COMMENT Following the introduction of the Building Safety Act in April last year, the process of making a building control application when using approved inspectors has changed – and so have the associated roles and responsibilities.
Changes have been made to how the building regulations are implemented in practice and how that legislation is “policed” on projects. As part of those changes, several key things have happened.
Approved inspectors have become “registered building control approvers”. In the past, they would give feedback on design issues relating to building regulations. Now, however, they no longer provide solutions to designs they are not happy with.
The changes also result in a new role, a principal designer for building regulations. This new post isn’t to be confused with principal designer under the CDM regulations – that is a different role and a different set of responsibilities. The new role has responsibility for building regulations compliance of the designs.
Previously, this was just subsumed into an unofficial capacity, with the building design teams often reliant on building control to flag what was not compliant and suggest solutions. Now, building control approvers are only monitoring and checking, and the design team has a more explicit role in ensuring their designs comply with the building control requirements. Anyone involved in designs for a project must produce a competency statement to demonstrate they have the relevant expertise to take on this role.
Back to the old school
The upshot is that we revert to a process similar to that of 30 years ago:
- The design team prepares the designs, signs them off as compliant and then submits them to the building inspector for a “full plans check”.
- There will have not been any input from the building control inspectors as part of that design process.
- Feedback will then be received after a set time period – six weeks typically for non-high risk buildings and 12 weeks for high-risk buildings.
- The feedback will confirm whether the designs are deemed to comply with building regulations or not. If not, typically you will be told that but no more, so there will be no guidance on where the designs failed to comply.
- It will then be up to the design team to work out where the designs are not acceptable, amend them, and resubmit.
Tick every box
So, in order to take control and help ensure the building regulations procedures as brought in by the Building Safety Act are properly adhered to, we as building surveyors must look to fill the gap.
An experienced building control surveyor is crucial in order to provide comprehensive advice on building regulations and to complete pre-submission checks prior to submission of a building control application. At each point, the building control surveyor should be involved – once the designs are ready to be checked, they should have a building regs critique. Feedback should then be incorporated with discussion over anything unclear and amends made together with the building control surveyor before submitting the designs for a formal full plans check.
In these changing times, being robust and making sure there are no gaps in knowledge or design when it comes to regulations is the only way forward.
Paul Dunne is partner and technical director at Rapleys
