BSR chair unveils measures to speed up approvals process at Building the Future conference

Batching up bundles of applications, bringing in account managers for major developers and overhauling its IT system are all part of ambitious plans by the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) to speed up the current approval rate for high-rise residential schemes.

BSR chair Andy Roe outlined the measures at the Housing Today Live/Building the Future conference in London this morning. He said the proposals would help to drive down the amount of time it takes to get gateway 2 approval closer to its stated aim of 12 weeks.

Roe, who has been in post since July, said that the average time that firms were waiting for gateway 2 approval across the UK curently stood at 43 weeks, while this number jumped to 48 weeks in London.

“It’s a system that’s not been working for the regulator or for you in the industry,” he admitted.

Under his plans, batches of up to 20 applications will be bundled up and looked at by one multi-disciplinary team (MDT).

Roe said the first batches were being looked at this week with MDTs such as Arup and WSP being brought in to carry out the process.

“These will be done under the supervision of the BSR [but] it means we will be able to work through those applications at pace,” Roe said.

As well as new build, batches will also include schemes that need remediation or refurbishment work, Roe added.

He revealed that the BSR plans to recruit account managers to manage larger developers as well as regions.

Up to 10 will be recruited and these will be “dedicated” to larger developers, such as Barratt Redrow, and regions such as London. “We’re already setting up meetings with people in the new-build space [about this],” Roe added.

He admitted that the regulator’s IT system was not up to scratch and promised this will be overhauled in the coming months. “I don’t think we have a viable IT system,” he told the conference. “Data, digital, access [all] has to be better.”

Roe said the number of new-build applications currently at gateway 2 was 156, with 26 now being put through the batching process.

A further 35 were so-called “transitional buildings” – schemes that were being looked at under the old regime before a government shake-up announced in the summer – with a further 95 “left in the old system”.

Roe said he expected decisions on 40 of these 95 schemes by the end of this month and added: “We should try and clear them all by the end of the calendar year. We are working on a plan to do so.”

He said there were a further 276 remediation schemes awaiting gateway 2 approval along with more than 400 refurbishment projects.

In June, the government announced a major shake-up of the BSR amid mounting concern over delays to the approval of high-rise residential schemes. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) set up a new board to take over the functions of the BSR from the Health & Safety Executive.

The overhaul saw Roe, a former commissioner of the London Fire Brigade (LFB) who attended the Grenfell Tower fire on the night of the inferno in 2017, brought in to chair the new-look BSR with Charlie Pugsley, previously deputy commissioner at LFB, joining next Monday as chief executive.

At the time of Roe’s appointment, John Palmer, previously a deputy director at MHCLG, was made operations director of the BSR, which currently employs around 500 staff.