In early November 2025 one of the biggest UK’s largest private building control firms Assent Building Control Compliance Limited, along with its subsidiaries Oculus Building Consultancy Limited and LB Building Control Limited, (together “Assent”) ceased trading and subsequently entered liquidation. The collapse of such a major player in the building control sector will likely have wide ramifications throughout the whole construction industry, and particularly for HRB developments and the BSR’s Gateway 2 Application process.

In this article, we examine (1) the new regime for safeguarding of customer funds applying to UK payment and electronic money institutions, (2) the impact these reforms will have on those firms and (3) in particular, the indirect effect the reforms will have on banks holding safeguarded funds and insolvency practitioners who manage the insolvency of a failed payment or electronic money institution.