News

Judging has just finished for this year’s LABC Grand Final Building Excellence awards. Our panel of judges, made up of industry experts, had a tense day of debate - but emerged with the winners of the 14 categories from our shortlist of regional winners. 

Our awards showcase buildings and design teams that have had to tussle with complex technical or construction issues and building site constraints. They highlight innovative and creative solutions and building control professionalism that leads to safe, sustainable and high quality construction projects.

LABC's annual President’s Reception marks the handover from the current President to the holder of the post for the following year.

The 2018/19 President will be Dave Sharp, Principal Building Control Surveyor from Wrexham County Borough Council (pictured above, being formally introducing by Chris Griffith-Jones.)

Also on the night...

The first of LABC’s level 6 fire safety surveyors receive their certificates from the Institution of Fire Engineer’s Neil Gibbons (centre):

Bhavesh Patel from Hertfordshire Building Control was named Trainee of the Year in front of 150 attendees at the LABC President’s Reception last week.

LABC has welcomed the prosecution in Manchester Crown Court of an Oldham based property developer whose project saw the complete collapse of the roof and the injury to one person.

Riaz Ahmad employed builders with no experience and who demolished almost every internal wall and support before an Oldham Council building surveyor informed the HSE and served a Prohibition Notice.

LABC have announced two more dates for its Fire Safety Specialist competence validation programme. Assessment days in London, Birmingham, Bristol and Manchester will be held on 25 September and 30 October.

A new survey of LABC’s 3,000 building standards surveyors has shown more than two thirds of local authority building control teams have surveyors with the top level competencies to deal with higher risk and complex buildings.

LABC has established that there are 1,096 local authority building standards surveyors with these competencies across England and Wales.

If you are doubling up floor joists, creating trimmers or trimming joists around stairs and chimneys they all need connecting properly so that they can act as a single unit.

One of our surveyors had a bit of a shock recently when visiting a site for a domestic extension.

They were called out to inspect reinforcement prior to concreting foundations but hadn’t been to site previously for an excavation or commencement inspection. The ‘builder’ proudly stood back and informed the officer that he had dug down 450mm but was still into filled ground so had decided to construct a reinforced raft foundation instead.

Better still, he was helping the environment by recycling shopping trolleys for the reinforcement.

Our latest construction awards event, the East Midlands Building Excellence Awards, took place at the Athena Cinema in Leicester on Friday 6 July 2018.

Hosted by Escape to the Country presenter and radio broadcaster Nicki Chapman, this prestigious construction industry event was attended by 400 guests, gleaned from local authority building control, building companies large and small and agents' and architects' offices from throughout the region.     

Asbestos was widely used in home construction from 1930 to around 2000, particularly from 1960 onwards. If you are dealing with an extension or refurbishment of a property built around this time then it’s possible that you will come into contact with asbestos materials. Asbestos was commonly used in many ways inside and outside of buildings, some of which include: