This one isn’t a SAP input, but it lands squarely on the desks of the people we work with every day — housebuilders, developers and Building Control. On 1 October 2026 the Building Safety Levy comes into operation in England, and if you’re bringing forward anything of ten homes or more, it’s a number you’ll want in your appraisal now rather than as a surprise near completion.
What the levy is
The Building Safety Levy is a tax on new residential buildings in England, brought in under the Building Safety Act 2022. The money raised — expected to run to billions of pounds over the next decade — goes towards fixing building safety defects such as unsafe cladding across the country.
Crucially, it’s collected by local authorities, in their role as the local guardians of the building control process, rather than by a new national body. The rules sit in The Building Safety Levy (England) Regulations 2025 (made on 19 November 2025), with a set of minor amendment regulations laid before Parliament on 2 July 2026 and the official guidance last updated in July 2026.
Who pays, and who doesn’t
The levy bites where three conditions are all met: the works form part of a major residential development, they create new residential floorspace, and the client isn’t an exempt person.
“Major residential development” means 10 or more new dwellings, or 30 or more bedspaces in purpose-built student accommodation. Schemes below that threshold are outside the levy altogether — and you can’t dodge it by slicing a large permission into sub-ten-dwelling building control applications, because liability follows the planning permission for the wider site.
A number of developments are excluded. Social housing (including affordable, social and intermediate rent, shared ownership, and First Homes sold at no more than 70% of market value) and supported housing are exempt, as is anything built by a non-profit registered provider of social housing — for those providers, all their works are exempt even where the homes would otherwise be chargeable. Also outside the charge: care homes and hospices, hospitals, hotels and hostels, children’s homes, refuges for domestic abuse victims, armed forces accommodation and similar. Straightforward extensions and improvements that don’t create a new dwelling aren’t caught either.
How the charge is worked out
The levy is a rate per square metre applied to the chargeable floorspace, measured as Gross Internal Area under the RICS Code of Measuring Practice. Each local authority has its own rate, weighted by average house prices in the area — so the figures vary enormously, from around £13 per square metre in the lowest-value areas to over £100 per square metre in the priciest. There’s a 50% discount for previously developed (“brownfield”) land, to reflect the higher cost of building there.
It’s worth actually pulling your council’s rate from the published schedule before you price a scheme, because on a site of any size the difference between a low-value and a high-value authority is real money.
Where the teeth are
Here’s the bit to flag to your commercial team: payment is due before the earlier of completion or occupation, and it’s enforced through the certificate you can’t do without. If the levy isn’t paid, the building control authority will withhold the completion certificate (or reject the final certificate). No certificate, no sign-off — so this isn’t a bill you can leave to argue about later.
One point of timing relief: the levy only applies to applications for building control approval submitted on or after 1 October 2026. Applications submitted before that date aren’t caught, even if they’re varied afterwards — but if a pre-October application is rejected and then resubmitted after the go-live, it will be liable.
What we’d suggest doing
If you’ve got schemes crossing the 1 October line, three quick jobs are worth doing now: check your local authority’s rate against the published schedule, confirm whether any part of the scheme qualifies for the social-housing or brownfield reliefs, and make sure whoever manages your building control applications knows the levy has to be cleared before the completion certificate is issued.
The levy sits alongside the compliance work we do help with — the Part L, Part G and thermal-bridging numbers that also have to be right before Building Control signs a scheme off. If you’d like a hand getting the energy and water side buttoned down while the commercial team handles the levy, get in touch and we’ll tell you how we’d approach it.
Sources: Building Safety Levy: Guidance — Section 1: Introduction (gov.uk, updated July 2026) · Building Safety Levy: Guidance — contents (gov.uk) · The Building Safety Levy (England) Regulations 2025 (legislation.gov.uk)