Private Law and Building Safety

This event marks the forthcoming publication of Private Law and Building Safety (Hart, 2025) edited by Matthew Bell, Susan Bright, Ben McFarlane and Andrew Robertson.

Chair: Richard Millett KC (Joint Head of Chambers, Essex Court Chambers, Lead Counsel to the Grenfell Tower Inquiry)
 
Introduction to the book: Associate Professor Matthew Bell (Melbourne Law School) and Professor Ben McFarlane (University of Oxford)
 
Panel: 

• Dr Fabiana Bettini (UCL Laws)
• Professor Paul Davies (UCL Laws and Essex Court Chambers); and 
• Cecily Crampin (Falcon Chambers)

The panel members will each consider different aspects of the complex, evolving interaction between private law and building safety and its importance both in practice and for our conceptual understanding of the law.

About the Book

The fire at Grenfell Tower in London is the most notorious example of disasters which have exposed building safety failures throughout the world. This collection of essays brings together an international group of authors to consider the lessons of the building safety crisis for private law, and the role that private law may play in addressing the crisis. The book examines issues in tort, contract, and property law in jurisdictions including England and Wales, Australia, Florida, Singapore, New Zealand, Canada and Italy. 

The book is an important resource for policy-makers, practitioners, and scholars as it considers recent case-law and legislative developments and looks at the potential and limits of private law in addressing the vital issue of building safety.

About the speakers

Matthew Bell is an Associate Professor and Co-Director of Studies for Construction Law at Melbourne Law School and Consultant to the Projects Group at the Australian law firm Clayton Utz. In 2019, he was awarded a PhD by King's College London for his research into residential construction regulation through the Centre of Construction Law. 

Fabiana Bettini is a Lecturer in Property Law at University College London, Faculty of Laws. Before joining UCL, she was the Hulme Postdoctoral Fellow in Land Law at the University of Oxford and Brasenose College, and a junior researcher at the Sciences Po Law School in Paris. She earned a doctorate in Comparative Private Law and a Law Degree in Italy. Fabiana’s research focuses on comparative property law. She examines property institutions across common law and civil law jurisdictions and is especially interested in multi-unit buildings. Her scholarship considers how private law can respond to broader social challenges, including housing affordability and building safety.

Cecily Crampin is a property barrister at Falcon Chambers in London. Cecily has a particular interest in the Building Safety Act 2022. She was and is junior counsel for SVDP and Get Living, led by Jonathan Selby KC of Keating Chambers, in Triathlon v SVDP & Othrs [2024] UKFTT (PC), fully fought applications for remediation contribution orders under the Building Safety Act 2022, heard in the FTT by the Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber) President and Deputy President, and most recently by the Court of Appeal in March 2025.

Paul S Davies is Professor of Commercial Law at UCL and a Barrister at Essex Court Chambers. He was previously a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and St Catherine's College, Oxford. Paul has also worked at the Law Commission. He is the author of Accessory Liability (2015; revised paperback edition, 2017), which won the main Inner Temple Book Prize in 2018, JC Smith’s The Law of Contract (2021), and a co-author of Equity and Trusts: Text, Cases and Materials (2019 (with Graham Virgo)). Paul is also an editor of both Chitty on Contracts and Snell's Equity.

Ben McFarlane is Professor of English Law at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St John's College, Oxford. He is an Associate Member of Wilberforce Chambers and holds a visiting appointment at Melbourne Law School. His research focusses on the interaction of the law of property and the law of obligations, and he is the author of The Structure of Property Law (2008) and The Law of Proprietary Estoppel (2014; 2nd edn, 2020) and a co-author of Land Law: Text Cases and Materials (2009; 6th edn, 2024) and Hayton, McFarlane and Mitchell: Text, Cases and Materials on Equity and Trusts (15th edn, 2022).

Agenda

5.15pm to 5.30pm: Arrival and registration
5.30pm to 7pm: Panel discussion
7 - 8pm: Drinks reception

This event is by invitation only.