Building Safety Regulator charges on a tall building

Building Safety Regulator charges are recovered for time spent rather than levied as a fixed application fee, which is the single most useful thing to understand before budgeting a higher-risk building. Under the Building Safety Act 2022 the Regulator, sitting within the Health and Safety Executive, operates a published charging scheme, and the amount a scheme pays depends on how much work the case generates. A well-prepared submission costs less than a thin one, and a rejection followed by a resubmission costs considerably more than either.

That changes how a development manager should think about the cost. It is not a fee to be looked up and added to the appraisal. It is an outcome of how the design and the documentation are managed.

Which buildings are in scope

The higher-risk building definition for design and construction purposes turns on height and use. A building of 18 metres or more in height, or with seven or more storeys, containing at least two residential units falls in scope, as do care homes and hospitals meeting the height condition.

Two practical points. Measurement and storey counting follow published definitions rather than intuition, and the treatment of basements, mezzanines and roof-level plant needs checking against those definitions. And a building that starts below the threshold and grows through design development moves into the regime, which is a programme event rather than a detail.

Note that the planning-stage question is not the same as the building control question. At planning, the Fire Statement requirement in the Development Management Procedure Order applies to relevant buildings and triggers consultation with the Regulator, which is what Planning Gateway One means. A Fire Statement is the document for that stage, and it is labelled professional required because the Act's framework expects fire engineering competence behind it.

Gateway one, two and three

Gateway two is the one that shapes the programme, because building work on a higher-risk building cannot start until approval is in place. Gateway three shapes the sales or letting programme, because occupation follows the completion certificate.

The charging arrangements have been extended since the regime began, so confirm on the Health and Safety Executive's site which gateway functions attract charges now rather than working from an earlier project's assumptions.

Hourly charging and what drives the total

Where charges are recovered by reference to time, the variables that matter:

• the completeness of the application at the point of submission, since a request for further information is chargeable time
• the complexity of the fire engineering strategy, particularly where a performance-based approach departs from the guidance in Approved Document B
• the number of buildings and the repetition between them, since a repeated block type costs less per unit than four different ones
• the number of rounds of correspondence, which is a proxy for how well the submission answered the questions the first time
• change control applications during construction

The lever a client has is the first and the fourth. An application assembled by a team that has read the published guidance on what the Regulator expects, with a coherent fire strategy, coordinated drawings and a clear golden thread structure, generates fewer queries. That is not an optimistic claim about goodwill. It is the arithmetic of time-based charging.

Information requirements that reduce challenge

What the submission needs to hold together:

1. A fire and emergency file, or the equivalent strategy documentation, that matches the architectural drawings rather than describing an earlier scheme.
2. Coordinated drawings across architecture, structure and services, with compartmentation and fire-stopping strategy legible.
3. A competence declaration for the dutyholders, with the principal designer and principal contractor appointed.
4. A construction control plan, a change control plan and a mandatory occurrence reporting plan.
5. The golden thread arrangements, meaning how information will be kept, updated and handed over.

A Fire Safety Strategy prepared to the relevant British Standard sits at the centre of that, and it is a fire engineering document rather than a planning one. Where the design relies on sprinklers, evacuation lifts or a single stair with enhanced measures, the strategy has to justify the approach rather than assert it.

Programme effect of gateway two before construction

Plan the programme backwards from the no-start constraint. The Regulator has published determination periods for building control approval applications, commonly cited as twelve weeks for a new higher-risk building and eight weeks for work to an existing one, with extensions by agreement. Check the current figures, and then assume that agreement to an extension is normal rather than exceptional.

The consequences for a development programme:

• the design has to be materially complete earlier than on a conventional scheme, because approval is sought before work starts
• contractor appointment and the principal contractor duties bite earlier
• enabling works, demolition and site clearance may be treated differently from building work, so take advice on what can proceed
• a rejection restarts the clock, and the cost of standing site overheads dwarfs the charge itself

Illustrative example: a 21-storey residential tower with a single basement. The programme assumes a twelve-week gateway two determination, and the team allows a further eight weeks of contingency for a request for further information and a partial resubmission. Design freeze therefore sits around five months before the planned start on site, and the value engineering exercise that would ordinarily run through the early works has to conclude before submission instead. Illustrative only, and the periods should be checked against the current published figures.

Change control applications and their cost

Change control is where budgets drift. Once approval is granted, changes are categorised, with notifiable changes recorded and major changes requiring an application to the Regulator before the work is carried out. Each application carries further chargeable time and further programme.

The discipline that follows: fix the design, resist substitution, and where a change is unavoidable, batch it. A single major change application covering three related substitutions costs less than three applications a month apart. And record every change in the golden thread as it happens, because reconstructing the position at gateway three is far harder than maintaining it.

Budgeting gateway work alongside planning

Keep the lines separate in the appraisal. Planning fees and the Community Infrastructure Levy are one family. Building Safety Regulator charges are another, alongside the cost of the additional design work the regime requires, the fire engineer's fees through construction, and the dutyholder competence and record-keeping resource.

Then add the indirect costs, which are larger: the earlier design freeze, the contingency in the programme, and the finance cost of both. On a tall building those tend to exceed the charges themselves, in the same way that utility connections and their lead times cost more in programme than in connection charges.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Check the current charging scheme and determination periods with the Health and Safety Executive, and take advice from a qualified professional before relying on any figure. For specialist technical reports, qualified professional input may be required. See PlanScope pricing if you want the planning-stage documents drafted and then sent for professional review.

PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.