The government is directing £55 million into building control workforce capacity in England, with new Registered Building Inspectors to be recruited and trained through LABC before being seconded to local authorities for up to two years. The funding forms part of a wider £70 million programme addressing shortages across building safety professions. A Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government letter issued to local authority chief executives on 10 September confirms that participating councils will not face a direct cost for the trainees while they are employed by LABC and undergoing training.
The Barbican Estate and City of London skyline. Original Image: London Construction Magazine.
£55m goes directly into building control capacity
The programme is intended to increase the number of Registered Building Inspectors and develop the competence of existing inspectors, including people able to work on more complex and higher-risk buildings. Trainees will be employed by LABC, the representative body for local authority building control in England and Wales, for periods of up to two years and seconded into participating local authorities. Councils are not obliged to employ those trainees when the training period ends.
That distinction matters. The announcement is workforce funding rather than a permanent increase in local authority staffing budgets. Its longer-term effect will depend partly on how many councils retain trained inspectors once the funded period finishes.The government has described the opportunity as time-limited and is encouraging councils to engage with LABC while funding is available.
Building control charging rules are also set to change
The workforce programme is being coupled with changes to the way local authorities can recover the cost of building control services. Existing charging regulations were last significantly updated in 2010, according to MHCLG.
Subject to Parliamentary approval, the proposed reforms would allow councils to charge for a wider range of building control functions on a fuller cost-recovery basis. Recoverable expenditure would be able to include a reasonable proportion of overheads together with recruitment, training and professional development costs. The regulations have not yet been laid, so the announcement should not be read as an immediate change to building control fees. MHCLG says further details will follow when the regulations are placed before Parliament.
Government starts building control data project
A third part of the programme concerns the financial information behind local authority building control services. Government has started a discovery exercise examining whether a common data standard could support charging schemes and the annual publication of building control financial statements.
The work is intended to make it easier to compare the cost and financial sustainability of building control services between authorities. At this stage it remains a discovery programme rather than an implemented national reporting system. MHCLG has also committed funding to examine alternative models of building control delivery, although the department has not yet published the value, structure or preferred model for that work.
Why inspector capacity matters for London projects
The capacity question sits alongside the separate higher-risk building regime operated by the Building Safety Regulator. London Construction Magazine's latest analysis found that Gateway 2 approval performance has continued to improve, but regulatory capacity remains important as the volume of applications, remediation work and projects moving towards construction increases.
Local authority building control and the Building Safety Regulator do not perform identical roles. BSR acts as the building control authority for higher-risk buildings, while local authority teams continue to deal with a much wider building control workload. The £55 million programme therefore should not be interpreted as additional funding for BSR Gateway 2 casework. The distinction has become more important since the Building Safety Regulator became a standalone arm's-length body under MHCLG earlier this year.
Funding lands as wider Grenfell reforms continue
The building control announcement came on the same day that government published the final report from Interim Chief Construction Adviser Thouria Istephan and its latest update on implementation of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry Phase 2 recommendations.
The government's building safety update says nine further Grenfell recommendations have been completed since May, taking the total recorded as completed since February 2025 to 30. The work also includes plans for a Single Construction Regulator, a building professions strategy and the forthcoming Remediation Bill.
A separate £13 million allocation is available to UK higher education institutions to increase fire engineering skills. London Construction Magazine has examined the distinction between completing individual Inquiry recommendations and implementing the wider regulatory changes in its analysis of the latest Grenfell recommendations.
What happens next
The immediate next step is the recruitment and training programme through LABC, while councils are being invited to participate in the government's digital discovery work. The charging reforms still require Parliamentary approval, and MHCLG says the regulations are expected to be laid shortly. Further details on the separately funded work examining new building control delivery models have not yet been published.
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Expert Verification & Authorship: Mihai Chelmus Founder & Editor, London Construction Magazine | Construction Testing & Investigation Specialist |