Competent Person

Competence is defined against a task, not as a general status. A person may be entirely competent to assess a small single-occupancy office and not competent to assess a complex residential block with a stay put strategy, and there is no contradiction in that.

What a duty holder should look for

Relevant training and qualifications are the starting point, but they are not the whole of it. Experience of buildings of the same type and complexity matters, as does membership of a professional body with an enforced code of conduct, evidence of continuing professional development, and appropriate insurance. So does a willingness to say that something falls outside their competence.

Why it is the duty holder's judgement

Appointing someone to carry out a task does not transfer the duty. The duty holder remains responsible for having made a reasonable judgement about competence, which means keeping a record of why the appointment was made — the qualifications seen, the experience discussed, the buildings previously assessed — rather than only the outcome.

That record is straightforward to assemble at the point of appointment and difficult to reconstruct afterwards.