News
04/03/2010
The Northern Ireland Building Regulations- DOES YOUR BUILDING COMPLY?
The Northern Ireland Building Regulations are legal requirements made by the Department of Finance and Personnel and administered by the 26 District Councils. The Regulations are intended to ensure the safety, health, welfare and convenience of people in and around buildings.
Contraventions of Building Regulations can generally be categorised as follows:
(a) failure to deposit plans before commencing building works;
(b) failure by the builder to give the required notice at specified stages of the work;
(c) failure to comply with the requirements of the Building Regulations in carrying out work on site.
The Council has legal powers to deal with each type of contravention.
Where the building work does not comply with the Building Regulations the Council is empowered to serve a Building Regulations Contravention Notice. The Notice will specify the contravention and the period of time, normally 28 days, within which work must be made good, altered or removed.
03/03/2010
Planet Environmental Design focus on support services for Architectural practices. By processing work for our Clients we enable them to save money and focus on their core business. As a result of the economic climate more businesses are focusing on cost and operating with less people. Therefore, more and more senior people are processsing basic work and getting involved in basic tasks. This is a false economy. This approach costs more money and takes the primary people away from their primary work which they are skilled in doing.
03/12/2009
EPC enforcement
From 3rd December 2009 the enforcement of Energy Performance Certificates became the responsibilty of district councils via building control departments. If an EPC and the associated recommendation report are not provided by the landlord,owner or builder of the property you can contact the relevant council and enforcement authority regarding this issue.
27/04/2009
The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement linked to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The major feature of the Kyoto Protocol is that it sets binding targets for 37 industrialized countries and the European community for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions .These amount to an average of five per cent against 1990 levels over the five-year period 2008-2012.
The Kyoto Protocol was adopted in Kyoto, Japan, on 11 December 1997 and entered into force on 16 February 2005. 184 Parties of the Convention have ratified its Protocol to date. The detailed rules for the implementation of the Protocol were adopted at COP 7 in Marrakesh in 2001, and are called the “Marrakesh Accords.”