Building Standards

Building Standards Building Warrant Fee Increases 2025

March 11, 2025 by Simon Moore No Comments | Category Building Standards, Futures Board

Following a public consultation in 2023, a 3-year model to increase building warrant fees annually from 1 April 2024 was developed. The model was introduced by the Building Standards Futures Board Programme (FB) to support verifiers and strengthen the building standards system in Scotland. As a result, building warrant fees will increase from 1 April 2025 through the Building (Fees)(Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2025.

The Verification Delivery Model, one of 7 initial FB workstreams, introduced the Scottish Building Standards Hub (SBSH), hosted within Fife Council and funded through building warrant fee increases. Working in partnership with Local Authority Building Standards Scotland (LABSS) and the Scottish Government, the SBSH supports increased consistency across the building standards service through increased capacity. It provides central building services such as the Scottish Type Approval Scheme (STAS) and the Dispute Resolution Process and provides additional support to local authority verifiers, expertise in fire engineering, energy and structures.

From 1 April 2025 the revised table of fees will be available within the Building Standards Procedural Handbook.

In summary, building warrant fee rates will increase between 8-10% from 1 April 2025. Some fixed fees e.g. for extension to warrants and amendment of warrants for work not exceeding £5k, will remain the same. Fixed fees for late building warrants, or for submission of a completion certificate where no warrant has been obtained for conversions and demolitions will increase to £300 and £500 respectively.

Year 2 of the model (2025/26) is designed to deliver a cumulative increase of approximately £8m (23%) nationally in building warrant fee income, based on modelled fee income from 2017 to 2022.

Additional fee income will support verifiers to improve and strengthen their service and for the SBSH to support the transformation, quality, and delivery of compliant buildings through the building warrant process.

The Scottish Government have introduced additional monitoring and reporting to support Ministerial decisions on the planned future year fee increases. This reporting identifies anticipated compliance capacity gaps within local authority verifiers, based on the proposed changes being introduced through the FB Programme. Reporting and monitoring also highlights areas of investment such as workforce development, training and technology.

A new, free online building standards fee calculator, used to assist applicants in estimating their warrant fee, is under development to be launched on 1 April 2025.

If you would like any further information on changes to building warrant fees or any other work carried out by the Futures Board workstreams, please contact us at BuildingStandards@gov.scot

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