The Building Safety Act: The New Frontier of Remediation Claims

The Building Safety Act 2022¹ has fundamentally reshaped the landscape of construction disputes in England and Wales. For those involved in the remediation of residential buildings, particularly high-rise developments over eighteen metres, the Act has introduced a new class of liability, extended limitation periods, and a degree of multi-party complexity that did not previously exist.

At its core, the Act creates retrospective obligations. Sections 116 to 125 and Schedule 8² establish the framework for remediation contribution orders, enabling the First-tier Tribunal to require responsible parties to contribute to remediation costs. Developers of buildings completed in the last thirty years may now face such orders, even where the original works were compliant with the Building Regulations 2010³ in force at the time of construction. The introduction of the Building Safety Regulator, the requirements for Principal Accountable Persons, and the creation of new criminal offences for non-compliance have all added layers of regulatory exposure.

The extended limitation period is particularly significant. Section 135 amends the Defective Premises Act 1972⁴ to extend the limitation period from six years to thirty years retrospectively for claims relating to dwellings. This single provision has reopened the liability exposure of developers, contractors, and design professionals on projects completed decades ago.

But the real challenge for disputes practitioners is the causation analysis. In a typical building defect claim, the chain of causation runs from defective work to resultant damage. Under the Building Safety Act, the analysis is more nuanced.

The question is not simply whether the cladding is non-compliant; it is who specified it, who approved the substitution, who inspected the installation, and who bears the duty to remediate.

Consider a typical scenario: a residential tower completed in 2012 with aluminium composite material cladding. The original specification called for Class A1 mineral wool insulation behind the cladding panels, in accordance with BS 8414⁵ fire performance requirements and the guidance in Approved Document B.⁶ During construction, the subcontractor substituted combustible PIR board on floors six through twelve. The substitution was not recorded in the contractor's quality records but was visible in the procurement chain.

Each party's liability depends on a forensic reconstruction of the design, procurement, and construction sequence.

This is where traditional disputes expertise meets a new statutory framework. The technical investigation (intrusive surveys, core sampling, BS 8414 compliance testing) must be coupled with a forensic document review that traces every specification change, every request for information, and every approval through the project lifecycle.