Building Regulations

Written evidence submitted by Adam Heeley MRICS

· There is a general feeling that the Building Regulations go a long way to ensuring Health and safety throughout the Building Industry

· These would appear to be low if you do sufficient volume of work as the only costs above those that would be required without the scheme in place are, annual membership of the scheme and notification costs.

· However for very occasional users of the scheme the annual membership costs could be seen as a barrier

· The types of when notification is not required could be made simpler to understand

· Removal or reduction of the scope of Building Regulations is likely to lead to the situation reverting to how it was before the regulations were brought in.

In discussion with contractors who are members of competent persons schemes and other Building professionals there is a belief that those following the requirements are meeting the standards but more needs to be done to catch those who are carrying out notifiable or even in some cases non-notifiable work who do not meet the required standards. Long term statistics should be useful in highlighting whether there has been a reduction in casualties, fatalities and electrically related fires. Where works were carried out under the competent persons scheme.

However the biggest problem with the current system is the the fact that notification is not required to be provided to the enforcing bodies (Local Authorities) until up to 30 days from completion of the works. Currently if we see electrical work being carried out we have no reason to suspect the works are being carried out improperly until 30 days have elapsed. The installer has long since disappeared and the owner is left with potentially non-compliant work and the authority having to take action against the owner and not the installer.

If we are aiming for better standards and more enforcement against cowboy installers the installation address should be notified to the local authority with details of the installer and the outline of the work to be undertaken. If this was some sort of free or very low cost notification all electrical work including that which is non-notifiable would be sent to the local authorities and the only the work requiring notification would issue the second notification which indicated that all the work was in compliance with the regulations.

Customers could then check that initial notification had been received by the local authority before the installer started work on site to give themselves some security that the contractor is complying with the legislation.

There are also some instances although these are few  where electrical or gas installation work is noticed in the course of carrying out other Building Control inspections that does not comply with the relevant standards despite the fact that contractors are notifying through the competent persons scheme. This is usually rectified and all is well but the number of times when we are on site to see this type of work is minimal and the competent persons schemes do not seem to inspect that many installations from each installer to ensure that the standards are maintained by their members are their set percentages of work they should be checking.. There are also vast numbers of jobs where the only work is being carried out under a competent persons scheme that our officers never set foot on.

Adam Heeley MRICS

January 2012