Putting the Resident at the Heart of Building Safety

While Principal Accountable Persons (PAPs) and their managing agents are busy getting their heads around safety management systems, safety cases and safety case reports, many are missing a crucial requirement of the Building Safety Act 2022 – resident engagement.

Section 91 of Part 4 of the BSA 2022 places a duty on the PAP to produce a resident engagement strategy, and to implement it.

But let’s take a step back first.

Building a Safer Future

Not quite a year after Grenfell, the revered Dame Judith Hackitt published Building a Safer Future which was her review of fire safety and building regulations. In her report, she placed the resident at the heart of building safety, a place that they should have been already. Complaining that residents’ voices often went unheard, Dame Judith became the catalyst for the most significant building safety cultural change we have ever seen in the blocks of flats sector.

Thus, the requirement for PAPs to engage with residents in higher-risk residential buildings, HRBs (as defined in the BSA as buildings 18 metres tall or more, or at least 7 storeys) became an integral part of the legislation. Specifically, as of 1 October 2023, the BSA requires that:

• residents have access to key building safety information
• there are clear channels for residents to raise safety concerns
• residents are offered a chance to participate in building safety decision making.

Resident Engagement Strategies

PAPs are obliged to write a residents’ engagement strategy (RES), review it regularly and establish a complaints procedure specifically in respect of building safety. Each HRB requires its own, unique RES, although naturally, PAPs, their agents, and consultants will start from a template.

Government guidance is pretty sound as a starting point, if you (as a PAP or PAP’s managing agent) have decided to produce RES’s in-house. Whether you in-source of outsource, the RES needs to achieve the following:

1. keep residents informed with building safety issues
2. promote their active participation when decisions are made
3. deliver safety information routinely and proactively
4. ensure safety information is easy to access.

Who is a ‘Resident’?

You may be surprised to learn that the definition of ‘resident’ is not limited to leaseholders. A resident – as far as the Building Safety Act is concerned – is anyone living in an HRB aged 16 years and upwards. For the first time, most managing agents are having to track who is living in the building, not just the person paying the service charge, and children are now in scope for ‘engagement’ which is of course a huge challenge, as any parent of teenagers will attest.

The challenge becomes greater when PAPs and their managing agents realise that they must seek out further demographic and physical details about their residents, because the legislation requires that 1. to 4. above is adhered to no matter the language or disability impediments.

Don’t panic. Reasonableness and best endeavours are baked into the legislation. The Building Safety Regulator – part of the Health & Safety Executive – expects reasonable steps are taken to provide a copy of the RES to all residents. But do take these steps, as the Regulator is expected to come down hard on PAPs who ignore the requirements to engage with residents.

Executing the strategy

At EK, we remind our clients (PAPs and managing agents) that whatever goes into the strategy, must be done. It’s no good promising a wide range of resident engagement activities if you do not have the tools (or the inclination) to put them into action.

Below, we suggest some ways to engage with your residents and to seek their feedback (feedback being a requirement of the legislation as well).

• Online communications: Portals and apps are ideal to push out building safety notifications to residents and store documents for important reading.

• Inductions: When new residents move in, that’s a great time to take them through the safety features of the building. Pointing out the location of the emergency exits in person may not be practical, so explore ways of inducting new residents through fire safety wizards online – speak to your software providers who may well have such wizards available already. As fires tend to start within an apartment rather than in the common parts, the earlier you can make residents aware that safety starts with them at home, the better.

• Meetings: As well as language barriers that you may have to overcome, you may be faced with several technophobes in your HRB. Learn who is living in your buildings and try out face to face meetings and events to engage those may not know their app from their elbow. Invite a guest speaker – someone from the local fire and rescue service for instance.

• Leaflets: Whilst we will all be keen to remain as paperless as possible, everyone living in a building will notice a leaflet pushed under their door. Make any leaflets striking so they get glanced at as a minimum, before they’re popped into the recycling. And yes, we do see the irony in educating residents on fire safety by introducing additional combustible materials into the building!

• Feedback: The legislation requires you to measure the level of engagement with your residents. Do whatever you can to encourage residents to contact you about building safety, and record, diligently, their responses. 

Engagement Challenges

A wise building safety software provider recently passed on to our team an insightful piece of advice about resident engagement that every block manager should hear: If a resident contacts you about noisy neighbours, overflowing rubbish bins or a juddery passenger lift, acknowledge them and deal with it. If residents feel you are listening to them on day-to-day matters, they are far more likely to listen to you when it comes to building safety.

Unfortunately, many residents will be apathetic about building safety, therefore little and often is our mantra – not least as most residents are unlikely to read wordy guidance cover to cover. For 16 year olds, TikTok may be the answer (and that isn’t a joke!).

Not all residents in your block will be able to read English. Whether this is due to a learning disability, a lack of schooling or someone’s mother tongue being another language, the BSA requires the PAP to take this into account and make the necessary allowances. For instance, if you are aware that other written and spoken languages prevail in your HRB, include on the front page of your resident engagement strategy a line or two in those languages inviting those residents to request a copy that they can read. Now that you are aware, you need to make allowances for those residents whenever you are engaging residents on building safety. The translation services don’t stop with the strategy!

If you have a resident in your HRB who is sight-impaired, explore making the RES available as an audio file. There’s plenty of software that can help with this. Speak to that resident about how they would ideally like to be engaged with on building safety going forward. Their disability makes them particularly vulnerable.

Think on similar lines with any residents with mobility issues. Your strategy needs to include how you will identify these residents and bring to their attention information on personal emergency evacuation planning (PEEP).

Experiment with different forms of engagement for different residents. There is no one size fits all. Speak to colleagues and peers, compare notes, and make the necessary changes. Never think of RES as a tick box exercise.

Does the Regulator need to see a copy of the strategy?

Yes, but only when it asks you to apply for a Building Assessment Certificate (BAC) for your HRB. Once called up to apply for the BAC, the Regulator will ask the PAP to:

1. confirm the information the Regulator holds is up to date
2. upload your safety case report
3. upload information about your mandatory occurrence reporting system
4. upload your resident engagement strategy.

The PAP will have 28 days to provide the above to the Regulator.

Remember, production of a resident engagement strategy has been a requirement since 1 October 2023. Producing a strategy from scratch under pressure is not advisable – so get going today!

Resident engagement is not just a BSA requirement

While the driver for resident engagement has come from Part 4 of the BSA 2022, other legislation also requires resident engagement – such as the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 and The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. For instance, all residential multi-occupancy buildings of any height containing at least two dwellings require that the Responsible Person (often the managing agent) provides fire door information and fire safety instructions to residents. If your residents merely grasp the importance of keeping their front flat door in good repair, shut and with the door closer attached, that is potentially a life-saving action. Encourage. Engage. Educate.