The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has said it could be some time before the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) becomes fully established under the Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government (MHCLG)
At the HSE’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) on 29 July 2025, HSE Chief Executive Sarah Albon welcomed the recent move of the BSR to the government-led department, but made clear that the process of setting up a new body in MHCLG would be a gradual one “over a period of months and years”.
In the AGM’s Q&A session, Albon was asked about the timetable for BSR moving away from HSE and the impact this would have on the HSE. She said: “[The government] are hoping to bring about secondary legislation this side of Christmas [December 2025], which will transfer the legal responsibility for delivering HSE’s current BSR functions into the new body.”
This would be the “beginning of a transition process”, she added, with those HSE staff who currently form the core of BSR functions also being transferred to the new agency under MHCLG. Albon confirmed that the HSE would be expected to continue providing some corporate service functions to support the new body “for some time to come”, with this eventually being phased out.
Particularly at the pace that MHCLG was keen to work at, there was still much to do, Albon noted.
“Some of that process may take a while, but rest assured, we will work closely with colleagues in the new agency and with MHCLG as well as the DWP and internally to make sure that it supports the continued excellent operation of the new BSR agency as well as our important ongoing functions at the HSE.”
She confirmed that HSE would still play an important role in ensuring the BSR’s future success: “We’ll need to continue to work closely as we’ll remain the regulator of employment in the construction industry, so there will still be a continuing crossover.”
“I think we have had a really positive impact in HSE in just the experience of setting up a new regulator. Having gone through that process, we have learnt a lot about how to do a major project and how to do it well…and that experience will leave a legacy in HSE.”
She continued: “Through the Building Safety Act 2022, we took on the responsibility of ensuring the safety of residents in both newly constructed and existing higher-risk buildings in England. And having built a new regulator from scratch, we look forward to seeing the BSR flourish in the future as an Executive Agency of the Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government, building on the strong foundations laid by the HSE.”
Also highlighted during the AGM was an ongoing concern by industry, namely, the plans and policies HSE had in place to ensure that applications submitted to the BSR received an outcome within the statutory period of 8 weeks for existing HRBs.
Philip White, Director of Building Safety at the HSE, noted that there were several facets to this issue, reiterating the need for industry to submit “good quality applications”. He added that the regulator was having to invalidate almost 40% of applications at the very first stage due to incorrect paperwork – “they can’t even provide the basics”, he said.
The next stage, involving assessment, also saw a high volume of applications being rejected due to applicants being unable to explain how they were complying with the Building Regulations.
“Overall, we are rejecting about 70% of applications. In doing so, we are trying to spend time with the applicants to try and get the application over the line so that people can build a new building or remediate a building or carry out maintenance work on a building.”
However, White noted that this was extending the time it usually takes the BSR to decide on the application. To combat this issue, he confirmed that several measures had been put into place to address a “whole raft of issues” whereby applications were “not meeting the statutory obligations”.
He made mention of the regulator’s work with the Construction Leadership Council (CLC) to produce guidance that will help industry have “a better idea of the detail of what they need to get their application over the line”.
The improvement of the regulator’s end-to-end processes was also a concern: “One of the difficulties we have is that two thirds of the resource assessing building control applications are not part of the HSE – we are relying on local authorities in relation to building control, and we rely on fire and rescue services in relation to fire expertise.”
For new buildings, the HSE announced that it would be assessing applications internally. This would be done via newly created multi-disciplinary teams within the BSR to try and speed up determination times. If successful, this would then be rolled out for remediation contracts for those buildings requiring remediation of unsafe cladding. Additionally, going forward, lower-risk work would be taken on by Class 2 inspectors as opposed to Class 3.
“We are doing what we can within our control – the challenge is for industry, in the broader sense, not just the developers, but those who advise them, to prepare good quality applications, allowing the HSE to make those decisions quicker,” White said.
You can view the full AGM here.