Peers condemn ‘unacceptable’ building safety delays and say approvals process needs to be ‘streamlined’

Streamlining the approvals process, hiring more building inspectors and cutting out unnecessary red tape are among the recommendations made by a House of Lords inquiry into the Building Safety Regulator regime.

The report by the Lords’ industry and regulators committee comes after several witness including CLC co-chair Mark Reynolds and BSR chair Andy Roe appeared before peers over the summer and autumn.

It found that “many applications are being rejected or delayed due to basic errors and applicants’ inability to evidence how they are considering elements of fire and structural safety which reflects poorly on the construction industry”.

But the committee added: “The BSR has not given clear enough guidance on how applicants are supposed to demonstrate that their buildings are safe”, while it warned: “Difficulties in local authority funding and the introduction of regulation have left an ageing workforce of building inspectors who are struggling to meet demand.”

And it said limited resources were not being used properly, saying: “Despite these skills shortages, smaller works such as bathroom renovations in high-rise buildings are being subject to the scrutiny of the BSR’s hard-pressed multidisciplinary teams.”

It said the process for signing off safety approval could be improved by “removing smaller works from the BSR’s building control approval processes” and recommended “the BSR  allocate the same multi-disciplinary teams to similar buildings or projects built by the same organisation, which could improve efficiency and consistency”.

Chair of the committee Baroness Taylor of Bolton said: “The scale of the delays caused by the BSR has stretched far beyond the regulator’s statutory timelines [12 weeks at gateway 2] for building control decisions. This is unacceptable. We welcome that the government and the BSR are now acting to try and make practical improvements but this will not address the anxiety and frustration that residents and companies have experienced.

“It does not improve safety to delay vital remediation and refurbishments, nor to deter the delivery of new housing in high-rise buildings. We expect to see further action from the government and the BSR to ensure that construction projects in high-rise buildings can be brought forward more quickly, without compromising on vital safety improvements.”

In the autumn, Roe outlined a series of measures to speed up the current approval rate for high-rise residential schemes. These included batching up bundles of applications, bringing in account managers for major developers and overhauling its IT system.

Last month, the BSR said nearly half of the live caseload for gateway 2 new build is being handled under its new model for deciding cases.

The regulator introduced a new case-handling procedure, which it named its innovation unit, after the previous multi-disciplinary team model was blamed for long delays in building approvals.