The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) has announced a £42.5m grant to support the delivery of the Building Safety Act 2022 over the next three years.
The package consists of a £16.5m grant to the Local Authority Building Control (LABC) – the representative body for local authority building control in England and Wales – and £26m to support the Fire and Rescue Services in England and the National Fire Chiefs Council.
The money will fund the recruitment and training of around 110 new building control inspectors and 111 fire protection officers to support the new Building Safety Regulator (BSR).
Three-year programme
DLUHC will recruit and train the inspectors over a three-year programme designed to direct skills and resources to areas with a greater distribution of high-rise buildings.
Under the Building Safety Act, these inspectors will be the local regulators of the BSR.
The BSR is an independent body within the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), established by the Building Safety Act following the Grenfell Tower fire.
Under the act, the BSR has the powers and responsibilities to ensure the safety of all buildings. It also has additional responsibilities for how higher-risk buildings should be constructed and safely maintained.
The Building Safety Act also requires the identification of the individuals responsible for a higher-risk building and the provision of key information to the BSR. Those responsible for safety in high-rise residential blocks in England have six months from April to register with the BSR.
Building control inspectors and fire inspectors will be responsible for overseeing the safety and standards of the design, construction and management of higher-risk buildings.
LABC chief executive, Lorna Stimpson, welcomed the funding. “Building control surveyors are a scarce commodity and so it’s important that we start to invest in this previously underfunded but vital public service role,” she said.
