What schools need to know about new Building Regulations

Schools must comply with the new Building Regulations, ensuring all design and build projects meet legal duties and competence requirements for safety and compliance.

As Tracey Field highlights in her work on education estate management and leadership, understanding these obligations is essential for academies and trusts planning refurbishment, maintenance or new construction projects.

Why were the Building Regulations updated?

The Building Regulations have been revised following the Grenfell Tower tragedy in 2017, which led to significant reforms to the UK’s building safety laws, including the Building Safety Act 2022. As part of these changes, the Building Regulations 2010 have been updated.

To summarise, the Regulations set out key legal duties and competence requirements for all parties involved in design and building work. For schools, this means understanding your accountability for regulatory compliance across your school estates programme – including refurbishment, maintenance and minor works – and ensuring the right people with the right competence are appointed and properly managed.

Schools as the client: your legal duties

As the client, a school (or responsible body such as a trust, governing body or local authority) must put in place suitable arrangements to plan, manage and monitor design and construction works so that, on completion, all work complies with the Building Regulations.

This requires:

• Allocating sufficient time and resources
• Setting and maintaining systems for compliance
• Providing complete and timely building information to all designers and contractors
• Ensuring effective co-operation across the project team.

Where more than one designer or contractor is engaged, you must appoint in writing:

• A principal designer to co-ordinate the design work
• A principal contractor to control the building work.

Appointees must be demonstrably competent and you should keep written records of the steps taken to verify competence. You may appoint an organisation to these roles, but legal responsibility remains with the client, which must designate a competent individual to perform the functions.

What to expect from your duty holders

Designers must not start work unless satisfied you, as the client, understand your legal duties. They must plan, manage and monitor design to ensure that, if built, it will comply with the Regulations. The principal designer co-ordinates design compliance, monitors designers’ performance and collaborates closely with the principal contractor.

Contractors must not start work unless satisfied you understand your duties and must ensure their work – and that of those they manage – complies with the Regulations. The principal contractor plans, manages and monitors all site work for compliance, never accepts non-compliant work and co-ordinates all contractors.

Competence and organisational capability

Individuals must have the skills, knowledge, experience and behaviours to do the work; organisations must have policies, procedures, systems and resources to ensure compliance. If competence or capability changes, or serious sanctions arise, the appointee must promptly inform the appointing party.

Publicly Available Specifications PAS 8671 (principal designers) and PAS 8672 (principal contractors) provide recognised benchmarks for assessing competence, although compliance with PAS alone does not guarantee legal compliance.

How do Building Regulations interact with CDM Regulations?

Tracey Field also highlights the importance of schools ensuring compliance with the separate Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2025. While separate, the principles and duties as they apply to clients, designers and contractors under the CDM Regulations mirror those in the new Building Regulations.

While there are comparable descriptions, it’s important to remember that the two regulatory regimes have differences. The principal designer and principal contractor roles under the Building Regulations focus on regulatory design and build compliance. The parallel roles under the CDM Regulations focus on health and safety. The same organisation or individual may hold both sets of roles if appropriately competent, but this must be confirmed in writing. Where roles differ, duty holders must collaborate and share relevant information.

Practical implications for schools

In practice, schools should:

• Plan early
• Appoint competent principal duty holders in writing
• Document competence checks
• Provide comprehensive building information
• Allow sufficient time and budget for compliance
• Maintain clear records throughout.

Tracey Field’s book, Leading & Managing an Education Estate – A Practical Guide, has recently been published.