Private Law and Building Safety
Matthew Bell · Susan Bright · Ben McFarlane · Andrew Robertson
Jul 2025 · Bloomsbury Publishing
Ebook
328
Pages
reportRatings and reviews aren’t verified Learn More
About this ebook
This collection of essays explores the real-world problem of building safety through the lens of private law.
High profile building failures including the fire at Grenfell Tower, London, England and the collapse of Champlain Towers South, Florida, USA have exposed widespread building safety failures globally. In this book, international experts deploy a variety of different private law perspectives ranging through torts, contract and real property law, to examine building safety failures across the UK, USA, Australia, Singapore, New Zealand, Italy and Canada. The book offers policymakers, practitioners and scholars ground-breaking consideration of this vital yet under-considered aspect of the building safety crisis, along with new and valuable insights into the nature, limits and utility of private law.
The book shows that private law can be part of the solution to – as well as being part of the cause of – the building safety crisis. Consideration is given to existing legislative and judicial responses to the crisis, offering guidance as to how statutory regimes addressing the building safety problem (such as the Building Safety Act 2022) can best be understood and developed. A central lesson is the need to take an integrated, coherent approach, within and beyond private law. The book also illustrates that an understanding of the causes of, and responses to, the building safety crisis is vital to any theory of private law: private law is unable to fulfil its distinctive and crucial role of ordering our relations, one to another, if we adopt an unduly limited view of the reasons and resources available to it.
The book results from a joint research project by the Faculty of Law at the University of Oxford and Melbourne Law School at the University of Melbourne.
High profile building failures including the fire at Grenfell Tower, London, England and the collapse of Champlain Towers South, Florida, USA have exposed widespread building safety failures globally. In this book, international experts deploy a variety of different private law perspectives ranging through torts, contract and real property law, to examine building safety failures across the UK, USA, Australia, Singapore, New Zealand, Italy and Canada. The book offers policymakers, practitioners and scholars ground-breaking consideration of this vital yet under-considered aspect of the building safety crisis, along with new and valuable insights into the nature, limits and utility of private law.
The book shows that private law can be part of the solution to – as well as being part of the cause of – the building safety crisis. Consideration is given to existing legislative and judicial responses to the crisis, offering guidance as to how statutory regimes addressing the building safety problem (such as the Building Safety Act 2022) can best be understood and developed. A central lesson is the need to take an integrated, coherent approach, within and beyond private law. The book also illustrates that an understanding of the causes of, and responses to, the building safety crisis is vital to any theory of private law: private law is unable to fulfil its distinctive and crucial role of ordering our relations, one to another, if we adopt an unduly limited view of the reasons and resources available to it.
The book results from a joint research project by the Faculty of Law at the University of Oxford and Melbourne Law School at the University of Melbourne.
About the author
Matthew Bell is Associate Professor of Law at the University of Melbourne, Australia.
Susan Bright is Professor of Land Law at the University of Oxford and McGregor Fellow at New College, Oxford, UK.
Ben McFarlane is Professor of English Law at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St John's College, Oxford, UK.
Andrew Robertson is Professor of Law at the University of Melbourne, Australia.
Susan Bright is Professor of Land Law at the University of Oxford and McGregor Fellow at New College, Oxford, UK.
Ben McFarlane is Professor of English Law at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St John's College, Oxford, UK.
Andrew Robertson is Professor of Law at the University of Melbourne, Australia.
Rate this ebook
Tell us what you think.
Reading information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.
