Building Safety Act 2022, UK wide
Golden Thread and Building Safety Information
Most buildings do not fail their safety duties for want of good intent. They fail because nobody can find the fire strategy, the compartmentation drawings or the record of what changed in 2014. AL23 Safety builds and populates the golden thread so your building safety information is usable on the day it is needed, for clients UK wide.
What is the golden thread?
Information that survives the people who created it
The golden thread is the building safety information that must be created, kept and passed on for a higher-risk building through design, construction and occupation. It is not a document. It is the whole set of information about the building and the way it is managed, held so that whoever holds a duty tomorrow understands the building as well as those who built it.
The Building Safety Act 2022 sets a five part test. The information must be electronic, structured, accurate, accessible and secure. Electronic rules out the box of paper in the plant room. Structured means a specific fact can be retrieved, not a shared drive with 40,000 unnamed files. Accurate means it reflects the building as it stands today rather than as designed. Accessible means the people who need it can reach it. Secure means protection against loss and against inappropriate release.
Being honest about scope, the duty in this statutory form attaches to higher-risk buildings. Owners of buildings below that threshold have no equivalent duty. The discipline still pays for itself. Section 156 of the same Act has already extended recording duties to every responsible person under the Fire Safety Order regardless of building size.
Who needs one
Who holds the duty and at what point
Clients, principal designers and principal contractors
on higher-risk building projects, from the start of design through construction.
Accountable persons and principal accountable persons
for occupied higher-risk buildings, meaning at least 18 metres in height or at least 7 storeys with at least two residential units, in England.
Anyone taking on a building
The golden thread must be handed over on a change of dutyholder or accountable person. Buying, selling or transferring management is the moment the gaps become visible.
Responsible persons under the Fire Safety Order
, who since 1 October 2023 must record the fire risk assessment in full and hand fire safety information to the incoming responsible person on departure.
Owners of buildings below the threshold
who want a single defensible record. There is no statutory golden thread duty here. There is still a duty to maintain fire safety measures and to evidence that you have.
The regulations that apply
Your legal framework, in plain terms
The Building Safety Act 2022 is the parent statute. Information duties for occupied higher-risk buildings sit in the Higher-Risk Buildings (Keeping and Provision of Information etc.) (England) Regulations 2024. The design and construction side sits in the Building (Higher-Risk Buildings Procedures) (England) Regulations 2023 and in regulations 11A to 11Q of the Building Regulations 2010. Alongside them the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, as amended by section 156, sets recording and handover duties for every responsible person.
Create and maintain
The information must be kept current through design, construction and occupation rather than assembled at handover.
Hand over
On a change of dutyholder or accountable person the information must be transferred, complete and in a usable form.
Mandatory occurrence reporting
The principal designer and principal contractor hold the duty during design and construction. The principal accountable person holds it in occupation.
Record the fire risk assessment in full
Since 1 October 2023 this applies to every responsible person whatever the size of the premises, together with that person's name and UK address and the identity of anyone engaged to carry out the assessment.
Co-operate and share
Where more than one responsible or accountable person exists, each must identify the others and share what they need.
Mandatory occurrence reporting
A two stage clock that starts without warning
Mandatory occurrence reporting is the part of the regime most often missing when we arrive. A reportable occurrence is a structural failure or fire spread incident that has caused or is likely to cause death or serious injury to a significant number of people. The risk of such an incident is reportable in the same way.
The mechanics are easy to miss. Notice must go to the Building Safety Regulator as soon as possible. A full report must follow within 10 calendar days. Ten calendar days is not ten working days. The system, the decision maker and the template therefore have to exist before the occurrence. We set them up and train the people who will spot it. The ten days are then spent investigating rather than drafting.
What the service covers
From an audit to a thread that stays current
- An information audit of what exists today, where it lives, who controls it and whether it is current, presented as a register rather than an opinion.
- A structured golden thread index built around the building rather than around the folders a previous consultant happened to use.
- Gap closure through targeted survey work covering compartmentation, fire doors, external wall construction and structural records where drawings are missing.
- Digitisation and naming conventions so that a fire door schedule can be found by anyone in under a minute.
- Access control that satisfies the secure limb of the test without making the information unusable.
- A mandatory occurrence reporting procedure with named roles, a decision test, the notification route and a report template built for the 10 day deadline.
- Handover packs for a change of dutyholder or accountable person, with a completeness certificate and an outstanding items list.
- Alignment with the building safety case report so that evidence cited in the safety case resolves to a document in the thread.
- Alignment with the construction record through our Gateway 2 and Gateway 3 support where the building is being built.
- Maintenance arrangements, including who updates the thread after each fire door check, remedial work or alteration.
Our process
Find it, structure it, then keep it alive
- 01
Discovery
We interview the people who hold information, look at the systems in use and produce a written inventory of what exists.
- 02
Structure
We agree the index, the naming convention and the access model, then set the thread up to fit the building and the way you manage it.
- 03
Population and gap closure
We migrate what exists, commission survey work for what does not and record the provenance of every item.
- 04
Systems and procedures
We write the update, handover and mandatory occurrence reporting procedures, then brief the people who have to use them.
- 05
Assurance
We review the thread against the five part test and issue a statement of position with any residual gaps named.
What you get
Information you could hand over tomorrow
- A building information register listing every item, its location, its owner and its currency.
- A structured golden thread index, populated and searchable, with a documented naming convention.
- A gap report naming what is missing, what it would take to recover and the interim mitigation.
- A mandatory occurrence reporting procedure with roles, thresholds, notification routes and a 10 day report template.
- A handover pack template for change of dutyholder or accountable person, with a completeness checklist.
- An assurance statement setting out where the thread meets the statutory test and where it does not yet.
What we need from you
Access, names and a little time
- Existing drawings, specifications, operation and maintenance manuals and any building control records.
- The accountable persons, the principal accountable person and the building's registration details.
- Existing fire risk assessments, survey reports and remedial work records, including works by others.
- Access to your document management system and to whoever administers it.
- Time with the building manager, who usually knows more than the paperwork does.
Why AL23 Safety
Records built by the people who survey the building
Practical, not just compliant
We build a thread the building manager will actually use. An unusable archive satisfies nobody, least of all a regulator asking a question at short notice.
Accountable
Where information cannot be recovered we say so in writing and propose a survey or a stated assumption rather than leaving a hole in the record.
One team, three disciplines
Fire safety, fire engineering and health and safety in-house. The survey work that closes the gaps is done by us, not brokered out.
UK wide
We support building owners, managers and project teams across the UK from our Manchester base.
Find out what you actually hold
The audit is usually the cheapest part and the most revealing
Most clients are surprised in both directions. Something assumed lost turns out to exist. Something assumed to be on file has never been produced.
Common questions
Answers, up front
Cannot see your question? Get in touch and we will answer it directly.
Contact usThe statutory duty applies to higher-risk buildings. Below that threshold there is no equivalent duty. Section 156 of the Building Safety Act 2022 still requires every responsible person to record the fire risk assessment in full and hand fire safety information over on departure.
None in particular. The law sets an outcome test rather than a product list. The information must be electronic, structured, accurate, accessible and secure. We have built compliant threads on document management platforms clients already own. A specialist system is a choice, not a requirement.
Notice must reach the Building Safety Regulator as soon as possible after the occurrence is identified. The full report must follow within 10 calendar days. The clock is short, which is why the value lies in having the procedure and template ready in advance.
Insist on the golden thread transferring in full, with a completeness statement and a named list of anything missing. The handover duty on a change of accountable person is a legal one. Accepting an incomplete transfer does not remove your obligation. It makes the gap your problem.
The safety case report is the argument. The golden thread is the evidence behind it. A safety case report citing information the thread cannot produce will not withstand scrutiny, which is why we build the two together where a client needs both.
Cost follows the size and age of the building, how much usable information already exists and how much survey work is needed to close gaps. An audit on a single block is short. A portfolio with poor records is a programme. Call us and we will scope the audit first so that you can decide on the rest with real numbers.
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