Part 3: Building Act 1984 Building control authorities and building regulations Section 41: Revocation of certain provision made under section 2(2) of ECA 1972 Background
Building regulations (specifically, the energy efficiency requirements in Part 6 and Part L of Schedule 1, and the broadband requirement in Part R of Schedule 1) have been used to implement provisions in EU legislation, particularly the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) and Article 8 of the Broadband Cost Reduction Directive.
	The power to revoke these regulations in full was lost at the end of the implementation period, with the repeal of section 2(2) European Communities Act. Without the ability to revoke these provisions in building regulations, the Government would be constrained in its ability to update and improve the legislation, which could never be fully revoked, for instance in a consolidation exercise.
	The European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 envisages that over time EU retained legislation will need to be amended or revoked, as it is replaced by new domestic legislation, and section 41 has been included for this purpose.
	Paragraphs 13 and 14 of Schedule 8 to the EU Withdrawal Act set out procedure to be followed in legislation which amends or revokes certain retained EU law including that regulations should follow the affirmative procedure, and a requirement for pre-publication of the regulations.
Example
The building regulations will need to be updated in the light of the changes being made in the Building Safety Act. As part of this exercise, the Government will also be giving careful consideration to the merits of consolidating the significant number of amendments which have been made to the regulations in recent years. The ability to revoke the existing regulations and replace them with new regulations is necessary to enable this to be done. Without the power in subsection (2) of section 41, there would be an anomalous position, in that building regulations made under section 2(2) of the European Communities Act could not be included in any exercise to update and consolidate the building regulations and could never be revoked.
The Government has consulted on proposals to introduce the Future Homes Standard and Future Buildings Standard to improve the energy efficiency and sustainability of new homes and buildings. This will require changes to building regulations including, potentially, those which implemented provisions in the EPBD; these changes may, in the absence of subsection (3) of section 41, engage the pre-publication and affirmative resolution procedure. The established procedure in the Building Act 1984 is for changes to building regulations, including the energy efficiency requirements, to be made following the negative resolution procedure.