The post-Grenfell era of a much more rigorous policing of building safety throughout projects is going to leave a lot of business casualties in its wake.
The collapse of Northamptonshire approved building inspector PWC Building Control Services has reportedly left 15,000 projects waiting for their completion certificates in the lurch, their paperwork passed over to already hard-pressed local authority building control (LABC) offices.
Unfortunately for those private-sector approved inspectors who can’t make the grade under the new Building Safety Regulator’s (thankfully) stringent guidelines, this is only the tip of the iceberg.
It is believed that there are 95 private sector firms currently operating, but that some will, like PWC, finding their insurers no longer support them if they don’t have the required registration and licence.
The big question for housebuilders is, can LABC pick up the slack?
More major building control providers disappearing will mean the 1.5 m homes looks like pie in the sky
James Parker Managing editor of Housebuilder and Developer
New registration
What has changed? Well, from April this year, in England only building inspectors registered with the Building Safety Regulator are allowed to do building control work, under the new title of RBI (registered building inspector).
This means they have to complete the Regulator’s assessment of competence, and PWC’s was one which was not completed to the required level by the deadline; the financially-challenged firm (with £10m debt versus £5m turnover) wasn’t able to redress the situation before being liquidated after its licence was finally removed in August.
This major firm’s demise is one of the first signs that the new building safety regime brought in by the Building Safety Act has real teeth, and worrying consequences for lack of compliance.
Short-term, the LABC says private clients and developers left in the lurch will now see their schemes passed over to local authority building inspectors and have to pay once again for their services to get projects signed off in order to sell.
A more robust system?
The good news is that over 4,000 RBIs have been registered with the regulator (as of August), with many predicting that only around 2,000 would be passed.
Despite this, other, smaller firms like ARS in Darlington have already gone into liquidation after failing to get insurance cover, and observers believe there are more to come.
Also, there are only two insurance firms underwriting inspectors currently, according to Inside Housing.
Developers were formerly able to work across several local authority boundaries at once, by not needing to form relationships with LABC, and instead using private sector firms to obtain completion certificates.
Depending on how many private approved inspectors don’t make the cut, more and more developers may be required to now return to working closely with local authorities, which will be more time consuming for everyone, but ultimately provide a more standardised, and potentially robust system.
A legacy of loose regulations
Affected housebuilders now glumly approaching LABC with their ongoing projects ready and waiting for completion certificates will be in trouble if they haven’t got their documentation straight, including comprehensive hi-res photo diaries of work done.
A few more major building control providers disappearing will mean the 1.5 million homes promised by Labour starts to look like pie in the sky.
This is the legacy of decades of sub-standard rigour and loose regulation of building control, which has seen a deterioration in oversight and a lack of coordination since private sector operation was allowed by Thatcher’s Government (and subsequently widened by John Major).
The new Building Safety administration is getting a grip, and this new, daunting landscape is what a robust system looks like, and there cannot be safety gains across the board without pain.
Hopefully we will come out the other side with a much more transparently credible, competent, and cheat-proof system, but there will need to be a lot of people recruited to fill the gaps.
James Parker is managing editor of Housebuilder and Developer and Architects Datafile
