Gateway 3 New-build Applications

Question

Asked by

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to improve the clearance rate of Gateway 3 new-build applications by the Building Safety Regulator.

My Lords, we have acknowledged recent challenges within the building safety regulator. That is why, in June, we introduced a series of reforms to strengthen it, including a new strength and leadership team under Andy Roe, steps to address operational challenges and plans for a new independent body with oversight of the BSR, as recommended by the Grenfell inquiry. The gateway 3 regime is still relatively new, and few projects have yet reached this final stage, but early experience is helping developers and the BSR to refine the process to make sure it is consistent, efficient and firmly focused on safety outcomes. The BSR is working with the Construction Leadership Council to publish a further suite of industry guidance on gateway 3 this year.

My Lords, given the serious demand for housing in this country, it is not appropriate that those looking for housing are waiting almost six months for stage 3 application approvals. I have been informed that, on a number of occasions, inspections have been cancelled at the very last minute with no indication of when they will take place. What is the Minister doing to take that inefficiency out of the system and allow progress on this issue?

As I explained, a programme of significant improvement has been undertaken under the new BSR leadership team. Of course, waiting six months for inspections is not an acceptable way forward; we want to improve things, and improvements are coming through the system now. Some of the work done by the new leadership team has already introduced this significant improvement. At gateway 3—a relatively new procedure, as I said—there have been 72 applications so far, which were received by November. Some 59 of those—82%—have already been approved, so things are beginning to improve.

My Lords, many local councils in cities across our country are building upwards, with high-rise housing development even for families. I welcome these milestones in advanced building safety in building infrastructure. Can the Minister assure the House that she is doing everything she can to speed up the process and to ensure that strict regulatory monitoring of the highest standard remains, once implemented, thereby avoiding at all costs another Grenfell disaster?

The noble Baroness is quite right to point to the balance we need here. I can do no better than to quote Andy Roe, who said that

“the BSR remains firmly committed to its core mission: keeping residents and their homes safe. Life-safety critical defects cannot be ignored and improvements to efficiency cannot be pursued at the expense of rigour”.

So we must get the balance right here: we have to speed up these processes and get them working properly for the industry, but we must also make sure that, in doing that, we do not relax at all on the very clear standards we must have to keep buildings safe.

My Lords, there are great concerns about the standards being applied in the building industry nowadays. We no longer have Walker Morris standards to guide us, but, having had many dangerous situations such as Grenfell Tower and a lack of quality in many builds, particularly in large estates, surely it is necessary to increase the resources available to the regulator in order to deal with these matters quickly and make sure that the standards people expect are maintained.

I think the noble Lord might have been referring to Parker Morris standards, but it is quite right that we have to focus very hard on keeping up the quality of build. That is absolutely what the building safety regulator is there to do. We are making sure that we support Andy Roe and his team in what they need to do. As I am sure noble Lords are aware, there has been a capacity issue in the system, but the June spending review committed an additional £1.2 billion a year to the skills system, supporting over 65,000 additional learners in key areas such as housebuilding, remediation and building safety. That will be critical. We have also invested £16.5 million specifically to recruit and train registered building inspectors, who form a vital part of this process. We are working with the independent building control panel to identify system-wide improvements, which I am sure will help with the issues the noble Lord is concerned about.

My Lords, it is important to recognise the significant progress made recently, but, sadly, much less progress has been made on the 253 applications for remedial work to existing high-rise buildings. Some of this involved residents having to move out while still paying their mortgages and management fees for properties they cannot legally access. Due to a definition of “building work” that is arguably too broad, relatively simple and straightforward work is being caught up in the gateway scheme and is adding to the backlog. What is being done to consult with the industry so that common types of work, such as the replacement of fire door sets, can be undertaken without resorting to a gateway application at all, so that it can get on with the serious job of removing dangerous cladding?

Two things are under way, one of which is working with the industry to identify those issues; it is very important that the remediation programme is well under way. The BSR has established a dedicated external remediation team responsible for assessing all building control approval applications relating to cladding remediation, so that is under way already. The other work the team has been doing is to make sure that, with applications that are not dependent on some of the work that can go on in the interim, that work can progress, so we are not holding up final approvals but letting people get on with what can be done in the meantime. I am sure that will help to unlock some of the hold-ups that have been in the system so far.

My Lords, if this were one isolated regulator falling down on the job, that would be one thing; but one after another, these quango regulators are failing. Is it not time to look not just at an individual regulator but at the whole model and the sort of people appointed to these jobs?

The noble Lord may be aware that one recommendation of the Grenfell report was to have a single building regulator. Progress is being made towards that—a single body is being set up with oversight of the building safety regulator. We need to move this forward very quickly, but it is important that we get it right as we do so. We need to work with the industry to deliver the single construction regulator in a way that will work effectively for everybody. The new body has been established through a statutory instrument, which was laid on 11 November. So progress is being made, and we need to make sure that we move this on as quickly as we can.

My Lords, we have seen a significant drop in the delivery of housing starts in London. Have the Government analysed the impact of delays in and the uncertainty of the BSR process on the viability of apartment blocks above 18 metres, and thus the development of those blocks? If so, will the Minister share that analysis with the House?

One of the benefits of the changes to the BSR is that regular data is now being published monthly. The November data has been published and is available online for all interested parties to look at. As I have said, we accept that the delays have been unacceptable. About 15% to 25% of the new dwellings that we want to build will be the responsibility of the BSR to improve. The new team has introduced an innovation model to deliver significantly reduced processing times for all new build applications—not just for London but for everywhere else. We expect most cases under the previous model to be unblocked by the year end. There has been a dramatic improvement already, with reductions of 20 weeks or more in some of the approval processes.

My Lords, is not the fundamental problem here the builders, rather than the regulator? Too many builders seem to be prepared to cut corners, and that is where the fundamental problem starts.

This is the important work that is being done—working with the construction industry and the BSR to make sure that everybody understands what their responsibilities are in this process. The construction industry has worked incredibly closely with the BSR to develop guidance on what needs to be submitted it, and to understand how we make can sure that buildings are safe. I come back to the words of Andy Roe: it is very important that people be reassured that the buildings they move into are going to be safe going forward. Our job in government is to make sure that we get the balance right between safety and not blocking up the whole industry, such that it cannot move forward with developing the homes people need. I am very confident in the ability of the new BSR team to take this forward.