The Building Safety Regulator is set to operate as the shadow Single Construction Regulator (SCR) before the overarching body begins formal operations, officials said last week.
Before Christmas, the government’s prospectus for the new regulator said the SCR would “take over [the BSR’s] responsibilities” and be the “foundation for an integrated regulator” but further details were sparse.
Late last year, the BSR was moved out of the Health and Safety Executive to be a standalone body reporting to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).
And in a briefing on the SCR held last week (5 February), Serhan Wade, a policy lead for the SCR at MHCLG, said: “Although the decision to create a new body for the Building Safety Regulator was motivated by improving its operational performance, creating a new body ahead of primary legislation is an opportunity to start building the future regulator in shadow form.”
Maddy Badcott, strategy lead for building safety and performance at the department, said: “Now we have moved the new safety regulator out of the Health and Safety Executive, that arm’s length body should… be the basis for the new single regulator.
“Our intention is for there to be as little disruption as possible. Obviously […] that might change as we develop the legislation with lawyers, but hopefully that helps clarify the intention is for that body to become the single regulator.”
Joe Murphy, head of single regulator design at the department, said that setting up the SCR from within the BSR would mean the government was “not starting from scratch, helping to set it up more efficiently”.
The exact legislative framework for creating the SCR was still under discussion, he said.
He said: “Do we need a whole new, kind of legislative framework that sets up a new body, or can we use parts of the system that we’ve already got, parts of legislation we’ve already got? We need to work through that.”
A number of questions from attendees at the online briefing sought greater clarity on the possibility, raised in the SCR prospectus, that more built environment professions could face mandatory licensing.
Jon Rowling, senior specialist, building standards at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, asked: “Does the scope… extend to builders, tradespeople, SMEs, who are carrying out work across the country, day in, day out? It would be very difficult to regulate them, but it’s a big area of concern among consumers, the quality of construction work.”
Chris Barrett, senior policy advisor at MHCLG, replied: “We haven’t defined the scope of the professions reforms yet. We will be asking questions and inviting views as part of the call for evidence that’s coming out in the spring. We recognise that going very broad is very challenging.
“Going very narrow might not quite hit all the areas that we want to, so it’s a a good question.
“We need to work through the answer with you and with other stakeholders and other colleagues in other departments.”
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Colin Marrs