Safer social housing

Stephanie Lloyd-Foxe examines the impact that the changing building safety regime is having on the social housing sector.

There has been a raft of legislative changes brought about following the Grenfell Tragedy, all aimed at improving safety. Whilst the aim is admirable, and something surely no one could disagree with, ensuring compliance with the new requirements, and arguably more importantly achieving the cultural change required to ensure residents not only are safer but feel safer has, and continues to present a significant number of challenges across the social housing sector.

?Dame Judith Hackitt herself recognised that legislation alone will not be sufficient, saying: “Changes to the regulatory regime will help, but on their own will not be sufficient unless we can change the culture away from one of doing the minimum required for compliance, to one of taking ownership and responsibility for delivering a safe system throughout the life cycle of a building.”

?To examine how the social housing sector has responded to these changes, it is first helpful to understand the broader operating environment they face. The sector aims to provide affordable homes, predominantly for rent, with the amount that the rents are increased every year capped by the government, which presents an initial challenge.

As part of the Fire Protection Association's continuing commitment to increase fire safety awareness across the built environment, a number of informative feature articles are available to read on our website. You can read the full article here.