Draft Building Safety Regulator (Establishment of New Body and Transfer of Functions etc.) Regulations 2026
(1 day, 15 hours ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Samantha Dixon)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Building Safety Regulator (Establishment of New Body and Transfer of Functions etc.) Regulations 2026.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. The establishment of the Building Safety Regulator was the most significant reform to the building safety regime in decades. The BSR has removed significant risk from the system and placed residents at the heart of house building. The regulator is an important and non-negotiable part of our built environment, particularly as we deliver 1.5 million new safe homes and accelerate the remediation of unsafe buildings. The BSR was first established within the Health and Safety Executive, and I want to express my gratitude for the invaluable leadership and experience the HSE has provided during its establishment and early operations.
It is now time for a new phase for the BSR. In June, my Department announced reforms to the regulator that included investing in strengthened and dedicated leadership; operational improvements, including the creation of a new innovation unit to improve the processing of gateway applications; and bolstered long-term investment in the capability of the BSR and its capacity to work with industry.
Mary Glindon (Newcastle upon Tyne East and Wallsend) (Lab)
What consideration can the Minister give to the regulator’s having Crown status, rather than making it a non-Crown status body, which civil servants are concerned will mean they risk losing their entitlements and access to the civil service pension?
Samantha Dixon
The classification of the new body was decided through a standardised Cabinet Office process, and its classification as a non-Crown, non-departmental public body is consistent with established practice. My Department is committed to protecting existing terms and conditions where possible, in line with the TUPE regulations and Cabinet Office statement of practice principles, and will continue to engage with staff and trade unions ahead of the consultation process.
Alongside the reforms announced in June, we announced the intention to move the BSR out of the HSE, establishing it as an arm’s length body of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. That is the specific purpose of the draft regulations. Provisions in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 enable the transition to be made via secondary legislation. The change will support the BSR for the coming years, strengthening accountability and providing a singular focus on dedicated leadership for building safety regulation. It is also a first and important step towards establishing a single construction regulator, which is a key recommendation of the Grenfell Tower inquiry phase 2 report.
The draft regulations will make sure that the BSR continues to deliver its statutory functions under the Building Safety Act 2022, while leading it into a new era. This will provide the foundation for a stronger, more accountable system that prioritises safety while supporting innovation across the built environment. I commend the draft regulations to the Committee.
Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz, for, I believe, the first time. I welcome the opportunity to sit opposite the Minister again, and I appreciate her remarks.
His Majesty’s Opposition views the Government’s decision to transfer the oversight of the functions and institutional workings of the Building Safety Regulator from the Health and Safety Executive to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to be a sensible one, and we will support it today. However, if the move is to be successful and effect real change in how the Building Safety Regulator operates in the housing market, it must ensure that the shift in oversight brings improvements in delivering remediation, standards of safety and the best outcomes for local communities.
As I said in a Westminster Hall debate a month and a half ago, which the Minister will remember, the Building Safety Regulator was set up with the best of intentions in the aftermath of the tragic loss of 72 lives in the Grenfell Tower disaster in 2017. I believe there was collective agreement on that point. The original intention behind the creation of the Building Safety Regulator was for it to play a key role in regulating high-risk buildings, to raise the safety of all buildings, and to help professionals working in the sector, thereby fulfilling the Government’s duty to provide safe, high-quality and decent homes for the public to live in. None of those are contentious objectives.
Along with other Members in that debate, however, I made the self-evident point that the Building Safety Regulator is not functioning as intended. In far too many circumstances it is preventing rather than aiding the building of those safe and decent homes. It has become a constraint on building—an all-too-large part of the increasingly muddled puzzle of red tape that now actively prevents Britain from building.
According to the Construction Plant-hire Association, severe delays to a key safety approval process have stalled more than 150 high-rise residential construction projects across the UK. The CPA has stated that that has been caused by the bottleneck stemming from the gateway 2 regulatory checkpoint introduced under the Building Safety Act 2022. That is because the gateway 2 regulatory checkpoint currently requires developers to gain sign-off from the Building Safety Regulator before construction can begin on high-rise schemes. The CPA states that that is “paralysing projects”.
The non-executive chairman of the Building Safety Regulator shadow board, Andy Roe—a man I know very well from my London City Hall days—appears to agree with the CPA. Earlier this year, he said that the gateway regime had
“very real challenges and issues at gateway 2”
and involved a process that was
“designed in good faith that does not work”.
I recognise and welcome the Government’s announcement in June this year that they are working to reform the process and to solve the issues, but that alone will not be enough. It will certainly not make up for the severe shortfalls in their ambitious yet increasingly impossible-looking target for 1.5 million new homes by the end of the Parliament. That is because, beyond gateway 2, around 70% of the applications that get through the Building Safety Regulator’s processes are rejected, compared with the roughly 10% to 15% of applications that get rejected in the wider British planning system. Schemes are now often delayed for 38 weeks longer than the two-week target time for approval, with 60% of adversely affected schemes in London, the city with the highest need and the greatest demand.
With the lowest number of additional homes for nearly a decade, the Government have left themselves on track to fall well short of their target. Blockages resulting from the Building Safety Regulator are one part of the problem, but not the only one. As the Building Safety Regulator moves from the Health and Safety Executive to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, the Government have an opportunity to make genuine reforms to the operation of the Building Safety Regulator. It is very important that that opportunity is seized.
As I suggested in the previous debate, improved dialogue with applicants, more guidance on the applications process, machine-readable submissions as standard and an electronic file management system will all go a long way to creating a Building Safety Regulator that works faster and more efficiently, but without any compromises on standards, equality and safety.
Thank you, Ms Vaz, for the opportunity to make these points to the Minister. I sincerely hope that she will be able to take them on board and use this opportunity to effect real change, unlock the housing market, and transform the Building Safety Regulator into the trusted, pro-growth and pro-development body that it has always been intended to be and that I am sure we all want to see.
Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Vaz.
The Liberal Democrats also support the establishment of the regulator under its own auspices as opposed to coming under the Health and Safety Executive. It is a welcome step in the right direction, but we agree that significant steps are needed to remedy the massive backlogs and delays that are holding up not just private housing but much-needed social housing in London and elsewhere. The 25 to 40-week wait for decisions is far in exceedance of the organisation’s 12-week target.
Furthermore, many buildings with defective cladding and construction are excluded from the remedies under the Building Safety Act 2022 because of the PAS 9980 definition of building safety. We believe it is important that the Building Safety Act definition of safety should be accepted, rather than the PAS 9980 definition, which excludes a whole range of buildings from remediation in terms of their height, the number of storeys and other factors. Thousands of tenants across the country find that they are not protected and are not getting the remediation they need for building safety issues.
We will support the move to the different structure, as set out in the statutory instrument, but too many people are waiting for the remediation of their properties, and the current system is not extensive enough. We recognise that addressing that would involve higher costs for the Government, but the building safety levy needs to be reformed to meet those costs, because thousands of people are currently excluded from the building safety regime.
Samantha Dixon
I thank hon. Members for their contributions. I point out that, since the new leadership took over at the BSR, progress has been significant. For example, between September and 24 November, a record 40 new build applications were processed from the previous model caseload, with the majority approved, allowing construction to begin on 10,000 homes since September. Overall performance continues to improve, with a record 578 cases closed since August 2025.
The Government are completely committed to the safety of residents. The Building Safety Regulator has seen a fundamental change in the built environment. The draft regulations will enable the BSR to move forward from the HSE and take us on the journey towards a single construction regulator, which is a key recommendation of the Grenfell inquiry.
Question put and agreed to.