Understanding the Golden Thread in Housing: Compliance Beyond Construction

In the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, Dame Judith Hackitt was commissioned by the government to investigate the issues that led to this horrific incident and advise on what preventative measures should have been in place.  In her Building a Safer Future Report, she made recommendations on managing fire and structural safety risks in high-rise multi-occupied residential buildings. 

Following this report, the UK has introduced stringent regulations to enhance building safety.  Central to these reforms is the concept of the Golden Thread, which involves creating a digital trail of information from the initial planning of the building, through its construction and then during occupation, to ensure building safety throughout its lifecycle.

What Is the Golden Thread?

The Golden Thread is a comprehensive, digital record of high-rise buildings, designed to ensure all relevant stakeholders can access the necessary information to keep a building and its occupants safe.  As explained on the government website: ‘It involves keeping a digital record of crucial building information – starting from design phase and continuing throughout a building’s life-cycle.’

Key areas of the Golden Thread include: 

• Documenting the design, construction, and ongoing maintenance of a building

• Accessibility to ensure that safety-critical information is easily available to those responsible for building safety

• Facilitating the identification, management, and mitigation of building safety risks, particularly in higher-risk buildings

As stated by the Building Safety Regulator, ‘The purpose of the golden thread is to have the right information to understand the building and the steps needed to keep the building and people living in it safe.’

Why Is It Important?

The aim of the Golden Thread is to ensure the safety of the people using or living in higher-risk residential buildings.  This is to be achieved by keeping and maintaining correct and relevant information about the building in a secure digital location that can be accessed by any persons responsible for maintaining the safety of the building. 

Buildings which are classified as higher-risk are those with at least 7 storeys or that are at least 18 metres high, or buildings that include 2 or more residential units.

As the Building Safety Regulator explains, ‘It’s important those responsible for the building know where up-to-date information is and can give access to others needing it.  This includes anyone responsible for maintaining or working on the building and others, such as residents and emergency responders.’ 

They remind housing operators that the building’s information must be:

• Kept digitally

• Kept securely

• A building’s single source of truth

• Available to people who need the information to do a job

• Available when the person needs the information

• Presented in a way that can be easily used  

For housing operators, maintaining an up-to-date Golden Thread is not just a regulatory requirement but a moral imperative.  As AI data analyst and digital solution provider, Cyferd, stresses, ‘It’s an essential tool for ensuring resident safety and preventing future tragedies.’  In particular, it:

• Demonstrates compliance with the Building Safety Act 2022

• Enhances transparency and accountability in building safety management

• Empowers residents by providing them with accessible safety information

• Streamlines the transfer of information during ownership or management changes

The Golden Thread is vital for ensuring that those responsible for building safety have easy access to accurate and up-to-date information, enabling them to manage and mitigate safety risks effectively. 

Compliance in Occupied Buildings

Post-occupation, housing operators face a challenge.  As legal advisor Trowers and Hamlins explains, ‘For the majority of higher-risk buildings, only the in-occupation Golden Thread will be relevant.’  This is because the majority of high-rise residential buildings are already built and so, as Trowers and Hamlins explains, ‘Instead, Accountable Persons for existing higher-risk buildings will need to obtain enough information about the building design and as-built plans for their older buildings in order to comply with the regulations – which might require intrusive surveys to be done.’ 

Then there is of course the question of storing this required information.  Trowers and Hamlins explains that the legislations does ‘Not require the Golden Thread to all be stored on one system, but only that the documents should be capable of being transferred to others without being lost or corrupted.’  They also point out that the regulations state that ‘Each Accountable Person is only required to keep the part of the Golden Thread insofar as it relates to the part of the building that they are responsible for.’  Therefore, for complex buildings with multiple Accountable Persons, the Golden Thread could be stored not only on different systems, but separated into different parts and held by different people.  This leaves room for confusion, error and gaps in the documentation.

How Spaciable Can Help  

Spaciable offers a suite of features that can greatly assist the requirements of the Golden Thread at the post-occupancy stage.  These include:

Centralised Document Library

Spaciable allows housing operators to store and manage safety-critical documents, such as fire risk assessments and maintenance records in one secure, digital location.  This ensures they are easily accessible and easy to keep up-to-date.

Issue Reporting and Tracking

Residents can report safety concerns directly through the platform, creating a transparent record of actions taken and resolutions.  This also creates a set of data that can be analysed to flag recurring issues which may pose a danger if left unchecked or to pre-empt issues arising or maintenance requirements, based on historic data as time goes on.

Audit Trails

Spaciable allows housing operators to maintain detailed logs of all updates and changes to safety information, supporting accountability and traceability.  QR codes can be generated and displayed using digital signage around the building to signal any updates or changes and encourage residents to read them.

Resident Engagement Tools

Created as a residential engagement and property management solution, Spaciable facilitates direct communication with residents either individually, in groups or across whole developments and is therefore an effective tool to notify residents regarding any safety matters to ensure they are informed and involved.

By integrating these features, Spaciable helps housing operators uphold the Golden Thread at the lived-in stage of the buildings lifecycle and helps accountable persons ensure that safety remains a priority long after construction is complete.

To find out more about Golden Thread compliance with Spaciable and to discuss your projects, please get in touch.