Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what assessment he has made of the National House Building Council’s role in overseeing building regulations.

Under the current system, Approved Inspectors such as NHBC are independently monitored and regulated by CICAIR Ltd to carry out building control work in England (and Wales). CICAIR Ltd is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Construction Industry Council (CIC) and the approval process it operates provides a route to registration as an Approved Inspector.

The Building Safety Regulator will be responsible for oversight of the competence and performance of building control professionals and the building control bodies in which they work, taking a wider view of the professionalism and culture that needs to support building safety in all classes of work, not just in-scope buildings. To do this, we are introducing a system of oversight of the performance of building control bodies (Local Authorities and Registered Building Control Approvers), and a system of individual registration based on competence and adherence to a code of conduct, all overseen by the Building Safety Regulator.