The Building Safety Regulator (BSR) said the Gateway 2 approval rate has risen to 67% with more than 10,000 units approved in the last 12 weeks.
In its latest building control Gateway 2 update, the BSR said in the 12 weeks to 29 March new applications representing 12,975 residential units were received and applications representing 16,721 units were determined, of which 10,165 (61%) were approvals.
Some 61% of decisions (19 out of 31) made by the Innovation Unit (IU) in the last 12 weeks were approvals. This means the 12-week rolling approval rate (minus invalidations and withdrawals) was significantly up from last month, with a median approval time of 22 weeks.
More than half (62%) of all decisions across all Gateway 2 categories related to London cases and in the last 12 weeks, 92 remediation decisions were made (49 in London) with an overall approval rate of 61%. This compares with only 228 decisions made throughout 2025.
Charlie Pugsley, acting chief executive officer of the Building Safety Regulator, said: “We continue to see improvements to numbers of approvals for new build and remediation cases and the time taken to get to a decision. The data we have published today reinforces the significant improvements we have seen when you look at where we were in July 2025, with median decision times of 51.5 weeks.
“A big part of our work to drive improvements is now focused on improving technical consistency in the sector and ensuring that learning from challenging designs or applications is shared. So, we have less complex cases to work through, further reducing decision times. This is directly increasing the availability of thousands of safe new and existing homes across England.
“To manage applications – particularly the intense demand we are seeing in London, which accounts for six in 10 of our Gateway 2 decisions – our batching pilot is proving highly effective. By collaborating with specialised external engineering suppliers, we are significantly accelerating processing times, while maintaining our rigorous regulatory oversight.
“However, we recognise the need to push further on existing buildings. That is why our remediation improvement plan provides targeted measures to bolster our resources and support industry in submitting higher quality applications. Speed can never come at the cost of safety. Our goal continues to be to ensure industry can construct safe buildings and that residents see the essential safety improvements they deserve.”
