A structural tailwind,
not a cyclical wave.

When development volumes rose, so did compliance spend. When they fell, the trades fell with them. Buyers: main contractors, managing agents, building owners: treated compliance as a cost line. They tendered it, squeezed it, and bought on price. That era is over.

What actually changed

Three obligations sit at the heart of the Act:

• Duty-holder accountability across design, construction and occupation: a client, principal designer and principal contractor answerable for compliance while a building is designed and built, and accountable persons, with one clearly identifiable principal accountable person, once a high-rise residential building is occupied. They can be organisations or individuals; either way, the legal responsibility is named and it sits with whoever holds the role
• The golden thread: digital documentation of all safety-critical information for higher-risk buildings, maintained through the building's life
• The Higher-Risk Building regime: a dedicated approval, registration and certification framework run by the Building Safety Regulator. BSR is the building control authority for higher-risk buildings: approval before work starts, a completion certificate before residents move in, and building assessment certificates for occupied buildings it calls in. Since 27 January 2026 BSR has been a standalone body sponsored by MHCLG rather than part of the Health and Safety Executive, paving the way for a single construction regulator

For passive fire: the compartmentation and fire-stopping work that historically got value-engineered out of programmes: this is the difference between a line item that could be squeezed and one that has to be evidenced to the regulator. Remediation orders make it the same on the existing-stock side: the First-tier Tribunal can order the landlord responsible to put right historic defects that create a fire-spread or structural-collapse risk in residential blocks of 11 metres or five storeys and above.

Why this isn't a wave

Compliance is not discretionary. The people accountable for higher-risk buildings face criminal liability for non-compliance. Since 1 October 2023 a principal accountable person commits an offence if their building is occupied but not registered. Since January 2024 an accountable person who breaches a duty in a way that puts people at critical risk of death or serious injury commits an offence too. Both carry up to two years' imprisonment. Carrying out building work on a higher-risk building without BSR's approval is a criminal offence in its own right. That's a fundamentally different question than "should we refresh the detection system this year". The spend has to happen, and it has to be evidenced.

Documented capability is now the gate. The law says so: clients must take all reasonable steps to appoint designers and contractors with the necessary competence or organisational capability, and on higher-risk work BSR checks that before it approves a project. Procurement teams have learned to read the difference between a contractor with current accreditations and a documented golden-thread workflow, and one with a clean PowerPoint. The first set wins.

The acquirer universe agrees. Marlowe built itself by rolling up UK fire-safety and compliance businesses: more than 80 acquisitions since 2016, by the count in its 2024 annual report. Mitie, after its own run of acquisitions including fire and security, then bought Marlowe outright in August 2025, pitching the combined group as the UK's largest provider of facilities compliance services and citing increasing legislative requirements, including new fire safety regulations, as the driver of demand. That is a bet on long-duration, regulation-driven demand. Nobody deploys capital at that scale into a sector they think is cyclical.

What this means in practice

For the buyer: the work has to be done: the question is who you trust to do it and defend it to the regulator. The premium for one delivery partner with end-to-end scope is real: less interface risk, fewer documents to reconcile, a single defensible audit pack.

For the contractor: the bar has moved permanently. The structural tailwind only flows to operators who can demonstrate operating depth in real time: not in case studies from five years ago. Group-level technology: Uptick, Procore, golden-thread platforms: is no longer "above-market for our size". It's the baseline procurement assumes you're running.

We've built AMPM Group around that read of the market. The compliance demand is real, structural, and accelerating. The question for everyone in the chain is whether the partner you pick can demonstrate the operating depth to defend you to the regulator: not whether they had a good year on price last time you tendered.

Sources

• Building Safety Regulator (GOV.UK): Design and building work: meeting building requirements
• Building Safety Regulator (GOV.UK): Safety in high-rise residential buildings: accountable persons
• Building Safety Regulator (GOV.UK): Keeping information about a higher-risk building: the golden thread
• Building Safety Regulator (GOV.UK): Building control approval for higher-risk buildings
• Building Safety Regulator and MHCLG (GOV.UK): BSR becomes standalone body in landmark step towards single construction regulator, 27 January 2026
• legislation.gov.uk: Building Safety Act 2022, section 77 (occupation: registration requirement)
• legislation.gov.uk: Building Safety Act 2022, section 101 (offence: contravention giving rise to risk of death and serious injury)
• legislation.gov.uk: Building Safety Act 2022, section 123 (remediation orders) and section 117 (meaning of "relevant building")
• Marlowe plc: Annual Report and Financial Statements 2024 (PDF)
• Mitie: Mitie welcomes Marlowe to build UK leader in Facilities Compliance

• Jamie Dawson is Chair of AMPM Group.