The Building Safety Levy, and what it changes from October

From 1 October 2026 a new charge applies to residential development in England. The Building Safety Levy, introduced under the Building Safety Act 2022, becomes payable on major residential schemes, and the money it raises goes toward the cost of remediating unsafe buildings. It is a developer charge rather than a management duty, but it changes the point at which a new building can be occupied, so it is worth understanding before the buildings it touches reach your portfolio.

Who pays, and how much

The levy applies to major residential developments, which the guidance defines as ten new dwellings or more, or thirty new bedspaces or more for purpose-built student accommodation (Building Safety Levy guidance, GOV.UK, 2026). Smaller schemes, affordable housing, care homes, NHS hospitals and supported housing sit outside it.

The rate is not a single national figure. Each local authority has its own rate, set to reflect local house prices, and the confirmed rates range from £12.70 per square metre in County Durham to £100.35 per square metre in Kensington and Chelsea (Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, 2025). Development on previously developed land attracts a fifty per cent reduction. The government expects the levy to raise around £3 billion over ten years.

The completion certificate is the gate

The part that matters most is the timing. The local authority collects the levy, even where it is not the building control body, and no completion certificate or final certificate is issued until the liability is settled. In practice the client has to provide a levy liability statement, confirming either that the charge has been paid or that a notice of no charge applies, before completion can be certified. A building that has not cleared the levy cannot lawfully be occupied.

That places the levy alongside the building control gateways as one of the checks a scheme has to pass before anyone moves in. For a higher-risk building it sits with the Gateway 3 completion process, and for everything else it sits with ordinary building control sign-off.

Where it meets the manager

You are unlikely to pay the levy yourself. What you inherit is the building after it has cleared. When a new development is handed over, the completion certificate is part of the pack that proves the building was signed off correctly, and behind that certificate is the levy that had to be paid first. Keeping that paperwork with the building's documents and its safety case is how the handover holds up later, when a regulator or a buyer asks how occupation was authorised.

It is also a reminder that the golden thread does not begin at handover. The decisions, charges and approvals from the development stage are the first entries in a building's record, and the managers who ask for them early tend to inherit fewer gaps. A building that arrives with its completion evidence in order is a building whose compliance calendar can start clean, rather than one spent chasing documents that should have come across on day one.

What to do now

If you take on new-build stock, add the levy to your handover checklist. Ask for the completion certificate and the evidence that sits behind it, and file it where the rest of the building's record lives. The levy is a developer's cost, but the certainty it buys, that a building was properly signed off before it was occupied, is exactly what a manager needs on the first day of looking after it.