Topic: the Building Safety Act 2022 and its continuing impact on design professional and contractor PI. Spokesperson: Matt Bartlett, Director, Apex Insurance Brokers Limited.
This briefing covers the questions a journalist needs to ask before writing about the Building Safety Act 2022, the PI market for design professionals, and the cladding-related risk pool. It does not duplicate the legal commentary that sits with law firms; it sits where insurance journalism sits — what the Act did to the broker, the underwriter and the SME design-professional buyer.
The Act received Royal Assent in April 2022 and is the principal piece of post-Grenfell legislation governing higher-risk buildings, building safety regimes, and the design and construction duties on the parties involved in building work. The legal detail of the Act, the secondary legislation flowing from it, and the Building Safety Regulator regime are well-covered in legal trade press. The insurance-market angle is what Apex is credentialled to comment on.
The Building Safety Act 2022 is the single most consequential piece of legislation for design-professional PI in a generation. It extended the limitation period for claims under the Defective Premises Act 1972 retrospectively, brought into being a new building safety regime for higher-risk buildings, and made cladding-related historic exposure a live, current PI question for any firm that worked on a relevant building from 1992 onwards (and in some respects further back). The 30-year retrospective extension on cladding-related defects under the Act is the single most material change from a PI perspective.
For the PI market, the Act compounded a hard cycle that was already in motion. From 2022, capacity for design-professional PI — architects, fire engineers, multi-disciplinary practices, surveyors with fire-safety scope — contracted sharply on any firm with cladding-period exposure. Premiums on those firms rose materially. Cover became narrower on retrospective exposure and on the new duties under the Act. Some firms exited the design professional book entirely; some carriers exited the sector.
In 2026, the market for design-professional PI is still hard on cladding-exposed firms, even as the wider PI market is softening. Apex’s clients on the design-professional book have come through that period with cover bound, but the placement difficulty and the wording detail have stayed.
“The Building Safety Act 2022 extended the limitation period on cladding-related defects back 30 years. That is the single fact that changed the PI market for design professionals.”
“The Act compounded a hard cycle that was already in motion. For the architect-engineer book, 2022-2024 was the hardest PI market in a generation.”
“Capacity for design-professional PI didn’t disappear in 2022. But it became conditional on a clean submission — and ‘clean’ included a clear historic-project disclosure on cladding-period work.”
“The Apex view is that a design firm whose proposal form does not explicitly address the BSA 2022 retrospective exposure is not earning a competitive read from the underwriter in 2026.”
“The Act’s higher-risk-building regime adds a live regulatory dimension to the design firm’s risk profile that the PI market is still pricing into terms. That work is not finished.”
“For SME design firms, the practical effect of the Act on PI placement is two-fold — a tighter look on historic-project disclosure and a tighter look on the firm’s risk-management practices going forward.”
“The market needs to remember that a clean cladding-period record is not a reason to avoid disclosure. The clean record is the strongest disclosure a firm can make.”
Apex has placed PI for design professionals through the 2022-2026 period of the Act’s impact on the market, across architects, engineers, surveyors with fire safety scope, multi-disciplinary practices and contractors with design responsibility.
Apex publishes plain-English briefing notes on the BSA 2022 implications for design professionals, available on the firm’s website.
The 30-year limitation extension on cladding-related defects under the Defective Premises Act 1972 (as amended by the Act) is the single most material change for PI from the Act, and is the change Apex flags first to design-professional clients at renewal.
Apex’s content estate covers the Act’s implications across the design-professional sectors in the firm’s PI book.
Apex does not give legal opinion on the Act itself — legal opinion sits with construction law firms, not with brokers. Apex will comment on the insurance-market consequences of the Act and on placement practice.
Apex will not quote specific insurer behaviour critically without the insurer’s right of reply being arranged.
Apex will not name a specific client whose case turns on the Act without the client’s written permission.
Apex will not predict the path of specific cladding-related litigation or its outcomes.
The single most material change is the extension of the limitation period for claims under the Defective Premises Act 1972 — extended retrospectively to 30 years for relevant defects and prospectively to 15 years for new work. For design professionals — architects, fire engineers, surveyors with fire-safety scope, multi-disciplinary practices — that retrospective extension brought claims back into the limitation window that would previously have been time-barred. The PI market reacted to that immediately. The other material change is the new regime for higher-risk buildings under the Act, which creates new duties on those involved in design and construction. The two together restructured the PI risk profile for design firms.
Capacity for design-professional PI contracted sharply in 2022 and through 2023, particularly for firms with any cladding-period historic work. Premium rates rose materially. Cover narrowed on retrospective exposure and on some of the new duties under the Act. Some carriers exited the design-professional book; some firms had to take rate increases of multiples of the prior premium to keep cover bound. The market in 2024 began to stabilise on clean risks and continued to harden on cladding-exposed risks. In 2026 the broader PI market is softening but the design-professional cladding-exposed sub-sector remains tight.
Three things, on Apex’s view. The first is a full historic-project disclosure on cladding-period work — every project the firm worked on in the relevant period, with the firm’s scope, the building height and use, the cladding system, the firm’s role in fire-safety design, and whether the firm has had any notifications or third-party correspondence on the project. The second is a forward-looking risk-management disclosure — what the firm does now on fire-safety design, on cladding-related work, on higher-risk buildings, on its decision-making about taking on new work in the sector. The third is a clean read on the firm’s claims and circumstances history in the relevant period. Together those three put the firm in the position where the underwriter can read the submission favourably even if the firm has historic cladding-period exposure.
No, it is gradient. A firm that did fire-safety design on relevant buildings in the relevant period sits at one end of the gradient. A firm that did general design work on a few buildings of moderate height with no fire-safety scope sits much further down. A firm with no cladding-period exposure sits at the clean end. The PI market reads the gradient; the firm’s job at renewal is to give the underwriter the information needed to place the firm on the gradient.
Yes. Multi-disciplinary practices with fire engineering capability and a relevant project history have been the hardest sub-sector for PI placement. Specialist fire engineers without diversified workload have been hard. Architects with a significant residential-tower book in the relevant period have been hard. Engineers on the structural side without fire-safety scope have been easier. Building surveyors who carried fire-safety scope have been mixed. The market reads sub-sector exposure, project-mix and scope together.
The Building Safety Regulator regime for higher-risk buildings under the Act creates new duties on accountable persons and on duty-holders involved in design and construction. PI carriers have been working through how to price and word the cover for those new duties — particularly for firms working on new higher-risk buildings post-Act. Wordings have varied across the market. The underwriter’s questions on a 2026 proposal form increasingly include named questions on the firm’s higher-risk-building work and on its compliance with the Act’s prospective regime.
That is unknowable in precise terms, but the structural drivers remain in place. The 30-year limitation extension does not unwind. The new regime under the Act is settling in but not retreating. Carrier appetite is returning slowly on the cleanest risks; some carriers have rebuilt capacity through the period; some have not returned. Apex’s working view is that the design-professional cladding-exposed sub-sector remains harder than the rest of the PI market through 2027 at least, with gradual easing on the cleanest risks.
To make the submission readable. That is the work — to surface the firm’s exposure profile, the firm’s risk-management practices, the firm’s project history and the firm’s forward-looking work to the underwriter in a way that the underwriter can read favourably. A clean submission earns terms a thin submission does not. The work is unglamorous, slow and high-attention. It is what an SME design firm needs from a broker in 2026.
A plain-English briefing note on the BSA 2022 implications for design professionals, available on the firm’s website. The sector cluster pages for architects, engineers and surveyors with fire-safety scope. The proposal-form library entries covering the design-professional proposal forms. Quarterly market commentary on the sub-sector.
The best BSA 2022 PI pieces specify the limitation extension correctly. Pieces that say “the Act made everyone liable for 30 years” are wrong; the Act extended the limitation period for relevant defects under the Defective Premises Act 1972, which is a specific statutory route. Pieces that get that specific are taken seriously.
The best pieces distinguish between the retrospective effect (the extended limitation on historic work) and the prospective effect (the new regime for higher-risk buildings). The two have different PI consequences and conflating them produces a muddled piece.
The best pieces name the sub-sector gradient. A piece that talks about “architects” as a single block misses the variation within the sector. A piece that distinguishes between fire-safety-scope architects, residential-tower architects, and general-practice architects has the texture trade press readers expect.
For media enquiries: Matt Bartlett, Director — matthew.bartlett@apexinsurancebrokers.co.uk — 0117 325 0027. Apex Insurance Brokers Limited, FCA FRN 724952, Companies House 07014570. Trading address: QCS, 53 Queen Charlotte Street, Bristol BS1 4HQ.
Last reviewed: June 2026.
Apex Insurance Brokers serves UK professional services firms and commercial businesses. Call 0117 325 0027, email hello@apexinsurancebrokers.co.uk, or request a quotation.
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