Accountable Person

The following commentary is based on the draft Building Safety Bill. It is therefore subject to change and provided for information only.

The Building Safety Bill introduces a new role of the Accountable Person. They will be the duty holder for occupied higher-risk buildings. Each occupied higher-risk building must have an identified Accountable Person.

What is the role of the Accountable Person?

The Accountable Person will various duties under the legislation, but perhaps the most important is the duty to assess the safety risks of the higher-risk building on an ongoing basis and take all reasonable steps to prevent a major incident occurring, and reduce the severity of any such incident.

The building safety risks the Accountable Person must take into consideration under this duty are those that pose a risk to the safety of persons in or about a higher-risk building arising from fire and structural failure. Whilst the legislation allows for the scope to be expanded in future, the initial focus of the duty is intended to address safety risks that may result in major and rapid onset events that pose the greatest risk to life.

What this means in practice for the Accountable Person is that risks arising from many different aspects of the building will need to be actively managed and considerable areas of building systems and procedures must be in place and compliant to meet the requirements of this duty.

Who is the Accountable Person for a higher-risk building?

The Accountable Person for a building can be an individual, organisation or multiple individuals and organisations.
You or your organisation will be an Accountable Person for a higher-risk building if:

• it holds legal possession of any part of the common parts, unless another person or organisation is under an obligation to repair or maintain all of the common parts in long leases (of more than 21 years), or
• it is under an obligation to repair or maintain common parts in long leases (of more than 21 years).

The Accountable Person may therefore be the freeholder, a housing association, management company, commonhold association, Right to Manage Company or a combination of them. Where there is more than one Accountable Person for a building, one of them will be recognised as the Principal Accountable Person, to whom many of the duties will solely apply. The Principal Accountable Person is identified as the person or organisation who holds the legal estate in possession of the structure and exterior of the building.

What does the Accountable Person have a duty to take all reasonable steps to prevent?

In the draft legislation, the Accountable Person has a duty to take all reasonable steps to prevent a major incident occurring due to a building safety risk materialising and secondly, to reduce the severity of any such incident.

Major incident is defined in the draft Bill as one that results in a significant number of deaths or serious injury to a significant number of people. The Government has clarified in its response to the pre-legislative scrutiny that dutyholders must mitigate or control building safety risks regardless of the cause (including electrical and gas failures).

For this reason and to manage risk, Accountable Persons should take a comprehensive and holistic approach to ensure compliance and building safety, rather than overly focus their attention on a narrow range of potential risks.

What are the full range of duties for the Accountable Person?

In summary, the Accountable Person will have the following primary duties:

• Make an application to the Building Safety Regulator to register the higher-risk building and apply for a Building Assessment Certificate
• Appoint a competent Building Safety Manager to manage building safety on a day-to-day basis (this may be a corporate entity or an individual)
• Carry out a suitable and sufficient risk assessment of the building on a regular basis
• Promptly take all reasonable steps to prevent a major incident or reduce its severity based on the risks identified in the assessments
• Prepare a Building Safety Case using the risk assessment and provide this to the Regulator, updating it as required to ensure it is complete, accurate and sufficient
• Maintain all required building information (the ‘golden thread’) to the required standard
• Develop a residents engagement strategy and complaints procedure, operating these with the Building Safety Manager.
• Operate a mandatory occurrence reporting system and provide other information as required to the Building Safety Regulator.

The Government recognises that the Building Safety Manager has an important role to play in assosisting the Accountable Person meet their duties under the Bill. Having a qualified and knowledgeable Building Safety Manager would therefore be a recommended early step for any Accountable Person.

What are the consequences or risks for an Accountable Person?

If an Accountable Person fails to comply with their duties under the Bill, they will be committing a criminal offence. The offences carry a maximum penalty of an unlimited fine and/or up to two years imprisonment.

Do the Accountable Person duties only relate to fire and structural risks?

The legislation as it is currently drafted extends the duty of the Accountable Person to manage fire and structural building safety risks that may result in a major incident. This means that obvious areas of building management and infrastructure must be compliant and effectively managed, such as but not limited to:

• Fire detection and alarm systems
• Fire doors and compartmentation
• Emergency lighting and life protection equipment
• Firefighting equipment
• Emergency procedures, plans, signage, documentation
• Building interiors, exteriors and general fabric

However, many other aspects of building infrastructure, if not managed correctly to ensure compliance could also contribute to the risk of fire or spread of fire.

This means a wider range of building systems and management, where failures or issues could lead to fire and its spread need to be considered, such as:

• Electrical systems and infrastructure
• Gas systems and infrastructure
• Mechanical and electrical plant
• Heating infrastructure
• Security and access systems
• Waste management systems and procedures

Carrying out a suitable and sufficient risk assessment as required by the Bill to develop a Building Safety Case, using a qualified multi-disciplinary team will be essential to ensure that all risks are correctly identified and a holistic and comprehensive compliance management system developed to manage them.

Further Reading

Learn more about the Building Safety Case

Learn more about the Building Safety Manager

Learn more about Higher Risk Buildings