Part 4: Higher-risk buildings Meaning of "building safety risk" Section 62: Meaning of "building safety risk" Effect
The new regulatory regime will regulate "building safety risks" in higher-risk buildings. These are the risks that the Accountable Person will manage in occupation, via the safety case, in order to prevent an incident involving these risks.
	This section defines those "building safety risks" as risks to the safety of persons in or about buildings with regards to risks arising from the building resulting from the occurrence of: fire spread, structural failure, and any other risk that may be prescribed by regulations in the future.
	This section is drafted using fire spread as the intention is that the fire must have spread from one part of the building to another in order to be considered a building safety risk. For example, this includes a fire spreading from one compartment to another within the building or from inside the building to the outside of the building. The intention is not to capture a fire spreading within a compartment.
	The intention behind the term structural failure as a building safety risk is to capture when the structural integrity of the building fails in doing so poses a risk to the safety of people. This is likely to manifest as part or all of the building collapsing.
	This section is drafted to capture risks inside and outside the building such as fire spreading on the external wall of a building but is limited to risks that are associated with the building and/or arising from the building itself. Risks are also limited to those affecting people in and about buildings.
	This section provides a power for the Secretary of State to define, in regulations, new "building safety risks" which, once prescribed, would then need to be regulated in higher-risk buildings. This section will therefore allow the future scope of the regulatory regime to remain flexible should evidence emerge, for example, that another risk arising from a building has the potential to cause a major incident (serious injury or death to a significant number of people).
	The power to prescribe a new building safety risk will be by regulations subject to the affirmative procedure in both Houses of Parliament. Before making any regulations prescribing new building safety risks, the Secretary of State must consult with the Building Safety Regulator. The Secretary of State must also consult any persons that they consider appropriate.
	In addition to the requirement to consult in this section, the Secretary of State can ask the Building Regulator to advise them as to whether a particular new building safety risk should be prescribed and the Building Safety Regulator is obliged to provide such advice on request (section 64). Alternatively, the Building Safety Regulator may proactively recommend to the Secretary of State to specify a new building safety risk (section 63).
	In prescribing a new building safety risk, if the Secretary of State is giving effect to regulatory advice or recommendation the requirement to consult the Building Safety Regulator is switched off, although the Secretary of State still must consult such other persons as they consider appropriate.
	Schedule 5 will support this function of the Building Safety Regulator and requires the Building Safety Regulator to keep the safety of people in and about buildings in relation to risks arising from buildings under review.
	Once prescribed, the Secretary of State will have the power, by regulations, to remove a prescribed risk from the definition of building safety risks. This power will apply only to prescribed risks and not to the risks expressly set out on the face of the Act: fire spread and structural failure – these will remain at the heart of the building safety regime.