Agenda item

The Leader of the Council presented this report relating to the East Midlands Building Consultancy (EMBC). The EMBC was now a fully staffed local authority building control partnership between SKDC, Newark and Sherwood District Council and Rushcliffe Borough Council.

The partnership was long-established and successful, it was based on a shared service agreement with SKDC delivering the service on behalf of other partners and themselves.

Building control is a statutory service which aims to ensure the safety of buildings and those who use them. Services within the function were either fee earning or non-fee earning. The split in workload was approximately 74 to 26%.

Non-fee earning work costs must be borne by the Council, whilst the service was allowed to charge fees for fee earning work on a cost recovery basis. The Council was not permitted to make a profit on these functions.

The partnership competed with registered building control approvers, formerly known as approved inspectors, for fee earning work. The service currently maintains an average of 60% of the market share, which was a significant increase on previous years, where the Council held only 50% of the market share.

There had been many legislative changes for building control, including a requirement for building control officers to demonstrate their competency.

 A number of Officers had received their competency validation and trainees were progressing well. EMBC was also engaging in the future of building control with the addition of two apprentices.

Appendix 1 provided details of the provision accounts for 2024-25.

Clarification was sought around the report, it stated that the EMBC had avoided costs by not replacing roles and then further on in report stated all positions had been filled.

The Assistant Director of Planning and Growth clarified that comments on money saved were from the Assistant S151 Officer’s comments about the report and were in reference to the previous financial year. The Council had savings in-year on the staffing likely due to vacancies. EMBC were fully staffed and could deliver the services required and meet expectations of customers.

Building control finances were separate to other services provided by the Council due to being fee-earning but not allowed to make a profit. The Council were also not permitted to charge fees for a proportion of work undertaken, which equated to 26% of the work and this element was funded from the General Fund.

A further query was raised on whether making profit each year would incur imbalances of income and expenditure and what happened to annual differences.

The Assistant Director of Planning and Growth confirmed it is within legislation to not make a profit but with some flexibility. It was difficult to manage the profit throughout the course of the year, meaning application fees charged for fee earning elements of work were reviewed continually.  The team would have to balance the costs of delivering the service against the income to offset that.

It was queried as to what level of qualification employees were trained to and when trained, and what obligation employees had to carry on working for the Council.

It was noted that apprentices were employed by the Local Authority Building Control for a two-year contract. If SKDC had positions available, they would look to employ the apprentices once their qualification was completed.

In terms of trainees, they came from a trades background and could use their experience and build on it through supportive learning to gain their level 4 qualification. It was hoped that once qualified, they would continue to work for the Council.

It was queried whether building control had involvement in every project undertaken by the Council and at what point building control would become involved.

Building control would become involved with a Council’s project when it’s controllable works, at the beginning of a construction phase. If the Council was designing a project, the building control team would engage with the property team from the outset.

The Committee:

Noted the update regarding East Midlands Building Consultancy (EMBC) and agrees to receive an update in 12 months.