Building Safety Approval Process Urgently Needs Fixing
Bradley Lay, a Leading Construction M&A Expert Calls on Government to Urgently Fix Building Safety Approval Process as Insolvencies Surge
A leading UK construction expert has called on the Government to urgently reassess the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) approval process, warning that delays in the current system are “slowly killing the economy”, triggering thousands of job losses and forcing long-established construction businesses into bankruptcy.
Bradley Lay is a leading mergers and acquisitions specialist in the UK construction sector, known for his results-driven approach to buying, scaling and exiting businesses.
He is the co-founder of Peak Capital Group and principal of a UK-based family office, through which he oversees strategic acquisitions across the UK and European construction markets.
As a prominent investor and advisor in the UK construction sector, Bradley says the Gateway approval process introduced following the Grenfell tragedy is having severe unintended consequences across the industry, with projects stalled for months and firms unable to generate income to support overheads.
“The UK construction sector has been in distress for the last few years, here is one of the biggest reasons that most in the sector may not even be aware of, which is slowly killing our economy, causing job losses and even forcing long established construction sector businesses to go bankrupt,” said Bradley.
He added: “BSR (the Building Safety Regulator) and the ‘Gateway’ process is basically a new system put in place following the Grenfell tragedy, in order to ensure that large buildings with people living in them have the relevant fire safety in place, to avoid a repeat of Grenfell. There are three design Gateways that buildings need to pass through prior to construction. It has been Gateway 2 which has caused so much of the pain that we are seeing in the sector.
“Gateway 2 decisions were meant to be between 12–8 weeks as explained by the BSR, but the reality is that we have seen this to be as high as 48 weeks in some cases, due to submissions getting marked invalid, requirements feeling inconsistent across cases and the regulator fighting capacity, process maturity and rework loops. In a nutshell, the knock on effect of this is that nothing gets built. So how can a business support its overheads if it has no income being generated to cover this?
“The answer is of course a business cannot, which has been a significant contributor to the 3,950 or so construction sector insolvencies in England and Wales in the 12 months to November 2025. Fire safety is certainly a serious issue and no corners should be cut in ensuring buildings have the correct measures in place, but like all policies and measures implemented under this current government, the execution has been not been thought out properly and action has not been taken as soon as it was identified that construction is being put on pause following new red tape.
“And then the government wonder why they are not getting anywhere near to hitting their self imposed target of building 1.5m new homes.”
Bradley believes the solution is practical rather than political and can be implemented without compromising safety standards.
He said: “I believe the solution to be quite straight forward and one that will ensure the sector continues to keep moving forward with building activity. I’d keep the safety measures and checks in place, but simply fix the approval machine:
“Start any submission with a readiness check which will identify any invalidations before submission. Publish a crystal clear national standard of what good looks like. Fast lane for repeatable low-complexity designs. Default ‘approval with requirements’ where risk allows, so that sites can start laying foundations while controlled details on areas of concern are closed out
“At a time where inflation is up, resulting in higher material and labour costs, and given so much global uncertainty, the construction sector has a tough enough time as it is, without the added cost pressures of red tape processes which can be made more time efficient with some tweaking to the process.”
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