{"id":538257,"date":"2026-02-16T12:45:03","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T12:45:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.constructionnews.co.uk\/?p=538257"},"modified":"2026-02-16T12:00:27","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T12:00:27","slug":"fears-of-contractor-instability-mount-amid-gateway-three-delays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.constructionnews.co.uk\/buildings\/building-safety\/fears-of-contractor-instability-mount-amid-gateway-three-delays-16-02-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Fears of contractor \u2018instability\u2019 mount amid gateway three delays"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Delays to gateway three approvals for higher-risk buildings (HRBs) may trigger financial \u201cinstability\u201d among contractors, according to industry analysts.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Their warnings came as a Freedom of Information (FOI) request showed 44 schemes are still awaiting a gateway three decision more than three months after those applications were submitted to the Building Safety Regulator.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The statutory timeframe for a gateway three decision is eight weeks.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Geoff Wilkinson, managing director of Wilkinson Construction Consultants, told <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Construction News<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: \u201cFor a lot of these [HRB] projects, the profit margin is low.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIt doesn\u2019t take a lot of delay and additional bridging costs before you\u2019ve wiped out any profitability.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThat will undoubtedly lead to further instability for contractors.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He added: \u201cI would be shocked if we didn\u2019t see further contractor failures, particularly subcontractors.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Wilkinson\u2019s comments echoed previous concerns expressed by Rudi Klein, a barrister and former chief executive of the Specialist Engineering Contractors Group.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.constructionnews.co.uk\/sections\/long-reads\/inside-the-bsr-bottleneck-part-two-16-04-2025\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Speaking to <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">CN <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">last year<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, he said gateway three delays would create additional costs for contractors, which they would likely seek to recover from the supply chain.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cGiven that the retention often represents the margin on a job, many subcontractors could face severe financial hardship, especially at a time when work is in short supply,\u201d he added.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The BSR has said that the only new-build projects to have reached gateway three are \u201ctransitional legacy cases\u201d. These include buildings started under the old regime that have transitioned into the new regime, but which are going through gateway two and gateway three simultaneously and cannot be occupied.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">CN<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> understands that the BSR has found it \u201cvery challenging\u201d to retrospectively process these nearly complete buildings in the absence of years\u2019 worth of advice, records and inspection, and without those buildings having been through gateway two.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The regulator has said it has found \u201csignificant safety issues in some of these older projects and continues to work proactively with applicants to get the buildings to a state where they can be occupied\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Under the post-Grenfell regime, gateway three is the final approval required before a completed higher-risk building \u2013 either 18 metres-plus or at least seven storeys tall \u2013 can be occupied.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Delays to gateway three approvals for higher-risk buildings (HRBs) may trigger financial \u201cinstability\u201d among contractors, according to industry analysts. Their warnings came as a Freedom of Information (FOI) request showed 44 schemes are still awaiting a gateway three decision more than three months after those applications were submitted to the Building Safety Regulator. The statutory &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":489789,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79552],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-538257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-building-safety"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.7 (Yoast SEO v26.7) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Fears of contractor \u2018instability\u2019 mount amid gateway three delays | Construction News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Delays to gateway three approvals for higher-risk buildings (HRBs) may trigger financial \u201cinstability\u201d among contractors, according to industry analysts.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" 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