CIOB Policy Discussion: Building Safety Regulator's Impact & Effectiveness

Summary

Details

The Building Safety Regulator (BSR) was established under the Building Safety Act 2022 to regulate higher-risk buildings (HRBs), raise safety standards of all buildings and help professionals in design, construction, and building control, to improve their competence.

Since launching, there has been concerns from across the built environment that delays in approvals have slowed projects down, with complaints from industry about inconsistency in advice, guidance and feedback as well as a lack of engagement from the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) which oversaw its functions. However, the BSR has also noted that numerous applications they have received have also not been to the quality that is expected, and therefore many have been rejected.

Following some of this feedback, the UK Government has recently (1 July) announced a package of reforms for the BSR, including moving it to a new Executive Agency within the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG). This includes a new ‘fast track process’ to enhance the review of newbuild applications to speed up delivery. It also hopes to boost capacity of the BSR workforce, with over 100 new members of staff set to be recruited.

Furthermore, in June, the House of Lords ‘Industry and Regulators Committee’ launched an inquiry into the BSR’s approval process to determine why the approval rate is both slow and low.

CIOB will be responding to this inquiry, and the main purpose of this virtual roundtable is to gather evidence to support and inform our response.

At this event, the CIOB Policy & Public Affairs team will provide an overview of the current state of play, what the new changes might mean for the sector and will then open the discussion to help inform our response to the Committee. Prior to the event, members can read the questions the Committee is seeking input on here.

Speakers:

David Barnes, Head of Policy & Public Affairs, CIOB

David Parry, Senior Parliamentary & Public Affairs Officer, CIOB

Please register your interest and a member of the Policy Team will send out further details and the Teams link.

Members: gain 3 CIOB CPD points when you reflect on the ethical aspects of your learning from this activity.

Please note: this event is for over 18’s only.

Online Platform

The webinar will be held using MS Teams. Please register your interest on Eventbrite then prior to the session, you will receive an email contaning the Teams link.

CIOB Assist

The webinar is free to attend, but if you would like to make an optional donation to CIOB Assist you can do this during the registration process.

Contact

David Barnes

Head of Policy and Public Affairs UK

[email protected] How can we help you get the most out of this event? We want to ensure accessibility for all of our members. Please contact us in confidence prior to attendance and we will do our best to answer any questions and support any additional needs you may have.

Time Zones

The webinar is being advertised in the GMT/BST time zone, but you can easily see the local time for the webinar using World Time Buddy: www.worldtimebuddy.com/.