manufacturers and suppliers to ensure a building product is fit for its intended purpose, so they can be held accountable if it fails due to the way it was designed or manufactured • making consenting easier for modern methods of construction such as off-site manufacture. Occupational regulation Occupational regulation aims to protect the public from harm by ensuring services are performed with reasonable care and skill. However, currently the occupational regulatory system doesn’t capture all of the risks in the building process. It’s not always clear that the people authorised to carry out restricted work are competent, and there are challenges to holding people to account for substandard work or poor conduct. The three occupations where we see the most pressing need for change are licensed building practitioners, engineers, and plumbers, gasfitters and drainlayers. The proposed changes include: - changing the licensed building practitioners scheme to raise competence standards and broaden the definition of restricted building work. - introducing a new licensing scheme for engineers and restricting who can carry out safety-critical engineering work - removing exemptions that allow unlicensed people to carry out plumbing, gasfitting and drainlaying work. Risk and liability We know that building work doesn’t always go right, and that fairer outcomes are needed when things go wrong. The proposed changes include: - requiring a guarantee or insurance product for residential new builds and significant alterations, allowing homeowners to actively opt out of it. - leaving the liability settings for building consent authorities unchanged. Proposing not to change the liability settings for BCAs was based on a finely balanced assessment. A cap on liability would only support BCAs, it