Part 3: Building Act 1984 Building control authorities and building regulations Section 35: Industry competence Proposed use of this power
The intention for this provision is to ensure that everyone doing design work or building work is competent to do their work in a way that is compliant with building regulations. For any design or building work on all buildings in England, it is intended that building regulations set out these duties:
The Principal Designer and Principal Contractor (appointed persons) must have the appropriate skills, knowledge, experience and behaviours and, if they are an organisation, the organisational capability, to carry out their duties specified in building regulations in a way that is compliant with building regulations. They may not accept an appointment unless they fulfil these conditions.
Anyone who participates in or manages the work must have the appropriate skills, knowledge, experience and behaviours, and if they are an organisation, the organisational capability to carry out work in a way that is compliant with building regulations. If a person does not have the appropriate skills, knowledge, experience and behaviours, they must be in the process of obtaining it, and must be appropriately supervised. The latter option is needed to cover individuals in training and apprentices etc.
Anyone who appoints organisations or individuals to carry out design work or building work must take reasonable steps to ensure that those they appoint meet the competence requirements for their roles.
For higher-risk buildings, the competence requirements for the Principal Designer, Principal Contractor, and those carrying out design or building work must be appropriate to the particular higher-risk building in question.
	These duties will apply to any design or building work on all buildings in England, whether or not the work is higher-risk building work. This includes any design or building work carried out during occupation.
	In England, the Government intends to provide statutory guidance to support these requirements. In the first instance guidance will be issued for higher-risk buildings, with wider competence guidance to follow later. The guidance will provide examples of the skills, knowledge, experience and behaviours and organisational capability required to work on higher-risk buildings, in particular, for the Principal Designer and Principal Contractor. The guidance may make references to the competence standards being developed by British Standards Institution (BSI) for these roles. Over time, it is expected that the built environment industry will develop sector-specific competence frameworks, which could, if sufficiently rigorous, be recommended and adopted in statutory guidance. It is expected that the competence committee (see section 10) will advise on this point.