Residents

The building safety reforms are designed to help ensure that your home is safe and that you feel safe. The reforms will apply to high-rise buildings in England. They'll help to protect you from fire and structural problems in your home.

Each high-rise building will have an accountable person who will need to make sure that your building is safe. But you'll have a part to play.

As a resident, you must not:

  • do anything that creates a significant risk to your building’s structural safety
  • do anything that creates a significant risk of causing or spreading fire in your building
  • damage or remove any of your building’s fire safety measures, such as smoke detectors, fire alarms, fire doors, and fire extinguishers

Your accountable person will also need to keep you informed about your building. In some situations, they'll need to ask for your views.

Residents' Panel

The Building Safety Regulator (BSR) formed a Residents' Panel (the panel) to ensure residents are placed at the heart of the new regulatory regime.

The purpose of the Residents' Panel  is to make sure residents have a voice in the work of BSR and can give their views about:

  • resident engagement
  • how residents escalate safety concerns to the regulator
  • the regulator's strategic plan
  • other matters that affect them

Find out more about the role of the Residents' Panel

If you’re worried now

As BSR is being set up, we cannot deal with individual resident's concerns about fire or building structure safety.

You should follow the complaints process for your building or landlord. If you cannot resolve a complaint with your landlord, you may be able to complain to the Housing Ombudsman Service.

If you have any fire safety concerns, contact your local fire and rescue service.

Some local authorities operate a selective licensing scheme for private landlords. If your council has a licensing scheme, you may be able to complain to their housing team.

Other sources of advice

Related content

Visit GOV.UK for more information about building safety reforms:

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Updated 2023-02-28