Gateway 3 performance data was published for the first time on 12 August 2026, showing that the Building Safety Regulator determined 29 applications over the preceding 12 weeks at an approval rate of 72% and a median determination time of 16 weeks. No new build project that has cleared Gateway 2 has yet reached Gateway 3, so the first benchmark rests almost entirely on refurbishment work.
What do the first Gateway 3 figures show?
Gateway 3 is the completion stage of the higher-risk building regime, the point at which a finished building is assessed before it can be occupied, and until this release there was no published measure of how long that assessment takes. The expanded dataset, correct as at 1 August 2026, records 319 Gateway 3 applications received in total, of which 235 are internal refurbishments, 47 are transitional cases inherited from building control bodies that stopped trading, and 23 are NHS internal refurbishments. Of the 29 determinations made in the 12 week window, the quickest came through in 8 weeks, and the regulator expects times to fall as new processes bed in and further resource arrives.
Break the in-progress caseload down by category and the shape of the pipeline becomes clear. NHS internal works account for 81 live Gateway 3 applications with 13 approvals recorded, ordinary higher-risk building internal works for 15 live applications with four approvals, and external remediation for five live applications covering 655 units with a single approval. New builds and conversions sit at zero on every column.
Why has no new build reached Gateway 3 yet?
Nothing has gone wrong here, and the answer is simply arithmetic about construction programmes rather than anything about regulatory throughput. A tower that received its Gateway 2 approval during the period when medians ran at 43 weeks would only have started on site during 2025, and no residential block of that scale completes inside a year, so the first cohort of new build completions will not present themselves for assessment for some time yet. Refurbishment projects, which are shorter and were never held up in the same volumes, have travelled through the system faster and now supply almost the entire Gateway 3 sample.
Advisers should therefore treat the 16 week median with care when a client asks what completion will take on a new build, because the figure describes internal works in occupied buildings rather than a finished tower with a full evidence pack behind it. The comparison that does hold is directional: the regulator has shown at Gateway 2 that it can compress decision times substantially once it restructures a team around a category, and there is no obvious reason why Gateway 3 should behave differently.
Gateway 2 approvals now split four ways
August 2026 marks a year since the Innovation Unit was set up to handle new build applications exclusively, and the comparison the regulator draws is striking: in the 12 weeks to August 2025 new build approvals ran at 39% with a median of 43 weeks, while the current figures are 91% and 22 weeks. External remediation improved over the same period from 47% and 43 weeks to 85% and 34 weeks. NHS applications appear as their own category for the first time, at an 84% approval rate and a 24 week median nationally, and the regulator reports that NHS applications submitted during 2026 are being determined in a median of 13 weeks.
Internal works remain the weakest category, at a 77% approval rate and a 32 week median, though the 2026 cohort within that category is running at 16 weeks. Application quality explains part of the gap. In the same 12 weeks, 448 internal works applications came in and 257 were invalidated or withdrawn, a ratio no other category comes close to, and the previous release showed the same pattern. Across all categories 1,547 Gateway 2 applications are in progress, including 69 transitional cases, and the 131 live new build and conversion applications represent 30,421 units.
What should advisers assume now?
Two dates at the end of September will pull applications forward, and anyone advising a developer client should have them in the diary. From 30 September the Approved Document B transitional period expires, so building control approvals for new residential buildings of 18 metres and above will require two staircases unless an application was made by that date and the work has sufficiently progressed within the following 18 months. From 1 October the Building Safety Levy applies to building control applications for major residential development, which the regulations define as 10 or more dwellings or 30 or more student bedspaces, and applications made before that date fall outside the charge. Both deadlines reward filing early, both will therefore push volume into the system during September, and a regulator that has spent a year clearing a backlog will be absorbing a spike at exactly the moment it starts to see its first new build completions arrive at Gateway 3. Our Gateway 2 tracker carries the running figures, and the previous 12 week release sets out how the current improvement was achieved.
Completion certificates now have a published benchmark for the first time, and 16 weeks with a 72% approval rate is the number clients will quote back at you. Treat it as a floor rather than a forecast on new build work, because no new build has yet been through Gateway 3, and build the September filing deadlines into any programme where the second staircase rules or the Building Safety Levy could apply.