Expired private building control companies

We are aware of several approved inspectors (these are private building control companies) whose professional indemnity insurance may have expired. This means these uninsured private companies cannot continue to lawfully provide a building control service and can cause them to cease trading. In the past the largest of these private companies tried to pass work-in-progress on to other approved inspectors. This is illegal.

What to do if your approved inspector no longer has the insurance cover required to trade

If your building project is being administered by an approved inspector who can no longer provide the building control service for you, then you need to do the following:

Step 1

The approved inspector or the person carrying out the works (the builder) must cancel the existing initial notice which was originally lodged through us. To do this please complete the following Section 52 cancellation notice form and return it to us.

Section 52.[docx] 14KB

Step 2

If building works have not started:

You can choose to use our building control service or a different approved inspector to administer your building project.

If building works have started:

Any work not covered by a lawfully issued final certificate must be passed back to us to ensure compliance with the building regulations. When passing uncompleted work back to us after issuing your Section 52 cancellation notice, you will need to complete our reversion application form.

Reversion Application [docx] 13KB

Important information to note about reversions:

  • when work is ‘reverted’ to us, you will need to provide us with as much information as possible to help us determine how the work (so far) complies with the relevant building regulations. This includes any plans, documents, structural designs, site inspection and records, your approved inspector might have made available to you
  • we are obliged by law to carry out this process and charge a levy fee for work that is reverted to us. Our charges are:
    •  £395 (not including VAT) for processing a straightforward reversion project
    • £49.50 per hour on top of the initial charge of £395 (not including VAT) for more complex reversion applications that require more work and time to process

If the time processing your reversion application is less than the value of the initial £395 then we can arrange for a refund that reflects any underspend. 

Step 3

Once we have the information required in step 1 and 2, then our highly experienced and qualified building control surveyor will assess all these details and advise you of the next steps in the process. Please note if we cannot ascertain compliance with any particular aspects of the building work, we may have to ask for certain elements to be uncovered for inspection. We aim to keep any such possibility of this to a minimum.

 

Our service is here to assist you through the process so that you can attain a Building Regulation Completion Notification and have building works that comply with the requirements of the building regulations.

Dealing with reversions from approved inspectors is a statutory duty of all local authorities - the approved inspector's ability to trade and the issue of any previously paid fees is outside our remit or control. We are aware that many people have been affected by this (including thousands of homeowners across the country) who may be out of pocket and facing the prospect of having to open up works previously inspected by a private inspector.

We share everyone's disappointment that no public comment was made by CICAIR, ACAI or MHCLG about this.

All complaints related to the behaviour of any approved inspector should be directed to their designated body Building Safety Regulator (appointed for this purpose by the Secretary of State) in the first instance and to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) thereafter.