Prove your home meets the new regulations

You must provide specific details during your design and build to comply with new building regulations.

A SAP assessor and local building control official will require various documents and photos to prove your home meets standards.

They will be used to show:

1. Your design thinking and decisions
2. You’re following your designs in your build 
3. You’ve built homes to your designs

Provide drawings and photos

Make sure all your design drawings are made available to your SAP assessor and local building control.

You must also take on-site photos to record the construction stages of each new home and prove they meet new regulations.

Find out how to provide on-site photo evidence.

Provide the new ‘BREL reports’

Your SAP assessment will produce the new Building Regulations England Part L compliance reports. These are known as ‘BREL reports’.

These will be used by local building control to check if new homes meet new regulations for fuel and power. The report should be signed by your SAP assessor.

Find out how to provide the new BREL compliance reports.

Provide fuel and power details

You must provide local building control with the following for any fixed building services or on-site electricity generation systems:

• your commissioning plans
• commissioning notice
• confirmation that commissioning has taken place in line with regulations

Your commissioning plans must include the design stage calculations for the following:

• primary energy rate
• carbon emission (CO2e) rate 
• fabric energy efficiency rate

Provide air permeability details

You must record all air permeability test results, failures and how you fixed issues, then report everything to local building control.

You must show that testers:

• have received appropriate training 
• are registered to test the class of building they tested

You must show test equipment has been calibrated by one of the following:

• a UKAS-accredited facility 
• the original manufacturer

You must also show the calibration took place within the previous 12 months or a period in accordance with manufacturer guidance. 

Provide thermal bridging details

You must make the following available to your SAP assessor and local building control so they can be checked against thermal bridging standards: 

• drawings of all different construction junctions
• photos of all different constructions before they’re concealed by subsequent work

Provide ventilation details

You must collect and record the following for local building control:

• measured flow rates
• installation and commissioning certificates

You must also provide a commissioning notice using the new completion checklist and commissioning sheet from Appendix C of the new regulations.

Find out more in Appendix C of Ventilation: Approved Document F.

Provide overheating details

You must provide local building control with a report showing each new home has passed the regulatory overheating assessment.

You must complete the compliance checklist from Appendix B of the new regulations and include it with this report.

You must provide local building control with your details and show which compliance method you used to meet the new regulations.

The final section of the checklist must be completed by the local building control inspector.

Find out more in Appendix B of Overheating: Approved Document O.

Provide information for homeowners

You must also provide details for homeowners about how to operate and maintain the services and systems included in their home.

Find out how to provide homeowners with information about their new homes.

Keep up to date

Use the Future Homes Hub to keep up to date with changes to the building regulations and the introduction of the Future Homes Standard.

Use our detailed guides to check what you need to do to meet new regulations.

Find out more

Find all new regulations in the official Approved Documents on GOV.UK:

• Conservation of fuel and power: Approved Document L - ‘Part L’
• Overheating: Approved Document O - ‘Part O’
• Ventilation: Approved Document F - ‘Part F’