Building Safety Regulator chair Andy Roe named on peerage list

The chair of the Building Safety Regulator is to be given a peerage.

In a statement released by the government yesterday, the King signalled his intention to confer the honour on 34 individuals, including Andy Roe.

A former British Army officer, Roe joined the London Fire Brigade in 2002 and worked his way up to become assistant commissioner. 

As incident commander during the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017, Roe (pictured) revoked the controversial ‘stay put’ advice to residents. In 2020, he became the brigade’s commissioner, a position he held for five years.

After stepping down as commissioner, Roe was appointed as executive chair of the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) and tasked with turning round a huge problem of delays in determining building safety applications. 

In the autumn, Roe outlined measures to speed up the current approval rate for high-rises , including batching up bundles of applications, bringing in account managers for major developers and overhauling the BSR’s IT system.

Last month, the BSR said nearly half of the live caseload for gateway 2 new build was being handled under its new model for deciding cases, dubbed the ‘innovation unit, which replaced the previous multi-disciplinary team model that was blamed for long delays in building approvals.

This morning, a critical report by a House of Lords inquiry into the regulator urged it to streamline the approvals process, hire more building inspectors and cut red tape.

Roe was nominated by prime minister Keir Starmer.