A Guide to Determinations and Appeals

Message from Nick Raynsford and Peter Law

The Building Regulations exist to secure the health and safety of building users, promote energy efficiency and make access easier for disabled people. These are all highly important objectives. The role of building control is to help ensure that all relevant building work accords with those objectives. Building control services must be effective, in the interests of building users. Building control must also be efficient, to minimise cost and delay for those carrying out building work. This document is about how building control providers can work to achieve effective and efficient levels of service.

Building control is unusual in offering builders and developers a choice of service provider - the local building control authority or a private sector approved inspector. This factor has helped to improve service quality. The Building Control Performance Standards and Guidance in this document build on past improvements. We are grateful to the members of the Building Control Services Steering Group for their hard work in producing this document.

A starting point for this document is that the building control function is the same whether it is carried out by a local authority or by an approved inspector. This document acknowledges the importance of consistent application of the regulations by all building control bodies, and the need for appropriate liaison machinery to promote this consistency. This document recognises that service quality does not only relate to factors such as response times - important as those are. A more fundamental test is success in preventing and rectifying non-compliance.

This document performs a valuable function in codifying existing best practice. It places a welcome emphasis on self-review and continuous improvement. We hope that all building control bodies will commit themselves to adopt and apply these Standards, and we commend the Guidance section to their attention.

Nick Raynsford
Minister for Construction
Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions
July 1999

Peter Law
Assembly Secretary for the Environment, Housing and Local Government
National Assembly for Wales
July 1999