The Wales building safety consultation proposes a £250 registration fee for category 1 and category 2 residential buildings and a £100 fee where a building safety authority is asked to decide who the principal accountable person should be.
The consultation, launched on 24th September 2026, sits under the Building Safety (Wales) Act 2026 and closes on 18th December. These are proposals for regulations, rather than operative registration rules. The detailed regulations still have to be made, and the wider Welsh regime is being brought into force in stages.
For owners, managing agents, housing providers and anyone responsible for multi-occupied residential buildings, the practical message is that Wales is now filling in some of the machinery needed before registration and accountable-person duties can operate in practice.
What the Wales building safety consultation proposes
The Wales building safety consultation focuses on three pieces of the future regime: how a building safety authority can determine the principal accountable person, how category 1 and category 2 buildings will be registered, and what fees should be charged for those processes.
Under the 2026 Act, regulated buildings are multi-occupied residential buildings containing at least two residential units, subject to specified exclusions. Category 1 buildings are at least 18 metres high or have at least seven storeys. Category 2 buildings are below 18 metres and below seven storeys, but at least 11 metres high or at least five storeys. Category 3 covers smaller regulated buildings.
The registration proposal is aimed at category 1 and 2 buildings. The Welsh Government proposes that the principal accountable person would pay £250 when applying to register one of those buildings with the relevant building safety authority.
The consultation says the £250 figure is broadly consistent with fees charged under similar regimes elsewhere in the UK, although it also makes clear that the fee could change in future as part of a wider charging scheme.
A £100 route to confirm the principal accountable person
The Act defines accountable persons and the principal accountable person, but ownership and management structures can be complicated. A building may have several accountable persons with responsibility for different parts of the structure or common parts, making it unclear which one should be treated as the principal accountable person.
The authority route is intended for cases where more than one accountable person meets section 9(3) in relation to different parts of the external structure. They could apply jointly for a formal determination, with a proposed £100 fee. The Welsh Government expects applicants to be broadly in agreement about who should take the principal role.
The consultation argues that this should provide a quicker and cheaper route than going straight to the Residential Property Tribunal. It says the lower fee is intended to encourage use of the building safety authority where a case is suitable, preserving tribunal capacity for disputes requiring independent judicial determination.
Not every dispute would stay with the authority. Where the ownership model is especially complicated, the building safety authority could decline to decide the issue, leaving the parties to seek a tribunal determination instead. In that situation, the consultation says a refund of the £100 fee could be requested.
What information could be required?
The Wales building safety consultation gives a useful indication of the documentary burden likely to fall on applicants. The consultation envisages electronic applications supported by enough evidence for the authority to understand who controls and maintains the relevant parts of the building.
That could include ownership and structural documents, plans or architectural layouts, evidence of control or management of common parts, and correspondence showing attempts to resolve the issue between the relevant parties.
Registration would require a different set of core details: the building’s address, category, height, storeys and residential units, alongside information identifying the principal accountable person and other accountable persons. For organisations, a named individual would act as a single point of contact.
The Wales building safety consultation also proposes a public register showing the building’s address, category, height, storeys and principal accountable person. Residents and prospective buyers or tenants could check who holds overall responsibility, while sensitive personal information would be safeguarded.
For certain new category 1 buildings that have gone through Gateway 3, the application would also confirm that a partial or full completion certificate is in place. Registration itself would not certify that a building is safe.
Registration will sit within a much wider regime
The registration proposals are only one component of the Building Safety (Wales) Act 2026. Once the relevant provisions are commenced, the Act will create duties for accountable persons to assess and manage building safety risks in regulated buildings, with additional requirements for the highest-risk buildings.
Category 1 buildings will face the most extensive duties, including safety case reports, occurrence recording and reporting, residents’ engagement strategies and building certificates. Category 2 buildings will also be subject to important structural and fire-safety duties, although the regime is deliberately tiered according to building category.
The consultation proposes category 1 registration first, followed by category 2 at a later date. For buildings already occupied when the relevant provisions take effect, the transitional period is currently expected to be six months. That is an expectation in the consultation, rather than a confirmed registration deadline.
The Welsh Government consultation document says: “Effective regulation requires appropriately skilled staff, specialist expertise, technical systems and ongoing monitoring arrangements.” The proposed fees are intended to contribute towards a system that can recover the costs of regulatory work in a transparent and sustainable way.
Wales is not copying the English regime wholesale
Practitioners working across the border will need to keep the two systems separate. Our guide to Building Regulations approval in England covers the English context; it should not be used as a guide to these Welsh occupied-building proposals. Wales has its own Building Safety (Wales) Act 2026 and its own categories, duties, building safety authorities and implementation timetable.
Some concepts, including accountable persons, principal accountable persons and building registration, will look familiar to anyone working with the post-Grenfell regime in England. But the legal route, definitions and commencement position in Wales must be checked independently rather than assumed to mirror the English Building Safety Act 2022 framework.
The Welsh consultation itself notes that the proposed £250 registration fee has been benchmarked against comparable regimes elsewhere in the UK, but that does not make the substantive regimes identical.
Who should be paying attention now?
The immediate audience is wider than building owners alone. Freeholders, housing associations, local authorities, resident management companies, right-to-manage companies, managing agents and professional advisers may all need to understand how responsibility is allocated once the regime is brought into force.
The proposed determination process is especially relevant where responsibility for the external structure or common parts is split between different legal entities. Those arrangements can be straightforward on paper and surprisingly messy in practice, particularly in mixed-use or heavily layered leasehold buildings.
Anyone expecting to become a principal accountable person should also start thinking about the quality of the information they hold. Registration is only the gateway. The wider regime will require accurate information about the building, its structure, its management arrangements and its safety risks.
When does the Wales building safety consultation close?
The Wales building safety consultation remains open until 18th December 2026. Welsh Ministers will consider the responses before finalising regulations on principal accountable person determinations, registration and fees.
The consultation also says a broader fee scheme will be considered separately. So the £100 and £250 figures should not be treated as the final word on every cost that might arise under the future regulatory system.
For now, the key distinction is between preparation and commencement. The consultation gives owners and managers a much clearer picture of how registration may work, but it does not itself activate the new duties or require a category 1 or category 2 building to be registered today.
Planning Geek will keep watching the subordinate legislation and commencement orders as the Welsh regime moves from the 2026 Act into day-to-day operation.
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