How the Building Safety Regulator has changed construction planning

For most of the last thirty years, building control sat quietly alongside a construction programme. Plans were approved, inspections happened as the job went along, and the programme rarely had to bend around them. For higher-risk buildings in England, that is no longer true.

A higher-risk building is one at least 18 metres or seven storeys tall with at least two residential units, or a hospital or care home of that height. Since October 2023, building control for these buildings has sat with the Building Safety Regulator rather than local authorities or approved inspectors. In January 2026 the regulator left the Health and Safety Executive and became a standalone body sponsored by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

Three gateways, three hold points

The regime creates three points where the project cannot proceed without the regulator's say-so.

• Gateway 1 is at planning, where a fire statement is submitted and the regulator is consulted.
• Gateway 2 is building control approval. Work on the higher-risk building cannot start until it is granted.
• Gateway 3 is the completion certificate. The building, or the part being completed, cannot be occupied until it is issued.

Gateways 2 and 3 are the ones that change a programme. They are not inspections that run in parallel with the work. They are approvals that the work waits for.

Gateway 2 has become a programme activity in its own right

The statutory period for a new-build Gateway 2 decision is 12 weeks. In practice, decisions have taken far longer. The regulator's own data for June to August 2026 shows a median of 22 weeks for new-build and conversion applications, and 33 weeks for complex cases. That is a big improvement on the 43-week median of a year earlier, and approval rates have climbed above 90%, but it is still nearly double the statutory period.

For planning, that means Gateway 2 needs to sit on the critical path as a real activity with its own duration, not as a milestone squeezed between planning discharge and start on site. Lenders and monitoring surveyors increasingly expect to see it there.

Design has to be further ahead before you start

A Gateway 2 application needs a level of design that many projects used to reach well into construction. Fire strategy, structure, external walls and key MEP decisions all need to be resolved and documented. That pulls design, procurement and specialist input earlier, and it changes the pre-construction programme more than the construction programme.

Since 2025, the regulator has accepted staged Gateway 2 applications more readily, so a project can seek approval for enabling works, substructure or frame before the full building is designed. Staging can protect a start date, but each stage needs its own approval before that stage starts. Each one becomes another gate in the programme.

Change during construction now has a cost in time

Once approved, the application documents become the agreed basis for the build. Changes are sorted into three types:

• Recordable changes go in the change control log.
• Notifiable changes must be notified to the regulator before the related work starts.
• Major changes, such as altering storey numbers, escape routes, external walls or structural design, need the regulator's approval first. Related work must stop until it is approved.

The statutory period for a major change decision is six weeks. The regulator's figures show a median of about seven. A late façade substitution or a layout change can now pause a work package for two months. Good programmes allow for this: they lock key decisions earlier, keep float in the packages most likely to change, and treat value engineering after Gateway 2 with real caution.

Gateway 3 and phased occupation

A completion certificate is needed before residents move in. The statutory period is eight weeks. In practice, recent decisions have taken a median of 16 to 20 weeks. As of August 2026, the regulator reported that no new-build scheme that went through Gateway 2 had yet reached Gateway 3, so the industry is still learning what that stage will really take.

For phased schemes, a partial completion strategy has to be agreed at Gateway 2 if blocks or parts of blocks are to be occupied ahead of the whole. That decision affects logistics, sales and handover sequencing years later, so it needs to be made with the delivery strategy in mind, not as an afterthought.

What this means for programmes, PEPs and logistics

• Show Gateway 2 and Gateway 3 as activities with realistic durations, not milestones.
• Plan design completion, specialist appointments and procurement back from the Gateway 2 submission.
• Decide early whether a staged application or partial completion strategy suits the scheme.
• Build a change control process into the Project Execution Plan, with clear owners for recordable, notifiable and major changes.
• Set out dutyholder roles for the client, principal designer and principal contractor under the building regulations as well as CDM.
• Allow for the golden thread of information to be built up during construction, not assembled at the end.

None of this makes higher-risk buildings unbuildable. It makes them less forgiving of programmes that assume approvals will arrive on time and that design can catch up on site.