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There were a number of building safety announcements this week, after reports suggested the government is considering giving developers an 18-month deadline to begin building safety work.
This attempt to speed up the pace of remediation comes as Inside Housing revealed that the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) signed off just 14% of developers’ remediation plans in the past year.
The BSR said this is because of an “unexpected increase” in applications, which led to delays in processing, as well as high numbers of incomplete or unclear applications.
At a Regulation and Governance Conference on Thursday, the deputy director of building safety at the Health and Safety Executive told attendees that assumptions and modelling related to the building safety regime have “not survived first contact with reality”. The director admitted that the BSR is having to “rebuild trust” after a challenging start.
At the same time, the government confirmed that fire safety will be excluded from any plan to strip back regulations after a speech on investment by the prime minister.
Inside Housing revealed that the Metropolitan Police has closed its investigation into the fire that took place in Dagenham on 26 August.
On homelessness, a charity found that the number of deaths of people sleeping rough increased by 42% in 2023 compared with the previous year.
In Northern Ireland, there were two calls for funding to tackle homelessness and deliver new homes.
Nicola McCrudden, chief executive of Homeless Connect, told the Northern Ireland Homelessness Conference that there must be a “concerted effort” to tackle the housing crisis head-on.
Meanwhile, the opposition party in Northern Ireland has called on the government to secure funding from Westminster to build 50,000 homes by 2032.
North of the English border, the Scottish Housing Regulator handed back more than half a million pounds to the government last year, during what it called the most challenging year for social housing in over a decade.
In Wales, landlord Trivallis has started work to fix safety issues at 60 homes built with reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete.
The government has made a big splash about delivering 1.5 million homes this parliament. However, reports suggested that the chancellor and housing secretary are in a stand-off about whether there will be an immediate top-up to the current Affordable Homes Programme.
It is unclear how the government intends to hit this target or go net positive on social rent homes, as promised, without billions in additional funding.
Many housing associations have reported plummeting development pipelines in recent months and the big developers cannot be expected to pick up the slack. The number of social homes delivered by Bellway decreased by 32% in 2023-24, as it reported a further £37m in legacy building safety costs.
Even with a new injection of cash, new research has warned that workforce shortages at councils due to budget cuts are putting Labour’s housebuilding ambitions at risk.
Inside Housing took a deep dive this week into how young people and teenagers can often be overlooked when it comes to resident engagement and met a group of young people researching how to change that.
Finally, as the past year has taken Jill Murray up mountains, into Downing Street, and onto the stage as president of the Chartered Institute of Housing. She spoke about her campaign to make housing EPIC.
Have a good weekend.
Stephen Delahunty, news editor, Inside Housing
Say hello: stephen.delahunty@oceanmedia.co.uk
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