Building Safety: restoring confidence in housing delivery
The National Building Safety Leadership Reception brought together senior colleagues to consider how practical partnership can create a more effective and predictable system, protect people and restore the confidence needed to invest and deliver homes.
Totus Digital and Berkeley Group co-hosted the National Building Safety Leadership Reception 2026 at the House of Commons on 22nd October, with the parliamentary sponsorship of Lord Goddard of Stockport.
The need to address barriers to housing delivery and investment provided the immediate context for the evening. Berkeley Group emphasised that the cumulative burden of regulation is making housing development increasingly difficult to finance and deliver, with consequences for growth, employment and supply chains.
The priority is therefore practical and urgent: creating a system that protects people while providing a clearer, more predictable route for viable development. An ambition for international leadership remains important, but addressing the difficulties facing the sector today must come first.
Partnership focused on practical change
The reception provided an opportunity to consider how government, the Building Safety Regulator and industry can work more effectively together. Better communication and earlier engagement are part of the answer, alongside clearer requirements, consistent interpretation and timely, evidence-led decisions.
Partnership must also support a candid examination of the cumulative regulatory burden. Where requirements or processes create unnecessary complexity, duplication or delay, there should be a willingness to review them against their safety benefit and their impact on delivery. Equally, industry must take responsibility for the quality of its designs, evidence and construction.
The task is not to choose between safety and delivery. It is to establish a system capable of achieving both, with clear accountability for the contribution each organisation makes.
From building safety to building safely
In his address, Aman Sharma MBE, Chief Executive of Totus Digital, explored the transition from “building safety” as a separate process to “building safely” as an embedded way of working.
The route from Gateway 2 through construction to Gateway 3 illustrated the need for a continuous approach: approved designs translated into controlled delivery, changes managed as they occur and evidence generated as work progresses. The same attention to decisions and information is needed throughout the operation, maintenance and adaptation of occupied buildings.
Aman highlighted opportunities to contribute through the Construction Leadership Council’s Building Safety Workstream, constructive engagement with the regulator and standards development through BSI. These provide routes for sharing project experience and developing practical solutions beyond individual organisations.
An immediate priority and a longer-term ambition
Aman also offered a longer-term vision:
“For our built environment sector to be recognised as setting the global standard across design, construction and operation.”
Reflecting on the reception, he commented:
“That ambition has to be earned. Our immediate task is to create a more effective and predictable system, through better partnership between government, the regulator and industry. We need to address the barriers preventing good projects from attracting investment and progressing, while keeping people’s safety at the centre of our decisions.
“The value of bringing people together lies in what follows this evening: sharing evidence, resolving recurring problems and taking responsibility for the changes within our influence.”
For Totus, this connects our work in fire engineering, fire risk management and independent assurance and governance across new and occupied buildings with our vision: “A built environment where safety is at the heart of every decision.”
The reception was held in support of the Children’s Burns Trust. Totus Digital and Berkeley Group thank all speakers and guests, and the teams whose work made the evening possible.
Totus is continuing conversations with delegates to identify practical opportunities for collaboration. The immediate focus is on improving how the system works, restoring confidence and enabling safe, high-quality homes to be delivered.
