The Enquirer has been contacted by one developer who faces “losing millions” after the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) decided its scheme would need to go through pre-construction checks despite being almost structurally complete.

The firm has now been forced to write to buyers explaining why their flats are delayed and faces sales collapsing.

The residential block came under the control of the BSR last April after the original building control firm was found to be non-registered.

Construction was well advanced with most of the scheme structurally complete by the end of last year.

The developer said the BSR “took months” to acknowledge its scheme and only sent an adviser to the site last November when most of the structure was complete and the Building Warranty provider was already doing final sign-off inspections.

The developer said: “Despite that the BSR decided that we still needed to go through the regulatory process for Gateway 2 even though the job is at the point of buyers nearly moving in.

“We had quite rightly believed that we were in Gateway 3 as construction had completed and we were at the stage of Building Control sign-off.

“We have been ignored and messed around for months then hit with this and our construction team is totally confused how to get this project over the finish line.

“I’ve spoken to other developers in a similar  situation and it’s total chaos thanks to a system which just isn’t working at the moment.”