A week may be a long time in politics, but three years is a mere blip when it comes to new building regulations. The third anniversary of the Grenfell Tower disaster is later this month, but the regulations in force at the time of the fire are largely still with us today.

To be fair, the wheels of government have been slowly revolving to effect change. The Hackitt review, published in 2018, looked at the organisational and cultural causes of the disaster and put forward a series of recommendations to address them. This was followed by a government consultation last year called Building a Safer Future, which set out how the review’s recommendations should be translated into a new regulatory approach to building safety. And this April the government published its response to that consultation, which sets out how a reformed building safety system will look. Subject to parliamentary scrutiny, this will be given legislative form in the Building Safety Bill.

In short, the proposals include a new regulator to ensure residential buildings over 18m high are safely designed and constructed and that they continue to be safe once occupied. The responsibility to ensure this happens will be placed on the client, the principal designer and the principal contractor, as well as the building safety manager once the building is complete. Three key gateways – planning approval, start of construction and handover – must be signed off by the building safety regulator before the next stage can commence. Details of a building’s design and construction, including any changes, must be digitally recorded and passed along the chain of responsibility. This is the so-called “golden thread” of information.

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