Industry and Regulators Committee examines work of Building Safety Regulator

On opening the session in Parliament, Baroness Taylor asked for an outline of the Building Safety Regulator’s achievement to date and whether or not building safety has indeed witnessed a general improvement.

“The whole system is completely new,” affirmed White, “and brings in the hard stop at Gateway Two. In terms of successes, we’ve established a regulator from nothing. Circa 400 people are now part of the operation or supporting the regulator from within the Health and Safety Executive. Planning Gateway One has been very successful. We’ve also established the regulation of the Building Control profession. Over 4,200 individuals have been registered as Building Control inspectors. Further, we’re beginning to inspect both public and private sector Building Control providers.”

Referencing Planning Gateway One, which was established back in 2021 and whereby local authorities send in submitted plans for high-rise buildings for the regulator to review and comment on in relation to fire strategies, White mentioned that (initially) circa 58% of all applications submitted were being rejected. “Now,” said White, “we’re only having to comment on around 17% of applications. That’s still too high. We want that figure to be at the 10% mark. We’re meeting Service Level Agreements almost 100% of the time.”

Gateway Two has presented a big challenge for industry. More design work now needs to be done to demonstrate compliance with the Building Regulations. Quite a few applications have been rejected over time due to insufficient demonstrations that fire and structural safety issues have been thoroughly addressed.

Delays in approvals

Lord Gilbert asked a key question in terms of what has led to the delays in approvals. According to Chris Griffin-McTiernan, co-ordination of all the parties involved (ie Fire and Rescue Services, local authorities and private sector partners) has proved to be something of a stumbling block at times.

“The number of hours we were spending on assessing applications was significantly higher than we had anticipated,” affirmed Griffin-McTiernan. “We expected a higher level of compliance with the initial applications. We now try and assess Gateway Two and Gateway Three at the same time. There was a perfect storm at the start of the last financial year as well in terms of responding to particular buildings.”

Part of that perfect storm was engendered by the collapse of two Building Control providers, which then engendered the transference of 50 partially completed construction projects to the Building Safety Regulator with no accompanying documentation.

Last year, the output on decisions being made was around 50 per month. The latest data (taken from August this year) shows the completion of 209 decisions in that particular month. An impressive uptick, then. That said, circa 40% of applications are still being rejected at the validation stage due to them lacking basic documentation on measures such as smoke detectors. Some have lacked assurances that external wall systems will resist fire.

Communication issues

Lord Udny-Lister focused on communication with the Building Safety Regulator, a subject which has been raised by several inquiry participants in previous sessions. “We are told that people find it very difficult to speak to the regulator, and when they do they receive a standardised response. What can be done to correct this?”

In response, Philip White noted: “This time last year, communication between the applicant and the regulator was not what it should have been. It was sub-optimal. We accept that and it happened for a number of reasons. We determined to fix that situation.”

What has actually been done in this area was elaborated upon by Griffin-McTiernan. He talked of investment in dedicated case officer support and the recruitment of account managers that can then provide applicants with a dedicated person with whom they can speak directly.

Griffin-McTiernan stated that there are very few applications that don’t require three, four or five requests for more information. 50% of existing building applications haven’t been meeting the standards set out in law for fire safety. “A common issue is around modelling, particularly focusing on smoke. Details of fire barriers in external cladding have been missing. Some examples have shown a lack of smoke detector provision in flats.”

Griffin-McTiernan continued: “The Building Safety Act requires transformation in the industry in terms of how buildings are designed. It requires upfront investment in knowing all of the necessary detail before a spade is put in the ground.” Adding to that point, Philip White said: “Culture change takes time. A draft guide on culture change has been produced.”

Building Control inspectors

White went on to state that the landscape has been “very challenging” for Building Control inspectors across the last few years. The Grenfell Tower Inquiry was heavily critical of Building Control. Then there was the need to establish regulation for the profession from scratch. Circa 30% of candidates were failing the established competence tests first time around.

“The flip side is that Building Control is now a regulated profession,” explained White. “The status of the inspection role will be enhanced.”