Digital property logbooks have been made compulsory in France in a move that has led to suggestions that the UK may now be “falling behind other European countries” in this regard.
The move comes six years after the Conveyancing Association first called for the introduction of logbooks in the UK, where their use being made compulsory does not appear at all imminent.
Across the Channel, however, logbooks have been compulsory since January for all new-build and retrofitted housing.
For new-build, the Logbooks – called a Carnet d’Information du Lodgement (CIL) – have to be supplied by developers. They are required to contain construction information, a materials record, certification, as well as operating, maintenance, and servicing instructions for any equipment installed.
For Retrofit, the logbooks have to be set up by a homeowner and contain permissions, certification, and EPG impact of any projects. There are various French commercial providers of CILs and a free one – CLÉA – provided by an arms-length government housing standards organisation Qualitel.
“Its good to see an element of targeted mandation by the French Government.,” said Nigel Walley, Chair of the Residential Logbook Association (RLBA), adding: “New-build and retrofit are two areas where we are exploring this for the UK.”
This news emerged as the UK’s RLBA joined the advisory board of a major pan-European project to investigate the role of Property Logbooks in delivering building standards across new build and retrofit.
The “DemoBlog” project is funded by the Horizon programme. It a four-year initiative with participants from 15 countries, but will focus on five demonstration products, with the French CLÉA and the UK’s Chimni among them.
One area where the UK may be considered to be ahead, however, is in registration and regulation. The RLBA’s Register of Logbooks was one of the original requests to the RLBA by the Ministry of Housing to support the fight against property fraud. Nigel Walley said:
“The European project partners have expressed a lot of interest in the role and value of the RLBA Register of Logbooks in the UK and our self-regulatory process. There is no equivalent in Europe yet, but we have been asked to demo the Register to the French Govt who are now considering one.”
