High rise domestic buildings: inventory

Background

1. The Ministerial Working Group on Building and Fire Safety was established in 2017 to oversee a review of building and fire safety regulatory frameworks, and any other relevant matters, to help ensure that people are safe in Scotland's buildings, and make any recommendations for improvement as required. As part of the Group's work plan, the development of a central source of information on key aspects of the construction and fire safety features of high rise domestic blocks was agreed.

2. The High Rise Inventory (HRI) provides information on the construction and fire safety of high rise domestic buildings. A high rise domestic building is defined in building regulations as a domestic building with any storey at a height of more than 18 metres above the ground, and the HRI therefore includes data for both larger tenemental style buildings as well as those that might be more commonly understood as traditional high rise flatted accommodation. The HRI data collection has been delivered through the Scottish Government's ScotXed Unit. It has been completed by Local Authority Building Standards departments for all relevant buildings, with data provided or verified to the best of the respondents' knowledge at the time of completing the inventory, and should be treated as a snapshot in time.

3. This summary report is based on information held in the HRI in August 2021. The HRI exercise is to be an annual undertaking, following an iterative process of improvement. While there is a small amount of missing data (see paragraph 6), it is intended that this shall be addressed in future exercises. Some information however may simply not be available due to e.g. missing building warrant information from paper files of a significant age.

4. The completion of the HRI in 2021 was a less intensive exercise than previously since Local Authority Building Standards are now only required to review the existing information in the inventory and make any necessary updates where changes have occurred to a building, where there are new buildings, where a building has been demolished or to complete information previously missing. Nonetheless their efforts in keeping the inventory up to date are acknowledged.