BIFIS issues Construction Phase Plan guidance for fitted interiors: what kitchen projects may need to clarify

What happened

BIFIS said fitted-interiors retailers, designers, installers and project coordinators should familiarise themselves with updated guidance and legal expectations relating to Construction Phase Plans, following renewed HSE focus on planning, managing and monitoring construction work.

Under the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015, a Construction Phase Plan must be prepared before the construction phase begins. HSE guidance states that the principal contractor is responsible where more than one contractor is involved, and the contractor is responsible on a single-contractor project. The plan should set out health and safety arrangements, site rules and measures for managing significant risks.

BIFIS advised retailers not to assume that health and safety responsibilities sit solely with installers once a sale has been made. Where a retailer designs, specifies, coordinates, appoints or manages installation work, it may have duties under CDM 2015 depending on the project structure and contractual relationships. Even where the domestic customer is the client, CDM duties normally transfer to the contractor or principal contractor as HSE describes.

The Construction Phase Plan requirement itself is not new legislation. It comes from CDM 2015. The current development is fitted-interiors sector guidance and renewed industry attention around compliance.

Why it matters for UK kitchen projects

A kitchen fit often involves several businesses: a kitchen retailer or designer, a fitter, and separate electrical, gas, plumbing or extraction trades. That multi-contractor pattern is exactly where clarity about the principal contractor and the Construction Phase Plan becomes practical rather than theoretical.

Occupied homes add further project detail. Children, pets, vulnerable residents, restricted access and live services change how work needs to be sequenced and controlled. Those points belong in the plan and in the homeowner’s written project record, not only in a telephone conversation.

Homeowners are not responsible for writing the Construction Phase Plan. They can, however, ask who is preparing it, who is maintaining it as the site changes, and how isolation of electricity, gas and water, cutting and dust controls, and trade sequencing have been agreed.

What homeowners may need to revisit

Ask whether the installation is expected to involve one contractor or several, and who has been identified as the principal contractor where more than one contractor is involved.

Ask who is preparing the Construction Phase Plan before work begins and who will update it if the programme, trades or site conditions change.

Record how electricity, gas and water will be isolated where that is required for the work, and who is responsible for those steps.

Ask how cutting and dust will be controlled, especially for worktops, plasterboard alterations or other operations that create dust in an occupied home.

Confirm the planned sequence of trades and any access or site rules that apply while the kitchen is being fitted. Note any arrangements for occupied rooms, children, pets or vulnerable residents.

Keep the answers beside the installation dates and supplier contacts in the project record. Do not treat a verbal assurance as a substitute for knowing who holds the written plan.