying that fee.

Our aim with communications has been to avoid confusion by sharing every alteration to the existing guidance. In short – we wanted to be ready to go, once we and the wider property industry had a clear idea of what needed to occur, to what detail this needed to be completed within, and how we were going to achieve that.

We have been working hard to ensure that we balance compliance, production of a sufficiently detailed safety case, and protection of service charge budgets. This involved interviewing multiple external contractors who are needed to provide the technical elements of the safety case report, where they did not exist.

The Result of Our Work

Our Operations and Communications teams have undergone training from TPI on Resident Engagement Strategies and Building Safety Case Reports.

We have a chosen contractor who we will be using for the technical elements of the building safety case. We are confident that the contractor is competent, experienced, trusted and can provide the value for money we require for our clients.

We have created a prototype of a digital Building Safety portal, which we are slowly rolling out across the High-Rise Residential Buildings whose instruction we have received.

We have commissioned the creation of a bespoke compliance smartphone app for our Property Managers to use, in office and onsite, to live report upon their building’s conditions, safety and relevant compliance. Directors will be able to access this information at any time.

We have created a clear fee structure for clients covering Resident Engagement Strategies.

We have created, tested, and reviewed Resident Profile surveys, ensuring that we ask the appropriate questions to get the information required and that we can easily track submissions back to units to identify where follow-up actions might be required.

We have created drafts for three Resident Engagement Strategies that are due to be disseminated.

We have created, tested and are in the process of reviewing how we record and act on Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan requirements.

Collating the Resident Profile

To build a representative picture of the demography of the building, we are rolling out Resident Profile Surveys for each high-rise building unit.

These will be sent annually to Leaseholders – and tenants of Leaseholders, where these are known – and ask residents to self-identify:

• Their status, e.g. declare whether they are a Leaseholder who is residing in the building (“Leaseholder Resident”), a Leaseholder who is not residing in the building (“Leaseholder Non-Resident”), or a Tenant of a Leaseholder.
  • We are asking this in order to understand how often the profile of individual units may change. Currently, the profile data collection will be repeated annually, however in cases of higher turnover households from rental units, this frequency may be increased in the future.

Residents will also be asked:

• Whether they or anyone else in their household requires additional support with building safety engagement, communication, or evacuation, so that these can be made known within the Safety Case Report and to emergency services.
• Their engagement preferences for matters of Building Safety.

This profile is a vital part of the Safety Case Report, and is also used to create the Resident Engagement Strategies.

Resident Engagement Strategies

Residents of high-rise buildings have a right to input and consult on building safety matters. The Resident Engagement Strategy details how this engagement can take place.

The engagement strategy also outlines the Building Safety Complaints process, and how residents (and other building occupiers or visitors) can report Building Safety-related concerns.

Each High Rise Residential Building that instructs us to support or manage their Resident Engagement Strategies will get a dedicated website for residents and unit owners, allowing them to access relevant information and communications at all times. 

This unique, digital-first approach to resident engagement helps to clarify what information residents need to provide, when; enables easy access to fire safety information; and clearly details engagement channels and how residents can get involved.

PEEP support

A Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan (PEEP) is created when a vulnerable person makes their safe evacuation needs known to an Accountable Person. These needs may occur because:

• The resident (or employee) has one or more physical, psychological, sensory or behavourial impairment or disability that complicates their mobility, or their physical functioning.
• The resident (or employee) has one or more physical, psychological, sensory or behavourial impairment or disability that makes it difficult for them to understand and follow instructions during an emergency;
• The resident (or employee) has a language or communication barrier that complicates their ability to understand fire safety procedures and/or follow instructions from Fire and Rescue Services during an emergency.

Our resident profile surveys are designed to enable us to identify households that may require additional support understanding procedures or evacuating during an emergency.

These households will be highlighted within the Safety Case Report and handled on a case-by-case basis by the Principle Accountable Person.

Timescales

Due to the nature of survey design, data collection, analysis, engagement strategy planning, and the number of stakeholders involved in producing all elements, this is not a fast turnaround.

We will aim to give residents three weeks to complete their surveys and consultations. However, this may not always be possible.

Creating a Range of Engagement Options to Suit All Budgets

Representation and consultation must be fair to residents whilst also being appropriate in terms of cost and effectiveness for service charge payers.

As a standard, all engagement strategies will focus on digital formats to maximise accessibility and reduce cost. These will be available at all times via a dedicated safety website, which will also provide all residents with easy-access to their building’s fire safety information.

Directors of RTM/RMCs and freeholders are also able to ask for additional communications services, such as:

• Resident newsletters
• Social media broadcasting channel management
• Annual resident meetings (where these are not existing)
• Resident safety committee group organisation support
• Annual satisfaction surveys
• Additional notification channels, E.g. SMS.

These services are resource intensive and come with additional fees for those properties who would benefit from the support.

Submitting The Safety Case Report

Our compliance team will submit the Safety Case Report to the Building Safety Regulator upon their request. It is not possible to do so before a request is received. It is prudent to be ready to receive a request from the Building Safety Regulator at any moment.

Annual Reviews

The following elements will be repeated every year for all High Rise Residential Buildings:

Building Safety

1. Fire door surveys

Resident Engagement: 

1. Resident Profile Surveys
2. Resident Engagement Strategies
3. Consultation on the Resident Engagement Strategy
4. Measurement of use of Resident Engagement Websites

The following elements will be reviewed and updated as necessary every year:

1. The Building Safety Case Report (and its contents)
2. Mandatory Occurrence Reporting Processes.