Building Regulations You Need to Know

What Building Regulations Cover

Building Regulations exist to make sure that the work you carry out is safe, healthy, accessible and reasonably energy efficient. They are not a set of hoops invented to slow you down – they are the minimum standards that protect you, your family, the next occupier and, in some cases, your neighbours.

In England and Wales the requirements are grouped into Approved Documents, and it helps to know roughly what each one deals with before you start:

• Part A – structure: foundations, walls, roofs, loadings and how the building stands up.
• Part B – fire safety: escape routes, fire resistance, alarms and compartmentation.
• Part C – resistance to moisture and contaminants, including damp and radon.
• Part E – sound insulation between dwellings and within flats.
• Part F – ventilation, increasingly relevant now that homes are sealed up tightly.
• Part G – sanitation, hot water safety and water efficiency.
• Part H – drainage and waste disposal, including foul and surface water.
• Part J – combustion appliances, flues and fuel storage.
• Part K – protection from falling, collision and impact, such as stair geometry and guarding.
• Part L – energy efficiency and the conservation of fuel and power.
• Part M – access to and use of buildings.
• Part P – electrical safety in dwellings.

Scotland has its own Building Standards, and Northern Ireland its own Building Regulations. The principles are similar, but the detail and the paperwork differ, so always check what applies where you are building.

Planning Permission Is a Separate Question

This trips up more people than anything else. Planning permission controls what you can build and how it looks – whether the extension is allowed, how tall it is, how close to the boundary. Building Regulations control how it is built.

You can need one without the other. A loft conversion often falls under permitted development, so no planning application is needed, but it will still require building regulations approval if it creates habitable space. Equally, a small detached outbuilding may be exempt from building regulations but still need planning consent. Assume nothing and check both.

Choosing Your Approval Route

For most domestic work you have two main options for building control approval, and a third for regularising old work.

• Full Plans application. You submit drawings and specifications up front. The building control body checks them and, if satisfied, issues an approval. This is generally the better route for anything substantial – extensions, loft conversions, structural alterations – because problems surface on paper rather than on site.
• Building Notice. A shorter, cheaper submission with limited or no drawings. It suits straightforward jobs such as a small bathroom refit or a straightforward drainage alteration. The risk is that compliance is judged as the work proceeds, and you carry more of the responsibility for getting details right.
• Regularisation application. This is how you legitimise work already carried out without approval. Expect to open up work for inspection, and expect the building control body to be cautious.

Approval can come from your local authority building control team or from a private approved inspector. Both are legitimate; the private route is often quicker, the local authority route can be useful if there are enforcement questions later. Whichever you pick, do it before you start. An approval issued after the fact is far more expensive and stressful.

Some work is covered by competent person schemes – registered electricians for Part P work, registered installers for replacement windows and doors, and gas engineers for boiler installations. In those cases the installer self-certifies and you receive a certificate, so no separate building control application is needed. Ask for the certificate and keep it safe.

Inspections and Stage Notifications

Approval is not a licence to disappear and reappear at the end. Building control needs to see certain stages before they are covered up, and it is your responsibility – or your builder's – to notify them. Typical notification points include:

• Commencement of work, before any digging starts.
• Excavations for foundations, before concrete is poured.
• Foundation concrete and any reinforcement.
• Damp-proof course and damp-proof membrane.
• Oversite before the floor slab is laid.
• Drainage, before trenches are backfilled and pipes are buried.
• Roof structure and any structural openings before they are closed up.
• Completion, so a final inspection can be carried out.

Give 24 to 48 hours' notice where you can, and take photographs of anything that is about to be hidden – pipe runs, insulation, lintels, steelwork. Photos have rescued many a completion certificate.

Unauthorised Work and Completion Certificates

If work is done without approval, the building control body can require you to alter or remove it. That is rare in practice, but it becomes a real problem when you sell: a buyer's solicitor will ask for evidence of compliance, and a missing completion certificate can stall a sale or knock thousands off the price.

When the work is finished and inspected, you should receive a completion certificate. It is not the same as a planning decision notice, and it is not the same as an electrical or gas certificate. Keep all of them together with your drawings and specifications.

Finally, a word of practical advice: talk to building control early. A five-minute phone call about your proposed layout or drainage route costs nothing and can save weeks of rework. Inspectors would far rather answer questions before the concrete goes in than explain afterwards why it has to come out.