The House | Can The Building Safety Regulator Cast Off Its ‘Bottleneck’ Reputation?

Former London Fire Commissioner Lord Roe is said to have made significant improvements to the way the Building Safety Regulator works (Collage by Antonello Sticca)

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England’s Building Safety Regulator did not get off to the best of starts. Created under the last government’s Building Safety Act of 2022, the BSR was designed to prevent a tragedy like the Grenfell Tower fire from ever happening again.

As well as overseeing the remediation of existing buildings, all new-build developments which qualify as ‘higher-risk’ at the planning stage are referred to the regulator for approval, and if they fail to pass muster, are sent back for changes to be made. The definition of ‘higher-risk’ means any block of flats taller than 18 metres, or seven storeys, comes under the BSR’s purview.

But soon after the regulator’s establishment, it quickly struggled with the volume of applications it was receiving, and delays mounted – while developers complained about opaque processes and poor communication.

In December 2025, the House of Lords’ Industry and Regulators Committee published a scathing report warning that the BSR’s “unacceptable” delays were having “a worrying impact on the delivery of new housing”.

The committee’s inquiry had opened in June, but by the time they published their report six months later, evidence had already begun to emerge that the BSR was getting its act together under new leadership. Experts across the construction sector tell The House that the regulator has made significant progress in how it deals with applications, while cautioning that there remains some work to be done.

The BSR grants approval for new buildings at three ‘gateways’. Gateway 1 comes before planning permission, where the local council is required to seek the BSR’s views on any higher-risk building. At Gateway 2, the BSR reviews the design before construction can begin, and at Gateway 3, the building is assessed again at the post-construction, pre-occupation phase.

Gateway 2 had become especially notorious in the last couple of years as a key “bottleneck” for new high-rise housing projects. While a Gateway 2 decision is meant to be issued within 12 weeks, by the summer of 2025, the average waiting time for approval had grown to just over 51 weeks.

In June 2025, former London fire commissioner Andy Roe – now Lord Roe – was appointed as the BSR’s chair. He was joined by his former deputy commissioner Charlie Pugsley, who took up the role of chief executive, and John Palmer, a former Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) official, who was made operations director.

“Those three individuals have just transformed the engagement of the BSR with industry and other key stakeholders in a really professional way,” says Neil Jefferson, CEO of the Home Builders Federation. “The people we see now who represent the BSR have instilled more confidence in the industry overall.”

The new personnel arrived just months before the BSR in January moved from being part of the Health and Safety Executive to becoming a standalone, arms-length body under MHCLG. It will eventually merge into a ‘single construction regulator’ to cover all aspects of the built environment, as recommended by the Grenfell Inquiry.

It was a bit of a black box before, and under Andy’s leadership that’s definitely changed

But beyond those administrative changes, improvements in the regulator’s communication style with developers and contractors have been welcomed across the sector.

“They’re talking to us much more sensibly and constructively, and not being quite as hands-off,” says Ian McDermott, chair of the G15 group of London housing associations.

“It was a bit of a black box before, and under Andy’s leadership that’s definitely changed. There’s much more engagement. We are talking through problems in a way that we simply didn’t do before, but there’s still quite a lot of work to be done.”

Median waiting times for Gateway 2 decisions are still taking longer than 12 weeks, though are substantially down from where they were, with the latest data showing approval taking 22 weeks and rejection taking 17 weeks. A backlog of legacy cases has however been largely cleared and a rising proportion of applications are being approved. In the 12 weeks to 30 March, the approval rate for validated applications climbed to 61 per cent, up from 33 per cent in the 12 weeks to 25 February.

Labour MP Mike Reader, who just six months ago helped lead a Westminster Hall debate warning that the BSR was “widely regarded as actively hindering the construction of new homes”, says he is “really impressed with how quickly it’s been turned around”.

But he warns: “There will be some cultural work needed still within the BSR. You don’t [suddenly] achieve cultural change in an organisation, in the mindsets of people from ‘Computer says no’ to ‘Not quite there, but this is how we can help you improve’ – that will still come… It’s not there yet, is what I’ve heard.”

It’s a concern echoed by Stephanie Pollitt, programme director for housing at BusinessLDN, who says that efforts now need to be taken to ensure that Gateway 3 does not become a new pinch-point over the coming months.

The frustration at Gateway 2 was partly due to a lack of clarity and transparency over what constituted a good application for validation, she says, adding: “I think we need to learn from those mistakes and make sure that doesn’t fall foul at Gateway 3 as well.”

Jefferson agrees: “The level of resource that’s in the BSR at the moment is wholly focused on Gateway 2, so when we get the first developments at Gateway 3 coming through, there are some concerns that there could be delays in getting buildings signed off on site, which creates cashflow problems for developers in many ways.

“I think there’s more confidence under the new leadership that we can tackle Gateway 3 together than there would have been previously, so that’s definitely a positive, but we’ve got a lot of learning to do together on Gateway 3.”

Ensuring that the regulator is properly resourced presents another challenge. The government had pledged to hire 100 additional staff into the BSR by the end of 2025, but minister Samantha Dixon has revealed that while 115 new posts were “approved”, only 83 new staff members have been “onboarded”.

Boosting the regulator’s workflow may also require other improvements beyond manpower alone.

“The BSR was set up with inadequate IT systems for document management – it was just completely overrun,” says Jefferson. “I wouldn’t say that that’s necessarily been solved yet, but it’s certainly been recognised as an issue.”

Andy and his team are receiving applications from developers which are timed to come in before the levy hits

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Jefferson warns too that Roe’s work to improve the BSR could soon be put at risk by the government’s plan to introduce the Building Safety Levy in October. The levy, which was delayed from October last year, will be charged on all new residential developments of 10 or more units, with the funds used to help pay for cladding remediation and other safety repairs.

“We would welcome a further delay because of the economic conditions for development at the moment. It’s really unwelcome that this is coming in,” says Jefferson, who points out that the government already has £2.6bn in its Building Safety Fund to spend.

“It means that Andy and his team are receiving applications from developers which are timed to come in before the levy hits. Those applicants will be looking for acceptance of those projects before October, which will create a spike in his workload and make it difficult for him to prioritise his work.”

Anthony Breach, policy director at the Centre for Cities think tank, meanwhile says questions may still need to be asked about whether the 18m height limit should be increased – potentially to 30m or 50m – to reduce the scope of the BSR’s work and speed up developments.

In its Phase 2 report, the Grenfell Inquiry concluded: “We do not think that to define a building as ‘higher risk’ by reference only to its height is satisfactory, being essentially arbitrary in nature,” and recommended that the definition be reviewed. After a review last year, the BSR found there was “insufficient evidence” to change the definition, which was supported by MHCLG.

“The 18m threshold is very low, it doesn’t really have any basis in fire safety,” says Breach. “The result is, the mid-rise buildings that the government – separately, in its economic strategy – is stressing as very important to improve housing affordability, transport efficiency, the productivity of the national economy, that type of building is now just much more difficult, expensive, risky to build than it would be in a system where the BSR’s scope was defined more clearly on fire risk.”

A BSR spokesperson said the regulator has introduced a new system of account managers to enable “regular dialogue between applicants and the BSR” as well as a new “complex case category of application”, saying this is “quite clearly the opposite of a ‘computer says no’ approach”. The recent move to become a non-departmental public body will also see “investment in our technology and in our people’s skills”, they said.

They added: “We are continuing to work with the sector to build upon the existing guidance to provide further clarity around what a good [application] looks like which will help reduce invalidations and rejections.

“We have seen some high quality applications pass quickly through the system and are encouraging developers to share best practice. New-build approval rates are increasing month on month and we have a shared objective with the sector to drive up approval rates.”

MHCLG, meanwhile confirmed that having already delayed the Building Safety Levy by a year to give developers time to prepare for it, “no further changes” are now planned to its implementation.