{"id":870460,"date":"2025-09-04T21:13:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T02:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/04\/housing-starts-95-lower-than-expected-in-london-amid-bsr-delays\/"},"modified":"2025-09-04T21:13:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T02:13:10","slug":"housing-starts-95-lower-than-expected-in-london-amid-bsr-delays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/04\/housing-starts-95-lower-than-expected-in-london-amid-bsr-delays\/","title":{"rendered":"Housing starts 95% lower than expected in London amid BSR delays"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"construction_generic_shutterstock.jpg\"<\/p>\n

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More than 95 per cent of housing projects expected to start in London last year failed to do so amid regulatory turmoil, the Local Authority Building Control (LABC) has said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Lorna Stimpson, chief executive of LABC, said \u201cthere is no doubt\u201d that delays with the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) approving high-risk buildings has impacted the construction supply chain \u201cenormously\u201d and will affect the delivery of the government\u2019s housing targets.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Speaking before the House of Lords\u2019 industry and regulations committee on Tuesday (2 September) she added: \u201cIn London alone, they were anticipating 20,000 starts last year, and only 900 have happened.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Stimpson said that staff issues at local authority building control are part of the problem, as \u201csalaries in the private sectors are double\u201d as contractors are increasingly \u201cpaying even more\u201d for building inspectors in a bid to get through the BSR\u2019s gateways systems.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSalaries are going up and up and up [\u2026and] working within local government is difficult,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe lost lots of people when we went through the [re]registration and the whole process of reform in the building control profession \u2014 we lost an awful lot of people, and we\u2019re a very aging community.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a session before MPs from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government earlier this week, BSR chair Andy Roe warned that his organisation risked \u201closing the complete confidence<\/a>\u201d of the building sector if it fails to significantly cut the building safety backlog this year.<\/p>\n

Separately, the Office for Product and Safety Standards (OPSS) chief executive Graham Russell told the House of Lords\u2019 committee that the move from creating products offsite to creating them onsite had added \u201ccomplexity\u201d to the regulator\u2019s work.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The OPSS assumed regulatory powers over the construction sector in 2022, in addition to its work monitoring products across consumer goods (excluding food), medicine and vehicles.<\/p>\n

Russell told peers that the \u201chistoric lack of regulation and the lack of consumer influence\u201d within the construction sector had also made regulation of construction products more challenging.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we think about cosmetics, buyers of cosmetics typically have a strong interest in not buying cosmetics that will harm them,\u201d he said. \u201cBut the end user of a construction product has no say in the chain.\u201d<\/p>\n

To tackle that problem, he said the OPSS was pushing for the supply chain to be \u201cincentivised and encouraged to be curious\u201d.<\/p>\n

Russell also warned that, due to the number of products within the construction industry that need regulating, the OPSS \u201ccan\u2019t necessarily always engage with every single product\u201d.<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cWe need to identify a priority product and try and shift the whole market towards compliance, not just the manufacturers, but the buyers and all the other people with an interest in the specifiers.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a>
\n Joshua Stein<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More than 95 per cent of housing projects expected to start in London last year failed to do so amid regulatory turmoil, the Local Authority Building Control (LABC) has said.\u00a0 Lorna Stimpson, chief executive of LABC, said \u201cthere is no doubt\u201d that delays with the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) approving high-risk buildings has impacted the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":870461,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22731,23522],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-870460","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-housing","8":"category-starts"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=870460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870460\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/870461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=870460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=870460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=870460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}