Our service, roles and responsibilities
This is to be read in conjunction with our Guidance pertaining to the role of Duty Holders.
All Duty Holders are obliged to have arrangements and systems in place to plan, manage and monitor both the design work and the building work to ensure compliance with the Building Regulations.
These changes emphasise that compliance with Building Regulations is primarily the responsibility of the Client (previously known as the applicant); Principal Designer (previously known as the agent) and Principal Contractor (previously known as the builder). Building Control will not be involved in the design process in any way.
As a Local Authority Building Control Service, we will comply with our obligations under Standard 5 (see Code of conduct for registered building inspectors).
Services we provide
The following are the services we will provide. We will:
- Register your application.
- Advise you if your application is valid.
- Carry out a Plan Check.
- Send out to the statutory consultations (where applicable).
- Undertake Site Inspections as required.
- Respond to any written requests for a Completion Certificate in respect of finished work.
We will assign a Registered Building Inspector dedicated to your application. However, due to operational circumstances and other issues out of our control this Inspector inspecting your work may change but this will not affect you as they will still feedback to the Registered Building Inspector assigned to your application.
The Registered Building Inspector is registered to monitor this level of work, if a lower-level Registered Building Inspector is carrying out site visits this will be under supervision of the allocated Inspector.
We will register your application within 5 working days and notify the Client and Principal Designer of the status of the application, for example, valid or invalid.
If your application is a Full Plans application, we will carry out a Plan Check of your submission and a decision will be made on a Full Plans application within 5 weeks of the date the application is valid, unless a request is made for an extension of time.
Our fees and charges are based on the anticipated amount of work the application will involve, there is provision in the Act that fees can be charged for additional incurred costs. We will confirm our fees after submission and may request to carry out the initial inspection of the works before confirming our fees.
If we are required to carry out external consultations, such as with the Fire Service, this will be communicated to the Client prior to the consultation being made. All information will be stored as required to comply with data protection.
As a local authority, we collect, process and store personal information about you in order to administer and assess Building Control applications, and to fulfil certain legal obligations with respect to Building Control. To find out more about how we process your data please refer to our Privacy Notice.
Any complaints are to be made in writing to our Building Control Service in the first instance, please note these will be treated in confidence, any anonymous ones will not be registered or dealt with.
All our Building Control Inspectors are registered with the Building Safety Regulator, and we carefully follow the rules and regulations issued by the Building Safety Regulator.