Cladding - Single Building Assessments and additional work assessments: standards

Legal Provisions Supporting Compliance and Assurance

The 2024 Act gives Scottish Ministers various powers including, as noted above, in section 5 the power to require any person to supply them with information which is reasonably required:

• by a person for the purpose of carrying out a SBA or an AWA, or
• by them for the purpose of maintaining the Register.

Scottish Ministers can therefore ask for any information that is reasonably required in connection with assessment and remediation works, and to allow them to maintain the Register. A person who is required under section 5 to supply information commits an offence if the person fails, without reasonable excuse, to supply the information in the required form by the date by which it is to be supplied (section 6 of the 2024 Act).

The 2024 Act (section 2) also makes it an offence for a person to provide information that the person knows, or ought to know, is false or misleading to the Scottish Ministers or to a person carrying out an SBA or AWA, and the person knows, or is reckless as to whether, giving the information is likely to result in (1) a material inaccuracy in the Register, or (2) an entry in the Register for a building not being created when it otherwise would.

These provisions of the 2024 Act give Scottish Ministers a route to additional assurance and compliance at key junctures in the assessment and remediation of a building. During assessment and remediation, details may come to the attention of Ministers including requests from owners and occupiers that merit Scottish Ministers asking for more information.