Building Control Approval for Higher-Risk Building Work
The Construction Leadership Council (CLC) continues to meet on a weekly basis with the Building Safety Regulator (BSR), to address priority areas and maximise communication to the industry on building control approval for higher-risk building (HRB) work. This includes the establishment of a new task and finish group to consider the journey of a new project through the building control process for both the Regulator and industry to support the submission, assessment and timely approval of high quality and compliant building control applications for new HRBs. As part of this work the CLC intends to provide information and thereby greater clarity to applicants to help achieve successful projects and occupied buildings.
Initial outputs include the publication of a summary process map of the current building control application process for a new HRB. This document brings together for the first time a clear summary of the whole process from planning gateway one to gateway 3 and will evolve as required.
♦ Understand the whole building control application process – do not approach from just completing one single gateway stage at a time.
♦ Prepare for gateway 3 from the start – the documents relied upon for gateway 3 evolve through the whole building control application process.
♦ Provide clear and comprehensive applications – demonstrate compliance with the functional requirements of the Building Regulations – not just what, but the why and how compliance will be achieved.
♦ Ensure a high quality application – this includes both the plans and documents, and they are not an independent set of documents. Provide sufficient technical detail and cut down on superfluous information such as repeated extracts of the legislation.
♦ Submit complete applications – check you have followed the application requirements and have submitted the full list of documents for validation.
Over the coming weeks it is intended that more detailed information and advisory notes on specific elements of the process will be published. This will build on and compliment informative and helpful guidance by other stakeholder groups including Build UK.
