High risk buildings - verification during construction: compliance plan approach - background and implementation

2. Projects in scope

The term High Risk Buildings (HRB) describes the building types in scope of this guidance. These building types have been selected following public consultation and following high profile building failures. Public consultation also highlighted that a projects scale or complexity was an important factor, and that for some work the full compliance plan approach would be disproportionate.

High Risk Buildings (HRB) include major works to create or alter a: -

• Domestic or residential buildings higher than 11 metres
• Educational, community, sport buildings
• Non-domestic public buildings under local authority control
• Hospitals
• Residential care buildings

Major works must be defined in terms of the impacts on life safety. Factors to be considered include

• Complexity
• Scale
• Value of works
• Escape routes
• Vulnerable occupants
• Cladding alterations or new installations

As part of the Scottish Governments response to the Grenfell Tower Inquiry Phase 2 recommendations the High Risk Buildings definition will be re-considered and defined before May 2026 in preparation for future legislative change. Verifiers have indicated that there are other project types which would benefit from inclusion, such as stadia and shopping centres.

The decision on whether a building warrant proposal is considered major works in terms of the applicability of the Compliance Plan Approach rests with the relevant local authority building standards verifier.

Once legislative change has been made, procedural regulations will be clear that for defined buildings, a building warrant application will not be considered as received unless the required prewarrant stage has been undertaken. Suitably defined timescales and scale of fees will form part of the post legislative change delivery.

To allow appropriate light touch monitoring of the use of this guidance, as part of the change process towards amendments to legislation, verifiers should prefix descriptions of work for projects in scope, with the description field in IDOX Uniform, with “HRB -”. This will allow identification of projects in scope without requesting formal returns from local authorities, through access to the online Part 1 building standards registers.