Building Safety Regulator’s innovation unit takes control of majority of new build cases as legacy system phased out

The Building Safety Regulator’s innovation unit is now handling the majority of its live new build cases, as it moves closer to clearing its legacy cases.

The latest figures, which cover the 12 week period to 22 December 2025, show that 102 of the regulator’s 171 live cases for new build were being handled by the unit established in the summer to replace the failing multi-disciplinary team system.

That amounts to just under 60% and marks an increase on the previous figures, reported on 24 November. At that point, 73 out of 167 cases (44%) were under the unit’s supervision.

The new case-handling procedure was introduced by BSR chair Andy Roe alongside a raft of other measures to speed up decision making.

Under a timetable set out by Roe last month at the Building the Future conference, the regulator aims to phase out the legacy model by the end of January.

The regulator said there had been a “strong focus on closing out legacy cases” during the period, resulting in the number of such cases to fall to 40, with a further 29 “legacy transitional cases”.

As a result of the falling number of legacy cases, the number of live applications across all categories fell from 1,219 to 1,158 over the past 12 weeks.

However, with all new cases for new-build higher-risk buildings flowing into the innovation unit, its caseload has been rising, augmented by a rising rate of new applications. 

A total of 101 new applications came into the unit over the most recent 12 week period and this increasing rate of incoming applications is expected to continue into the new year. However, the BSR anticipates this will “stabilise somewhere between 120 and 180 once in steady state”

Over the period, 31 decisions have been made by the innovation unit, with 48% being determinations of invalidity and the period to decide this averaging one week. 

 >>See also: What the latest documents tell us about the government’s progress on building safety

A further 16% were rejected, taking an average 14 weeks, while 23% saw a decision made with an account manager, over the same average period.

“As part of our work to drive up approval rates for safe applications, cases which are over 12 weeks, but are considered to have the potential to achieve an approval with further information, are now held by account managers who liaise closely with the applicant,” explained the BSR.

Just 10% of applications were approved by the innovation unit (amounting to a total of three), at an average period of 12 weeks.

“Applications which are clearly deficient have been identified and rejected early, with good quality applications now achieving approvals at around the 12-week point,” said the regulator. 

The regulator expects the overall number of determinations across all categories in the final quarter of the year to be 250% higher than in the first.

Q1 saw the regulator come to just over 200 decisions in quarter 1, compared with a total of more than 700 that it expects to have reached in the final quarter by 31 December.