Over 150 high-rise schemes stuck in limbo as red tape clogs up UK construction
Over 150 high-rise construction projects in the UK have been stalled due to problems with the Building Safety Regulator, with over half of those located in London, according to new data.
A new survey from the Construction Plant-Hire Association (CPA), the UK’s leading trade association for renting building equipment, has found that crane fleets and machinery are sitting unused while developers wait for the green light to build.
“With very few exceptions, when it comes to construction, infrastructure and housing, everything’s on a downward spiral,” Steven Mulholland, chief executive of the CPA, said.
“[The industry] is feeling it now… jobs are finishing and new ones are not starting. We’ve got a real problem,” he added.
The latest S&P figures show the eighth consecutive month of declining construction business activity – its sharpest rate since Covid – while construction firms made up 15.2 per cent of all business failures in July 2025.
Mulholland said that independent SMEs are particularly “feeling the pain”, with planning delays compounding issues brought by last Autumn’s budget around labour costs and inheritance taxes.
Why have projects stalled?
There are a number of reasons building high-rises in the UK – and particularly the capital – is a difficult feat, but the real pressure point has become the Building Safety Regulator.
Originally implemented to tackle safety concerns in light of the devastating Grenfell fire, the regulator must approve development before work can begin on high-rise schemes.
Additionally – and controversially – all buildings above 18m in height must have two separate escape stairs to improve fire safety and provide alternative escape routes in emergencies.
Despite a target of twelve weeks per application, approvals have been taking up to a year, according to the CPA.
The CPA’s survey, which was conducted with some of the UK’s largest tower crane operators and leading plant-hire companies, asked respondents to provide data on projects where equipment had been contracted but could not be deployed due to outstanding building safety approval.
Members across the CPA reported over 150 stalled high-rise schemes across the UK, with Mudholland adding that the figure could pass 200.
“If you are a developer and you’ve got a scheme of five to 800 homes, and you’ve taken you a year to get planning, and it takes you another year to get building control sign off, interest charges will go up, the scheme becomes unviable, you lose your finance,” Mace chief Mark Reynolds said at a select committee meeting about the BSR earlier this year.
Unite, which builds high-rise student accommodation, has also warned that the Building Safety Act has added “around six months” to development programmes “putting pressure on returns and further slowing new supply”.
“There’s such a hesitance for individuals to sign off on projects, because there’s probably a real feel of fear of culpability if something goes wrong in five or 10 or 20 years time,” Mulholland said.
“It’s really important that you do have regulation…. it’s just about making it manageable, and not causing bottlenecks or the real problems that we’re facing now,” he added.
How bad is the problem?
The government is aware of the issue: questions posed to the government in May 2025 by the Housing, Communities and Local Government committee yielded confirmation that the government will publish a “prospectus” on regulation of the built environment by the end of the year.
New reforms have introduced a Fast Track Process to “enhance the review” of newbuild applications, and “pave the way” for the creation of a single construction regulator, as recommended by the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
A policy paper out earlier this week also recommended appointing a chief construction advisor with a “sufficient budget and staff to provide advice”, as well as ways to further streamline the process.
But this is unlikely to come quickly enough for small or medium companies stuck in limbo with limited reserves.
It’s something which affects companies across the whole construction supply chain: “[Businesses] who do everything from the groundwork through to putting the finishing touches to the interiors… aren’t doing anything,” Mulholland said.
To compound the issue, cash flow from already-approved applications has begun to dry up as the issue drags on.
“As well as having cranes… not going out on hire, [plant-hire firms] have now got all these ones coming back in.” Mulholland said.
A BSR spokesperson said they “acknowledge the frustrations that delays in approving building control applications for high-rise buildings are causing for the sector.”
“We’ve made several changes to our operations and expect significant reductions in processing times in the coming months.
“Developers can help us process applications more quickly by submitting high-quality plans which clearly meet building control standards,” the spokesperson said.
A government spokesperson said: “We have appointed new leadership to the Building Safety Regulator who have immediately focused on speeding up decision making on building control approval.
“We will go further to reduce unnecessary delays without compromising safety and build the 1.5m homes this country desperately needs – including a building acceleration package to overhaul the Building Safety Regulator’s performance.”
The direct impact on housing targets
Around four fifths of high-rises are residential, and half of the homes built in London since 2002 have been high-rise buildings – a trend which can be seen in increasingly dense cities like Manchester and Birmingham.
It all points to a headache for Labour, which has made housebuilding targets a flagship promise, albeit one which looks ever-less likely to be achieved.
There was a 12 per cent drop in housebuilding projects started across the UK year on year in August, and a 44 per cent drop in London developments, according to data from Glenigan.
For Mulholland, however, there’s a couple of easy fixes: A ministerial will to engage with small and medium-sized construction companies – as well as staying in their posts long enough to push things through – and a shift in perspective on building.
“It doesn’t always have to be new… We’ve already got really, really good infrastructure, but we don’t maintain it,” he said.
“We [need to] maintain and enhance what we’ve already got… as an industry, we like new, don’t get me wrong. But let’s try and keep what we’ve got going as well.”