Building Regulations Self Certify

The Government introduced competent persons schemes to allow individuals and enterprises to self-certify that their work complies with the Building Regulations as an alternative to submitting a building notice or using an approved inspector.

Of course construction businesses and their customers can using local authority building control procedures or an approved inspector to make sure that work is compliant with the building regulations.
To comply with Building Regulations, you, your builder or architect simply need to contact your local authority Building Control Officer who will send you a form to complete which will include details and diagrams of the intended work. These are national regulations. What this means is that England and Wales have one set of regulations, Scotland another) but are administered by local authorities.

After you return this to your local authority you will be either receive Approval or a request for further information/clarification. Around 2 million installations of new and replacement glazing happen every year. If all of them went through the normal Building Regulations application process it would place an enormous burden on local authorities.

To ensure that the work is done properly without an unreasonable increase in the administrative and financial burden on installers and property owners. A national scheme, which allows installation companies that meet certain criteria for Building Regulations self-certify that their work complies with the Building Regulations, is known as FENSA.

It stands for Fenestration Self-Assessment. The Glass & Glazing Federation set up FENSA. It also updates local authorities of all completed FENSA installations and issue certificates to householders confirming compliance, and maintains a national database of all its registered installers.