Building Safety: New Secondary Legislation Confirms Building Control Regime Will Be In Force From 1 October 2023

• Published date: 25 August 2023
• Subject Matter: Employment and HR, Environment, Real Estate and Construction, Health & Safety, Construction & Planning, Clean Air / Pollution
• Law Firm: Gowling WLG
• Author: Ms Sue Ryan, Lewis Evans and Emma Knight

On 17 August 2023, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing, and Communities (DLUHC) published a suite of secondary legislation implementing the more stringent building control regime for higher-risk buildings established by the Building Safety Act 2022 (BSA).

It also published its long-awaited response to the consultation on implementing the new building control regime for higher-risk buildings and wider changes to the building regulations for all buildings - which, as we reported in our earlier insight, closed in October last year.

Importantly, these confirm that the new building control regime will come into force on 1 October 2023.

We outline below some of the headline issues covered by each of the five statutory instruments published on 17 August, as well as the key takeaways.

New regulations implementing the building control regime

There are three new sets of regulations which relate to the design and construction phase:

1. The Building (Higher-Risk Buildings Procedures) (England) Regulations 2023

These set out the details of the building control regime for higher-risk buildings (HRBs), specifying the procedural building regulation requirements when a new HRB is being designed and constructed or when building work is being done to an existing HRB. Amongst other things, they provide details of:

• The process for, and what must be included in, "Gateway 2" applications, i.e. the application to be submitted to and approved by the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) before any work starts. This will replace the current "deposit of full plans" stage under the Building Regulations 2010 and introduce a "hard stop" whereby BSR approval must be obtained before building work on HRBs may commence.
• The change control process, including "notifiable changes" and "major changes", and the requirement for the principal contractor to set up and maintain a change control log.
• The golden thread of information and the procedures for handing the information over to dutyholders responsible for maintaining the building once construction has finished.
• The requirement for the principal dutyholders to set up a mandatory occurrence reporting system and the procedure for reporting occurrences to the BSR.
• The procedure and requirements for applying for a completion certificate, also known as a 'Gateway 3' application.

2. The Building Regulations etc. (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2023

These amend the Building Regulations 2010 to support the new higher-risk building control...