Building Safety Regulator to publish quarterly performance data

Following major delays around the BSR’s Gateway 2 checkpoint for higher-risk buildings – building control sign-off, which must take place before work begins – there have been calls from across the housing sector for a review of the process. 

In March, MPs heard that the hold-ups – with applications sometimes taking almost a year to get BSR approval – were in some cases leading to people losing their jobs.

Besides demand-driven bottlenecks in the system, the government has also blamed delays on poor-quality applications.

In his written answer, Mr Norris said MHCLG and the BSR “jointly keep [the] BSR’s operational set-up under review as a departmental priority”.

“We are working with the BSR to undertake a further programme of enhancements to improve application processing times, which we recognise are too long. Enhancements to the service will continue to scale up in the coming months,” he said.

Matt Hodges-Long, chief executive of the risk management platform TrackMyRisks, said Mr Norris’s comments suggested “positive progress” that would enable benchmarks to be set, and that, ideally, the government would release data monthly, as it does with building safety remediation.

“You would hope to see approval times coming down. Or if it plateaus, then you can understand, plan and put targets in place,” he said.

“Another key point, if we’re looking at Gateway 2, is that it covers not just new build, but remediation,” Mr Hodges-Long added.

“If you’re in a building waiting for new cladding or fire-door replacements, if those are being held up by the regulatory process, then you could argue that is getting in the way of improvements in safety.”

He said he hoped the government would also provide further information about the service enhancements Mr Norris referred to.

“The question is, what is coming? Will they be improving their technology, which is broken in a lot of ways, or their invoicing, which lots of people are complaining about?” he asked.

Inside Housing has approached MHCLG for further comment.