From 1 July 2026, Wales will switch on a fresh round of Building Safety Act powers. Welsh Statutory Instrument 2025 No.1368, signed by Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Energy and Planning Rebecca Evans on 12 December 2025, sets the date.

The order brings into force the enforcement toolkit long flagged by ministers: compliance notices and stop notices, a modernised offence for breaches of building regulations, time‑limits on building control approvals, ministerial determinations on disputed applications, and default powers so Welsh Ministers can step in if needed.

Specifically, sections 36, 37, 38, 39 and 45 of the Building Safety Act 2022 will take effect in Wales, alongside related amendments to the Building Act 1984 including section 91 and parts of Schedule 5. In plain terms, councils gain clearer routes to require remedial action, pause unsafe work, and pursue breaches, while developers face firmer expectations on paperwork and build quality.

For readers in the North, the cross‑border angle matters. Contractors from Cheshire, Merseyside and Greater Manchester regularly deliver schemes in Wrexham, Flintshire and Denbighshire. From July next year, a stop notice in North Wales could stall crews and cashflow on a mixed programme that also has sites over the border, so project plans need to allow for that risk.

Local authority building control teams in Wales will need to finalise templates, workflows and training so notices are issued consistently and stand up to appeal. Early conversations with planning enforcement and legal teams will help, especially in authorities handling large regeneration pipelines in places like Deeside and along the A55 corridor.

Housing providers and registered social landlords should assume tighter oversight on basic compliance: fire doors that close, correctly installed cavity barriers, proper certification on products and competent installers. Framework partners and in‑house DLOs will want to sequence intrusive surveys and any remedial packages so they do not drift into July unprepared.

For developers and SME builders, section 36 on lapses is a practical watch‑out. Check which approvals could expire, what needs refreshing, and where design changes since approval might trigger new scrutiny. Contracts should set out how the team responds if a compliance notice lands, including who pays for delay and who leads the fix.

The determinations route via Welsh Ministers will matter when there is a genuine dispute about how the regulations apply. That makes record‑keeping, early engagement with building control and clear design rationales more important. Cross‑border consultants should not assume English practice carries across unchanged after July.

This is one more step in Wales’s staged roll‑out of the Building Safety Act. The July 2026 tranche is about enforcement capacity and accountability. Between now and then, map any live projects, line up pre‑July compliance checks, brief site managers and speak to your building control body so there are fewer surprises when the switch is flipped.