Scotland’s Cladding Remediation Programme update: Q2 2025
A quarterly release providing data and information on the progress of the Cladding Remediation Programme in Scotland.
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Introduction
The Grenfell tragedy of 14 June 2017 highlighted that issues of potentially unsafe cladding and other fire safety defects could be present in residential buildings across the UK.
Cladding generally refers to the external wall system used on some buildings. This can be used to provide thermal insulation, weather resistance or to improve a building’s appearance.
A Ministerial Working Group on Mortgage Lending and Cladding was set up in June 2017 to consider the difficulties people experience when trying to buy, sell or remortgage properties in buildings with potentially unsafe external wall cladding. The group published its final report and recommendations in March 2021, and Scottish Ministers announced that all recommendations from the Ministerial Working Group would be accepted. This included a commitment to develop the Single Building Assessment (SBA), a methodology to assess domestic multi-residential buildings 11 metres and over in Scotland.
The Scottish Government Cladding Remediation Programme was established to take forward the design and implementation of this work, with the aim of protecting homeowners and residents of buildings with potentially unsafe cladding in Scotland.
The Programme is committed to ensuring that residential buildings with cladding are assessed to identify whether this presents a fire risk. Following this, work may be needed to eliminate or mitigate these risks depending on their severity.
To be within the scope of the Programme, a building must meet all of the following criteria:
- is a flatted, residential building
- has an external wall system (i.e. cladding)
- is 11 metres or more in height (from ground level to uppermost habitable floor level)
- was constructed or developed between 1 June 1992 and 1 June 2022
The Cladding Remediation Programme was initially in a ‘pilot’ phase, which was primarily focused on the design and testing of the SBA process. Learning from the ‘pilot’ phase identified a number of potential challenges, such as delays and obstacles to assessing and remediating buildings due to difficulties in obtaining consent from owners and residents. Steps to address these challenges were taken by bringing forward the Housing (Cladding Remediation) (Scotland) Act 2024 which commenced on 6 January 2025.
An SBA can be carried out to assess any risk caused by a building’s external wall system, and identify if any work is needed to eliminate or mitigate these risks. The Cladding Remediation Programme developed the SBA specification (June 2024) with independent fire engineers.
An SBA has to be carried out by a competent, qualified person and meet compliance and assurance standards specified by Scottish Ministers.
On 25 March 2025, the Cladding Remediation Programme launched the Single Open Call, which is an opportunity for residential property owners or their representatives to notify the Programme of their concerns about cladding in their properties, and (subject to the height and age of their property) to apply for government funding for a statutory SBA. The Cladding Remediation Programme has asked for expressions of interest (EoIs) to identify buildings which may need assessment.
After an EoI is made to the Single Open Call a due diligence review is undertaken to ensure the property meets the minimum requirements as set out in the SBA specification. Once this review is complete and the property deemed to be within scope of the Cladding Remediation Programme, an offer of funding from Scottish Government will be made to the applicant to instruct an SBA to be undertaken.
This release provides information on the number of SBAs and their progress, remedial works identified as a result of those SBAs and EoIs submitted via the Single Open Call, by type of applicant and local authority area. However, it does not provide the complete picture of progress to mitigate cladding fire safety risk in Scotland. This release focuses on SBAs and therefore does not include information on other types of assessment carried out prior to the publication of the SBA specification in June 2024. It is also possible that developers or other organisations have started and/or completed more SBAs and/or remedial works than the Cladding Remediation Programme is currently aware of.