The Government consulted on its proposals to implement this recommendation in its Fire Safety Consultation (carried out in 2020). The Government responded to the consultation last year (link).

In the last thematic update (published in May 2022), we reported that the Government had intended at the time to lay regulations under article 24 of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 later that year to implement this recommendation. Ahead of laying these regulations, Section 1 and 3 of the Fire Safety Act 2021 had to be commenced, which happened on 16 May 2022.

Commencement of the Act allowed the Government to lay The Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 (available on legislation.gov.uk). The regulations were laid on 18 May 2022 but will not come into force until 23 January 2023 in order to allow responsible persons, FRSs and anyone else affected by them time to prepare and for supporting guidance to be published in advance.

Under the Regulations, the responsible person for all multi-occupied residential buildings must, regardless of height, provide their residents on an annual basis with relevant fire safety instructions. These instructions must be comprehensible to all residents and give residents instructions on how to report a fire, instructions related to the building’s evacuation strategy and any other instruction that tells residents what they must do when a fire has occurred. 

Furthermore, it is worth noting that while Regulation 9 in the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 delivers the Government response to this recommendation in full, we will build on this through a provision in Clause 156 of the Building Safety Act 2022 that will require responsible persons in buildings that contain two or more sets of domestic premises to provide residents with relevant and comprehensible fire safety information. This will include things such as the fire risk assessment and the preventative and protective measures that are put in place to mitigate potential fire risks.