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Choosing Your Building Control Body
Choosing Your Building Control Body
Local Authority or Approved Inspector?
Approved Inspectors have existed since 1985 and can be either corporate bodies or individuals. Fundamentally, as private companies, Approved Inspectors exist in competition with Local Authority Building Control to provide services that generate profit. Local Authority Building Control continues to provide an independent, publicly accountable service that is legally required to recover its relevant costs. As at 2008, within the Royal Borough of Kingston, Approved Inspectors had a Building Control market share of approximately 10%.
Without the benefit of either reliable recommendation or knowledgeable experience of their service, assessing a Building Control provider is extremely difficult. One indication of a quality service is their commitment to achieve the standards recommended by the national Building Control Performance Standards Document. This document was published jointly by both public and private sector interested parties with the aim of preventing competition from driving down the primary health, safety, welfare and sustainability standards. The full document can be accessed from the bottom of this page but key aspects you might consider (for example) include:
- What is the Policy on the delivery of the service?
- What is the experience and qualifications of the person who will be undertaking an assessment of any plans and inspections of the building work?
- What statutory consultations (if any) will be necessary for the work? Will you be advised of the outcome?
- Will the design proposals receive a detailed check and will you be given evidence of plans approval? If so, within what timescale?
- What actual site inspections will be undertaken? Will you be advised when inspections have been made?
- What records of the site inspections will be kept and will they be made available?
- Upon satisfactory completion of the work how promptly will a Final or Completion Certificate be issued?
- In the case of minor work such as extensions and alterations to private dwelling houses, in addition to the building control fee, does the Building Control body have any financial or professional interest in the work?
- How long will records of the project be kept?
- What will happen to any records if the Building Control body ceases to trade?
- If things do go wrong what complaints procedure is in place?
Other considerations might be:
- How long has the Building Control body been in operation?
- Where is the Building Control body based? If it is based out of the region how will this affect the frequency and timeliness of site inspections?
- If the Building Control fee varies significantly from other providers (either higher or lower), consider why this might be and what implications this might have for your proposals?
- If the contractor feels strongly about the provision of only one particular Building Control provider try to find out why?