What the Building Safety Regulator checks at Gateway One

The Building Safety Regulator does not approve your fire design at Planning Gateway One. It comments, as a statutory consultee, on whether the scheme has taken fire safety into account in the matters that planning can actually control: where the building sits, how a fire appliance reaches it, where the water comes from, and what the external walls are made of. The local planning authority then has to have regard to that response.

Understanding that distinction saves a lot of argument. A regulator comment asking for the hydrant locations is not a design objection. A regulator comment saying the site layout leaves no workable appliance route is, and it will not be fixed by a condition.

Where the requirement comes from

Article 9A of the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015 requires a Fire Statement to accompany planning applications for development involving a relevant building. A relevant building contains two or more dwellings or educational accommodation and is 18 m or more in height, or has seven or more storeys.

The Health and Safety Executive, through the Building Safety Regulator, is the statutory consultee on those applications. The regime came into force on 1 August 2021 and sits within the wider framework created by the Building Safety Act 2022, which also establishes the later gateways that run through building control.

Submit the Fire Statement on the published form with the application. It is a validation requirement, so an application without one does not start its determination period.

The consultation and what comes back

The authority consults the regulator once the application is valid. The statutory consultee period is 21 days, extendable by agreement, and the response comes back as written comments addressed to the authority.

The response is advice, not a decision. It typically does three things: identifies where the submitted information is insufficient to assess a matter, raises specific fire safety points arising from the layout or the building form, and flags issues that will need resolving at the later gateways even if they are not planning matters.

What it does not do is sign off the fire strategy, confirm compliance with Approved Document B, or give any assurance that the building will pass Gateway Two.

The points raised most often

Read enough responses and the same themes recur.

• Fire appliance access. Route widths, turning provision, hardstanding positions and the distance from the appliance position to the building entrance. Applicants frequently show a route on a landscape drawing without dimensions or a swept path.
• Water supplies for firefighting. Hydrant locations, flow rates and whether the existing main can deliver them. Confirmation from the water undertaker takes weeks to obtain, so start it early.
• The evacuation strategy and its effect on the plan form. Stair numbers and positions, lobby arrangements and the assumptions behind a stay put strategy. The policy position on second staircases in tall residential buildings has moved since 2023, so check the current national requirement and any transitional arrangements at the time you design rather than relying on an older scheme.
• External wall construction. Materials proposed for the external walls, balconies and any attachments, and how they relate to the restrictions on combustible materials.
• Firefighting facilities inside the building. Firefighting shafts, lifts and their position relative to the core, where these affect the footprint shown on the application drawings.
• Site constraints outside your control, including overhead lines, watercourses, level changes and neighbouring buildings that limit appliance positions.

The common thread is dimensioned information. Almost every request for further information is a request for a number that was not on a drawing.

How the planning authority uses the response

The authority must have regard to the regulator's comments. It cannot treat them as a veto, and it cannot use them to refuse on matters that properly belong to building control.

In practice, three outcomes follow. Where the comments identify missing information, the authority asks for it and the determination period is extended. Where the comments identify a design issue with a land use dimension, such as an unworkable appliance route, the authority will expect a design change. Where the comments flag something for later gateways, the authority notes it and moves on.

Conditions have limited use here. A condition requiring details of the fire strategy to be approved later does not answer a comment that the site layout does not work, and officers are increasingly reluctant to accept that approach.

Responding without redesigning the scheme

Deal with the comments in the order the regulator raised them, and answer each one explicitly rather than in a general statement.

Most responses can be closed out with a revised drawing carrying dimensions, a letter from the water undertaker, an updated Fire Statement section, or a short technical note from the fire engineer explaining an assumption. That is not a redesign, and it should not need a fresh consultation unless the scheme itself changes.

Where a design change is unavoidable, make it once and make it properly. A sequence of small amendments each triggering reconsultation is how a determination period doubles.

The Fire Statement has to be prepared by someone with the necessary fire engineering competence. That is a legal requirement rather than a preference, and an AI-assisted draft is a starting point for that professional rather than a substitute for them. The professional directory is the route to a reviewer where you need one for sign off.

Timing it against the determination period

Work backwards. A major application runs to a 13 week determination period. The consultee period is 21 days from the date the authority consults, which is rarely the date of validation. Any request for further information, the water undertaker's confirmation and a reconsultation on amended drawings all sit inside the same 13 weeks unless you agree an extension of time.

The practical programme looks like this: fire engineer appointed at the concept design stage, water supply enquiry raised before submission, appliance access tested with swept paths before submission, Fire Statement issued with the application, an extension of time agreed early rather than late.

Where the scheme is complex, ask the authority to consult the regulator on a pre-application basis. Not every authority will, and the regulator's capacity varies, but it is worth asking.

Carrying the answers into Gateway Two

Everything agreed at Gateway One becomes the starting assumption for the building control application at Gateway Two. Stair positions, shaft locations, appliance access and external wall build-ups all reappear.

Inconsistency between the two submissions is the single most avoidable cause of delay. If the planning drawings show a firefighting shaft in one position and the Gateway Two package shows another, somebody has to explain which is right and why the planning permission still works.

Keep a live document recording the fire safety assumptions, who owns each one, and where each is evidenced. A Fire Safety Strategy prepared to BS 9991 or BS 9999 is a fire engineering document and needs a competent author, and it is the natural home for those assumptions as the design develops. Where the structure is mass timber, the insurance and fire engineering questions start earlier still, as set out in our note on mass timber frames at the planning stage.

This is general guidance, not legal advice; check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it. PlanScope drafts the supporting documents for a Gateway One submission and flags what it cannot verify, and the Fire Statement itself must be authored by a competent fire engineer.

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