Building Safety Regulator enforcement and upcoming reforms

Brett: Hi everyone, I’m Brett Mason, a Senior Associate here in the Construction Disputes team at Gowling WLG. Today I’m joined by Natalie Barton-Howes, Principal Associate in the Regulatory Crime team, to talk about the Building Safety Regulator, enforcement and future reforms. 

So, let’s start with the fundamentals: what is the purpose of the Building Safety Regulator? 

Natalie: The BSR was established under the Building Safety Act 2022, and that was borne out of the Grenfell Tower tragedy. The independent review that followed Grenfell found that the old system for regulating building safety was not fit for purpose. The enforcement powers were rarely used, and the impact of the penalties was just too small to have any real, impact or change.

So, the core mission of the BSR is to protect people and to protect places by regulating building safety and building standards laws.

It operates across four key areas, which are acting as the building control authority for high-risk buildings, overseeing occupied high-risk buildings and regulating the building control profession, and also more broadly, securing the wider safety of everyone in and around those buildings.

So, as of January 2026, you may be aware the Building Safety Regulator has become a fully independent statutory body. So, it's moved from the Health and Safety Executive, which is where it was initially sat and it's now an independent arm's length body under MHCLG.

Brett: Great. And I think with the Building Safety Regulator becoming a fully independent body back in January, that's obviously paving the way towards the Building Safety Regulator morphing eventually into the Single Construction Regulator.

Everyone hears about the Building Safety Regulator having teeth now and, what we call the enforcement toolkit.

So what does that enforcement toolkit look like in practice?

Natalie: The BSR has, a large enforcement toolkit, and it's scalable so it, can respond proportionately to the severity of the issue. So at the lighter end, there are things like verbal and written warnings that can be issued for any breaches which don't have any specific consequences, but they can be followed by things like formal compliance notices, which can be served on Accountable Persons or Principal Accountable Persons for any breaches or even anticipated breaches that do require action within a specified time frame.

So for imminent danger, that could be an urgent action notice and for any serious risk of harm that could be a stop notice, which would be an order to stop work and there could also be powers that would require you to remove work or to amend any of the work that you're doing.

The really important point there is that if you don't comply with those notices, then that in itself is a criminal offence.

At the more serious end you've obviously got prosecution. So the BSR can prosecute both individuals and companies. It can also seek things like director disqualification orders, for individuals who have been convicted.

The BSR can also, and this is quite unique to the BSR, they can appoint something called a Special Measures Manager, so where they don't think that the Accountable Person or Principal Accountable Person are managing the risk appropriately, they can essentially bring in somebody to do that job. And clearly that would be at the cost of those who are creating the risk or failing to manage it.

And that would usually be in instances where there are repeated failures.

Brett: Yeah.

Natalie: And there's also, recent case law that suggests that the BSR can obtain injunctions. So in the recent case of HC and Integratas, the BSR obtained a without notice injunction, from the Technology and Construction Courts to prevent occupation of the building because of what they considered to be fire, serious fire safety defects.

Brett: So I think that injunction case is really interesting that we've seen the BSR actually muscle in and get involved in a building that is currently suffering from issues. And it shows that their intent for the future, I think, our audience should also be aware that the judge in that case did say that the principle that the BSR can apply for those types of injunctions should probably be tested further.

So we may see some more commentary on that as things progress.

So generally we're seeing a wide range of tools available to the BSR to enforce. So what should people take away from that?

Natalie: Well you’re absolutely right. It is going to be subject, we suspect, to further judicial testing. So it's not set in stone that this will happen again. But in any event, we would expect that to be something that is completely exceptional and only used where there's imminent life safety risks. So, I don't expect that it would be used instead of, or as a replacement for the notice and prosecution regime. But I think it's important to note that the BSR is looking to use all tools available to it and all methods available to it to protect, life and building safety.

It's also probably important to note the decision, which was a First Tier Tribunal case in 30 Burstock Road which showed the BSL being pulled up for acting ultra vires.

So in that case, it refused a building control decision appeal on grounds that the local authority hadn't considered and the Court found that it had acted outside of the principles of fairness and transparency. So the BSL can be challenged and it can be subject to, it is subject to principles of fairness and proportionality. And, it will be held to account where it's not acting in line with those principles too.

Brett: Yeah. It's very much a learning process for the Regulator, it seems, as well as the courts.

There is obviously a lot of change going on at the moment. And we'll be talking about some of the future, things that are happening shortly. But what is the Building Safety Regulator focusing on at the moment?

Natalie: So you'll know that operational performance is improving. The data shows that, better pace of approval and the backlog of things like new build cases has been cleared largely. But remediation is and remains, a main focus for the BSR. The BSR has published an external remediation improvement plan, and it's establishing a remediation enforcement unit for those buildings over 18 metres with unsafe cladding.

And that unit will have access to a full range of enforcement tools. And what they are is under consultation at the moment with the remediation bill. But that's going to be things like compliance notices, civil penalties alongside criminal penalties and prosecution where necessary. And that's all in order to hold those building owners and developers to account for any delays in remediation.

There's also a major consultation on approved document B, that's the safety guidance, and that's really important to be aware of and feed into and understand the changes, because any changes can just redefine the benchmarks against which compliance is measured and then enforcement action taken.

Brett: Yeah. And I think that consultation with ADB is a really golden opportunity for experts in the construction industry to really feed into how we can make that document as effective as possible, particularly noting that, with a lot of our disputes in building safety, we see arguments around routes to compliance and how to comply with the building regulations.

So looking further ahead, what should practitioners be watching out for?

Natalie: So there's a lot on the horizon; we've got three big changes. The first of that is the Single Construction Regulator, so that's the proposal to bring together the regulation of buildings, products and professionals under one coherent framework with the BSR at the heart of it.

The construction products reform is also on the horizon. So we've had the white paper, which proposes a lot tougher sanctions for breaches of construction product safety. Which would be a criminal sanction with up to two years imprisonment for individuals and unlimited fines for product safety breaches. Plus, this new concept of the civil penalties, alongside things like director disqualification powers being used.And the most important thing here is that they are looking at extending the scope with a general safety requirement which would then bring all products, construction products into, scope, not just those ones that have designated standards.

Finally, there's the remediation bill, which I've touched on. And that's the proposed duty and penalty regime, which is looking at making sure that remediation is actually happening without delay. And that's bringing in that bigger role for things like civil penalties and non criminal tools alongside the criminal regime. There are, as always, concerns about things like capacity shortages, expertise shortages, which we know impacts the industry as a whole. And there is a need for greater clarity across this framework and all of the proposed, changes that are coming in. So, again, it's a case of closely watching this space.

Brett: Well, there’s a lot for us to be getting our teeth into.

So moving on to the final question. What's one thing that our audience should take away from today?

Natalie: So the message that I would leave with is that we know that the BSR has a substantial and growing enforcement toolkit, and we can see that that's being actively tested now through case law and through operational experience. With the Single Construction Regulator on the way, with tougher sanctions for construction products on the way, then, and also alongside the remediation bill that's being developed, what we can expect to see is more decisive enforcement action and there are going to be real consequences for failure.

So my practical advice is for anyone with building safety duties, you know, it's quite straightforward- you need to understand your obligations. You need to invest in those compliant systems and frameworks and just engage proactively, because there's so much out there and it's changing very rapidly.

Brett: Thank you.

Natalie: Thank you.

Brett: Thank you for listening. We hope today's discussion has provided some useful insight into the role of the Building Safety Regulator, the growing focus on enforcement, and the future direction of building safety reform.

If you'd like to learn more about these issues and their impact on the built environment, you can explore our latest building safety insights on the Gowling WLG website.

Thanks for joining us, and we'll see you again soon.