In the last 2 decades we have seen a large rise in people who are looking to build their own home or make additions to their own property. What  these people are often met with is a planning permission hearing where they will find out whether or not they are allowed to continue with the plan that they have. These plans which are drawn up by architects must take an enormous amount of laws into consideration as building code is tight and it covers a wide array of areas within the construction of a property. Dino Tomassetti is a master in the real estate industry and we caught up with him to find out exactly why there are so many building laws to stick to. 

Safety Concerns

The reason why we have most of the building regulations in existence is for the safety of the inhabitants of the property and the builders themselves. Sadly most of these laws have been implemented following a tragedy, which the law then seeks to avoid happening in the future. There is also a sense of learning through the years with this, take the use of asbestos as an example. This material was once widely used in buildings yet following the discovery of its harmfulness, it is now no longer legal to use. 

Ensuring Freedom 

What happens in most cases when it comes to planning permission is that neighbors have the opportunity to appeal the move for further building. This could be for a number of reasons, it could be that a new extension would block someone’s view or access to sunlight, it could also be on the basis the they do not want months of disruption and heavy goods vehicles coming past the home, it may even be down to noise pollution. Many of the regulations in place are there in order to protect the community. 

Environmental 

More and more of the building regulations that we are now seeing are put there in order to ensure that we are doing all we can to protect the environment. For example there are new regulations around waste from a construction site and materials that can and cannot be used. Furthermore there are codes in place that are designed to protect animals living in their natural habitat so that we do not disrupt the eco-system. 

Culture 

There are also building codes which are written into local regulations that are put there in order to maintain the image and the culture of the area. For example New York building regulations are very different from other cities in the US and that is because of the iconic status which the city has and therefore construction must be done in a certain way in order for it to be allowed. 

As you can see the basic idea of these building regulations are to keep people safe and to protect their freedoms, whilst maintaining the identity of a particular area.