We’ve signed up to the Building a Safer Future (BSF) Charter

Posted on 12 August 2022

Our Building Safety team is demonstrating our commitment to building safety by making sure we continue to meet the requirements of the Building Safety Act.

“The Building a Safer Future (BSF) is an independent organisation set up to create a positive culture and drive behavioural change around building safety in the built environment sector,” explained Liz Oliver, our Safer Homes Director. “We're proud to have become a regulatory signatory of the BSF Charter. This is an important step for us and will help improve our building safety leadership and culture.”

The BSF has five key commitments:

  1. Collaborate to spearhead culture change and be the voice of building safety across our sector
  2. Be transparent in the interests of safety, sharing key information with residents, clients, contractors and statutory bodies in a useful and accessible manner in the design, construction and occupation phases of the process
  3. Make safety a key factor of choice in who we work with, ensuring that building safety is placed at the centre of selection decisions without compromising quality or value for money
  4. Ensure that the voices and safety of residents, visitors and employees are central in our decision-making process
  5. Set out and communicate clear responsibilities within our organisation and with our partners, ensuring everyone with a stake in the building during design, construction and occupation understands their role and has the time and resources they need to achieve and maintain building safety.

Lesley Smith, our Head of Building Safety, said: “We’ve done a lot of work since the Grenfell Tower tragedy in 2017 to improve the safety of our buildings, including setting up a dedicated Building Safety team. We’ll be including the BSF commitments in our approach to how we build, maintain and manage buildings, making sure customers who live in them are, and feel safe.”

BSF is an independent not-for-profit organisation, created in response to Dame Judith Hackitt’s Building a Safer Future review after the Grenfell Tower tragedy. You can find out more on the BSF website.