54  The draft Building Safety Bill

out budget costs for these works, which demonstrates how expensive
they may be. The IA assumes that where buildings currently have no
plans or inaccurate plans, it will cost between £10,000 and £19,000
per building to produce a two-dimensional Computer Aided Design
(CAD) plan and evaluation drawing. Other options such as 3D scan-
ning and photogrammetry will be more expensive.13 It is estimated that
the appointment of a BSM may cost £3,000 per building,14 and if the
BSM is to undertake all their designated duties, this could cost £6,400
to £10,000 per building per annum.15
In terms of who pays these costs, the proposed legislation will amend
the Landlord & Tenant Act 1985 so that every tenant with a long lease
must pay the Building Safety Charge within 28 days of demand. A
“long lease” is defined as a lease granted for a term of over 21 years,
including Right to Buy and Right to Acquire leases and also shared
ownership leases. The new sections to be inserted in the Act mirror the
existing statutory consultation regulations so that long leaseholders will
be consulted, though this can be dispensed with if the works are deemed
to be urgent. The cost cannot be recovered if the long leaseholders do
not receive a demand or a notification of costs within 18 months of the
cots being incurred. Leaseholders are, potentially, facing massive bills
which the IA has estimated to be £78,000 per leaseholder.16 Leasehold-
ers may have to bear the cost of putting right the faults of others such
as, developers, contractors or those producing the Government’s own
advisory documents.17

Part 5 Supplementary and general18

The ‘New Homes Ombudsman’

The Secretary of State is to establish a scheme whereby owners and oc-
cupiers of new-build homes can make complaints to the newly created
role of New Homes Ombudsman. Residential developers can also be
members of the scheme. It is anticipated that the Secretary of State will
issue or sanction a code of practice for standards of conduct and quality
of work (s.106).

Housing Ombudsman
Social housing complainants will be able to escalate a complaint d­ irectly
to the Housing Ombudsman, though they will have to complete their
landlord’s in-house complaints procedure first. This will put social
housing tenants on parity with those of other tenures.
 The draft Building Safety Bill  55
Construction products
Schedule 8 of the draft Bill allows the Secretary of State to regulate all
construction products that are made available in the UK. The Regula-
tory regime will identify “designated products” and issue a statutory list
of “safety critical” products, where the failure of a product would result
in death or serious injury. All other construction products that are not
designated or deemed to be safety critical will be subject to a general
safety requirement.

Changes to registration of architects

Section 111 of the draft Bill amends the Architects Act 1997 to a­ llow
the new Architects Registration Board to monitor the c­ ompetence of
architects throughout their registration. If an architect does not meet
the requirements deemed necessary by the Board, the ­a rchitect may
be removed from the register of architects. Any disciplinary ­orders,
made by the Professional Conduct Committee of the A ­ rchitects Reg-
istration Board, will be listed alongside an architect’s entry in the
Register, to allow for greater transparency for fellow professionals and
for public alike.

Fire safety reform

The Government completed a wholesale review and reform of the
management of fire safety in buildings by introducing the Fire Safety
Bill 2020. The Bill complements the change in regime set out in the
draft Building Safety Bill.

The Fire Safety Bill

The Fire Safety Bill was introduced in 2020 and amends the
­Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 with far-­reaching
consequences. External walls and anything attached to those walls –
that is, cladding – and flat entrance doors of multi-occupied resi-
dential buildings, of any height, fall within the scope of that O ­ rder.
Crucially, the Government’s position is that the Fire Safety Bill is a
“clarification” of the Fire Safety Order, rather than an amendment.
This is contentious, as the inclusion of external walls within the Bill
is not merely a clarification, but actually extends the scope of the Fire
Safety Order.