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Building Safety Act 2022: Managing Gateway-Driven Project Delays and Liabilities

Since the Building Safety Act was introduced in April 2022, its gateway regime has caused project delays due to capacity constraints, regulatory rigidity and limited guidance. Delays in achieving approval at each gateway can potentially lead to uncertainty about the viability of the project itself. So how can project teams prepare for these delays?

The Building Safety Act requires approval for tall multi-occupancy residential buildings (high-risk buildings or ’HRB’)¹ administered by the Health and Safety Executive’s Building Safety Regulator, rather than via the traditional building control approval process.²

This stricter control of the design and construction process, as reported by construction journals and in the House of Lords’ report, has caused significant delays.³The control of the design and construction process for HRB’s is now based on a series of submissions or gateways that act as ‘hard stops’ to the project, which every HRB project must pass through sequentially:

Gateway 1: Detail fire safety during the planning application stage
Gateway 2: Obtain approval for the completed design prior to commencing construction
Gateway 3: Acquire approval from the Building Safety Regulator prior to registration and occupation

Approval delays at each gateway due to the Building Safety Regulator’s capacity constraints, regulatory rigidity and the limited guidance available impact a project’s viability and, in some instances, halt construction on-site for extended periods leading to additional costs. This is particularly true for gateway 2, when a project’s costs are greatest and where approval often takes between 25 to 40 weeks compared to the statutory 12 weeks.⁴

What Are the Key Causes of Gateway-Driven Project Delays and How Can Project Teams Prepare?

Capacity and Engagement
The greater level of competency required from an assessor of HRB applications is currently limiting their numbers. It has been widely reported in construction journals that the Health and Safety Executive (‘HSE’) has struggled to appoint technical staff to manage applications and is under-resourced to deal with the volume of applications.⁵

One of the Act’s objectives was to distance assessors from the developer or contractor making an application to avoid one-off derogation of the regulations and to standardise fire safety for approved projects. As part of this distancing, any pre-application consultation has been removed. This limits non-standard designed fire safety solutions that can be generated from early collaboration and discussion between the assessor and the project team.

The lack of engagement and shortage of experienced assessors has led to each HRB submission being assessed from first principle and uncertainty for designers over how the same detail will be considered in one HRB submission compared to another. This has resulted in longer review times and doubt for designers when preparing submissions.

To combat this, project teams will have to extend the periods planned for gateway 2 approval and for the construction detailing period in their programmes to accommodate the approval durations currently being encountered in practice. Project teams should also assess whether the experience of the design team, and whether the level of detail being provided, is sufficient to avoid further regulator comments or resubmissions.

Increased Complexity
There is still limited guidance for designers on the information required for a HRB application, resulting in a higher rejection rate.⁶ Greater scrutiny of gateway 2 requirements and their on-site installation are creating time and cost pressures on design input and the management of construction works.

Contractors and designers can no longer rely on previous solutions, increasing design durations. Construction also cannot proceed without increased oversight, in case the installation process is not captured by the contractor to the level of detail required to gain approval from the Building Safety Regulator.

Project teams on HRB projects must therefore allocate more fire safety and cladding resources during the design phase and should plan for more supervision and recording of the cladding and fire protection construction works during the construction phase.

Fire safety details should be reviewed against current standards before submission, with consideration given to whether proper installation can realistically be achieved on site. Greater integration of cladding detailing into the overall detailed design should also be undertaken to improve coordination and reduce the risk of rejection by the HRB assessor.

Contractors should ensure that construction work recording is maintained to the level of detail now required to demonstrate compliance, with inspection schedules and worksheets implemented during construction to facilitate the on-site inspection process.

Rigidity of The Gateway Regime
Under the new gateway regime, any change to the approved design after gateway 2 approval must be formally assessed. This could result in a full re-submittal to the Building Safety Regulator. Unlike the previous building control scheme, works are not allowed to continue whilst the proposed design change is assessed, creating a significant risk to programme delivery.

This is particularly pronounced on refurbishment projects. In our experience, design issues may only become apparent during construction when strip-out works expose latent issues within the original building.

Controlling design changes during the construction phase will now be more important. It may also lead to disputes about design development liability having greater significance, if a project was halted completely for an extended period for full HRB resubmission.

Clients and contractors will therefore need to understand the implications of any design change they are considering implementing during the construction phase. They also need to understand the importance of adhering to the approved construction details.

Project teams should ensure that instructions and proposed design changes during construction are assessed against gateway 2 approval requirements, as seemingly minor changes can become the critical cause of project delay on site if they trigger resubmission to the Building Safety Regulator.

For refurbishment projects, the lack of knowledge of the existing building and the extent of the design that will be required on site should be quantified and costed as a risk to the projects’ progress at contract formation stage.

Insurance
With the complexity and regulatory constraints for any HRB submission and the extended liabilities for designers resulting from the Building Safety Act, professional indemnity insurers are stepping away from supporting designers who take on HRB projects. They may also resist a claim for historic work. Many design consultants are increasingly reluctant to undertake HRB work where liabilities extend beyond their professional indemnity cover, further reducing the pool of experienced designers available.

Honest conversations are needed with the designer’s insurer on past and future projects to ensure that fire safety issues will not leave designers exposed from a lack of insurance cover. Project teams should also consider whether the design work being undertaken and associated liabilities are adequately covered by the existing professional indemnity insurance in place.

The design standards that should be met and the designer’s management of the design process should also be clearly recorded throughout the works, particularly where design development or historic construction issues can expose clients, contractors or designers to an insurance cover risk. Retrospective assessments of construction works may also be required where historic projects have been subject to disputes or fire safety concerns.

What This Means for Future Projects
To minimise HRB project delays and liability exposure, project teams must develop their knowledge of construction details that meet the new requirements of HRB submissions and understand the design information that needs to be submitted.

When planning a HRB project, the project team need construction programmes that realistically plan for the extended approval durations of each of the gateways and the increased design time required. Without this, delays may make some projects unviable or the subject of disputes.

Many projects are still being procured on assumptions around design development, programme sequencing and gateway approval durations that no longer reflect the practical realities of the gateway regimes.

The impact of the Building Safety Act will therefore be with us for some time and has fundamentally changed HRB construction strategy and the insurance market. Because of the new stricter regime, it is apparent that the construction industry will see an increasing number of disputes concerning the responsibility for the delays and liabilities incurred from the Building Safety Act.

Footnotes:

1: Building Safety Act 2022, Part 3.31.120D.

2: Building Safety Act 2022, Part 2.2.1

3: ‘The Building Safety Regulator: Building a better regulator,’ House of Lords Industry and Regulators Committee Report, HL Paper 225 (11 December 2025), (2 June 2026)

4: Ibid., at paragraphs 38 to 42.

5: ‘Building safety regulator moves to unblock cladding fix backlog,’ Construction Enquirer (8 April 2026) and ‘Building Safety Regulation: progress, challenges and the path forward,’ New London Architecture (24 September 2025) -

6: ‘Reasons for the Rejection of Applications at Gateway Two,’ Build UK (September 2025)