When will the Building Safety Act 2022 become law? – The draft bill was announced in July of 2020, and its First Reading took place a year later in 2021. The Act received Royal Assent and completed all the parliamentary stages in becoming an Act of Parliament in April 2022.

All buildings in scope of the Act will need to be registered with the BSR, with registrations being expected at any time between April 2023 and October 2023, The Higher-Risk Buildings (Key Building Information etc.) (England) Regulations 2023 define the key building information which must be submitted by 30 September 2023,

Once registered, the Accountable Person(s) must apply for a Building Assessment Certificate, a process which is expected to begin April 2024, which will include information about the reasonable steps taken to prevent building safety risks. This information will include a Building Safety Case Report.

Get ahead of the game and start storing information via a golden thread sooner rather than later, as this information will be needed for both current and future builds. Our free, on-demand webinar ‘Building Safety: Are you ready for 1st April?’ provides a useful refresher session that will take you through the key things you need to be thinking about now to have assurance that you are ready and well-prepared.

Hear from an organisation who have spent time preparing, and learn how they have approached their duties, what they have learnt, and what their key challenges and significant issues have been. Watch below now!

Does the building safety bill apply to Wales?

Why consult on commencing changes that have already been agreed should apply to Wales? – Our Safer buildings in Wales White Paper focussed on the safety of multi-occupied residential buildings (those containing 2 or more sets of domestic premises) following the Grenfell Tower fire and we took an opportunity, through the UK Fire Safety Act 2021, to introduce some of the proposals relating to fire safety earlier in Wales.

The Fire Safety Act 2021 now provides that the entire structure of multi-occupied residential buildings is in included in the regulatory regime under the FSO. The Building Safety Act 2022 will also address some of the proposals in our White Paper concerned with fire safety in multi-occupied residential premises, mainly around additional duties on responsible persons.

However, many of these changes will apply to all buildings to which the FSO applies, not just residential buildings. It will include all other non-domestic premises (business premises and public buildings, with some limited exceptions); buildings which were not the focus of our White Paper consultation.

Does the building safety Act apply to Wales?

2) (Wales) Regulations 2022 on 6 December 2022, which brought into force various sections of the Building Safety Act 2022 (BSA) that empower the Welsh Government to define the term ‘higher-risk building’.

Which country produces the best silk?

China. China overwhelmingly dominates production, producing nearly six times as much silk as India, its nearest rival in terms of volume. Silk is traded internationally either as cocoons from the silk moth or as semi-processed raw silk yarn.

What are the benefits of the golden thread?

What are the benefits of the Golden Thread? – The need for the Golden Thread arose following the fallout from the Grenfell Tower fire. During the trial and subsequent report, it emerged that a number of communication breakdowns and misleading statements led to the use of cladding on the tower which did not meet legal requirements.

The cladding used did not fulfil the fire resistance requirements for use on tower blocks, and concerns around it were either dismissed, ignored or lost in email chains. The patchwork nature of both the tower construction (involving numerous contractors, subcontractors, suppliers and associations), as well as the communications around the cladding and its suitability, all demonstrated a serious flaw in how materials are sourced, and how buildings are constructed and managed.

The idea was to avoid these issues by ensuring that information previously recorded in a piecemeal manner by multiple individuals or businesses was instead available as a single, mutual resource, accessible to all parties. Deploying a Golden Thread for construction stops information from being lost at any stage, impairing the ability of different parties to effectively assess aspects of building safety.

The implementation of things like passive fire protection (e.g. fire doors or barriers) can easily be checked against the plans for the building, and commented upon. If there is an issue, it is made apparent to everyone, and steps can be taken to resolve it. The chief benefit of a Golden Thread is the transparency and accuracy of data.

With all information about a building available and traceable to individual decision-makers, it becomes far easier to identify problems, issue queries, and track the implementation of plans and goals. Through this, it becomes easier not only to ensure that safety featiave been properly implemented, but to maintain them and other aspects of a building in future.

How did they make gold thread?

Nowadays we have a plethora of different gold threads at our disposal. Or better: metal threads as they are available in a wide array of colours too. However, it all started much, much humbler thousands of years ago. Yep, that’s how long these beauties have been around.

1. The oldest mention of gold threads is in the bible (Exodus 39, 3): ” They hammered the gold into thin plates and cut them into threads in order to work it into the blue, purple and scarlet yarn and the fine linen crafted by the skilled artisan.
2. Personally, I think a link between the eruption of the volcano on ancient Thera and the story of Exodus is very plausible.

New C-14 dating evidence showed that this eruption took place around 1613 BC +/- 13 years. Bear in mind that the book of Exodus existed as oral tradition for many generations before it was finally written down. However, it could mean that the manufacture of gold threads is at least nearly 4000 years old. Ottoman Embroidery with plate seen on Crete. What did these earliest gold threads look like? Well, if we read scripture carefully, it suggests to me that they looked a lot like our modern plate, Thin strips of flat metal thread. On the other hand, the fact that they are “worked into the blue, purple and scarlet yarn ” sounds a bit like it is being used as blending filament.

1. Now modern-day blending filament is a super-thin polyester.
2. Certainly not what the ancient Hebrews had at their disposal.
3. Their thread must have been stiffer, heavier and thicker.
4. But it might just be that they used it in a similar way as modern embroiderers use blending filament.
5. Or they used the thin strips of metal just like the embroiderers in Turkey.

They take a large flat needle and use lengths of plate IN the needle. Not like the way I was thought to use plate at the Royal School of Needlework where we couched it down. Japanese Thread A disadvantage of used hammered precious metals as a base for your gold threads is that they are very expensive. Furthermore, when you work them into the garment, that garment becomes quite heavy. To overcome the first problem, gilt threads were introduced.

This means that you use a more base metal such as silver or copper and you adhere a very thin layer of gold to it. This reduces the cost. But you are still left with the weight issue. In comes the invention of hammering the metal into even tinner sheets, cutting them into strips and adhering these strips onto animal gut or plant material such as mulberry paper.

The combined material is then wrapped around a yarn core by means of spinning. These threads would have been comparable to today’s Japanese Threads and Passing Threads, When and where were these new metal threads invented? Unfortunately, the exact origin and time are unknown, but a pure gold strip likely wound around a fibrous core (not survived as it was a cremation) has been found in a Roman grave of a young woman in Cadiz, Spain.

1. The tiny dimensions of the gold strip are mind-boggling: 0.2 mm wide and only 3.6 microns thick.
2. There is a second method for producing metal threads: wire drawing.
3. By passing a strip of metal through a progressivly smaller series of holes, very fine metal wire could be obtained.
4. These were probably first used in jewellery production, but archaeological finds show that they were also used in textile production in China from the 2nd century BC and in the port of trade Birka (Sweden) from the 9/10th century.

Some of these threads consist of tightly wound wires around a textile core. Although some researchers suggest that these wires were actually imported from the East (Byzantium) it is noteworthy that these kinds of wires have been known to the Sami people.

1. However, they use pewter and not silver or gold.
2. I wrote a blog article on their type of embroidery.
3. These threads look like very fine pearl purl, but with a fibrous core.
4. They are still produced today and can be obtained online from Swedish webshops.
5. Gilded silver threads began to appear in the 9th century, but might be older.

The oldest type consists of hammered sheets of silver covered with a thin layer of gold. When strips are cut from these sheets, they are gilded on only one side. These strips were then spun around a fibrous core. This type of gold thread is known as or de Milan,

Were they invented in Milan or simply traded from Milan into the rest of Europe? These threads further developed in the 16th century as gilded drawn silver threads were hammered flat and spun around a fibrous core. These threads are all-over golden. These drawn threads have the huge advantage that they are much longer than the strips from the sheets and thus reduce the number of joints whilst spinning.

And then there is yet another method to produce a gold thread with a fibrous core: membrane gold. This is where animal tissue is gilded and then cut into strips which are then spun around a fibrous core. This method was likely invented in the 11th century and was both a much cheaper way to produce gold threads and it reduced the weight considerably.

These threads were hugely popular and used in great quantities. These threads are commonly called Cypriot gold. However, new research by David Jacoby suggests that this is a misnomer. Furthermore, historical documents suggest that this type of thread was not at all cheap. Jacoby pushes for further research into the compositions of the alloys of the surviving gold threads as well as the identification of their cores and animal tissues to identify their origins.

This would indeed make for exciting research and answer many questions regarding the how, where and when. If you are interested in the topic, do click the links for the Jacoby and Katzani papers as they make for interesting and detailed reading. They also provide lots of further papers in their references.

Sources: Friedrich W.L., et al., (2006): Santorini eruption radiocarbon dated to 1627–1600 BC., Science 312, p.548–548. Jacoby, D., (2014): Cypriot Gold Thread in Late Medieval Silk Weaving and Embroidery, In: S.B. Edgington and H.J. Nicholson (eds), Deeds Done Beyond the Sea: Essays on William of Tyre, Cyprus and the gate Military Orders, p.101-114.

Karatzani, A., (2014): Metal thread: the historical development, Keynote lecture at the conference ” Traditional Textile Craft – An Intangible Cultural Heritage?”, The Jordan Museum, Amman. Stern, D.H., (1998): Complete Jewish Bible, Jewish New Testament Publications.

What countries in the UK must comply with current building regulations?

Building regulations in the United Kingdom are statutory instruments or statutory regulations that seek to ensure that the policies set out in the relevant legislation are carried out. Building regulations approval is required for most building work in the UK.

• Building regulations that apply across England and Wales were set out in the Building Act 1984 while those that apply across Scotland are set out in the Building (Scotland) Act 2003,
• The Act in England and Wales permits detailed regulations to be made by the Secretary of State.
• The regulations made under the Act have been periodically updated, rewritten or consolidated, with the Building Regulations 2010 having recently been superseded by the Building Safety Act 2022,

The UK Government (at Westminster) is responsible for the relevant legislation and administration in England, the Welsh Government (at Cardiff) is the responsible body in Wales, the Scottish Government (at Edinburgh) is responsible for the issue in Scotland, and the Northern Ireland Executive (at Belfast) has responsibility within its jurisdiction.

What is the white paper for safer buildings in Wales?

This White Paper sets out proposals for comprehensive reform of legislation that contributes to building safety in Wales. It focuses on legislative change across the lifecycle of buildings as well as setting out aspirations for culture change in the way buildings are designed, constructed and managed.

Are EICR mandatory in Wales?

Do I need an EICR certificate for a commercial property in Wales? –

1. Unlike rental properties, an EICR for a commercial building like a school, factory, office, or store, is not a legal requirement.
2. However, it is one of the most efficient ways to ensure that your commercial property’s electrical installation is safe.

Can you build a house in the UK without planning permission?

Community Rights in England – If your building project benefits the local community, and the community supports it, you may not have to go through the normal planning permission process. Neighbourhood planning lets your community grant planning permission directly under certain circumstances.

How far can you build out without planning permission UK?

FAQs. What is the maximum extension without planning permission? For extensions on detached properties you can extend as far as 8m from the existing property and for other types of properties the maximum distance you tend to be able to stretch from the original property is 6m.

Can you build a house anywhere in the UK?

What is Planning Permission? – To build a house on your land, you’ll need planning permission from your local authority, ensuring the development is in the local area’s best interests. The Council issues planning permission, a formal document allowing development at a particular site.

Jack Gloop