The Building Safety Regulator’s registration scheme for building inspectors introduces, for the first time, a formal competence framework for a profession that has historically relied on qualifications and years of service as proxies for competence. Registration requires demonstrating that technical knowledge is current, documented, and maintained — not simply that qualifications were obtained at some point in the past. The CPD implications are specific: hours logs are insufficient. What the BSR registration framework asks for — and what most building control surveyors do not yet have the infrastructure to produce — is a structured, longitudinal record connecting CPD attendance to documented professional intent and application.
What the BSR registration framework actually requires.
The Building Safety Regulator’s competence assessment framework for building inspectors draws on the Building Safety Act 2022’s dutyholder competence requirements. Registration requires evidence across four areas: technical knowledge, competence application, CPD governance, and behavioural conduct. For CPD governance specifically, the requirement is not completion of a fixed hours count — it is evidence of a structured approach to maintaining and developing competence: identifying competence gaps, attending CPD relevant to those gaps, and documenting what changed in professional practice as a result. This is a Plan-Do-Check-Act requirement applied to professional development, and it cannot be satisfied by an hours log. It requires, at minimum, a documented CPD policy linked to competence areas, a record of CPD attended with stated learning objectives, and evidence of application — what the professional did differently as a result.
The conflicts register dimension.
There is a second CPD governance question that BSR registration creates for building control professionals specifically, tied to their role: the relationship between CPD attendance and inspection decisions. A Registered Building Inspector who attends a manufacturer’s CPD session on a product’s fire performance, and subsequently approves a specification incorporating that product, has a professional situation a reasonable auditor might examine. This is not an accusation of impropriety — it is a transparency and auditability question that building control professionals have not previously needed to document, because no audit trail existed. A longitudinal CPD check-in record creates one: what was learned, when, and what the professional intended to do as a result. A firm with team-level competence documentation can export a competence map showing, by discipline and CPD topic, what professional development has occurred and what its stated application outcomes are. That record is the conflicts register infrastructure the BSR registration framework implicitly requires, even where it doesn’t name it as such.
What a BCA firm needs to produce at registration.
A firm seeking Building Control Approver registration needs to demonstrate organisational competence management, not just individual inspector qualifications. The documentation required is: team-level CPD coverage by discipline and technical topic, individual Realisation Rates showing CPD is producing documented application in practice, and a board-level accountability statement confirming CPD governance is actively maintained. A firm that can produce these three items on request is in a materially stronger registration position than one that cannot. More importantly: once the BSR inspection regime becomes active, these are the first documents an inspector is likely to ask for when a building control decision is challenged.
The infrastructure question.
BSR registration is not a one-time event. It requires ongoing competence maintenance and documentation. The firms and individuals who build the infrastructure now — before the first audit — will not need to reconstruct their records retrospectively. The infrastructure that produces BSR-grade competence evidence is the same infrastructure that produces professional development insight generally: they are built together, or they are built twice.
FAQs
The Building Safety Regulator’s competence framework for Registered Building Inspectors requires evidence of a structured approach to maintaining competence, not just hours completed. This includes a record of CPD attended with stated learning objectives, evidence of application to professional practice, and documentation that the CPD was relevant to identified competence gaps. An hours log does not satisfy this requirement. A structured CPD record with longitudinal application evidence — such as a CPD Passport with 30-day and 90-day check-in data — provides the documentation the BSR framework asks for.
Yes. Approved Inspectors transitioning to Building Control Approver registration under the Building Safety Act 2022 are required to demonstrate organisational competence management, not just individual qualifications. Team-level CPD governance documentation — who attended what, what they intended to apply, and whether they applied it — is required at firm level, not just individual level.
Whether CPD attendance creates a conflicts register dimension for building control professionals is a question BSR registration and audit frameworks are likely to consider. Maintaining an auditable record of what CPD was attended, when, and what its stated application outcomes were creates the transparency a reasonable audit would expect. This is an administrative record, not an admission — and its absence is riskier than its presence.
“Build the CPD record that BSR registration requires — free, longitudinal, and structured for competence evidence from the first session.”
