Under the Building Safety Act 2022, "structural risk" is the risk that a building's load-bearing structure — its frame, floors, walls, foundations, or transfer structures — could fail or behave unsafely. It sits alongside fire risk as one of the two core categories of building safety risk that a Higher Risk Building's Accountable Person has an ongoing legal duty to identify and manage.
Two Different Things, Both Called "Structural Risk"
In practice, structural risk covers two related but distinct concerns:
- Ongoing condition — deterioration, damage, or defects that could compromise structural performance over time. This is what a condition survey and structural risk assessment are designed to catch.
- Robustness under abnormal events — the building's ability to avoid disproportionate collapse if something unusual happens: an accidental explosion, a vehicle impact, or fire-induced structural damage.
The second point is easy to overlook. A building can have an impeccable service history and still have unproven robustness, simply because it has never actually experienced an abnormal event. A long, uneventful track record is evidence of one thing only — that the building can carry the loading it has actually experienced — not that it would perform safely under an event it hasn't.
In short: structural risk isn't just "is the building in good condition?" — it's "do we understand how this structure would behave under both everyday and abnormal conditions, and have we managed what we've found?"
Why It's Assessed Separately From Fire Risk
Structural and fire risk require different expertise, different evidence, and often different remediation. The Building Safety Regulator treats them as two distinct pillars when reviewing a Building Assessment Certificate (BAC) application — a building can have excellent fire safety management and still fail on structural safety grounds, or vice versa. Both need to be evidenced independently, normally within the same Safety Case Report.
How Structural Risk Gets Assessed
This is done through a structural risk assessment: a risk-based review carried out by a Chartered structural engineer, identifying hazards, scoring their likelihood and consequence, and setting out proportionate recommendations. That's a different exercise from a routine condition survey, which simply records the physical state of the building without a formal risk framework behind it.
Worth knowing if you're in Wales: the threshold at which structural risk has to be formally addressed is lower there than in England — see our guide to the Building Safety Act in Wales for the detail.
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Get In TouchFrequently Asked Questions
What is structural risk under the Building Safety Act?
Structural risk is the risk that a building's load-bearing structure — its frame, floors, walls, foundations, or transfer structures — could fail or perform unsafely. It sits alongside fire risk as one of the two core building safety risks the Building Safety Act 2022 requires Accountable Persons to identify and manage.
Is structural risk the same as a building's condition?
Condition is only part of it. Structural risk also covers robustness — a building's ability to avoid disproportionate collapse if it experiences an abnormal event such as an explosion, vehicle impact, or fire-induced structural damage. A building can be in good condition and still have unproven robustness, simply because it has never faced such an event.
How is structural risk assessed?
Through a structural risk assessment: a systematic, risk-based review carried out by a Chartered structural engineer, identifying hazards, evaluating their likelihood and consequence, and setting out proportionate recommendations. This is different from a routine condition survey, which simply records the physical state of the building.
Why does structural risk matter for a Building Assessment Certificate?
The Building Safety Regulator specifically checks structural safety, alongside fire safety, when reviewing a Building Assessment Certificate application. Evidence of structural risk being properly assessed and managed normally forms part of the Safety Case Report submitted with that application.