Plant and machinery will now be included in the new regulatory regime for high-risk buildings ushered in by the Building Safety Act, the government has announced.
The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities yesterday released its response to a consultation on regulations covering the definition of a building under the Act.
Respondents had raised concerns that the consultation proposal to exclude plant machinery from the definition could have an impact on safety.
In response, the government said: “It was raised that plant rooms could contain firefighting or suppression equipment, as well as other key infrastructure important to the overall safety of the building.
“Some respondents also raised that plant rooms and machinery could be a source of potential fire or structural collapse.”
As a result, the government has updated the proposed regulations to include plant rooms and machinery, giving the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) the ability to regulate them under the category of higher-risk buildings.
It said: “This amendment will make sure that parts of a building which contain important fire-safety equipment are included within the boundaries of higher-risk buildings.”
The government also amended the definition so that not all plant machinery levels are excluded from the measurement of the height of a building. The move was in response to concerns raised during the consultation that developers could “game the system” by building multiple plant levels or basements to house residents.
The government response said that new wording would “make sure not all plant machinery levels are excluded and set out that only levels which consist exclusively of rooftop plant rooms or rooftop machinery are excluded from the height measurement”.
The Building Safety Act, which became law earlier this year, will put new legal responsibilities on professionals designing and constructing higher-risk buildings, as well well as on those responsible for managing them.
The regulations, which will come into force next year, define higher-risk buildings as residential blocks, care homes and hospitals that are at least 18 metres or seven storeys tall.
The government’s consultation rejected calls by some respondents to extend the definition to hotels and prisons.
According to the government’s response, this is because the BSR will also have wider responsibilities for overseeing the safety of all buildings.
“This will drive continuous improvement in the performance of all buildings to protect the safety of occupants,” it said.
The department added that these buildings are already regulated by the Fire Safety Order, “and generally, these buildings are staffed 24/7, have multiple routes of escape, signage and emergency lighting to assist evacuation, and have a higher level of detection and alarm systems than residential buildings”.
The government has laid the amended regulations before Parliament and, once approved, it plans to publish full guidance on them.
