Yesterday we wrote about the 2,111 buildings with unsafe cladding where remediation has not started. Part of the money for that work now comes from a new charge on the buildings going up next.
The Building Safety Levy (England) Regulations 2025 came into force on 1 October 2026. They apply to building control applications made on or after that date. An application lodged before 1 October stays outside the levy, even if work starts later, but a fresh application after a rejection or a lapse falls inside it.
Who it catches
The levy is aimed at major residential development in England. As summarised in legal commentary published on 1 October, that means schemes of more than 10 dwellings, or more than 30 bedspaces of purpose-built student accommodation. It covers new homes, new residential units created inside existing buildings, and changes of use to residential.
Development by non-profit registered providers of social housing is exempt, and non-residential buildings such as hospitals and hotels are generally outside it.
The money goes towards fixing historical building safety defects. The government's estimate, as reported by several law firms, is about £3.4 billion over roughly ten years.
How the bill is worked out
The charge is per square metre of gross internal area of the chargeable residential floorspace, including the relevant communal areas. The rate depends on the local authority area, with two rates for each authority set out in Schedule 3 to the Regulations. Development on previously developed land gets a 50% discount.
Local authorities collect it through building control. Final building control approval cannot be given until the levy is paid, and the building cannot be occupied until that approval is in place. Missing or wrong information can delay the application or see it rejected.
So the levy turns three facts into money: how much floor area there is, which of it counts, and whether the land was previously developed.
The records that make the number defensible
None of this is new information. It is information that now has to be right, dated and easy to produce.
- The floor area, measured once and kept. Gross internal area per floor, with the drawings it was measured from and the revision they were at. If the plans change between application and completion, so might the levy.
- What counts as chargeable. Which areas are residential, which communal areas are included, and which parts of a mixed scheme sit outside it. Write the reasoning down beside the figure.
- The land history. If you are claiming the brownfield discount, keep the evidence that the site was previously developed: earlier plans, searches, photographs, the planning history.
- The dates. When the building control application was made matters more than when work started. Keep the submission record.
- The handover. The same plans and areas become the building's record after completion, and, if it is a higher-risk building, part of its golden thread.
Where SAMRISK puts it
Drawn floors and their areas live in building plans, with each revision kept. The application, the levy calculation and the evidence behind it are filed and versioned in documents. For the land, the title boundary and its history sit in land boundaries, and planning decisions in the planning register.
Submission dates and approval milestones go on the compliance calendar, with the follow-up as tasks with an owner. When building control or a buyer's surveyor asks where a number came from, the answer is already written down.
Sources: The Building Safety Levy (England) Regulations 2025, in force 1 October 2026; MHCLG, Building Safety Levy guidance; law firm commentary on the levy, October 2026; MHCLG, Building Safety Remediation monthly data release, September 2026.
General information as at November 2026. Not legal advice; check the regulation or ask a competent person.