Do you handle the building control notification?
Yes. The notification is submitted, the inspections are booked, the inspector is met on site, and the completion certificate is closed out and handed over in the homeowner’s name. It is part of the job rather than an optional extra, and it is included in the fixed price as a named line so you can see what it is. You are not asked to fill in a form, work out which authority covers your postcode, or chase a certificate afterwards. This page is about what that means for you as the customer. The mechanism itself, who is legally responsible and how the two notification routes differ, is covered on the who notifies Building Control page, and whether your particular job is notifiable at all is answered under Building Regulations approval.
What being handled actually removes from your list
The practical effect is that a piece of administration that usually lands on the householder does not. In detail, that means the following are done for you.
- Identifying the right authority for the address, which in this radius means Gloucester City, Cheltenham Borough, Tewkesbury Borough, Stroud District, Cotswold District, Forest of Dean District or one of the neighbouring authorities across the county line.
- Completing and lodging the application with the correct description of the work.
- Paying the fee, which appears as an itemised line in your fixed price rather than as a separate bill arriving later.
- Assembling the technical information: the unit’s certified U-value, the glazing specification, the opening area where escape or ventilation is engaged, and any structural calculation.
- Booking the inspections around the fitting programme, so an inspector arrives while the relevant work is still open.
- Being on site to meet the inspector and answer questions about the detail.
- Following the file through to a completion certificate and passing it to you.
None of that is difficult. It is simply a sequence with deadlines in it, and the deadlines sit inside a working programme that somebody has to be watching.
What the application needs from the survey
The reason the notification is bundled with the work rather than treated separately is that everything it needs comes out of the survey anyway. The application describes the opening size, the roof construction, the structural approach, the unit specification and the insulation detail, and every one of those is recorded during the forty minutes on site.
Where a designed trimmer, a flitch plate or a small steel is involved, an engineer’s calculation goes in with the application. Where the unit forms an escape opening from a loft room, the clear openable dimensions go in and are checked against the requirement. Where insulation continuity around the reveal is part of the compliance case, the intended build-up is described. Doing this from a survey rather than from memory is what stops an inspector arriving to a surprise.
The inspection points, and where they fall in the week
A rooflight job is usually inspected at two or three points, and the programme is arranged so they are reachable rather than treated as interruptions.
| Stage | What is being looked at | Why the timing matters |
|---|---|---|
| Structural opening, before it is covered | Trimmers, fixings, any specified beam or flitch, and how load transfers into the adjacent rafters | Once the plasterboard is on, none of it can be seen |
| Insulation and vapour control at the reveal | Continuity of insulation tight to the frame, and the vapour layer taped to it rather than trimmed short | The same problem: this is buried by the plaster |
| Completion | The finished unit, the openable area, ventilation provision and any electrical certification | This is the visit that releases the certificate |
Because the roof is never left open overnight, the structural inspection has to be timed against a sequence that closes the covering the same day. In practice that means agreeing the visit in advance rather than calling on the morning, and it is one of the reasons the notification is submitted early rather than at the point the scaffold goes up.
The certificate, and whose name it goes in
The completion certificate is issued to the owner of the property. That is deliberate and it is the way it should be, because the certificate is a document about your house rather than about the contractor who worked on it. It is issued after the final inspection, and a copy is passed to you with the rest of the handover material.
Keep it somewhere you will find it in ten years. It is the paperwork a buyer’s solicitor asks for on a conveyance, and discovering it is missing at the point of sale is a far worse problem than dealing with it while the scaffold is still up. Photographs of the opening at each stage go over with it, so there is a record of what is underneath the covering as well as a certificate saying it was approved.
Where an electrician’s certificate joins it
An electrically operated rooflight, a powered blind or a hard-wired rain sensor brings mains wiring into a roof space, and that work is certified separately under the electrical part of the regulations. The certificate for the electrical work is issued by the electrician who did it and comes to you alongside the Building Control paperwork.
The practical point is sequencing rather than administration. First-fix cabling has to be in before the plasterboard goes on, so the decision about whether a unit is manual, electric or solar is one to make before the fitting week rather than during it. Solar operated units sidestep the cable entirely, which is why they are often the answer on a retrofit into a finished loft room. That is covered under electric rooflight installation.
Consent is a different thing again, and it is separate
Building Control and planning are two different systems and neither substitutes for the other. Building Control asks whether the work is technically compliant. Planning, listed building consent and conservation area controls ask whether the alteration is acceptable in appearance and effect on the building.
A job on a listed building in Cheltenham or a stone cottage in Painswick may need listed building consent, a planning application, and a Building Control notification, all three, on the same rooflight. Where that is the case the survey notes say so and the consent route is set out separately, because it runs to a different timetable and it has to start earlier. The planning permission and building regulations guide sets out how the two systems sit alongside each other.
Replacement units, which are notifiable more often than people expect
Taking out a unit at the end of its life and putting a new one in the same opening is usually notifiable too, and the reason is thermal. Current guidance sets a limiting standard for a replacement roof window, and the replacement has to meet it. Any current manufactured unit does so comfortably, but the requirement is what makes the work notifiable rather than exempt.
That catches people out because a like-for-like swap feels like maintenance. It is treated as a controlled fitting, and the notification runs the same way as it does for a new opening: submitted, inspected, certificated in your name. On a house where three or four units of the same age are being changed together, one notification covers the set, which is another reason doing them on one scaffold is better than doing them one at a time. See replacement rooflights and Building Regulations.
What it costs you in time, which is close to nothing
The honest accounting on your side is a signature on the go-ahead, being in the house on the inspection days if you want to be, and filing the certificate when it arrives. That is the whole of it. The fee sits in the fixed price as its own line, itemised alongside unit, labour and scaffold, so it is visible rather than absorbed.
What you get for it is a piece of the job that is very easy to skip and very expensive to fix later. Unnotified work in a roof surfaces at exactly the wrong moment, and the route back is a regularisation application on work that has already been buried, with an inspector who now has to be satisfied about details nobody can see. Handling it as part of the job is the cheap version of the same outcome.
How this works on a Gloucestershire job, start to finish
In sequence: an indicative range by email, a survey, a fixed price with the Building Control fee itemised, the notification submitted, the unit ordered, the scaffold booked, the fitting week with inspections timed into it, and the certificate to you at the end. Fifteen years of running that sequence across the same handful of authorities is what makes it routine rather than a piece of paperwork bolted onto the end.
The wider installation detail, including what the regulations actually require of a rooflight in structure, thermal performance, fire escape, ventilation and safety glazing, sits on the skylight and rooflight installation page. To start a job, email info@severnskylightsgloucester.co.uk with photographs of the roof and the room, the covering if you know it, and the address.
Next on this subject.
- Question Do rooflights need planning permission? Usually not. Putting a rooflight into the roof of a house is normally permitted development, which means the national rules…
- Question Do I need building regulations approval for a rooflight? Yes. Forming a new opening in a roof is notifiable work under the Building Regulations, and it is notifiable whether…
- Question Who notifies building control about a rooflight? In law the duty sits with the person having the work carried out, which means the homeowner, and in practice…
- Question How much does a rooflight cost? There is no single figure, and any site that publishes one is quoting for a job it has not seen.…