For a while, the Building Safety Bill required every high-rise residential building to have a building safety manager. That requirement was removed before the Act became law. Here's what happened to the role, who holds those duties now, and where a managing agent fits, summarised from GOV.UK guidance.
Before you rely on this: it's a plain-English summary of GOV.UK and Building Safety Regulator guidance as it stood in October 2026, and it applies to England. It isn't legal advice. The official pages are listed at the end, and they're the ones to check.
The building safety manager at a glance
| Question | In short |
|---|---|
| Is a building safety manager legally required? | No. The legal duty to appoint one was removed from the Building Safety Bill in 2022 |
| Who holds the duties instead? | The accountable persons for the building, led by the principal accountable person |
| Can they get help? | Yes. They can employ an organisation or individual, such as a managing agent, to carry out duties for them |
| Can they hand over the legal responsibility? | No. The accountability and liability stay with the accountable persons |
| Which buildings? | Occupied high-rise residential buildings: at least 7 storeys or 18 metres high, with at least 2 residential units |
| Where it applies | England |
What happened to the role
Earlier drafts of the Building Safety Bill required accountable persons to appoint a building safety manager to run the day-to-day management of a high-rise residential building's safety. In 2022 the government changed course. Its accountable persons factsheet said that recent amendments to the Bill "have removed the legal duty to appoint a Building Safety Manager", and that accountable persons "must determine how best to meet the duties placed on them and what arrangement they require".
That factsheet has since been withdrawn, because the Bill became the Building Safety Act 2022 and newer guidance replaced it. The point it made still stands: there is no statutory building safety manager role. You'll still see the title in job adverts, where organisations use it for a job, but it isn't a role the Act requires. For the wider picture, there's a plain-English summary of the Building Safety Act.
Who holds the duties now
The duties sit with the accountable persons. An accountable person is the organisation or individual that owns the common parts of the building, or has a legal obligation to repair them. Every building has one principal accountable person (PAP), who leads. The role itself is explained in full in the accountable person under the Building Safety Act.
The Building Safety Regulator's guidance says accountable persons must:
- report safety occurrences to the Building Safety Regulator, on the mandatory occurrence reporting system operated by the PAP
- carry out duties relating to the resident engagement strategy
- keep certain information about the building, known as the golden thread of information
- provide building information to the people and organisations entitled to it.
The principal accountable person must also, among other things:
- prepare and update the building's safety case report
- operate a mandatory occurrence reporting system and a complaints system
- display required information clearly within the building
- prepare and update a resident engagement strategy
- apply for a building assessment certificate when the regulator says to
- check that every accountable person has identified and assessed the fire and structural risks in their parts of the building, taken steps to prevent incidents, and put measures in place to lessen the severity of any incident.
Where a managing agent fits
The guidance is direct about this. Accountable persons and the principal accountable person "can employ an organisation or individual, like a managing agent, to carry out duties on their behalf". But they "cannot delegate their legal obligations to others": the accountability for making sure the duties are carried out, and the liability for the building's safety, stay with them.
In practice, that means much of what a building safety manager would have done is now done by managing agents and in-house teams, under the accountable person's oversight. If you're the managing agent, the duties you carry out belong to your client, and it's worth agreeing in writing exactly which ones you hold.
The competence requirement
The guidance also says accountable persons and principal accountable persons "must either have the relevant competence or appoint someone with the relevant competence". For individuals, that means the appropriate skills, knowledge, experience and behaviours to carry out their duties. For organisations, it means the right organisational capability. So while no one has to hold the title of building safety manager, someone competent does have to do the work.
Where Building Search fits
A lot of these duties come down to finding information quickly: the last fire door check, what a survey found, when a system was serviced. Building Search makes a building's documents searchable and answers a plain question with the document and exact page each answer came from. It doesn't carry out any duty for you, and it doesn't make anyone compliant. It makes the information you already hold quicker to find and check. There's an interactive demo with fictional sample data. For keeping the files themselves in order, see building records management.
Looking after several buildings' files? I'll send you a free one-page plan showing what a search page for one of your buildings would look like and what it would cost. See how Building Search works.
Questions people actually ask
Is a building safety manager a legal requirement?
No. The legal duty to appoint a building safety manager was removed from the Building Safety Bill in 2022, before it became the Building Safety Act. The duties sit with the accountable persons for the building instead.
Who replaced the building safety manager?
No one replaced the role directly. The accountable persons, led by the principal accountable person, hold the duties, and they decide how to meet them. They can employ a managing agent or another competent person to carry out duties, but the legal responsibility stays with them.
What are the duties of an accountable person?
They include reporting safety occurrences, carrying out duties under the resident engagement strategy, keeping the golden thread of information and providing building information to those entitled to it. The principal accountable person also prepares the safety case report and runs the mandatory occurrence reporting and complaints systems.
Can a managing agent be the accountable person?
A managing agent can carry out duties for the accountable person, but the accountable person keeps the legal responsibility. A management company that a lease requires to repair the common parts is itself the accountable person for those parts.
Official guidance
- Safety in high-rise residential buildings: accountable persons (Building Safety Regulator, GOV.UK)
- Accountable persons factsheet (withdrawn July 2022) (GOV.UK)
- The Building Safety Act (GOV.UK)
