{"id":859325,"date":"2025-07-01T10:12:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-01T15:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/01\/council-suspends-building-inspections-due-to-staff-shortage\/"},"modified":"2025-07-01T10:12:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-01T15:12:08","slug":"council-suspends-building-inspections-due-to-staff-shortage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/01\/council-suspends-building-inspections-due-to-staff-shortage\/","title":{"rendered":"Council suspends building inspections due to staff shortage"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\"Oracle-Whitepaper_mobileconstruction.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\n

Chelmsford City Council has suspended building inspections and put a freeze on new building control applications because of a lack of qualified staff.<\/p>\n

In an announcement on its website, the Essex council said it had paused all building inspections \u201cover the coming weeks\u201d.<\/p>\n

In a statement, the council told Construction News<\/em>: \u201cLike many councils, Chelmsford City Council has been facing an acute building control staffing crisis, caused by a national shortage of qualified building control inspectors in the public sector.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis has resulted in a short pause in us accepting new applications which should be resolved later this week, and we anticipate reopening for new applications from Friday 4 July.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to the freeze on new applications, the statement on the council website also said that the council was \u201ccurrently unable to carry out any building inspections over the coming weeks\u201d due to the “severe” staff shortage.<\/p>\n

It said that applicants can email bu**************<\/span>@************<\/span>ov.uk<\/span><\/a> to confirm each completed stage of work so they can be updated on their your applications.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can also send supporting photos of the work to the same email address.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are working to resolve this as soon as possible, and apologise for the inconvenience.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, in its statement to CN<\/em>, the council said it was \u201creceiving professional qualified support from another local authority for existing applications\u201d.<\/p>\n

Local authorities are responsible for confirming that buildings \u2013 aside from high-rise buildings (HRBs) \u2013 meet the standards required.<\/p>\n

Under the Building Safety Act 2022, the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) took on the responsibility for building inspections at HRBs, which are at least 18 metres or seven storeys in height.<\/p>\n

A shortage of building safety inspectors has soared in recent years and led to nationwide delays.<\/p>\n

The BSR is presently undergoing a recruitment drive to increase its staff numbers, with plans to recruit 100 extra inspectors announced today<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The government also said a new Fast Track system will increase inspector and engineer capacity within the BSR to address delays to both new-build case reviews and remediation decisions.<\/p>\n

Last year, the chief executive of the Local Authority Building Control (LABC) warned that councils had not been given enough time to get their inspectors<\/a> certified with the BSR by April 2024, as mandated under the act.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Related Articles<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a>
\n Joshua Stein<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chelmsford City Council has suspended building inspections and put a freeze on new building control applications because of a lack of qualified staff. In an announcement on its website, the Essex council said it had paused all building inspections \u201cover the coming weeks\u201d. In a statement, the council told Construction News: \u201cLike many councils, Chelmsford<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":859326,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27471,23543],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-859325","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-council","8":"category-suspends"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=859325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859325\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/859326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=859325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=859325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=859325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}