Building Safety Alliance to become a charity
The Building Safety Alliance have announced their intention to become a charity, aiming to drive culture change and competence across the occupation phase.
The Building Safety Alliance is a collaborative group of stakeholders from the occupation phase with over 70 declared supporters from a wide range of organisations across the built environment sector.
Formed in March 2021 with representation from many disciplines active in the residential housing sector, the Building Safety Alliance initially worked on implementing the recommendations from Working Group 8 of the Competence Steering Group, which was tasked with developing a competence framework for the building safety manager as per the recommendations in Dame Judith Hackitt's report.
It has since evolved to become the pre-eminent forum for all those organisations providing support, services and products to the occupied residential sector.
The group includes owners, residents, insurers, facility and property managers, representatives from professional and trade bodies, and a wide number of professional services providers.
The three principal professional bodies within the occupied sector – the Property Institute, the Institute of Workplace and Facilities Management, and the Association for Project Safety, along with the Construction Industry Council (CIC) – have all been fully involved and supportive of the Building Safety Alliance since its inception. They are now sponsoring the formation of a 'Foundation Charitable Incorporated Organisation'.
The Building Safety Alliance has a growing number of special interest working groups (SIGs) to deliver practical solutions to the sector, supporting best practice compliance with the Building Safety Act 2022 through voluntary collaboration.
It will soon release guidance to the sector and dutyholders to support them towards meeting the golden thread requirements, guidance on competence expectations that 'Owners/Clients' (Principal/Accountable Persons) and those who contract works should be considering, and guidance as to how an organisation may evidence that it has the 'organisational capability' to deliver the services it is contracted to deliver.
Anthony Taylor, Interim Chair of the Building Safety Alliance, said: "This extremely welcome and timely development, after two years' very hard work by many volunteer supporters, will provide us with an appropriately transparent governance regime to ensure that the Building Safety Alliance has a sustainable future for the longer-term. It will also provide a valuable platform for our supporters to be able to continue to their collaboration with to deliver the work needed to implement the new building safety regime.
"Our group continues to grow as the wider sector agrees that collaboration and co-ordination of effort to drive competence and culture change is achieved better, faster and more consistently, together."