The inspectors who certify new UK homes as safely built aren’t apparently liable if the homes are defective. This can’t be right.
How safe are our homes? This is a question with a tragic resonance these days as the public inquiry into the Grenfell Tower fire continues. The Building Regulations (currently the 2010 version) and the guidance outlined in the associated ‘approved documents’ provided, we thought, a basic level of comfort as to the adequacy of fire protection, structural integrity, sanitation and so on. Further, these standards are policed by Local Authority Building Control officers or otherwise by so-called approved inspectors (AIs), their private sector counterparts, who provide the final certificates confirming compliance. Professionals who are responsible to us for discharging their role with reasonable skill and care, one would assume.
