EWS1 Building Safety Act

The EWS1 Form and Building Safety Act: A New Era in Fire Safety Regulation

EWS1 isn’t required or mentioned by the Building Safety Act 2022 — it’s an industry certificate developed by RICS in 2019, three years before the Act, and used by lenders to decide mortgage risk on buildings with cladding.

The Act creates a separate statutory system: a Building Safety Regulator, legal duties for “Accountable Persons,” and a “higher-risk building” category with ongoing safety obligations. Both emerged from the same event — the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire exposed how combustible cladding could accelerate a fire’s spread — but they took separate paths rather than one coordinated effort: industry moved first with EWS1 in 2019, and Parliament’s full legislative response followed in 2022.

The two operate alongside each other rather than one replacing the other, and depending on your building, you may need to deal with both.

What the Building Safety Act 2022 Actually Does

Established the Building Safety Regulator, based within the Health and Safety Executive, to oversee building safety — particularly for higher-risk buildings (Part 2 of the Act).

Created the “higher-risk building” category — broadly, occupied residential buildings of significant height or storey count — with statutory duties on “Accountable Persons” to assess and manage building safety risks on an ongoing basis, not just at a single point in time (Part 4).

Requires a Safety Case Report for higher-risk buildings, which has to be kept under review rather than issued once and forgotten.

Introduced a dutyholder regime and the “golden thread of information” — a requirement for accurate, up-to-date building safety information to be created, kept and handed over throughout a building’s life, so anyone responsible for it can be identified and held accountable (Part 3, Part 4).

Set stricter standards for construction products, including testing, certification and liability rules for materials such as cladding (Part 5).

Introduced resident engagement duties, requiring Accountable Persons to have a strategy for engaging residents on safety matters and a complaints procedure they can actually use (Part 4).

Introduced a legal remediation framework — Remediation Orders and Remediation Contribution Orders — giving tribunals the power to compel remediation work and recover costs from responsible developers or landlords, alongside leaseholder protections that limit or remove service charges for historical safety defects in many cases (Part 5, Schedule 8).

What the Building Safety Act 2022 Actually Does

EWS1 was never incorporated into the Act as a legal requirement, and the lender-and-fire-engineer relationship behind it works exactly as it did before the Act existed. It also applies more broadly than the Act’s higher-risk building threshold — buildings well below that height can still be asked for an EWS1 by a lender or insurer, since that decision is commercial, not statutory.

	EWS1	Building Safety Act 2022
What it is	Industry certificate (RICS-developed, lender-relied-upon)	Statute law
Legal requirement?	No	Yes, for buildings meeting the higher-risk threshold
Applies to	Buildings a lender or insurer requests one for — commonly from around 11m up	“Higher-risk buildings” — a specific height/storey threshold set out in the Act and regulations
Point-in-time or ongoing?	Point-in-time, roughly a five-year design life	Ongoing statutory duty, reviewed continuously
Who relies on it	Lenders, insurers, buyers’ solicitors	The Building Safety Regulator, with enforcement powers
Purpose	Enables an individual sale, mortgage or insurance decision	Whole-building, ongoing safety management

Where EWS1 and Building Safety Act Actually Overlap

Evidence and the golden thread.

The wall-construction evidence behind an EWS1 or FRAEW — cladding, insulation, cavity barriers, fire-stopping — is exactly the kind of record the Act’s golden thread of information expects to be created and kept for a building’s life. A well-documented EWS1/FRAEW investigation doesn’t automatically satisfy the Act’s requirements, but it’s not wasted effort either — it’s the same category of evidence, produced for a different purpose.

Who pays for remediation.

Schedule 8 of the Act limits or removes the ability to pass certain historical safety defect costs on to qualifying leaseholders through service charges. This matters directly if an EWS1 assessment comes back with a B2 rating requiring remediation — the Act, not the EWS1 process, is what determines who’s protected from paying for it.

Routes to remediation.

Where a B2 rating leads to a dispute over responsibility or funding, the Act’s Remediation Orders and Remediation Contribution Orders give leaseholders and the regulator a legal route to compel action and recover costs — a separate track from voluntary schemes like the Building Safety Fund.

Ready to Start Your EWS1?

We manage the complete EWS1 process from initial review to final fire engineer sign-off. We coordinate the desktop assessment, site access, permits, equipment and any required opening-up investigation, then arrange the independent fire engineer assessment and EWS1 sign-off. You deal with one point of contact throughout, rather than having to coordinate multiple contractors and specialists yourself.

You deal with one point of contact throughout, rather than having to coordinate multiple contractors and specialists yourself.

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EWS1 and Building Safety Act FAQs

Is an EWS1 required by the Building Safety Act 2022?

No. The Act doesn’t mention or require EWS1. It’s an industry certificate that operates independently, used by lenders and insurers to assess individual buildings.

Does the Building Safety Act replace the need for an EWS1?

No. They serve different purposes — the Act is a statutory safety regime for higher-risk buildings; an EWS1 is what lenders and insurers rely on for individual property transactions. Meeting one doesn’t automatically satisfy the other.

What counts as a "higher-risk building" under the Act?

Broadly, occupied residential buildings of significant height or storey count, containing multiple residential units. The precise threshold is defined in the Act and supporting regulations rather than being a simple round number — check current guidance for your specific building.

Who is the "Accountable Person" under the Act?

Whoever holds the relevant legal interest in the building — often the freeholder or a resident management company — takes on statutory duties for higher-risk buildings under the Act, separate from whoever commissions an EWS1.