Building Control Bodies
The purpose of the Building Regulations is to ensure the health and safety of people in and around buildings and the role of checking that Building Regulations are being complied with falls to Building Control Bodies (BCBs).
Further information on the two types of BCB - Local Authority Building Control (LABC) and private sector Approved Inspector Building Control (AIBC) is available on the planning portal.
The role of building control is crucial to the maintenance of Robust Details as an alternative means of satisfying Part E of the Building Regulations. The Part E RDL Scheme depends upon building control bodies requiring builders to undertake pre-completion sound testing in new, attached dwellings in England and Wales unless the dwellings are registered with RDL and built in accordance with the relevant Robust Detail specifications. The Building Regulations impose these requirements on the person carrying out the work.
Each time a builder registers plots to be built using Robust Details, RDL provides a Purchase Statement. The builder is required to pass this on to the Building Control Body, preferably with their building control application but no later than the start of building work.
The Purchase Statement lists all of the individual registered plots and a unique registration number is assigned to each one and also shown on the statement.
The Robust Details Handbook, which includes the Robust Detail specification sheets and site Checklists, is an essential tool which can help both builders and building control bodies to ensure that separating walls and floors are built properly.
The builder is also provided with a compliance certificate for each registered plot and is required to sign each one when the relevant separating walls and floors are complete. The compliance certificate should be made available to the Building Control Body if requested.
In summary, the Robust Details process aims to ensure that the following is achieved without imposing an unreasonable burden on the building control body:
- The builder is only permitted to use Robust Details instead of pre-completion sound testing if the plots concerned have been registered in advance with RDL
- The builder constructs separating walls and floors strictly in accordance with the relevant specification sheets and Checklists and provides written confirmation of this in the form of a signed Compliance Certificate.
If the procedure outlined above is not observed in full then the dwellings must be subject to pre-completion sound testing. The only alternative to the RDL Scheme is pre-completion sound testing.
