£20m Funding to Boost Building Control

LABC HAS SECURED over £20m in new funding to build capacity in public service building control.

The funding, from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC), is being delivered over a three-year period.

It will enable the recruitment of around 110 Trainee Building Control Surveyors and the provision of over 2000 accredited courses of education to existing public service building control surveyors.

Building Regulator

The Building Safety Act 2022 brings new responsibilities and obligations for public service building control. The Act makes ground-breaking reforms to give residents and homeowners more rights, powers, and protections. The creation of the new multi-faceted Building Safety Regulator, reflects the key recommendations from the Independent Review of Building Regulations and Fire Safety, led by Dame Judith Hackitt.

The new trainees will gain the skills, knowledge and experience to competently support the existing public service building control teams, as these teams support the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) in the regulation of Higher-Risk Buildings (HRBs).

Their level 4, 5 and 6 education will be provided by LABC. Experiential learning will be gained through their secondment into a local authority building control team, working alongside skilled and experienced building control professionals.

Once a trainee successfully completes each stage of learning and has gained sufficient experience, their competence will be validated by the Building Safety Competence Foundation (BSCF). Proving their competence in this way will enable them to register to practice as Registered Building Inspectors with the Building Safety Regulator.

Lorna Stimpson, LABC Chief Executive

LABC Chief Executive, Lorna Stimpson, said ‘We are delighted to have secured this funding and to provide much needed additional resources for our local authority members in England.

“Building control surveyors are both a scarce commodity and a profession which has an ageing demographic; ‘growing our own’ at this time is fundamental to the continued development of public service building control and provision of support to the BSR.”

​LABC represents all local authority building control teams in England and Wales. LABC teams are independent, impartial and not for profit.

Building control services were de-regulated by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government in 1985. In 1997, John Major’s government introduced the ‘approved inspectors’ regime, which allowed private companies to appoint and pay their own building inspectors.

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