Engage residents of your higher-risk building

Part 4 of the Building Safety Act 2022 requires the people who run an occupied higher-risk building in England to involve its residents. The Principal Accountable Person must have a residents' engagement strategy and a complaints system. Each Accountable Person must give residents prescribed safety information and answer their requests for more.

Know who the duties fall on

Residents here means people aged 16 or over who live in the building. Owners of homes in the building count too.

The Principal Accountable Person prepares the strategy and runs the complaints system for the whole building. Every Accountable Person must give residents and owners in its own part of the building the information and copies of documents the regulations list. A complaint made to any Accountable Person must go into the single complaints system.

Prepare the residents' engagement strategy

A building safety decision is a decision about managing the building that an Accountable Person makes under Part 4.

The strategy must also commit you to the following:

• tell residents when works arising from a building safety decision will take place, and why
• consult residents on the days and times, and on how to reduce disruption, for works lasting more than a day that limit access or cause a nuisance, unless the works are an emergency
• give due consideration to consultation responses
• keep records of your reviews
• set out in writing to residents how consultations will be carried out

You must then act in accordance with the strategy.

Consult on the strategy

You must consult residents, owners and the other Accountable Persons when you first prepare the strategy. You must consult again when you revise it, unless the revision follows consultation responses. For a building occupied in stages, you can consult in stages or when most residents and owners are able to take part.

Every consultation must use reasonable methods, such as digital, postal or in-person events. Take reasonable steps to make sure the people affected know about it. Run it for a reasonable period. A consultation on the strategy itself must last at least 3 weeks.

Review and share the strategy

Review the strategy at least every two years. Review it also within a reasonable time after:

• a consultation on the strategy ends
• a mandatory occurrence report on the building goes to the Regulator
• significant material alterations to the building are complete, unless a review in the previous two years already considered them

Significant material alterations include changes to the building's height or width, its number of storeys or homes, its staircases and escape routes, its external wall or its internal layout. Revise the strategy if you think it necessary.

As soon as reasonably practicable after you prepare or revise the strategy, each Accountable Person must give a copy to every resident aged 16 or over in its part of the building. It must also give a copy to every owner of a home there and to the other Accountable Persons. You need not give a copy to a resident you do not know about, if you have taken all reasonable steps to find out who lives there.

Give residents the prescribed information

Each Accountable Person must give every resident aged 16 or over in its part of the building the information and documents in Schedule 2 to the 2024 Regulations. It must take all reasonable steps to give them to owners. They cover:

• a summary of the latest fire risk assessment, including the level of risk to residents
• a summary of the safety case report, covering the risks assessed, the steps taken and how well they are working
• what residents can do to prevent a risk materialising, how to report one, and their own duties under the Act
• the location of escape routes, fire doors and aids, the fire and smoke control equipment and how to use it, and evacuation information
• the role, telephone number, email and postal address of the Regulator, the Principal Accountable Person, the Accountable Person for their part, any responsible person under the Fire Safety Order, and any single point of contact
• the current residents' engagement strategy, the list of what residents can ask for, and the complaints procedure

Answer requests for more information

Give the information in writing, and in a form the person can understand. Explain technical language, or add a plain English summary of complex material.

What residents can ask for includes:

• the full information behind anything the safety case report only summarises
• the building safety risk assessments and the steps taken to manage the risks
• the up-to-date fire risk assessments and the latest safety case report, with the evidence and documents it relies on
• a summary of the responses to the latest consultation on the strategy
• the record of each decision on whether to revise the strategy
• any Tribunal order about the Principal Accountable Person

Three limits apply. You need not provide security-sensitive information, or commercially sensitive material that is not in the public domain. You must not share personal data in breach of data protection law. If you do not provide something that was requested, give the reason.

Run a complaints system

The Principal Accountable Person must set up and run a system to investigate relevant complaints. These are complaints about a building safety risk, or about an Accountable Person's performance of its duties under Part 4. Anyone can make one, by any reasonable method. The system must:

• rest on a published policy that says what counts as a relevant complaint, how to make one, how it is dealt with and the expected timescales
• acknowledge each complaint as soon as reasonably practicable and say whether it is accepted as a relevant complaint
• give reasons if it is not accepted, and tell the complainant they can ask the Regulator to decide
• prioritise complaints by the level of risk
• give every response in writing, in plain language, with reasons and any action planned or taken
• offer a reconsideration of the first substantive response, and tell the complainant they can then take the complaint to the Regulator

The policy must give the Regulator's contact details and explain how reasonable adjustments are made under the Equality Act 2010 and how personal data is used.

Know what the Regulator does

The Residents' Panel is a committee of residents of higher-risk buildings that advises the Regulator. The Regulator must also publish a statement of its engagement with residents each financial year.

If you do not meet these duties, the Regulator can give you a compliance notice requiring specified steps within a set time. Ignoring one without a reasonable excuse is an offence. It carries up to 2 years in prison, a fine, or both on conviction in the Crown Court.