Spotlight on NHBC Building Control

Celebrating 30 years and looking ahead to the new building regulations

NHBC has grown to become the largest single Building Control Body in the UK and this year celebrates its 30^th anniversary. Diane Marshall, the organisation’s Head of Technical Services, looks back over the last 30 years and ahead to how the changes implemented by the Housing Standard Review, which came into effect on October 1^st, will impact the house building industry.

In 1985, NHBC launched its Building Control service as the UK was on its way to producing record housing levels by the end of the decade. From the very beginning, the service has helped to raise standards of new homes via comprehensive design checks and site inspections and now carries out upwards of 400,000 inspections each year for building control. It has also helped NHBC’s builder customers to build quality homes that comply with the Building Regulations across England and Wales for the hundreds of thousands of new home owners over the last three decades.

Rewind to the mid-80s when NHBC launched its building control in England and Wales, the service was limited to three story houses. However, there have been several significant changes during this time, as the service has developed to cater for a wider range of properties – from single plots, to large scale mixed-use developments, London skyscrapers, landmark commercial projects and even the conversion of the Grade II listed Roald Dahl Museum. 1985 also saw the introduction of NHBC’s innovative Type Approval system. As the name suggests, Type Approvals are a useful tool if builders propose to build standard house types and details. Type Approvals of a repeat design, can helpfully speed up subsequent sites as it will always be accepted by NHBC throughout England and Wales. Recent changes to the Type Approval system now also allow specific Type Approvals for house types used exclusively in England or Wales.

Additionally, Building Regulations have evolved over the years from prescriptive requirements to a more open system of functional requirements which give the designer greater choices. Early involvement of NHBC Building Control in a project therefore allows designers to consult building control professionals on their innovative solutions and ensure that they meet the requirements early on. Another major change was the increase in popularity of timber frame construction in the late 1980s, which has further evolved to a rise in the use of prefabrications and MMCs. As a result, keeping our technical staff up-to-date with regulations if of key importance; the last 30 years has seen an ever increasing rate of change as well as some of the approved documents becoming specialist in nature, such as Approved Document B – fire Safety and L – Conservation of Fuel and Power.

New century, new developments

In 2000, NHBC became the first Building Control body to invest heavily in a state of the art IT system, which made the business paperless and transformed the way the organisation interacted with customers.

New initiatives have continued over the years, with the launch of NHBC’s customer portal to make submission of information even faster, while this year has seen the introduction of a new TechZone, an online technical resource which includes Building Control Plus; a fully interactive platform which includes all Building Regulations and supplementary resources in one place.

Looking ahead, the industry is now in the process of embracing the challenges set by the Housing Standards Review. Earlier this year in March, shortly before the dissolution of Parliament, the then coalition government issued the final results of its wide ranging review of the many statutory and non-statutory standards that house builders were being asked to design and build to. Running to just over 4000 pages of legislation, regulation and guidance, the comprehensive package completely changes the basis for building regulations that have been in place as far back as the 1667 London Building Act, ie. to set the minimum standards for all new buildings.

The review, which was commenced in 2013, was launched as a ‘tidying up’ exercise to deal with ‘complex, overlapping or contradictory housing standards’, replacing over 100 different policies and standards into a single set of national standards, most of which are published in the Building Regulations.

The final results of the review sees the introduction of Optional regulations in Part M – Access and also Part G – Water as well as a new mandatory regulation for all new housing Part Q – Security as well as a National Space Standard which has not been placed in the building regulations.

The future

Having spent the last six months digesting the new regulations and understanding the complexities of what lies ahead, we hope that the industry will adopt the changes relatively seamlessly, but we are here to help builders adapt.

Looking ahead, this landmark year provides an opportunity to think about ways in which NHBC Building Control can further support its builder customers. Needless to say NHBC Building Control will continue to innovate and support builders, and homeowners, by providing a rigorous, independent third party check on the design and construction of the UK’s new homes.

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