UK Construction and Law

New build gateway 2 approvals reach 92 per cent and the median falls to 22 weeks

By Staff Writer  |  5 September 2026

The regulator's June to August figures put decisions on new higher-risk buildings at a 92 per cent approval rate against 39 per cent twelve months ago. Internal refurbishment still takes 32 weeks. Applications are rising ahead of the levy on 1 October.

The Building Safety Regulator published its building control approval application data for June to August 2026 on 4 September, with every figure taken as at 31 August. Fifty decisions were made on new higher-risk buildings and conversions. Forty-six were approvals and four were rejections, which is a 92 per cent approval rate on a rolling twelve week view, at a median approval time of 22 weeks. August marked twelve months since the Innovation Unit was set up to handle new build applications alone. At that point the median stood at 43 weeks and the approval rate at 39 per cent.

Sixty-three new build applications came in over the twelve weeks, four were invalidated and one withdrawn, and 9,362 residential units were approved. There are 147 new build and conversion applications in progress covering 32,691 units, up from 131 at the end of July. Thirty-three of those are tracked as complex cases and run at a median of 33 weeks.

External remediation moved the same way. There were 118 decisions and 105 approvals, an 89 per cent rate at a 33 week median, covering 8,667 units. A year ago the equivalent figures were 47 per cent and 43 weeks. Three hundred and twenty-seven remediation cases are in progress covering 28,274 units, and twelve applications made in 2024 are still open against 42 at the start of this year.

Where the caseload actually sits

Internal refurbishment is the volume. There were 143 decisions on higher-risk building internal works in the twelve weeks, around 43 per cent of all gateway 2 decisions, at a 78 per cent approval rate and a 32 week median, with 1,082 in progress and new applications arriving at an average of 38 a week. For internal works submitted during 2026 the median has fallen to 16 weeks, so the published headline is being held up by 2025 cases still closing rather than by current performance. NHS work is now reported separately: 22 decisions, 18 approvals, an 82 per cent rate and a 22 week median, falling to 13 weeks for applications submitted in 2026, with some approvals reached inside the statutory eight weeks.

London carries around 65 per cent of in-progress new build applications and around 61 per cent of the new build residential units. Thirty-one of the 50 new build decisions were London cases and 28 were approved, a 90 per cent rate at 23 weeks. London remediation approvals ran at 96 per cent, and open remediation cases in the capital fell from 200 to 182 over the period.

Our latest performance figures show that we are successfully driving momentum in building control assessments and approvals for more than 18,000 residential units.

Charlie Pugsley, Acting Chief Executive Officer of the Building Safety Regulator

The parts that will bite

There are 1,654 gateway 2 applications in progress, an increase of over 100 during August. The regulator attributes the rise to the building safety levy, which takes effect on 1 October 2026, and says it has a mitigation plan and will watch whether the increase continues. Anyone timing a submission to land before that date is joining a queue the regulator itself expects to lengthen.

There are 184 live major change requests, and the median time to close one on a new build project is 7 weeks against a statutory 6. A change during construction is not an administrative footnote in the programme. It is a consented variation with its own clock, and on these numbers that clock runs a week over.

Gateway 3 remains the untested part of the system. No new build project that has passed gateway 2 has yet reached it. Of 346 gateway 3 applications received, 260 are internal refurbishments, 45 are transitional cases and 23 are NHS internal refurbishments. Sixteen were determined over the twelve weeks at an 88 per cent approval rate and a 20 week median, the quickest in seven weeks. Eight external remediation cases covering 972 units are in progress at that stage.

One line in the commentary deserves attention on site rather than in the office. One hundred and twenty-six new build projects have started work, and the regulator says its inspection programme has found a small number of cases where building work did not follow the designs agreed at gateway 2 and required remedial work. It says it will monitor this closely and take action where appropriate.

Twenty-two weeks is the number that will be quoted in programme submissions this autumn. The one to hold beside it is 32 weeks, which is what an internal refurbishment still takes, and 43 per cent of all decisions are internal refurbishments.