The Building Safety Act 2022 is the most significant piece of building safety legislation since the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. Passed in response to the Grenfell Tower tragedy, it fundamentally changes how residential buildings are regulated — and who is personally accountable when things go wrong.

If you're a director of a residents' management company, this act directly affects your legal responsibilities. Here's what you need to know.

What the Act does

The Building Safety Act introduced several interconnected changes:

A new Building Safety Regulator — a body within the Health and Safety Executive responsible for overseeing the safety of higher-risk buildings (18m+ or 7+ storeys)
The Accountable Person regime — a legal duty on those who own or manage residential buildings to assess and manage building safety risks
Enhanced duties for all residential buildings — not just higher-risk ones. The Act extends and strengthens existing fire safety requirements under the Fire Safety Order 2005
Personal accountability — directors and officers who fail to ensure compliance can face personal liability, enforcement action, and criminal prosecution

What it means for RMC directors

For directors of resident management companies, the key implications are:

You are the Accountable Person. For self-managing blocks, the RMC is typically the entity responsible for the building's common parts. As directors, you carry personal responsibility for ensuring building safety duties are met.

Ignorance is not a defence. The Act expects the Accountable Person to proactively assess and manage building safety risks. Waiting for a problem to be reported before taking action is not sufficient.

Records matter more than ever. The Act strengthens requirements around maintaining and sharing building safety information. You need to demonstrate what compliance activities have been carried out, by whom, and when.

Residents have new rights. The Act gives residents the right to request building safety information and to raise complaints through the Building Safety Regulator. RMC directors need to be able to respond to these requests with complete, accurate records.

How this connects to existing regulations

The Building Safety Act doesn't replace existing fire safety and building safety regulations — it sits on top of them. Your existing duties under the following remain in full force:

Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 — fire risk assessments for common parts
Fire Safety Act 2021 — extended scope to external walls and flat entrance doors
Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 — fire door checks, building plans, resident information
Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998 — annual gas safety checks
Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 — asbestos management surveys and registers
Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998 — lift inspections

The Building Safety Act adds a layer of personal accountability and record-keeping on top of all of these.

What you should do now

If you're an RMC director, these are the practical steps to protect yourself and your residents:

Audit your current compliance status. Go through every compliance category — fire safety, electrical, gas, asbestos, lift safety, water hygiene, and estate — and check that every required inspection is current, every certificate is on file, and every remediation action has been completed and documented.

Establish a systematic tracking process. Spreadsheets and email threads are not defensible record-keeping. You need a system that tracks compliance status, sends reminders before deadlines, links inspections to remediation work, and maintains an audit trail.

Document everything. Every decision, every inspection, every contractor appointment, every communication about building safety. If it isn't recorded, it didn't happen — at least as far as a regulator is concerned.

Share information with residents. The Act requires it. Make sure fire safety information is displayed in the building and available to any resident who requests it.

Plan for succession. If you step down as a director, the incoming person needs to be able to understand the full compliance picture from day one. That means the records need to live in a system, not in one person's inbox.

How Block Guardian helps

Block Guardian was built specifically for this context. It tracks all seven UK compliance categories with automated status updates, links inspections to remediation cases, stores certificates with versioning and audit trails, and maintains an immutable log of every action. When a regulator, insurer, or incoming director asks to see your records, the answer is already there.

If you're an RMC director looking to get your compliance under control, start a free 45-day trial and see how structured compliance tracking works in practice.