Building Regulations in England and Wales - Approved Documents and Compliance

Approved Documents and Compliance

There are currently 14 sections to the buildings regulations and each is accompanied by an Approved Document. The Approved Documents usually take the form of firstly stating the legislation and then providing a number of means which are deemed to satisfy the Regulations. The Regulations themselves are actually rather brief; in common speech when architects talk of the 'Building Regs' it is the Approved Documents to which they refer.

The Building Regulations do not aim to stifle innovation. Compliance with the legislation is what is ultimately required and there may be many ways of complying, other than just using the ways set out in the 'deemed to satisfy' provisions within each of the Approved Documents.

In reality, an innovative solution may be hard to validate and for most building work, the tendency is to take the regulations literally. For example, bathroom manufacturers produce a 'Doc M Pack' for disabled toilets, which reproduces exactly the diagram in Part M, and most public disabled toilets are now designed around this layout.

Many manufactured products have Agrément certificates issued by the British Board of Agrément, certifying compliance with the Building Regulations.

Most of the detailed information on the building regulations is now available on www.planningportal.gov.uk. where general public users can now access simplified building regulations guidance, and professional users have a better organised version of what was on the former DCLG building regulations website, including the full versions of the Approved Documents and associated guidance, previously held on the DCLG website.