When settling on a realistic home building scheme, dealing with the planners is only half the battle. Architect Julian Owen explains how to ensure your drawings meet the Building Regulations and why it’s important to get this right

Part 5 Building Regulations & technical design

A lthough they are both primarily concerned with keeping the council happy, planning and Building Regulations applications are dealt withentirely separately. If you are granted planning permission it is not a guarantee that you will get approval under Building Regulations and vice versa. A completely different set of people deal witheach and sometimes there seems to be no discussion or communication whatsoever between them, even when officers who work for the same local authority are involved. The information required to meet Building Regulations has little in common with that needed by the planners and it is assessed by a different method. There is a large element of subjectivity at play when a planning application is scrutinised. The personal views of the planning officer, the chief planner and the committee may all influence the scheme that finally gets approval.

Obtaining Building Regulations approval is, in many ways, simpler and more predictable. In England and Wales, the government publishes a set of rules called the Approved Documents. These tackle each aspect of building construction and set out how to comply with the regulations. On the whole, if you follow these edicts, your project will be approved, and if you don’t it probably won’t.

Designing to meet the Regs

There is a certain amount of negotiation to be had but it is possible to anticipate and design out any problems at the concept stage. Whoever prepares your planning application must be intimately acquainted with the Regulations and avoid drawing anything that has to be modified because it contravenes them. For example, your house may make use of the roof space, with rooflights for the first floor bedrooms set just above the gutter line. This may sail though the planning committee without a murmur of objection. If the cill height of the rooflight is over 1.1m, however, it will not pass the regulation that says it must be low enough for an occupant to easily climb out if there is a fire.