Construction and Planning Update – March 2025 top five

Here are our top five for March:

1. Fire Safety

2 March saw the issue of Approved Document B (fire safety) volumes 1 (dwellings) & 2 (non-dwellings): This is the 2019 edition of the document, incorporating 2020, 2022 and 2025 amendments, collated with forthcoming 2026 and 2029 amendments. 

The 2026 amendments are shown in purple and commence on 30 September 2026, the 2029 are shown in orange and commence on 02 September 2029. 

This is not a fire safety definitive guidance; it is for common building situations only. It is for developers and designers to determine whether they are in a common building situation. They should also consider the requirements of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order of 2005 in relation to non-domestic buildings.  

Relevant links: Approved Document B vol 1 2019 edition inc 2020, 2022 and 2025 amendments and forthcoming 2026 and 2029 changes

The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005

2. Planning and procurement

The government published its Planning and Infrastructure Bill on 11 March 2025. It is a Bill to make provision “about infrastructure; … town and country planning; … for a scheme, administered by Natural England, for a nature restoration levy payable by developers” amongst other matters.  Guidance was issued on the same date setting out the aims of the Bill and what it will do.

In short the Bill will create a legislative framework to allow planning to be speeded up, with government intervention in areas where planning policy is not considered to be in accordance with local planning policy documents, curtailment of certain Judicial Review processes and rights of Appeal and to allow for a national collection of contributions from developers for a strategically coordinated environmental mitigation system, instead of the piecemeal and localised version currently used.  A new body, the Nature Restoration Fund (NRF) is to create Environmental Delivery Plans (EDP) which focus on a protected site or species and into which developers can pay, freeing them of site specific assessments and project specific interventions. The government have confirmed via a statement under section 20(3) of the Environment Act that this Bill would not have the effect of reducing the level of environmental protection to less than existing environmental law.

The bill is expansive and covers more than just local plans and EDP objectives.  Let us know if you’d like to understand more about the Bill’s likely impact on you.

3. Much ado about a tender submissions clarification document

In a March judgment the Technology and Construction Court dealt with a case of two different versions of the same contract. The difference mattered; one version had a tender submissions clarification document relevant to which party took the risk in existing structures. The tender submissions document was only in the electronic version of the contract. His Honour Judge Stephen Davis decided for the developer, holding that the document was part of the contract. The approach taken was to: 

1. examine the relevant clauses in the contract, including insurance arrangements;
2. consider what arrangements were agreed with regard to the consultants who carried out the pre-contract investigation. In this case there was provision for novation of the consultants to the contractor. This is common where the contractor takes on responsibility for pre-contract design, as in this project; 
3. apply contract interpretation principles, referring to the general rule that the court will not delve into pre-contract negotiations, except to establish that a fact was know to both parties or as to the general object (aim) of the contract. 

Link to case: High Court Judgment Template

4. Two firsts

The first Building Liability Order (BLO) and first Information Order (IO) introduced by s.130 and s.132 of the Building Safety Act 2022 respectively have been given following the judgment last December in 381 Southwark Park Road RTM Company Ltd and others v Click St Andrews Ltd and another [2024] EWHC 3179. A BLO can only be made if a “relevant liability” is established i.e., a liability that is incurred under the Defective Premises Act 1972 or section 38 of the Building Act 1984 (latter not yet in force), or as a result of a building safety risk (spread of fire/structural failure/ any other prescribed matter), and the court considers it “just and equitable” to do so. An IO requires a person with “relevant liability” to provide specified information or documents within a specified time.  For the full detail: Building Safety Act 2022 

5. HSE Guidance for avoiding collisions between vessels

Many would consider the Health and Safety Executive (“HSE”) Safety Notice issued in March to be either extremely prescient or unfortunately ill timed. HSE issued the notice because it had identified a rise in the number of incidents of ‘attendance’ vessels/ships colliding with offshore oil, gas and renewable energy structures. The Notice gave expression to the view that this was a failure of navigation, watch processes and systems, resulting in collisions or risks of collision. It gives five examples of where these failures resulted in one vessel hitting another, or a stationary jacked up platform.

The Notice isn’t designed to address international shipping. This is a shame given that the most obvious example of a collision between two vessels, where at least one vessel failed to appropriately navigate, keep adequate watch or avoidance protocols in place came close to causing the biggest ecological disaster this nation has seen for many decades, the impact of which may not actually be known for many more.