Building standards: national annual verification performance report 2021 to 2022

6 Performance Trends

6.1 Professional expertise and technical processes

KPO1 - Minimise time taken to issue a first report or to issue a building warrant or amendment to building warrant

The performance for issuing a first report (KPO1.1) and building warrant or amendment to warrant (KPO1.2) has steadily improved during 2021-22 (see Chart 1).

KPO2 - Increase quality of compliance assessment during the construction processes

There are currently no performance targets set for KPO2 and a wider review is currently underway.

6.2 Quality customer experience

KPO3 - Commit to the building standards customer charter

All 32 verifiers have implemented and published the Building Standards National Customer Charter (KPO3.1). This is supplemented with their own local charter.

Verifiers have made improvements to the quality and consistency of information published on their websites which promotes better communication for building standards customers. Verifier response times (KPO3.2) to requests for information for customers reporting performance concerns to Scottish Government have been met within the five-day target (see Chart 2).

KPO4 - Understand and respond to the customer experience

The National Customer Satisfaction Survey of Building Standards customers has been conducted annually since 2013 by an impartial third party on behalf of Scottish Government. The overall National Customer Satisfaction rating for Scotland (KPO4) declined to 7.1 during 2021 (see Chart 3).

A new digital platform was introduced in 2022 to allow local authorities to collect and analyse customer feedback at the point of service to support services in responding to the customer experience more effectively.

6.3 Operational and financial efficiency

KPO5 - Maintain financial governance

Overall fee income has increased by 3% during 2021-22 compared to average levels. This is largely due to more construction activity during the recovery period from the pandemic. Verifiers have continued to maintain the level of investment in staffing of their building standards service (see Chart 4).

KPO6 - Commit to eBuilding Standards

The move towards digital services has been supported by Scottish Government's eBuildingStandards platform used by all 32 local authority verifiers (KPO6.1). The number of electronic applications has continued to rise year on year since the platform was launched in 2016. All Building Standards customers can submit electronic documents and payments directly to local authorities and the system facilitates continuous improvement toward fully digitised end-to-end electronic processes (KPO6.2), covering the whole customer journey (see Chart 5).

KPO7 - Commit to objectives outlined in the annual verification performance report

The Annual Verification Performance Reports are a strategic planning and management tool to link performance reporting to continuous improvement actions. All 32 verifiers have implemented and published their reports (see Chart 6) which includes information on their vision for the service and strategy (KPO7.1). They also publish performance data against each of the key performance outcomes (KPO7.2) on their own local authority websites:

• Annual Verification Performance Reports