The failure in implementing 100% Hackitt

I’m going to go against convention here with this post. It’s a personal view as a building control professional of 17 years, it’s the view of someone who has worked for two local authorities and handful of Approved Inspectors.

I don’t agree with the 100% implementation of the Hackitt Report in its current form. In fact I admire its content but I don’t agree with some of its core principles. That is not to say I don’t think the construction industry needs reform, it does. It needs to be more holistic in its approach to the delivery of a project. It needs to be from conception all the way through to end of life demolition with safety as the benchmark throughout.

My biggest criticism of the report is how it has been manipulated and been interpreted in a way which has set a wedge between sectors of the building control industry and how it has allowed itself to be moulded in to a dystopian vision orchestrated by LABC.

The Hackitt Report identified that there is a cultural issue across the sector, which was described as a ‘race to the bottom’. There are multiple factors in this ‘race’ but regulatory compliance is not the defining factor. It’s a side effect of an industry that does not always facilitate good practice.

Dame Judith also stated that there is insufficient focus on delivering the best quality building possible in order to ensure that residents are not only safe, but feel safe in their homes or places of work.

As a charted surveyor working in Building Control I have poured over the Hackitt Report and feel that her view on that we don’t need a new regulator is the right and one which seems to have been ignored. Her wish on page 8 of her final report was that existing regulators come together and bring their collective expertise and knowledge to bear in a very different way to deliver a stronger and better regime that will benefit everyone.

This isn’t what has happened and this isn’t what LABC (as the countries largest provider of building control) have been doing. Since the publication of the final report LABC has siloed themselves as the proposed sole arbiter of building regulations in complex scenarios. They have isolated themselves away from the Association of Consultant Approved Inspectors (ACAI) and the Building Control Alliance (BCA), they have gone alone and without consultation, established a competency framework supported by building control courses and qualifications using the public purse. But don't be fooled into what looks like a noble attempt to raise industry standards, it isn’t because it’s not open to those outside the LABC framework.

Even this week at a Policy Connect event on building regulations in the House of Commons, ACAI were excluded and denied representation. The reason is abundantly clear when you view the speech by Lorna Stimpson. In the video from the event she in effect slanders the Approved Inspector profession as immoral, corrupt and at the behest of main contractors/clients in what we approve or sign off, all these comments without any evidence, only assumptions. There is an agenda to make sure that they present professionals working within the Approved Inspector system as incompetent.

Its been avoided thus far but it has to be recognised that Local Authority Building Control are not the panacea in building regulations. It is on the whole an underfunded and understaffed, inefficient service. Tragic events within high rise buildings in the last 10 years where LABC were the custodians of the regulations and the building stock show this. And I am not painting Approved Inspectors as saints when I state this, Grenfell could have happened to any of us, I’m merely pointing out that the proposed guardians of the regulatory function on high rise buildings in the Hackitt Report are not by default a safe pair of hands and have been subject to more cuts in service than their private sector counterparts.

This division we now see could have been eliminated. The regulatory function of building control within the Hackitt Report should, and could have been managed through the Building Control Alliance, a body which purports to represent the whole of the industry but in this instance they have failed to do so. This very failure by the BCA could also be considered as an indictment against the building control sector in that following an event as pivotal as Grenfell the last meaningful communication from the group was over 6 months ago and it was the only news item by the BCA in 12 months! As an industry that isn’t good enough and the BCA needs reforming by its stakeholders for the post Hackitt era to reflect the needs of the whole industry.

Approved Inspectors have been around for 30 years and they have made a positive contribution to the delivery of a regulated built environment as a licenced, insured and competent group of professionals and organisations. Any change to legislation should place this contribution at its heart rather than cast it off with the carrot of services being used by LABC teams should they so wish. The fact of the matter is that we would never be asked to undertake the function even if service delivery at LABC suffered as a consequence.

BCA state in their mediation document used by Approved Inspectors and LABC that:

“It is absolutely fundamental to the standing of Building Control as a whole that this relationship stands as a model of exemplary professional interaction. Both Government and Industry rely on the building control service to focus on efficiency and high compliance with minimum burden”

The above statement should form the basis for the whole building control industry but ladies and gentlemen we are currently failing the very people we should be protecting. We need to move forward as one with both Approved Inspectors and Local Authority Building Control providing a competency based, licenced, insured and regulated service through governance by the CIC and the stewardship of the Building Control Alliance for the benefit of all.

The days of separating competence, service delivery and regulatory function have to stop. We need to reflect and the LABC need to recognise the misrepresentation of Approved Inspectors does nothing but damage the industry as a whole because if clients cannot choose their regulator they need to know that the people supporting the process, whether it is on the side of the duty holder or the regulator hold the same level of competence, qualifications and governance and this is what we should all be striving for.