Building control charges in England are about to cover a much wider range of council work after new regulations were made on 14th October 2026. Most of the changes come into force on 6th November, following the Government’s publication today of its circular and consultation response.
The rules allow local authorities to recover reasonable costs for activities that have often been unfunded, including processing private building-control notices, testing work, formal compliance action and some dangerous-building functions. Councils must publish their charging schemes online at least seven days before they take effect.
I would not read this as a simple national fee increase. Each council will set its own scheme around the new powers, so applicants, developers, owners and private building-control providers will need to check the local authority’s published charges and the particular function being used.
What the building control charges regulations do
The Building (Local Authority Charges and Amendments Relating to Charging) (England) Regulations 2026, SI 2026/1094, were made on 14th October and laid before Parliament on 15th October. They replace the 2010 local-authority charging regulations for England.
The official circular says the aim is fuller cost recovery. Taking one financial year with another, an authority’s income should as far as possible match the costs of its chargeable functions and advice.
Those costs can include a reasonable share of overheads, depreciation and the cost of capital. Authorities must also publish annual statements showing charges received, costs incurred and any surplus or deficit.
The practical effect is that building control charges can now reach work that sits beyond ordinary plan checking and site inspections. The change matters because formal notices, tests and enforcement activity can absorb specialist time even when no conventional application fee funds that work.
More council functions can now attract a charge
The regulations permit charging for accepting, rejecting or considering notices and certificates submitted by a private registered building control approver. These include initial notices, plans certificates, final certificates and some cancellation or transfer notices.
A council may require an initial charge and, in more complex cases, a supplementary charge. If the authority does not communicate the required decision within the prescribed period, it may have to refund the relevant payment rather than retain a fee for a process that ended through deemed acceptance.
Building control charges may also apply to tests and samples reasonably required to establish whether work complies with the Building Regulations. The Government says the taxpayer should not carry the cost where that technical work becomes necessary.
The list extends into formal compliance and enforcement. It includes work connected with powers of entry, compliance notices, stop notices and notices requiring offending work to be removed or altered.
It also reaches formal action concerning defective premises, dangerous buildings, ruinous or dilapidated buildings, neglected sites and demolition. These can involve inspections, legal work, applications to a court or tribunal and urgent professional input.
The Government response records concern that charging enforcement costs might look like a fine. Ministers say the charges recover reasonable costs and do not replace the authority’s duty to enforce proportionately.
Published schemes will determine the actual price
The building control charges regulations do not create one national tariff. Each local authority must prepare a charging scheme and place it on its website not less than seven days before it comes into effect.
That means the headline change is legal capacity, not a single price list. The amount payable, the timing of payment and any supplementary charge will depend on the council’s adopted scheme and the work needed in the individual case.
For homeowners and small developers, wider building control charges make early checking more important. A project budget based on the familiar application and inspection fees may miss a later charge for unusual testing, a dispensation request or formal action prompted by non-compliant work.
For private registered building control approvers, the new regime adds a council-side cost when statutory notices and certificates are processed. Consultation responses warned that different schemes across more than 250 authorities could create administrative complexity.
The Government has not imposed a national flat fee. It says wider digital reform and common data standards should improve consistency and transparency, while leaving councils able to recover their reasonable local costs.
Cost recovery is not general council income
The Government says the revised building control charges framework is intended to make services sustainable, support training and recruitment, and reduce reliance on general council taxpayers.
That does not give councils a free hand to use the system as a revenue stream. Any surplus or deficit should feed into the next charging scheme, including legitimate building-control overheads, rather than being used to support unrelated council activity.
The response quotes the principle that “local taxpayers should not bear the cost” of the statutory service. That is the policy case, but users will reasonably expect the wider charges to produce timely, competent and transparent service in return.
I would therefore watch both sides of the equation. Published prices matter, but so do decision times, refund arrangements, the explanation for supplementary charges and the quality of the work that the income is meant to support.
Disabled-person work keeps an important protection
An important protection remains for qualifying work solely required for disabled people in existing dwellings. The regulations do, however, remove the local-authority exemption for comparable adaptations to existing buildings to which members of the public are admitted, so councils may now charge for those services. The Building Safety Regulator retains its separate exemption for the rare higher-risk public-building cases it handles.
The consultation had also asked whether the existing exemption for adaptations to dwellings should change, but the Government says it needs further assessment before taking that question further.
This is an area where the wording matters. Not every project involving accessibility will automatically qualify, and the exception should be checked against the statutory conditions rather than assumed from the description of the work.
The rules also allow charges for applications to relax or dispense with certain building-regulation requirements. That can involve technical assessment and consultation with specialists, so the Government considers it reasonable for councils to recover those costs.
Some environmental changes start later
Most of SI 2026/1094 comes into force on 6th November 2026. Regulation 11 follows a different timetable because it links to changes in environmental requirements under the Building Regulations 2010.
For non-higher-risk building work, those provisions start on 24th March 2027. For higher-risk buildings they start on 24th September 2027.
The later change allows certain requirements concerning high-efficiency alternative systems, nearly zero-energy buildings and carbon-dioxide emission rates to be relaxed or dispensed with where the building control body considers compliance unreasonable in the particular circumstances.
That is a discretion, not an automatic exemption. Anyone relying on it will need a properly evidenced application and should not treat the later commencement date as permission to disregard the underlying standards.
What applicants should do before 6th November
Councils can prepare and publish their new schemes before the regulations commence. The immediate task for anyone with current or proposed building work is therefore to monitor the relevant council website rather than rely on an old schedule saved elsewhere.
Check which event triggers payment, who is liable, whether an initial charge is refundable, how supplementary charges are calculated and whether the council explains its review or complaint route. Keep the published scheme that applied when the relevant work was undertaken.
If formal enforcement is involved, separate the recovery of an authority’s costs from any criminal, civil or regulatory consequence. Paying a building control charge does not regularise defective work, remove a notice or guarantee approval.
The distinction between planning and building regulations also remains essential. Planning permission deals principally with the acceptability of development, while building control addresses technical compliance and safety. Planning Geek’s England coverage follows both systems where changes affect development decisions.
These building control charges are a significant shift because they move more of the cost of regulatory work towards the projects and parties creating it. The real test will be whether locally published schemes are understandable, proportionate and matched by better-resourced services.
I would budget for the possibility of new charges now, but wait for the relevant council’s scheme before putting a figure into a viability appraisal or client quotation. The law creates the power; the local scheme tells you what you may actually have to pay.
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