Following the tragedy at Grenfell on 14 June 2017, The Building Safety Act 2022 introduced the Safety Case Regime for higher-risk buildings (HRBS). HRBS are residential buildings at least 18 meters or at least seven storeys in height.

The aim of the Safety Case Regime is to ensure those responsible for buildings, known as Accountable Persons, deliver a continuous preventative and proactive approach to managing building safety risks.

bpha has 14 buildings in scope: Ashburnham, Becket, Boswell, Bury, Chandos, Evesham, Frampton, Leighton, Priory, Richbell, Rosie, Upton, Beauchamp and Westbury Courts.
As part of the Act, as well as providing safety cases, bpha needs to ensure that an effective and inclusive resident engagement strategy is in place which outlines:

• The information that will be provided to residents and flat owners about the decisions relating to the management of the building
• What decisions residents will be consulted on
• Details of how consultation will take place
• Details of how the success as well as information on how the methods used for promoting participation will be measured and reviewed.

A survey was recently carried out asking residents for their views on fire and building safety in their block, whether they knew where to go for fire and building safety information and if they did if it was easy to understand. We also asked them to let us know if there was anyone in their home that would have difficulty in the event of a fire. This valuable feedback is being used to inform our engagement strategy and update customer data.

As part of the resident engagement strategy, we have reached out to residents to encourage them to help set up a resident led Building Safety Group. The group is open all to residents, including leaseholders and shared owners. As members of the group, we will be equipping them with the skills and knowledge to challenge and influence building safety policies and practices. Helping us to ensure legislation is followed as well as produce the building safety resident engagement strategy and get involved in engagement initiatives for building safety in their community.

The inaugural meeting for the group took place on Tuesday 3 October at Bedford Heights. It was agreed that bpha will organise resident site inspections and drop in’s at blocks. We also discussed the best way for bpha to collect customer information including disability and communication preferences.

If you would like to find out more about building safety for your block or would like to be involved in the Building Safety group, please get in touch with the Customer Engagement team by emailing CustomerVoice@bpha.org.uk