Mr. John Wickham:

I was going to add a comment on the one-stop shops. It has been a concept that has been discussed along with its benefits, etc. The working group on the reuse of existing buildings did put together its expertise to try to come up with the manual, called Bringing Back Homes, to demystify the layering of regulations and how they apply to typical building scenarios. For instance, a disability access certificate is not needed for the reuse of a building containing a flat. That was a regulatory change back in 2018. Measures were put in place to reduce some of the bureaucracy that was there, and to give clarification on some of the things that were perceived as being a problem as well. In essence, that has worked really well among building control and those avoiding solutions of reuse to try to get matching expectations. That is one of the core objectives; making sure the regulations are well understood and that they can be applied without unnecessary delay when it comes to the processing of fire certs or applications.

At this point in time in 2024, we have consolidated all that we have available to us in the context of section 7 in terms of providing flexibility. We also do not want to stop there. We are researching the topic. Within the next couple of weeks, we will have awarded a contract through Construct Innovate for academic research to look into the perceived versus the actual impediments to the reuse of existing buildings. That is a ten-month contract that will hopefully give further evidence that we can inform our decision-making going forward.