Reading a Gateway One consultation response from HSE

A Gateway One HSE response is not an approval and not a refusal. It is a statutory consultee response that the local planning authority must have regard to, and in the large majority of cases it asks for information or consistency rather than design change. Reading it correctly matters because the instinctive reaction, which is to send the whole scheme back to the fire engineer and the architect, is usually the wrong one and costs weeks you do not have inside the determination period.

Who the consultee is and what it looks at

Where development involves a relevant building, Article 9A of the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015 requires a fire statement with the application, and the Health and Safety Executive is consulted as the Building Safety Regulator for planning purposes.

The scope of that consultation is deliberately narrow. The regulator looks at fire safety matters that are affected by the planning decision itself, which in practice means the things that cannot easily be changed later: site layout and access for fire service vehicles, water supplies for firefighting, the location and arrangement of means of escape, the external wall construction in principle, and the relationship between the building and its neighbours.

It is not looking at detailed design. Compartmentation details, door specifications, alarm systems and the rest belong to Gateway Two under the Building Safety Act 2022, assessed by building control. A response that reads as if it wants a full fire engineering design has usually been triggered by a fire statement that promised one.

The three shapes a response takes

In practice responses fall into three broad shapes, and identifying which one you have received is the first task.

The first is a response with no further comment, or with observations that do not require anything from you. File it, reference it in your covering note to the case officer, and move on.

The second, and by far the most common, is a response raising queries or asking for information. These are typically about a drawing that does not show something, a statement that asserts something without supporting detail, or an inconsistency between the fire statement and the architectural drawings. They need an answer, not a redesign.

The third is a response that does not support the proposal as submitted. That is the one to take seriously, and the only one that should prompt a conversation about the scheme rather than about the paperwork.

Common technical queries and what they signal

Six queries come up often enough to anticipate before submission.

Fire service vehicle access, where the site plan does not show appliance routes, hardstanding dimensions or turning provision. This is almost always a drawing problem rather than a design problem, and the fix is a dedicated fire service access plan.

Water supplies for firefighting, where hydrant locations and flow rates are asserted rather than evidenced. The answer involves the water undertaker, so start that enquiry early because the response time is outside your control.

Means of escape arrangements, particularly in single-stair residential buildings. A query here signals that the regulator wants to understand the evacuation strategy and the provision for firefighting access, and the answer belongs in the fire statement rather than in a planning note.

Evacuation lift provision, where the strategy refers to assisted evacuation without saying how.

External wall construction, where the fire statement describes a system in general terms and the elevations show something else. Inconsistency between documents is the single most common cause of a query.

Separation distances and the relationship to adjoining buildings, where the site plan does not dimension them.

Notice the pattern. Five of those six are failures of documentation rather than of design. A Fire Statement that is written against the actual submitted drawings, with cross-references to drawing numbers and revisions, removes most of them before they arise.

Responding without redesigning the scheme

Work in this order.

1. Read the response against the submitted documents and classify every point as a drawing omission, a documentation inconsistency, a request for evidence, or a design issue.
2. Deal with the first three in an addendum to the fire statement plus revised drawings, keeping the original document intact rather than reissuing it wholesale.
3. Cross-reference every answer to the specific paragraph of the response, so the case officer can see each point has been covered.
4. Send the addendum to the case officer with a request to re-consult, and copy the drawing schedule.
5. Only after that, consider whether any remaining point requires a change to the scheme.

Resist the urge to improve things that were not queried. Every revised drawing creates a new opportunity for inconsistency, and a re-consultation on a substantially altered package can generate fresh queries.

Illustrative example: a 19 metre residential block where the response raises four points, three of which are that the site plan does not dimension the appliance hardstanding, the fire statement refers to a sprinkler system not shown on the drawings, and hydrant provision is stated without a water undertaker reference. The fourth asks how the single stair strategy accommodates firefighting operations. Points one to three are answered in a three-page addendum and two revised drawings within eight working days. Point four needs the fire engineer and a short note on the evacuation strategy. No design change. The scenario is illustrative rather than drawn from a real case.

Conditions, and the limits of what planning can secure

Authorities sometimes respond to a query by proposing a condition requiring further fire safety details to be submitted and approved. That is occasionally appropriate, and often not.

A planning condition cannot secure compliance with the Building Regulations, and a condition that duplicates the building control regime risks failing the tests of necessity and relevance to planning. The useful conditions are the ones that fix things planning actually controls: the retention of a fire service access route shown on an approved drawing, the provision of a hydrant before occupation, the retention of a turning area, or development in accordance with an approved fire service access plan.

Where the regulator's point is about detailed design, the right answer is usually that it belongs at Gateway Two rather than that it should be conditioned. Say so, politely, with a reference to the division of responsibility between the gateways.

When an objection is really a drafting problem

Read a response that does not support the proposal twice before the project team meets. Ask whether the regulator has understood the scheme as designed, or as described.

Fire statements prepared from a template, or prepared before the design was settled, frequently describe a different building from the one on the drawings. Where that has happened, the objection evaporates once an accurate statement is provided, and the lesson is about sequencing rather than about design. Where it has not, and the point is a genuine layout or access constraint, a redesign is cheaper now than at Gateway Two. The coordination point applies with equal force to schemes retaining existing structure, as our note on the structural appraisal of a building proposed for retention sets out.

A Fire Safety Strategy prepared to BS 9991 or BS 9999 is a fire-engineering document and must be written by someone with that competence. The same applies to the fire statement: a planning team can assemble the drawings and the cross-references, and the technical content belongs to the fire engineer.

Timing the response within the determination period

Statutory consultees work to a 21-day period, so on a 13-week major application you will usually have the response by week five or six. That leaves time, provided the addendum goes back within a fortnight and the re-consultation is requested immediately rather than at the next scheduled meeting.

Where a design change is needed, agree an extension of time with the authority rather than letting the period expire. A refusal on a fire safety ground that could have been resolved is an expensive appeal, and the regulator will be consulted again on any amended scheme in any event.

Check consistency between the fire statement and the Design and Access Statement before you submit, because the two documents describing the same building differently is the most avoidable query of all.

Browse the report index to see which documents a tall residential application usually needs alongside the fire statement.

This is general guidance, not legal advice; check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval. A Fire Statement must be prepared by a person with the necessary fire-engineering competence.