The Building Safety Act (BSA) 2022 introduces new requirements for building owners to demonstrate that they have effective measures in place to identify and manage safety risks. The Act enables residents in higher-risk buildings to have a say in the management of their building and raise concerns directly with the Accountable Person, who will have a duty to listen to them.
As part of their statutory obligations, the Act requires the Accountable Person(s) to prepare and keep under review a resident engagement strategy. It must provide residents with relevant safety information and risks about their building.
The strategy will need to be provided to all residents aged 16 years and over and should be regularly reviewed and updated. It also forms part of the golden thread of information and must be submitted with the safety case to the Building Safety Regulator.
What does your resident engagement strategy need to include?
Every resident engagement strategy will be different, but the Act says it must detail:
• What information will be provided to residents.
• What residents will be consulted on.
• How residents’ views will be sought.
• How residents’ views will be taken into account.
• How the effectiveness of the strategy will be measured.
So where do you start?
One of the requirements of the Building Safety Act is that building owners and property managers should understand the needs of every household living within the building, especially if there are any disabled or vulnerable residents living there. As well as whether residents have a preferred language for communication. This will help shape your evacuation procedures and how you choose to communicate to residents on an ongoing basis.
Therefore, the success of your engagement strategy will rely heavily on how well you know the residents living within your buildings. Often this information can be difficult to access – resident information may be held in different systems, in sporadic emails, or managed by different staff. To ensure you comply with the Building Safety Act, it’s paramount that this information is easily accessible.
How technology can help?
Spike PMS has been designed to be the single view for property managers, with integrations to many third-party systems including finance, CRM and maintenance management. By consolidating data from different sources this enables property managers to quickly find and access the information they need, whenever they need it.
More importantly it enables them to perform various actions, such as having the ability to send out communication and documentation directly to tenants and leaseholders, whether that’s by email or directly to the Spike app. All communication and documentation that has been sent to a property, leaseholder or tenant is logged in Spike, with property managers able to see who’s opened and read the communication which forms an important part of the golden thread.
What’s more, with Spike PMS, you can automate the sending of communication and documentation. For instance when a resident moves into a building, property managers are able to set up a workflow that can automatically send all of the necessary fire safety documentation and any other important information to them, ensuring that you remain compliant, and nothing gets missed.
Example
Taking the example of having to know whether any residents are disabled and potentially would require assistance to evacuate the building in an emergency. If this information hasn’t been collected or property managers want to make sure it’s accurate and up to date, they can send out a service request directly to residents via the Spike app asking for residents to populate which then automatically gets logged and updated against the resident profile.
Once this information has been obtained, this provides property managers the ability to filter by these fields, and then send the appropriate communication and documentation such as tailored Personal Emergency Evacuation Plans (PEEPs) or any other specific information relating to that individual resident.
Summary
In order for your resident engagement strategy to be effective, consider the technology used to keep residents informed, engaged and updated.
Spike PMS brings property managers, tenants and leaseholders closer together via a dedicated app, ensuring that important safety information reaches those who need it, when they need it. This helps property managers meet obligations and the latest regulations.
Sign up to our webinar!
Join our Tech Talk in partnership with The Property Institute on Thursday 9th May to learn how technology can:
• Use technology to increase building safety and support Golden Thread requirements.
• Identify your repetitive manual tasks and automate them.
• Strengthen customer retention and foster resident engagement using technology.
