The expert won't put it in writing

So the question is not whether anyone will write it for you. It is which document your own application has to carry, and what you can settle with a professional before they arrive.

In England, nobody who visited your house owes you the document

Reg 12(1) of the Building Regulations 2010 puts the duty to apply on whoever intends to carry out the building work, which means you or the contractor you engage.

The Dutch provisions are written the other way round. Those supply articles say what must be supplied with an application, and none of them says who supplies it. Who owes the document is left to be read off whoever is applying.

You may be thinking that the person with the training is the person the document belongs to. In England the regulations do attach a duty along those lines, and its condition is the answer. Reg 11K(3) says that “In providing a design, a designer must take all reasonable steps to provide sufficient information about the design, construction and maintenance of the building” to help the client, other designers and contractors comply. It binds someone who is providing a design, and reg 11Q defines design to include “calculations prepared for the purpose of a design”. So a professional who produces that calculation is providing a design, and reg 11K(3)’s duty attaches to them. One who declines has, in these regulations’ own terms, provided no design at all.

So the question worth asking is what someone has been engaged to do. Reg 2 defines a designer by activity and business context, as “any person (including a client, contractor or other person referred to in Part 2A of these Regulations) who in the course of a business” carries out design work or instructs someone under their control to do so. Membership of an institute does not enter the definition.

The load-bearing question decides which route you are on

Whether the wall carries load is where both markets start, and each takes it somewhere different.

In England that fact brings the work inside the regulations through the material-alteration limb. Reg 3 covers “the material alteration of a building, or a controlled service or fitting, as mentioned in paragraph (2)”, and paragraph (2) makes an alteration material where the work would at any stage result in non-compliance where the house previously complied, or in an existing non-compliance getting worse. Reg 3(3) lists structure first among the requirements that test runs against. The test is about whether compliance moves, which is why a small job can be caught and a large one need not be.

In the Netherlands the same fact works as a switch on the permit. Art 2.27 of the Besluit bouwwerken leefomgeving exempts partial renewal, alteration or enlargement of a building only where listed parts do not change, and the first item on that list is “1°. de draagconstructie;”. The exemption holds only while every part on that list is unchanged, so leaving the load-bearing structure alone is not on its own enough to escape the permit. Change it and the exemption falls away, and an unanswered question about one wall becomes a permit application.

England names the route, not the document

England’s regulations give you a choice of routes and leave the paperwork open. Reg 12 offers two, a building notice under reg 13 or an application for building control approval with full plans under reg 14. A building notice’s contents are administrative, running to “a description of the proposed building work, renovation or replacement of a thermal element” plus, for the erection and extension cases, a site plan, storey count and drainage particulars. Reg 13 does not require a structural calculation.

On the full-plans route, writing is the form the application takes. Reg 14(1): “An application for building control approval with full plans must be made in writing, signed by the person making the application”. What goes in is open-ended, because reg 14(3)(d) asks for “any other plans which are necessary to show that the work would comply with these Regulations”. That clause names no calculation and no engineer: the regulation sets the standard and leaves you to work out what meets it.

The authority’s power to say no is what gives the gap teeth. Under reg 14A(1)(b) a full-plans application can be rejected where it “is not sufficiently detailed in any respect to allow the relevant authority to determine whether the proposed work would contravene any applicable requirement of the building regulations”. Besides approval and rejection there is a third outcome: reg 14A(3)(b) lets the authority grant the application subject to a requirement “that such further plans as the authority may specify must be provided before work to which those plans relate starts”. Whether a file resting on an unwritten view clears that bar is the authority’s judgement rather than a line in the regulation. What the regulation settles is who carries the consequence if it does not, and that is the applicant.

Two corrections before you go looking. Reg 12 does not force the full-plans route for structural work, so a building notice remains available on the face of the regulation. And the old language of depositing full plans and waiting for them to be passed describes a step that no longer exists: Building Act 1984 s.16 now carries the note “S. 16 omitted (1.10.2023 except in relation to W., 1.7.2026 for W.) by virtue of Building Safety Act 2022”. Both of those dates have passed, so if you meet that phrasing anywhere, check the date on what you are reading.

The Dutch regulation names the document and itemises it

Art 7.20 of the Omgevingsregeling requires that a constructieve berekening be supplied with the application, and it itemises six things that calculation must contain as a minimum:

• the schematisation under the applicable NEN or NEN-EN norm, including the load schemes to be applied
• the material properties attributed under that norm
• the cross-sectional quantities, justified per structural element in the form of a calculation
• the justification of the support properties
• the calculation results per load scheme
• the governing values

A spoken view cannot satisfy a provision written that way.

Two further supply obligations sit alongside it, and they are separate requirements rather than parts of the calculation. Art 7.7(1) requires data and documents on safety, including the loads and load combinations for strength and stability of the structure and its parts, and the ultimate limit state of the structure and its parts. Art 7.7(3) requires a toelichting, a written explanation of the structural design covering the assumed loads and load combinations, the structural coherence, the stability principle and the structure’s fire resistance on failure.

The clause that matches your situation most exactly is about existing buildings. Where the application concerns altering or enlarging a building that already stands, art 7.7(2) requires that the safety data show “ook wat de opbouw van de bestaande constructie is en wat de toegepaste materialen zijn”: what the existing structure is made of, and which materials were used in it. Somebody has to establish what is already there, in a form that can be handed in, and that is the legal reason an unwritten view of the wall cannot carry a Dutch application. For assessing an existing building at renovation there is a designated standard, carried in the Omgevingsregeling’s standards table as “Beoordeling constructieve veiligheid van een bestaand bouwwerk bij verbouw en afkeuren” (NEN 8700, with NEN 8701 and NEN 8707). You cannot read those standards without buying them, so the designation is a pointer and no more.

If your reading has turned up the kwaliteitsborger and the verklaring, neither reaches you: IPLO, the government’s information point for the Omgevingswet, states that those rules “gelden alleen voor nieuwbouw (permanent of tijdelijk) en niet voor verbouw”, that they apply only to new build and not to renovation, and that “Een bouwactiviteit valt niet onder gevolgklasse 1 als het om verbouw gaat.”: renovation falls outside gevolgklasse 1 altogether. Altering the home you already live in is verbouw. If the work needs consent at all, it is the permit route and not the notification one.

In the UK, who is paying changes what the advice comes with

RICS’s guidance on risk, liability and insurance records where its members most often exclude liability altogether, and it is on advice given for free. Para 3.18 notes that “The most common situation in which members do so is if they provide advice without charging a fee”, where “do so” is excluding legal liability altogether. The mechanism sits in the same paragraph: on free advice, members “should still ensure that the advice given falls within the scope of their business services, as defined by their policy, or they may have no insurance” if the person who received and relied on the advice makes a claim. Unpaid advice can land outside the policy, and the exposure then becomes personal. None of this is sourced for the Netherlands; Dutch professional-indemnity practice is a separate question with separate rules.

RICS recommends a document for exactly this case, and it is not the opinion you asked for. Para 3.18 again: “RICS recommends that members should ensure the exclusion of liability is in writing and is specifically drawn to the attention of the recipient of the advice.” So after free advice, what gets put in writing may well be the exclusion.

Your position is better than that moment suggests, and the same guidance says so. A complete exclusion, it notes, “would usually be possible only where your client is a business user, not a consumer”. You are a consumer. RICS is describing how exclusions tend to hold up rather than ruling on your case, so read “usually” as written.

Two obligations of a RICS-regulated firm are worth knowing. It must carry adequate and appropriate professional indemnity cover for all its previous and current professional work, which is a mandatory obligation and is what couples written work to liability in the first place. And Rule 3 of the Rules of Conduct is short, “Members and firms must provide good-quality and diligent service.”, with the numbered items under it printed as example behaviours illustrating that rule. Example behaviour 3.6 has members communicate to clients the material information their professional advice and opinion rests on, which is an example of communicating and not a right to a written report. Example behaviour 3.2 has them agree the scope of the service with the client, along with its limitations and timescales, and that is the one you can use before anyone visits.

Worked example: Priya in Sheffield and Ruben in Nijmegen

Priya wants a wall out between her kitchen and dining room. An engineer she knows looks at it as a favour, charges nothing, says it is probably fine, and will not write that down. Nothing in the regulations moves that task onto them, and an unpaid look is the situation RICS describes for its own members. Priya is the applicant under reg 12(1). She picks between the building notice and full plans, and on the full-plans route her application is itself a written, signed document. What she is weighing is reg 14A(1)(b): whether a file resting on an unwritten view is sufficiently detailed is the authority’s call, and the two ways it can go against her are rejection, or approval on condition that further plans arrive before that part of the work starts. So she pays for the calculation. That changes the engineer’s position as well as hers, because a calculation prepared for the purpose of a design is design under reg 11Q, and reg 11K(3)’s information duty attaches to a designer who is providing one.

Ruben has the same wall in Nijmegen and a shorter route to the same conclusion. The wall is load-bearing, so art 2.27’s exemption falls away and he needs the permit. Count what the application has to carry: the constructieve berekening with its six itemised minimum contents under art 7.20, the safety data under art 7.7(1), and the toelichting under art 7.7(3), with art 7.7(2) requiring that the safety data also document the structure already standing. All three are written. Ruben’s question stops being whether the engineer is willing to write something and becomes which of the three he is paying for, and when.

What to settle before the visit

Your leverage sits in the terms, and the terms are agreed before anyone arrives. Scope and limitations agreed then make the written calculation part of what you are buying, at a price you see with everything else; asked for afterwards, it is a favour.

1. Name the applicant. Confirm whether you or your contractor is the person who intends to carry out the work, because in England that is where the duty to apply sits.
2. Establish in writing whether the visit is paid. With a RICS-regulated firm in the UK, that answer is information about insurance rather than about goodwill: free advice can fall outside the firm’s policy, and it is where liability is most often excluded.
3. Name the document you are buying, in writing, with its scope and limitations. Use the regulation’s own name for it where there is one: the Dutch regulation names a constructieve berekening and a toelichting, while England’s regulations name no equivalent, so there you write down what the document has to establish about this wall.
4. If the advice is free and the firm is RICS-regulated, ask up front whether an exclusion of liability will come with it, and decide whether an opinion on those terms is enough for what you have to hand in.

If the visit has already happened, the same move works one step later: agree the scope and the price for the calculation in writing, then instruct it.

What comes back when you pay for the calculation should be a quote, with the scope and the price in it, and your instruction back, carrying the price and the dates, is a mandate. In England one more document arrives at the end and is worth filing: once satisfied, the authority “shall within the specified period give a completion certificate in all cases” under reg 17(1), and reg 17 sets that period at eight weeks from receipt of the reg 16(4) notice.

If you are holding a whole survey, the survey came back red covers going back to the surveyor in writing and asking what access each item needed and who can provide it, which is the same move one step earlier. When to hire a building inspector covers what to ask for before any report exists, and the inspector entry sets out why their fee does not move with the answer they find.

Where appkeep fits

You end up with a file: whatever your own application had to carry, and the calculation if you bought one. Keep it against the parts of the house the work touched, so the next person who asks what is behind the plaster can read the answer. The wall itself has no next date, but each component the job exposed does, and those are the lines that belong on a planned maintenance list.