From March 2010 all European public-sector clients are legally required to base their planning and building control applications on Eurocode-compliant structural designs. Given that most existing national structural design codes will be withdrawn at the same time, the private sector is very likely to follow suit.

Approved Document A for Building Regulations in England and Wales - which provides guidance on how to comply with part A (structure) of the regulations in common building situations - references 22 of the national codes being withdrawn in 2010 but will not be revised by the UK government's Communities and Local Government (CLG) department until 2013. Despite this, Eurocodes designs will comply and CLG will clarify the legal position by the end of 2009. The equivalent to Approved Document A in Northern Ireland is Technical Booklet D: 1994 – Structure, and this will be revised before the end of 2009 to include references to Eurocodes alongside withdrawn British standards. In Scotland, structural guidance is provided in section 1 of the Domestic Handbook and section 1 of the Non-domestic Handbook. The Scottish government plans to publish revised guidance incorporating Eurocodes that will come into effect in 2010.

While withdrawn British standards may still be used to achieve compliance with UK building regulations, they will no longer be maintained or reviewed by BSI. Continuing to work with withdrawn standards could put building control officers, structural designers and their insurers at increasing risk.

In order to ensure that Eurocode designs are properly checked, building control officers will need to engage the services of professional civil and structural design engineers who are sufficient trained in and familiar with Eurocodes. The support resources on this website are primarily intended to enable designers to do this.

 

Building control officers may also find many of the resources, particularly the general introductory courses and publications, of use to their own staff. You can search for general support resources by specifying 'all Eurocodes' in search criteria.