The two routes, and why most firms take the second #
Building work that falls under the Building Regulations needs approval. The traditional route is a council building control department or a private inspector. The other route is a competent person scheme, which GOV.UK describes as allowing building trade installers to self certify certain types of work rather than obtaining building regulations approval, with customers benefiting "from lower prices as there are no building control fees".
Which scheme covers which work #
GOV.UK publishes the current list of authorised schemes and what each may certify. The ones most relevant to small installers:
| Scheme | Work it covers |
|---|---|
| Fensa | Replacement windows, doors and rooflights |
| Gas Safe Register | Gas appliances |
| Certsure, trading as NICEIC | Electrical and multiple trades |
| NAPIT | Electrical and multiple trades |
| CompetentRoofer | Roof coverings |
| HETAS | Solid fuel and heating |
| APHC | Plumbing and heating |
| ATTMA | Air tightness testing |
The full list of work categories across the schemes
Work categories across the schemes include cavity and solid wall insulation, gas, oil and solid fuel combustion appliances, electrical installations in dwellings, heating and hot water systems, plumbing and water supply, replacement windows, doors and rooflights, roof coverings and microgeneration.
For electrical work in dwellings specifically, when notification is required is set out in Approved Document P, which GOV.UK describes as the Building Regulation in England covering electrical safety in dwellings.
Where the admin actually lands #
The notification itself is usually the easy part, because the scheme provides the route. The cost is in what surrounds it, and it has a particular property: it arrives after the money is in, when everybody has moved on to the next job.
Runs on rules
- Recording the address, the work type and the date it completed
- Submitting the notification within the scheme's own rules
- Knowing which finished jobs have not been notified yet
- Getting the customer their copy
- Finding a certificate for a job from four years ago, if it was filed against the address
The third of these is the one worth pausing on, because almost nobody has that list.
Needs the competent person
- Deciding whether this job is notifiable at all
- Deciding what to do when a job was never notified, which is a conversation with the scheme
In most firms the notification happens because an engineer or an office manager remembers, which means the list of jobs waiting to be notified exists only as an absence.
The double keying underneath it #
There is a pattern that shows up in every trade that certifies its own work, and nobody calls it automation. They call it putting it in twice. The address, the customer, the work description and the completion date get captured five times over.
-
When the job is booked
-
Again on the job sheet
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Again on the certificate
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Again in the scheme portal
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Again on the invoice
Each retyping is a chance to introduce an error into a document that will be read years later by a solicitor. It is the same pattern the Department for Education named in its own workload review as re-entry of data into multiple systems, and that letting agents report when 61 per cent say staff transfer or duplicate information between systems.
It crosses every sector we look at because it is not a sector problem, it is what happens when several systems each need the same five facts.
What the customer should end up with #
Whatever the scheme requires for that work type, in a form the customer can find again. That last clause is doing real work. A certificate emailed as an attachment to an address the customer has since stopped using is, for practical purposes, not issued.
Firms that treat the customer copy as the last step of the job rather than an afterthought get noticeably fewer calls in the years afterwards, and a noticeably easier time when a conveyancer comes asking.
The two trades with statutory distribution deadlines of their own are covered on electrical certificates and EICR deadlines and landlord gas safety records. To put hours against your own certificate cycle, start with the which tasks run on rules.