Obtaining Copies of Building Regs Documents

[Ferdinand]

Has anyone tried obtaining the docs on an existing house, or know what their status is?

 

My understanding is that Planning Documents are essentially public, and Building Regs docs are essentially private ie I can't get a copy.

 

I am going to see what my Council says, but I have 2 agendas here:

 

1 - I am planning work on my house (rebuilt from 3 walls and a hole after nearly-demolition12 years ago by the previous owner),  to extend somewhat and improve the fabric, and it would be useful to know as much as possible.

 

2 - I plan to write to my MP suggesting that all Building Regs documents become basically public, as one response to the Grenfell Enquiry. And as a way of introducing a culture to encourage scrutiny.

Any perspectives would be most welcome.

 

Cheers

 

Ferdinand

 

 

[TonyT]

Fife Council has their drawings on line that you can do a search and find all the drawings for a property.

Is it not the same for the local area where you live?

[Onoff]

I don't know if each LA has it's own rules but I got the drawings for our place, extended and reroofed in the late 1980s just by asking nicely about 4 years ago. Got paper copies, foc, taken from a microfiche. Tbh the quality isn't all that. I did thereafter ask for a scanned file that I could blow up myself. Although promised over the phone it never materialised.

 

They were hand drawn planning drawings but have all the timber and steel sizes on. They reference "supporting calculations" which I couldn't get unfortunately. 

 

Until you ask etc. Don't forget many are working from home so something like digging through microfiche archives might not be seen as a priority.

[Ferdinand]

4 hours ago, Onoff said:

I don't know if each LA has it's own rules but I got the drawings for our place, extended and reroofed in the late 1980s just by asking nicely about 4 years ago. Got paper copies, foc, taken from a microfiche. Tbh the quality isn't all that. I did thereafter ask for a scanned file that I could blow up myself. Although promised over the phone it never materialised.

 

They were hand drawn planning drawings but have all the timber and steel sizes on. They reference "supporting calculations" which I couldn't get unfortunately. 

 

Until you ask etc. Don't forget many are working from home so something like digging through microfiche archives might not be seen as a priority.

 

The ones I am trying for will only be 2008-9 so microfiche should not be involved.

 

4 hours ago, TonyT said:

Fife Council has their drawings on line that you can do a search and find all the drawings for a property.

Is it not the same for the local area where you live?

 

I have heard stories on both sides.

 

And I have never seen a clear answer from mine.

 

A couple of years ago some BR information - eg if it had cavity venilation or not, suddenly came onto  the website. When asked the rationale was budget savings so people could check themselves. It seems they had just added a layer of data.

 

But at the same time the large scale maps (down to about 1:250 online) vanished, presumably for the same reason - and it now something strange. The previous ones allowed things like gaps between houses to be worked out quite reliably to plus or minus a few inches, which was great.

 

Despite a convo with the Council's mapping officer I never got to the bottom of it.

 

F  

[TonyT]

https://www.fife.gov.uk/kb/docs/articles/planning-and-building2/planning/planning-applications/view,-track-and-comment-online
 

 

here is the website for Fife Council.

just type in address etc and find info and click away. 
 

failing that maybe you can contact the architect And get copies of info?

[the_r_sole]

You can usually request them if you have an "interest" in the property and you have to request access from the copyright holder (usually the architect)

There's far too much intellectual property in that level of detailed drawing to publish them publicly