A building can be genuinely safe and its duty holder still be committing a criminal offence, because the offence is documentary. The Building Safety Act asks you to hold a golden thread of information, evidence every check, and demonstrate on demand that risks are understood and controlled. Most blocks are safer than their paperwork suggests. That is not a defence.
Almost everything about your obligations follows from one measurement, and a surprising number of buildings sit within a metre of a line that changes the duty holder’s title, the record-keeping burden and the criminal exposure. Measure before you budget.
Three things, and only one of them is being talked about. Residential personal emergency evacuation plans became a legal duty on 6 April 2026 for buildings of 18 metres or more and for 11 to 18 metre buildings on a simultaneous evacuation strategy — a genuinely new, recurring obligation to identify residents who may need help, offer a person-centred fire risk assessment, agree an evacuation statement and share the detail with the fire service. The Building Safety Regulator left the HSE on 27 January 2026 to become an independent body under MHCLG, which is an operational reset rather than a softening. And the cladding remediation deadlines of end-2029 and end-2031 that you will see described as law are not yet law — the Remediation Bill was in the May 2026 King’s Speech and is expected to be introduced after summer recess, with Royal Assent anticipated in 2027. Plan for them. Do not let anyone tell you they already bind you.
Six answers and we will build the compliance calendar — every recurring check, how often, and under which instrument. The number at the top is the one worth sitting with, because someone has to do all of them and evidence each one.
Everything else follows from it — the duty holder’s title, the inspection cadence, and whether the regulator has to be told this building exists.
Frequencies are those set by the Fire Safety Order, the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022, the Building Safety Act and the British Standards that are the recognised means of compliance. Counts are estimated from the figures you entered — a real register is built from an asset survey.
This is the part that catches people. The duty attaches to the entity that controls the common parts, not to whoever is doing the work — so appointing a managing agent transfers the labour and none of the liability. Delegation is a management arrangement. It is not a defence.
Usually the accountable person by default, because the repairing obligation for the structure and common parts sits with them. Where there is more than one accountable person, one has to be the principal accountable person — and that is the entity the regulator will write to.
Acquiring the right to manage acquires the management functions, and with them the duties over the parts you now control. A resident-led company with no professional staff carries the same statutory obligations as an institutional freeholder, judged to the same standard.
The same position, arrived at through the lease rather than through statute. RMC directors are almost always leaseholders serving unpaid, which changes nothing about what is expected of them.
Rarely the accountable person, and frequently assumed to be by everyone including themselves. The agent carries out the duties on the client’s behalf and carries professional obligations of its own — but when the regulator prosecutes, it prosecutes the duty holder.
A long leaseholder of the whole building with repairing obligations over common parts can be an accountable person in their own right. Intermediate interests are exactly where this gets argued, and where it is worth establishing the position before an incident rather than after.
Where an offence is committed with the consent or connivance of a director, manager or secretary — or is attributable to their neglect — that individual is guilty of the offence as well as the company. This is the sentence most volunteer directors have never read.
You took the role to keep the service charge honest and get the roof fixed. The Building Safety Act does not have a category for that. You are a duty holder, the serious offences carry an unlimited fine and up to two years’ imprisonment, and liability can reach you personally where an offence is attributable to your neglect. Nobody is suggesting that prosecutions of volunteer leaseholders are common — they are not. What is common is a building whose records cannot be produced, whose fire doors were last checked by nobody in particular, and whose directors have no idea they are the ones on the hook. The fix is not heroism. It is a maintained register, a named competent person, and evidence.
An outsourced building safety function. We do not replace your managing agent and we do not become the accountable person — nobody can take that from you. What we do is make sure the duty is discharged and, just as importantly, that you can prove it was.
A single structured record of the building: drawings, specifications, external wall makeup, fire strategy, alterations, contractor certification and every check ever done. Held digitally, kept current, and handed over intact when the building changes hands — which is where most golden threads are lost.
Quarterly on the common parts, annually on flat entrance doors, by competent inspectors, with photographs, door schedules, defect codes and remedial tracking. Refused access recorded and re-attempted, because best endeavours is a standard you have to evidence rather than assert.
Every recurring check the building requires, scheduled, allocated, chased and closed out. Weekly alarm tests through to annual emergency lighting duration tests. An overdue item is a live finding, not a note in a spreadsheet nobody opens.
For higher-risk buildings: registration, the safety case report, the building assessment certificate application when directed, mandatory occurrence reporting and the correspondence that follows. Written to be read by a regulator rather than filed.
Identifying residents who may need assistance, offering and conducting person-centred fire risk assessments, agreeing evacuation statements, handling consent, and getting the right information into the secure information box. New since April 2026 and, in most buildings we look at, not yet started.
The engagement strategy and complaints system the Act requires, operated rather than drafted. Handled well this is also the cheapest risk control you own, because residents report defects long before an inspection finds them.
Competence evidence, insurances, method statements, certification and sign-off collected at the point of work rather than reconstructed two years later. Work that cannot be evidenced has, for regulatory purposes, not been done.
A standing report your directors can put in front of leaseholders, an insurer or a purchaser’s solicitor. On a sale or a remortgage this is the difference between a transaction that proceeds and one that stalls for months.
Per building per year, priced on the size of the register rather than the number of flats — because a nine-storey block with two lifts and forty fire doors takes what it takes. Set-up is quoted separately, because building a register and keeping one are different jobs.
Set-up is £1,500–£6,000 depending on the state of the existing records, and on a building with nothing inherited it is a project with an end date rather than an open commitment — we will price it as one. Inspections, assessments and remedial works are pass-through at cost and we take no commission from any contractor. Where the fee is met from the service charge it has to be reasonable under section 19, and it may be a qualifying long-term agreement requiring section 20 consultation. We will tell you which side of that line a proposal falls before you commit.
Send us the height, the number of flats and your role. That is enough for us to tell you which regime you are in and roughly what running it properly costs.
Four questions. We will come back with what your building requires, what is likely to be missing, and what it would cost to run properly.
The work per building falls sharply across a portfolio, because the register and the contractor panel are shared.
Choose as many as apply. It changes what we look at first and how fast we have to move.
Fire and rescue services differ in how actively they inspect, and it is worth knowing whose area you are in.
No charge for the conversation. If the building is genuinely in good order we will say so.
Check it over. Tapping the button opens WhatsApp with this ready — nothing has been sent yet.
Send this on WhatsAppEvery one of these has a free tool on it. None of them asks for your details before it gives you an answer.
Benchmark the block line by line, retender the contracts, and use the costs that are simply not payable.
Service charge benchmarker with the legal leversfrom £1,750 →One verified record per property, shared selectively with tenants, agents, solicitors and lenders.
A live passport you can open and explorefrom £8 a month →What the law will cost you over a ten-year hold, before you commit to buying.
Ten-year capex forecaster with the yield impactfrom £450 →Almost certainly not, and this is the single most common misunderstanding we meet. The accountable person is the entity with the repairing obligation over the common parts — the freeholder, the RTM company, the resident management company, sometimes a head lessee. Your agent carries out the duties on your behalf and has professional obligations of its own, but when the Building Safety Regulator or a fire and rescue service takes enforcement action, it acts against the duty holder. You can delegate the work. You cannot delegate the duty, and an agent’s failure is still your breach. That is a reason to supervise the arrangement rather than to change it.
Yes, and the 11 to 18 metre band is where we find the most neglect — precisely because there is no registration and no safety case, so nobody feels the weight of it. What does apply is quarterly checks of every fire door in the common parts and annual checks of every flat entrance door, plus the full Fire Safety Order including the requirement since October 2023 to record the risk assessment and the fire safety arrangements in full. If your building is on a simultaneous evacuation strategy rather than stay put, the residential PEEP duties that began on 6 April 2026 apply to you as well. On a 14 metre block that is comfortably two hundred documented checks a year.
Residential personal emergency evacuation plans became a legal duty. For buildings of 18 metres or more, and for 11 to 18 metre buildings on a simultaneous evacuation strategy, the responsible person must take reasonable steps to identify residents who may need assistance to evacuate, offer them a person-centred fire risk assessment, carry it out if accepted, put reasonable mitigations in place, agree an emergency evacuation statement with the resident, obtain their consent, and lodge the relevant detail for the fire service. The building-level plan is reviewed at least every twelve months. It is a recurring obligation involving consent, personal data and genuine judgement — and in most buildings we are asked to look at, it has not been started.
No, and treating it as one is how organisations fail it. The requirement is that the information is structured, digital, current, accessible to those who need it, and capable of being handed on intact. A shared drive with eleven years of PDFs and no index satisfies none of those. The test we apply is simple: if the person who runs this building left tomorrow, could a competent successor pick it up without reconstructing anything? On most buildings the honest answer is no, and the reconstruction is what costs money — usually far more than maintaining it would have.
Not yet, and you will see them described as law by people who should know better. The end-2029 deadline for buildings over 18 metres and the end-2031 deadline for 11 to 18 metre buildings come from the Remediation Acceleration Plan, which is government policy. The Remediation Bill that would give them statutory force was in the King’s Speech in May 2026 and is expected to be introduced after the summer recess, with Royal Assent anticipated in 2027. The practical advice does not change — plan against those dates, because the funding and the enforcement posture are already built around them — but you should know the difference between a policy commitment and a duty, particularly if someone is using the word “law” to sell you something urgently.
Per building, on the size of the register rather than the number of flats, because a nine-storey block with two lifts and forty fire doors takes what it takes. We price the set-up separately from the ongoing function, because they are different jobs: building a register on a block with poor records is a project with an end date, while running it is a standing service. We will tell you which of the two you are actually buying before you commit, and if your records turn out to be in good order we will say so and quote only for the running.
Fairly asked, and the answer depends on the building rather than on the company. A five-flat converted house under 11 metres needs a properly recorded fire risk assessment and a handful of routine checks — it does not need an outsourced function, and we will tell you so. A forty-flat block over 18 metres needs registration, a safety case, a golden thread and several hundred documented checks a year, and the fact that its directors are unpaid leaseholders changes none of that. The statutory standard is the same whoever is holding it. What we would say is that the cost of getting it wrong falls on the same leaseholders who are trying to keep the service charge down, which is usually the argument that settles it.
That request arrives with a deadline attached, and there is no version of this where the records can be assembled afterwards. Building the register is a project. Keeping it is a function. We do both.
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