Chamber and committees

Of the 15 recommendations laid out in Cladding Remediation Gateway Reviews 0 (Strategic Assessment) October 2021 and July 2022, the October recommendations largely overwrite those from the July review. Of the eight recommendations from the July 2022 Gateway Review, all are on track and four out of the eight have been completed.

Not all 780 buildings on the high rise inventory will require assessment. Single building assessments are demand led and available on request for homeowners or their representatives should they meet the qualifying criteria.

We have been in contact with the representatives of over 50 buildings about the Single Building Assessment programme, with plans to expand this throughout 2023.

The full scope is available to interested suppliers via the Public Contracts Scotland website and includes: 1) an overview of Scotland’s empty homes; 2) the key barriers and opportunities for bringing homes back into use; 3) an assessment of the effectiveness of current approaches and interventions; 4) suggestions on how these could be improved. We anticipate the exercise will be complete by summer 2023.

For the purposes of Cladding Remediation, an SBA is an assessment carried out by homeowners to determine the fire safety risk in buildings due to cladding. Duty of care for properties lies with the owners.

This data is not held by the Scottish Government. It is the responsibility of Registered Social Landlords to ensure that their housing stock is safe. However, we are funding RSLs who are participating in the Single Building Assessment Programme and will continue to do so.

The Scottish Safer Buildings Accord is an ambitious attempt to secure the cooperation of Scotland’s leading developers to address the cladding problem. It is a complex and commercially sensitive negotiation. The Scottish Government has held productive discussions with Homes for Scotland and developers in recent months and subject to satisfactorily concluding negotiations the Accord will be agreed and signed in the coming weeks.

The Single Building Assessment takes a holistic approach of assessing buildings. Following professional advice from fire engineers, splitting the process would not fulfil the critical life safety requirements of the Single Building Assessment.

The working group does not, in general, create new material separate from that created to organise the meetings such as agendas and meeting notes, which are now subject to publication. The Chair will take a view on proactive publication of any new material in line with FOI principles and the need to respect the confidentiality of blocks engaged in the Pilot.

We have received eight pre-final reports.