The House of Lords has delivered its verdict on the early performance of the Building Safety Regulator, and it has not pulled its punches.
In a report titled The Building Safety Regulator: Building a better regulator, peers describe a system beset by “unacceptable” delays, with applications routinely taking far longer than the 12-week statutory timeframe.
It says that decision time have stretched to 43 weeks nationally and 48 weeks in London, figures that have translated directly into stalled projects, frozen housing starts and mounting commercial pressure across the industry.
Baroness Taylor of Bolton, chair of the committee, says the delays have caused widespread “anxiety and frustration”.
The report, commissioned in June 2025, sets out a familiar catalogue of problems, one consistently highlighted by Construction News.
However, its conclusions already look very out of date.
Over the past six months, the regulator has been through a rapid and conspicuous reset.
The government has removed oversight from the Health and Safety Executive and installed new leadership, appointing former London Fire Brigade commissioner Andy Roe as chair and ex-deputy commissioner Charlie Pugsley as chief executive.
At the same time, the regulator has moved to bring its multidisciplinary teams in-house and has embarked on a recruitment drive that has added more than 100 staff.
Roe has been candid about the shortcomings of the previous operating model.
Appearing before MPs, he says the franchised approach to multidisciplinary teams “was not working” and has committed to clearing the legacy backlog of new-build applications by the new year.
The intention is to create a regulator that is operationally coherent and capable of making timely decisions.
These changes that have been made to the organisation are already having a significant effect.
I recently met a senior figure at major housebuilder who told me that it had submitted a large London high-rise scheme in November and that a decision is expected in February.
Unlike during the BSR’s initial period of operations, the housebuilder is able to pick up the phone to a BSR case officer whenever it likes.
But the view that the BSR has got its act together is not just anecdotal.
In the 12 weeks to late November 2025, it reported a 73 per cent approval rate for new-build applications and that it is making decisions at record levels.
Process changes, including batching similar schemes and establishing an Innovation Unit, are designed to speed up assessments and provide clearer routes through the system for applicants.
According to the regulator, more than 11,000 new homes have been able to proceed as a result over a recent 12-week period.
Many of the Lords’ recommendations read, therefore, less like new prescriptions and more like a description a problem that has already largely been solved – certainly for new build schemes, if not yet for cladding remediation projects.
The committee’s calls for more inspectors, better guidance and improved merely serve to mirror the priorities of the new leadership team – priorities already implemented and yielding significant improvements.
It’s demand for clearer advice to applicants has already been addressed through joint work with the Construction Leadership Council to spell out “what good looks like” at gateway submissions.
This week’s headlines surrounding the Lords’ report must be frustrating for a body that has made such great strides in such a short space of time.
Read more here: Click Here
