Building notice, full plans or a competent person: which applies to your job
Regulation 12 gives you two routes, and regulation 12(6) takes both away for a lot of house work. Here is how to tell which one is yours.
Which route applies depends on who does the work. Regulation 12 of the Building Regulations 2010 gives you two: a building notice, or an application for building control approval with full plans. Regulation 12(6) then removes both where the work is Schedule 3 work done by a registered scheme member, who signs it off instead.
The short version
- A building notice is the fast route, not the cheap one. Nothing is checked before you build.
- Full plans is checked on paper first. The authority has five weeks, and the answer is one you can rely on.
- For a large share of house work it is neither, because a scheme member self-certifies and sends a certificate within 8 weeks of completion.
- A building notice is barred on three kinds of job, and the one that catches houses is building over or near a public sewer.
Start here
Two routes by default, and a provision that removes both
The question worth asking is not whether your job needs building regulations approval. It is which of three routes it is on, because that decides when you start and how long you wait.
Regulation 12 sets the default and it is short. A person intending to carry out building work must give the relevant authority a building notice, or give an application for building control approval with full plans. That second phrase is the current name for what most people still call a full plans application.
Then comes the provision that settles most domestic jobs, and no page written from the building control side puts it near the top. Regulation 12(6) says a person is not required to give a building notice or an application with full plans where the work consists only of work described in column 1 of the Table in Schedule 3 carried out by a person described in the corresponding entry in column 2, or work described in Schedule 4, or work in Schedule 3A inspected by a third party certifier appointed before work starts.
Read that as a homeowner and it is simple. Hire somebody registered for the exact thing you want doing and there is no application at all. Not a quicker one. None. Planning permission and listed building consent are separate systems entirely: planning permission, building regulations and listed building consent.
If nobody on the job is on a scheme and the contract is silent, the notice does not give itself. It lands on you as the owner, so agree in writing who is giving it.
The comparison
What each route costs you in time
The routes differ in the thing that matters to a homeowner: when somebody looks at the work. A building notice buys speed. You give a description of the work and a site plan, no drawings, and regulation 16 lets you start once at least two days have elapsed since the end of the day it was given. The checking happens on site while the work is open, and if the officer dislikes what they find it is already built.
Full plans buys certainty instead. The authority must tell you the outcome within five weeks beginning with the date it receives the application, or within a longer period you agree in writing. Five weeks before a spade goes in is the right trade on anything structural, anything you are borrowing against, and anything where being wrong means taking the roof off twice. Self-certification is neither.
| Route | What you submit | When work can start | What is checked, and when | What you end up with |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Building notice | Description of the work and a site plan. No drawings | Two clear days after it is given | Nothing beforehand. On site, as the job proceeds | A local authority completion certificate, if they are satisfied |
| Application with full plans | Full drawings and a specification | In practice once the decision is in | The plans, before work starts, then on site | A decision you can rely on, then a completion certificate |
| Competent person self-certification | Nothing. There is no application | Immediately | The scheme member is responsible. The scheme audits them | A scheme certificate within 8 weeks, and the council is notified |
The three exceptions
Three jobs where a building notice is not available at all
In three cases regulation 12 takes the building notice away and full plans is the only route. Two are uncommon. The third catches ordinary houses.
Regulation 12(3). The building is one to which the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 applies, or will once the work is done. A private house is outside that Order. The block of flats it sits in is not, and neither is a flat over a shop.
Regulation 12(4). The work includes erecting a building fronting onto a private street. If your road was never adopted by the highway authority this is live, and most owners on unadopted roads do not know it.
Regulation 12(5). The work is subject to paragraph H4 of Schedule 1: building over or near a drain or sewer shown on the public sewer map. Check this one first.
The sewer trap, and why it turns a two week job into a six week one
Plenty of homeowners assume the pipe under the garden is theirs. If it carries a neighbour's flow it is very often a public sewer, and it is on the water company's map whether or not a manhole cover tells you. Put a garage, an extension or a set of footings over or near that line and H4 bites, the notice route closes, and you are on full plans.
Then it gets slower again. Regulation 15 makes the authority consult the sewerage undertaker on H4 work, and stops it granting approval, or giving a completion certificate, until fifteen days have passed unless the undertaker answers sooner. Stack that on the five week determination and a job priced as a fortnight on site has six weeks of paperwork in front of it. Found before design it costs a phone call, found once the trench is open it costs the programme.
Before anybody digs. Ask the water company for a sewer map before you commission drawings, not after. If a public sewer crosses the footprint you need a build over agreement as well as a full plans application, and neither waits for the other.
None of the above
For a lot of domestic work, nobody applies for anything
Regulation 12(6) is why most homeowners have never filled in a building notice. Where a competent person scheme covers the work, the person doing it self-certifies and the scheme tells your local authority, and some work is not notifiable at all.
How a competent person scheme works
Schedule 3 is a table. Column 1 describes a type of work. Column 2 names the bodies whose registered people may do it without an application. Where the two line up, the person doing the job self-certifies that it complies, and the scheme tells your local authority on your behalf and gives you a certificate within 8 weeks of completion as evidence of compliance. That is why a scheme member can start on Monday when the same job through a building notice cannot.
The entry for replacing the covering of a pitched or flat roof names two bodies and excludes solar panels. That entry, and what to do when your roofer is on neither scheme, is in do I need planning permission to replace a roof.
Schedule 4 is the second exit: work that is not notifiable at all, whoever does it. Swapping a WC, basin, bath or shower where the drainage is not altered. Putting insulation into a roof space, where it is not being done in order to comply with a requirement of the regulations. That last qualifier matters, because insulation as part of a re-cover usually is, and then it is notifiable. That trigger is Part L on a re-roof or loft conversion, and what goes in is on our insulation page.
The three questions to ask whoever quotes you
- Are you on a competent person scheme for this type of work? A firm registered for one trade is not covered for another.
- Are you notifying building control, or am I giving the notice? Registration on its own produces nothing. The notification produces the certificate.
- Which route have you assumed, and is the building control charge in your figure?
Ask all three of everybody who prices the job and write the answers on the quote. A no to the first is not a reason to drop a good quote. It means somebody gives a building notice, and that somebody is normally you. What else belongs on the paperwork: what a roofing quote should include.
Solar panels sit outside the roof covering entry, so a roofer's registration does not carry them, and they have their own planning class too: rooflights, dormers and solar. A flat roof rebuilt as a warm roof rather than a cold roof changes what has to be shown.
Who does the checking
Your building control body, and the name that changed in 2024
You also choose who does the checking, and the name of the private option changed two years ago. There are two kinds of building control body in England: your local authority's building control department, and a private sector business. Until 2024 that private business was called an approved inspector.
It is now a registered building control approver, and the individuals inspecting have to be registered building inspectors, registered with the Building Safety Regulator, part of the Health and Safety Executive. The Building (Registered Building Control Approvers etc.) (England) Regulations 2024 came into force on 6 April 2024, and initial notices from approved inspectors who had not registered ceased to be in force on 1 October 2024 on work that is not higher-risk.
Two uses for that. Both registers are public and searchable on gov.uk, so you can confirm the business is registered and that the individual turning up is a registered building inspector. And it dates the person advising you: anyone still saying approved inspector is working from material at least two years old.
For a one-off job the local authority is usually the practical choice. They hold the records for your address, they are who a conveyancer writes to, and they are who you apply to if the work is already done.
At the end
The completion certificate, and work that is already done
The certificate is the only part of this still standing in ten years, and the part that turns up in your sale.
On both local authority routes, regulation 16 requires a completion notice within five days of the work being finished. The authority then has eight weeks from receiving that notice to give you a completion certificate, if it is satisfied the requirements have been met. Read the wording on it: "evidence (but not conclusive evidence)" that they have been complied with. A compliance record, not a workmanship warranty.
On the competent person route it comes from the scheme instead, within 8 weeks of completion. Either way, put it with the deeds. A conveyancer asking for sign-off years later is how this subject usually reaches a homeowner.
Regularisation, for work already done
Regulation 18 lets the owner apply to the local authority for a regularisation certificate, for unauthorised work carried out on or after 11 November 1985. You apply in writing with a description and plans of what was done. The authority can require the work to be opened up for inspection, testing or sampling, and if it is then satisfied it may give a certificate.
Two cautions. Opening up is a real instruction, and on a roof it means scaffold and stripping. And the certificate is discretionary: the regulation says the authority may give one, not that it must.
Next steps
What to do, in order
- Write down what the job involves, element by element. Route is decided per piece of work, so one job can sit on two routes at once.
- Rule the sewer question out before you pay for drawings.
- Ask everybody who quotes the three questions above and keep the answers with the quote.
- If nobody is on a scheme, choose on the risk rather than the speed. Structural or expensive to redo means full plans.
- On full plans, allow the five weeks from receipt and do not book a start date inside it.
- Chase the certificate and file it with the deeds.
- If the work is already done with no paperwork, apply for regularisation before a buyer's solicitor does.
If you want somebody to look at the job and say which route it is on, that is what a site visit is for. Thomas comes out and puts in writing what he found. What we cover is on the roofing page, and you can ask for a free written itemised quote.
This page sets out the general position in England under the Building Regulations 2010. It is an explainer rather than legal advice, and your council's building control team will confirm your own case. In Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole that is BCP Council, whose page on checking whether you need approval is the place to start; elsewhere in Dorset it is Dorset Council.
Questions
Common questions
What is the difference between a building notice and full plans?
A building notice is a short notice with a site plan and no detailed drawings. You can start two clear days after giving it, and nothing is checked until the officer inspects on site. An application for building control approval with full plans is checked on paper first, and the authority has five weeks from receipt to tell you the outcome.
Do I need building regulations approval if my contractor is on a competent person scheme?
No application is needed. Regulation 12(6) of the Building Regulations 2010 removes the requirement for a building notice or full plans where the work is described in Schedule 3 and is carried out by a person registered with the body named against it. The scheme notifies the council and sends you a certificate within 8 weeks of completion.
When can a building notice not be used?
In three cases. Where the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 applies to the building, where the work includes erecting a building fronting onto a private street, and where paragraph H4 of Schedule 1 applies, meaning building over or near a drain or sewer shown on the public sewer map. In all three, full plans is the only route.
Is an approved inspector the same as a registered building control approver?
It is the same job under a new name and a new regulator. The Building (Registered Building Control Approvers etc.) (England) Regulations 2024 came into force on 6 April 2024, and initial notices given by unregistered approved inspectors on work that is not higher-risk ceased to be in force on 1 October 2024. Individual inspectors must now be registered building inspectors with the Building Safety Regulator.
What happens if the work was done without building regulations approval?
Apply to the local authority for a regularisation certificate under regulation 18, which covers unauthorised work carried out on or after 11 November 1985. The authority can require the work to be opened up for inspection and testing, and it may then give a certificate. Do it before a sale rather than during one.
Read next
Related advice
The guides below pick up where this one leaves off, and the roofing page covers the work itself and the places we cover, if you would rather have the job looked at.
Who wrote this
Thomas Hannen
Thomas owns Bournemouth Roofing & Building and prices every job himself instead of sending somebody else. The company is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, number 15471719, registered in England and Wales. If you want to talk something through before you commit to anything, the site visit and the written itemised quote are both free.
Free quote
Not sure which route your job is on?
Thomas comes out himself, goes over the job properly and puts in writing what he found, what it would take and what building control will want to see. The site visit and the written itemised quote are both free.