Modernising and strengthening Building Control

On 29 March 2007, Communities and Local Government published a short report on the Future of Building Control which sets out a package of options that the Government is minded to develop further and invites interested parties to provide suggestions on how the reform should proceed.

The publication follows detailed discussions with key members of industry on the strengths and weaknesses of the current system, which have highlighted the strong case for reform.

The paper recognises a number of important shortcomings with the current system including the lack of a clear future vision for the purpose of Building Control, the current piecemeal approach to regulatory change and the complexity of guidance. Problems with achieving compliance and with effective enforcement are also highlighted as key areas for action. 

Amongst those ideas included in the package are options for:

• providing greater enforcement powers for local authorities to tackle persistent offenders;
• further helping with compliance by providing simple customer focused guidance that helps with specific building work or types of problems;
• moving away from a piecemeal approach to building regulation review and towards a longer fixed-term cycle with planned pauses and a clear indication of future changes; and
• formulating options for making sure that building control bodies are properly resourced into the future.

Also published today is a report of a study on Achieving Building Standards, carried out by Science Applications International Corporation on behalf of the Department which has fed into the Government’s analysis of the current system. 

A full consultation document was published on the 18 March 2008.