Building safety
Changes you need to know about
Our customers’ safety is incredibly important to us, and you might know that recently, there have been some updates to the building safety regulations that landlords like Stonewater have to follow in order to make sure customers are safe in their homes.
The new legislation is called the Building Safety Act 2022 and was written by the Regulator of Social Housing to ensure social housing customers live in safe, high-quality homes.
One of the new regulations asks us to make sure customers have a voice when it comes to the safety of their buildings. It asks us to work with customers who live in buildings at least seven floors or at least 18 metres in height, to involve them in our decision making and work with them to decide the best ways to communicate with customers about important safety information.
If this applies to the building where you live, we’ve already been in touch with you. We‘ve consulted all customers living in those buildings, and formed a customer building safety panel of six customers. Since August they’ve been helping us by sharing their views about safety in their communities.
If you live in a house or a building that doesn’t meet the above criteria, the group will still benefit you, as they’ll help us to improve the safety information we provide to all customers, including signs and notices on what to do in the event of a fire, our webpages and letters we might need to send you about safety checks.
What we need from you
Under the new legislation, it’s really important that you help us to keep your building safe. This includes:
- Allowing us in your home for remedial, testing and maintenance activities such as your annual gas safety check.
- Not damaging or tampering with fire safety systems designed to keep the building safe
- Understanding your evacuation procedure and how to contact the fire service if there's an emergency
- Making sure you understand the importance of fire doors in preventing the spread of fire and smoke. These are vital to your evacuation procedure and can save lives
We’re doing some work to improve the information we provide you about safety features in your home, including things like fire doors. Keep an eye out on the recently updated Health and Safety at Home section of our website and future issues of Here to Help for useful information.