The Scottish Building Standards Agency was an executive agency

Executive agency

An executive agency, also known as a next-step agency, is a part of a government department that is treated as managerially and budgetarily separate in order to carry out some part of the executive functions of the United Kingdom government, Scottish Government, Welsh Assembly or Northern Ireland...

 of the Scottish Government. It was responsible for building standards regulations in Scotland.

The Agency was based in Livingston, West Lothian.

History

The Agency was formed on 21 June 2004. It was set the responsibility to carry out the duties of the Scottish Government as set out in the Building (Scotland) Act 2003. The 2003 Act introduced a new building standards system in Scotland, which started on 1 May 2005. The building standards system is set out to protect the public interest in the design, construction, conversion and demolition of buildings. The system requires plans to be verified as meeting the standards set out in the regulations.

The agency was located in Livingston, in line with the Government's policy of relocating public sector jobs outwith Edinburgh. Staff from the existing building standards division of the Scottish Government were transferred to the Agency.

The Agency was disbanded on April 1, 2008 and its functions were transferred back to the Scottish Government.

Role

The Agency described their functions as to:

1. to prepare the building regulations and write guidance on how to meet the regulations
2. to provide views on compliance to help verifiers make decisions
3. to grant relaxations of the regulations in exceptional cases
4. to maintain a register of Approved Certifiers
5. to monitor and audit the certification system
6. to monitor and audit the performance of verifiers
7. to verify Crown building work