Understanding the Building Regulations

Simon Polley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317626169
• Edition: 6
• Topic: Architettura
• Subtopic: Architettura generale

Do you need a concise, jargon-free and compact guide to the UK building regulations?

Simon Polley boils down the regulations to their basic features, explaining the core principles behind them. Easy to read and light enough to carry around with you, this is the ideal introduction to a vital part of your remit as a building control officer, architect or surveyor.

Updated with the extensive 2013 changes, and illustrated with cartoons and diagrams.

Chapter 1

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The Building Regulations 2010

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The Building Regulations 2010 are a Statutory Instrument, 2010/2214, made under specific sections of the Building Act 1984. They impose requirements on people carrying out certain building work in England and Wales (excepted energy buildings only). It is important to note that compliance must be shown with these regulations and not necessarily with the contents of the Approved Documents, which are purely to give ‘practical guidance with respect to the requirements of any provision of building regulations’ (Section 6 of the Building Act 1984), and their use is not therefore mandatory.

The actual Regulations, which are discussed below, are split into ten parts concluding with six schedules:

• Schedule 1 – the technical requirements expressed in functional terms with which building work must comply;
• Schedule 2 – exempt buildings and work as referred to in Regulation 9;
• Schedule 3 – self-certification schemes and exemptions from requirements to give building notice or deposit full plans;
• Schedule 4 – descriptions of work where no building notice or deposit full plans required;
• Schedule 5 – revocation of regulations;
• Schedule 6 – consequential amendments.

Regulation 1: Citation and commencement

Regulation 2: Interpretation

A number of terms used within the regulations are explained. The significant ones are reiterated for information:

Building – any permanent or temporary building (or part of a building) but not any other kind of structure or erection.

Change to a building’s energy status – any change that results in a building becoming a building to which the energy efficiency requirements of these Regulations apply, where previously it was not.

Controlled service or fitting – a service or fitting where Part G, H, J, L or P imposes a requirement.

Dwelling – includes a dwelling-house and a flat.

Dwelling-house – does not include a flat or a building containing a flat.

Energy efficiency requirements – the requirements of Regulations 23, 25A, 25B, 26, 26A [26B and 25C Wales only], 28, 29, 40 and 43, and Part L of Schedule 1.

European technical approval – a favourable technical assessment of the fitness for use of a construction product for the purposes of the Construction Products Directive, issued by a European Technical Approval issuing body.

Excepted energy building is defined in Schedule 2 of the Welsh Ministers (Transfer of Functions) (No.2) Order 2009. In essence this only includes a generating station, and associated electric lines, pipe-lines and storage that are not used as a: residence; shop; office; showroom; canteen; or ancillary outbuildings.

Flat – separate and self-contained premises, including a maisonette, constructed or adapted for residential use and forming part of a building divided horizontally from some other part.

Floor area – the aggregate area of every floor in a building or extension, calculated by reference to the finished internal faces of the walls enclosing the area or, if at any point there is no such wall, by reference to the outermost edge of the floor.

Height – the height of the building measured from the mean adjoining outside ground level to a level half the vertical height of the roof or to the top of any walls or parapets, whichever is higher.

Institution – an institution (whether described as a hospital, home, school or other similar establishment) that is used as living accommodation for, or for the treatment, care or maintenance of, persons:

(a) suffering from disabilities due to illness or old age or other physical or mental incapacity; or

(b) under the age of five years,

where such persons sleep on the premises.

Public building – consisting of or containing:

(a) a theatre, public library, hall or other place of public resort;

(b) a school or other educational establishment [not exempted under Section 4(1)(a) of the Building Act 1984]; or

(c) a place of public worship,

but excluding a shop, storehouse or warehouse, or a dwelling to which members of the public are occasionally admitted.

Renovation – the provision of a new layer in the thermal element, unless solely as a flat roof repair, or the replacement of an existing layer, but excludes decorative finishes.

Room for residential purposes – a room, or a suite of rooms, that is not a dwelling-house or a flat and that is used by one or more persons to live and sleep in; includes a room in a hostel, a hotel, a boarding house, a hall of residence or a residential home, whether or not the room is separated from or arranged in a cluster group with other rooms, but does not include a room in a hospital, or other similar establishment, used for patient accommodation, and, for the purposes of this definition, a ‘cluster’ is a group of rooms for residential purposes that is:

(a) separated from the rest of the building in which it is situated by a door that is designed to be locked; and

(b) not designed to be occupied by a single household.

In these Regulations, thermal element means a wall, floor or roof (but does not include windows, doors, roof windows or roof-lights) that separates a thermally conditioned part of the building (the conditioned space) from:

(a) the external environment (including the ground); or

(b) in the case of floors and walls, another part of the building that is:

(i) unconditioned;

(ii) an extension falling within Class VII of Schedule 2; or

(iii) where this paragraph applies, conditioned to a different temperature, and includes all parts of the element between the surface bounding the conditioned space and the external environment or other part of the building as the case may be.

Paragraph (b)(iii) only applies to a building that is not a dwelling, where the other part of the building is used for a purpose that is not similar or identical to the purpose for which the conditioned space is used.

Regulation 3: Meaning of building work

One of the first tasks with respect to any proposal is to establish whether it is building work and hence requires a submission under the Building Regulations. Building work is defined as:

(a) the erection or extension of a building;

(b) the provision or extension of a controlled service or fitting in or in connection with a building;

(c) the material alteration of a building, or a controlled service or fitting;

(d) work required by Regulation 6 (requirements relating to material change of use);

(e) the insertion of insulating material into the cavity wall of a building;

(f) work involving the underpinning of a building;

(g) work required by Regulation 22 (requirements relating to a change of energy status);

(h) work required by Regulation 23 (requirements relating to thermal elements);

(i) work required by Regulation 28 (consequential improvements to energy performance).

Where building work under Regulation 3, (g), (h) or (i) does not constitute a material alteration then that work need only comply with the applicable requirements of Part L.

A material alteration occurs if the work, or any part of it, would at any stage result in a non-compliance, where it previously complied or, if it did not comply with a relevant requirement, by it becoming more unsatisfactory. Only Requirements A, B1, B3, B4, B5 and M, relating to structure, fire safety and disabled access, are relevant to a material alteration. Examples would include an opening in a load-bearing wall, erection of new internal partitions giving rise to increased means of escape travel distances, or the removal of a disabled toilet or access ramp.

Regulation 4: Requirements relating to building work

Building work, as established above, must be carried out in accordance with the relevant requirements listed in Schedule 1. These include the structural stability of the building, means of escape and fire safety, resistance to moisture, ventilation arrangements, drainage, stair design, thermal insulation and facilities for disabled people. To comply with one requirement should not cause a non-compliance with another requirement.

Where compliance with the relevant requirements of Schedule 1 was not originally shown, the building work shall not make the situation more unsatisfactory than it was before the work was carried out.

Regulation 5: Meaning of material change of use

From a building regulation point of view a material change of use only occurs where the use of a building is changed to:

(a) a dwelling;

(b) contain a flat;

(c) a hotel or boarding house;

(d) an institution;

(e) a public building (as defined in Regulation 2);

(f) a building no longer exempt...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 The Building Regulations 2010
• 2 Approved Document to support Regulation 7: Materials and workmanship
• 3 Approved Document A: Structure
• 4 Approved Document B: Fire safety
• 5 Approved Document C: Site preparation and resistance to contaminants and moisture
• 6 Approved Document D: Toxic substances
• 7 Approved Document E: Resistance to the passage of sound
• 8 Approved Document F: Ventilation
• 9 Approved Document G: Sanitation, hot water safety and water efficiency
• 10 Approved Document H: Drainage and waste disposal
• 11 Approved Document J: Combustion appliances and fuel storage systems
• 12 Approved Document K: Protection from falling, collision and impact
• 13 Approved Document L: Conservation of fuel and power
• 14 Approved Document M: Access to and use of buildings
• 15 Approved Document P: Electrical safety – dwellings
• Further information
• Index