High Rise Flats: Insulation

(asked on 10th October 2025) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that cladding remediation works on high-risk buildings are not subject to avoidable delays in the building control approval process by the Building Safety Regulator.


Answered by
Samantha Dixon Portrait
Samantha Dixon
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
This question was answered on 20th October 2025

The Building Safety Regulator (BSR) has established a dedicated external remediation team who assess all building control approval applications for cladding remediation. The team is already delivering engagement events to improve developers’ understanding of the requirements, and therefore increase the quality of applications and approval rates.

The BSR is also in the process of establishing a remediation enforcement unit, to oversee escalations from government/partner regulators where remediation is not progressing quickly enough. The unit will have access to additional, dedicated resources for building control work to deal with the increasing demand, and to help increase the pace of remediation works.

We recognise that delays in assessing Gateway approval applications are unacceptable, which is why we announced reforms on 30 June including carving out the BSR from the Health and Safety Executive and establishing the Regulator as a standalone body with a clear focus on building safety.

The BSR is already making operational and policy changes to speed up decision making, particularly on building control approval, including through the introduction of an Innovation Unit. Early signs are positive with all applications in the Innovation Unit so far on track to exceed or meet the 12-week SLA as they progress through the application process.

In addition to this, BSR has initiated a new approach of batching applications so they can be processed by multidisciplinary teams formed by Registered Building Control Approvers with oversight from BSR.

The BSR is continually improving the suite of guidance that supports those with duties in understanding what the law requires of them and how they can comply. New guidance with the Construction Leadership Council (CLC) has been published to help applicants better understand what’s needed for a successful submission.

Reticulating Splines