Cross border building control given green light

The market for building control services could see more competition and choice after a government statement this month gave the green light to local authority building control departments to work outside their own boundary areas – competing against their neighbour authorities and private sector Approved Inspectors.

In a written ministerial statement, DCLG minister Don Foster said on 4 July that council building control departments could now set up trading companies and – if they pass the Construction Industry Council assessment process – qualify as Approved Inspectors.

The statement added that the right to do so had in fact existed since the Localism Act 2011 became law, but only came to light this year when the Department for Communities and Local Government looked into the issue.

This followed a request from a local council – believed to be Ashford Borough Council in Kent – which wanted to flex its wings and had raised the issue with government under the Red Tape Challenge.

Paul Everall, chief executive of representative body Local Authority Building Control, said that he did not anticipate that these newly-discovered rights would be exploited widely.

“It may be taken up by a handful, but local authorities would need to think about the costs involved in setting up a trading company, completing the rigorous approval process, and then running the risk of upsetting their neighbour authorities,” he said.

But Jerry Burchell MCIOB, team leader in the building control department at the London Borough of Wandsworth, said that the statement was in line with ongoing plans at Wandsworth and other London boroughs, although its strategy did not involve becoming an Approved Inspector.

Burchell pointed out that local authority building control teams can already check plans submitted in a different council area under the LABC Partner Authority Scheme – for instance if a client has developed a good working relationship with a building control team after three projects in one borough and wants to use them to check plans for a fourth project in a neighboring borough. However, the actual site inspection work always has to be carried out by the “resident” building control team.

Burchell said the next step would be for building control teams to offer their regular clients a full service in neighbouring areas, and said that discussions with other London and some Home Counties authorities on creating a “single market” were already progressing.

“If there was a pan-London agreement in place, we could approach the head of building control at Lambeth for instance, and ask if they were happy for us to do the work. They would get a fee from us [of 5-10%], whereas if the work went to an Approved Inspector they’d get nothing.”

Burchell also predicted that some local authorities would follow the Approved Inspector route, especially if a commercially-minded local authority was close to one that had scaled back its building control team.