Two thirds of the building assessment certificate applications received by the Building Safety Regulator this year have been refused. That single figure goes a long way to explaining why, on 9 July 2026, the regulator announced a reset of the whole regime: a more proportionate, risk-based and intelligence-led approach to assessing occupied higher-risk buildings, with extra support for the people responsible for running them.
This article covers what a building assessment certificate is, what the BSR has announced, why so many applications failed, what stays exactly the same, and what duty holders should be doing between now and the arrival of updated guidance in September.
The Building Safety Act 2022 created a stricter safety regime for higher-risk buildings: those at least 18 metres tall or with at least 7 storeys, containing two or more residential units. Every occupied higher-risk building must have an accountable person (AP), and where there is more than one, a principal accountable person (PAP) who carries overall responsibility for the building's fire and structural safety.
The building assessment certificate, usually shortened to BAC, is the mechanism the BSR uses to check that those duty holders are doing their job. When directed to apply, a PAP must submit evidence that the building's fire and structural safety risks are being assessed and managed on an ongoing basis. That evidence centres on the safety case report, supported by the resident engagement strategy, mandatory occurrence reporting arrangements and the wider body of safety information held for the building. If the BSR is satisfied, it issues the certificate, which must then be displayed in the building for residents to see.
The process began in April 2024, and since then the regulator has directed principal accountable persons to apply for certificates covering nearly 2,000 buildings across England.
The announcement, published on GOV.UK as the building assessment certificate foundation plan, responds to feedback from PAPs, financial institutions and other organisations involved in higher-risk buildings. In practical terms, the BSR says it will:
Initial updated resources are expected from September 2026, with more to follow as the revised process takes shape.
The tone of the announcement is candid. Lord Roe, chair of the BSR board, acknowledged that the first roll-out presented significant challenges and costs for duty holders, and that determination times and refusal rates fell short of the regulator's own expectations. Charlie Pugsley, the BSR's acting chief executive, put the balance plainly: assessments need to become quicker and simpler without becoming weaker.
There is context to that language. The BSR formally separated from the Health and Safety Executive in January 2026 and now operates as a standalone body under the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. The BAC reset is one of its first major moves in that new form, and it signals a regulator that wants to be seen supporting duty holders as much as policing them.
The refusal rate is the part of the announcement most worth dwelling on. According to the regulator, 66% of the applications received so far this year were refused, and the reason given is telling: many submissions concentrated on procedural compliance rather than demonstrating that fire and structural safety risks were actually being managed.
In other words, the paperwork described a system, but the evidence did not show the system running. A safety case report that says "fire doors are inspected on a quarterly programme" is a statement of procedure. Inspection records showing the programme in action, doors checked on schedule, defects identified, remedial work completed and verified, is evidence. The first tells the regulator what should happen. The second proves what did.
This is the same distinction that sits at the heart of the golden thread: safety information that is accurate, kept up to date, digital and accessible. A building can have a thick folder of policies and still fail to show a live, current picture of how its risks are being handled. On the BSR's own account, that gap is what sank the majority of applications.
It would be easy to read "pause" and "reset" as a softening of the rules. The BSR has gone out of its way to say the opposite.
The legal duties under the Building Safety Act remain firmly in place and have been enforceable since January 2024. Every PAP and AP must continue to actively manage their building so that residents are protected from the risks of fire spread and structural failure. Obtaining a certificate is not the end goal, and the absence of an assessment does not suspend the underlying obligations. The regulator has been explicit that PAPs must not wait for a future assessment before preparing their safety case reports.
So the reset changes how and when the BSR assesses buildings. It does not change what duty holders are required to do in the meantime.
For anyone responsible for an occupied higher-risk building, the sensible response to the announcement looks like this:
Fire doors are one of the clearest examples of the evidence gap the BSR has described.
Every occupied higher-risk building is, by definition, over the 11 metre threshold that triggers Regulation 10 of the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022: best endeavour checks of flat entrance doors at least every 12 months, and checks of communal fire doors at least every 3 months. Those checks generate exactly the kind of recurring, door-level record that turns a procedural claim into demonstrable management: what was checked, when, by whom, what was found, and what happened next.
A safety case report backed by that trail answers the regulator's criticism directly. One backed by a policy statement and a stack of loose sheets does not. If you want the fuller picture of how this record-keeping duty arose, our explainer on what the golden thread is covers the background.
A brief note of caution: this article is general information about a regulatory announcement, not legal advice. Duty holders with questions about a specific building or a refused application should take advice on their own circumstances.
DoorTRACE gives every fire door a scannable identity and a complete digital history: registrations, inspections, defects, remedial work and verification, all time-stamped and audit-logged. When an assessor asks how a building's fire doors are being managed, the answer is a report generated from live records rather than a promise written in a policy. See the platform or get in touch to see how that evidence trail is built door by door.
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