format. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the meeting of the meeting of the local government community committee in 2017. In the meeting papers provide a digital format in the time of the meeting that will be in the digital format in 2021. We have a full house today and apologies have been received from MSPs, and we move to agenda item 1, which is the building regulations in Scotland. The evidence session follows up on the session held by stakeholders in the housing and building industry on 3 May 2017, and the committee will take evidence today from Ross McKay, community property law centre, law society of Scotland, Kenny McKenzie, royal institution of charter surveyors in Scotland, Gilly Carr, present elect, institute of clerks of works and construction inspectorate of Great Britain, and Glen Campbell, building standards manager, Highland Council. Thank you, everyone, for coming on this morning. We very much appreciate it. We'll move straight to questions. I wonder if I could perhaps open up and just get some general experiences and views from the witnesses we have today. In your experience, how widespread is the problem of new-build homes that have received completion certificates, subsequently been found to have significant construction defects? That's a fairly good contextual question to ask, given what we're looking at here this morning. Anyone want to start off on that? Don't all rush to catch my attention. Gilly Carr, did you want to come in? Yes, generally UK wide, it seems to be a foreseen problem, mainly from the end users who are up high, new-build housing seems to be getting a lot of negative press. Your perception is that it's fairly widespread. Anyone else want to give a view on that? Sorry. We'll take on Mr Campbell and then we'll take Mr McKay. From a Highland perspective, the issues that we tend to get reported to ourselves tend to be surrounding the noise and condensation for some reason. It can be an issue where it's down to the quality of workmanship, but mainly in the two particular issues it's the lifestyle of the people that occupy the buildings that tend to generate the problems. Is that specific to new-build properties? No, it doesn't necessarily need to be, but we tend to find that new-build people moving into new-build properties tend to find problems at an earlier stage and report them via the Housing Association or the local authority. I would say that my experience anecdotally is that there isn't a large-scale evidence of major structural defects in new-build properties in Scotland in the context of breach of regulations. There are a wide range of issues that I would class under the snagging heading, which can be fairly serious from Nigel's point of view, but technically perhaps not a breach. If there is an area that is probably causing more concern, it would be the small standalone one-off-two-off type of transaction, rather than major builders, who tend to have the systems in place to monitor and deal with complaints internally before going back to local authorities or certainly to solicitors to take some form of action. I concur with Ross. My experience, although I am here representing RICS, I am not employed by RICS. I am a building standard surveyor who works with City of Edinburgh Council. I just chair the building control professional body within the RICS, so that is why they asked me along this morning. Thank you. That is helpful. That is helpful. My personal experience is similar to Ross's. I think, and also probably Glenn, people's aspirations when they build a new house or move into a new house will be soundproof and wind and water tight and whatever. There may be a little snagging items, but you do tend to sometimes get the one-off developer who there can sometimes be more serious defects, not common but can happen. That developer goes into liquidation or disappears and that becomes quite problematic. That is where it falls back on, your NHBCs, your Premiers, your Zurichs or whoever is doing the third party insurance nowadays. I will definitely come back and ask more questions about that as the evidence session goes on. I suppose it then poses the question that, how can you build homes that suffer from serious construction defects? How can they end up receiving completion certificates? If the system is working really robustly, then hopefully that would not happen. How do we find ourselves in that situation? It is down to the level of inspection during the build process. The building control teams have their requirements and their diaries for going out to inspecting properties during the course of construction, but, stating the obvious, they are not in sight on a daily basis. Any completion certificate always has the magic phrase, so far as it can be ascertained from a visual inspection. Quite literally, if there is anything behind the wall or underneath the floor that is not visible, the building control team cannot comment on that. As solicitors, we are relying on the completion certificate as prima facie evidence that the property has been built in accordance with other regulations, but we accept that it is not 100 per cent guarantee. Literally, something could be hidden from sight which no inspector could ascertain. Much of it is based on trust? Yes. I just want to comment on that, Gili Carr. Unlike building control, I am of the opinion that they only do sequential inspections, foundations, dam proof course, windowsill level, et cetera, where you would normally have clockworks on sight, there is quite a lot more time allowed to carry inspections. Unfortunately, clockworks have been taken out of the forms of contracts. When designing and building contracts came in, they literally removed the word clockworks from the contract, where previously, and hopefully with NEC3, the clockworks has put back in there, so at least it makes the client, the developer, aware that there is such a person as a clockworks, so hopefully we can get back into the construction side. Any other, I mean, just for clarity, delighted to hear replies from all witnesses, but don't feel the need for everyone to reply, so I don't know if Mr Campbell or Mr Mackenzie wants to add anything to that. Yes, of course, Mr Carr, yes. Touching on what Mr Campbell said regarding condensation, for instance, some of that is down to design. It's not always down to bad ownership. Touched on modern-day living standards that people would expect, but could put in, not we, design that could put in, mechanical ventilation, bathrooms can be improved, kitchens can be improved, likewise bedrooms. Thank you. Mr Mackenzie. The situation is really, it's a level of inspection that is possible on that type of development and resources and finance and the matching, the application fee against how many inspections you could carry out. Also communication because you're relying on the developer informing you that the building's at such a stage that you can inspect. If you go along to inspect a building, it's all covered up. You've got to have real cause to ask for that to be opened up. You could ask for it to be opened up, but if that was challenged you would have to almost show failure, so you can only do reasonable inspections, but if you had a reason to think there was a fail you would get it opened up. I think very, very rarely any building that starts construction won't meet the standards on paper and quite often the final building meets the standards as well on a visual aspect, but it's perhaps these little things where maybe a cavity's got a wee bit of a block that could cause stampness. Shrinkage, settlement, things like that can happen, but they take years to happen, they don't just happen overnight. Kate, Mr Campbell, do you want to add anything? I think this issue needs possibly a bit more investigation in that is it clear that it's building regulation defects that are being found or is it more down to the quality of workmanship, which are two separate entities, and building standards don't, in their inspections on site, have that responsibility to inspect the quality of workmanship that's been carried out? The reason for the inspection is to ensure compliance with the regulations. That's helpful because I was going to go in and ask a little bit about responsibilities, whether it's the construction team on site, whether it's developers, whether it's the insurance company, NHBC. We had NHBC at our committee a few weeks ago, and I have to say that it came to committee after we heard anecdotal evidence from people who felt they'd been poorly served by construction standards and new-build housing. I stress on the record that it was anecdotal evidence that we heard, but it led us to ask an obvious question about if someone complains to NHBC or any other insurance company about a significant problem that they have, structurally defective in their house, or whatever a significant problem they have whether or not that company would have a responsibility to see if that could potentially be systemic across 200 unit development in the reply that we got from Malcolm McLeod and NHBC was if the complaint was about an individual property, we would tend to look at that particular property and deal with that complaint because we would not know whether the problem was systematic or systemic. I'll leave that sitting there. One insurance company, that might be practising the sector, but back to the concept of who's responsibility is it. After the event, if the new-build properties are insured and we identify a problem in one new-build property on a development, or maybe it's two, three or four, and there are 200 units there, is there any legal responsibility for anyone to start picking away at this to see if there's something more underlying, whether it's the quality of workmanship, whether it's design or whatever, who would have that responsibility and if no one should have it, should it sit somewhere? To me it as a lawyer. I would say that at the moment there is no responsibility. There is a bigger issue here to do with the warranty and consumer protection that a buyer for new-build home obtains. At present what they receive is the habitation certificate, which is maybe not a final complice certificate but is the green light from local authorities saying that that individual house has been passed and is fit for occupation. There will be a cover note from NHBC or equivalent warranty providers saying that they have inspected the property and are satisfied it's fit for occupation. That's it. There is nothing else there. One of the great emissions is that there is very little obligation on the part of the builder to actually provide a property that is compliant with anything. A lot of builders have a standard form contract and they won't even have a provision saying that they undertake to build the house in compliance with applying permission and building regulation. Effectively you take what they give you. The law society produced a couple of years ago a standard form contract for use in new-build situations. We wrote in a specific provision saying that the builder undertakes to build the house to a proper mortman-like standard, which is the classic bowl fashion phrase, and in compliance with all relevant regulations. That effect is the building contract because normally when you buy a new-build house you don't have a building contract. If you went out and did a £100,000 extension to your house, you would have an architect involved, an architect's contract, a whole ream of paperwork setting out what's going to be done. On the whole, when a consumer buys a new-build property, they don't have a building contract other than the most that one-line phrase saying that the builder will build the house. I think that there maybe is a road to go down and look at something. I would have thought that, and I don't want to just quote NHBC, but I would have thought that type of third-party insurance should be adequate given the amount of inspections that they do. I think with every product, and houses probably fall under that, you might get the Friday afternoon house, I'm not sure, but certainly my experience is not of major problems throughout private sector construction, not at all, but there is the odd one-off house that something has gone wrong with. They tend not to make the press, sometimes don't even make building standards, but you hear a third hand. These things tend to be picked up by the builder because they're a national contractor and they don't want that in the newspapers. They do it more out of their own commercial reasoning as opposed to perhaps any legal reasoning, and you get the odd house where there's been maybe specialist foundations and something's been missed and that house is settled and people have been evacuated, taken to somewhere, that house has been rebuilt, doesn't need a repair as such, and something's been done about it, but these are very, very few and far that I'm aware of. You're able to say that it's all anecdotal, but the Government has it all anecdotal. I think opening up who pays for it at the end of the day, because clack-a-works, yes, definitely, no-max means, if there's a clack-a-works on a job, the job will be hopefully better finished and constructed definitely, but that's a cost and it's who's going to pay for that, and it might end up being the person buying the product or pay and it's more on-cost, but that's only a personal feeling. Gilicharr? We seem to be talking about individual properties rather than for a housing association. You get what you pay for, basically. There's a practicing clack-a-works, so I could just give you a little bit of my background. My joiner by trade went on to be site manager, building manager, then moved on to clack-a-works, worked for a number of years for your Castle City Council as a clack-a-works, and through the Institute were taught to be part of the construction team, so anything that we pick up building-wise throughout the construction phase would bring the build out at a very early stage and stops the effects that were aware of being built into the properties. I don't think I've come across anybody who would willingly build a defect and then carry on and do it again, so if you can bring it to the construction company at an early stage, it's beneficial to everybody. I'm being really disciplined here. Mr Cabell will bring in a little bit later, but you've brought up lots of themes that I know my fellow committee members want to explore further. We're going to change the order slightly just to let my fellow MSPs know, given the lines of question that we've had and the response that we've had, Mr Simpson can take you in at this point. I'll follow up with you, Mr Mackay, because we've looked at the legal situation. You rightly said that people buying a new home really don't have any consumer protection, and that seems to me to be unacceptable. You mentioned the standard contract that you drew up a few years ago. I don't know how widespread that's been used, but do you think that part of the solution may be to have a standardised missive that has to be used for all new house sales in Scotland? I think that there's certainly merit in that approach. There are always reluctance to impose standard contract by legislation in any field, but you're quite right, as we've discussed before, that there is a lack of warranty protection. One may have to ascertain how deep the problem actually is before introducing a whole legislative raft to support that, and that may require further evidence. However, in terms of the standard form of contract, it's increasingly used by smaller builders, shall we say, but the main national builders who are aware of them, at the moment, still use their own bespoke offer to sell, and they're fairly reluctant to move from that. Indeed, some of their position is very much of the line that this is a standard contract, take it or leave it, and we do find that even fairly reasonable technical amendments on my view are rejected. Their view is that that's a standard form contract signed up to it. Now, when you are a new home buyer, you've seen the house that you really like, it's been sold to you very well, it's got ever-mod coins, yes, you want to sign up to it, and the law will try to explain to you the position, but really you just want to sign the dotted line, secure the new house and start planning for you by the furniture and the carpets, et cetera. So I think that there is an element there that consumers do require protection in terms of warranty, a very simple warranty, as I said, that builders really have a duty to build in accordance with regulations and to a reasonable standard. If we dealt with this in the missives stage, that gives people absolute legal cover if things go wrong. They have that contract, yes. That could cover things like how defects are handled, provision for dealing with disputes, if we were to have an ombudsman, for example, that there could be an actual route for consumers to go down that would be set out in those missives, and that doesn't exist at the moment. No, there's not. I'm sure that NHBC and Homes for Scotland would say to you that they have created their own consumer code for home buyers, which has certainly, over the last few years, very much helped the position. NHBC are not just primarily a form of insurance, they also provide an arbitration service, and perhaps that's why a lot of these cases don't come to public attention, because when you do have a complaint and you're into dispute with the builders, the purpose of NHBC, or a primer guarantee, or the two major suppliers of the product, will step in and try and arbitrate between builder and buyer, and only then would the NHBC step in to insist that work is done. But, certainly, if you're buying from anything without NHBC or primer guarantee protection, you do have a problem if there's a dispute with your builder. Just one final question on this line of questioning, convener. I know we're having a conversation understandably with the lawyer on the panel, but if anyone else wants to come in on that, don't feel obliged to, but get her attention and come in and have a call in. I want to say is that I think a lot of the NHBC Premier is driven by the lender, by the mortgage lender, the banks, or whoever's lending the money, and I think still a lot of, particularly first-time buyers, the person who lives in that house doesn't own it. It's the mortgage person who owns it. A lot of these things are driven more by the lender, and I think it's more people with, I don't know how you feel about that, but we hear that a lot of it is the lender wants this or the lender wants that, not in terms of regulations, but in terms of a completion certificate in their hand on a certain date, rather than a temporary certificate, because they want to make sure that every single thing is complete. We would only issue a temporary certificate or a habitation certificate, as the solicitors like to call them, where there's something maybe like a bit of footpaths not finished along the road, a bit of street lighting that may not affect that property, and also perhaps as outstanding amendments to plans to be submitted, it might not affect that property, it might affect another property. But a lot of the third party insurance is driven more by the lenders, I think, than the house builders wanting it themselves. If I could just come back to that point. If there is a mortgage involved, which obviously applies to vast majority of cases, the solicitor has to buy by the Council of Mortgage Lenders handbook, where it sets out basically the technical provisions of what we require to do. What that states is that we have to check that there is warranty cover from an approved list, as approved by the lender. So you will find in that regard that all lenders will say, NGPC, Premier, Zurich will be approved as warranty providers. I should say that Zurich are no longer in the market, they've come out. But there are a number of smaller providers which will say, yes, we are happy to accept them as the warranty provider. Provided that we check that there is warranty, that's all the lenders we'd require. They don't expect us to interrogate the workmanship or anything else in that regard. So long as we can say that we've got the completion certificate or habitation certificate called what you will, and the warranty, the lenders will be happy in that regard. They will accept a chartered severe report to supervise the worker and architect, who's also supervised the work as well. So I think speculative housing, if I was to buy a bit of land and build my own house, then I could employ a third party independent, or it may be the architect who did my plans, but they would be fully employed to sign off at different stages that they're satisfied with the work. And I think that's where, from the RIC's point of view, and as well as from the Clackawerth's point of view, that perhaps third party inspections can be outsourced as opposed to maybe put upon by a nominated third party inspector. And I think a lot of non-domestic, non-housing properties, the architects still involved in the project, or there's a third party surveyor or project manager acting behind the client who's overseeing that property at different stages as well. Okay, just to follow up on that point, Ken is quite right that there is an option of what's called a professional consultant certificate, which you tend to see in the one-off situation you're building your own house. And the professional, the architect, the engineer, or a specified list of others can give you a certificate saying, I've supervised that construction during the third course of construction and everything is fine. And it's a standard certificate which these professionals can provide. It's actually more wide-ranging than the basic completion certificate actually states I personally have supervised construction. And I'm happy to sign off on it. Okay, sorry. If we're going to go down this misives route, if the committee forms a view, I don't know what view the committee will form, but if the committee was to conclude that we should have standardised misives, who would instigate that? Would that be a matter for the government? Does it require a change in the law? To make it binding, yes, it would do. One could certainly, though, as an interim step, is recommend to homes for Scotland that their members move towards a standardisation of contract and see if that can be dealt with on a voluntary basis. Okay. Okay, specifically on this point, Mr Gibson. Obviously, the problem with the voluntary basis is that the rogues are the ones that are least likely to sign up to it, you know. And I think that's the issue there. I mean, it's about NHBC, convener, because we've had a lot of talk about NHBC. Specifically on this issue. About misives. Well, that is the only comment I was wanting to make about the misives, which is basically that, unless you legislate, it doesn't cover the people who are least likely to actually adhere to the kind of regulations we want to see, you know, that they won't introduce. It's not a supplementary on misives. No, because it was about A&A, because when I asked for a supplementary, we were talking about NHBC, we've kind of moved on from that. Okay, Elaine Smith. Well, again, it's not about misives, I'm afraid, convener, because it was a wee while ago that I did want the supplementary, so we're probably going to come back to inspections on clerical works issues, I think, later. So I'll shelve my supplementary for later. Could I just ask you on the whole legal situation? It was actually one of the pieces of anecdotal evidence that we got that a person who bought a new house and a big new housing scheme from a private building company had actually got a full survey done. I mean, personally, I was expecting that they might just get a mortgage survey, but they'd actually got a full structural engineering survey done, and then there were problems, foundation problems, et cetera. Is there any onus, then, on that surveyor to be responsible in the law for providing a full structural survey which later turned out to have huge problems to Mr Mackay, I suppose? The whole issue of surveys is an interesting one. The members of the committee will be aware that if you're buying a second-hand property, the seller is at least required to provide a home report in terms of the Housing Scotland Act. So a seller survey. There's a specific exemption for new build, so builders do not have to provide any equivalent to a home report in respect of a new build property. It's therefore up to a buyer to decide what level of survey they may wish to obtain on that property. If they're obtaining a loan, their lenders will instruct what's called a scheme 1 mortgage valuation, which is a relatively cursory inspection of the property, confirming its prima facie four walls on a roof and its worth £6,000, and it's suitable for mortgage purposes. However, it's not an in-depth survey, as you expect to be. It's primarily for valuation purposes. It is relatively rare, in fact, it's very rare for a buyer to spend their own money on getting that upgraded to what is called a home buyer's report, what we call scheme 2, which is a much more thorough inspection of the property. They tend to rely on the fact that it's new build, that they've got the comfort of knowing the builder perhaps, the national name, and they take that as comfort. They have the completion certificate, they have the NHBC, and they see little point in incurring the cost of a further full survey on the property. That's their choice, but I think certainly there was a strong pushback several years ago in the context of home reports that builders were given that exemption. Okay, I come in briefly again. I think that that's really interesting, and I'm glad that that's come out in your evidence, because it might be something that we would like to, if the committee would agree, but we'll look at that a little bit further. The problem with that piece of anecdotal evidence we got was that it was a full structural survey, it wasn't just a valuation survey, and it didn't pick up the major defect, but I probably need to just move on slightly. I was wanting to ask Mr Mackenzie something on this as well, which was about the fact that, when you were responding to those questions, you said that often it will be resolved because the builders don't want bad press, whereas it's also the case that the homeowners don't want the bad press because then they might not be able to sell their houses. Therefore, is there some kind of need to get statistics that actually show the extent of the problem, because we're looking at it a wee bit in the dark if builders don't want to talk about foundation problems where half of their houses are sinking and homeowners don't want to talk about that either because it's their houses and it's the biggest purchase that they've ever made and they might have to resell it, then how can we actually get... I think you said we should be looking maybe at getting some more evidence, but how can you get more evidence? I think there's... I'm not going to get into trouble for bringing in the HBC again, but again, that was... It wasn't anecdotal. I know of one situation many, many years ago that happened in a property in Edinburgh, but as I say, I think these situations are very few and far between. You may correct it, the owner may not want that as well, but I'm sure that would have been reported also to the NHBC and probably the NHBC would have been involved. And I think they'll have a record of all minor major claims and defects against them, because basically they're just underwritten by an insurance company, I think these companies. So the insurance company will have records. So I would think statistically the NHBC would be able to give you that record. It's certainly not something that's reportable to the local authorities in any way at all. And sometimes we only get it anecdotically as well. And unfortunately, rumours get legs and arms and they'll become exaggerated between the get-to-tenth person. We might be the tenth person. Should it be then reportable to the local authority? Because it's back to the convener's very first point. If an insurance company finds something structurally defective about one house, should there not be some kind of onus on them to go looking to see if it's in the other houses rather than just try to deal and contain that one situation? I don't know if there's... Maybe Glen might be better speaking on behalf of local authority since I've got an RSS hat on at the moment in that one passport, but I don't think it should necessarily be because there's no reason for that through the building standards. Sorry for butting in. I would agree with Kenny that in finding a fault in one house and, for example, a development of 200, if it were foundations, it would be practically impossible to revisit the other 199 houses to check or recheck to make sure foundations were, in the rest of those cases, done correctly. Can I just go back one other point? The problem as well is that you're going back another stage because where you've got foundations put in, sometimes these foundations may have been put in by a specialist subcontractor on behalf of the builder, but in other developments, they may have been put in by a specialist subcontractor to someone wanting to develop land in a mining area or whatever who then sells off plots of land. I'm only saying that in the moment because I live in Musselborough and round about Walliford, Musselborough, for about two years, someone has been putting grout and stabilising the ground all round that area, but as far as I'm led to believe at the moment, so house builders are going to come on to that land and they're understanding that that land is stable. It might just be that there's one wee bit just been missed where a corner of the house goes. It is very, very difficult and unfortunately these things may happen very, very rarely, but hopefully that's when the insurance is there to pick up any accident that happens in any form of life. Do you want to come back? I suppose just to make the point that it's difficult to get that information, Mr MacKenzie, from, for example, you mentioned NHBC, it would be difficult to get that information because it wouldn't be subject to freedom of information requests, so if they do keep all of that data, then I'm not sure how we would go about getting it, to be honest. I don't know how the building authority, being the local authority at the moment, would be able to record all that either. They could, but again, that might be even worse if they tend to do general property searches and anything flies up. This is more secondhand, but as a new build we're talking about today, as a secondhand house year two, or so down the road, and if there's notices or anything flags up in that, that will flag up on any property search. So this could be a detrimental thing to the sale of that house or to house builders in the future by marking that against something. On the other hand, the problem is, I'm not going to mention the builder, we do have a certain amount of privilege in Parliament, but we now know that there are a lot of crumbling houses, basically that were sold as new houses 25, 30 years ago, and certain builders have been associated with that. I think that taking up your point about inspecting the whole development, I think that the distinction is between workmanship and design. If you find a problem in a specific property and that you'd be ascertained that was due just to poor workmanship, I think that there would be no reason to logically go to the other houses in development, but if it was a clear design fault for some reason to do with the design of the roof truss or something like that, then there may be grounds for saying if this is a design issue applied to one, it will probably apply to every other house with that same design in the estate. I just clarify like wall ties, that is a school issue. Something like that, I think that there should be perhaps a notice on whoever the insurer is if they find it in one house, because that could be a matter of life and death in certain circumstances. If it is design, you are getting into technical regulations and literally the nuts and bolts of construction. If there is a case that wall ties should have been there according to the building warrant and just simply weren't installed, that's workmanship. For some reason, the engineers got it wrong because they weren't strong enough for the wall. That's a design fault and that leads into a bigger picture of inspection. I can just step out a tiny bit. Referring back to the inspection that was done by the engineer and the survey. Again, when surveys are just on the key stages it's when the work going on in between, like your wall ties, if the inspections are carried on throughout the construction process of the building, then you've got more chance to pick it up because a lot of people just look at walls of the building to nice-way walls and timber on it. They don't see what's behind the wall. Likewise, when the structure goes unless it does a break into some areas to see what's behind the wall, they would never find it. Before we move on, Mr Gibson, your theme of questioning has been returned to us now with an opportunity if you want to explore that further before we move on. It's this year about building control. NHBC and its submission has said that it's an approved inspector for England Wales where it's been delivering a complete building control service since 1984 and is the single largest building control authority in the UK and goes on to talk about the services it provides. It says that successive Scottish Governments have declined to licence NHBC to deliver a building control service in Scotland and therefore homeowners in Scotland are suffering consumer detriment. Does the panel agree with that statement? I think that the Scottish Government or the reason NHBC or an equivalent insurance body haven't been taken into the building standards or the building control process or the verification process is that local authorities are accountable to the public they're accountable to the local members and they don't have any commercial interest unlike NHBC they keep referring back to NHBC but they are a commercial body they're in a business you know taking fees from contractors or development companies yep okay You've put that on the record Mr Gibson let Mr Campbell continue with these The local authority is seen to be impartial and independent and I think that the view in the past has been that that brings with it an added security for the public interest Okay so we've seen systems better here than it is south of border where they've been involved building control for 33 years There seems to be evidence that the inspector regime that's in England and Wales isn't as good a system as some people would purport it to be Yeah that's interesting Okay well Mr Mackenzie would like to Really all I would like to add for that is that I think in England and Wales because obviously RISS got members throughout Britain and UK and I've got some people I know who worked down there and I think England and Wales the NHBC tend to dominate house new housing and the local authority deal with more than on domestic situation but from my own experience in Scotland all the defects anecdotally are real that I've been aware of these properties have either had a certificate and I can't see where the NHBC or Premier or anybody else would be doing any more wearing both hats than what they do present so I'm not convinced that that's the root cause I'm not saying that the NHBC wouldn't do as equally a good job or otherwise but I don't think that's getting to the problem that maybe what faults are there where are they, how do we stop them happening in the first place I think that's a bigger picture I think that's helpful Mr Mackenzie and I know we've put it on the record already I think we should state it again just now this is not about one warranty provider at NHBC it's about the policy and legislative statutory landscape in which they operate so for everyone watching this I think that's important to point out we're not looking at any one provider we're looking at the structures within which all providers and others operate so I think that's helpful that you come back to that point How I think it's in our response have got construction compliance notification plans which I think was brought in after consultation through local authorities as such local authority building standards I think we're at the last committee meeting as well and that was a step that we've had over the years and different local authority have dealt with it slightly differently and we've put something formally in place and that's been quite successful but again not like to use the word cowboy builder because that's been another thing that we've looked at over the years for many years to try and how we deal with that situation is that again you can only deal with the response you get as I said earlier if you turn that for an inspection and the building's finished you've got to have reasonable cost you might say well I wanted to see all these if they've got photographs that's an alternative method but again building standards at the moment under its current remit is only confirming compliance with the health and safety and welfare and compliance with the plans and if there's been bad workmanship that may take 30 years to start crumbling we don't know that because materials are changing all the time and they've got third party certification as well agreement certificates, British standards that comply with independent testing but where does maintenance come in here we're in a building here, one of the most complicated and beautiful buildings in Scotland but I think it's had its own problems as well and that's not a dig particularly but I think it's just it's a very difficult situation that we're dealing with certainly pleased for not conducting enquiry on invention no no, not at all there's so many excellent things here but there's probably one or two little issues I'm sure and that can happen in a lot of buildings because we don't have this crystal ball to know what's going to happen with a material 20 years, 10 years down the road I'm delighted you're saying there may only be one or two we're happy with that Mr Whiteman, do you want to come in? Yes, thanks I mean we've covered an awful lot of ground here and I think many of these issues we'll probably want to return to in the months and years ahead but I'm just wondering, to what extent are the problems that we're talking about here specific to the speculative building industry which I know dominates in the UK unlike the rest of Europe where you enter into contracts at the beginning buyers procure buildings and they get built and there's an architect and there presumably will be the equivalent of a clerk of works so you have that contract whereas if you just buy it off the shelf as it were which is common, is that responsible for a lot of the potential problems here? Probably at the core of it it would be, as you say, it is speculative we have a well-established building industry we have a really small number now of national house builders which we all know and their job, their business is to go out to buy land to build houses in the expectation that there is a demand there that people will buy their product and it's no different from the sale of any other product be it a car a sofa, a tin of beans, a house and the issue there is quite frankly the scale of the expense that you're talking about properties worth at the very least tens of thousands of pounds the reliance, a large degree, is on the reputation of the builder this is pure act total but I was at a round table meeting chaired by the HBC a year or so ago some of the major builders represented and they were at pains to say that they have radically improved and enhanced their after care service that there was a situation several years ago whereby people were buying property with what snagging problems rather than structural problems a lot of unhappy buyers they feel that they've now addressed that they have after service teams to deal with these issues and certainly if you're buying a new property now and you find that there's a loose window or something they will get a team in there to fix it and I think that has squashed a lot of the issues but it's more serious in terms of structural defects as I say the same teams are there to look into that now and the builders are aware that they have a reputation to maintain because if there is bad publicity it will be picked up by the public and it will be impacting on their share price and they are very conscious of that so they have a business rationale to make sure that they build a good product but that's the business driver behind it rather than a legal, technical or regulatory regime OK and a question for Gili Carr who's using clerks of works now in the house building domestic house building industry but unfortunately clerks have depleted drastically over the past decade or so I'm not aware of many companies that do actually employ a clerks of works who would tend to be a designer or a client rather than the construction company themselves it has become more prominent and I think it's because of things like this that it's being brought for that there's a need for regular inspection best will in the world again on there's a lot of very good builders out there unfortunately when it comes to large companies they tend to have a lot of self-employed management teams and it's not just the bill as a reputation the bill as a reputation is based on the self-employed person that person is going from one company to another company it doesn't seem to have much strunger for the word here and not quite continuity loyalty to the particular company he sees himself as finishing him on site and he'll move on elsewhere so that's where the overall large company suffers but just to be clear the clerks of works legal obligation is towards the client clerks of works on behalf of a client so would a clerks of works ever have been involved in speculative volume house building because there is no client at that stage not in the not direct of the client and again depends on what needs are wanted given it wouldn't be rigged to ask a clerks of works to sign off and complete a building the whole role of the clerks of works are to inspect through the whole construction process unfortunately I don't work with housing at the moment I'm working on larger-sized projects I'm currently working for Harry Watt University in west of Edinburgh and for instance the pylon goes on in jobs there's a test done by the main contractor that the pylon rigging testing is correct I must have witnessed the witness them tests and it's a build up whether you've been on site more regularly than just the ad hoc inspection you build up a good working yeah you end up with a good working relationship with the contractor and it's all about trust and you can only do that by dealing with the face rather than just the three or four inspections throughout the process okay thanks I'll leave it there can I first of all just thank Alexander Stewart and Jenny Gould for their patience to take us on to a new line of questioning shortly but I know Graham Simpson some further questions around the clerks of works yeah so it strikes me that if you had a clerks of works on site then that their job as you've described Mr Carr is to inspect every building every stage and make sure things have been done properly the system we have at the moment that does not happen the building control system we have at the moment that isn't happening we have what's called reasonable inquiry where building control officers are inspecting some sites they're doing a risk a paper based risk assessment and things things get missed so my question to you Mr Carr and others is should we bring in a system where we have a mandatory clerk of works for instance on sites over a certain size and would that help in answer to that yes would be ideal but unfortunately because of restraints out of local authorities I don't know if that's affordable as you know a lot of local authorities have outsourced their housing stock to housing associations so it would be great to get that in place but the clerk of works isn't the be-and-down door we can only inspect on the lack of time that we've been given to each project it's not a finite line to say everything's perfect there's the odd thing that gets overlooked hopefully I don't think I've overlooked anything myself and I can only answer for myself and other qualified clerk of works you pick up a lot more than what you'd miss Mr Campbell we don't we don't want to confuse reasonable inquiry with the role of the clerk of works the role of building standards building control is there to ensure that the building that's been constructed has been built in accordance with the approved drawings and complies with the regulations the role of the clerk of works is there to check the quality of the work that's going on site and that the building's been built in accordance with the plans and specification there are two different roles between building standards and the role of the clerk of works standards is going to be our final line of questioning so we definitely get the distinction so any other comments in relation to the clerk of works he would say it boils down to risk benefit analysis there's no doubt in an ideal world every house would have a regular inspection regime by an independent professional be it a clerk of works, an architect inspector or whoever but that's going to cost serious money and the practical aspect has to be where does the building industry this committee the local authorities feel that there's an appropriate balance to be struck in that regard it boils down to cost and what is the risk benefit analysis there I say it behind it I'm not speaking for them but I can imagine their reaction to employing a regime of clerk of works of equivalent that will bite into their profit margin they may want to then put the price of houses up which does not expect what the intention is so is there another mechanism for ensuring the quality because that's what we're talking about the quality of the build and secondly what is the fallback when that quality doesn't materialise and it may be something like a sinking fund which perhaps builders other parties could pay into if you buy a flat in a modern block these days it's quite common that factors of managing agents will seek a monthly payment from the owner to go into a sinking fund to deal with future maintenance it may be some sort of fund like that to deal with which I think is still a fairly rare case of structural defect not picked up by builders, not picked up by insurers just slipped through the net if there is some sort of fund there to deal with those cases that might be an appropriate mechanism rather than statuary employment of third parties okay Mr... Yes, Giliacar I touched on the quality of clerk of works on legs or ICS or the legal agent there's a lot of clerk of works out there just pick up the phone, pick up the business card I am a clerk of works I can only answer for the qualified clerk of works we'll go through a very simple process to interview people who are coming to the institute I think that's helpful Do you want to add anything Mr Simpson? No, a clerk of works so hold that thought because I really need a specific equation on clerk of works Okay, thanks very much convener, so we've got two clerk of works situations here big building companies and the good ones, I suppose, whose houses are not crumbling 30 years later it did just to employ clerk of works they wouldn't have undertook a building project of any magnitude without having a clerk of works but now it seems they don't so that's the private sector and whether or not there's any motivation for them to employ clerk of works and then there's the issue around the public sector building control whether or not they should be employing clerk of works in the private sector for example what would be the motivation for them to employ clerk of works would it be that if there was a more robust inspection regime for example say there was a blue sky team from the Scottish Government who were going to go out and swoop down on particular sites maybe take the local authority people with them at the time but the big companies and schemes don't exactly know when that blue sky team might be coming would that be something that might motivate them around to thinking well if we had a clerk of works on site we would be ready for that so that would be question number one is there any merit in that kind of thing I see Gilly Carr nodding I think any additional inspections would be of benefit one way or the other but if you're just going to do inspections I'm at risk of repeating myself here again you're only taking it at that point in time when it's a rainy day when people are travelling through mode to get to the place of work and you don't know what's built in there what's going off the feet etc you're taking on all the health and safety issues like so To get to the bottom of why the big building companies, the big house builders because we heard evidence previously that the clerk of works is a thing of the past and why is that why is it not in their interests especially when they're employing so many subbies as we've had some discussion about why is it not in their interests to have an overall clerk of works on their building sites is it because there isn't any possibility of that kind of unexpected inspection I suppose that's all I'm asking is that an issue you're dead right there has been some companies lately advertising for clerk of works work direct for the building company rather than work for the client so it's because of publicity that when things go wrong unfortunately everybody says why wasn't the clerk of works, it's after the event so it has improved very slowly where the clerk of works have come back into it Can I ask Mr Campbell specifically on the local authority situation so it would seem now to put in place the building next you've got your building control officers but again local authorities used to have clerk of works too because they could do a different job to the building control officers could you maybe tell us why the local authorities no longer have specifically clerk of works so for example things like I suppose I'm talking about sheer test, drain test, found test the kind of things that clerk of works might have actually gone out into the role of the building control officer who is higher qualified in a different sort of way could you tell us a bit about that If we're talking about the building housing developments the local authority would have employed their own clerk of works for building housing developments for council use the private sector is a different scenario where the local authority isn't responsible for that development of houses because again getting back to what Ross had said initially that in a housing development the customer is that young couple that's going to be buying a house for the first time it's the early client effectively not the local authority and in an ideal world it should be it should be them that's employing the clerk of works to supervise the construction of that house for their own purpose for their private interest the local authority's interest is a wider responsibility where they're looking at the overall development of a housing development for the purposes of quality of an individual house for the end user so you would never as a local authority have used your own building control officers to go out and do soil tests or found tests or drain tests at the end before you gave a certificate of completion you would never have done that the system that Kenny had mentioned and I think the previous meeting that you had where the the chart from labs had been here there was probably mention of the construction compliance notification plan CCNPs that's a system that's now in place where when the surveyor the building standard surveyor building control officer whatever you want to call them assesses a proposed housing development given that this is where we've got the biggest issues with and look at a scheme of let's say 100 houses they will determine what houses within that development will need specific inspections and they will randomly select a house because we don't have the resource to be on site every day of the week or to inspect every individual house so we will randomly select a number of specific house types to inspect the construction compliance notification plan will stipulate that the foundations need to be inspected on that house that it might need another inspection at wall plate level whenever the timber frame is erected if it's a timber framed house depending on the type of construction there will be a stated number of site visits that we would like to see and it could be soil tests before the foundations are laid in Highland we fortunately don't tend to have the same ground condition issues that the central belt have we don't have mining areas that are susceptible to holes appearing the ground conditions in Highland are generally very good sandy gravel we don't tend to come across and not very many if any issues with subsidence or foundation failure they have occurred where people have maybe built in peat but by and large it's not a common occurrence Mr Campbell is it a resource issue then would you have both building control officers and clerical works going out and doing more inspections of specific types if you had more resources? In an ideal world, yes we would like to inspect every single house in a housing development but we don't have the resource to do that Mr Stewart has been waiting for an hour now to ask a very similar question but Gilly Card did actually want to come in in relation to clerical works at local authority level again very quickly I work for the castle city council as I said there were some 10 years and one of the reasons I left was they went from a group of 14 clockworks down to two you can't deliver the same service without the people and just a touch on the mention there of the individual buying the house free has been passed to them as Mr McKenzie said early on the pressure could be put onto the mortgage lenders I think you'd have a better recourse about how much clerical works would cost in reality if there's a large talk with the private sector here if there's a large house developer building a 400 unit development they're going to be on site a rolling programme of build for say two and a half years how many clerical works would they need full time to do that job that's a very broad question I suppose what I'm trying to get is if you're selling properties at £200,000 a property you've got 300-400 of those units, you're on and off site within three years how many clerical what percentage of overall ticket price of that poor operative sale is really going to be reflected in having two full time clerical works on site Mr McKay's reasonable point about balance over level of risk guaranteeing quality and what the cost to all of that is in that mix so I'm really trying to just grapple with how significant of additional cost would it be for the private sector to employ a cleric of works or two or three for a large substantial housing development we're very cheap clerical works in my opinion a lot of them are very much underpaid I'm aware of some local authorities pay as little as £23,000 a year so it's not much more than a building labourer but again if you get a qualified clerical works private practice in the region of £25-30 so again that's given me a very broad answer a very broad question I think that gives us some context because we as a committee have to strike a balance in the recommendations that we make and certainly my instinct was just within the private sector with quite eye-watering ticket prices and a lot of new bill properties it seems very minimal the additional cost to a developer for clerical works and I was just trying to make sure that I was going along the right lines in terms of that Mr Carre I've seen from the private sector direct from Willis it's been in the region of £38,000 a year for a couple of weeks that's it Mr McKenzie I've just come in just as an alternative to clerical works I know that chartered surveyors provide this service well as do architects and probably structural engineers and it sometimes needs a relevant expertise I don't want to digress but a lot of instances now when you talk about drain testing on building sites we still witness drain tests and such like but a lot of that is self-certified now SNFF or Scottish Northern Island Plumbing Association or something they register their drainage people plumbers whoever to self-certify drainage now so a lot of that is self-certified work a lot of design is self-certified now through Government no structural engineering registration scheme which is through your building standards division that's one of their self-certified groups so a lot of design now is self-certified as is a lot of site works as well but definitely a clack of works on a Wimpe site I don't know if I've seen it other than if they're working for someone else I've never seen them employ one themselves Other building firms Other building firms than the Taylor Wimpe anyway Billy, do you want to tie that for me? Yeah Just like that again I'd want Mr McKenzie's side if there's a through personal experience if there's a building control office on site I would regularly I see them inspecting main drains and if I see that I don't inspect the main drains I trust them on the whole we do the internal drainage what's under the foundation that it's very difficult to get back to test them as they go along but we also get a CCTV survey of the full drainage system on completion it's not waste of time having a building control and a clack of works when he's work hand in hand it's not doubling up on the workload as such we tend to go do one thing as a team and the third party inspectors as well because what tends to happen is that Glen's management now he's probably been a soldier in the past but generally in a new housing development you will go out at the very beginning you will inspect the first house going up now if that's the show house they usually try and make it good anyway but you inspect that first house and I think as Gillil alluded to as well that you hope that you get that right and then that follows on no, we've agreed standards here let's work to these standards and again you work hand in hand with the NHBC you go on site you look at their book and see if they're picking up any faults and when you're there you'll maybe say for the wee issue with this situation you'll go on specific if you're going to look at a house you might look at that specifically NHBC don't do drain testing they rely on the local authorities so there's a partnership there already there is a partnership there already between all these people to try and at the end of the day professional people all wanting to get a professional good quality building absolutely that's the point well made very patient thank you for sticking with us Alexander Stewart MSP thank you convener gentlemen we've already touched this morning on the role of building standards and it would be quite useful to get a view from you about how local authority building standards departments themselves are sufficiently resourced to provide an effective service to the client and if that's not the case what kind of knock-on effect do we then have so Mr Calvin we were starting to come into some of that I think you'll always have a local authority view saying that the service is understaffed it's a particular issue right now where in the last we're slowly coming out of a recession house building is now taken off again there are levels of housing that we are now approaching that we were last seen at the boom unfortunately local authorities haven't kept in tow with that and the result is now that many authorities are struggling with staff resources trying to catch up with the private sector Highland Council and itself when we have issues of staff resources that we're unable to turn around the building want applications to meet targets we regularly will use the assistance of private sector verifier surveyers to help us and I'm aware that Edinburgh fairly recently put a plea to labs for that same purpose so yes as I said we'll always plead for staff and it is an issue yes I think there's a serious issue with local authority funding of building standards it isn't ring fenced the fees aren't ring fenced and I think some I'm speaking on behalf of the SS so I can see that I think the perception is that some local authorities see building standards as a bit of a cash cow that there's a regular income coming in here that we can have some of this and it isn't properly resourced I think there was a recession building industry seems to go up and down through recessions I've been involved for 40 years and I can probably name most of them and at that time yes there is financial pressures on the department to actually have enough income to cover your budget and your staff but when it's out of that very dip there's normally a surplus and it isn't always getting spent on resources you have all sorts of further complications of colleges stop doing surveying courses because there's no recruitment for surveyors that takes four years to fix so you come out of a recession and you need someone there but that person's in training because of the budgetary situation local authorities they tend to have yearly budgets and they don't do long term succession planning training regimes and apprentice regimes are difficult and I think the RICS have been looking at trying to somehow help in that way and there are other professional bodies as well to work with local authorities to work at training and maybe more than a print and try and get more professional people into building standards because I think as Gillie said as well I think it's quite important to have professional people with professional standards because that institute gives you that assurance that a member is working on a professional standard where he's perhaps someone who's not qualified not saying they've not got level expertise but sometimes they've not got that professional standard behind them but I think there's certainly issues with training there's issues with budgetary control and I think also there's huge issues with the fact that still a huge percentage of building one applications that come into a council the fees are probably less than £250 and that will hardly cover the administration nowadays with computer systems and register things they've a mind of technical input into it just the register what they want and grant they want and the process that that's involved in and leasing computer space of the building standard systems and others that alone, that's that money wiped out and then you've got to do a professional job on top of that the fees at the lower end need to be greatly increased you could maybe look at cutting down on some of the non-domestic fees because I think again we're speaking primarily today about house building 400 unit housing scheme may cost quite a few million pounds say 20 million pound a 20 million pound office development perhaps can be thoroughly inspected if it's a fairly shell unit in about half a dozen inspections you could do half a dozen inspections time 400 on the housing scheme and it's the same fee so there's different fee structure has to be looked at I think up to the bottom could perhaps be cut back a bit at the top but I think domestic, non-domestic has to be maybe looked at separately and maybe a bit more clever there and also it's very difficult but I know that certainly my view is that any monies that comes into building standards should be kept within that team with such that budget I think that's very clear Mr McKenzie very helpful Mr Campbell, did you want to come back in? Just support what Kenny's saying, succession management is an issue that seems to have fallen off a lot of local authorities radar and to the extent that apprentices, trainee surveyors seem to be a thing of the past as an example I have a team of 26 staff the average age of my surveyors is 48 years old I've got two surveyors at 65 my youngest surveyor is 30 years old and I'm not getting to be to be taken in trainee people to shore up the bottom end of the profession and I think that this is happening throughout the country we've got a lot of old there surveyors and within the next 5 or 10 years we could believe in the profession and we don't have young new blood that's growing in underneath that and it's a potential problem you've identified the problem that funding is a major issue and if we are to be realistic about where we're going forward then we need to look at the fee process and the structure of that because that will give us an opportunity to identify and move things forward and then you've exactly touched on Mr Campbell about the whole idea about apprenticeships about ensuring that you've got progression that colleges, universities because what we're going to find as we move forward over the next 5 or 10 years is that there is going to be a massive demand and then people will be trying to acquire these individuals into locations to try and ensure that they have that and as more house building demand grows and progresses you're going to find yourself in a very difficult situation of being able to manage that crisis because it will become a crisis and then there could be more difficulties and more standards that are slipping the fully qualified staff to manage that process and ensure that you have the right people doing the right rules in the community and the house buyer buying the property assumes that everything is going to be okay because they have this idea that their new home or the house they're purchasing the biggest purchase of their life maybe is going to be of a good standard and that may not be the case I'm just wondering right within that I think was the point where the skills gap might emerge in the years ahead so I think it would be helpful if you could put on the record how you would seek to address that skills gap obviously you've spoken about a resourcing issue about ring fencing and adequately resourcing and full cost recovery in terms of the level of fees but that wouldn't solve the skills gap so it might seem self evident to you how we solve that skills gap but it would be quite helpful for our committee on that the fees consultation that came out just before Christmas or just at the turn of the year one of the recommendations of that was that the fee increase part of that fee increase to the local authorities would require the local authorities to employ trainees apprenticeships and that's an excellent idea I personally think it would fully support that I would ask my question to you is how you could make the local authorities adhere to that because it's an excellent idea and it would hopefully force the local authorities or commit the local authorities to employing new blood within the profession but I find it the ring fencing fee income is a great idea and I don't think you would have any building standards manager in the country say no to it but it's an impossible task to have a local authority give money that goes into a central pot to an individual service if you could answer that question we should be spoken places with each other that tackles the problem you've identified every other politician accusing them of centralisation and undermining a local democracy but of course sometimes that means at a local level we're not getting the service and delivery that all of our constituents require and we all wrestle with that one but we'll certainly continue to think about that Mr Mackenzie briefly I think going back in it I think not undermining Gillian the clack of works and building standards have always been separate but what we did have for many years certainly was what we called more a building inspector who was a clack of works as such and they were much more the people who were out five days a week gone round inspecting work and you had your building inspector, surveyor, officer whatever the titles change over the years we've gone from building control to building standards quite rightly because we never did control buildings as such but now it's very much getting it right on the plans and then inspecting I think in the past we quite often we got it right in the plans but it wasn't as involved because there wasn't as many regulations and complications building was much simpler 40 years ago and at that time it was very much get out and see it on site and I think it has moved away from that particularly when the construction compliance notification plan came in looked at employing more site based people maybe more we've got experienced people in the office but maybe some youngsters to come in and train to learn the skills of site inspection and plan reporting and the disciplines of the profession as such but maybe employ clack of work type people to only do site inspection work but again that floundered a bit on one availability and two actual finance of that the resourcing of it and I think there is a will within local authorities to do both but it's all down to as you were saying getting someone at the very top to authorise it when budgets are incredibly tight whether it's in national or local OK, Mr Carr did you want to comment? Yeah, and I can already say my own personal situation I worked 10 years in the channel islands there was a post advertised for a clack of works for the education department 233 applicants for one post which I thought was a very good number of people that don't employ luckily enough I won that and it was again ongoing training from the Guernsey Government that strength I believe strength of my career my own situation on the qualifications part of it I went to university when I was 43 as I see how I joined the background I wanted to improve my career throughout my life so I went full time family, full time job and a part time degree so it's only the individuals that you can bring into the construction it's not all about taking people directly from college or university it's people with experience you don't need to know just how we build things you need to know how we don't build things and that's only learned by experience we are now called institute of clack of works and construction inspectorate but not just clack of works anymore in our own body recognised that to keep to maintain a hundred and odd year old institute we need to improve so we are construction inspectors as well I think we know that we all fall back into the old terminology and I apologise that Mr Mackay I apologise were you wanting to come in any of that this is not really a legal issue but I entirely endorse what my colleagues on the panel are saying we tend to forget that we've been talking about new built houses but building standards departments deal with a huge range of applications on a daily basis and certainly what we're saying now it's not affecting buyers but lots of homeowners are being affected because of the backlog people who want to get an extension added work done in their house of some shape or form and it's being held back which as an overall issue is not good it's not good for the building industry it's not good for homeowners and again it comes back to resources because building standards is an essential part of what we do in consumers we know that the work is being regulated and checked to a reasonable standard okay thank you Alexander Stewart was your initial question do you want to follow up on any of that? Just to thank them convener because I think the evidence that we've heard and what you've said exactly mirrors what we I think believe the case to be that as I said there is a backlog there is a potential crisis within the industry and we need to identify things that should and could be done to address that and I think they're very useful for the committee as we go forward so thank you for that okay thank you Mr Stewart just to say to other members we've got about 10 minutes more left for questions if there's anything you still want to come back in on I know that Mr Simpson does so Graham Simpson thanks very much our role really is to look at the system which we've done in previous session and today and to come up with some solutions if I can ask you Mr McKenzie in your submission the submission from the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveys and for members this is on page 5 of their submission you mention that the system can result in a lack of consistency within each building standards office this is point 15 and more widely across Scotland and you say the introduction of procedural regulations would help alleviate this do you think therefore that we should set a minimum number of inspections to be carried out by building control and possibly warranty providers yeah I think that an effect happens at the moment I think where the inconsistency comes in is how we populate we've got this construction compliance notification system in place now and that can be populated to 20 visits perhaps I think or more you could add more and obviously that's very very rare I also ask for certification as well where and we give a tick sheet of all the final certification require as well so it's a guidance note as well which is very useful for contractors but I think there's an inconsistency because as Ross has alluded to and where I currently work in Edinburgh we have been struggling with workload because Edinburgh's booming it's a capital city and it's been booming it never really had much of a recession it rode out the recession pretty well compared to other places and we have actually used the facilities that we have now with consortia through the local authorities and as a national body local authority building standards which would always local authorities always are anyway and we've outsourced work to Aberdeen and to Ergyll and Bute who Aberdeen because of the oil industry I think have suffered the recession and spare capacity and they've been helping us out which has improved the situation but there still is this inconsistency that perhaps some officer may have a lot of experience and look at an application and say oh yeah and I know that architect and he'll be supervising the work I'll only do three visits there I'll only look at the beginning the middle and the end and then you might get a slightly more who may say oh I want to see quite a lot and then you might get an officer who's got a huge backlog saying I'll just risk assess this one the last four photographs that's the type of inconsistency so it already in place the fact that there is almost a procedural thing there where there is a document that can be sent out it's maybe down just to personality and experience of how that inconsistency has come about it's the same with interpretation of regulations developers are always say people interpret differently but every architect and every developer gives you different levels of information and also people of a different degree of expertise and what they can glean from perhaps a few notes they want a detail they want different things you're never ever with personality going to get something totally ticked in boxes that vary a little bit depending and things but procedurally I think to perhaps I think the construction notification plan is very much a voluntary thing for local authorities I think in England and Wales perhaps they had a system I don't know if it was a national system way back that they wanted to look at things this was a way back when I started on standards and some authorities adopted that in the past again it's resource based when you're quiet you can get things done Mr Mackenzie, we've established we know from evidence that we've heard that different councils perform at different levels and that's why the Scottish Government in issuing verification notices to councils have given some only one year and some up to six I'll top my head Edinburgh got one year so you're right different councils are performing to different standards but from our point of view the evidence that we've heard is that when it comes to buying a house you can have no confidence that that house has been inspected at every stage you can have no confidence that it is built to standards and what I'm suggesting is that if we build into the system a prescribed number of inspections that situation may not arise so my question is to any of you would you agree with that I think it would certainly help if it was resourced it would almost certainly help but I think perhaps as you alluded to earlier my gut feeling is that there still would be the odd situation occurring and I think these situations have occurred anyway with a good level of supervision in place I'm not sure I think as Ross said building standards isn't just about new housing and I would say in Edinburgh at the moment not trying to defend it in any way perhaps some of the backlog has been caused because there's been a huge upsurge in new housing and new housing gets very well served in terms of people needing to get a certificate on a day and people out doing inspections and doing professional thorough inspections is best of the ability and that demand has taken away from resources which have probably focused quite a lot in new housing in recent times because it does tend to get quite high priority it certainly would be a big advantage if there was a fee for new housing that allowed officers to inspect key stages in every single house definitely improvement but I think as Gillie said as well you can't guarantee that you'll see every bit that you're only there even if you're there every day or twice a day there's a lot done in three hours that you might never see and might be missed and that might be when the dodgy wall ties put up because I've run out of wall ties and thought we need to get paid a bonus for this or we need to get this finished we'll go and pick up something else and use it and my view is and I think it was in the Clack of Works Institute's report is a lot of the issues goes back to the tradesmen I'm not trying to divert that from the professionals but it's the man on the ground who's making that error it's that qualified tradesman and I think that has to be looked at is who we employ are we employing four-year, five-year time-served tradesmen anymore I'm totally digressing but if you want my personal view on things I think that's where a lot of the fault has come about yes supervision maybe should have picked some of it up it can't pick up enough you can't afford to have someone stand over somebody's shoulder a factory situation what you've got a level of quality control I think about long-term security for tradesmen with certain companies rather than sobbing everything an individual schemes and all about people as Gillie says being in one site one day taking the money and going to an earth site next day no responsibility, no comeback folk prog don't even know who built walls anymore I think Gillie Carr wanted to add to some of that as well and he said my answer to your question yes will it improve when I was just going to say yes that's far too short you'll never go far in politics with a shot through your answer like that Mr Campbell say qualified yes principal what you're suggesting suggesting is would work but the construction compliance notification system excuse me addresses that to a certain extent in the targets it risks assesses the individual site the developer you know the location of the site the ground conditions etc and the survey will then determine the number of inspections it's required to have every individual house on a site inspected at various stages of construction would require a huge resource and that's fine when you've got 200 houses to do for the next two years but when that housing development then dries up and there's no housing for the next two or three years after that local authority to do with that resource there's issues there with employing and hiring and firing crudly the local authority couldn't manage very well I don't think but in principle yes I think what you're suggesting is a good idea Mr Simpson anything else thanks very much it's just a specific question to Gilly Carr and it's back to the clerk of work situation in your written submission to us you say at number 5 historically regulations stipulated the appointment of a clerk of works that should be reinstated what regulations were those it should have read forms of contract not regulations forms of contract can you explain that a bit further forms of contract with the builders or with the local authorities forms of contract between builders and clients whether they be private client or a local authority there's a touch on before the design and build form of contract came about and the local authority without quantities kind of went astride there was sections within them earlier contracts that stipulated a 23 of wind in the forms of contract actually stated what the contract had to provide for the clerk of works like an office and a telephone etc when the design and build come along which was pushed by the construction companies themselves the word clerk of works didn't exist anymore so it would rather than talking about maybe housing developments as local authorities employing contracting with private companies to build schools and in previous times those schools would have had a clerk of works stipulated in the contract but now that they're not when it's stipulated in the contract it's up to the person who's signed up with the contract i.e. the office sector the head of local authority they can at least remove the word clerk of works the design and build form of contract with the word clerk of works not being in they would seem to be forgotten and those contracts they're legal so they could be looked at so basically the committee could take an interest in that I'm not from a legal background but my understanding is the current forms of contract that are coming out in the construction industry are called an EC3 and I think there's a big push from RICS to get the word clerk of works put back into the contract which is very helpful but until we get recognised that there's a need and as Mr Simpson put on you need there needs to be something right to say you need X amount of inspections whether it be a building inspector, charlatan, clerk of works it's a way forward Right, I don't know if Mr Mackay has any comment on that Like all your advice there are standard form contracts and there are a whole suite of contracts in the building industry which have been developed over the years which architects and others pull down off the shelf and effectively fill in the blanks to a large degree they regulate the timescale, the payment structure etc etc and these are the standard form contracts that Gillies are leading to that the architect who is putting the whole scheme together would be using and certainly if the question going to I suspect the RIS or other similar body looking to them to develop the standard form construction contracts to not perhaps enforce but certainly looked for the inspection regime to be beefed up in that regard whether it's a local authority client, a private client or whatever It seems from what Gelliclax saying that actually it did just to be enforced because it was part of the legal document and now it no longer is Yeah, it's not my sector but I can imagine that yes, they've dropped that it was a matter of practice but it's equally it's simple putting it back in again and it's a question of speaking to the relevant parties who prepare the standard form contracts and recommending that this would be good practice Come in there Again, I'm not wanting to digress but are we talking here about private house speculative house building are we talking about local authority house building are we talking about building because I worked for a house building contractor 40 years ago and there was never a clack of works ever on a private house building job, there never ever was one local authority house building which is now done through house association still tends to have clack of works on them very few jobs that aren't university or health board or something like that have clack of works now most major contracts are design build architects design them for a client they appoint then a major contractor and the contractor I don't know the legal word but he brings on board all the architects and engineers and they come under his remit after that point he employs them all and the job's done he may be a third party surveyor or architect or project manager on behalf of the client looking after the project but I think ultimately that the contract is with that builder at the end of the day I mean I think that's quite helpful it was exactly what I was trying to clarify but I think we did clarify that actually what was being referred to was beyond, I mean we have tended to focus on private house building but there is a lot more to the old regime and the inspection regime than that so I think what that widens it out to is what we were talking about as schools hospitals, Scottish parliaments you know perhaps where the public sector is employing the private sector on a design build construct it seems to me from the answer I got to the question that it used to be that you would be confident that you would have to have a clerk of works that would be on the contract but now it doesn't have to be and so therefore you can have schools put up in areas as part of the design build construct which don't have a clerk of works near them I think that's what I was trying to clarify whether a PPI or whatever PP2 or whatever it is that don't have clerk of works or may have a clerk of works but you've got now schools that the councils are funding through architects again and tender to builders who do have clerk of works and probably more have got clerk of works visiting again because we tend to be reactive rather than proactive because walls have been falling down I'm sorry to say maybe finish for me something slightly related but it's on on a briefing that we had for the meeting and it talks about functional standards and it gives specifically standard 2.2 which says that every building divided into more than one area of different occupation must be designed and constructed in such a way that in the event of an outbreak of fire within the building fire and smoke are inhibited from spreading beyond the area of occupation where the fire originated that then illustrates how the building should perform but it doesn't tell you how that requirement should be achieved and presumably because the choice is with the a load of building standards mandatory the choice is with the builder how they would achieve that then how can the local authority verify and maybe this is a question for Mr Campbell how can they actually know that that is achieved again coming back to risk assessing specific types of buildings if we're looking at that particular regulation that you're referring to there in Highland Council's situation and I'm sure most authorities would given it's a health and safety issue we would inspect that specific part of the building but you're referring to the regulation there underneath that regulation there's a removal of technical standards that will determine various ways of complying with that standard the designer the architect can either opt to adhere to the standards or they can come up with an alternative to that but in essence it always has to come back that it must comply and in every in certainly Highland Council's situation we would inspect to check separating floors or compartment floors or whatever it might be to ensure that that integrity is met because I suppose what springs to my mind is open plan schools for example when you're opening up more complex types of buildings there are other standards that come into place that would support that individual the report on the schools which I wasn't totally directly involved in but my colleague was very involved in Edinburgh there was a lot of questions raised about open plan schools and a lot of questions raised about fire separating walls and things like that we're not convinced they were fire separating walls you can have compartment sizes of thousands of metres particularly in single story schools and such like go back to your first question we do inspect these walls and floors and the biggest thing is inspect is the penetrations to make sure they're fire stopped there's dampers and things and different things on anything going through those floors so that is critical and that is a key inspect point but I think in the schools report it kept alluding to fire stopping and we think these were maybe just acoustic walls that were taken up and they double thick plasterboarded on them for sound How could they get through without an inspection then? I don't mean just in Edinburgh If you don't have an inspection regime that inspects all of these individually and you just depend on builders to say tick we've complied I think we would inspect those things but if I was looking at a wall that was an acoustic wall to me and someone else perceives it as being a firewall later when they do a report on a building if it's an acoustic wall and it's got a hole through it I don't want to get too technical too defensive here but sound doesn't come into schools in terms of our building standards it only comes into housing and relationships with buildings between housing and hotels nowadays residential sleeping things so there was a lot of things put into these school reports talking about breaches and firewalls that I don't think were we're not 100% sure because we didn't get specific instances but normally firewalls are inspected it's one of the key areas people say we're obsessed by fire we tend to be labeled to be obsessed with drainage and fire and other people say well what about condensation what about dampness, what about roof leaks that's much more important than my building that we're going on fire but we do tend to look at the health and safety things quite critically access another thing nowadays we're very strict on but certainly firewalls would always be inspected two things can happen is one, after the building's finished people can go in and start putting IT throughout that building and the IT person goes in and he takes his knife and he cuts through a fire bat or a fire partition and just leaves it and doesn't fire stop it later that doesn't need a building warrant nobody goes back in and inspects that it's happening regularly I've been in buildings where I've been resident on that building for four years and you turn your back and it's an area that's meant to be locked down permanently only from the contractor to get in and suddenly you turn your back and two months later there's a ladder up and somebody and you say how's this happening and you go back to them and they say oh that's not us, that's somebody from BT putting something in but it's your building still you've got to look after these things I think a lot though in the schools that a lot of the walls that were perceived to be fire walls were actually just acoustic walls for keeping quiet between classrooms because you wouldn't need and a lot of schools you wouldn't need many fire separating walls they're all in one occupancy they're all open plan even your floors don't perhaps need to be fire walls sorry to go on to it but it's quite a critical thing but I didn't want to stop you earlier because we should let you put all this on the record but the education committee of the Scottish Parliament has got an inquiry that starts today actually they're committed into school infrastructure and we're looking at many of these matters so I'm not trying to curtail the detail you're putting on the record because I think it's appropriate to mention that another committee of this Parliament is looking at it in quite a lot of detail and it's worthwhile just determining what standards are building control officers if we historically if we've asked things the biggest thing we ever get back from builders is that's not a building regulation we don't have to do that you might say it's good building practice but if it's just something like the difference between there might be a wee bit of sound transmittal between two offices they're not going to do it they're not going to spend money on fire stop and something they're just going to leave that it doesn't matter to anybody I think my colleague felt that a lot of the stuff that came back on the schools about fire he couldn't understand and he didn't see where all these things were and we couldn't understand where they were but we weren't given specifics but we reckon that it's because schools tend to have acoustics around the corridors around every room which looks like a firewall but it isn't and it might be an interesting thing to put to your committee any other questions from committee members I thank all of you for the good value of you today that's a lengthy evidence session I think it's reasonable to put on the record right where we started that there's lots of players and making building standards as high a quality and buildings as safe as they possibly can be when things go wrong it is anecdotal and most people have very good experiences of the system but we're obviously looking about what the recourse is and how we stop things going wrong and we have responsibly sits in relation to that it's not always clear who our responsibility does it I think Mr Mackay quite helpfully illustrated that point when you were giving it from a legal perspective but very informative, very helpful a lot for us to digest as a committee I thank you all again for your attendance we'll keep you updated with our inquiry as we go forward but that ends this particular evidence session Thank you for watching