‘Getting gateway 2 approval now much closer to stated 12 weeks,’ Building Safety Regulator boss says

The chair of the Building Safety Regulator has said it has driven down the amount of time it takes to get gateway 2 approval to be much closer to its stated aim of 12 weeks.

Andy Roe arrived at the regulator last summer when the average time to get sign off in London, the biggest market affected by the issue, was taking 48 weeks. Outside of the capital, the wait time was around 43 weeks.

But speaking this morning as the regulator became a standalone body – and moved out of the jurisdiction of the Health and Safety Executive – Roe said the wait time was now down to “13, 14, 15 weeks” and “often” 12 weeks for both London and nationally.

He also said firms were being told within a week of submitting their gateway 2 documents whether their submission had been validated or not. Many had long complained they were only being told months after submitting paperwork that what they had sent in was incorrect.

Roe, who was speaking alongside his chief executive Charlie Pugsley, said a series of initiatives such as batching up bundles of applications, bringing in account managers for major developers and overhauling its IT system had begun to work.

He admitted that what he inherited last year was broken but said: “The way we’ve communicated and approached things has completely changed.

“My inbox used to be full of complaints. I don’t have those anymore because we’ve addressed them.”

He said the regulator was much more in daily contact with industry and said the problems of gateway 2 would not be repeated at the gateway 3 stage – where completed schemes have to be signed off by the regulator before occupiers can move in.

He admitted: “I completely understand why people are anxious [about gateway 3] but we have a plan. To help managed that anxiety, we have got a clear strategy of communication between the regulator and the developer. We are very, very focussed on this. With gateway 3, we have a plan A, B and C.”

Around 29 schemes of an initial 144 are still in the gateway 2 backlog and Roe said they would be given the chance “to get over the line” with sign off. He added: “We want to get them over the line but we will at some point have to call a halt. There is not a hard and fast rule [and we have a ] responsibility to the applicants.”

He admitted the next big issue to tackle was the amount of time it is taking to tackle its remediation backlog. Around 280 schemes are still waitirng for clearance with the time taken to deal with remediation cases coming in at around 34 weeks.

Roe said it was set to announce a plan to deal with the backlog in the coming couple of weeks with its aim to get the wait time down to the stated period of eight weeks.

And he added that enforcement action will only be used on those building owners who persistently flout the new rules. He said there were still “a lot of dangerous buildings out there that will need enforcing against”. But he said enforcement “must have teeth” and would be used against “the worst actors”.

Under a series of changes announced last year, the BSR has moved to an arms length body of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

The government also said it has launched a new consultation to speed up the delivery of lower risk building works on high-rise buildings. This would cover how lower‑risk work – such as installing fibre‑optic cabling and mobile masts – is handled.

It added: “This will free up the Building Safety Regulator to concentrate its expertise on the most complex and highest‑risk building projects, where strong oversight has the greatest impact.” The consultation closes on 24 March.