284 Gateway 2 Approvals in Last 12 Weeks

The Building Safety Regulator (BSR) has released its latest building control Gateway 2 update.

Across all categories, 284 Gateway 2 decisions were made in the 12-weeks to 29 March, with a 67% approval rate.

Following criticisms of BSR for project delays, the organisation has increased the pace of decisions by making improvements to its applications pilot batching process and by focusing on existing remediation projects.

The Innovation Unit (IU) made 19 approvals (61% of its 31 decisions) in the last 12 weeks taking a median approval time of 22 weeks.

New applications representing 12,975 residential units were received and applications representing 16,721 units were determined, of which 10,165 (61%) were approvals. There are currently 28,761 units in live cases.

In all Gateway 2 categories over the past 12 weeks, 62% of decisions related to London cases, with 372 applications closed in the capital over the past 12 weeks.

A higher number of starts in 2025 Q4 were highlighted in recent government Housing supply indicators of new supply for England (to December 2025), partly due to BSR reporting 7,089 total starts in that period.

Batching Pilot

BSR says that processing times under the batching model are “significantly quicker” than the previous MDT model.

The process scales capacity by bundling applications to specialised external suppliers for accelerated assessment, with BSR maintaining full regulatory oversight.

Across all three major categories – new build, remediation and refurbishment – the median time from a case being issued to a supplier, to them returning a full assessment, is 4 weeks.

• 242 new build cases have been issued through batching, with 39 decisions (of 83 returned to date) reached at a median time of 9 weeks.
• 372 remediation cases with 30 decisions (of 139 returned) reached at a median time of 10 weeks.
• For refurbishment, 681 cases have been issued to the batching process so far. 49 decisions (of 317 returned) have been reached at a median time of 10 weeks.

Remediation Decisions Plan

Over the last 12 weeks, 92 remediation decisions were made, with an approval rate of 61%. This compares to 228 decisions made throughout the whole of 2025.

97 new cases were received during this period with 299 live cases now being processed, representing 25,921 units.

To focus on the existing high-rise buildings, a remediation improvement BSR has set out how it intends to increase resources, improve processes and continue working with applicants to improve application quality.

Initial guidance will be published in early April BSR says.

Innovation Unit Progress

New build applications continue to move through the Innovation Unit (IU) with 31 decisions, made in the past 12 weeks.

All time IU approvals now stand at 24, with median approval time now at 22 weeks.

This increase is a consequence of applications that have moved into account management post-12 weeks reaching a successful outcome – with additional work to resolve challenging technical issues rather than rejecting the application.

For applications post-validation (or withdrawal), 61% are approved and 39% are rejected. The IU is currently managing 135 live applications, representing 24,824 units.

Currently, 65% of all live IU applications are based in London, representing more than half (54%) of the overall residential units the unit is handling.

Open remediation cases in London have seen a slight decrease over the 12-week period, dropping from 172 down to 164.

London Application Volume and Decisions

London cases are the majority of all closed Gateway 2 cases (62%). Over the past 12 weeks, 372 applications were closed in the capital, with 470 new applications received. The total number of live London applications across all categories is now 845.

Resolving Historical Cases

The backlog of legacy new build cases has almost been cleared. The number of active legacy cases is now down to two regular cases.

There are 13 technically complex applications which are now being dealt with via a complex case process.

Charlie Pugsley, BSR Acting Chief Executive Officer, said: “We continue to see improvements to numbers of approvals for new build and remediation cases and the time taken to get to a decision.

“The data we have published today reinforces the significant improvements we have seen when you look at where we were in July 2025, with median decision times of 51.5 weeks.

“A big part of our work to drive improvements is now focused on improving technical consistency in the sector and ensuring that learning from challenging designs or applications is shared. So, we have less complex cases to work through, further reducing decision times. This is directly increasing the availability of thousands of safe new and existing homes across England.

“To manage applications – particularly the intense demand we are seeing in London, which accounts for six in ten of our Gateway 2 decisions – our batching pilot is proving highly effective.

“However, we recognise the need to push further on existing buildings. That is why our remediation improvement plan provides targeted measures to bolster our resources and support industry in submitting higher-quality applications.”

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