Just seven schemes out of 40 applications received last year get green light from regulator
Less than a quarter of finished high-rise housing projects that have applied for “completion” certificates from the new safety regulator have so far received a decision, Building Design can reveal.
Amid continuing industry concern over the operation of the Building Safety Regulator (BSR), the organisation said just seven out the 40 projects which applied in 2024 for the final building control approval necessary to allow residents to move in have so far received it.
Under the new post-Grenfell system for regulating construction work on housing schemes taller than 18 metres (HRBs), developers or firms carrying out remediation work must seek approval at three distinct “gateway” points.
Firms have already raised concerns about the length of time it has been taking the new Building Safety Regulator to respond to gateway 2 applications, approvals for which are needed to allow construction to start on site.
However, buyers and developers are also starting to express fears about delays at the post-construction gateway 3 stage, where a “completion certificate” must be issued before the building can be occupied.
One buyer of a flat in a new-build HRB told Building Design his developer has told him it has been waiting since October for gateway 3 sign-off for the completed homes from the regulator, and that the developer “last week said the regulator was still not able to give them a timeline for the buyers to complete on their purchases, although the case is progressing”.
The regulator told Building Design that it made decisions on 23% of the 40 applications for gateway 3 approval received in 2024, with seven of the 40 approved, and two rejected. Regulations stipulate the BSR is required to respond to gateway 3 applications within eight weeks.
Matt Voyce, executive director of construction at high-rise developer Quintain, which has a number of schemes held up by the gateway checks, including at gateway 3, said he wasn’t surprised by the figures and that the organisation’s performance “cannot be acceptable” as delays were “creating a handbrake to residential investment”.
He said Quintain had a completed 185-home scheme with 104 affordable homes which was sat empty awaiting gateway 3 approval. He said: “Residential viability is on a knife edge and the BSR risks are tipping the scales in favour of developer doing nothing, resulting in fewer homes being delivered and government’s ambitious housing targets being missed.
“The delays in approving gateway 3 applications will result in completed buildings sitting empty, affecting income streams and financing covenants for developers.”
The news comes days after the government promised to put in £2m of funding to support the regulator in approving high rise schemes via a new cladding remediation enforcement unit.
It comes two weeks after the body said it accepted that its model of outsourcing the processing of applications was not working as well as anticipated and had contributed to delays. The regulator has also blamed the poor quality of applications from many firms for the delays seen at gateway 2.
A spokesperson for the Health & Safety Executive, in which the regulator is housed, said that the BSR accepted that nine projects inherited from the collapse of private building control firm AIS had experienced delays at Gateway 3, but that others were “progressing through their 8-week assessment period”.
The spokesperson said: “Essentially there are no issues at GW3, taking out the transitional [AIS] cases”.
The spokesperson added that the new funding “will help the timescales on progressing compliant applications” at gateway 2 but that the industry needed to “step up and comply with the process” with better quality applications.
Earlier this month, McLaren suggested private developers could help fund an initiative to speed up decisions at the gateway 2 stage while others raising concerns about the issue have included the trade body for piling specialists which has warned its members are deferring investment decisions while others are looking at lay-offs.
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