Mandatory occurrence reporting: what must be reported, by whom, when
Mandatory occurrence reporting requires dutyholders on higher-risk building projects, and accountable persons in occupation, to report structural and fire safety occurrences that could cause a significant risk to life to the Building Safety Regulator. A mandatory occurrence reporting plan is part of every Gateway 2 application.
What is MOR for?
Aviation learned decades ago that safety systems improve when incidents are reported rather than buried, and mandatory occurrence reporting imports that logic into higher-risk buildings. The regime requires structural and fire safety occurrences that could put life at significant risk to be reported to the BSR: during the build by the project's dutyholders, and in occupation by the accountable person. The point is learning at system level; the regulator sees patterns no single project can.
How does it work on a project?
It starts at Gateway 2, where the application must include a mandatory occurrence reporting plan: the system the principals will run so that anyone on the project can raise a potential occurrence, the decision process for judging whether it meets the reporting threshold, and the mechanics of notifying the BSR promptly with a fuller report to follow. Like the change control plan it sits beside, the plan is a promise the regulator can later test against practice.
The threshold judgement is where projects need honesty engineered in. The test is significant risk to life, and the plan should name who makes that call and require the borderline cases to be recorded with reasons even when the answer is no. A project whose occurrence log shows judgements being made is credible; a project with a perfect zero and no records of near-questions is the one the assessor doubts.
What does MOR mean for site culture?
The same thing this regime keeps rewarding: contemporaneous records and reporting lines that let people speak. An operative who spots a compromised fire barrier needs a route that gets it assessed within hours, not a culture where raising it is a career decision. The behaviours limb of competence and MOR are the same policy seen from two angles, and at Gateway 3 the occurrence log joins the evidence set: a regime that reads your reports during the build arrives at completion already knowing whether your project told the truth in real time.
Frequently asked questions
- What counts as a reportable occurrence?
- A structural or fire safety occurrence that could cause a significant risk to life: the categories cover matters such as structural failures or defects and fire safety failures serious enough to threaten occupants. The test is risk to life, not embarrassment; routine snags are not occurrences, and hiding genuine ones is the real offence against the system.
- Who has to report?
- During design and construction, the principal dutyholders must operate the mandatory occurrence reporting system described in their Gateway 2 plan, and anyone working on the project should be able to raise an occurrence through it. In occupation, the accountable person carries the reporting duty.
- When do you report?
- Promptly. The framework expects notification to the BSR without delay once an occurrence is identified, with a fuller report following. The reporting plan should specify who notifies, how fast, and how the follow-up report is compiled; treat speed of notification as the design requirement.
Related
This page is information, not legal advice. It is written and maintained by a practitioner, verified against primary sources on the date shown above, and corrected fast when the regime moves. Spotted something out of date? Tell us.