Chief Philip White says regulator’s attempts to engage developers rather than turn applications down have contributed to delays
The Building Safety Regulator (BSR) is looking at taking a “firmer approach” by rejecting more gateway 2 applications outright as it seeks to decrease delays in building control approval, the organisation’s chief has said.
Since taking over the building control for higher-risk buildings, the regulator has been subject to a stream of criticism from the housing development sector over delays of up to 11 months to approval at the ‘gateway 2’ pre-construction stage.
In a statement published on the government’s website, Philip White, chief inspector of buildings at BSR, he stressed that “industry needs to step up and comply with the process” in providing good quality applications.
White indicated that the regulator could begin taking a different approach in how it handles poor quality applications in order to ensure more complete submissions are not delayed.
He said that the regulator’s attempts to engage with applicants rather than simply rejecting submissions had meant that applications “take longer and appear to be delayed”.
“Of course, the time we spend on those incomplete applications is time we can’t spend on others, some of which would be perfectly good to go,” he said.
He said a shift in method could mean the regulator takes a “firmer approach to rejecting those applications that aren’t making the bar straight away”.
He explained that a backlog of cases which built up last summer was “almost cleared”, but the regulator was still struggling with poor quality applications.
White explained that application volumes had been “steady” when it first took on building control for higher-risk buildings, but that things changed in Spring 2024 when transitional arrangements from the pre-Building Safety Act regime came to an end and private building control suffered a collapse.
He said the “temporary backlog of cases” that subsequently built up before July 2024 had nearly been dealt with by the regulator.
While White said there were “a small set of applications from the pre-July backlog that have been in the system for a long time”, approval times had otherwise come down. He said that for other applications, the average Gateway 2 handling time was now around 16 to 18 weeks.
However, he stressed that “industry needs to step up and comply with the process” in providing good quality applications.
The most recent data showed 44% of applications were still being rejected at the validation stage, which is a simple administration check that all the required documents have been supplied.
He emphasised that the process was not “red tape for the sake of it”, but that it was “preventing risks and problems from being designed into the built environment”.
“It’s about making sure residents have safe and quality homes and avoiding costly works at a later date. Or homeowners not being able to secure lending and insurance,” he said.
>> Read more: What the delays at the Building Safety Regulator mean for high-rise development
He also outlined some of the most common and serious failures in applications. These included missing details on how key structural components connect, inadequate information on fire resistance of cladding, walls or barriers, corridors that don’t meet evacuation width requirements and poorly designed or unproven smoke extraction systems.
“These aren’t minor omissions – they present significant safety risks and lead to delays in the approval process,” he said.
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