From 1 October 2026 the Building Safety Levy applies to qualifying building control applications and initial notices for relevant residential buildings in England, including higher-risk buildings. BSR's October 2026 bulletin confirms the levy is now operational — and that it is already changing how completion certificates are issued. This guide summarises what changed, what BSR saw in the run-up, and what Accountable Persons and Principal Accountable Persons should check.
“BSR cannot issue a completion certificate until the local council or other collecting authority has confirmed either a valid notice of no charge, or that the levy has been paid in full.”
What changed on 1 October 2026
The Building Safety Levy (SI 2025/1236, as amended) came into force for qualifying residential building-control applications and initial notices submitted on or after 1 October 2026. Applications submitted before that date which are later invalidated or rejected and then resubmitted on or after 1 October 2026 may also become subject to the levy.
GOV.UK's building-control-approval and completion-certificate guidance pages were both updated on 1 October 2026 to add levy guidance, confirming the practical link between levy status and certification.
The completion certificate link
This is the detail duty-holders most need to plan around: where the levy is payable on a project, BSR cannot issue a completion certificate — full or partial — until the collecting authority confirms a valid notice of no charge, or that the levy has been paid in full.
For Principal Accountable Persons managing a Gateway 3 or partial-completion submission, levy status is now a dependency on the completion-certificate critical path, not a side process that can be settled afterwards.
The pre-levy application surge
BSR's published application data shows a sharp rise in new higher-risk building submissions in the run-up to the levy: 64 in September 2026, compared with 34 in August and 17 in July — a pattern BSR directly attributes to applicants trying to beat the 1 October deadline.
BSR responded by activating contingency plans, including extra assurance checks before any decision to invalidate or reject an application, specifically to manage the surge without unfairly penalising viable projects.
- New-build HRB applications: 97% approval rate, 23-week median assessment time (BSR Q3 2026 data)
- Existing-building HRB work (including external remediation): 87% approval rate, 32-week median assessment time
What Accountable Persons should check now
Whether or not your organisation submits building-control applications directly, levy status now sits alongside Gateway and handover evidence as something a Principal Accountable Person should be able to answer a question on.
- Confirm whether any current or recent application is in scope for the levy under SI 2025/1236
- Record levy liability, amount, payment date, and receipt reference against the relevant project — not in a separate spreadsheet
- Flag levy status explicitly as a dependency on any pending completion-certificate application
- Treat a resubmitted application (after invalidation or rejection) as a fresh levy-scope check, not an automatic continuation of the original submission's status
How Threadsovereign tracks this
Threadsovereign records Building Safety Levy liability, amount paid, payment date, and receipt URL against a project, visible in the client portal — as an evidence store, not a liability calculator. Threadsovereign does not calculate levy amounts, collect payments, or integrate with HMRC or the collecting authority; live application-field automation remains out of scope.
Conclusion
The levy itself is now simple to state — it is in force. The operational detail that catches teams out is the completion-certificate dependency and the fact that a resubmission resets levy scope. Build both into your Gateway 3 and BAC readiness planning rather than treating the levy as a one-off compliance event.
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Cochise Derrick
Founder & Director
Cochise Derrick is the founder and director of Threadsovereign Ltd and the sole architect and developer of the Threadsovereign platform. With a background as a lead developer on central government digital services and current SC clearance, he brings the technical depth and regulatory understanding required to build compliance infrastructure that duty-holders can genuinely rely on. Threadsovereign is the result of over a year of focused development against the Building Safety Act 2022 and its statutory instruments.
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