Your Expert Guide to Preparing Building Safety Case Reports

Preparing a Building Safety Case Report can feel overwhelming, especially with the detailed requirements set out under the Building Safety Act 2022. For many Principal Accountable Persons, the difficulty lies not just in understanding what’s needed, but in pulling together the right information and presenting it clearly.

This guide is here to make that process more straightforward. It breaks down what a Safety Case Report involves, what the regulator expects, and how to approach it in a practical, step-by-step way. Whether you’re starting from scratch or reviewing what you already have, the aim is to help you move forward with confidence.

A Safety Case Report (SCR) serves as a critical document for high-rise buildings, offering a comprehensive overview of their safety measures. It is a mandatory report that identifies potential fire and structural risks, and outlines the strategies in place to manage and mitigate these risks. Essentially, it provides a detailed snapshot of the buildings safety case.

The SCR plays a crucial role in demonstrating compliance with the Building Safety Act 2022, ensuring that any risks identified by the Building Safety Regulator are acknowledged and effectively controlled.

The Building Safety Act mandates that all high-rise residential (HRB) buildings should have a safety case report. An HRB is defined as a residential building over 18 meters in height or having at least 7 storeys and two or more residential units.

The Principal Accountable Person (PAP) is responsible for compiling and submitting this report, which involves gathering comprehensive building information, commissioning necessary risk assessments, and ensuring the report accurately reflects current safety measures. This report is a crucial component of the Golden Thread of Information. To meet ongoing legal obligations, safety case reports must be kept up to date. As the BSR intends to reissue BAC invitations every 5 years, regular updates will streamline future submissions.

The submission of a safety case report to the BSR is required when the PAP receives an official invitation. Following this invitation, the PAP has a 28-day period to submit their BAC application, which includes the safety case report. The BSR also issues a final notification with a 6-day submission warning. To provide preparation time, the BSR issues an initial notice letter to the PAP stating that they could be called at any time within the next 3 months to submit.

Although a SCR submission is not required until the BSR invites PAPs to do so, the requirement to assess, manage and mitigate building safety risks is an ongoing requirement. Under Part 4 of The Building Safety Act, PAPs have an ongoing duty to manage building safety risks. The safety case regime plays a critical role in driving that continuous risk management.

A Building Assessment Certificate (BAC) is an official document confirming that a high-rise residential building meets the safety standards of the Building Safety Act 2022. It is a legal requirement for higher-risk buildings to obtain a BAC from the Building Safety Regulator (BSR). The BSR assesses the building’s safety through a detailed review of its Safety Case Report, Mandatory Occurrence Reporting system, and Resident Engagement Strategy.

Earlier this year, the BSR published their assessment criteria for which they will be assessing BAC submissions and safety case reports. The assessment criteria consist of 126 individual requirements that BAC applications must meet. A multidisciplinary team, including the BSR regulatory lead, fire assessors, and structural assessors, use these criteria to ensure a comprehensive review. These requirements now demand greater diligence from safety case report authors, requiring adherence to a broader range of compliance standards.

As a leading provider of safety case report assistance, we often get asked for templates and other downloades to help speed up the process of preparing a safety case report.

Currently, there is no official template or a definitive example of a ‘good’ safety case report that you can download. As a new concept, the building safety regulator have already increased their expectations, and recent SCR feedback has indicated the requirement for further detail on some areas.

The BSR has created a Safety Case Toolkit with PDF downloads; however, you will find our concise yet comprehensive guide below to be a much faster aid for preparing your report.

If you book a meeting with us to discuss your safety case report needs, we can share example reports at this meeting.

All building safety case reports must be prepared from the ground up, as they are unique to the building in question, which makes it difficult to provide a full template online. Because of the complexity of the reports and the amount of information required, it wouldn’t be feasible (or helpful) if we created a dummy report of an imaginary building.

Our step-by-step guides below should give you everything you need in order to create your BSCR, and our AI solution ‘BB-SCR’ can help you prepare BSR-compliant reports even faster.

Existing guidance from gov.uk suggests that the Safety Case Report should include:

1. Details of relevant persons
2. Building specifics
3. Risk assessment techniques
4. Risk management strategies
5. Safety systems
6. Evacuation plans
7. Mandatory occurence reporting policy
8. Resident engagement strategy
9. Ongoing works
10. Building improvements

Outline the methods utilised for identifying potential hazards within the building, including comprehensive fire risk assessments, thorough structural surveys to assess integrity, and detailed evaluations of utilities such as gas and electrical systems.

Part of the Safety Case Report involves outlining how specific safety incidents will be reported in accordance with regulatory requirements. This encompasses a structured approach to reporting various incidents, including fires, near misses, and defects in safety systems.

Each reporting category – fire incidents, near misses, and defects in safety systems – requires clear documentation and adherence to regulatory guidelines to uphold building safety standards and ensure resident welfare. Regular reviews and updates to these reporting procedures are necessary to adapt to changing circumstances and continuously improve safety measures.

By addressing these aspects in the Safety Case Report, stakeholders can ensure that planned or ongoing works are managed effectively, minimising disruption to building safety and resident well-being while maintaining compliance with safety regulations and enhancing overall building resilience.

Building the safety case is probably the most important step in writing a safety case report. It’s highly likely that the majority of the information you need to build your safety case already exists. It’s essential to pull together all the key elements of the safety case so that they can be analysed to ensure you have everything you need before starting the safety case report.

One of the most important elements of your safety case will be your building’s risk assessments. These will include the most crucial documents, such as the fire risk assessment, the structural survey, a resident engagement strategy, and one of the many forms of exterior wall assessments or appraisals, such as an FRAEW.

In addition, you’ll need the maintenance and inspection reports for all works undertaken on the building. These prove that you have been maintaining your building according to the legislation or remediating it according to the recommendations found in the various risk assessments. Many of these documents will have their own actions that need to be completed, and it is vital to ensure you include all proof showing that work has either been done, is underway, or has been scheduled.

To ensure that you consistently maintain the safety of your building, you will have various processes that you follow. These processes may be paper-based logbooks, they could be simple spreadsheets, or you may have a software application that ensures everything is scheduled and completed on time via various notifications. Regardless of the method you use, a safety case report will require details of these processes, explaining how you ensure risks are identified and managed. These systems are referred to as safety management systems and should be included in your safety case. It’s common to have several different systems to manage the various parts of the building; details for all of them should be included.

Finally, as with your golden thread of information, the safety case will need to be in a digital format. Ideally, it should be made up of machine-readable PDF documents, not scanned images. This means that if you have a room full of paper documents, it would be worth engaging an optical character recognition (OCR) company soon to convert your documents into machine-readable PDF files. This will not only support the creation of your safety case but also your golden thread of information.

Once you have compiled your digital safety case information, your are now ready to both validate that you have everything you need and review the documents to ensure every action has been taken, is underway, or has been scheduled.

Part 4 Section 83 of the Building Safety Act 2022 states that “An accountable person for an occupied higher-risk building must as soon as reasonably practicable after the relevant time assess the building safety risks as regards the part of the building for which they are responsible.” This is specifically in relation to the safety case report. It is after this that “further such assessments must be made at regular intervals.”

It is therefore important to ensure that all safety case information is both complete for each part of the building and compliant with the various legislations. This is no small task and should not be underestimated.

Unfortunately, it is highly likely that some documentation will be missing. For instance, a resident engagement strategy has not commonly been required to be documented in the past, although many managing agents do routinely engage their residents for feedback. Documenting the way in which this happens, how often, and what methods are used is not typical. The same can be said for many other types of surveys, strategies, and plans, all of which will now be required to be refreshed, compliant, and digitally available to complete a safety case report.

And even the most diligent building manager, with the very best safety management system, will almost certainly still have several pieces of remediation outstanding for all types of reasons. All of these activities will now need to have a timeline for completion documented, or an explanation as to why they have not.

Safety case analysis is a key step in the SCR process.

Once the work to gather all safety case information (step 1) and analyse that information (step 2) has been completed, you can undertake the task of filling the gaps.

With Part 4 Section 84 of the Building Safety Act making it very clear that an accountable person for an occupied higher-risk building must promptly take all reasonable steps to prevent a building safety risk materialising, and to reduce the severity of any incident resulting from such a risk materialising, there is little wriggle room for whether these gaps must be filled or not.

However, with various funding challenges (including Section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985) and leaseholders already fed up with the various service charge increases or one-off charges, the costs of filling the gaps should not be underestimated. In fact, making a provision now for an additional £40k-£60k for this very reason could be prudent.

Having the funds in place is one thing; having someone available to do the work is quite something else. The market has suffered from a lack of competent resources for several years; however, since the registration deadline on 1st October last year passed, demand has increased significantly, with lead times now over 6 weeks in many cases. And once the SCR requests start going out from the Building Safety Regulator in a little under 11 weeks (1st April 2024), there will certainly be another spike in demand.

This is all likely to take quite a toll on the principal accountable person, or more likely, the property manager taking care of all this on their behalf. In either case, delaying will only make things worse. Gathering the information, analysing, and making sure any gaps have been filled should be undertaken as soon as possible, as writing the safety case report itself is also not an easy task and cannot be undertaken without the right information.

Once you have completed the 3 steps above, you can write your safety case report.

As we know, a safety case report is a document that outlines the safety risks associated with high-risk buildings and explains how those risks are being managed and mitigated.

It should provide a condensed overview of the pertinent information and supporting evidence (the safety case) required to effectively manage the risks associated with fire spread and structural safety within a building. Principal accountable persons (PAPs) will have a duty to apply for a building assessment certificate for their buildings when directed to do so by the Building Safety Regulator (BSR), by submitting their safety case report within 28 days of the request. So careful thought will need to go into the design and format of the document template to ensure it provides all the necessary information in a format easily understood by both technical and non-technical readers.

1. 1.  A building description.
   2.  A summary of the risk assessment techniques used throughout the building and the significant findings of those assessments.
   3.  Details of how the risks are being managed.
   4.  An outline of the safety management systems used to manage building safety risks.
   5.  What the evacuation strategy is and how it aligns with the building’s design and safety features.
   6.  Information on any ongoing work and building improvements
   7.  Details of all accountable and responsible persons, plus those who wrote the SCR, outlining what makes them competent to do so.

The safety case report report must be reviewed and updated at least every five years, or more frequently if there are any changes to the building, its use, or its safety status. Meaning you should expect to update the SCR several times a year if works are undertaken to improve the building in any way.

As the PAP, you are required to inform the BSR within 14 days of any changes to the building summary, the accountable persons, or the parts of the building for which they are responsible for. Whereas any changes to the building’s structure or fire safety information must be communicated within 28 days.

Under the Building Safety Act 2022, failing to submit a safety case report can have significant consequences. Failing to submit a report, submitting it late, or knowingly submitting a false or misleading report is a criminal offence. This can lead to prosecution and a fine of up to £5,000. The BSR can also impose civil penalties, potentially reaching £10,000 per day; plus, the BSR can issue enforcement notices requiring compliance with the Building Safety Act, including taking specific actions to improve building safety. Failure to comply with an enforcement notice is itself a criminal offence. And in extreme cases, if the BSR believes there is a significant risk of harm to residents, they can apply to the First-tier Tribunal for a special measures order. This order would allow the BSR to appoint a special measures manager to take over building safety duties.

A poor quality SCR can also lead to some of these consequences, as it may not adequately identify and manage safety risks. The BSR may reject a poor-quality report and require the PAP to submit a revised version.

It’s also worth noting that without a compliant safety case report, the building cannot obtain a building assessment certificate, which is required for selling or leasing flats in the building. This can have significant financial implications for the PAP or property owner.

It is highly likely that the task of writing your safety case report will be outsourced to a competent person or company, given the complex requirements needed. Such as knowledge of building elements, materials, systems, and construction processes relevant to fire safety and structural integrity. An understanding of fire risk assessment, fire safety strategies, and fire protection systems, as well as structural loads, analysis, and design, particularly in relation to fire scenarios.

All this within the framework of legal and regulatory knowledge of the Building Safety Act 2022, Fire Safety Order 2005 and many other relevant legislation and guidance.

Given the very complex requirements of a safety case report and the legislative obligations for the principal accountable persons, Black Boots felt there must be a way of de-risking the process and making it much more efficient. With this in mind, Black Boots – Safety Case Reporting (BB-SCR) was created.

BB-SCR is an Ai tool that empowers PAPs or their agents to upload safety case information, obtain an initial assessment of that information, and, if complete, receive a robust, compliant, and easy to understand draft safety case report in an editable Microsoft Word format in just minutes.

BB-SCR’s initial assessment provides the guidance you need to either find the missing information or create it (via your partners or using your own team). You can then re-run this assessment as many times as needed until you create a compliant safety case report.

• BB-SCR assists you in understanding what is needed for a compliant safety case.
• BB-SCR reduces the time and effort taken to create a draft safety case report (from many days to just minutes)
• BB-SCR provides the assurance that your safety case is always available and can be re-run whenever it is needed by the BSR, stakeholders, or residents.

For the thousands of existing higher-risk buildings (HRB) in England, the new stringent regulatory regime from the BSR is going to mean significantly more work and cost in the coming months and years. However, this will hopefully deliver the lasting change required to transform the built environment and enable residents to be safe and feel safe in their homes.

Last Updated: 30th March 2026