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BSR chair says minor building work should be taken out of regulator’s scope
Minor building work to high-rise blocks is likely to be moved out of the scope of the Building Safety Regulator’s oversight, amid a major shake-up led by chair Andy Roe.
Minor building work to high rises is likely to be moved out of the scope of the Building Safety Regulator’s oversight, amid a major shake-up led by chair Andy Roe #UKhousingIn an exclusive interview with Inside Housing, Mr Roe confirmed his plans to bring delays at the beleaguered regulator down to the proposed 12 weeks.
The former commissioner of the London Fire Brigade (LFB) – who took over the regulator alongside his former LFB colleague Charlie Pugsley in July – said he would work with government to change the definition of building works that need to go through the regulator’s ‘Gateway’ process.
It is understood such a change would require an amendment to the law, which many sector figures have been calling for since the introduction of the new regulatory regime more than two years ago.
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Under the current system, anything meeting the definition of ‘building work’ in a block taller than 18 metres requires approval from the regulator before work can begin.
This has seen jobs such as the replacement of fire doors and the fitting of communal fire alarms delayed by up to a year while the regulator assesses their compliance, causing major delays and overwhelming the regulator’s teams.
Data shared with Inside Housing in October revealed that of 869 projects awaiting ‘Gateway 2’ approval, 439 (50.5%) were more minor works to existing blocks.
Asked if he believed the scope of projects overseen by the BSR should be reduced, Mr Roe said: “The answer to that is yes, basically. Charlie [Pugsley’s] whole ethos when he was running the regulatory business inside LFB was ‘you’ve got to put your resources where the risk is the greatest’.
“The building safety regulator is no different... we think that’s a part of the regime that needs to evolve.”
He added: “You would want to keep hold of some refurbishment. So if you’re doing massive scale refurbishment across whole estates, you do need to know that the people doing that are competent, and understand the terrible impact they might have on safety from getting it wrong.
“There’s a place, though, where you could take a lot of Category B jobs [more minor changes to a building] back out of this form of control into a more proportionate regime, potentially back with local authorities.
“Obviously that’ll be done carefully so we don’t get into a situation where we create new unintended consequences, but the answer, putting it simply, is yes. Because what that would then do is free up skilled resources inside the regulator.”
Mr Roe added that the regulator had already adopted a new approach of contracting large engineering firms to provide ‘multi-disciplinary teams’ (MDTs) for whole batches of Gateway 2 applications.
The prior system – which relied on setting up each MDT from scratch for every application – had been a major cause of delays, he said.
“We’re only a few weeks into that approach, but we are beginning to see really good progress,” said Mr Roe, adding that the jobs going through under this new system are currently achieving milestones that suggest they will come a lot closer to statutory targets.
“I’m hoping we’re going to see a sort of average of around 12 and 15 weeks,” he says.
“I think that feels sensible for new build applications, because we don’t want to be so rigid... that we don’t allow consideration of what can be quite complex engineering decisions.”
You can read his full interview with Inside Housing here.
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