‘Assure yourself, and you will have a much easier time assuring us’ – in conversation with the Building Safety Regulator

Many Gateway 2 applications are being rejected. The data you’ve shared shows just 31% are being approved, while 44% are invalidated because they don’t contain the right information and 25% are withdrawn or rejected. Where are applicants going wrong?

The validation stage, which is where an application is first submitted, is where we’re seeing most of the issues. The law sets out a detailed schedule of material that needs to be sent in at that point. What we’re finding is that too many applications don’t contain that information, or that things are missing. We can’t progress the application if it doesn’t have the required information.

The rejections reflect situations where those submitting the application haven’t demonstrated that the building regulations are going to be met. Examples include where the application didn’t demonstrate that the foundations would be strong enough to support the proposed building, or didn’t demonstrate how the walls would be tied together.

We’ve rejected plans where the applicant’s own analysis of the smoke control system demonstrated it would put smoke into evacuation routes; or applications for the remediation of cladding where it’s not demonstrated that the facade of the building is capable of taking the weight of the new cladding and, in some cases, not even demonstrating that the new cladding is any better in terms of combustibility than the cladding that’s proposed to be taken off.

We are talking about pretty fundamental things, and that’s quite worrying.

Are you working with applicants to fix these things before rejecting the application?

We will work as hard as we can with the applicants to give them the opportunities to provide us the information so we can get that work approved. But at times, when we make requests for information, it’s apparent that the applicant doesn’t have that information to hand. They themselves are not able to say that the cladding they’re going to put on is any better than the cladding they’re going to take off.

I found it, personally, a bit concerning that you’re wanting to do works like that, and you haven’t assured yourself that the cladding is going to be better.

So that’s what I’ve been saying for a long time: assure yourself that your building is going to meet the requirements of the building regulations. And then you can assure the Building Safety Regulator.

We have non-prescriptive building regulations in the UK. So the standards you are judging people against are performance-based, and that requires a degree of interpretation. Do you think that part of the problem might be that you are making those judgements in a different way to the industry?

We work through multi-disciplinary teams involving registered building inspectors, and we are taking advice from them, as we are legally obliged to do. It is their advice that is pointing us towards saying we don’t think that the building regulations are being met.

It is worth reflecting, as well, that there is more than just the functional requirements to go by. There are various British Standards, there is statutory guidance. So while there are areas where interpretation may be necessary, there is guidance; there are frameworks to support what complies and what does not.

Complying with the building regulations is something organisations are capable of doing. We do see applications approved. It is something that can be done.

There are a lot of reports about how long it takes for applications to get through the system. What could applicants do to speed the process up?

Part of the adjustment the industry needs to make is more design upfront, so that you’ve got a more complete design to submit.

But when we see reports about applications that have been with us for 50 weeks, we are aware of those applications. And we know there have been multiple requests for information on some of them, and that each of those requests for information has perhaps taken three weeks to be met. We’ve had to assess it. And there’s then been further requests for information, some of which have been met, some of which have only been partially met.

You can conclude that if an application has been with us for that length of time, there are potentially some issues with it that we’re trying to work through in order to try and get that application approved. It isn’t the case that the BSR took your application 50 weeks ago and hasn’t touched it in the interim.

You sometimes see claims that people don’t know why their application has been rejected, and I struggle with that. There will have been requests for information. There will have been an assessment by registered building inspectors. If you received several requests for information, it is likely that that has given you an understanding of where your application is not providing us with assurance, and thus I would have assumed that you would have got some ideas from that process about what is wrong.

It isn’t as if an application comes in, a rejection letter comes out, and there’s no conversation at all.

When one then sees BSR delays blamed for houses not getting built, what I would say is: those houses, those properties, aren’t getting built because the building regulations might not be met if they were. 

And I think we’d all want the building regulations to be met so we have safe, quality homes. Certainly, ministers, the deputy prime minister, have been very clear that they want safe, quality homes.

Is there an issue on your side in terms of resources? Do you have enough capacity to deal with the amount of work that’s come your way?

Before we launched, we modelled the volume of work we expected to come our way. And as I’ve said previously, that modelling didn’t survive contact with the real world.

There were over 500 assumptions that underpinned the creation of the BSR. It was an extremely complex and large endeavour. We have Category A and Category B applications, and the Category Bs were significantly higher than we anticipated. [Category A involves “significant alterations to the structure, safety, or design of a higher-risk building”; Category B is simpler work which does not.]

We also anticipated that the quality of the submissions would be better than they turned out to be. There’s an often-quoted example, but it is an actual example, of a building compliance statement that said simply, “It complies”, which wasn’t the kind of reasoned argument that one might have anticipated, and I think that created some issues for us.

So there were those kinds of things that created issues for us, and we reacted. We drew recruitment forward, we modified processes to make them faster, and we’re starting to see the benefit of that. We were also given additional funding of £2.1m last year to address some of these issues.

I understand that your remit is set by ministers, but given the issue with the high volume of Category B jobs, do you have any reflection on the proposal that the scope of works you oversee in that area should be reduced? 

That would require some legislative change, and the department and ministers would need to be convinced that any change wouldn’t create new risks. There are things the industry could do to help with that, for example through the creation of competent persons schemes for issues such as fire-door installation.

Other things that we will explore, obviously, are different ways of actually discharging our functions. Are there means by which we can do that work in a different way, achieve the same aim, but do it in a light-touch way, in a faster way?

But we ourselves would need to be convinced of the evidence that that’s still achieving the same objective, namely that you get something that complies with the building regulations.

Some social landlords expressed concern that necessary remediation work is being slowed down while they wait for BSR approval – and that a safety risk results from that. What would you say to that?

We’ve recently put new guidance on gov.uk. That was based on the research we did with applicants. They were telling us, “These are the parts of the process we found difficult to navigate”, and that guidance seeks to respond to that.

But I can give a top-four list of issues we’re finding with remediation. If you address that top four, you have a much better chance of getting through.

One: it’s about demonstrating that the cladding [you are putting on] is better than what you are taking off.

Two: it’s about making sure you show that the structural elements have been met, that the walls are literally strong enough to take the weight of the new cladding.

Three: you’ve got to remember that you need to comply with all elements of the building regulations. You still have to prove, for example, that the cladding will allow proper ventilation, so there isn’t going to be a build-up of damp and things like that.

Finally, you’ve got to remember that this is an end-to-end process. Everyone is focused on Gateway 2, but the important bit of the process is actually at the start, before you submit to us. And it’s for you to assure yourself at that stage that your remediation job is going to meet the building regulations.

Assure yourself, and you will have a much easier time assuring us.

Peter Apps is contributing editor at Inside Housing