If one topic separates candidates who read the news from candidates who understand their projects, it is the Building Safety Act 2022. Assessors can ask about it through ethics, contract practice, procurement, cost planning or construction technology, and the regime has moved a long way since the headlines: the regulator changed shape in January 2026, approval statistics now exist, and a levy lands in October 2026.
This guide sets out the working picture as of August 2026, with the parts that touch QS work drawn out.
The dutyholder regime applies to your job, whatever you build
The most commonly misunderstood point first. The dutyholder regime introduced by the Building Regulations etc. (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2023 has applied to all building work in England since 1 October 2023, high-rise or otherwise. It inserted a new Part 2A into the Building Regulations 2010, and it works like this:
- Clients must make suitable arrangements for planning, managing and monitoring a project so the work complies with building regulations.
- Where a project involves more than one contractor, the client must appoint a principal designer and a principal contractor for building regulations purposes. These are legally distinct appointments from the CDM 2015 roles with the same names, even though the same firms often hold both.
- Everyone doing design or building work must have the skills, knowledge, experience and behaviours for it, and organisations must have organisational capability. Competence is now a regulatory duty rather than a professional aspiration.
For a QS, this shows up in appointment documents, tender preliminaries and contract terms. JCT 2024 wires it in directly: a new Article identifies the building regulations principal designer and principal contractor, and the contractor's dutyholder obligations are contractual, with breach a ground for termination. Our JCT 2024 guide covers the detail.
Higher-risk buildings: the definition and the three gateways
A higher-risk building for the design and construction regime is one that is at least 18 metres tall or has at least 7 storeys, and contains at least two residential units, or is a care home or hospital meeting the height test. Height is measured to the top of the floor surface of the top storey, ignoring rooftop plant. Hotels are outside the regime entirely.
Three control points, commonly called gateways, run through an HRB project:
Gateway 1 sits in planning (since August 2021): applications involving a relevant building (18 metres or 7 storeys and up, containing two or more dwellings or educational accommodation, a wider category than the HRB definition used at the later gateways) need a fire statement, with fire safety expertise consulted.
Gateway 2 is the one that changed the industry. Since 1 October 2023 the Building Safety Regulator, rather than a local authority or approved inspector, is the building control authority for HRB work. Construction cannot lawfully start until the BSR approves the full application: design information, competence declarations and a construction control plan. It is a hard stop, and the statutory determination periods are 12 weeks for a new HRB and 8 weeks for work to an existing one, extendable by agreement.
The live question for cost planners is what those timescales actually run at. The BSR's own data published on 12 August 2026 (covering May to July 2026) shows 91% of new-build HRB decisions approved with a median determination of 22 weeks, and applications submitted in 2026 processing faster still. That is a marked recovery from the 2024–2025 backlog period, and it is still roughly double the statutory clock. A QS pricing preliminaries, finance costs and programme risk on an HRB should be using current published figures, with dates, rather than either the statutory number or last year's horror stories.
Gateway 3 closes the project: a completion certificate application to the BSR, with pre-occupation inspections and an 8-week determination period. A new HRB cannot be occupied before the certificate is issued, and it must then be registered with the BSR before occupation. Occupying an unregistered HRB is a criminal offence for the principal accountable person.
One further construction-stage discipline: design changes on an HRB after Gateway 2 approval are subject to a formal change control regime, with significant changes needing BSR agreement before they are built. Change management on an HRB is therefore slower and more expensive than the industry was used to, which reaches directly into variation strategy and programme advice.
The golden thread
The golden thread is the digital record of building safety information that must be created and maintained through an HRB project and handed to the accountable person at occupation: the design intent, the products used, the changes made, and why the building is safe. For a QS the practical consequences are procurement and cost items: information management scope in appointments, common data environment costs, and the discipline that as-built records are now a regulatory deliverable rather than a courtesy.
The Building Safety Levy: in your development appraisals from October 2026
From 1 October 2026 the Building Safety Levy applies in England to most new residential schemes of 10 or more dwellings and to conversions, with purpose-built student accommodation in scope from 30 bedspaces. It is charged per square metre of chargeable floorspace, collected through the building control process by local authorities, and rates vary by authority, with a 50% reduced rate where at least 75% of the site is previously developed land. Affordable housing and schemes of fewer than 10 dwellings are exempt, and applications submitted before 1 October 2026 escape it.
If you advise on residential development budgets, this is a new line in the appraisal, and clients will expect you to know it. Check the rate for the relevant authority on gov.uk rather than quoting a national figure, because there is not one.
The regulator itself has changed
Two structural facts to have straight in an interview. In January 2026 the Building Safety Regulator moved out of the Health and Safety Executive to become a standalone body, and the government confirmed in July 2026 that it intends to legislate for a single construction regulator, with implementation not expected before 2028. Mandatory occurrence reporting, the register of occupied HRBs and the remediation programmes all continue in the meantime.
Questions a panel could reasonably ask
- Who are the dutyholders under Part 2A of the Building Regulations 2010, and how do they differ from the CDM roles with the same names?
- Your client wants to start piling while Gateway 2 is under determination. What do you advise?
- What would you allow in a cost plan for Gateway 2, and what evidence would you base it on?
- How does the change control regime affect how you would manage variations on a higher-risk building?
- What is the golden thread, and where does it show up in your procurement documents?
- A developer client asks whether the Building Safety Levy applies to their 12-unit scheme submitting in November 2026. What do you say?
Answering them takes a grasp of the regime's shape and a willingness to connect it to your own projects rather than memorised section numbers, and that is what Level 3 questioning rewards. To test where your current awareness sits alongside the rest of your preparation, the free APC Readiness Check gives you a measured answer, and the interview guide covers how hot topics come up in the room.