Duties & liability under the Building Safety Act

The law has already
decided what you're
responsible for.
Has anyone told you?

The Building Safety Act 2022 and the Building Regulations 2010 place specific, personal, criminal-backed duties on every party to a higher-risk building — the client, the designers, the contractors, and the person accountable once it is occupied. These duties are in force now. They apply whether or not anyone has explained them to you.

In fact, one of them is a duty to tell you. A designer must not even begin work until satisfied the client understands their own duties. If that conversation never happened on your project, you are already looking at a fundamental problem.

Phase one · Design & construction

Building Regulations 2010, Part 2A

Inserted by the 2023 Amendment Regulations and in force since 1 October 2023. These dutyholder roles apply to projects requiring building control approval, and in full to higher-risk building work — where the Building Safety Regulator is the building control authority. There is no shopping around.

Client
Reg 11A · 11B · 11D · 11E
The duty
  • Make suitable arrangements for planning, managing and monitoring the project — including allocating sufficient time and resources — so the work complies with all relevant requirements.
  • Ensure the right information reaches designers and contractors, and that everyone knows when a project involves higher-risk building work.
  • Appoint a Principal Designer and Principal Contractor in writing where more than one contractor is involved.
  • Take reasonable steps to satisfy yourself that everyone you appoint is competent.
The exposure

These duties cannot be delegated away. Fail to appoint the principal roles and the duties fall on you by default.

Breaches of the Building Regulations are criminal offences, with penalties sharpened by the Building Safety Act — unlimited fines, and exposure that can reach named individuals, not only the company.

Principal Designer
Reg 11M · (11D appointment)
The duty
  • Plan, manage and monitor the design phase so that the design, if built, would comply with all relevant requirements.
  • Take all reasonable steps to ensure every designer cooperates and coordinates, and understands and complies with their own duties.
  • Liaise with the Principal Contractor and share all information relevant to planning, managing and monitoring the work (11M(3)).
The exposure

At completion you must sign a statement confirming you fulfilled your Part 2A duties. It becomes part of an audit trail that will be scrutinised.

The regulator will ask how you ensured each designer understood their duties — and what you did when they didn't. "I assumed they knew" is not an answer.

Designer
Reg 11K · 11F
The duty
  • Do not start design work unless satisfied the client is aware of the client's own duties (11K(1)).
  • Take all reasonable steps to ensure your design, if built, would comply with all relevant requirements.
  • Cooperate with the client, the principal designer and everyone else on the project.
  • Only take on work you are competent to do.
The exposure

If you began without ensuring the client knew their duties, you were in breach on day one.

A design that cannot be built compliantly is your liability — and competence is a legal requirement, not a professional courtesy.

Principal Contractor
Reg 11N · (11D appointment)
The duty
  • Plan, manage and monitor the construction phase so the work complies with all relevant requirements.
  • Ensure every contractor cooperates and coordinates.
  • Liaise with the Principal Designer and have regard to their compliance comments.
The exposure

You too must sign a completion statement confirming you met your duties.

Coordinating compliance across every trade on site is your responsibility — provable, or not.

Contractor
Reg 11L · 11F
The duty
  • Ensure your work — and anyone under your control — is planned, managed and monitored to comply.
  • Cooperate with the client, principal designer, principal contractor and others.
  • Only take on work you are competent to do.
The exposure

"I only did my bit" is not a defence where your bit wasn't compliant, or wasn't coordinated with everyone else's.

Running through all of it — competence · Reg 11E & 11F

Everyone appointed must be competent: the right skills, knowledge, experience and behaviours. The client must take reasonable steps to check before appointing — and for higher-risk work, that includes asking about serious sanctions in the previous five years. Cooperation itself is now a legally required behaviour, and so is saying no to work beyond your competence.

Phase two · Occupation

Building Safety Act 2022, Part 4

In force since 16 January 2024. Once a higher-risk building is occupied, a new and heavier set of duties falls on the Principal Accountable Person — the party with overall responsibility for the building's safety in occupation. This is where the criminal exposure is sharpest.

Principal Accountable Person
BSA 2022 · ss.79–93
The duty
  • Apply for a Building Assessment Certificate when directed by the regulator — within 28 days of the direction (s.79).
  • Display the certificate once issued (s.82).
  • Assess the building safety risks at regular intervals (s.83) and take all reasonable steps to manage them (s.84).
  • Prepare and revise the safety case report (s.85), and notify and provide it to the regulator (s.86).
  • Establish and operate a mandatory occurrence reporting system (s.87).
  • Keep the golden thread of prescribed information (s.88) and give information to the regulator, residents and any incoming accountable person (ss.89–90).
  • Produce a residents' engagement strategy (s.91) and operate a complaints procedure (s.93).
The exposure — read this twice

The 28-day clock is fixed by statute. There is no formal extension. The 28 days is a submission window, not a preparation window — the duty to hold this information has applied since January 2024, so "we weren't ready" is unlikely to be a reasonable excuse.

Failing, without reasonable excuse, to comply with these duties is a criminal offence. Placing anyone in or about the building at critical risk is an offence in its own right (s.101).

On conviction: unlimited fines and imprisonment for up to two years — with a further daily penalty for each day the default continues after conviction. Liability can attach to individuals, not only the corporate entity.

Ignorance of these duties is not a reasonable excuse.

Accountable Person
BSA 2022 · ss.83 · 84 · 88
The duty
  • Assess and manage the building safety risks for the part of the building you are responsible for (ss.83–84).
  • Contribute to the golden thread and cooperate with the Principal Accountable Person (s.88).
The exposure

The same criminal framework applies to your relevant duties. Being "only" an accountable person, rather than the principal, does not put you outside it.

If your team hasn't been told,
that is the problem.
STRAND is how you fix it.

STRAND makes every one of these duties explicit — to every party, in plain English — and builds the timestamped, immutable evidence that each was met. It discharges the very duty at the heart of Regulation 11K: making certain everyone knows what they are responsible for.

And when the regulator's direction lands and the 28-day clock starts, it tells you exactly where you stand — in minutes — then shows you precisely what remains to be done, before a regulator, or a court, ever asks.

Establish where you stand

This page is general information about the duties created by the Building Safety Act 2022 and the Building Regulations 2010 (as amended), current as at July 2026. It is a simplified summary — section references, thresholds and commencement positions are abbreviated, and some provisions remain subject to further regulations and guidance. It is not legal advice and creates no professional relationship. Always take advice specific to your building, your role and your circumstances.