Following on from my first post on what is now SI No.9 (I wonder if the Dept are John Lennon fans?). I was speaking to a colleague yesterday and a few additional, important points need to be made:

1. For this transition year (prior to the Register of Builders being made mandatory), a project is ‘flagged’ by the Council as potentially problematic if the owner has the same name as the builder. This is also true if the Assigned Certifier and the Builder are effectively the same. It is forecast that projects of this type may be flagged as those to be priority ‘inspected’.

2. The Certificate of Compliance on Completion may not be accepted by the Council (or solicitors?) if the owner has the same name as the builder. I personally feel that it’s doubtful this will be the case by Councils when they’ve already accepted the owner/self-builder being same on the ‘Notice of Assignment of Builder’. Solictors and banks however may be a different scenario.

The above is the case for this year, remember that from 2015 it will be mandatory to be on the list of ‘Registered Builders’ and self-building as we know it via direct labour will be gone.

Who’s going to determine whether you (as self-builder) are a building company or not? Are there rules on this already? I’d love to hear. Please comment…