Building Safety Regulator spells out timetable to clear gateway 2 backlog

The Building Safety Regulator (BSR) has said all but three of the 91 legacy gateway 2 applications will be decided by the end of the year.

The BSR 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.

BSR chair Andy Roe first outlined the latest numbers at Housing Today Live at the Building the Future conference in London earlier this month in which he also outlined a series of measures to speed up the current approval rate for high-rise residential schemes.

In the latest data, which is applicable for the period to 1 October, there were 152 new applications in the system – including the 91 legacy applications.

In all, the 152 applications covered 33,670 units while a further 253 applications to remediate existing buildings, covering 22,304 units, were at gateway 2 stage.

It said 88 schemes will be decided by the end of the year with the remaining three due to be concluded in January.

In its update, the BSR said: “This projection is based on experience to date, dependent on continued progress and, in many cases, relevant and timely information being provided by applicants.”

But it warned that its timetable could still come unstuck. “The total number of identified ‘blockers’ is greater than the number of applications, as many cases face multiple impediments [such as] staff availability, complex decisions, information needs from applicant or BSR.”

And it said it faced challenges around the availability of so-called ‘computational fluid dynamics’ expertise – experts needed to run the rule over fire safety strategies.

>>See also: Is the government’s Building Safety Regulator shake-up enough to fix the delays?

London has the most applications at gateway 2 covering both new build and remediation with the figure in the capital standing at 200. The figure for the rest of England was 175.

In his plans outlined earlier this month, Roe said batching up bundles of applications, bringing in account managers for major developers and overhauling its IT system were all part of a package to speed up decisions.

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