The Grenfell Tower tragedy in 2017 has been the catalyst for one of, probably the most, important piece of legislation in my time as a construction lawyer – the Building Safety Act 2022 (‘the Act’).
The Act dwarfs all other construction legislation. Not only does it address wide ranging issues – it looks back at how to rectify cladding and other fire and structural issues and who is to pay for the remedial works and it also looks forward as to how we make our buildings safer for the future. It is also radical …very radical, throwing many established principles into doubt. It increases limitation periods (the period of time in which a party can be found liable) in some cases from the established 6 or 12 years to 30 years… and it challenges what lawyers call piercing the corporate veil (the concept of only being able to pursue the company actually responsible) to provide for related companies to also be held responsible.
If you work in the construction industry you need to know about the Act.
It is so important that we will be providing a series of weekly blogs on it over the coming months. The Act has become law only 5 years after the Grenfell tragedy. This means that much of it is planned to come into effect by way of secondary legislation over the next 12 months or so. Our blogs will keep you up to date about what is already in force and what is coming into force and when.