Industry and Regulators Committee
2 September 2025
No chapters available yet
Legend
Transcript markers
- text Sentence being played
- text Search result
- text Intervention cited by the link you opened
Click a sentence to play the video from that moment. Select text to quote it with the speaker, timestamp and link.
More options
Industry and Regulators Committee House of Lords
00:12 - 02:56
Speaker 1
Once upon a time, I thought that was fabulous. It's now actually recognising my profession for what it should be, but working within local government is difficult. Local authority building control doesn't just deal with HRBs when there is a dangerous structure; there's a vehicle impact on a building, a gas explosion. It's the same building inspector who will be out at 2:00 in the morning working with the emergency services to make buildings safe. So, we need those people in public service. We've got to retain them, and we are losing them. We lost lots of people when we went through registration and the whole process of reform in the building control profession. We lost an awful lot of people, and we're a very aging community.
Most building inspectors look like Darren and me. There are not young people in building control because investment hasn't been there in local authorities for a long time, for lots of reasons, including austerity. We're very fortunate in LABC and in public service to have been given a government grant in 2023, and we brought in 150 new trainees, which I'm very delighted that we're getting towards the end of their training now. Ninety of them are already Class 2A. Building inspectors have been taken on in direct employment by their local authorities.
We need more investment. 150 trainees will not make up for the possibly 1,000 building inspectors that we lost through the registration of the profession. We're going to continue to lose people as they get towards retirement. We're going to lose more and more people. We have got to invest if we're going to have a build and control profession in the future, but also to have a profession within local government that does all of the other things, whether it be making sure that Old Trafford Stadium is fit for people to go in and watch the football, or whether a building is made safe after something occurs to make that building unsafe.
We need building control in public service, and so salaries are going to have to increase.
The rest of the transcript is for Pro customers
Unlock the full transcript, chat, and every analysis feature with Polyfact Pro.
The video itself stays free to watch, in full, no account needed.
Ask anything about this video — I analyse its transcript to answer.