The Construction Leadership Council is set to issue guidance, drawn up with Building Safety Regulator input, on how building firms can navigate the gateway building control process for higher-risk buildings (HRBs), Construction News understands.
Mark Reynolds, co-chair of the Construction Leadership Council (CLC), yesterday (8 July) revealed during a Parliamentary hearing that his body has led a process to work up a set of guidance notes.
CN understands that the principle of releasing the guidance has been agreed with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) and the BSR, with final details of the wording currently being hammered out between the bodies.
Reynolds, who is also chairman of Mace, was speaking at the ongoing House of Lords Industry and Regulators Committee inquiry into the regulator.
He said that Karl Whiteman, CLC industry sponsor for building safety and divisional managing director at housebuilder Berkeley, led on the process of drawing up the new guidance, which will be issued on behalf of the CLC.
The new guidance notes have “been ready to issue for several weeks”, Reynolds said.
Industry has long voiced frustration at a lack of clarity over what detail is expected from them at gateway two – the design approval process for HRBs.
In April, Adam Nicholson, preconstruction director at McLaren Construction told CN: “If you’re doing a planning application, there’s lots of examples of what a design and access statement should look like, and they give you lots of guidance as to what it’s for and how it can be received, and what you need to include.”
But the BSR has resisted issuing formal guidance up itself.
Departing BSR chief Philip White told CN in April that firms should be sharing best practice among themselves.
He said: “[We are] happy to be part of it, but I think this is one industry needs to take on.”
During yesterday’s Parliementary appearance, Reynolds further claimed that the BSR was planning to reduce the time it takes for applications to pass through gateway two to five weeks – though he said that was “a long way off”.
First, the focus should be on decreasing the time it takes to consider applications to 13 weeks, which he said would be a “huge, huge step forward”. After that, the aim would be to decrease application times to eight weeks and then five.
He suggested that “engag[ing] the fire consultants in a different way” was key to reducing the time for applications to be considered.
Reynolds also suggested that clients in the construction industry would be happy to pay into the BSR to help it recruit more staff to clear the backlog of applications.
He said the industry “would be happy to pay what was necessary” to speed up gateway two applications, especially if that safeguarded HRBs and prevented further cost increases.
He said he could only “speak for himself and the colleagues I deal with”, but added: “If [the application process] happened quickly, and therefore there was not a threat to the future project, industry would be happy to pay what was necessary to get it done.”
Elsewhere during the session, Reynolds also called for a change in the design details currently required by the regulator at gateway two.
He said: “You don’t design a structure to the nth degree until you’ve actually procured the specialist delivery contractor and the subcontractors for cladding and for drylining.”
He said that the details defining the structural integrity and compartmentation of buildings relate mainly to the walls, floors and ceilings and doors.
“So there aren’t many components you need to worry about [at gateway two]. And what the regulator has said is it needs to be fully designed [at that stage],” he added.
The current requirement to provide full design details by gateway two means the industry needs to spend a lot more time and money designing the project to a more advanced level, he said.
Reynolds said that the gateway two information provided should be more of a “performance framework, rather than an absolute requirement”, which he said would allow projects to move on much more quickly.
Reynolds also backed proposals addressed in the committee inquiry for the BSR to assess high-rise projects by company, rather than individually, arguing that it would “drive consistency” and “improve the turnaround times” of project analysis.
Analysing multiple projects by larger clients at once would also allow the industry to build housing capacity as demanded by the government, he added.
He said the CLC had been calling for that “for quite some time”.
Reynolds said that the CLC has presented a set of reform proposals to BSR, saying: “We’ve been pushing the BSR for several weeks to acknowledge those proposals and accept those proposals, and they’ve got, quite frankly, until this week to do it. Otherwise, we’ll be writing a formal letter to the Minister in advance of the meeting we have with him on Monday next week.”
Construction News approached the BSR, Mace and the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government for comment.
Last month, responsibility for the BSR was stripped from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), with two fire brigade professionals appointed to lead the new-look BSR.
Following the change, Geoff Wilkinson, managing director of compliance consultancy Wilkinson and a chartered surveyor, said the appointment of fire chiefs to run the BSR was “bizarre” and “incredibly concerning”.
This story was amended at 1420 on 9 July 2025 to correct the name of the body in whose name the guidance will be issued. It will be published by CLC, not BSR as originally stated.
Read More
Joshua Stein