A high-rise block in east London where unsafe cladding has been removed
The number of undecided building control applications sitting with the Building Safety Regulator reached over a thousand at the end of March, figures reveal.
The figure is included in the set of performance figures published by the BSR, covering January to March with updates set to be made every quarter.
The figures show that the number of schemes it decided was half the number it received during the period – 257 decisions against 513 applications.
That meant the number of open applications in the regulator’s in tray rose from 763 at the end of December 2024 to 1,019 at the end of March this year.
However, a statement from the BSR released alongside the figures said that the situation has been reversed since March and that the backlog is now shrinking, rather than rising, due to an increase in staffing levels.
It said: “We acknowledge there are delays in processing applications and we continue to introduce improvements.
“Recent recruitment activity is having a positive impact on productivity with the number of decisions doubling (month on month) overall since March.
“Significantly, the number of decisions made are now exceeding new applications received.”
Of the 257 decisions made during the first quarter of the year, the BSR approved just 82, a rate of just 32 per cent.
Of the remainder,126 were recorded as invalid or rejected, while 31 were withdrawn.
Only 33% were decided within the statutory timeframe, with the average time taken to make decisions up to 25.1 weeks from 20.4 weeks in the final quarter of 2024.
New build applications took 36 weeks to decide, up from 19.2 weeks at the end of last year.
The BSR also confirmed that it was taking its multidisciplinary teams in-house as reported by Construction News last month.
