Building standards verification services - national performance and workforce: annual report 2023-2024

1. Introduction

1.1.This report has been produced by the Scottish Government’s Building Standards Division to provide an overview of the performance of building standards verification services across Scotland and to provide information on the professional workforce employed by local authorities to provide verification services.

1.2.The report provides aggregated information on the national level of performance against the key performance outcomes (KPO) within the Building Standards Performance Framework for Verifiers 2024. It includes the key findings from the quarterly data returns made by verifiers for the reporting period covering 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024.

1.3.Annual monitoring is also in place to measure changes to the building standards workforce. The workforce data provides an essential insight into the resourcing of services, the development of competence and an indication of the level of staff turnover affecting verifiers in different parts of Scotland. This report presents data collected as at 31 July 2024, providing commentary on the challenges faced by the profession including:

• the level of supply and demand
• resourcing
• the competency of the building standards profession
• identifying where change is needed for resilience

1.4.All data is collected from each local authority via the ScotXEd web platform and robust validation rules and quality assurance measures are applied to ensure data reported is consistent across all 32 services.

1.5.Building Standards Division provide guidance on data reporting and carry out further quality assurance reviews of all data returns to ensure data is as accurate as possible.

1.6.A three-year trend analysis is included with detailed insights and findings for each section.