Your fire risk assessment has landed with a significant, expensive recommendation: install automatic opening vents (AOVs) in the common stairwell. The building is a century old. It has always had openable windows on the landings. And now you face a major retrofit. Before you commit to the works, ask one question: on what basis does…
An enforcement notice from the Fire and Rescue Service lands like a threat. It arrives on official letterhead with a deadline attached. Most building owners and Responsible Persons feel the same thing when one arrives: fear of prosecution and fear of getting it wrong. Take a breath. A notice is not a punishment. It opens…
Your buyer’s lender has asked for an EWS1 form. The block is two storeys. A handful of flats sit above a couple of ground-floor units. And now the sale is stuck. If that sounds familiar, you are not alone, and you may not need the form they’re asking for at all. The problem: the wrong…
Three years after the Building Safety Act received Royal Assent, one question still doesn’t have a good answer: why do hotels, student accommodation blocks and hospitals sit outside its protection, when their occupants often face equal or greater risk than residents in a qualifying residential building? Who the Building Safety Act Protects, and Who It…
A fire risk assessment that identifies serious findings is not a problem, it’s the system working. What you do with those findings determines whether you are legally protected or legally exposed. This article sets out what the findings mean, what the law requires, and what a clear path forward looks like. Understanding the Risk Rating…
Most HMO landlords have had a fire risk assessment carried out. Fewer have asked what that assessment is actually measuring against. The answer, in most purpose-built HMOs, is nothing documented — and that gap has real consequences for compliance, liability, and the safety of the people living in the building. What a Fire Strategy Is…
We assess external walls for a living. We open up facades, inspect cavity barriers, test insulation, and report on whether a building’s external wall system is safe. And there is a pattern we see over and over again, even on buildings that are sometimes only a few years old. Missing cavity barriers. Compressed fire stopping.…
You already know something is wrong. Maybe a fire risk assessment flagged your external walls. Perhaps an EWS1 assessment came back as B2. Maybe lenders are refusing leaseholders mortgages, and they’re pointing the finger at you. Whatever the trigger, you are now facing the same question most freeholders and managing agents eventually face: what do…
The Building Safety Act 2022 is more than three years on from Royal Assent. The occupied higher-risk building regime has been live for over two years. Safety case reports are being called in and submitted as part of the Building Assessment Certificate (BAC) process, and Principal Accountable Persons are, to varying degrees of preparedness, getting…
Two instruments. Two drivers. One external wall. If you manage a residential building in England and Wales, understanding the difference between these could be the gap between legal compliance and legal exposure, or between a sale completing and collapsing. Start Here: The Legal Obligation Most People Miss Before the EWS1 form and before PAS 9980,…