RICS reacts to the Fire Safety Act
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05 May 2021
The long-awaited Fire Safety Act has made its way through Parliament, gaining Royal Assent.
This short Act closes the loophole that the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 overlooked 16 years ago, on the need for the external walls of a building and the fire doors to individual flats to be assessed as part of the requirement for a Fire Risk Assessment (FRA) of the building.
Now there can be no question (in England or Wales) that from now on the Responsible Person has a legal responsibility to commission an FRA with the external walls and fire doors assessed too.
RICS has been working with government on the impact that this will have on industry and building owners, and we are currently training up to 2,000 external wall system (EWS) assessors to be able to carry out checks on these long-overlooked parts of a building.
Gary Strong, RICS comments:
“We have long advocated a closing of this legal loophole, and the need for a holistic assessment of the fire safety of in-scope buildings. Building owners now have a clear legal responsibility to ensure that their buildings are safe for occupiers and the public. We will continue to work with government and industry to ensure that the safety of the public is paramount and top of the agenda in this country.”
