Guidance

Manage a building control application for a higher-risk building

Use this service to apply for and manage building control applications for higher-risk buildings in England.

Applies to England

You can use this service to apply for approval to construct, or carry out building work on, a higher-risk building.

After you submit your application, you can return to this service to:

  • make a major or notifiable change to the proposed work
  • change the client, principal designer or principal contractor
  • submit a notice of intention to start work, commencement or inspection
  • apply for a completion certificate

A higher-risk building has at least:

  • 7 storeys or is at least 18 metres high
  • 2 residential units or is a hospital or a care home

A higher-risk building with at least 2 residential units must be registered with BSR before people live there.

Start now

Before you start

Read the supporting guidance to help you make the application:

When uploading documents for your application they must be:

  • PDFs
  • smaller than 1GB
  • named using only letters, numbers, spaces, hyphens and underscores

Charges

You’ll need to pay:

  • £189 to apply for building control approval
  • £189 to apply for change control
  • £227 to apply for a full or partial completion certificate

You can pay this charge by debit card, credit card, or invoice.

You’ll also be charged:

  • £151 per hour for Building Safety Regulator (BSR) staff to work on your case
  • for any costs BSR incur from relevant authorities or third parties

There is no charge to:

  • submit a notice of intent to start work or commencement
  • tell us you have reached a certain inspection point
  • apply for building control approval, if your building work is being transferred from another building control body and that work has not sufficiently progressed with full plans

Transitional buildings

If the building work started before BSR became the building control authority, transitional arrangements may apply.

You can find out more by reading the guidance about:

Personal information

You must only provide the personal data we ask for. Make sure you redact any other personal data before you submit it to us. Find out more in our privacy notice.

Get help using this service

Contact BSR (opens in new tab) if you need help using this service.

Updates to this page

Published 2 October 2023
Last updated 27 March 2025 show all updates
  1. Information added about what you can use this service for and links added to relevant guidance.

  2. Charges updated.

  3. Service updated to allow applications for: building control approval when building work is transferred from another building control body, change control, a full or partial completion certificate. Information about charges added to include £180 for change control applications, and £216 for full or partial completion certificate applications.

  4. First published.

Sign up for emails or print this page