The Building Safety Regulator (BSR) has revealed that the majority of Gateway 2 applications in its newly established Innovation Unit (IU) are meeting or exceeding the 12-week statutory target for new-build applications.
The unit was introduced in August as part of a package of reforms to address significant delays and high rejection rates in the application process.
The BSR says the IU is now managing 27 new-build applications with 6,192 housing units. It focuses on fast-tracking new-build applications for homes in high-rise buildings and has a new operating model, with dedicated in-house multidisciplinary teams (MDTs) managing and assessing individual applications.
The original MDT model relied on external or outsourced delivery for a portion of the specialised technical assessments.
In total, the BSR is progressing 152 live new-build applications, representing 33,670 housing units across England. An additional 253 live remediation applications are also being processed, covering an estimated 22,304 housing units.
