The mystery of the Scottish Building Regulations

[Mr Uncalled-For]

I've recently been trying to track down the Scottish building regs online. I wanted to find an equivalent to the PlanningPortal website, which usefully hosts free downloadable PDFs of building regs. The 'equivalent' website in Scotland seems to be sbsa.co.uk (Scottish Building Standards Agency). You can download a document from there that the website folks claim specifies the building regs for Scotland. This document doesn't actually provide much usable info (it's more at the level of saying things like "drainage should be like green and, basically good, mkay? Also, let's talk about reed beds") so isn't equivalent to the PlanningPortal docs. When I spoke to the people at the SBSA, they said that the details on how to meet the requirements set out are up to local authorities to decide. The doc that the SBSA provide does make reference to numerous British Standards, so maybe this is where the real detail resides. BS-* cost big bucks as far as I can see.

So in England and Wales, regs are published free, and in Scotland, according to the SBSA, regs are decided by individual councils who don't seem to be under any obligation to tell people what they are. I must assume the SBSA are talking nonsense or are incapable of making the situation clear, since as described it's absurd. I had previously thought that the building regs were very similar to those in England and Wales, but with different identificatory letters. (Part X in E&W is Part Y in Scotland kinda think)

Does anyone know whether the Scottish building regs are actually available anywhere online, for a smelly serf like me to look at?

[Tony Bryer]

[Mr Uncalled-For]

to!

For example, it manages to talk about waste water drainage without making any reference to "32mm" etc.

That section can be paraphrased as "Waste water systems should obey the british standards", whereas, the planning portal site (England & Wales) actually has includes concrete details.

Equivalent Scottish building regulations (given a definition of building regs where they are useful) don't seem to be available online. Or am I wrong? Perhaps it's too dangerous to let people in Scotland know the building regs.

[Mr Uncalled-For]

The independent republic of my house. Sounds ideal.

[Tony Bryer]

They already have! We produce the SuperHeat program which checks new dwellings against the Approved Document provisions relating to energy efficiency. The rules are different in each of the three jurisdictions, E&W, Northern Ireland and Scotland. Two examples:

In E&W and NI there are no set rules for compliance: the fundamental principle is that you work out the CO2 for an identically sized dwelling built to 2002 standards, knock off 20% and that's the target your design mustn't exceed. Lots of arithmetic which is why you buy the software . There's a deliberate ethos of saying "this is what we are looking for, but how you deliver it is up to you", the move away from prescriptive regulations that lots of designers have asked for. But, as the Architects' Journal observed when the new rules came in, you really don't know whether something will comply until you've run the numbers through the software. In Scotland you can do this, but they have what are called 'packages': design to the package spec - U-values, boiler efficiency etc - and you know your design will comply. Pragmatic rather than philosophical.

In E&W and NI SuperHeat is required to produce a compliance checklist, listing the various requirements and whether they are met; when checking to Scottish provisions we are explicitly prohibited from producing a checklist since the feeling is that having one would reduce the checking process to a box ticking exercise.

.. and there's more where these came from ....

At one time SuperHeat was probably the only software package in the world to have a Northern Ireland edition of the manual, the rules at that time bearing little resemblance to the rest of the UK.

[cerberus]

Well, when you get your independence you can create your own ;-)

Don.

[nightjar]

That is the way that regulations are written today. For example, I only know of one instance of anything being quantified in the Health and Safety at Work Regulations - the height of a handrail must be at least 1.1m. Everywhere else, they are written in vague generalities and you then get guidelines to tell you what will, normally, be deemed to comply. I suspect that what you are looking for is not the regulations, but a guide to interpreting the regulations.

Colin Bignell

[Mr Uncalled-For]

I'm looking for what's currently on the Planning Portal website (England & Wales), but for Scotland.

i.e: documents that don't just reference British Standards, but include some usable detail.

[dmoodie]

Lets look at it this way, which may solve your problem

1. you do have access to the Scottish Building regulations
2. you need help in the interpretation and finer details
3. you do have access to the planning portal docs which provide some finer points and interpretation on *very* similar regulations and issues

How about you put 1 + 3 together and get 2 ? (dodgy maths)

Additionally you could always go and buy a book by Chudley and Greeno, which will provide a lot of common sense and background knowledge in the general area.

cheers

David

[Mr Uncalled-For]

I'm scandalised by the implication! Applying English building regs in Scotland!? Of course it did cross my mind. I also found that you can access the British Standards at the library, so that's another route to possibly take.

[Hugo Nebula]

On Wed, 15 Aug 2007 22:48:13 GMT, a particular chimpanzee, Tony Bryer randomly hit the keyboard and produced:

Except for 99% of the people designing and building real buildings. The likes of Richard Rogers and Will Allsop can afford teams of environmental engineers to work out their building's carbon footprint, but your average jobbing plan drawer, even more so your small builder building a one-off house on a Building Notice, wants to know how much insulation to put in the walls, what U-value windows do they put in, how big can the windows be, etc.

[Hugo Nebula]

On Wed, 15 Aug 2007 08:32:24 -0700, a particular chimpanzee, Mr Uncalled-For randomly hit the keyboard and produced:

It seems one can get Approved Documents or Technical Documents from all jurisdictions in the British Isles (apart from Guernsey), although Scotland's are a bit light on detail.

As pointed out elsewhere, the system of Control may differ from south of the border, but the basic intent is largely the same. The Eng&W Approved Documents are mostly derived from British Standards and BRE Guides anyway, so if the performance required is the same, the guidance will be equally as valid. A lot of manufacturers with useful websites or brochures will usually tailor them to cope with both jurisdictions.

[Tony Bryer]

Agreed, it's just that those 99% are voiceless: it's people who work for the big boys who are on committees, speak at conferences, draft BSs etc. In my BCO days the most common request was "just tell me what to write on the plan"!