The BSR has recently been at the centre of criticism from the Association of Construction and Quality Professionals (ACQP), which on Monday called for the regulatory body to be removed from the HSE.
ACQP has cited “structural and cultural incompatibilities that are undermining the ability of the BSR to deliver the post-Grenfell reforms intended by the Building Safety Act.”
On Tuesday 24 June, the Industry and Regulators Committee of the House of Lords met as part of its inquiry into the BSR to hear evidence from Matt Voyce of investor Quintain and Dan Hollis of Clarion Housing Group. Voyce said the BSR was under-resourced, and that Quintain’s experience so far working with it had been “challenging, frustrating, and costly.”
While applauding the aims, he said that in practice, “communication, and transparency of where we were in the process, was lacking right the way through.”
Hollis said that a number of Clarion’s buildings had been called in by the BSR to assess their building assessment certificates, with a varying picture of service from the regulator: “Sometimes they engaged with us, and we could have conversations, and sometimes they didn’t.”
While generally positive, he highlighted some inconsistency of approach across different strands of the BSR: “You could see that different teams have different approaches, and perhaps some were not as collaborative as other teams, and the process took “quite a significant amount of time.”
He highlighted the need for clearer guidance and more consistency, and said the current system was not as collaborative as it could be.