Building Design near you

The 2023 amendment regulations named the roles. A client can be an organisation or an individual and will often be a developer or the building owner; a domestic client is any individual who has building work carried out on their home, or the home of a family member. The principal designer is the person or organisation appointed to control design work when multiple designers are involved. The principal contractor is the person or organisation appointed to manage building work when multiple contractors are involved.

Domestic clients have duties of their own under the regime — allocating time and resources, appointing designers and contractors, and cooperating with the other participants — which is a change from the way most homeowners think about a building project. The regime is about making sure that at each stage the dutyholders are identified and their roles, responsibilities and expectations are clear.

The competence requirement is the operative part for anyone buying design. It is not a qualification test administered by an authority; it is a duty on the individual and on the organisation, backed by a duty on the client to take reasonable steps to confirm it. Practically, that means asking for evidence of relevant experience and asking who is the principal designer on your project, and getting the answer in writing.

Separately from the building regulations dutyholder regime, the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 place duties on designers. Regulation 9 says a designer must not commence work in relation to a project unless satisfied that the client is aware of the duties owed by the client under the Regulations. That is a stop condition at the very start of a job, not a box ticked later.

When preparing or modifying a design, the designer must take into account the general principles of prevention and any pre-construction information, to eliminate so far as reasonably practicable foreseeable risks to the health or safety of anyone carrying out or liable to be affected by the construction work, maintaining or cleaning the structure, or using it as a workplace. Where risks cannot be eliminated, the designer must reduce or control them through the design and provide information about the remaining risks to the principal designer, and ensure appropriate information is included in the health and safety file.

The designer must also provide sufficient information about the design, its construction and maintenance to assist the client, other designers and contractors to comply with their own duties. On a domestic project, regulation 7 transfers most of the client duties to the contractor or principal contractor, or to the principal designer where there is a written agreement to that effect — the general client position is covered in the project management guide in this catalogue and is not repeated here.

Planning permission is about whether the development is acceptable in land-use and design terms. Building regulations approval is about whether the construction meets technical standards. GOV.UK is explicit that building regulations approval is different from planning permission and that you might need both. Getting one does not imply the other, and the drawings for each are different documents.

For building regulations in England and Wales, you may apply to your local authority's building control department or to a private registered building control approver. Higher-risk buildings — GOV.UK gives the criteria as 7 or more storeys or 18 metres or more in height with at least two residential units, along with hospitals and care homes — go to the Building Safety Regulator instead. That is a block-of-flats question rather than a house question, but it matters if your project is in one.

Some work can be notified on your behalf by a tradesperson registered with a competent person scheme rather than requiring its own application. GOV.UK warns why it matters either way: without approval you will not have the certificates of compliance you may need when you want to sell your home.

A building design fee reflects how many stages you are buying and how many consultants have to be coordinated. The variables are the scale and complexity of the building, how much survey and investigation is needed up front, whether the scheme needs a full planning application, how much specialist input — structural, services, acoustic, heritage — has to be brought into the set, whether the designer takes the project through building control, and whether construction stage support and inspection are included. A percentage fee, a stage-based lump sum and an hourly rate all describe the same work differently, so compare deliverables rather than headline numbers.

LokalMatch does the introduction, nothing else. Describe the project once, give your postcode, and designers who cover your area get in touch with you directly. Homeowners never pay to use the site; the professionals pay for the requests they receive. LokalMatch does not design buildings, does not set fees and does not vet, rank or recommend anyone — so ask each respondent about competence and the principal designer role before you appoint.