Scotland’s cladding remediation estimates: June 2025

Methodology

Figure 1. Overview of the main steps of the methodology process

Ordnance Survey (OS) provided an initial list of candidate buildings in Scotland, which had two or more residential addresses and a maximum height of more than 10m.

Linking datasets

Unique Property Reference Numbers (UPRNs) were used to link the OS list of candidate buildings to other data sources available in the public sector. These included the Communal Establishment Register from National Registers of Scotland (NRS), the High-rise Inventory (HRI) and Home Analytics Scotland from Energy Savings Trust.

Calculating the estimated number of buildings 11 metres or more in height in Scotland

Communal establishments

The responsibility for assessment and any necessary work on commercial and wider public sector buildings (schools, hospitals, hotels, university accommodation etc.) sits with relevant public bodies and building owners. Many of these types of buildings are included in the Communal Establishment Register, which comprises managed residential accommodation with full or part-time supervision of the accommodation. The OS list of candidate buildings included a few such communal establishments – mostly student accommodation – so these were eliminated, along with some other buildings that were deemed not to be relevant based on their building classification type.

Height

The Housing (Cladding Remediation) (Scotland) Act 2024 relates to buildings that stand 11m or more above the ground. This height is measured to the floor of the topmost storey. The datasets listed previously provide up to three different height measurements for each candidate building: i) height to the floor of the topmost storey in the HRI, ii) relative height to the eaves from Home Analytics and iii) maximum building height from Ordnance Survey.

The Home Analytics Scotland dataset records information for residential properties in Scotland. Since a building can contain multiple properties, the individual properties were grouped by building and the maximum value for relative height to the eaves was taken from the grouped properties.

To determine the number of residential buildings 11 metres or more in height, the height to the floor of the topmost storey in the HRI (i) was used if it was available. Where that was not available, such as for all buildings below 18 metres, an adjusted relative height to the eaves from Home Analytics (ii) was used where available. To calculate this adjusted height, 2.7 metres was removed to account for the height from the floor of the topmost story to the eaves. This was chosen in preference to the maximum building height from Ordnance Survey since maximum height could include things like spires or antenna, which could result in measurements that are very different to the height to the floor of the topmost storey. If neither (i) nor (ii) were available for a particular building, the same 2.7 metre adjustment was made to the maximum height from Ordnance Survey (iii).

Based on this, buildings that were 11 metres or more in height were selected to produce our estimate of the total number of residential buildings in Scotland in that category.

Calculating estimates of the number of buildings requiring work to alleviate external wall system (EWS) life-safety fire risk

Different methods were applied to calculate estimates for high-rise (18m+) and mid-rise (11-18m) buildings.

Mid-rise (11-18m)

In 2022, the UK Government published estimates of the number of mid-rise (11-18m) residential buildings in England and the proportion of these that are estimated to require work to alleviate life-safety fire risks due to external wall systems. The proportion ranges produced were disaggregated by height band and level of remediation required.

These were applied to our estimated number of mid-rise (11-18m) residential buildings in Scotland, to calculate the estimated number of mid-rise residential buildings in Scotland which might require work.

There is some anecdotal evidence that Scotland may have more old mid-rise tenement buildings built with thick external solid stone walls than England, and that these are unlikely to have life-safety fire risks related to an EWS. However, in the absence of available evidence demonstrating otherwise, the assumption is that there is no significant difference between the housing stock in England and Scotland.

High-rise (18m+)

Data reporting by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) shows that in England only a few new high-rise (18m+) buildings are now being added to MHCLG remediation programmes each month, suggesting that the vast majority of high-rises needing remediation in England have now been identified. This number was therefore assumed to be the total of high-rises in England requiring work. To estimate the number of high-rise residential buildings in Scotland that might need work to alleviate EWS life saftery fire risk, the number of high-rise residential buildings in an MHCLG programme as a proportion of England’s total high rise residential buildings was calculated and applied to the estimated number of high-rise residential buildings in Scotland. As a result, this estimate does not comprise a range like the mid-rise estimates.