Building Control

Building Control has a long history going back many hundreds of years, first recorded in the time of King Herod who introduced a law which stated that

‘Should a man construct a building which falls down and kills another then this man should be slain ’.

The first Building Control legislation within England dates back to the aftermath of the ‘Great Fire’ of London in 1666 when fire had spread rapidly between buildings. Shortly afterwards in 1667 the London Building Act was introduced which sought to achieve some degree of fire resistance in buildings.

In 1875, the Public Health Act was introduced to bring a degree of consistency. This required urban authorities to make byelaws for new streets, with regard to the structure of buildings, to ensure stability and prevent fires, and in respect of health matters to provide for the drainage of buildings and the provision of air space around buildings. The Local Government Board in response issued the first model byelaws for new streets and buildings as a guide for urban authorities making their own byelaws. These byelaws were further extended in 1905 to cover the whole of the country. This was because the Industrial Revelation, where many local authorities were faces problems because towns were expanding and the great need of housing.

A new concept of building legislation was developed with the introduction of the Public Health Act 1936. A single model series of controls regarding the construction and condition of buildings was introduced, together with the use of British Standards to indicate satisfactory compliance. This was a major step forward towards the legislation we have today.

The first national Building Regulations was introduced in 1966. For the first time the requirements they contained were mandatory and therefore local authorities who had their own local byelaws in force, had no choose but to enforce them.

In 1984 the Building Act came into force and consolidated a number of acts that were applicable to Building Control.

Bellow I’ll list the acts and the legislations which I think they are related to the primary services:



· The building act

· The building regulations

· The water act 1991

· The land drainage act 1991

· The gas act 1995

· The electricity act 1989

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