Building Control Issues

[Adele Tractor]

Hello there, I have just joined buildhub so I hope I am using this forum correctly. My partner and I are at the very beginning of our 1st house self build and we went with the local council building control as they were considerably cheaper than private and we are building on a shoe string. After the very brief first site visit, we have found him almost impossible to contact. He won't answer the phone and doesn't respond to emails. We have done all our ground clearance and are ready to get the foundations done before autumn kicks in, but can't move forward until we can iron out the issues he raised. Can I ask what peoples experiences are with council run building control vs Private and can people let me know what a reasonable time limit is, to get a response for general questions and then more in depth issues. Trying to understand what is the norm so we may work with realistic expectations in how we plan and run this build. Thanks, Adele

[Mr Punter]

Hello @Adele Tractor and welcome.

 

Private or Local Authority, building control are overrun with work and do not have time to talk to you.  You need to work out how to comply and they will check the plans and visit key stages.  They will probably only visit site 3 or 4 times.

 

Why don't you post what you are unsure about on here and see what replies you get?  There are lots of members with considerable skill and experience.

[Adele Tractor]

Thanks for your reply. I do appreciate they are really busy, and not looking for them to come up with the solutions. We are having issues with the B5 compliance, we had contacted the fire service who said they needed to talk to the building control officer. Our officer said to forward the information over to him which we did immediately. This was 2 weeks ago and he is not replying to any of our attempts to contact him, even though he has mentioned the issue to our structural engineer while disusing a different issue. Its cost us money and time. We are now unsure of how to proceed.

[Mr Punter]

You can often make contact with the fire service and I have found them quite helpful.  Did the fire service speak to BC?  Were they happy with your proposals?  Did the fire service bring this up as an issue at planning stage?  They will often relax some guidelines for a single dwelling.

[ETC]

Do you have BC Plan Approval?

What is complicated about B5 compliance?