We're putting up internal walls, new radiators and electrical circuits, one replacement window. Should I have involved Building Control already?

[Lexilicious]

Job to make two bedrooms out of one large one, and reverse an earlier open plan arrangement in living room, has grown legs a bit.

We are now doing almost fully new electrical circuits, not just like for like replacements of sockets. Using a Part P qualified sparky so he will certify his work, of course.

Builders have advised that the windows for the two bedrooms (original room had two, so we're not actually knocking through a new window aperture) are not compliant with current building regs for fire escaping. Do I really have to replace them? What would trigger a Building Control inspection other than me putting in some plans?

We might put in plans later to put on a bit of a porch, if they came to inspect that, surely they couldn't point at non compliant windows and say "oh by the way, get those replaced while you're at it", could they!

You don.t necessarily trigger them but ty could see the windows etc when they come for the porch. Why don,t you just show them the plans ESP if thy inc electrics?

thing is that by the time we do the porch it won't be evident that we did anything other than redecorating the other parts. And I'm sure that what we're doing doesn't actually need permission.

What I mean is they surely can't say that if you (e.g.) lay new flooring you should do windows too? Regs on windows can't be retrospective?

Hmm, no I'm being contradictory... I was confident before that we were sub-building control, and that the certification by the electrician would be all we needed. Now that the builders think we need to replace both the windows (one needed a replacement glass panel because the double glazing vaccuum had failed), I'm wondering whether I now need to submit some plans.

Zero structural work, no gas, no externally visible changes other than this/these windows.

Why don't you phone your council planning regs dept and pose this as a hypothetical alteration and see what advice they give?

Windows require fensa certs

I believe windows and electrics don't need separate Building Regs if you use appropriately certified people - FENSA for windows and NICEIC for electrics. They will issue you with a certificate of compliance once the works are done for building regs purposes.