MP warns sector not to use delays as reason to row back on building safety reforms

The frustration over delays in the building safety approval process must not be used as an excuse to roll back post-Grenfell reforms, according to the Labour MP for Kensington and Bayswater.

Speaking at the Housing Community Summit, Joe Powell, who is also a member of the housing select committee, said he had been disappointed with the attitude of developers and contractors pushing back against building safety reform in the wake of the ongoing delays in the approval process.

He said: ”The problem there is about execution and having the building safety regulator (BSR) operates in a way to process decisions in a way that can allow buildings to be approved in the prescribed time frames [is necessary].

“But we have been doing a lot of work as the housing select committee and we don’t think the answer is throwing out the post-Grenfell reform.”

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He did acknowledge that there was cause for frustration from those trying to get projects through the process but that the importance of the regulatory reform was greater.

He said: ”It is understandable, that if you are trying to get a remediation project or a new development through and you aren’t hearing anything for 40 weeks there is a clear and understandable frustration but we can’t just turn away from it all.”

Powell also said that incoming BSR chair Andy Roe had last week told the housing select committee that the backlog of applications would be cleared by the end of the year, meaning that the conversation should shift from whether the regulator to establishing a more collaborative relationship between the organisation and the industry.

He also said there was potential down the track for developers who had proven to be trustworthy through their interactions with the regulator to have their applications fast-tracked to allow the regulator to focus in on and clamp down on “cowboys”.