Greybeard – like I said, anyone can have a crack at designing, you don’t need any qualification, and in my experience the local house extensions are not always thoroughly checked by BC at the calc stage but only when things are on site and as long as it looks big enough it is accepted. It is possible to submit calcs to Building Control without a signature meaning that there is no comeback on whoever did the calc if there is a failure in the future as they are done by an unknown “engineer”(this has been done by my friends but I wont do it).
I have also seen people using the institute logo and claiming to be members when they are only graduate members. If they are reported they get banned from an institute they are not members of for a couple of years, but it doesn’t stop them legally carrying on as if nothing has happened as you don’t need to be a member in the first place.
lesgrandepotato – The variance in fees is an issue as there is no set scale (similar to what RIBA have) meaning you charge what you want and one man bands with smaller overheads can charge less. There is a difference in quality of product. A cheaper price might get you calcs and drawings that are vague and generic which will get you through BC, but further information will be required to build it which will then incur further cost.
Generally we don’t do ourselves any favours.
(PS- Good old Viccy died 115 years ago – that is plenty of time to pull together a decent argument. Maybe they could have raised it a little earlier?)
