Building control approval advice

Hello, I was wondering if anyone here might have done an extension to their property and might be able to offer some advice?

We have planning permission and have the builders lined up but I believe now we need to get Buildings Control Approval before the work can start? There are 2 options on Lewisham’s site: Submit Buildings Notice and Submit Full Plans. I’m not sure which we have to do. I’ve been trying to call the buildings control office for the last week now but can’t get through.

If anyone has done this recently and knows what I need to do, any advice would be much appreciated.

The project is a single story ground floor extension.

Ha. I’m in the same boat. I tried calling them many times. Emailed them and no response. Ended up tweeting them saying I was getting nowhere.

My questions were

Building control:

What do you require us to submit initially to start off the process of building control approval - would structural drawings from our structural engineer along with our plans that you approved suffice or do you need other documents? If other, please confirm what documents you’d also need?
What steps are next after we’ve submitted our initial documents (how many visits, who do we arrange with etc?)
What is the difference between employing a private building control surveyor or employing a council surveyor. Is one quicker than the other?

This is their response which I didn’t find very helpful

In order to get building control involved in your project you will need to complete either a building notice or a full plans application and submit it with your drawings and calculations.

Once you have submitted the application you will need to give us 24 hrs to process it and then call us to make payment. Once the payment is made your application is validated. If you have a full plans application you need to wait for the plans to be approved before starting work. This can take 5-10 days. With a building notice you can start after 48 hours.

You can then arrange inspections as necessary.

Please note that when processing applications the building manager can decide that the project is complex and therefore needs a Full plans application.

However now having spoken to a few builders they’ve told me they can employ a private building controls person. Has anyone any experience with this?

I booked an appointment to see planning. Emailed them with a request and they came back a few days later. I asked for outline planning consent guidance.

Thanks very much for your replies. I finally managed to get through to them and they said we can do either, it’s up to us! We’ve decided to opt for the full application given the scale of the project, apparently this means they will check through all the plans before the work starts rather than just the onsite inspections. The online form doesn’t work at all so they’ve advised me to complete the PDF on their website and e-mail it over.

We used an approved building regs contractor. Easier to get in contact with for site visits, and marginal cost difference to Lewisham. Would recommend it as an alternative, our guy was very professional and friendly.

Hi Jim. Please could you DM me his details please? Many thanks.

What Jim said - the private places have a much stronger incentive to provide decent customer service. I recently used BBS, very responsive and timely etc.

Thanks all. Jim if you could share your contractor’s details as well that would be much appreciated (either here or by direct message).

Have DM’d you both, in fear of breaking any forum rules!

You’re more than welcome to recommend and share business details here.

I’ve used Quadrant twice.

http://quadrantai.co.uk/residential-services/

And, as with @Beige, BBS.