Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that accountability for compliance with building regulations cannot be transferred to another party.

Responsibility for ensuring building work complies with the building regulations rests with the person carrying out the work, and where appointed the principal designer and principal contractor, not with the building control body. Inspection and sign-off of building work can be provided by local authorities and private sector Registered Building Control Approvers. Where an RBCA is appointed, through an initial notice, responsibility for building control transfers from the local authority to the RBCA, which becomes the building control body for that work. Formal enforcement against the regulations can only be undertaken by LAs; where an RBCA encounters breaches of the building regulations that are not rectified they should revert the work to the relevant LA.