Part 3: Building Act 1984 Building control authorities and building regulations Section 35: Industry competence Effect
This Section amends the Building Act 1984, creating powers to prescribe in building regulations competence requirements relating to the Principal Designer and Principal Contractor (appointed persons), and any prescribed person. Building regulations may also impose duties on the person appointing the Principal Designer, Principal Contractor and any prescribed person to ensure that those they appoint meet the competence requirements. These requirements will apply to design or building work on all buildings.
	The Principal Designer, Principal Contractor, designers and contractors can be an organisation or an individual. Sub-paragraph (2) makes clear that the competence requirements can apply to both organisations and individuals. For individuals, the competence requirements will relate to their skills, knowledge, experience and behaviours. For organisations, the competence requirements will relate to the organisational capability – the ability of an organisation to carry out its functions under the building regulations properly. This may include having appropriate management systems, processes and policies to carry out its functions, and having the capability to ensure that its staff have the appropriate skills, knowledge, experience and behaviours.
	Where the Principal Designer or the Principal Contractor are organisations, subsection (3) enables building regulations to impose requirements on these organisations to ensure that the individuals leading or managing the work have the appropriate skills, knowledge, experience and behaviours to manage, on behalf of the organisation, their functions as the Principal Designer or the Principal Contractor.