Building standards verification performance framework 2020: national survey findings

Executive Summary

The remit of the building standards system in Scotland is to protect the public interest by setting out the standards to be met when building or conversion work takes place, to the extent necessary to meet the building regulations.

In 2020 the Scottish Government commissioned Pye Tait Consulting to undertake the seventh annual national customer satisfaction survey for building standards.^[1] The purpose of the annual survey is to obtain nationally consistent customer satisfaction data across all 32 local authorities in Scotland and to enable comparison analysis between years.

The survey aligns with Key Performance Outcome 4 (KPO4) of the ‘Building Standards Performance Framework for Verifiers’ (operational from May 2017).^[2] The purpose of KPO4 – titled ‘Understand and respond to the customer experience’ – is for local authority verifiers to monitor customer satisfaction with the building standards service and ensure it meets or exceeds customer expectations.

Approach to delivering the survey:

• The 2020 survey questionnaire was identical to the 2019 version (a copy is presented in Appendix 2);
• The scope of the survey was all building standards customers between 1^st April 2019 and 31^st March 2020, defined as:

a. Applicants for building warrants (including any agents);

b. Submitters of completion certificates (including any agents); and

c. Others that have interacted with the building standards service.

• Local authorities supplied their customers’ contact details (name and email address only) to Pye Tait Consulting for the express purpose of being invited to participate in the survey;
• The survey opened on 28^th September 2020 and closed on 3^rd November 2020. It was hosted online and customers with email addresses were directly invited by Pye Tait Consulting to participate;
• Local authorities were at liberty to promote the survey link to their own customers (i.e. those within scope) as appropriate;
• For customers of one local authority verifier the survey automatically assigned their responses to that local authority verifier; while customers of multiple local authorities were presented with links for each local authority verifier of which they had been a customer and thus could complete the survey multiple times, once for each local authority verifier.

Achieved sample:

Total email addresses supplied to Pye Tait from local authorities: 26,264^[3]

Total survey invitation emails sent by Pye Tait: 20,966^[4]

Total survey responses received: 3,037

Response rate: 14.5%^[5] (against 20,966 emails sent).

Respondent profile:

• The majority of surveyed customers (74%) stated that they were direct building warrant applicants and/or direct submitters of completion certificates during the 2019/20 financial year (the period in scope of the survey);
• A quarter (25%) classified themselves as agents, i.e. acting on behalf of applicants;
• A small minority (2%) defined themselves as an ‘other’ customer type;
• The majority of customers (78%) had submitted applications for domestic work only, 11% submitted applications for non-domestic work only and 12% submitted applications for both domestic and non-domestic work.

Note that the colour-coding metrics used reflect The Scottish Government’s updated performance measurement requirements.