Building Safety Act 2022 and EWS1: What Residential Agents Must Understand

The Building Safety Act 2022 (BSA) is one of the most significant pieces of legislation to affect residential property in England in decades. It emerged from the Grenfell Tower disaster and the subsequent Hackitt Review, and it creates new duties, new rights, and new legal liabilities across the property industry — including for residential estate and lettings agents.

This article explains the key provisions agents need to understand, what the EWS1 form does and does not tell you, and where AI tools can help with the growing compliance burden.

What the Building Safety Act does

The BSA creates a new regulatory framework for buildings in scope — primarily residential buildings of 18 metres or more (or seven storeys or more). Its key provisions include:

The Building Safety Regulator (BSR) — a new statutory body within the Health and Safety Executive responsible for overseeing safety in high-risk residential buildings (HRBs). The BSR maintains a register of HRBs and must approve key appointments (the Principal Accountable Person, Building Safety Manager) for registered buildings.

Principal Accountable Person (PAP) — for each HRB, one legal entity (the freeholder, head leaseholder, or management company) is designated as PAP and bears primary responsibility for building safety management, risk assessment, and resident engagement.

Building Safety Case — the PAP must produce and maintain a Building Safety Case — a documented assessment of the building's safety risks and how they are managed. This must be kept current and made available to the BSR on request.

Residents' rights — the BSA creates new rights for residents, including the right to request the Building Safety Case Report and to make complaints to the BSR about building safety.

New leaseholder protections — the Act creates statutory protections limiting what leaseholders can be charged for certain types of remediation work, particularly cladding remediation. These protections are complex and depend on when the lease was granted, the nature of the defect, and the financial position of the developer.

The cladding remediation crisis — the context

Following Grenfell, widespread surveys revealed that many high-rise buildings across England had external cladding systems or fire compartmentation defects that rendered them unsafe. The cost of remediation — often running into hundreds of thousands or millions of pounds per building — threatened to fall on leaseholders through service charges.

The government responded with:

• The Building Safety Fund (for social housing and certain private buildings)
• Developer-funded remediation through the developer remediation contract
• The statutory leaseholder protections in the BSA limiting service charge recovery for qualifying remediation costs

For estate agents, this has created a market in which the remediation status of a building is a critical piece of information. Buildings with unresolved cladding issues are difficult to sell and may be difficult to mortgage.

EWS1 — what it is and what it is not

The External Wall System 1 (EWS1) form is a document produced by a qualified professional (typically a fire engineer) that provides an assessment of a building's external wall construction and its compliance with fire safety standards.

EWS1 categories:

• A1 — the external wall materials are unlikely to support the spread of fire. No remediation required.
• A2 — the external wall materials are unlikely to support the spread of fire but require further assessment.
• A3 — the external wall materials are not of limited combustibility. Remediation required.
• B1 — there are combustible materials in the external wall but their risk can be mitigated without remediation.
• B2 — there are combustible materials in the external wall and remediation is required.

What EWS1 does:

• Provides a standardised assessment of external wall fire risk
• Enables mortgage lenders to make lending decisions on flats in buildings they would otherwise decline
• Demonstrates due diligence by the building owner

What EWS1 does not:

• Guarantee a building is safe (it is an external wall assessment, not a comprehensive fire safety audit)
• Cover internal compartmentation, fire doors, or means of escape
• Constitute a Building Safety Case

The EWS1 access problem:

Not all buildings have an EWS1 form, and obtaining one requires access to a suitably qualified professional — which can take months. For buildings with high-risk cladding, the form will confirm the problem but not resolve it. Buyers of flats in buildings without a valid EWS1, or with a B2 rating, face mortgage difficulties.

What residential agents need to do

On every flat instruction:

1. Establish whether the building is above 18 metres (or seven storeys). If so, confirm whether it is registered with the BSR.
2. Ask the vendor's managing agent or freeholder whether an EWS1 form exists and what its rating is.
3. If the building has combustible cladding or a B2 EWS1, disclose this proactively to prospective buyers before they spend money on surveys.
4. Understand the building's remediation position — is it in a funded remediation programme, subject to a developer remediation contract, or unresolved?
5. Check whether the vendor has received any Building Safety Levy notices or has outstanding service charge liabilities for remediation.

For listings: material information requirements (covered by Trading Standards guidance on the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations) now require agents to disclose known building safety defects as part of the property listing information. Getting this wrong creates liability.

For lettings: landlords of flats in HRBs need to understand their obligations under the BSA (registration, PAP duties where applicable). Agents advising landlord clients should be able to explain the basics.

The leaseholder protection provisions

The BSA creates a statutory cap on what certain leaseholders can be charged for qualifying remediation costs:

• Leaseholders in buildings where the developer or freeholder is responsible for the defect cannot be charged at all
• Qualifying leaseholders (those who own only one property, or whose lease was granted after a qualifying date) have a cap based on the property's value
• Non-qualifying leaseholders may be charged but subject to a separate cap

These protections are complex, fact-specific, and subject to ongoing litigation and tribunal decisions. Agents should not attempt to apply them without legal advice, but should be aware they exist and flag them to clients who receive unexpected remediation service charge demands.

Where AI helps

The BSA and EWS1 landscape generates significant information-gathering and advisory work. AI tools can help with:

• Drafting buyer advisory notes — explaining the BSA regime, EWS1 ratings, and what questions buyers should ask before making an offer on a flat
• Building safety questionnaire triage — working through the LPE1 (Leasehold Property Enquiries) responses to flag building safety issues requiring further investigation
• Remediation status summaries — synthesising information from multiple documents (EWS1 report, fire risk assessment, service charge accounts) into a clear client summary
• Material information compliance — checking listing descriptions against material information requirements to ensure building safety issues are appropriately disclosed

AI cannot assess building safety (this requires a qualified fire engineer), produce an EWS1 form, or advise on legal liability under the BSA. But for the triage, explanation, and documentation work the Act creates, AI tools save significant time.