Home buyers get access to Building Control reports

From April home buyers will be able to access Building Control reports for houses they have purchased.

The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) has released a circular letter which notifies of a revised Building Control Performance Standard 7 due to come into force on 1 April 2017.

Standard 7, which covers communications and records, has two new requirements. Under the changes Building Control bodies will be required to provide site inspection records to the building owner, on request, for all building work that has been issued with a final/completion certificate or where an initial notice has been cancelled. They will be able to charge for this on a cost-recovery basis.

Until now the reports compiled during the building of new houses have been unavailable to the new purchaser. The reports detail the progress of the house at key build stages and include any defects identified by the independent professional approved inspector. Making these reports available will also highlight how many quality checks have been made and at what stage.

The move has been welcomed by Local Authority Building Control (LABC). A spokesman said: “LABC welcomes the circular letter. We see this as part of the wider discussions (in part triggered by complaints about new homes and the work of the APPG on the quality of new homes) on standards and quality in the building industry.

“It’s more than new homes. Changes of practices in construction, the loss of people in the industry during the recession, EU workers, a growing economy, technical innovation and government targets for one million new homes have all contributed to challenges and issues.”

The LABC says it has issued guidance and is helping its members to implement these changes in the short time available. Separately it has briefed the main providers of Building Control software to local authorities so that the systems and processes can be easily amended.

The spokesperson added: “There is a bigger picture and LABC has been consulting with local authorities and is already putting a new framework in place to review and uplift best practices, standards, records and training. And it’s not just about new homes. LABC is looking across all segments.”

Private sector providing of building inspection services, including NHBC, will have to to provide the same service.

A spokesperson for the Home Builders Federation (HBF) said they were not aware of the upcoming changes, but knew there had been growing calls for the reports to be made public.

The spokesman said: “It sounds ideal, my only concern would be that the reports could be difficult for most lay people to understand and they might not have the experience or technical background to fully grasp them.”  

The issue of falling housing standards and overall quality of construction has been becoming more high profile recently. In February house builder Bovis Homes announced it was slowing its construction programme by up to 15% this year to boost overall build quality and had set aside £7m to cover remedial work and compensation for poor quality construction on its homes.

The move came as the group admitted customer service standards “fell significantly” during 2016 after being dogged by complaints about homes sold unfinished and with electrical and plumbing faults.

Kevin Stewart, minister for local government and housing in the Scottish Parliament, also recently convened a summit of professional bodies – including CIOB and Institution of Structural Engineers – and construction experts at which he expressed his grave concern over the issue of falling construction quality and lack of quality control procedures in the wake of the Edinburgh schools debacle and challenged the industry bodies to take steps to sort it out.

New home warranties reviewed

The Competition and Markets Authority has just begun a review of NHBC’s undertakings following an investigation by the former Monopolies and Mergers Commission. The undertakings were aimed at enabling builders to choose between providers of new homes warranties and to enable proper competition in this market.

The review will seek to understand whether there has been a change of circumstance in the market for structural warranties for new homes since NHBC gave its undertakings in 1995. The CMA says: “If this has taken place, the we will decide whether to vary or remove the undertakings. We are now consulting with builders, warranty providers and mortgage lenders, as well as other relevant stakeholders and are seeking to gather the majority of evidence by 20 April.”

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