I wanted to get involved with the building control myself as I was told by the architect that it’s best that you appoint the building control otherwise builder might find their mates so best to be on the side of caution.
You can go to private building control company or your local council. I found that council building control was a little cheaper and turnaround was also quicker. This however turned out to be potentially costly and time consuming mistake…
If you go to private company they will have to give council 5 days notice before the works commence whereas if you go to council you have to give two days notice.
Another thing that I wish I knew earlier is that you can do two types of applications:
Full plans or Building notice.
They cost the same but Full plans will be examined in more detail and will be checked for any inaccuracies making sure that issues are known before the work starts rather than during the work. It takes longer hence need to be submitted in advance before the works start our council has 5 weeks to two month to check the plans and make a decision. So if you have time it might be worth sending your plans for a full check-up by your local council. More details on the topic here:
The issue was that Council Building control took almost two month after submitting to come back to me and say that floor joist calculations done by the architect were wrong! We almost finished the flooring at that point and had to readjust and delay to re-calculate and re-do the whole floor! I don’t know if the private would have been better or quicker, possibly you would have a bit more leavy and in the worst case you can switch from the private to council but not other way around! So if you can do Full plans or Building notice as that will let you know before the works start if there are any issues with the architects calculations.
Another thing that needs to be done before the works start is to arrange a photographic survey of the public road next to your property so in case of any damage that was there you are not charged afterwards. Any damaged pavement tiles or road might be claimed against you in case if no survey was done. That is all written in the council decision so make sure read it all as it contains other important bits of information. The survey was done very quickly – I called on Friday afternoon and some one was at my house on Monday morning making pictures.
When do the works start?
Does putting up scaffolding counts as commencement of works?
Another “headache” was to do with when do the building works start. My builder said that scaffolding doesn’t count as commencement of works and some private building control companies also said that putting up scaffolding doesn’t count as long as we don’t actually start any work on roof. However when I phoned my local council building control number the lady on the phone insisted that it does and I can’t actually put up scaffolding before giving council notice…
So I did do two days notice of commencement of works and when person from building control turned up he was actually surprised that I asked him to come to see that no works have been done and I’m about to commence works as per any building control guideline I have found online. He said that it’s not strictly necessary, my guess is that it is since there is even a field in the form on the building control website but it is a bit of waste of time as it will be logged at the “first fix” visit when some of the works already started.
In hindsight, I should have gone with what my builder was telling me but I wanted to follow the guidelines and wasted few days as a result.