Gateway One consultation: what the regulator asks

Planning Gateway One consultation adds a statutory consultee to an application that most planning teams have never dealt with before, and it adds it at the point where the scheme is least able to absorb a design change. The Health and Safety Executive is consulted on applications for relevant buildings under Article 9A of the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015, and it comments on the fire safety matters that planning can actually control.

The regulator does not approve anything at this stage. It advises the local planning authority, and the authority decides.

Which applications trigger the consultation

The trigger is a relevant building: one containing two or more dwellings, or educational accommodation, that meets the height condition of 18 metres or more, or seven or more storeys. Both the residential element and the height condition have to be met.

A Fire Statement on the form published by the Secretary of State must accompany the application, and the authority consults the Health and Safety Executive. Get the building height methodology right before you decide the gateway does not apply, because height is measured in a defined way and a scheme sitting at seventeen point something metres will be checked.

Note: the definition of a relevant building for Gateway One is not identical to the definition of a higher-risk building used for the building control gateways under the Building Safety Act 2022. Educational accommodation sits inside the planning definition. Care homes and hospitals sit inside the building control definition during design and construction. A scheme can fall within one and outside the other, so test both.

A Fire Statement has to be prepared by someone with the necessary fire engineering competence. That is a legal requirement rather than a matter of good practice, and any AI-assisted draft is a starting point for that person to work from rather than a substitute for them.

What the regulator looks at

The review is confined to fire safety matters that bear on the planning decision. In practice that means the things fixed by the layout and hard to change later.

• Access for fire and rescue service vehicles: route widths, gradients, turning, carrying capacity and the standing position relative to the building.
• Water supplies for firefighting, including hydrant locations and the availability of an adequate supply.
• The siting of the building relative to its neighbours and to any site boundary, and the effect of that siting on external fire spread.
• The principles of the means of escape strategy insofar as they drive the building envelope, including the number and position of escape cores.
• Site layout matters such as dry or wet rising main inlet positions, firefighting shafts and the relationship between the building and any podium or undercroft.

What the regulator does not do at Gateway One is review the detailed fire engineering. Cavity barriers, compartmentation detail and product specification belong at the building control gateway. Submitting a hundred page fire strategy at planning invites questions about material that is not yet fixed.

The requests that come back most often

Four themes recur. The first is appliance access: a drawing that shows a route but not its dimensions, gradients or load capacity, or a turning head that will not accommodate a pump appliance. Draw it with dimensions and a swept path, and state the design vehicle.

The second is water supply. A statement that hydrants will be provided in accordance with the requirements is not evidence. Name the water undertaker, show the proposed hydrant positions on the layout, and say what enquiry has been made about available flow.

The third is escape strategy at a level of principle. Where the proposal relies on a single staircase, expect the question, and check the current position in Approved Document B and in any transitional arrangements before you answer it, because that part of the guidance has moved. Where a second staircase is provided, show it on the plans rather than describing it.

The fourth is the interface between residential and other uses. A residential block above commercial units raises questions about separation, independent escape routes and service risers, and our note on the fire strategy for a residential block above commercial units covers the layout consequences. External wall build-up and balcony arrangements attract comment where they affect external spread, and that ground is covered in balconies, external walls and fire spread.

Timescales and their effect on determination

The consultation runs on the statutory consultee timetable set by the Order, and the authority cannot determine the application without having taken the response into account. On a major application with a thirteen week period, a consultee response that arrives late compresses everything that follows.

Manage it actively. Send the Fire Statement to the authority in a form that can be forwarded on the day of validation rather than a week later. Ask the case officer to confirm the date the consultation was issued. And build an extension of time into the programme from the outset, because agreeing one at week twelve looks like drift while agreeing one at week four looks like planning.

Responding to a holding position

A holding response is common and it is not a refusal. It usually says the submitted material does not allow a view to be reached on one or two matters, and it lists them.

Answer all of them at once. A single consolidated submission with a covering schedule that maps each point to the drawing or paragraph that answers it moves faster than three separate emails. Update the Fire Statement itself rather than issuing a supplementary note, so the authority holds one current document. And re-issue the drawings with revision letters, because a reviewer comparing an unrevised drawing against a new statement will raise the same point again.

Illustrative example: a scheme of 96 flats over eight storeys drew a holding response on two points, appliance access gradient and hydrant provision. The team revised the access road profile, obtained a written response from the water undertaker on flow, and re-issued a single updated statement with a two column schedule. The follow-up response was clear and the application was determined within the agreed extension.

Recording the outcome in the decision

The officer report should record the consultation, the response and how it was taken into account. Check that it does. A report that omits the response leaves the permission open to challenge, and a short email to the case officer before committee is easier than dealing with it afterwards.

Conditions at this stage should be modest. A condition requiring development to proceed in accordance with the approved Fire Statement principles is normal. A condition requiring approval of a full fire engineering strategy through planning is not, because that material belongs to building control, and a condition that duplicates another regime is open to challenge on the tests for conditions.

Carrying the position into Gateway Two

Gateway Two is the building control approval stage with the Building Safety Regulator before construction begins on a higher-risk building, and Gateway Three is the completion stage. The planning Fire Statement is the first written statement of the scheme's fire strategy, and it will be read against the Gateway Two package.

So keep them consistent. Where the design moves between planning and Gateway Two, record why. Where a planning condition fixes a principle that the design team later wants to change, deal with it through a variation rather than by quietly departing from it. The full Fire Safety Strategy that follows is a fire engineering document and needs an author with the relevant competence.

This is general guidance, not legal advice; check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it.

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