Callers to Assent Building Compliance’s head office told firm has ‘ceased trading and set for insolvency’
Fears were growing this morning about the impact on the Building Safety Regulator’s (BSR) plan to clear the backlog of gateway 2 approvals by January next year after building control firm Assent Building Compliance confirmed it was set to go into insolvency.
Assent was set up in 2005 and its services included building control, fire safety, building regulation advice and consulting work on the Building Safety Act.
But callers to its Wakefield head office were this morning given a pre-recorded message which said: “Assent has ceased trading and is in the process of entering insolvency.” It said further details would be posted on its website in “due course”.
In a statement, the BSR said: “Assent Building Compliance Ltd has made BSR aware of issues affecting their future operations, which includes two Registered Building Control Approvers [RBCA], Oculus Building Consultancy Ltd and LB Building Control Ltd.
“We are in active discussions on the impact on their ongoing registered building control service provision as well as the RBI resource provided to BSR through our supplier framework.”
Last month, the BSR said it wanted to clear the backlog of legacy gateway 2 application by the start of next year.
It said the 91 schemes covered 21,745 units and had been caught up in the old regime before the system for assessing applications was overhauled in the summer.
The BSR is under severe pressure to cut the average time that firms are waiting for gateway 2 approval which across the UK currently stands at 43 weeks, while in London the wait is 48 weeks.
In its statement, the BSR did not say how many gateway 2 applications Assent was working on or give further details of what its collapse would mean for processing those applications.
Under existing government guidance issued last October, if a building control firm goes under “all their uncompleted projects should have received a cancellation notice. We believe that most of these projects will revert to the relevant local authority.”
If jobs get a cancellation notice, clients are told “you only have a 7-day period where you are able to [appoint a new RBCA]. If this is not completed in the 7 days from the cancellation of your initial notice then the work will be automatically reverted to your local authority.”
In a post on LinkedIn, Geoff Wilkinson, managing director of Wilkinson Construction Consultants, said: “The 7 day limit is critical and even RBCAs with any capacity will have limited ability to pick any of these up.
“I’m hoping that the Assent notices were unspecific enough that the Client (person carrying out the work) can issue form 10 and avoid the 7 day period as that buys everyone time. If not then the government need to urgently amend that rule to give any hope of clearing up this mess - a minimum of 30 days would be more appropriate.”
In a separate post, he added: “How this is handled will have a huge impact on thousands (possibly tens of thousands) of home owners and housing projects.
“What happens next may further stall an already strained system and make Government housing targets even more unrealistic.”
Assent’s collapse comes a few months after its chief executive Iain Thomson stepped down at the end of July by mutual consent.
At the time, the firm said: “A highly experienced, interim leadership team is now in place and the board will strengthen this in due course with the appointment of a new CEO.”
In its last set of accounts for the year to December 2023, Assent blamed an “operational restructure to ensure the effective management of all projects” for turnover falling nearly 60% to £2.8m.
The firm remained in the red although pre-tax losses narrowed to £354,000 from £1.4m. According to the accounts, Assent had 71 employees.
Last year, two other building control companies collapsed. AIS Surveyors was put into liquidation last June while PWC Building Control Services was put into liquidation in September.
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