Building Safety Regulator: giving us structure and safety information (key building information)

Published 17 May 2023

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This guidance is for a principal accountable person, or someone authorised to act on their behalf who needs to register a high-rise residential building.

When applying to register a high-rise residential building with the Building Safety Regulator, we’ll ask you for some information about the building's structure and fire safety (also known as key building information). If there's more than one structure in the building, we’ll ask you for this information for each structure.

You should take all reasonable steps to find this information.

Principal accountable persons must show that they understand the buildings they’re accountable for. The information you give will help you when you start to assess the building's risks as part of your safety case.

You should be able to get the information we need from the most recent fire risk assessment. If there's an external wall system (EWS) appraisal, the information might also be there. So you should not need to do a full separate survey.

At this stage, we do not need to know about planned changes or improvements. We need you to tell us about the building as it is now – or at the most recent survey.

We’ll ask you about the evacuation strategy for the residential areas. This could be phased, progressive horizontal, simultaneous, stay put or temporary simultaneous. We do not need to know how you evacuate any non-residential parts.

We need to know about fire and smoke control equipment in the residential units. This includes heat or smoke detectors, and sprinklers or misters.

We need to know about fire and control equipment in the parts of the building shared by all residents. This includes alarms, dry or wet risers, smoke control systems, smoke detectors, and sprinklers or misters. We also need to know where these are.

We also need to know if the building has any of these types of lift:

Evacuation lifts have structural, electrical and fire protection. They’re used to evacuate people with a disability or extra needs

Firefighters lifts have protection, controls and signals for firefighters to control it. The 2003 British Standard classifies these lifts.

Fire-fighting lifts are like firefighters lifts but less stringent. The 1986 British Standard classifies these lifts.

Modernised lifts for fire service use are normally used for passengers. But they have basic extra protection, controls and signals for firefighters to use.

Firemen's lifts were installed before fire-fighting lift standards were available. They have no complex lift controls or protection measures for firefighters to use.

We need to know the certified fire resistance of your fire doors. We’ll ask you tell us about:

You need to tell us how many of each door has certified fire resistance for 30, 60 or 120 minutes. You’ll also need to tell us about fire doors where you do not know the fire resistance, like notional fire doors.

We need to know about:

On-site generation includes air source heat pumps, biomass boilers, or solar panels.

Energy supply includes district heating, mains electricity or gas supply, or oil.

We need to know about the structure of the building. It could be any of these types:

We need to know:

We need you to count:

We need to know what materials are visible on the outside of the walls. We also need you to estimate what percentage of each is visible. For example, concrete might cover 70% while glass might cover the remaining 30%.

To estimate the percentages, start by calculating the surface area of the structure. Then calculate the surface area of the windows and any glass on balcony doors. This helps you to calculate the percentage covered by glass. Then you can estimate the remaining percentages of the other materials.

If there's aluminium composite material (ACM) or high-pressure laminate (HPL), we need to know if it:

A2-s1, d0 is set out in British Standard BS EN 13501-1. This classifies building materials based on their reaction to fire. BS8414 is the British Standard for tests that assess the fire safety of cladding applied to the outside of buildings.

We need to know:

Features on the roof include communal recreation areas, phone masts or roof lights. On the outside walls, there might be advertising hoardings, balconies or staircases. There might be communal walkways between structures or escape routes onto the roof.

We also need to know if the building has machinery in an outbuilding, on the roof or in a room on the roof. Machinery could be for heating, ventilation or energy generation.

We will not ask for the materials used in advertising hoardings, communal recreation areas, machinery on the roof, or phone masts.

We need to know the primary use of the building. The primary use is the area that takes up the most floor space above ground level. If there's a secondary use, we need to know about that too.

If there are any floors below ground level, we need to know how many there are and what they’re used for.

If the building had a different primary use in the past, we need to know what it was used for. For example, an office or factory could have been converted into residential units. And if you know it, we’d like to know when the use changed.

For building use, we use the same list of options throughout the application:

Assembly and recreation means any place of assembly, entertainment or recreation. For example, this might be a bingo hall, theatre, dance school, gym or public library.

Residential institutions include prisons, hospitals or boarding schools. They could also be care, residential or nursing homes.

We’ll ask you about any of the following building works, even if there has only been a change to part of the building:

We’ll also ask about the installation, replacement or removal of:

There may have been other building works. But we do not want to know about those.

We’ll also ask which was the most recent work and what year it was completed.

You might not know about all previous building works. But you should try to find the information, for example from the building's records.

We need to know about connections: