The Building Safety Act 2022 has reshaped the legal duties that sit on the shoulders of anyone managing residential blocks in England, and for managing agents the change is not academic. If you manage a block that falls within scope, the Building Safety Act now dictates who is legally accountable for fire and structural safety, what records you must keep, and how you engage residents on safety matters. Get it wrong and the consequences run from regulatory notices to criminal liability. This guide sets out what managing agents actually need to do, in plain terms, without wading through the full text of the Act.
What the Building Safety Act Actually Changed
Before 2022, building safety regulation for existing residential blocks was thin and largely reactive - triggered after something went wrong rather than before. The Building Safety Act introduced a proactive regime built on three ideas: a named person legally accountable for safety, mandatory record-keeping that has to survive a change of managing agent or freeholder, and a dedicated regulator with powers to inspect, demand information and prosecute. The Act sits alongside your existing fire safety and building regulations duties, not instead of them - it's an extra layer, specifically for higher-risk buildings.
Which Buildings Are Actually "Higher-Risk"?
Most of the Act's toughest duties apply only to buildings that meet the legal definition of a higher-risk building: broadly, residential blocks of a certain height and number of storeys containing two or more residential units. If you're unsure whether a block you manage is in scope, don't guess - the Building Safety Regulator, part of the Health and Safety Executive, runs a registration process, and existing higher-risk buildings should already be registered. A block you've just taken on that isn't registered but should be is an immediate priority, not a background task.
Scope isn't fixed at handover either. A refurbishment that adds storeys, or a change of use that increases the number of residential units, can pull a building into scope partway through your instruction. Get into the habit of re-checking status whenever significant works are proposed.
The Accountable Person: Who's Actually on the Hook
For in-scope buildings, the Act requires an Accountable Person - the organisation or individual who owns or holds a repairing obligation for the building's structure or common parts. Where there's more than one, one is designated the Principal Accountable Person, who carries the primary duties. Managing agents are rarely the Accountable Person themselves - that's usually the freeholder or a right-to-manage company - but agents are almost always the ones doing the practical work of discharging those duties day to day, on instruction. That distinction should be explicit in your management agreement, because "we assumed the agent was handling it" is not a defence either side wants to test.
Core duties the Accountable Person carries
- Registering the building with the Building Safety Regulator and keeping that registration current
- Assessing building safety risks and taking reasonable steps to prevent or mitigate a major incident
- Preparing and maintaining a safety case report setting out how those risks are managed
- Applying for a Building Assessment Certificate when required
- Reporting mandatory occurrence types - safety incidents - to the regulator without delay
- Running a resident engagement strategy and complaints procedure
The Golden Thread: Your Paper Trail Is the Point
One of the most practically demanding parts of the Act is the "golden thread of information" - a requirement to hold accurate, up-to-date digital information about a building's design, construction and ongoing management, usable throughout the building's life. For managing agents this is where compliance stops being abstract and becomes a filing problem: fire risk assessments, structural surveys, contractor sign-offs, remedial works records and safety case updates all need to be kept in a form you can produce on demand, not reconstruct from someone's inbox after the fact.
This is also where agents get caught out at handover. If you inherit a block from another agent, ask early and directly what golden thread records exist and in what format - any gap becomes your problem the moment you take the instruction.
Talking to Residents Isn't Optional Either
The Act puts resident engagement on a statutory footing for higher-risk buildings: a documented strategy for how residents are told about safety risks, how they raise concerns, and how those concerns are tracked and closed out - not just an inbox nobody monitors. Agents who already run decent complaints handling will find much of this familiar; the shift is that safety-specific concerns now need their own visible channel and a record showing they were actually dealt with.
What Non-Compliance Actually Costs
The Building Safety Regulator has real enforcement powers: compliance notices, stop notices, and criminal prosecution for the most serious breaches, with liability reaching individuals as well as organisations in some circumstances. For a managing agent, the more immediate risk is usually reputational and contractual - losing an instruction, or facing a claim from a freeholder who says the agent failed to flag a gap. Insurers are increasingly asking about Building Safety Act compliance as a matter of course at PI renewal, so a patchy record can hit you before the regulator ever gets involved.
Practical Steps for Managing Agents
- Confirm scope for every block you manage - check height, storeys and unit count against the current definition of a higher-risk building, rather than assuming.
- Identify the Accountable Person and Principal Accountable Person in writing, and make sure your management agreement reflects exactly what you're instructed to do on their behalf.
- Audit what golden thread records already exist before taking on a new instruction, and flag gaps immediately rather than absorbing the risk silently.
- Build a resident engagement process that's documented, not just conversational.
- Keep a single, searchable record of every safety-related contractor instruction, quote and sign-off - the evidence you'll need if the regulator or a resident ever asks when something was fixed and by whom.
That last point is where a lot of agents are quietly exposed: compliance paperwork scattered across email threads, group chats and different contractors' own systems. Platforms like PlanaJob help here by letting property managers compare quotes from vetted contractors in one place, with the job, the quote and the sign-off attached to the same record - exactly the kind of compliance audit trail in PlanaJob that turns "we think it was done" into a document you can actually produce. It's worth setting up a free account and seeing how it fits your process, and if you manage several blocks, PlanaJob's resources for property managers cover the wider compliance picture beyond just this Act.
Contractors carrying out fire safety or remediation works have their own stake in getting this right - a well-documented job protects them as much as the agent instructing it, and those weighing how compliance obligations affect pricing and risk on this kind of work may find useful context in communities like Contractor Club.
If you're building out a wider compliance routine, PlanaJob's blog covers related topics, from fire risk assessment scheduling to gas safety, worth reading alongside this one.
FAQ
Does the Building Safety Act apply to every block a managing agent looks after?
No. Most of its toughest duties - registration, safety case reports, the golden thread - apply only to buildings meeting the legal definition of a higher-risk building. Blocks below that threshold still carry standard fire safety and building regulations duties, but not the Act's higher-risk regime.
Is the managing agent legally the Accountable Person?
Usually not. The Accountable Person is typically the freeholder or a right-to-manage company - whoever holds the repairing obligation. Agents carry out the practical duties on the Accountable Person's behalf, so the management agreement needs to spell out exactly what's delegated.
What's the single biggest compliance gap agents run into?
Incomplete or fragmented golden thread records, especially after a change of managing agent. Safety documents split across old contractors, previous agents and residents' own records make ongoing compliance very hard to prove - exactly the gap a proper audit trail is meant to close.