Calls grow for clearer guidance to ease a growing bottleneck
More than 5,500 newly built homes across the UK remain unoccupied because of significant delays in the Building Safety Regulator’s approval process, according to a Freedom of Information request submitted by law firm Irwin Mitchell.
The backlog stems from delays in the regulator’s Gateway 3 approval process, which serves as the final clearance before completed buildings can be occupied. Under the building safety regime for higher-risk buildings, developers must pass three regulatory gateways overseen by the Building Safety Regulator. Gateway 3 approvals are intended to be completed within eight weeks.
The FOI request revealed that, of 158 applications submitted last year, 55 took more than three months to reach a decision. A total of 44 schemes waited beyond three months for approval, with the longest wait reaching 550 days.
Bottlenecks cause delays
High-rise buildings measuring at least 18 m tall or at least seven storeys are typically classified as high risk under the regime. Gateway 2 occurs during the design stage before construction begins, while Gateway 3 provides final approval for occupancy.
Irwin Mitchell previously highlighted delays at the Gateway 2 stage and has now identified Gateway 3 as an additional bottleneck in the approval system.
At the end of last year, the Industry and Regulators Committee stated that the Building Safety Regulator needed to improve its processes. Developers had raised concerns about delays in project approvals and insufficient guidance on demonstrating building safety.
The law firm has called on the government, the Building Safety Regulator, and the industry to collaborate on streamlining approvals while maintaining the building safety regime’s objectives and enabling new home delivery.
“We fully support the need for a strong, independent regulator and recognise the importance of rigorous oversight. But our FOI findings show that the current Gateway 3 process is not delivering decisions within the statutory time frame,” said Vijay Bange, national head of construction at Irwin Mitchell.
“The transition to a standalone regulator provides an opportunity for improvement, but the delays we are seeing now are unsustainable. Greater transparency, clearer communication and better resourcing are essential if Gateway 3 is to operate effectively.”
In December, a cross-party House of Lords Industry and Regulators Committee report criticised the Building Safety Regulator’s approval processes as “unacceptable”, warning that persistent delays were holding up remediation work on unsafe buildings and increasing costs for leaseholders.
The report said the scale of regulatory delays – notably at critical safety gateways – risked undermining the government’s statutory target to deliver 1.5 million new homes by 2029 if performance did not improve significantly.
