The government is in the process of setting up a “dedicated Remediation Enforcement Unit” within the Building Safety Regulator (BSR), a Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government (MHCLG) official has revealed
Parliamentary Under-Secretary at MHCLG, Alex Norris MP, announced the government plans in response to a written parliamentary question submitted by Will Forster MP in February 2025. Forster asked the Building Safety Minister what steps the department was taking to “ensure the effectiveness” of the enforcement measures by the new Building Safety Regulator (BSR) and whether the government would also make an “assessment of the adequacy of compliance by clients and contractors”.
In response, Norris said that the BSR was taking action to ensure that those applications that “did not meet the regulatory standards of building safety” were rejected. He added: “We understand that the introduction of the new regulatory regime initially resulted in a lot of poor quality and incomplete applications from industry.
“BSR continue to support applicants to meet the functional requirements of the building regulations. It is worth noting that the requirements in the regulations are not new, and rejected applications contribute to the processing time of compliant applications.”
Norris also revealed that the regulator was working with MHCLG officials to set up a “dedicated Remediation Enforcement Unit within the BSR”.
Expanding on this, Norris said: “The Remediation Enforcement Unit is designed to hold owners of ACM clad buildings to account, enforcing remediation where necessary, and will be essential to meet the government’s priority for remediation of unsafe Higher-Risk-Buildings (HRBs). We are considering further options to ensure compliance with the building safety regulations as part of the ongoing spending review.”
As previously reported by the FPA, Deputy Director at the BSR, Tim Galloway told the London Assembly in January 2025 that 40% or more gateway applications were not able to “assure the regulator” that the functional requirements of the building regulations were being met in their plans. At a separate committee meeting held in February, Chief Executive of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), Sarah Albon admitted the BSR had gone through “teething troubles” when it was first set up but that the review time for applications was beginning to decrease – from an initial 30 weeks down to 16 weeks. Although the 40% figure “undoubtedly causes concern and cost and delay”, Albon explained that “we are doing the right thing by spending longer in the design and the build phase to ensure that people can stay safe in the future”.
In his written response to Forster, Norris added: “The Building Safety Act 2022 also requires that within five years of the Act coming into force, the Secretary of State appoint an independent person to carry out a review.”
This will include “reviewing the effectiveness of the regulator, and provisions made by or under the Building Act 1984 such as the dutyholder duties and enforcement measures,” Norris said.
Earlier this month (February 2025), the government announced further funding for the BSR as part of its ongoing housebuilding ambitions, with £2 million being set aside to address “pinch points” and “ensure greater timeliness and efficiency when new tall buildings are signed off”. Additionally, the fire risk brief will also be transferred from the Home Office to the MHCLG in April 2025, keeping in line with a recommendation from the Grenfell Tower Inquiry final report that calls for building safety and fire policy to sit under a single Secretary of State.