{"id":154681,"date":"2025-09-02T07:35:14","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T06:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbctoday.co.uk\/news\/?p=154681"},"modified":"2025-09-01T16:53:20","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T15:53:20","slug":"building-safety-regulator-reforms-solution-housebuilding-bottleneck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pbctoday.co.uk\/news\/building-control-news\/building-safety-regulator-reforms-solution-housebuilding-bottleneck\/154681\/","title":{"rendered":"Are the Building Safety Regulator reforms the solution to the housebuilding bottleneck?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Emily Leonard, Emma Medina-Wallace and Eleanor Folger of law firm Freeths examine the government\u2019s reforms to the Building Safety Regulator and ask if they will help deliver much-needed housing for the UK<\/h2>\n

Introduced by the Building Safety Act 2022 (BSA), the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) is responsible for raising safety standards for all buildings, regulating the design and construction of higher-risk buildings, and helping professionals improve their competence in design, construction, and building control<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The BSR is the building control authority for higher-risk buildings in England. As at the time of writing, a higher-risk building (for the purposes of the design and construction stage) is a building which is at least 18m tall or seven storeys high, with two or more residential units or is a hospital or a care home.<\/p>\n

Mounting delays to Gateway 2<\/h3>\n

Although long-awaited and widely supported given the circumstances of the Grenfell tragedy, the rollout of the building safety reforms has faced heavy criticism as delays continue to mount since the higher-risk building approval process was introduced.<\/p>\n

Most of these delays occur at Gateway 2, being the approval stage before construction can start. While there may be a target time stated for assessment of new higher risk buildings of 12 weeks (and for existing higher-risk buildings of eight weeks<\/a>), it is well known and reported that there have been significant delays by the BSR in processing Gateway 2 applications.<\/p>\n

In addition, a significant amount of applications have been rejected due to missing key information<\/a>, suggesting that more needs to be done to ensure that the requirements are clear to applicants.<\/p>\n

Since Gateway 2 clearance is required before construction of high-rise residential buildings can commence, this bottleneck has stalled the progress of numerous housing projects. Given the UK government\u2019s recent pledge to build 1.5m homes by 2029, these delays come at a critical juncture.<\/p>\n

Reform to address bottlenecks and accelerate delivery<\/h3>\n

There is some hope on the horizon as reforms introduced by the government, increased transparency and new Gateway 2 guidance all aim to streamline the BSR and accelerate housebuilding.<\/p>\n

The government\u2019s reforms, introduced on 30 June 2025, include:<\/p>\n