No one in the industry will disagree with the need for the reforms in building safety following Grenfell and certainly there can be no doubt that the objective of safer buildings will be achieved.
Published: 16 July 2026
Authors: Amber Wright
Necessarily, these reforms would be at some justifiable cost to the industry, but it is certainly the case that the process of regulation has so far been a very bumpy and costly road.
Performance to date has proved costly
Since 1 October 2023, the Building Safety Regulator has acted as the building control authority for higher-risk buildings. From the outset, the new regime has created significant challenges for both the Regulator and the industry. The scale of the task was underestimated, with approval delays affecting project costs and investor confidence.
Delays have hit bottom lines. Gateway approval timeframes remain difficult to predict, and with each project requiring a tailored approach, the time and cost involved in preparing, submitting and securing approvals remains hard to estimate accurately. Delays in the approval process have proved costly for the industry and this is an area the Regulator has committed to tackling.
Latest figures published by the Regulator show median Gateway 2 approval times of 35 weeks for external remediation and 28 weeks for internal works. Rejected applications are taking a median of 26 weeks for external refurbishment and 25 weeks for internal works, representing a significant delay where these applications need to be resubmitted. New HRB and conversion works are closer to the 12-week target but still have a median Gateway 2 approval time of 22 weeks.
The next challenge is Gateway 3. Latest figures show that no new build projects that have passed through Gateway 2 have passed through Gateway 3 yet. For refurbishment projects, 221 have passed through Gateway 3, with 124 applications achieving an 86% approval rate and a median determination time of 16 weeks – double the 8 weeks target. The BSR acknowledges this is “an important area of focus for the Regulator, particularly for new build”, and expects determination times to fall as new processes are introduced and additional resource is secured.
The Regulator recognises that “sufficient internal, external and integrated resources are essential” to meet demand. It has expanded its team and continues to recruit but remains heavily reliant on externally procured resource. Latest figures show that 152 staff members have been, or are currently, involved in the internal regulatory team, while 493 people have been, or are currently, sourced or seconded from external organisations.
Regulator’s fees
The real cost of delays and difficulties of the Gateway process and the Regulator not achieving the statutory timescales will never truly be known, such as the fall in investor confidence resulting in stalled or cancelled schemes and project delays. The cost of the fees of the Regulator itself have also been difficult to estimate by the industry, but we can at least shed some light on that.
In response to a Freedom of Information Request submitted by Shoosmiths’ Construction and Engineering team, the Regulator confirmed the fees it had charged up to 31 December 2025. Across all application types up to the Gateway 2 approval stage, total fees exceeded £4.4m, with an average fee of more than £5k. For new build projects, Gateway 2 fees ranged from £3,296 to £37,707 with an average of £13,121. Across refurbishment and remediation projects Gateway 2 fees ranged from £504 to £36,301 with an average of £3,559 for refurbishment projects and £6,513 for remediation projects.
These costs relate only to the initial stage of the building control process. Further fees are payable for the Regulator’s oversight during construction and at the Gateway 3 completion certificate stage. The data on Gateway 3 fees is more limited due to the lower number of Gateway 3 approvals with only fees totalling £181,863 having been charged to December 2025, but on a positive note the average fees for Gateway 3 were only £2,043 across all work types with little variation between work types.
The Regulator’s fees are of course just one part of the overall cost of building control and do not take into account applicants’ own significant costs in preparing and updating applications and engaging with the Regulator.
Streamlining the regime
Looking ahead, there are some positive indications on the horizon of things improving and a more pragmatic approach from the Regulator. The government is seeking to streamline the higher risk building control regime by reviewing its proportionality and freeing up the capacity of the Regulator to concentrate on the most critical safety work. Removing certain work from the Regulator’s scope would ease resourcing pressures and reduce approval delays.
In January, the government launched a consultation on regulatory dispensations from the HRB building control regime for certain telecommunications works. The consultation acknowledged that the regime had created “some unintended consequences”, including the need for Regulator approval for routine but essential works to existing higher-risk buildings. The government has responded to this consultation and confirmed that it intends to remove all procedural requirements to gain building control authority approval prior to the commencement of works for the installation of fibre optic cabling, both for buildings within the scope of the higher-risk building regime, and those outside it. This will last for three years to allow sufficient time to develop a competent person scheme. For, building work to rooftop mobile communication masts, the government intends to dispense with procedural requirements only for buildings within the scope of the higher-risk building regime and only at Gateway 2. Gateway 3 requirements will continue to apply
The dispensations will take effect from 1 September 2026. In both cases, the functional requirements, dutyholder requirements and competence requirements of the Building Regulations 2010 will still apply.
The government has also responded to the consultation ‘Improving proportionality and building safety outcomes in building control: categorisation of higher-risk building work’. The consultation proposed changes to the legal definition of Category A work. The government is “minded” to exclude work inside flats from Category A (subject to exceptions). However, it has not yet reached a final position. There are outstanding issues to consider, including identifying which types of work inside flats should remain as Category A work and how to avoid unintended consequences of excluding this work. The government will also continue to consider whether small scale works in communal areas should be excluded from Category A.
In addition, the government has published a new consultation seeking views on changes to the emergency repairs route under the higher risk buildings regime. Currently, emergency works can be carried out in existing higher risk buildings without seeking building control approval from the Regulator. Approval can be sought retrospectively after the work is carried out. To enable urgent works to proceed more quickly, the government is consulting on proposals to expand the types of work that may start without the Regulator’s prior approval. The consultation runs until 3 September 2026.
New Single Construction Regulator
The government has also responded to its consultation on a Single Construction Regulator (SCR). The Regulator will form the foundation of the SCR, with the government noting that “efforts to improve BSR’s performance provide an increasingly strong basis for the new regulator”. Legislation will be brought forward “as soon as Parliamentary time allows”, with implementation expected to begin in 2028.
What comes next?
The industry has borne the brunt of the Regulator’s early challenges and now waits to see whether recent improvements will continue with more proportionality and pragmatism, or whether Gateway 3 will become the next major hurdle.