Helping NHS Trusts comply with the BSA

With the Building Safety Act a significant legislative change which impacts both new and existing hospital buildings undergoing building work, Helen Sturdy, the NHS England Estates team’s head of Construction, and the procurement framework lead at ProCure23, Andrew Rolf, Mott MacDonald’s Healthcare Technical Advisory lead, and Louise Mansfield, a Legal director at commercial law firm, Bevan Brittan, discuss NHS England’s recent publication of several NHS-specific guidance documents to inform hospital Trusts of the new requirements, and help ensure they comply.

The Building Safety Act (BSA),¹ introduced in response to the Grenfell Tower tragedy to fundamentally reform the building safety system, is a significant legislative change that impacts new and existing hospital buildings undergoing building work during both design and construction. It strengthens the regulatory framework for building safety, ensuring greater accountability and responsibility throughout the lifecycle of buildings under the new regime. It also requires any occupied hospital buildings that contain residential accommodation (meaning key worker or student accommodation, but no patient wards or 'on-call rooms') to be registered and managed.

The BSA introduces new responsibilities for existing stakeholders involved with the design and construction of new and existing buildings. It also introduces new stakeholders for occupied buildings with residential accommodation (Accountable Persons and Principal Accountable Persons), and a new regulator, the Building Safety Regulator (BSR), sitting within the Health and Safety Executive, that oversees all buildings, but in particular the safety of higher-risk buildings (HRB).