The warrant, and the inspections that follow it

What a warrant is, and when it is needed

A building warrant is permission from the local authority's building standards service to carry out work described in a specific set of drawings. It is granted before the work starts. That is the part people coming from elsewhere find unfamiliar: the approval comes first, and the drawings attached to it are the drawings the job is then built to.

A new house always needs one. So does most of what people call an extension, along with structural alterations, forming new openings, conversions and a good deal of drainage work. Some small work is exempt, and the exemptions are set out by the authority rather than by us. Where a client is not sure, the honest answer is that we ask building standards before a spade goes in, and not afterwards.

Planning permission and a building warrant are two separate things and they answer two separate questions. Planning asks whether the house should be there at all, in that form, on that plot. The warrant asks whether what is drawn meets the building standards. A job can hold one and still be waiting on the other, and work cannot start on either alone.

What goes in with the application

The application is a package, and a thin package comes back with questions attached. What goes in is prepared by the design team, and we read all of it before we price anything, because the detail that governs the build is rarely on the plan.

1. Location and site plansThe plot, the boundaries, the position of the house and the drainage running off it.
2. Plans, sections and elevationsEach sheet stamped and carrying a revision letter, which is the version the job is built to.
3. Structural calculationsFoundation sizes, lintels, joist spans and the roof design, prepared by the engineer.
4. The energy documentsInsulation values, airtightness and the ventilation strategy for the finished house.
5. The written specificationMaterials, build-ups and workmanship clauses that no drawing can carry.

Once the warrant is granted, that package becomes the site file. Nothing else has standing on the job.

What the warrant settles

The warrant settles the shape of the building, the build-ups inside its fabric, the foundation design, the drainage layout and the conditions the authority attaches to the work. Site hours and noise limits usually sit among those conditions, and they are the reason a job cannot simply run longer in the evening to catch up.

It also settles who has to see what, and when. The stages at which building standards want a visit are fixed with the warrant rather than agreed later, so the programme has to be written around them from the first day.

What the warrant does not settle is the ground. It approves a foundation design against an assumption, and the trench tells us whether that assumption holds. Where it does not, the question goes back to the engineer and the designer before any concrete goes in.

Inspections through the build

Inspections run right through a job rather than gathering at the end. The point of each one is to see something before it is covered up, so the timing is not a formality: an inspection missed at the proper stage is an opening-up exercise later.

1. Trench open, before concreteThe formation is seen as it was dug, at the depth the ground actually gave.
2. Drainage before backfillThe run is tested and seen in the trench, and the trench stays open until it has been.
3. Oversite before the slabThe build-up is seen layer by layer while each one is still visible.
4. Structure at wall-plateWall ties, cavity trays, lintels and the roof structure, before the covering goes on.
5. Final, before occupationBooked once the tests, the certification and the commissioning paperwork are in hand.

The completion certificate

The completion certificate is the document that says the work was built to the warrant. It is submitted by the person who holds the warrant and accepted by the authority, and it is accepted on the strength of the inspections made during the build and the certification handed over with it.

That is why the drainage test results, the electrical certification and the commissioning records are collected as the job goes along rather than hunted for at the end. Each of them is the evidence for something that is no longer visible.

The certificate stays with the house. A buyer's solicitor will ask for it years later, so the copy we hand over at completion is worth putting somewhere it can be found again.

Amendments, and why they are not site decisions

Work changes on site. Ground is softer than drawn, a client moves a door, a product is unavailable in the week it is needed. What matters is how the change is recorded. A change that touches anything the warrant approved is handled as a warrant amendment, submitted and approved in the same way the original was, and only then built.

Doing it the other way round is where jobs come unstuck. A house built slightly differently from its approved drawings has a completion certificate that will not be accepted without the difference being regularised, and regularising something already built is slower and more expensive than drawing it properly beforehand.

That is why the drawing register is opened on the first day. Every revision that lands is entered on it, the superseded sheet is pulled out of the site file, and the trades working that week are issued with the current version rather than told about it. Anything on paper about a warrant goes to works@livingstonpark.live, where the register is kept.