The Building Safety Act 2022 (‘BSA’) has fundamentally rewired the risk allocation landscape in the UK construction and real estate sectors. Recent TCC judgments demonstrate an aggressive judicial approach to enforcing BSA liabilities, ensuring that complex corporate structures and Special Purpose Vehicle (‘SPV’) insolvencies will no longer protect associated companies from historical defect claims.

This article examines the interplay between the BSA and existing legislation, the practical application of the “twin regimes” for redress and remediation, and the increasingly powerful role of adjudication in securing Building Liability Orders (‘BLOs’).

BSA & Defective Premises Act 1972 (‘DPA’)

The BSA serves as a remedial vehicle that significantly expands the reach, duration, and enforceability of the duties originally established under the DPA. These two fundamental pieces of construction legislation interface in three critical ways:

Section 130 – Building Liability Orders: Although the BSA encompasses DPA claims, it maintains a distinction between the “fitness for habitation” and the “building safety risk” standard. This means a BLO can be granted not only for direct fire or structural risks but for any defect rendering a dwelling unfit for habitation under the DPA. This is discussed further below.

Section 135 – Limitation Periods: As confirmed in BDW Trading Ltd v URS Corporation Ltd [2025] UKSC 21, one of the most significant aspects of the BSA is the extension of limitation periods for claims under the DPA. Prior to the BSA, contractors often possessed a complete limitation defence under the Limitation Act 1980 for claims brought under the DPA once six years had elapsed since practical completion. However, Section 135 of the BSA inserted a new Section 4B into the Limitation Act: For works completed before 28 June 2022, the limitation period is 30 years and for works completed after 28 June 2022, the limitation period is 15 years.

Section 134 – Duties relating to Work to Dwellings: There is a caveat to limitation periods where existing dwellings are concerned. Prior to the enactment of the BSA, work on existing dwellings not constituting a conversion or enlargement, were often excluded from the DPA’s statutory protections. To remedy this, the BSA inserted Section 2A into the DPA. However, unlike Section 1 for new dwellings, Section 2A for existing dwellings only carries the 15-year prospective limitation period.

Remediation Orders (‘ROs’) & Remediation Contribution Orders (‘RCOs’)

As defined in Triathlon Homes LLP v Stratford Village Development Partnership & Ors [2024] UKFTT 26: “An RO is an order which the FTT may make on the application of an ‘interested person’ requiring a relevant landlord to remedy specified relevant defects and in a specified relevant building or take specified steps in relation to a specified relevant defect in a specified relevant building.”

While an RO is a specific statutory creature, it operates like specific performance tailored to the urgent rectification of building safety risks. Where Courts were once reluctant, they are now more ready to enforce contracts requiring supervision and the RO regime represents the ultimate evolution of this trend, providing a dedicated statutory mechanism to ensure “those who caused historical building safety defects should pay for their remediation” and that “the works that are required are actually done” (Triathlon Homes).

The RO and the RCO are often pursued together. An application for an RCO can be made against the same landlord who is the respondent to an RO. Succinctly put in Crest Nicholson Regeneration Ltd v Ardmore Construction Ltd [2026] EWHC 789 (TCC), the RO “enables domestic property owners to obtain orders requiring works to remediate building safety risks at their property”, and RCOs “enable those works to be funded notwithstanding the dissolution or impecuniosity of the development SPV”.

As expanded in Grey GR Limited Partnership v Edgewater (Stevenage) Limited & Others [2025] CAM/26UH/HYI/2023/0003, the purpose of the RCO is “to ensure that a wealthy parent company or other wealthy entity which is caught by the association provisions cannot evade responsibility for meeting the cost of remedying the relevant defects by hiding behind the separate personality of the development company.”

Building Liability Orders

A BLO is designed to extend liability for building safety risks to associated bodies corporate to prevent developers from avoiding liability through the use of thinly capitalised SPVs. In Kitt and Anor v The Laundry Building Ltd and Anor [2024] EWHC 4250 (TCC), the court observed that: “Section 130 of the Building Safety Act 2022 provides as follows: (1) The High Court may make a building liability order if it considers it just and equitable to do so. (2) A ‘building liability order’ is an order providing that any relevant liability … of a body corporate (‘the original body’) relating to a specified building, is also — (a) a liability of a specified body corporate …”

In BDW Trading Ltd v Ardmore Construction Ltd [2025] EWHC 434 (TCC), Keyser J addressed whether the original body’s liability must be established as a precondition. He concluded it did not: “It makes perfectly good sense to allow a building liability order to function as what might be termed an indemnity (‘If this original body has any relevant liability in respect of this specified building, this associate shall also have that liability’). In a given case, it may be very convenient to know in advance that an associate will be liable, if the original body’s liability is subsequently established, so that the associate knows where it stands when it seeks to defend the substantive allegations.”

Twin Regimes for Remediation and Liability

While the BSA allows a variety of parties to apply for both orders, the RO/RCO regime is said to be designed for leaseholders and building occupiers, whereas the BLO regime is a powerful corporate enforcement tool frequently utilised by commercial parties for high-value financial recovery. Some of the key differences are as follows:

Scope of Defects: The statutory architecture of the BSA establishes two distinct avenues for addressing structural and fire-safety defects in residential buildings (these are what the BSA calls ‘building safety risks’), however the BLO extends its reach further than the RO/RCO’s grasp. Whereas ROs/RCOs relate to building safety risks (‘relevant defects’), a BLO must attach to a ‘relevant liability’, which section 130(3) defines as a liability incurred not only as a result of a building safety risk but also under the DPA or section 38 of the Building Act 1984. The DPA test is ‘fitness for habitation’ which was so described in Vainker and another v Marbank Construction Ltd and others [2024] EWHC 667 (TCC): “For a dwelling to be fit for human habitation, it must, on completion, be capable of occupation for a reasonable time without risk to the occupants’ health or safety, and without undue inconvenience or discomfort to them…”

Legal Track: A BLO is said to be a tool to ‘pierce the corporate veil’ maybe due to a combination of factors including the High Court track, the DPA extension and the Building Information Orders (‘BIO’), giving some additional leverage over an RCO. However, as Constable J noted in Crest, the RO/RCO regime in the FTT can also yield: “…swifter resolution than complex multi-party determination in the High Court, which enables domestic property owners to obtain orders requiring works to remediate building safety risks at their property, and orders which enable those works to be funded notwithstanding the dissolution or impecuniosity of the development SPV.”

‘Just and Equitable’ Test: Both the RCO and the BLO require the judicial body (the FTT for RCOs and the High Court for BLOs) to determine that making the order is ‘just and equitable’ and the Courts have noted that this test is applied similarly across both orders. On the contrary, there is no just and equitable requirement to secure a RO.

BSA & Adjudication

A significant legal development is the broad interpretation of dispute resolution clauses established in Fiona Trust. In BDW Trading Ltd v Ardmore Construction Ltd [2024] EWHC 3235 (TCC), the court considered whether an adjudicator had jurisdiction over a DPA claim. The court adopted the ‘commercial common sense’ approach concluding that rational businesspeople likely intended all disputes arising out of their relationship to be decided by the same tribunal.

More recently, Crest considered the ability to use an adjudicator’s decision as the basis for a BLO where the claimant sought an ‘Anticipatory BLO’ and an ‘Adjudication BLO’ for approximately £14.9 million awarded against an insolvent contractor. Consistent with the robust approach, the court found the adjudicator’s decision was indeed a relevant liability and that therefore all ‘associates’ are jointly and severally liable:

“The short answer to each of these submissions is that the Adjudicator’s Decision is binding until the dispute is finally determined by the Court. Its interim status does not mean that, pending any trial, it somehow does not create a liability. It plainly does. If the decision is not challenged in Court, it constitutes a binding determination of a party’s liability for all time.”