Meet your duties as an Accountable Person

An Accountable Person owns, or must repair, the common parts of an occupied higher-risk building in England. Part 4 of the Building Safety Act 2022 gives each one duties for the safety of the building. The Principal Accountable Person has extra duties for the building as a whole.

Check whether your building is in scope

A building is occupied when residents live in more than one of its homes. Some buildings are outside the occupation regime, even when tall enough:

• buildings used entirely as a hospital, care home, secure residential institution, hotel or military barracks
• buildings with Ministry of Defence living accommodation

A mixed-use building with at least two homes is in scope.

Work out whether you are an Accountable Person

The role comes from your legal relationship with the building. You do not apply for it.

A managing agent working only under a contract is not an Accountable Person. A management company is one if a lease requires it to repair or maintain the common parts. Housing associations, local authorities and resident management companies can all be Accountable Persons.

A building can have several Accountable Persons, each responsible for its own part. They must share safety information with each other. If it is unclear who they are, anyone who owns or claims to own a common part, or who has or claims to have a repairing obligation for one, can ask the First-tier Tribunal to decide. The Tribunal can also decide who is the Principal Accountable Person.

Find the Principal Accountable Person

It is usually an organisation, though an individual who owns the building can be one. A person in the organisation, or an authorised third party, can act as the Regulator's single point of contact. That does not make them the Principal Accountable Person.

Register the building

The Principal Accountable Person must register an occupied higher-risk building with the Building Safety Regulator. A new building needs its completion certificate first and must be registered before residents move in. Allowing an unregistered building to be occupied is an offence, unless you have a reasonable excuse.

After registering, you must tell the Regulator about changes to the registration details within 14 days of becoming aware of them, not counting bank holidays, Christmas Day or Good Friday. Changes to the structure and fire safety information must be reported within 28 days. Each Accountable Person must pass such changes to the Principal Accountable Person within 28 days. If an administrator, liquidator, receiver or similar is appointed to an Accountable Person, you must also give the Regulator the office-holder's details.

Assess and manage building safety risks

Every Accountable Person must assess the risk of fire spread and structural failure in the part of the building it is responsible for. Do this as soon as reasonably practicable after the building is occupied or you become an Accountable Person. Repeat the assessment:

• at regular intervals
• whenever you have reason to think it is no longer valid
• when the Regulator directs you to

You must then promptly take all reasonable steps to prevent those risks materialising and to reduce the severity of any incident. That includes carrying out works. You must make and carry out arrangements to plan, organise, control, monitor and review those steps.

This goes beyond a fire risk assessment under the Fire Safety Order. Where someone else is the Responsible Person under that Order, building safety information must be shared between you.

Prepare the safety case report

The Principal Accountable Person must prepare a safety case report. It brings together the risk assessments and the steps taken by every Accountable Person. It also describes the building, how safety measures are tested and maintained, how works are managed and the emergency plans. Keep it in electronic form. Revise it when a further assessment or new steps make that appropriate. A notification of a revision must give an overview of the main changes and say why they were made.

Engage with residents

Consult residents and the other Accountable Persons on the strategy for at least 3 weeks. Review it at least every two years, after each mandatory occurrence report, and after significant alterations to the building. Each Accountable Person must give a copy to every resident aged 16 or over, and every owner, in its part of the building.

Each Accountable Person must also give residents and owners the safety information the regulations prescribe. It includes:

• a summary of the fire risk assessment and of the safety case report
• the location of escape routes and fire and smoke control equipment
• evacuation information
• who the responsible people are and how to reach them
• how to report a risk and how to complain

Report safety occurrences

Residents and other users must be able to use the reporting system, and it must be reviewed regularly.

Keep the golden thread

Hold the information electronically in a form that can be transferred without loss, keep it accurate and secure, and record who made each change and when. When your responsibility for part of the building ends, pass the information to the new Accountable Person and tell the Regulator.

Apply for a building assessment certificate

The application must include:

• the latest safety case report
• details of the occurrence reporting system
• a statement that each Accountable Person has met its information duties
• the residents' engagement strategy

For the charging year starting 1 April 2026, the fee is £312 plus £156 for each hour of Regulator staff time.

Building safety managers and company officers

Appointing a building safety manager is optional.

If a company commits an offence, a director, manager or secretary can also be prosecuted when it was committed with their consent or connivance or is down to their neglect. There is an exception. Where a resident management company, right to manage company or commonhold association has paid directors appointed to support its building safety duties, unpaid directors are not covered.

Penalties and enforcement

The Regulator works with Accountable Persons to put problems right first. If that fails, it can give a compliance notice requiring specified steps within a set time. It can also prosecute.

These offences are each punishable by up to 2 years in prison, a fine, or both on conviction in the Crown Court:

• not registering an occupied building
• not applying for or displaying a building assessment certificate
• not giving information when a responsibility passes to someone else
• ignoring a compliance notice
• a contravention that places people at critical risk

A further fine can follow for each day the offence continues after conviction. If there has been a serious failure to comply with a duty, or at least two failures, the Regulator can ask the First-tier Tribunal for a special measures order. It appoints a manager to take over the Accountable Person's duties.