"Complies with Part B" is half a sentence
"Complies with Part B" is half a sentence. The other half is "which Part B", and in five years that missing half is the one that matters.
Three texts of Approved Document B are now in play in England:
- The 2019 edition incorporating the 2020, 2022 and 2025 amendments. It still applies where a building notice, initial notice or full plans application went in before 30 September 2026 and the work is sufficiently progressed within 18 months, so before 30 March 2028.
- The same edition with the 2026 amendments, in effect from 30 September 2026. More than one common stair in blocks of flats with a storey 18m or more, and provisions for evacuation lifts.
- The 2029 amendments, published in September 2024 and taking effect on 2 September 2029. They remove the national classes for fire resistance, with their own six month transitional route.
Two projects on the same street can be designed correctly to different texts.
The same pattern runs outside the Approved Documents. The Part 2A dutyholder and competence duties came into force on 1 October 2023. The Building Safety Levy regulations came into force on 1 October 2026 and do not apply to a building control application made before that day. In each case, the date of a notice or application decides which rules a project answers to.
In each case, the date of a notice or application decides which rules a project answers to.
Paragraph numbers move too. The 2026 amendments restructured Section 3 of Volume 1, so a means of escape reference copied from an older check may now point somewhere else. A reviewer holding a different edition will read a correct citation as an error.
Four fields I would put beside every compliance statement:
- Document, volume and the full edition wording from the cover.
- Any amendment booklets read alongside it.
- The transitional route relied on, with the notice or application date.
- The date of the check, and confirmation the online version was current that day.
None of this is extra work. It is what is already in front of the designer at the moment of the check, written down.
How do you record the edition in your compliance records?
