On 25 March I made a written statement on local government reorganisation. There was a minor error in the statement. In outlining the new councils to be created in Suffolk, it said:
“Central and Eastern Suffolk Council (current local government areas of West Suffolk, 21 parishes from Mid Suffolk, and Babergh (less 31 parishes)).
Western Suffolk Council (current local government areas of Mid Suffolk (less 29 parishes), and East Suffolk (less 25 parishes).”—[Official Report, 25 March 2026; Vol. 783, c. 49WS.]
It should have said:
“Western Suffolk Council (current local government areas of West Suffolk, 21 parishes from Mid Suffolk, and Babergh (less 31 parishes)).
Central and Eastern Suffolk Council (current local government areas of Mid Suffolk (less 29 parishes), and East Suffolk (less 25 parishes).”
Today, the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government launched a public consultation on proposals to establish a fire risk assessor profession with consistently high levels of competency, where trust is rebuilt, and where a strong, diverse pipeline of talent ensures improved standards of fire safety.
Context
Fire risk assessments are a fundamental part of the fire safety regime established under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. This legislation requires responsible persons to make a suitable and sufficient assessment to help make sure hazards are identified and the right fire precautions are delivered to keep people safe in the buildings where they live, work, and visit.
RPs can currently undertake this assessment themselves, or appoint someone, commonly known as an FRA, to assist them. Competent and professional FRAs therefore play a critical role in keeping people safe.
Despite this vital life-safety role, FRAs are not currently recognised as a regulated profession. There is no single professional body, no agreed definition of the role, no defined career pathway, and no specified training or qualifications.
While many FRAs are highly competent, we want to see an FRA profession with consistently high and demonstrable standards of competency across the board. Further, we want these proposals to rebuild trust in the FRA profession so that those who rely on their expertise, whether occupying, buying or selling, can feel confident in the fire safety of their homes or other premises.
The Grenfell Tower inquiry phase 2 report identified serious shortcomings in the fire risk assessments produced by the FRA for Grenfell Tower, including failures to identify critical fire safety hazards and to verify that previously identified risks had been addressed. In response to recommendation 26 in the inquiry’s phase 2 report, the Government committed to introduce mandatory certification for FRAs.
In 2014 and 2015, the previous Government reformed public service pension schemes. These reforms introduced “transitional protections” that allowed members closest to retirement to remain in their legacy schemes rather than move to the reformed schemes. In December 2018, the Court of Appeal found that these protections in the judicial and firefighters schemes constituted unlawful age discrimination: the McCloud and Sargeant judgments.
To remedy this, Parliament enacted the Public Service Pensions and Judicial Offices Act 2022. The Act gives affected members a choice between legacy and reformed scheme benefits for the period 1 April 2015 to 31 March 2022 and permits certain pension decisions to be revisited where they would have been made differently but for the discrimination.
However, an unintended consequence has arisen for firefighters who opted out of their pension scheme because of the discrimination. The Act fixes the “relevant legacy scheme” in legislation. As a result, some affected members cannot be reinstated into the actual legacy scheme in which they last accrued service, preventing them from buying back opted-out service and leaving them without a full remedy.
To resolve this, the Government will use the Act’s special-case power to amend regulations with the effect of disapplying sections 4(2) and 4(3) for the particular cohort of eligible members who opted out due to the discrimination and who now elect, under section 5 of the Act and regulation 6 of the Firefighters’ Pensions (Remediable Service) Regulations 2023, to buy back opted-out service between 1 April 2015 and 31 March 2022—the remedy period. This will mean that opted-out service within the remedy period can be treated as pensionable service in the last-accrued legacy scheme.
Building Safety: Higher-Risk Buildings and Professional Development
An effective and efficient building control system underpins the fundamental safety of homes and communities across the country, built on the expertise of skilled professionals. Today I announce further steps the Department is taking to make sure this system is working effectively and supporting our ambitious remediation and house building targets.
This will restore confidence in the work done to ensure safety in the building sector and boost the housing supply and the improved operation of the Building Safety Regulator’s gateway regime.
Today, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government is launching a consultation on improving proportionality and safety outcomes in the higher-risk building control regime. This consultation is seeking views on how building work in existing higher-risk buildings is categorised, to make sure the application requirements reflect the scale and complexity of the work. We are committed to making sure the higher-risk regime is applied in a proportionate way without compromising on safety. It must strike the right balance between robust oversight of safety-critical works and enabling safer building works to proceed efficiently and without undue delays.
Alongside this, MHCLG is announcing a £70 million building profession workforce programme to address shortages of capacity and capability in two safety-critical areas of the built environment: £55 million for building control and £15 million for the fire engineering profession. These professions play a key role in making sure building work is delivered in accordance with the building regulations and that engineering solutions protect people and mitigate harm to the built environment in the event of fire.
Planning is principally a local activity, and the Government recognise the vital role that planning committees play in ensuring that decisions about what to build and where are shaped by local communities and reflect the views of local residents. However, in providing essential local democratic oversight of planning decisions, we must ensure planning committees operate as effectively as possible, focusing on those applications which require member input and not revisiting the same decisions.
At present, every local planning authority has its own scheme of delegation to identify the circumstances in which planning decisions are taken by planning committee rather than delegated to officers. Most local planning authorities already delegate a significant proportion of applications to such officers—such that 96% of planning decisions in England are already not made by planning committees. However, there is significant variation across the country, and this creates risk and uncertainty in the system.
It is for this reason that we took powers in the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 to allow the Government to introduce a national scheme of delegation. By setting out which planning functions should be delegated to planning officers for a decision and which should go instead to a planning committee or sub-committee, a national scheme of delegation will ensure greater consistency and certainty across England about who in a local planning authority will be responsible for making planning decisions.
During the passage of the Act, the Government consulted on proposals relating to the delegation of planning functions, the size and composition of planning committees and mandatory training for members of planning committees. We are today publishing the Government response to that consultation.
When this Government took office in July 2024, one of our top priorities was to fix the broken local audit system it inherited, which was failing both local bodies and taxpayers alike. Determined to fix the foundations, restore confidence and put the system back on a stable footing, we took decisive action to introduce a series of statutory audit opinion backstop dates in autumn 2024. The backstops have successfully cleared the backlog of unaudited local body accounts and are now restoring a system of timely reporting and assurance. This progress provides a strong platform for rebuilding assurance and delivering wider reforms of the local audit system.
27 February 2026 backstop—financial year 2024-25
Unless exempt, all local bodies in England were required to publish their statement of accounts, including the audit opinion, for 2024-25 by 27 February 2026. The system has taken another significant step forward in returning to timely publication, with over 91% of opinions published by this date. This demonstrates a consistent improvement in timely publication since the introduction of the backstops, up from 84% at the first backstop and 87% at the second backstop. As of 9 March 2026, the publication figure for 2024-25 had subsequently increased to 93%.
Progress on rebuilding assurance
Due to the time constraints of the backstops and in line with expectations, approximately 45% of bodies received a disclaimed opinion at this backstop, and 9% of published opinions have moved from a disclaimed opinion to a qualified opinion. Almost 3% of published opinions demonstrate fully restored assurance by moving to an unqualified opinion. Approximately 44% of bodies received an unmodified opinion, with only a very small number receiving a disclaimed opinion for the first time. This represents encouraging progress, despite the ongoing challenges to rebuilding assurance that I set out in my statement on 2 December 2025.
Consultation
The consultation we have launched today is an important step in delivering recommendation 26 of the inquiry’s phase 2 report and fulfilling our commitment to introduce mandatory certification for FRAs.
We have engaged stakeholders across Government, the devolved Governments, and industry to secure their initial contributions to our plans and help shape the future of a profession that can consistently deliver its vital fire safety role.
The consultation will remain open for 12 weeks until 18 June 2026. We encourage as many responses as possible, to make sure future measures strengthen confidence in the FRA regime and so that those undertaking this critical work are appropriately competent, supported, and accountable. Following the consultation, Government will carefully consider the responses received and set out next steps in due course. The consultation can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/fire-risk-assessors-profession
This work forms part of a wider programme to implement inquiry recommendations and improve fire and building safety, including proposals for the establishment of the single construction regulator, recent publications on the fire engineering profession and ongoing work to develop a new strategy for the built environment professions.
This is launched alongside the announcement of a £70 million building professional workforce programme to address shortages of capacity and capability in two safety-critical professions: building control and fire engineering. The funding for fire engineering will contribute to our response to the inquiry recommendations on increasing education for fire engineers.
A separate statement has been laid providing further detail on these announcements.
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The Government will now bring forward a statutory instrument under the Act’s special-case power to correct this position and will do so as soon as parliamentary time allows.
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Our funding will enable the recruitment and training of up to 700 new building inspectors to increase overall capacity, the training of more building inspectors to class 3 to enable them to work on HRBs, and the expansion of masters level education for fire engineers. This takes forward the recommendations of the Grenfell Tower inquiry, in line with our recently published next steps on fire engineering profession reform.
These announcements form part of a wider programme to keep people safe in the buildings where they live, work and visit. As part of this, a consultation was launched today for fire risk assessors. A separate statement has been laid providing further detail on these proposals.
Our priority remains, as it must, ensuring the collective safety of residents in buildings across the country, while speeding up progress on crucial building work such as cladding remediation and delivering the new homes this country urgently needs.
The consultation on proposed changes to HRB categorisation can be found here:
We will announce further details on availability of the building profession workforce programme funding in due course.
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As required by the Act, I am also publishing today a further consultation on draft regulations which set out the national scheme of delegation and the maximum size of planning committees, and statutory guidance to support local planning authorities in implementing the reforms. This consultation will run until 23 April 2026.
The draft regulations, which were informed by the responses to the earlier consultation, implement the national scheme of delegation through the creation of a two-tier structure. Schedule 1 of the regulations sets out the applications which must be determined by officers in all circumstances. Schedule 2 sets out the applications that are presumed to go to officers unless they meet the criteria specified in the regulations and the nominated officer, usually the head of planning, and nominated member, usually the chair of the committee, agree that they should be referred to committee—the gateway test.
There are separate provisions for applications made by, or on behalf of, a local planning authority itself, or an officer or member of the authority, to be referred to committee where appropriate even if they do not raise any significant planning, economic, social or environmental issues. The draft regulations also set a maximum size limit of 13 members for a planning committee.
Subject to consideration of the responses received to this latest consultation, we will finalise the regulations and associated statutory guidance, which will then be subject to further scrutiny through the affirmative procedure. The Government’s intention is that the regulations will come into effect in Autumn 2026. We continue to work on the arrangements for the mandatory training of committee members, and these will be announced in due course.
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Non-compliance
In total, 33 non-exempt bodies failed to publish their opinions by the backstop. A list of these bodies has been published on gov.uk, including where opinions were published shortly after the backstop.
Publication of prior-year opinions
In December 2025, I also provided an update on the status of the publication of audit opinions up to and including 2023-24. Since this update, further outstanding opinions for these years continue to be published as factors preventing the issuance of opinions are resolved. Over 99% of opinions have now been published for financial years outstanding, and 97% for financial years up to 2023-24. The non-compliance lists for the two previous backstops have also been updated.
The Department continues to engage with bodies with outstanding opinions to ensure that they are published as soon as practicable, and it will not hesitate to take further action with bodies demonstrating a pattern of continued non-compliance.
Looking ahead to the 31 January 2026 backstop for 2025-26 accounts
The deadline for publication of audited accounts for the financial year 2025-26 is 31 January 2027. In line with amendments made to the accounts and audit regulations 2015, bodies are required to publish their draft accounts for this financial year by 30 June 2026.
My Department will continue to work proactively and co-operatively with local bodies and audit firms to support a return to timely account publication and to drive the system-wide rebuilding of assurance.