Prime minister expected to set up task groups to look into issues with current regime rather than risk further industry disruption
The government is unlikely to introduce a single regulator for the entire construction industry immediately as part of its response to the Grenfell Inquiry, industry experts have said.
Construction Industry Council chief executive Graham Watts and Construction Products Association chief executive Peter Caplehorn both told Housing Today’s sister title Building they believed ministers would prioritise economic growth while implementing a tougher regulatory regime.
Keir Starmer has promised to issue the government’s full response to the Grenfell Inquiry’s final report by 4 March, six months after the publication of the inquiry’s findings into the causes of the fire at the west London tower which killed 72 people in June 2017.
The 1,700-page report’s 58 recommendations for reforming building safety to prevent a similar disaster happening in the future included a call for the creation of a single independent regulator for all parts of the construction industry which would report to a single secretary of state.
It criticised the existing regime for being too “dispersed” across multiple bodies and government departments.
The proposal generated concern among some industry experts due to the potential disruption it could cause to construction firms which have already spent several years adapting to the new building safety regulator (BSR), which was set up in 2022.
The current regulator has also faced issues in recent months with high-rise residential projects being delayed by up to two years because of a lack of resources needed to approve “Gateway 2” applications required for schemes to start construction.
Watts said embarking on another period of transition would “magnify those problems”, adding: “We can see all the delays that are being caused and the problems that are being caused in the government’s growth targets by the delays in the current regulatory system.
“My feeling is that, with some of the tougher decisions, they are just going to kind of kick into the long grass.”
Watts added that signs the government was in the process of setting up groups to look into different parts of building control suggested ministers intended to “buy themselves a lot more time to consider the consequences and the knock-on effects of some of these decisions”.
Any future changes to regulation could be tied into a statutory five-year review of the Building Safety Act which is due in 2027, Watts said.
Caplehorn said he expected Starmer to support the inquiry’s recommendations in principle but would “evolve” towards these objectives rather than disrupt the “momentum” that has been generated by the existing regulatory reforms.
>>See also: Reeves promises not to ‘renege’ on building safety regulation as 90 new high-rise projects held up by rules
>> Also read: High-rise decision delays caused by outsourced delivery model, says building safety regulator
“I think it’s about setting out a vision as to how that would go, and working towards it over a reasonable timeframe,” he said, adding that he believed officials had listened to the concerns of the industry over the impact of another period of regulatory change.
“The impression I get is that the message about evolution has certainly been taken on board, and I also think that they are very conscious of the fact that, while we’ve still got some wrinkles, a lot has been done and momentum has been created.”
Developers are currently facing delays of between 18 and 24 months on so-called ‘higher risk’ housing schemes, which are taller than 18m, caused partly by a lack of in-house technical staff at the regulator.
BSR head of operations, planning and building control Andrew Moore has admitted that the body’s outsourcing approach, which assembles building control teams from the private sector to sign off projects, “isn’t working as we had hoped”.
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