1 October 2026: applications after this carry the levy

On 10 September 2026, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government wrote to local authorities and registered building control approvers about the Building Safety Levy and what it does to building control procedure. The levy is expected to raise £3.4 billion over ten years, and it applies to building control applications submitted on or after 1 October 2026. If your portfolio has residential schemes in England that have not yet gone in for building control, the evidence you hold about those applications now carries a charge attached to it.

That letter is not a consultation. It is a reminder of duties that already exist, and it lands on the desk of whoever signs off the building control submission. For a portfolio manager, the question is not whether you support the levy. It is whether you can show, for every scheme, when the application went in, what floor space it creates, and whether any exemption applies.

The levy is collected through building control, so your application date is now a financial decision

The Building Safety Levy was introduced under the Building Safety Act 2022 and is administered and collected by local authorities in England. It applies to major residential developments that create 10 or more new dwellings, and to developments that create 30 or more purpose-built student accommodation bedspaces. It also applies where a development creates new residential floor space or increases existing residential floor space.

The date that matters is the date the building control application is submitted. Applications submitted before 1 October 2026 are not subject to the levy, even if they are amended or varied later. That single sentence should be sitting in front of every development director with a scheme in pre-application. A scheme that goes in on 30 September avoids a charge that the same scheme going in on 2 October attracts. The Building Safety Levy guidance sets out how the levy operates and how exemptions work, and it is the document your development team should be reading alongside the Levy Regulations.

For a portfolio manager, this is an evidence problem before it is a cost problem. You need to know, scheme by scheme, whether the application has gone in, and if not, why not. If the answer sits in a development team's inbox rather than in a record you can produce, you do not have an answer.

Exemptions exist, but they depend on evidence you may not hold centrally

The levy does not apply to affordable housing, care homes, schools, hospitals, hotels and hostels, or temporary accommodation for homeless people. Those exemptions are real, and they are worth real money on a large scheme. They are also the kind of thing that gets asserted in a meeting and never documented.

If a scheme in your portfolio is claiming an exemption, the question a local authority will ask is not whether the scheme is broadly affordable or broadly a care home. It is whether the evidence supports the specific exemption claimed, for the specific floor space, at the point the levy liability is assessed. A Levy Liability Notice is issued when the developer submits a commencement notice, whether that is for a full plans application to a local authority or the Building Safety Regulator, or for an initial notice registered with a Registered Building Control Approver.

That notice is the trigger. Once it is issued, the levy becomes payable, and payment must be made before a completion certificate or final certificate can be issued. A completion certificate held up by an unpaid levy is a handover held up, and a handover held up is a conversation with an occupier about a date you cannot now meet.

Registered Building Control Approvers have new responsibilities, and your submissions route through them

The 10 September letter addresses the effect of the levy on building control functions by local authorities and registered building control approvers. It also provides an update on the recent consultation on plan approval requirements for new builds and fire safety order buildings, and it highlights existing legislation relevant to the issues discussed in that consultation.

For RBCAs, the guidance is explicit: they need to be aware of their new responsibilities and how to support their clients to engage with local authorities regarding the levy. In practice, that means the approver you use for a scheme is now part of your levy evidence chain. If your approver is not asking you for the floor space figures and exemption evidence at the right point, the gap will surface later, when the completion certificate is the thing standing between you and an occupier.

The letter also reminds local authorities of certain changes made by the Building Safety Act 2022. The Act replaced magistrate's courts with the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber) as the appropriate court or tribunal for certain procedures. That is a procedural change, but it matters to how disputes are handled, and it is the kind of detail that gets missed when a team is focused on the levy itself.

The implications of the Building Safety Levy for building control procedure letter is short, and it is worth reading in full rather than in summary. It is the official statement of what changed and what local authorities are being reminded of.

What to do this week, before the October deadline moves from diary to problem

Start with a list. Every residential scheme in England in your portfolio that has not yet submitted a building control application. For each one, you need four things: the intended submission date, the chargeable residential floor space, whether the site is previously developed land, and whether an exemption is being claimed.

The brownfield rate matters here. The guidance explains the previously developed land levy rate, and in a district like Tendring the standard rate is £24.80 per m² of chargeable residential floor space, with a brownfield rate of £12.40 per m², a 50% discount. Rates are set nationally by the Government and vary by local authority, so the figure for your scheme depends on where it sits. The Tendring District Council summary is a useful worked example of how the rates and exemptions land in practice, even if your schemes are elsewhere.

Then check the evidence. Can you produce, today, the floor space calculation for each scheme, the brownfield status, and the exemption justification if one is claimed? If those documents sit with a development partner, a contractor or an approver, you do not hold them. You are relying on someone else's filing.

The levy is collected through building control, which means the evidence has to be right at the point of application, not at the point of completion. By the time the completion certificate is waiting on a payment, the opportunity to fix the record has gone.

Your 60-second self-check

• Can you list every residential scheme in England in your portfolio that has not yet submitted a building control application, with its intended submission date?
• For each of those schemes, could you produce the chargeable residential floor space figure and the brownfield status today, without asking a development partner?
• If an exemption is being claimed, is the supporting evidence held centrally, or is it in someone else's file?

If none of those answers is yes, you are not short of information. You are short of a record. The free 5-minute Director's Risk Check at hermanwa.com/risk-check gives you a control score for your portfolio and the breach exposure with official sources attached, which is a faster way to find the gaps than waiting for an audit or a renewal to surface them. Five minutes now is cheaper than a completion certificate held up in October.

Herman's verdict

The levy is not the problem. The problem is that the evidence it depends on sits in four different places, and the date that decides whether you pay it is the date someone else's application goes in. If you cannot produce the floor space figure and the exemption justification for every scheme today, you are not managing the levy. You are waiting to find out what it costs.

— Herman