How much does a Gateway 2 application cost for a single flat?

There is no fixed price. Under the BSR's charging scheme, which is its published list of fees, you pay an application fee of £195, plus an assessment charge of £156 per hour for each person assessing the work. So the total depends on how much time the assessment takes. For a single flat, once that time is added, the cost can still run to several thousand pounds.

How do I count the storeys, and do roof gardens or galleries count?

Beyond the basic exclusions, two cases catch people out. A gallery, which is a raised internal floor open to the space below, is ignored if it is less than half the size of the largest storey. Roof gardens are currently not treated as a storey, pending a formal change to the rules. So a block can sit close to the line, and the count needs care.

Does Gateway 2 cover planning permission, listed-building consent or my freeholder's permission?

No. Gateway 2 is building control only. You may also need planning permission, as covered above. Separately, if your block is listed, you will need listed building consent, the permission to alter a building of special architectural or historic interest. And as a leaseholder, you will usually need the freeholder's licence to alter, their written consent to the work, before you touch the structure. These are separate consents that run alongside Gateway 2, not instead of it.

Is this the same as the building safety case and the accountable person?

No. Those belong to a separate set of rules that apply once people are living in the building, known as the occupation regime. That regime requires an accountable person, the named party responsible for managing safety risks, and a safety case, the document showing those risks are being controlled. Those duties fall on whoever owns or runs the building, usually the freeholder or the management company, not on a leaseholder doing a flat refit.

Who has to make the Gateway 2 application, me or my builder?

The legal duty sits with the client, which in building-safety law means the person commissioning the work. For a private renovation, that usually means you, the flat owner. You can appoint your design and build team to prepare and submit the application for you. But the legal responsibility to get approval before work starts stays with you.

Is Your Mansion Block a Higher-Risk Building? (2026)

What makes a building 'higher-risk'

Start with the binary, because it saves most people the rest of the article. If you are renovating a house, or a flat in a normal-height block, the Higher-Risk Building rules do not apply to you. They catch one situation: a flat in a tall mansion block. This explains when you are in, what being in means, and how the rules are shifting through 2026.

A Higher-Risk Building is a building in England that is at least 18 metres tall, or has at least 7 storeys, and contains at least two residential units. Higher-Risk Building is the term the law uses to mark out the buildings that fall under the stricter building-control rules. A residential unit is a self-contained home, such as a flat.

So two things must both be true: the height or storey count, and at least two flats. Hospitals and care homes at the same height also count, but for a home the test is the one above. The two height tests, 18 metres or 7 storeys, are alternatives, so a building can be caught by either one. A block can reach 7 storeys without quite reaching 18 metres, and it is still in.

Height is measured from ground level to the floor of the top storey. A few things are left out of that measurement: storeys below ground are not counted, and roof-top plant, the machinery housed on the roof, does not count either.

The single most useful consequence is this. A single dwelling house is never a Higher-Risk Building, because it does not contain two or more units. So most prime-London houses are out of this regime from the very start, whatever their height. The rules are aimed at blocks of flats, not houses. This is why a single large townhouse, even a tall one across several floors, sits outside the regime: it is one home, not two or more.

What Gateway 2 is

Gateway 2 is the building control approval you must get from the Building Safety Regulator before any building work starts on a Higher-Risk Building. The Building Safety Regulator, or BSR, is the national body that now oversees these buildings. Building control is the sign-off that confirms work meets the building regulations, the national standards for how a building is constructed.

The BSR runs a three-stage process for Higher-Risk Buildings, and the stages are called gateways. Gateway 1 sits at the planning stage. Gateway 2 is the one that matters most for a renovation. Gateway 3 is the completion sign-off, given before anyone moves in. The three gateways line up with the life of a building: permission to plan it, approval to build it, and sign-off to occupy it. Gateway 2 is the middle one, and the one a renovation runs into.

Gateway 2 is a hard stop. Work cannot begin until it is approved, and starting the work without that approval is a criminal offence. This is not a form filed alongside the build. It is a barrier in front of it. In practice, approval means the BSR is satisfied, before work starts, that the design meets the safety standards, so the check happens on paper rather than after the wall is open.

It is also worth being clear about what Gateway 2 is not. It is building control, not planning permission. The two are separate consents, and you can need both. One does not stand in for the other.

Since 1 October 2023, the BSR has been the only building control body for Higher-Risk Buildings, so local-authority building control no longer handles them. The BSR is meant to decide within 12 weeks for a new building, or 8 weeks for work to an existing one, though both periods can be extended by agreement.

Does your renovation actually need it?

The trigger is the building, not the work. Gateway 2 only applies if your block is itself a Higher-Risk Building. If your block is not one, none of this applies, and your renovation goes through ordinary building control like any other flat.

If your block is a Higher-Risk Building, then the next question is what work you are doing, because not all of it is caught. Some work is exempt.

Work that is not caught needs no Gateway 2 approval. This covers cosmetic and like-for-like work: redecorating, replacing a bath, basin, toilet or sink with a similar one, like-for-like repairs, and adding insulation. The everyday refresh of a flat sits here. This is the kind of work the 2026 proposed reform is aimed at, covered in the next section, though as things stand it is still treated under the current rules.

Other work is caught, and currently falls into the heavier of the two tiers, known as Category A work. This includes changing the internal layout, structural alterations, work to the external walls, and work to a compartment wall, which is a wall built to stop fire spreading between flats. It also includes anything that affects fire safety or escape routes. If your project touches any of these, it goes to the BSR.

The line to hold on to is the building one. A flat in a block under 18 metres and under 7 storeys is outside this regime entirely, with ordinary building control instead. If you are unsure which side of the height line your block sits on, that measurement is worth confirming before you plan any work, because it decides everything else.

How long it takes, and why that is changing

The honest answer on timing is a range, not a single number, because the system has been moving fast.

Through 2024 and into 2025, approvals were badly backlogged. Some waits were reported at around 40 to 48 weeks, far beyond the target. By early to mid 2026, the picture had split. New-build approvals had fallen sharply, with many landing near the 12-week target. Work to existing buildings, and remediation cases, remained much slower. So the answer to how long it takes depends heavily on whether your building is new or existing, and a figure quoted for one is no guide to the other. For an older mansion block, the realistic expectation is still a wait measured in months rather than weeks, even as the system speeds up.

One thing to treat with care is the headline average. The regulator has been clearing a backlog of older cases at the same time as deciding new ones, which distorts any single average figure. A reported average can look worse than the wait a straightforward new application would now face, so a single number tends to mislead.

The regime is also mid-reform, and the direction matters. On 27 January 2026, the BSR became a standalone body sponsored by the housing ministry, with new leadership, more in-house engineers, and a fast-track route for some cases.

Closer to home, a 2026 government consultation proposed lifting most minor works inside individual flats out of the heavy approval tier. As of mid-2026, that consultation had closed, but the government had not yet published its response. So the lighter treatment of minor in-flat works is proposed, not yet law. If you are planning such work, that is the change to watch.

The honest version

This regime exists because of Grenfell, and the purpose is right. The problem is calibration, not principle.

A system built to stop another Grenfell currently spends scarce fire-engineer time vetting bathroom and kitchen refits. By early 2026, the regulator had received roughly five times as many of the heavier-tier applications as it expected, many of them minor works inside flats. A House of Lords committee singled out bathroom renovations in high-rise blocks as work tying up experts who should be assessing genuinely dangerous buildings. The regulator and the government now acknowledge this, which is why the proposed reform aims the heavy process at real risk and lifts minor in-flat work out of it. That is the right fix.

The industry has not helped. Too much of the trade, Myrmex included, has either ignored this regime or used it to frighten clients, when the honest job is the dull one: tell a client plainly whether their building is in scope, and at what level, before anyone panics or proceeds. Both failure modes cost the client. The first risks an unlawful start. The second wastes money on fear. The useful position is neither: scope the building accurately, then run the application properly if it turns out to be needed.

A Gateway 2 application is real work. It needs a competent team and a complete, evidenced submission, and assembling and running that is the job. If you want to see how a project like this is coordinated, that is the next thing to read.

This is general information, not building-control, fire-safety or legal advice. A construction manager coordinates the project and the application; it is not the Building Safety Regulator, a building control body, a fire engineer or a solicitor. Get those judgements from the people qualified to give them.