When you’re coming up with a bespoke home building scheme, dealing with the planners is only half the battle. Architect Julian Owen explains how to ensure your project meets the Building Regulations and why it’s important to develop the details at the design stage

Planning and Building Regulations applications are dealt with entirely separately. So gaining planning permission it is not a guarantee that you will get approval under Building Regulations (or vice versa). In fact, the information required to meet Building Regs has little in common with that needed by the planners, and is assessed by a different method. There’s a large element of subjectivity at play when it comes to getting planning, whereas obtaining Building Regulations approval is, in many ways, simpler and more predictable. On the whole, if you follow the edicts set out in the relevant approved documents and technical standards, your project will be approved; and if you don’t, it probably won’t.

Designing to meet the Building Regs

While there’s a certain amount of negotiating room, in general it’s best to anticipate and design out any problems at the concept stage. Whoever prepares your planning application should also be intimately acquainted with the regs and avoid drawing anything that has to be modified because it contravenes them.

While the guidelines are widely available, interpreting them and ensuring they can be easily met on the ground involves experience from your designer and your building team. For example, your house may make use of the attic 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.