House of Lords Committee reports unacceptable delays at Building Safety Regulator
Today, a cross-party House of Lords Committee has released its report into The Building Safety Regulator (BSR) highlighting the impact of “unacceptable” delays caused by the BSR approval processes. At Rendall & Rittner, we have experienced first-hand the challenges faced, leaving residents waiting for remediation works to be completed in unsafe buildings and increasing costs for leaseholders.
The Building Safety Regulator was created under the Building Safety Act of 2022 to bring greater scrutiny to the design, construction and management of buildings, ensuring greater safety for those living in high-rise buildings. Whilst we welcome the increased focus on building safety, we recognise the frustrations across the industry and submitted evidence to the House of Lords inquiry in the hope that our insights will support greater consistency and efficiency.
Following the publication of this report, we are pleased to see that many of our recommendations have been featured throughout. This includes improving the time for gateways approvals, which slows essential safety improvements and learnings to be publicly shared on planning applications to improve greater consistency. Reference is also made to our concerns that any potential increase in BSR fees would ultimately be borne by leaseholders.
Our Health and Safety Director, Vanessa Brandham CFIOSH, comments: “We hope that the findings outlined by the House of Lords Committee will result in improvements to the building safety mechanism for residents in buildings that we manage, who have been suffering as a result of these delays. We also would like to see these findings enable developers, landlords, leaseholders, RMCs, RTM companies, residents and managing agents across the country to benefit from a more efficient process. In order to further support the safety of residential properties, we will continue to share our insights.”
