What happens if you fail to comply with Building Regulations?

If you fail to comply with the Building Regulations, the Building Control Partnership has a general duty to ‘enforce’ the Building Regulations on behalf of Fareham and Gosport Borough Councils and Portsmouth City Council. This is to ensure the health and safety of the public and to protect the environment. We will do so by informal means wherever possible.

To avoid such situations, make sure you make an application to us in building control (and to your local Planning department if appropriate) before you start any work and ensure you/your builder call us out for regular site inspections. If issues arise on site we can work with you to find solutions and enforcement powers are therefore rarely used.

Building Regulations can be contravened by:

  • Not following the building control procedures set out for handling your building work
  • By carrying out building work which does not comply with the technical requirements contained in the Building Regulations – which would come to light during the inspections carried out by the building control service.

The Legal background

If a person carrying out building work contravenes the Building Regulations, their local authority or another person may decide to take them to the magistrates’ court where they could be fined up an unlimited amount for the contravention, and up to £50 for each day the contravention continues after conviction, and/or imprisonment for up to two years. This action (under section 35 of The Building Act 1984) will usually be taken against the builder or main contractor, although proceedings should be taken within six months of the offence being discovered and within two years of the offence being committed.

Alternatively, or in addition, the local authority may (under section 36 of The Building Act) serve a Compliance Notice and/or a Stop Notice on the owner requiring them to alter or remove work which contravenes the regulations, or, in the case of a serious risk of harm, to stop work. If the owner does not comply with the Compliance Notice, the local authority has the power to alter or remove the work itself and recover the costs from the owner. If the person on whom the Stop Notice was served does not comply with a Stop Notice they could be fined an unlimited amount and up to £50 for each day the contravention continues after conviction, and/or imprisonment for up to two years.

What happens if you disagree with a local authority’s compliance or stop notice?

Normally a local authority’s compliance notice will give you 28 days to rectify the building work.

If you wish to contest the notice on the grounds that you believe your building work does comply with the Building Regulations, you can advise your local authority that you would like to commission a written report from a suitably qualified person with a view to persuading the authority to withdraw the notice. In this event the 28 day period to rectify the building work is extended to 70 days. Alternatively, you can appeal against the notice in the magistrates’ court and demonstrate that your building work complies. This option can be used either as an alternative to the above, or if proceedings under that option have been unsuccessful. You should make your appeal within 28 days of receiving the notice or within 70 days if you have used above option first.

If you are successful with either option, your local authority may have to pay your costs.

If, on the other hand, you believe that your work cannot be expected to comply with one or more of the requirements in the Building Regulations because they are too onerous or inapplicable, you do have the right to apply to your local authority for a relaxation or dispensation of the requirement(s) in question in order for your completed building work to be considered to achieve compliance. Your application should be made within 28 days of receiving the compliance notice from your authority. If they refuse your application you have a right of appeal (in England) to the Building Safety Regulator or (in Wales) to the Welsh Assembly Government against that refusal, providing you do so within 21 days of that decision.

Impact on selling a property

Notwithstanding the possibility of enforcement action, you should bear in mind that, if the local authority considers that building work carried out does not comply with the Building Regulations and it is not rectified, the authority will not issue you with a Completion Certificate and the contravention may come to light through a local land search enquiry when you wish to sell your property. (A Completion Certificate proves the work was inspected by building control and complied with the minimum requirements of the Building Regulations and is the document you will need should you re-mortgage or sell the property in the future.)

Registered Building Control Approvers

Where a Registered Building Control Approver is providing the Building Control service, the responsibility for checking that the Building Regulations are complied with, will lie with that Registered Building Control Approver. They will mainly do this by advising you. However, they do not have enforcement powers. In a situation where they consider your building work does not comply with the Regulations they will not issue a final certificate and will cancel the initial notice submitted on your behalf by notifying the local authority building control service. If no other Registered Building Control Approver takes on the work, the building control service will automatically be reverted to the Local Authority Building Control Service. From this point on your local authority will have enforcement powers to require you to submit a Reversion application which will incur a charge and alter any non-compliant work previously carried out.

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