The knee jerk response that there are also poor engineers is an attempt to deny that there are problems that an engineer could help address. Remember as an employee of the jurisdiction the jurisdiction is in a position to get rid of a poorly performing engineer. If the comment about cost was about the jurisdiction being unwilling to pay for a qualified engineer then I suggest you have bigger problems because that implies that they would have similar attitude towards the inspectors.
I assumed you meant that the building permit applicant would be hiring a 3rd party engineer to design the houses.
I can hear a lot of screaming and shouting but I believe that a lot of there problems would be avoided if engineers were involved in the design of houses.
We have situations where a engineer is required for a component of a house. Recently we had a design for the foundation wall to support a pre-stressed concrete slab. The engineer was chosen because of the cost of design services. The plans we received did not have dimensions for wall thickness, curb height, maximum wall height, size of footings, etc. I don't know how someone could build it, but it was stamped by a civil engineer. So, why would I require a civil engineer to design all houses if this is the level of design I am going to get? What "service" is the applicant getting for their money? True. Some will chose a civil engineer with a higher level of service and gladly pay for it, but not all.
If the jurisdiction employs a civil engineer, and many do, then all applicant pay for the level of service that they receive and, at least here in Canada, that jurisdiction is now exposed to a higher degree of liability because they have someone with that knowledge base. So, all must pay for the increased level of service, even those who are building just to the prescriptive code.
What do I, a lowly engineering technologist, do when I encounter those anchor bolts with a contractor telling me this is how they do it everywhere? I tell them to show me where in the code it lets them do it that way. Should there be nothing in the code allowing their construction method, they can enlist the services of a civil engineer, probably the one I talked about above, and they can incur those costs and my tax payers are now better protected from liability.