Building Safety Regulations and Fire Alarms: What the Latest Court Rulings Mean for Responsible Persons in Kent and London

For years, public discussion of the Building Safety Act 2022 stayed fixed on one place... cladding. Grenfell, the remediation debates, the Building Safety Fund.

Then, in April 2026, a High Court ruling moved it somewhere else entirely: into the boardrooms of contractor groups, years after the original work had finished. Mr Justice Constable granted two Building Liability Orders against companies associated with Ardmore Construction Limited, over historic Fire Safety defects at Admiralty Quarter, a residential development in Portsmouth completed between 2007 and 2009. The contractor had entered administration one day before an adjudicator awarded the developer, Crest Nicholson, around £14.9 million for the defects. The court made Ardmore's associated companies jointly liable for the adjudicated award, and separately granted an anticipatory order covering any liability that might later be established against Ardmore itself at trial.

The message was clear: restructuring or insolvency won't necessarily stop liability reaching further into a group of companies, where a court considers it just and equitable to make that happen. For any Responsible Person (the person or organisation legally responsible for fire safety in a building, usually the employer or owner) managing Fire Alarm compliance, that direction of travel matters more than the case itself.

A quick note before we go further: this is a plain-English overview, not legal advice. Your fire risk assessment, and a competent fire safety professional, are where you get an answer for your specific building.

What is a Building Liability Order, in plain English?

Section 130 of the Building Safety Act 2022 created a tool the construction industry hadn't seen before: a way for a court to reach past the company that carried out the work and pull "associated" companies in the same corporate group into the liability too.

In practice, if a contractor restructures, changes name, or is wound down in a way that isolates its historic liabilities, a court can now look at the wider group and ask whether it's "just and equitable" to make those associated companies jointly and severally liable alongside the original contractor. That test can be applied before final liability is even established at trial.

Crest Nicholson v Ardmore: the case that moved the goalposts

The clearest example so far is Admiralty Quarter: 18 apartment blocks and a 21-storey tower in Portsmouth, built between 2007 and 2009. Following the kind of post-Grenfell investigation that's now routine, Crest Nicholson identified extensive fire safety defects in the external wall systems and internal fire compartmentation, including combustible insulation and missing or defective fire barriers.

Crest took the contractor, Ardmore Construction Limited, to adjudication. In August 2025, the adjudicator found that Ardmore had breached its contractual obligations and its duties under the Defective Premises Act 1972, awarding Crest around £14.9 million. Ardmore entered administration the day before that decision was issued.

Crest then applied to the High Court for two things: an "anticipatory" Building Liability Order, covering any liability Ardmore might ultimately be found to owe at trial, and an "adjudication" Building Liability Order, making Ardmore's associated companies jointly liable for the unpaid £14.9 million award. On 1 April 2026, the court granted both, in the first detailed, fully contested judgment on how the "just and equitable" standard actually works, and the first case to confirm that an adjudicator's award (not just a final court judgment) can support a Building Liability Order.

Gateley Legal's Mark Lennon, who acted for Crest Nicholson, put it plainly afterwards: the ruling gives developers and building owners a materially stronger route to recovering remediation costs, and it confirms that restructuring or administration won't keep historic building safety liability contained within a single, asset-poor part of a group. That reading is consistent with the Supreme Court's own approach in URS Corporation Ltd v BDW Trading Ltd, which placed real weight on Parliament's purpose in extending the routes available for recovering the cost of historic building safety defects.

What actually counts as a "building safety risk"?

This is the part worth getting right, because it's easy to over-read, and two different legal routes get conflated here.

A Remediation Contribution Order, the tool used in the Triathlon Homes case below, is tied to a "relevant building" as defined in the Act: broadly, a self-contained building in England with at least two dwellings that is either 11 metres or more in height, or has at least five storeys, subject to statutory exclusions.

A Building Liability Order works differently. It isn't restricted to that same "relevant building" definition. It turns instead on whether a "relevant liability" exists: a liability under the Defective Premises Act 1972, or one arising from a "building safety risk", a risk to the safety of people in or about a building from the spread of fire or structural failure. That route isn't tied to a height or storey threshold in the same way. Unlike the Remediation Contribution Order provisions, it isn't expressly limited to residential buildings.

A third, separate threshold, 18 metres or seven storeys, defines a "higher-risk building" under a different part of the Act altogether, covering ongoing duties like the golden thread of building information and oversight by the Building Safety Regulator. Three different tests, from different parts of the Act, answering different questions.

A second signal: Triathlon Homes and the cost of temporary measures

The Act's other main remediation tool, the Remediation Contribution Order under section 124, has already been tested on what actually counts as a recoverable cost. In Triathlon Homes LLP v Stratford Village Development Partnership, the Court of Appeal upheld a First-tier Tribunal order requiring the original developer and its parent, Get Living plc, to contribute close to £18 million towards fire safety remediation at the former Olympic Village in Stratford, East London. Get Living and SVDP have since been given permission to appeal part of that ruling to the Supreme Court, specifically on whether the order can cover costs incurred before the Act came into force, so that point isn't fully settled yet.

Significantly, the Tribunal found that "remedying" a defect isn't limited to the final, permanent fix. The recoverable costs included the waking watch put in place while the defects were live, and the temporary fire alarm system installed as an interim measure, not just the eventual cladding replacement.

As things stand, no Building Liability Order or Remediation Contribution Order case has turned on a defective Fire Alarm system, inadequate Emergency Lighting or a suppression failure as the primary defect. In the cases covered here, the underlying defects concerned external wall systems, fire compartmentation and related passive fire protection, with Fire Alarm costs appearing only as an interim measure rather than the underlying defect itself. That looks like a gap in reported case law so far, not a gap in the statute.

What do these Building Safety regulations mean for your Fire Alarm compliance

None of this means these judgments created new Fire Alarm servicing duties, and neither case turned on the adequacy of routine maintenance records. Ardmore was about historic construction defects and how far corporate liability now reaches; Triathlon was about which remediation costs could be recovered, not about whether existing documentation held up. But they do point at something wider: whatever building you're responsible for, reliable, contemporary evidence of what was checked, when, and what was done about it is worth having on its own terms, whoever eventually asks the question, an insurer, an enforcing authority, a fire risk assessor or something more serious.

That's the gap a properly maintained, documented Fire Alarm system helps close. Not by preventing every dispute or proving compliance on its own, but by giving you a clear evidence trail when someone asks. At Syndicate Fire Protection Service, every visit is logged against our Intelligent Asset List, tracked device by device and engineer by engineer. Our BAFE SP203-1 registration, certificated by SSAIB, sits behind every maintenance visit we carry out: not a guarantee that nothing will ever go wrong, but genuine third-party evidence that SFPS has been independently assessed for Fire Alarm maintenance under the BAFE SP203-1 scheme.

One client described the difference this way, long before anyone was ever asking a hard question:

"Projects have been managed professionally, with clear communication, good planning and a proactive approach."
Darius Zomorodian, Director, Jackson's Art Supplies, Ramsgate

None of this replaces your own legal advice. But it does mean that when someone eventually asks "can you show me exactly what was checked and when", you can.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do Building Safety regulations apply to my commercial premises?

It depends which part of the Act you mean. The Remediation Contribution Order used in the Triathlon Homes case is tied to a "relevant building": broadly, a block with at least two dwellings that's 11 metres or five storeys or taller, so most standalone commercial premises sit outside that specific gateway. A Building Liability Order is different, and potentially wider: it isn't restricted by that same building definition, though whether the underlying liability and building safety risk actually exist will always depend on the facts. Either way, your day-to-day Fire Alarm duties as a Responsible Person still come from the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, not the Building Safety Act. For premises within the scope of that Order, Article 17 requires fire safety equipment to be subject to a suitable system of maintenance and kept in efficient working order and good repair, where necessary to safeguard the safety of relevant persons.

What actually is a Building Liability Order?

It's an order under section 130 of the Building Safety Act 2022 that extends a company's liability for historic building safety defects to other companies "associated" with it in the same corporate group, where a court decides it's just and equitable to do so. It's aimed squarely at situations where a contractor has restructured or become insolvent, leaving an unpaid liability the wider group might otherwise avoid.

Could maintenance records really help if a dispute like this ever arose?

Not directly; neither case actually turned on the adequacy of routine Fire Alarm maintenance records, and this isn't a substitute for legal advice. But the wider point still holds: good records don't prevent every dispute or prove compliance on their own, but they give you a clearer evidence trail if an insurer, an enforcing authority, a fire risk assessor or eventually a court asks what was done and when. A Fire Alarm system with a complete, contemporaneous service history is a stronger starting position than one with gaps.

How often does a Fire Alarm system actually need servicing?

BS 5839-1:2025 recommends successive inspections at intervals of approximately six months, with a visit anywhere between five and seven months after the last one normally falling within the standard's permitted window. Weekly user tests are also recommended under the standard, typically carried out on site as part of the building's fire safety arrangements.

What's the real difference between the 11-metre and 18-metre thresholds?

The 11-metre, or five-storey, threshold defines a "relevant building" for the Act's remediation powers, including Remediation Contribution Orders. The 18-metre, or seven-storey, threshold is a separate and higher bar that defines a "higher-risk building" under Part 4 of the Act, covering ongoing duties like the golden thread of building information and Building Safety Regulator oversight. Both are real. They answer different questions, for different buildings.

If it's been a while since your Fire Alarm system had a proper look, or you simply want to see what a documented, QR-coded service history actually looks like in practice, get in touch. We cover Kent, London and the South East, and wherever practicable, you'll be looked after by the same regular engineer.