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If your in the process of building it may be good to know what's happening to Building Control The good idea department decided that after Grenfell they would set a building inspector standard through legislation: Building Safety Register (BSR) So after the 6th April 2024, if "inspectors" are not Registered Building Inspectors (RBIs) it will be a criminal offence to work as a building inspector. You will be able to check on line to see if an inspector is registered and what inspections can be carried out by the inspector. (tell me if you know where this is..) https://buildingsafety.campaign.gov.uk/making-buildings-safer/building-safety-regulator-news/regulating-the-building-control-profession/#:~:text=After April 2024%2C if they,passed an independent competency assessment. However Lack of funding and lack of skilled people means there is presently a shortfall of qualified inspectors who have the qualifications. https://www.housingtoday.co.uk/in-focus/race-against-time-before-april-are-we-heading-for-a-building-control-inspection-crisis/5127866.article https://www.deeside.com/building-inspector-shortage-and-safety-reforms-strain-councils-in-wales/ https://www.building.co.uk/focus/race-against-time-before-april-are-we-heading-for-a-building-control-inspection-crisis/5127835.article As if the weather isn't enough to contend with....

This is more of a comment than a question. For all that the principle of sips has been around since the 1930s, we have found a staggering level of ignorance about them from people who youwould expect better from. At first, just finding builders who were interested in doing the stonework proved problematic as some shied away or I had to explain what sips are to them, even though it's really just like doing it around timber frame. Needless to say we went no further with those ones. Then we found that even our building inspector knew nothing about them & was/is *highly* suspicious of them, querying even their approval status & forcing us to do research for him quite literally every step of the way as well as adding some silly restrictions demonsrating a complete lack of understanding of the system (at least one of which would cause quite a loss of heat if we went along with it). The most recent person has been a window company "surveyor" who has also been very reticent to deal with the build, with some weird ideas (I thus spoke to this big national window company's *senior* "surveyor" about the delays this has caused & had to actually also explain to *him* too what sips are!) At its basic it is simply a much improved form of timber frame of course, but it has been an eye opener at how narrowly educated such a wide variety of the trades are & how nervous at the thought of anything "new". Our builders have just got stuck in, it has to be said, but if I were doing this again, or was advising someone just about to, I'd say to definitely double check that your building inspector had dealt with sips before, ditto any other trades who would be coming on site to interact with the structure - not because there is any issue whatsoever with sips, (in truth a lot of things are actually far simpler with it), but because of how poorly educated the trades from BCOs onwards seem to be about anything beyond brick & block & how nervous they are about anything different & the delays this can cause due to imaginary issues they may develop.