Breaches of the Building Safety Act's principal accountable person regime attract criminal prosecution – not regulatory warnings, writes our Amy Farr, Partner and Head of Building Safety and Construction Compliance, for Green Street News.
The UK’s Building Safety Act 2022 has fundamentally rewritten the rulebook on who is responsible when residential buildings fail. At its heart sits a simple concept: the principal accountable person.
Yet two years after the Act came into force, I’m still encountering asset managers, pension fund trustees, and private wealth advisers who have no idea their clients may have assumed direct criminal liability for building safety – often for properties they’ve never even visited.
It might seem like a technical compliance issue buried in operational procedures. But in reality, it’s a board-level risk that could result in unlimited fines and up to two years of imprisonment. And frankly, it’s catching out investors who thought they’d neatly delegated these responsibilities away.
The policy backdrop: why accountability became non-negotiable
The principal accountable person regime is part of a wider government push to end what was seen as wilful opacity in UK property ownership structures. The proliferation of unit trusts, special purpose vehicles, and foreign ownership vehicles had created a situation where tracking down who actually owned a building had become genuinely difficult.
Dame Judith Hackitt’s 2018 review, commissioned after the Grenfell Tower fire, was unequivocal: there needed to be “a clear and identifiable dutyholder with responsibility for building safety of the whole building.”
More importantly, she refused to allow this responsibility to be delegated. As she put it: “Accountability must remain with the dutyholder. They cannot pass or delegate their accountability to the building safety manager.”
Dame Judith has since doubled down. In a recent interview with SFG20, she was characteristically direct, stating:
“If you’re the owner, you are responsible and accountable. You can delegate the work, but you can never delegate the accountability… I’m a homeowner, I can bring someone in to do the work, but if they do a poor job, then I’m partly to blame for not having done the proper due diligence.”
Dame Judith Hackitt Chair of the Independent Review of Building Regulations and Fire Safety
Who is the principal accountable person?
The regime was introduced through Section 72 of the Building Safety Act 2022. Every “higher-risk building” (at least 18m in height or with at least seven storeys, and containing at least two residential units) must have one principal accountable person (PAP) – the organisation responsible for maintaining common parts, including the structure and facade.
This is typically a commonhold association, social housing provider, owner, or the party named in the lease for common parts maintenance. Under full repairing and insuring (FRI) leases, the head lessee often becomes the PAP. Although the PAP can appoint third-party support (like a management company), the PAP retains ultimate responsibility.
Who are accountable persons?
Accountable persons (APs) are organisations or individuals who own or have legal repair obligations for common parts: structure; exterior; corridors; lobbies; and staircases. APs include freeholders, landlords, management companies, and right-to-manage companies.
There can be multiple APs for a single building – a freeholder who owns the structure; a head leaseholder with repairing obligations; a residents’ management company maintaining certain common areas. All carry statutory duties and criminal liability.
Where multiple APs exist, one must be designated as the PAP – the AP who owns or has a legal obligation to repair or maintain the structure and exterior of the building. In most cases, this means the freeholder.
The PAP carries additional responsibilities. They must register the building with the Building Safety Regulator; coordinate with other APs; act as a primary point of contact with the regulator; and take the lead on safety case reports and Building Assessment Certificates.
And if they fail to meet their duty, the consequences get very serious. Breaches attract criminal prosecution, with unlimited fines and up to two years’ imprisonment. Company directors can be personally liable if offences occur through their consent, connivance, or neglect. We are not talking about regulatory slaps on the wrist.
“Despite Dame Judith’s clarity, I’m still regularly asked whether these responsibilities can be outsourced to managing agents or building safety managers. The answer is no.”
Amy Farr Partner, Head of Building Safety & Construction Compliance, Workman
The delegation myth
You can’t pass the PAP role to your managing agent.
If you’re the freeholder, you’re the PAP – and that comes with the heaviest regulatory burden and the most direct line to criminal liability.
Legal accountability follows ownership and control, regardless of what your management agreements say.
Where the risk is hiding
They appoint specialist external asset managers to handle day-to-day operations. The structure looks neat on paper. In practice, pension trustees may hold statutory PAP status while having limited ability to discharge those duties. This could also conflict with some funds’ responsible investment strategies. The risk sits with fund members, regardless of management agreements.
Foreign-domiciled high-net-worth individuals present different challenges. The Building Safety Regulator doesn’t distinguish between UK and overseas owners. If you’re a non-UK domiciled individual who owns UK residential property as part of private wealth planning, you may be a PAP under UK law. The distance between owner and asset creates obvious practical difficulties for oversight, but it doesn’t reduce legal liability.
Retail-focused investment managers face perhaps the most unexpected exposure, as the definition of a higher-risk building is broader than many realise. A retail scheme with residential accommodation above it – even just a couple of high-rise flats over shops – can trigger PAP status.
Investors with no deliberate residential mandate suddenly find themselves legally responsible for residential safety outcomes, often within complex mixed-use schemes where maintaining oversight is logistically challenging.
What this means in practice
This isn’t a problem you can audit away once and forget about. Building safety is an ongoing responsibility, requiring continuous assessment, reporting, and management. For investors holding residential assets indirectly or as a secondary component of diversified portfolios, this demands a fundamental shift in governance.
PAP status should be treated as a board-level private markets risk. It requires proactive identification across the portfolio, appropriate governance frameworks, and clear disclosure to underlying investors or beneficiaries. The idea that these duties can be buried in operational management agreements needs to be abandoned.
For investors structuring new acquisitions, PAP liability should be considered during due diligence, alongside more familiar concerns about yields and valuations. For those already holding relevant assets, a systematic review of where PAP status may have been inadvertently assumed is overdue.
The Building Safety Act represents a deliberate policy choice to push accountability to the top of ownership structures. For investors in UK residential property, that means exposure to criminal liability that cannot be contracted away. Understanding whether you’re a PAP is a fundamental question about the nature of the risk you’re actually holding.
This article originally appeared in Green Street News.
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