Chamber and committees

A grant model was used to enable a quick start to the programme and to test the viability of an arm’s length delivery approach based on established principles behind Scotland’s property systems. Interim learning from this approach shows there is a need to move to a model based on directly procured contracts to speed and scale delivery and at lower overall risk. This change was announced to the Scottish Parliament by myself on 12 May 2022 - Update on cladding remediation programme: Cabinet Secretary's statement - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

The Cladding Remediation Unit has 14 members of staff.

As the Minister with responsibility for this area, I am the only Minister to attend the Cladding Stakeholder Group.

All SBAs so far have used physical intrusive inspections and desktop reviews to determine outcomes.

The Minister for Local Government, Housing and Planning chaired all meetings of the working group, it met five times between 28 April 2020 and 15 March 2021.

Eight buildings have received grant payments and all other buildings are being supported through the Single Building Assessment process.

The Scottish Government does not collect information where work is progressed by building owners or developers outwith the Single Building Assessment programme.

The Cladding Stakeholder Group is operationally focused and so no expectation of ministerial attendance, however, I did attend the August meeting of the group to thank them for their on-going contributions to the evolving Cladding Programme.

The Building Safety Act 2002 is bringing forward a new regime for high rise buildings in England following Dame Judith Hackitt’s review of the building regulation system there, which concluded that the system was broken.

The reviews of compliance and enforcement and fire safety standards in Scotland following the Edinburgh schools report and the Grenfell Tower fire did not reach the same conclusion, but did recommend that strengthening of the system should be undertaken. The Building Standards Futures Board is leading change to improve our system through work streams on Digital Transformation, Workforce Strategy, Certification Strategy, Compliance Plan, Verification Delivery Model, Technical Strategy and Verification Standard.On 22 April new regulations were laid in Parliament to improve the safety of cladding on new buildings in Scotland and to ensure that replacement cladding, beyond minor repair, meets the current standards.

Scottish Government is committed to using all tools at its disposal to encourage and enforce measures by developers and other key actors to ensure buildings are remediated, cost-effectively and at pace. This could include raising additional revenue where there is an anticipated shortfall – to ensure equity between homeowners in unsafely cladded buildings with linked developers, and those without. We will explore the necessity of additional revenue raising as part of the development of the Scottish Safer Buildings Accord – announced to the Scottish Parliament on 12 May 2022 - Update on cladding remediation programme: Cabinet Secretary's statement - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

The Scottish Government is actively looking at a number of ways to support homeowners affected by unsafe cladding, which may include property purchase schemes. We will work with stakeholders and homeowners to find solutions that work in the unique Scottish context, which does not include leaseholders.