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UK: Yorkshire-based Assent, one of the country’s largest building control firms, has ceased trading, placing hundreds of Gateway 2 applications in limbo.
Two of Assent’s biggest entities, Oculus Building Consultancy Ltd and LB Building Control Ltd, are registered building-control approvers (RBCAs), meaning they are authorised by the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) to carry out building control work on behalf of local authorities.
According to the register of building inspectors, the two firms employ 69 building inspectors between them, and handled between 15,000 and 20,000 applications annually.
Assent was a key player in the Building Safety Regulator Gateway approval process for many projects. Its collapse is likely to cause chaos and set back efforts to clear the Gateway 2 project backlog by early January. In some cases clients could be forced back to the drawing board to start the whole approval process again.
A company statement said: “Assent has ceased trading and is in the process of entering insolvency. Details of the appointed insolvency practitioners will be published on our website in due course.”
A spokesperson for the BSR said: “Assent Building Compliance Ltd has made BSR aware of issues affecting their future operations, which includes two Registered Building Control Approvers, Oculus Building Consultancy Ltd and LB Building Control Ltd. We are in active discussions on the impact on their ongoing registered building control service provision as well as the registered building inspector resource provided to BSR through our supplier framework,” they added.
Highlights:
• Yorkshire-based Assent, one of the country’s largest building control firms, has ceased trading, placing hundreds of Gateway 2 applications in limbo
• According to the register of building inspectors, the two firms employ 69 building inspectors between them, and handled between 15,000 and 20,000 applications annually
• Assent was a key player in the Building Safety Regulator Gateway approval process for many projects.
