SELECT has called on Scottish Ministers to use a review into building standards to ensure the mandatory use of approved certifier schemes across the construction industry.

The trade association made the call as it responded to the Review Panel on Building Standards (Compliance and Enforcement), which was set up in the wake of the Edinburgh school closures last year and the Grenfell Tower tragedy.

Welcoming the review panel, SELECT's Head of Technical Services Dave Forrester said the review is an "opportunity to really consider the regime of compliance and enforcement and to embrace meaningful change".

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"Parts of the building standards regime work very well at the moment. Technical standards, for instance, are flexible enough to accommodate change and innovation," he said.

"However, there are a number of issues surrounding approved certification which we think the review could profitably address in order to remove anomalies and build confidence in the certification process."

Mr Forrester highlighted that approved certifiers are directly responsible for the work that is certified under a building warrant. Local Authority Building Standards Scotland (LABSS), the membership organisation representing verifiers, has issued guidelines regarding certification services.

However, some councils are still either unaware of or ignoring the LABSS guidance and accepting forms of certification without detailed scrutiny.

Mr Forrester said: "This is the ideal moment to make it a mandatory requirement to use the existing approved certifier schemes, particularly for Government-funded work, and to extend the process to all Schedule 3 work [work subject to building regulations but not requiring a warrant]."

(LM)