General Guidance
The Building (Fees) (Scotland) Regulations 2004 set the fees that are charged by verifiers for building warrant submissions, including those for ‘late’ completion certificates and building warrant submissions.
Details of the fees are set out in the tables on pages 39-40 of the Scottish Government Procedural Handbook, with the fees related to the ‘value of the works’. The fee tables for both pre April fees and post April 2024 fees have been reproduced seperately as PDF documents and are found here for Table 1: Fee Table 2017 PDF.pdf ; and here for Table 2: Fee Table 2024 PDF.pdf.
In calculating the value of the works, the applicant must use the normal market costs rather than any discounted costs which they might be able to achieve.
For example, even if the labour was unpaid because it is a self-build project, the value of the building work should still include a fair assessment of the value of labour had commercial contractors undertaken the work. The cost of verifying compliance is the same in both cases, indeed it may even be higher in a self-build project, so it is considered equitable that the warrant fee should be calculated on the same basis.
The cost of works that do not require building warrant approval, for example, decoration, floor coverings, etc, do not require to be included in the estimated value of the works. However, temporary works and preliminaries relating to the permanent works required to comply with the building regulations should be included.
The Verifier may check the amount by reference to established indices of building costs, by confirmation of actual tender prices or by the submission of a full breakdown of costs for a project.