Gateway 3 New-build Applications

Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd December 2025 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard]

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.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)]

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.

[Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard (UUP)]

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?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

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.