Home
/ Insights
/ Reports
/ Building Safety: Responding to Emergencies and Mitigating Risk

Building Safety: Responding to Emergencies and Mitigating Risk

Why it Matters?

Recent high-profile safety incidents continue to demonstrate the significant public, government and legal scrutiny facing organisations involved in the construction and maintenance of residential buildings in the UK. Media interest in the issue remains high, with coverage often centred on the significant disruption caused to residents caught up in an issue they cannot control.

Effective operational response plans, including practical measures to support residents, are paramount – but these must work in tandem with an effective stakeholder engagement strategy to guide responses to these risks as they emerge, including the consideration of longer-term policy and potential litigation objectives.

The necessity of this has been further reinforced by the publication of the UK Government’s Remediation Acceleration Plan, which places a strong focus on the requirement to “put residents’ needs at the heart of remediation”. This includes the expectation that residents are “kept informed throughout the process, that they have a meaningful say in remediation, wherever possible, and that contractors working on site consider how to minimise the disruption residents face.” These factors mean that there are clear reputational and legal imperatives to prepare to respond quickly to safetyrelated events to reduce any impact on residents, as well as mitigating wider reputational consequences.

Our analysis of press coverage on building safety issues in the UK highlights consistent and substantial attention from national, local, and trade publications. Since 2019, reporting on this topic has increased rapidly, reflecting the growing prominence of building safety in public discourse. This trend underscores a complex, high-stakes environment where heightened scrutiny of building safety concerns can have significant reputational consequences for businesses that find themselves under the spotlight.

Figure 1: Graph showing volume of building safety coverage across 6 years (2019-2024)

Building Safety Across UK Media: An Analysis of the Volume of Coverage in the Past 6 Years (2019-2024)

Figure 2: Graph showing source-based analysis of UK building safety media coverage in 2024

Building Safety Across UK Media: A Source Based Analysis of Coverage Across National, Local and Trade publications in 2019-2024

Key Challenges:

These objectives are simple but pose a significant challenge for organisations facing the reality of a major safety incident or issue. Key challenges to address include:

Acting Quickly to Help Residents
Businesses must prioritise the safety of all residents and act fast help those impacted by safety or structural issues. Often the onset of a safety incident is sudden, and responses (including notification and remediation) can be complex. Building safety remediation continues to generate protracted challenges in communicating with residents, who face high costs until works are completed and have genuine concerns about the mortgage-ability and insurability of their homes following remediation. Disputes with residents and their representatives are common.
The Building Safety Act (2022) reiterated the importance of preparation. In accordance with the Act, businesses must demonstrate that they not only have effective measures to identify and manage safety risks, but that they prepare and keep under review a resident engagement strategy. Being prepared to communicate during an incident is vital to meet legal and regulatory requirements. Furthermore, the government has stated that it will strengthen the obligation to ensure that those responsible for remediation inform, consider, and take reasonable steps to mitigate the impact on residents. As part of this, the government has also stated that it will challenge those responsible to evidence their compliance based upon resident feedback.

Managing a Wide Range of Stakeholders
Businesses will need to coordinate and communicate with a variety of stakeholders – not least their own people and their customers. Safety incidences and concerns involve a number of vocal or responsible stakeholders, including emergency services, regulators and government at local, regional and national levels. Responsibilities for building safety have been strengthened at all levels. While consistent, aligned messaging should be the goal, the pressure of a crisis will introduce the need for other stakeholders to comment publicly, increasing the risk of diverging or contradictory communications. Building and maintaining relationships with these key partners in advance of an incident is vital. These are relationships that will need to be developed and maintained consistently, not just in a moment of crisis.

Communicating amidst Legal Uncertainty
Legal responsibility for defects, safety failures or operational issues may not be immediately apparent. However, the real-world impacts of these issues mean that developers and freeholders often do not have time to wait for a drawn-out legal process to conclude, especially in light of Government expectations that residents be kept informed throughout the process. Organisations must communicate quickly to provide support and guidance to residents or leaseholders, while balancing any action against the legal precedent that this may set – including future litigation strategy – and with the requirements of government and risk of further intervention and challenge. Engaging legal counsel is often a natural first step. Strategic communications advice to protect the organisation’s reputation should closely follow, enabling an integrated approach that protects the company’s reputation and supports any future dispute.

How FTI Consulting Can Help

Establishing a clear narrative: Messaging that aligns with the business’s overall strategy and aims to protect its reputation with stakeholders and enterprise value.
Developing response protocols: Scenario playbooks for high-risk assets, identifying key stakeholders, key messages and operational actions (e.g. temporary accommodation, financial support for residents). Allowing you to hit the ground running should the worst happen.
Stakeholder mapping & engagement: Identifying the influential stakeholders for each asset – politicians, commentators, residents’ groups – and developing strategies to proactively engage these groups can help in resolving issues more effectively as they arise.
Testing: Workshops and exercises to stresstest your response plans and identify areas for improvement.
Crisis response support: Strategic counsel to your Crisis Management or Communications team, as well as “arms and legs” support to execute and project manage your response as required.
Litigation communications: Using legal experience and industry expertise to provide informed, actionable counsel to identify, prepare for and respond to litigation threats.