Organisational change in systems of building regulation and control: illustrations from the English context

This paper evaluates organisational changes in English local authority building-controldepartments (BCD), in a context in which the adoption and development of management procedure,technique, and process, more commonly associated with corporate private-sector enterprises, isoccurring. Referring to data based on twenty-nine interviews with building surveyors, we show thatchange in building control is complex and contradictory, and best thought of as the emergence of newcapacities, competencies, and interactions (of regulation) both within BCD, and between BCD and new actors and agents. This includes the enlargement of the regulatory networks of BCD, through theuse of external expert advisors, and by the formation of, sometimes unstable, partnerships in whichBCD may work with each other and with clients of building-control services. Such partnershipsand networks are part of a complexity of regulation, in which outcomes are not the products of any one professional, or actor, but part of a diversity of overlapping relations and interventions. Suchrelations, we argue, are part of a process that may undermine, even dismantle, the public provision of building-control services