Hold-ups now dogging gateway 3 building safety approvals, FOI reveals

More than 40 completed schemes have been waiting over three months to get gateway 3 sign-off from the Building Safety Regulator.

The data has been obtained by law firm Irwin Mitchell via a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to the Health and Safety Executive.

It said that as a result, nearly 5,600 homes have been affected because of the hold-ups with a total of 44 schemes waiting to get the gateway 3 green light.

With echoes of the problems that have dogged gateway 2, the longest case – understood to be a scheme in south-west London – took 550 days to get approval having been first submitted in June 2024.

Gateway 3 is the final approval stage for new residential applications that is required before buildings can be occupied. The BSR aims to make decisions within eight weeks.

The data, accurate as of 21 January, covers the period from Q2 2024 to Q1 for 2026 and shows that 201 applications had been submitted for gateway 3 between Q2 2024 and the end of last year.

Of those, 35 were approved within three months while 57 were approved after three months.

Irwin Mitchell said 43 schemes were submitted for gateway 3 in the nine months the data covered of 2024 while 158 were submitted for gateway 3 last year.

The findings come at a time of heightened scrutiny for the BSR, following criticism from a House of Lords committee in December and the regulator’s recent transition from the Health and Safety Executive to a standalone organisation.

In a statement, the BSR said it was “not correct” to claim that nearly 5,600 homes had sat empty as a result of the hold-ups.

It added: “No new-build HRB that has gone through the GW2 process has yet applied for GW3 approval. The only new-build properties that have reached GW3 are transitional legacy cases (where the building was assessed under the old regime and not gateway 2 but transferred to the BSR after the Building Control body ceased trading).

“We have found significant safety issues in some of these older projects and continue to work proactively with applicants to get the buildings to a state where they can be occupied. The vast majority of GW3 applications and decisions so far are for Category A or B work alongside some remediation work, most of which is carried out whilst residents remain in their homes.

“It is therefore not correct to equate these applications to empty properties.”

Last month BSR chairman Andy Roe said the problems of gateway 2 would not be repeated at the gateway 3 stage.

He admitted: “I completely understand why people are anxious [about gateway 3] but we have a plan. To help managed that anxiety, we have got a clear strategy of communication between the regulator and the developer. We are very, very focussed on this. With gateway 3, we have a plan A, B and C.”

Vijay Bange, national head of construction at Irwin Mitchell, said: “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 timeframe.

“Thousands of completed homes are sitting empty for months on end. This is financially damaging for developers and deeply frustrating for residents waiting to move into safe, modern homes.

“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.”

Roe also said last month that the regulator was making progress in tackling the gateway 2 backlog and bringing the wait time for decisions at this stage closer to the stated 12 weeks.

But some firms have said they are still waiting 20-something weeks for sign-off while in a market update this morning London cost consultant Core Five said that while the BSR was now better resourced it was still only leading “to a trickle, not a deluge of new project starts”.