LABC has a web site here and this page lists 10 good reasons for building control.
But it is one of those services government allowed to privatise.
Some say, the privateers cherry pick the best jobs leaving local authorities those jobs that are hard to fulfill for the fee.
That results in the privateers being able to offer better money and poaching many inspectors from local authorities.
In my experience, the privateers often bundle up building control and structural warranty insurance into one package. They wear two hats. Building better and wriggling out of a future claim.
I find that the privateers rarely come to site, but worse: they show no flexibility to recognise that a situation on site can be built better than the architect envisaged on the drawing board months earlier.
When I have tried to use my initiative, for instance at the bottom of the dig for an underpin if I find the soil is quite different to what was expected, and I try to do a better job, if I call in the inspector to see it his response is to write a report that I am not building to the drawing - which might have become impossible given what we found.
The report means if the client claims on his structural warranty, he will be turned down because of the discrepancy.
But you cannot stop having excavated an underpin for 2 months while the architect is brought back and draws a new specification. The house might fall down.
Whereas the local authority inspector is much more likely to agree that the method on the drawing clearly won't work and agree the initiative to do a better job.
I find local authorities useful sometimes but privateers not on your side at all.
Do clients change their minds as the build progresses? Every day. You don't want to be tied to the drawings over every unimportant detail or else your very expensive warranty has very little cover left.
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But big changes are on the way.
You can read an article (March 23) about them
here.
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