§ Brian CotterTo ask the Secretary of State for Transport, Local Government and the Regions what the cost will be to small businesses within the construction industry of complying with self-certification schemes following the introduction of the Building (Amendment) Regulations 2002. [53003]
§ Dr. WhiteheadThe four new schemes recognised in the regulations are voluntary, and offer small businesses the opportunity, should they wish to take it up, to save money through not having to go through local authority building control. This is particularly important in relation to replacement glazing where as a result of changes we made to Part L of the regulations—that part dealing with the conservation of fuel and power, it became controlled fitting and subject to building control.
The Fenestration Self Assessment Scheme (FENSA) was introduced to ease the burden of this change. We estimate that the typical cost of going through local authority building control for replacement glazing would be about £120 for a contract with a value of less than £2.000. Overall we have estimated the cost of not introducing self-certification to be £106,400,000 in the first year, and the overall financial benefit to be £104,685,000.