The Building Safety Act 2022 – How does it affect the work of Accessibility and Inclusive Design Consultants?
The eighth NRAC online event will be on Thursday 27 November 2025 from 9:30am to 12:45pm.
The Building Safety Act 2022 has significantly changed the role of accessibility and inclusive design consultants, with the need to integrate their expertise into a more rigorous and accountable building safety regime.
The talk will provide two perspectives, firstly by Martin Burgess, who has extensive experience in the statutory Building Control as well as being qualified as an NRAC consultant and secondly by Andrew Lord, an experienced NRAC consultant whose Inclusive Design practice has recently worked a number of higher-risk building (HRB’s) where the accessibility and inclusive design consultant’s role has had to adapt and expand to meet the requirements as a ‘designer’ under the Act.
Martin Burgess
Martin has extensive experience in the field of statutory Building Control, which led him into access consultancy work, when Part M was introduced into the Building Regulations following the implementation of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (which was then absorbed into the Equality Act 2010). He is a Registered Building Inspector with the Building Safety Regulator as well as an Access Consultant, registered with the NRAC.
His experience and overlapping roles, dealing with both the Building Regulations, but also accessibility guidelines, provides a unique insight into how these two key elements inter-relate, as well as the challenge of how the Equality Act, which is Human Rights legislation, dovetails with technical requirements use with the built environment.
Andrew Lord
Andrew Lord is chair of the National Register of Access Consultants advisory group and director of Lord Consultants, a specialist accessibility and inclusive design consultancy. As an NRAC Consultant, Chartered Building Engineer and Chartered Building Surveyor, he has extensive experience of working under the Building Safety Act and will talk through how an accessibility and inclusive design consultant services have had to change and develop to be able to work under the Act.
In particular, for higher-risk buildings (HRBs), he has studied how consultants' input on access, inclusive design, and emergency egress is now critical to demonstrating compliance at every stage of a building's life cycle.
If you have a specific question on the topic please send it to Chi ahead of the NRAC online seminar and Martin and Andrew will endeavour to answer it during the session.
Tickets:
£60 (including VAT) for NRAC members and supporters
£70 (including VAT) for non-members
Please click here to book your place, or email info@nrac.org.uk if you have any questions about reasonable adjustments.
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