Building Safety Act 2022: trends in High Court litigation
More than half of Building Safety Act 2022 claims are pursuing building liability orders (BLOs).
You might have seen our data featured recently in the Financial Times on building, cladding and fire safety claims post-Grenfell. Today, we're going to take a closer look at Building Safety Act 2022 (BSA 2022) litigation.
The BSA 2022 was introduced largely in response to the Grenfell tragedy. It aims to strengthen oversight of building quality and accountability within the construction sector, and it's now featuring more prominently in litigation.
What does the data show?
Building Safety Act 2022 claims in the High Court (E&W)
To date, in the High Court (Business and Property Division and King's Bench Division only), Solomonic has identified more than 60 public claims that reference the Act, with almost all of them issued in the Technology and Construction Court (TCC) – unsurprising, given the Act's focus on construction quality and defects. Our Document Search tool also surfaces more than 180 documents that mention the Act.
Since 2020, of the 61 High Court claims issued referencing the BSA 2022, 41 have been for more than £1 million and 22 over £10 million, with a median sum sought of approximately £8.4 million. That skew towards high-value claims reflects the nature of the disputes reaching court: multi-party construction and remediation matters, often involving substantial fire safety remediation costs and complex chains of liability between developers, contractors and building owners.
Remedies sought tell a similar story about how claimants are using the Act. More than half of claims (33, or 55%) have sought a building liability order (BLO) under section 130, the Act's novel mechanism allowing the court to extend a company's liabilities to associated companies on a joint and several basis where it considers this just and equitable. Damages remain the most common remedy overall, sought in 52 matters (85%), followed by indemnity in 29 (48%).
The BLO figure is particularly notable given how new the remedy still is in practice. The TCC handed down its first substantive guidance on the BLO procedure in Willmott Dixon Construction Ltd v Prater and others [2024], before going on, in 381 Southwark Park Road RTM Company Limited & Others v Click St Andrews Limited (in Liquidation) & Another [2024] EWHC 3179 (TCC), to make what is understood to be the first BLO actually granted by the High Court.
With more than half of BSA-referencing claims now seeking this remedy, we'd expect the body of case law on how courts approach the "just and equitable" test to grow quickly over the next 12–18 months.
We have also captured seven Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber) decisions relevant to the Act, though these are not included in the chart above as we are unable to assign a reliable issue date to these matters.
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