In Part 1 we looked at the way the sectors had emerged through the Government opening up Building Control to competition back in 1985.
We examined how Building Control existed in the hey days of 1970s with bad haircuts, brown envelopes to help get plans approved (I once recall fivers fluttering on the reception floor as I thought the envelope handed over was an application) and building inspectors moonlighting as bar owners, shopkeepers or even builders.
Far fetched? I remember walking on site to see a familiar man waving down at me as he pointed a chimney. The white overalls that he, my boss, the head of building control, wore were functional. He could shed them after lunch and walk into the office without any mortar splashes. He’d probably also drawn the plans for the work. And approved them. Happy days.
But our story is now fast forwarded to the 1980’s with capitalism tooth and claw.
Greed is good!
Gradually, both sectors had found common ground to discuss common professional issues and with an interplay of staff between Council and Approved inspector and vice versa a uniformity of approach was perceived to exist. We competed but were the same profession. Jane and Joe had both started in the public sector but one was now Head of Building Control at a Local Authority and the other had started their own Approved Inspector business. Any disagreements existed on a granular level. Joe rang Jane when he’d been a bit late with an Initial Notice. Jane continued to push the “use us or we’ll lean on planning to kill your project” card. Harmony existed.
MHCLG or the DoE as it was then, handed out regulations and guidance like various tablets of stone and then shut up shop and refused to tell anyone how to interpret them. “Approved Documents” said how you could achieve requirements but they were not the only way. As both sectors struggled to work out a common approach they actually got closer still.
The Institute of Building Control was subsumed by the RICS. Building Control then became a sideshow rather than a central stage issue.
CABE was left to being a wide ranging professional body and steered a path of technical excellence trying hard to not upset any of it’s members. It’s most heavily thumbed pages were the “Determinations” where we got an insight into smoke alarm batteries, spiral stairs and disabled WC widths.
Peace reigned.
Some may argue that it was Grenfell that changed this but the fractures had actually occurred way before then. Grenfell shone a light on the major issues including those that are larger than Building Control itself but the main reason for a split in this “truce” was the political aspirations of one group.
The ACAI (The Association of Consultant Approved Inspectors) represented the private sector but in fact just looked inward. It was a club, with an executive team that met monthly and acted as a sounding board for its members who primarily were too busy running businesses to be that bothered about the workings of government. It sent representatives to meetings with the government MHCLG and august bodies such as the Building Control Alliance etc., but largely kept to being a member organisation being in the political loop so its members didn’t have to bother. Many of the Executive Team were ex-LA and knew the score and in truth just used the ACAI to get a heads up for their own businesses. The NHBC representative apparently regularly changed hats in meetings to suit their own ends. If there were 2 overall aims it was keeping in touch with what Government were planning next technically and being up to speed with CICAIR (the Construction Industry Council Approved Inspector Register) that acted as the regulator for the private sector and set it’s performance standards.
From humble beginnings, CICAIR now is responsible for registering 80+ private sector Approved Inspectors who range from one-man bands to major companies with serious private investment. The company appointed by the government is responsible for setting performance standards and ensuring they are met. CICAIR not only registers new AIs but makes sure that they are meeting standards or they can be admonished, suspended or sometimes even have their license revoked. They oversee the AIs and keep them in check – they do not represent Approved Inspectors just like the FCA does not represent banks nor OFCOMM represent TV stations, broadband providers, etc.
Overall the private sector gradually gained roughly over 50% of all construction activity including the prestigious projects where developers wanted a more responsive service. Much of the work came from architects who knew they could quickly get advice not hang on a council switchboard pressing 5 for Planning and then holding infinitum.
The private sector had initially been in competition with the Local Authorities but in reality after a few years they largely competed with each other not the councils. All of this kept pricing in check but also capped the amount of expansion each AI could achieve. To win work you needed staff and to get the best staff you needed to pay more.. but if you did you’d need to raise fees and then lose work. It was a bit of a knife edge but kept it all stable.
You’ll sometimes hear the phrase “race to the bottom” in the context of how AIs have cut service levels to cut costs and that has resulted in shoddy work being unseen or “let go.” There may well be cases of that; Aedis the Approved Inspector that spectacularly failed, was not sending out staff to jobs and relying on photographs instead – it also cut down inspections to save money. Rogue individual inspectors within an AI company also do exist and they too can cause problems if they’re not winkled out in time. But let’s be real here. We all know Building Inspectors who have played golf on a Friday afternoon instead of working and some let’s face it are not that good – at golf or inspections. There are good and bad inspectors in both sectors and it’s why tighter control of both sectors is needed.
LABC (Local Authority Building Control) in the past had just been a subscription-based organisation on par with ACAI that was seeking to push LA Building Control to developers primarily to ensure their members secured work and were able to compete against the evil private sector with their secretaries and mobile phones and slick offices. You’d see them at construction shows trying to sell something that people thought they already used. They had a well-executed plan of almost shaming developers into supporting the “local community” that worked.
LABC originally was represented by a man in an ill-fitting cheap suit touring the country and pushing the benefits of LANTAC (the house type approval scheme) to Heads of Building Control in Local Authority and leaving them with a branded tea coaster, a wet handshake and an invoice for their subscription. In general those Heads looked on this with bemusement and LABC was seen as “kind of obligatory” and never understood fully what they were paying for. In the main office we knew the man from LANTAC had been as we had new scale rulers and one or two of us were ordered to “get out and fly some flags”.
Then a miracle occurred.
Forget mouse mats and promo bugs for your monitor. We’re suddenly talking twin-insulated aluminium coffee cups.
LABC suddenly emerged from its previous dull cocoon and seemed to be able to throw a bit of weight around. It suddenly had full time staff, took over nice offices in central London and it looked very confident. The guy who previously looked like an out of work taxi driver had a smart business card and a better suit. He still talked about LANTAC but now there was a new product to push. There was a new brochure. There was a slick website and those giveaway pens now were Parker – not plastic. Had they won the lottery? No, a lottery win is a one off. Instead, they’d found a cash cow that could be milked for many years.
LABC Warranty was born.
It’s a great business model. Simply marvellous. The public sector offers it’s community facing, locally-employed Building Control to developers but additionally also promotes a product they can’t offer but the private sector can… and they in turn get paid a commission on each project. Not the local authority mind you. They sit there with their ring-fenced budgets and yearly round of cuts. No, the commission gets paid by the warranty company to the LABC (set up as a private company). They also additionally receive the member subscriptions from each Local Authority. Oh, and sponsorship.
It’s a money machine. The warranty company have unprecedented access to the developers with no competitors. The LABC simply collect the cheque. In 2021 the company income was £4 million +.
Let that figure sink in for a minute.
LABC Ltd is a dormant company – see here – but the District Surveyors Association T/A LABC is the main administrator, here on company house.
LABC aren’t doing anything illegal. They’re just making a lot of money from the private sector and channelling it to promote the Public Sector.
LABC keep attacking private sector money but are funded by it. “Whoosh” is the noise as the fact sails over their head.
A lack of irony.
Like Alcoholics Anonymous being sponsored by Smirnoff.
Staff aren’t lacking though – there’s 25 listed on their website. They probably have more staff than most councils have surveyors.
How do building control staff employed in councils feel about that? How do elected members view it? Do they have a say?
Back at a local level if you, as a developer, don’t take up the council offer of Building Control you sometimes get a passive threat : “We note your decision and will bear it in mind if you plan to build here in the future”. And “did we mention we have close links with the planners?”
“Great” says Mr Developer through gritted teeth “Where do I sign?”
Kerrching!
And yet according to LABC, private building control companies are “…allowing developers to choose their own regulator” and so the developer is choosing the regulator that allows them to build badly. We’ll come back to that grand statement in Blog post part 3 but the damage has been done because LABC said it to MPs as part of their witness statement for the Building Safety Bill hearings. They were unchallenged.
The developer could always stick to their guns and choose another warranty provider. They can always choose Premier Guarantee. This is effectively the same company as LABC Warranty with the same private sector warranty surveyors but under a different brand – which also offers a private approved inspector service instead of the LABC building inspectors.
Good isn’t it?
As LABC got richer it became more vocal and local authorities themselves even started to believe them. “We are better than the private sector,” they thought. Well, no you are just two different services. One is enforcement-based and the other is audit-based.
LABC became cash-rich as LABC warranties increased and they in turn received more commission from the privately owned warranty company who in turn became richer and promoted LABC warranty more.
It could exert a lot of sway. Not just with campaigns but the luxury of full-time staff chipping away with the same message. They could influence the elected members, the MPs, the other public sector bodies.
If they were PSG they’d have signed Messi. They did the next best thing and (wait for it) employed as their CEO the civil servant responsible at the DoE for Building Control – Paul Everall. He was a well-respected, lovely chap used to balancing the needs of the private and public sector so he always looked awkward in his new role pushing just one of those causes. For a while his stewardship may have tempered the anti-private sector rhetoric – he certainly took a balanced view back in 2019 when interviewed by Inside Housing about Grenfell – here
At his retirement party nobody saw the irony as he was presented with a painting of the Fire of London. Let that one sink in as well.
LABC was now in a different league. It could operate like a large business – because in effect that’s what it was. It was not constrained by having to report to councillors and all that democratic nonsense. It could fire up the war machine and really do some damage to the private sector that was not only the antithesis of lofty Public Sector work ethics – but was also costing them a lot of money.
Nobody anywhere was trying to get the whole profession together.
Nobody from either Public or Private Sector could bury the hatchet and get 8 – 10,000+ direct and indirect employees in the Building Control industry to work for the common good.
The staff in the trenches – public and private – were just doing their job.
The ACAI were trying hard to not upset anyone.
The LABC were trying to be a business.
DoE / MHCLG / <Insert new name here> were trying to avoid constricting design by deliberately not prescribing the rules in enough detail to allow them to be followed with any confidence.
What did developers / clients / architects / the public think?
Well, who knows. Nobody engaged.
Our whistle stop journey has reached the new Millennium… so what’s next?
Register to receive Part 3 and follow the journey
Please share widely 🙂
The Secret Building Inspector 
One thought on “The Building Safety Bill – Part 2 – Follow the Money”