local council : Building regulations & planning

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are useless. my own recent conversations with the local building regulations and planning have left me with the feeling the surveyors know very little about the regulations.. especially basic stuff like attached garages and porches.
anyway a guy at work has just had a porch built at 3 meters squared. it doesn't need planning permission so he thought he was ok, he checked up on the web, did some research on the regulations and planning etc etc and all was good. got it built professionally (certainly looks good) etc

anyway the building regs found out and wanted to check out the porch because he didn't put in an application for the porch. He did explain to them the porch was 3 meters sq and didn't a planning applications. but 'senior' building control surveyor was firm in his tone of 'voice' that it needed it. he got scared and decided to measure the porch before the surveyor came round, big problem the porch measured externally came to 3.3 meters squared! he thought he might have a problem on his hands! apparently the surveyor came round and instead of measuring the external dimensions of the porch he measured the internal surface area.. so the porch now was 2.2 Meters squared! he didn't say anything to the surveyor but he too doesn't think to much of the building regulation control at the local council!