The Association of Construction & Quality Professionals (ACQP) has called for the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) to be removed from the Health & Safety Executive (HSE), citing structural and cultural incompatibilities that are undermining its ability to deliver the post-Grenfell reforms intended by the Building Safety Act.
The ACQP said that the current arrangement risks repeating the very regulatory failures it was designed to prevent.
鈥淭he BSR was meant to reset the culture of construction safety in the UK. But housing it within the HSE , an organisation whose expertise lies in workplace safety, has led to confusion, weak enforcement, and an alarming lack of sector engagement,鈥� said ACQP chief executive Gerry Sharpe.
The ACQP was set up in 2019 to promote best practice in quality assurance and compliance across the construction sector. It has approximately 800 members so far.
ACQP members highlight specific problems with the BSR being hitched to the HSE:
- The HSE is not a construction regulator. Its staff, systems and oversight frameworks are not designed to deal with building control, cladding, fire engineering or long-term structural risks.
- The BSR has set itself up as distant, bureaucratic and disconnected from the professionals and residents it is meant to support.
- The HSE鈥檚 long-standing risk-based, reactive enforcement culture does not align with the proactive demands of modern building safety oversight.
The ACQP is calling for the government to immediately begin the process of removing the BSR from the HSE and establish the BSR as an independent statutory body with its own governance, staff and powers.,
The BSR needs to foster stronger integration with local authorities, fire services, building control and planning regulators, it says.
鈥淲e believe in a regulator that is feared by cowboys, trusted by residents, and respected by professionals. That will never be achieved while it remains buried in the wrong institution,鈥� Sharpe said.
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