Originally implemented to tackle safety concerns in light of the devastating Grenfell fire, the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) has now been accused of hamstringing developments in the capital.

Delays in the system are currently “undermining investor confidence” in the sector, “holding back the delivery of new homes and adding to uncertainty for residents”, Melanie Leech head of the British Property Federation, said.

Just 871 affordable homes have been built in the capital since 2021 – just over five per cent of the current housebuilding target, which has a deadline of March 2030.

It is just over three per cent of the capital’s original housing target, which had to be reduced this May in the face of “difficult conditions”.

Critics have argued that a key part of the slow planning process is the BSR, which often takes far longer than its target of eight weeks to decide on an application.

“If you are a developer and you’ve got a scheme of five to 800 homes, and you’ve taken you a year to get planning… and it takes you another year to get building control sign off… interest charges will go up, the scheme becomes unviable, you lose your finance,” Mace chief Mark Reynolds said at a select committee earlier this week.

The BSR has to contend with an unenviable task: to ensure safety without choking the industry’s ability to deliver homes, particularly with the government’s target of 1.5m new homes.

New reforms aim to streamline the nascent system and help to loosen bottlenecks, but do they go far enough?

A ‘crucial cultural shift’

There is no question that the BSR is necessary to ensure the safety of high-rise buildings.

“The introduction of the building safety regulator is an absolutely crucial cultural shift in the market,” director of the cladding Safety Scheme Helen Fisher told the select committee.

“There is a cultural need for the construction industry to take the requirements of building safety regulation more seriously… [but] I don’t envy the job that the building safety regulator has had to come into,” she said.

New reforms have introduced a Fast Track Process to “enhance the review” of newbuild applications, and “pave the way” for the creation of a single construction regulator, as recommended by the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.

Pundits have said the changes “directly address” the delays in the process which had previously frustrated developers and slowed progress on housing delivery.

“It’s encouraging to see safety and speed being treated as complementary, not conflicting, priorities,” Neal Moy, MD of development finance at Paragon Bank, said.

Leech said that “we want to see a system that balances proportionate regulation without compromising safety… the new fast track process is important to unblock decisions quickly now.”