A year of building-safety change, in one place

Anyone responsible for a building has spent the past year reading more legislation than they would like. The pace of building-safety change has been unusual, and the changes have come from several directions at once: social housing, counter-terrorism, the structure of the regulator itself, and the long tail of the Grenfell Inquiry. Taken one at a time, each is manageable. Taken together, they are easy to lose track of, which is reason enough to set them down calmly in one place.

This is that round-up. It is not exhaustive, and it is not legal advice, but it gathers the headline developments and the dates that matter, so a manager can see the shape of the year without assembling it from a dozen separate updates.

The Grenfell Inquiry's long shadow

The single most consequential document of the period was the Grenfell Tower Inquiry Phase 2 report, published on 4 September 2024. It runs to seven volumes, around 1,700 pages, and 58 recommendations, 37 to government and 21 to other bodies, according to gov.uk, Bevan Brittan and the FBU. Its first recommendation, a single construction regulator for England and Wales, is expected to be legislated for and operational from 2028, per Building and gov.uk, though it will not cover product testing and certification.

The practical message of the report, in our reading, is consolidation. The old regime was judged too complex and fragmented, and the direction of travel is towards a building being able to account for itself coherently rather than across institutional seams.

Social housing: Awaab's Law

For social landlords, the defining change was Awaab's Law. Phase 1 came into force on 27 October 2025, covering damp and mould and all emergency hazards, according to the CIH, Kennedys and Brabners. It puts hard clocks on the response: investigate within 10 working days, provide a written summary within 3 working days of the investigation concluding, begin to act on a significant hazard within 5 working days, and make safe an emergency hazard within 24 hours, per the Housing Ombudsman and RPC.

The regime expands in 2026 to cover excess cold and heat, falls, structural collapse, fire, electrical and hygiene hazards, according to the CIH. So Phase 1 is the start of a much wider obligation, and landlords who built a damp-only process will be extending it next year.

Public venues: Martyn's Law

The newest strand reaches a set of premises that have rarely been part of building-safety conversations. The Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025, known as Martyn's Law, received Royal Assent on 3 April 2025, with an implementation period of at least 24 months so duties are expected from around 2027, according to the Home Office, ProtectUK and Mayer Brown. The regulator will be the Security Industry Authority. The standard tier covers premises with a 200 to 799 capacity; the enhanced tier covers premises and events of 800 or more.

The regulator reshaped

The institution doing the overseeing is also changing. The Building Safety Regulator became Building Control Authority for all higher-risk buildings in England in October 2023, hosted within the Health and Safety Executive, and from January 2026 it is being established as a standalone body, per the ICE and Building. A higher-risk building remains one at least 18m or 7 storeys, with at least two residential units, per gov.uk and the RICS.

Seeing it as one workload

Set out separately, these look like four unrelated stories. From a manager's chair they are one workload, because they share a structure. Each creates a recurring duty, attaches it to a named responsible person, and is ultimately tested by whether the organisation can show what it did and when.

• Awaab's Law tests dated responses to hazards.
• Martyn's Law will test documented preparedness for public venues.
• The higher-risk building regime tests a living safety case and golden thread.
• The coming single regulator tests whether a building can account for itself coherently.

The common requirement underneath all four is an honest, current record with clear ownership. That is the thing worth investing in, because it serves every one of these duties rather than just one.

It is also why the temptation to treat each development as a discrete project is the wrong instinct. A building does not experience Awaab's Law and the higher-risk regime as separate worlds; it experiences them as overlapping demands on the same fabric, the same plans and the same people. The damp investigation that Awaab's Law puts on a clock may surface a ventilation fault that touches the building's wider condition. The evacuation thinking that Martyn's Law will ask of a ground-floor venue rests on the same escape routes the fire strategy already depends on. Pulling these together is not tidiness for its own sake; it is the only way to see the building whole rather than as a stack of unrelated obligations.

Where to keep it

The mistake the year invites is to answer each development with its own spreadsheet, its own folder, its own process, until the building's compliance lives in a dozen places that nobody can reconcile. The calmer approach is to hold it all against a single compliance calendar, so the recurring duties chase their own deadlines, and a single audit trail, so the evidence builds itself. For the detail behind each strand, our notes on Awaab's Law arrives: what social landlords must do now and Martyn's Law, and the premises it will touch go deeper than this round-up can.

A short, practical close

The past year did not bring one big change; it brought several, from several directions, and the difficulty is keeping them in view at once. They share more than they seem to: each is a recurring duty with a named owner and an evidence test. A manager who builds one current record, rather than a separate response to each headline, is ready for all of them and for the next one. SAMRISK exists to be that one place. This is general information rather than legal advice, so check the current position on any specific duty before acting.