Which roles are considered dutyholders under the Building Safety Act 2022?

• A. Principal Contractor and Principal Designer
• B. Site Labourer and Contractor
• C. Architect and Engineer only
• D. Tenants and Leaseholders only

Answer: (A)

The Building Safety Act 2022 creates explicit duties for people who have to manage building safety across its life cycle. These “dutyholders” are the individuals or roles responsible for making safety decisions during design and construction and for ensuring safe handover and ongoing safety management.

The principal designer and the principal contractor are named as dutyholders because they oversee safety throughout the design and construction phases. The principal designer coordinates design choices to control safety risks and to ensure safe information flows between designers, the client, and construction teams. The principal contractor takes the lead on construction, planning and carrying out work in a way that minimizes hazards, coordinating various trades and ensuring proper handover of safety information to whoever will manage the building after completion. Together, they generate and transfer the necessary safety information—the “golden thread”—to the accountable person responsible for ongoing safety management.

Other roles like a site labourer, a general contractor, architects and engineers, or tenants and leaseholders are not designated as dutyholders under the Building Safety Act in the same way. They may contribute to safety, but the Act specifically assigns the principal designer and principal contractor as dutyholders due to their pivotal responsibilities in design and construction.