Building Standards – Page 5 – Planning Edinburgh

Building Standards update

Team areas

As part of changes to how we deliver the Building Standards service, teams have been reorganised in to new locality areas. The teams are now based on four geographic areas in place of the previous five and are shown on map below.

The area teams can be contacted on these email addresses:

We also have an interactive map on our website which will allow you to search for the relevant team.

eBuilding Standards

The launch of the new eBuilding Standards service in August this year has been a big success and September saw almost 60% of all building warrant applications being submitted electronically – double the amount from the same time last year.

We’re keen to continue this trend, so if you haven’t started using eDevelopment then why not give it a go – it’s a single log in and can be used for both planning and building warrant applications.

Building Standards – advice and guidance

Our Building Standards web pages have also been given an overhaul to include links to general building standard advice, forms, guidance and how to apply online.

A key part of this is that we now ask that enquiries are made using the downloadable form. This will help us get the right information we need to answer your enquiry and help us focus on the more complex projects.

For smaller scale projects, the Scottish Government have produced a useful guide if you are thinking of doing building work or home improvements. There is also advice on the Local Authority Building Standards Scotland website for both agents and homeowners.

Delays Processing Building Warrants

We appreciate that at the moment there is a delay of approximately 10 weeks for first reports to be issued but we are working to resolve this and recruitment is well underway to help deal with this issue. Please bear with us as we work through this.

eBuilding Standards launch – 24 August 2016

Changes to how Building Warrants are submitted

From 24 August 2016 building warrant applications can be submitted using the new national eBuilding Standards online service. This will allow building warrants and other related forms, such as amendment to warrants, start of work notices and completion certificates to be submitted electronically using this new service.

The new site will have a number of benefits, making the process of submitting applications simple, saving applicants and agents time and money whilst allowing us to start considering applications sooner.

From 24 August both ePlanning and eBuilding Standards will be accessed through the eDevelopment.scot home page – a new Scotland wide service. With a single login for both planning and build standards applications this will make accessing and submitting applications even easier. The service will also have the added benefit of allowing a number of users to work together, sharing plans online in a single application.

eBuilding Standards info flyer image — eBuilding Standards flyer

The service available on the Council’s existing Building Warrant website will be replaced by the new eDevelopment service. Over the next few weeks there will be changes to the existing service in preparation for the switch over. Our website has more details on how this change will be managed.

So for now, we’d recommend bookmarking the new site and putting the date in the diary.

We’ll provide reminders and updates through the blog and Twitter as we get nearer to the launch date.

The Planning and Building Standards helpdesk service is changing

On 3 December 2015 the Planning Committee approved a new Customer Service Charter for Planning and Building Standards. This sets out the level of service you should expect from us and out how we will handle general enquiries.

As part of this, from Monday 14 December 2015, the helpdesk service we provide will change with the new opening times of 9:00am – 1:00pm Monday to Friday.

Our general reception area will still be open from 8:30am – 5:00pm Monday to Friday, if you want to come in to view plans using the PC terminals, submit applications or a comment on an application. The helpdesk will be closed over the Christmas and New Year period, reopening on 5 January 2016.

Planning and Building Standards reception

We’re making these changes for a number of reasons including the Council’s ‘channel shift’ process which encourages the greater use of online information and transactions. Making this change also gives planning and building standards officers more time to deal with applications.

Save time. Do it online

To support this change there are already a number of ways you can get planning and building standards information. This includes:

More improvements to come

Right now we’re working to improve our online information, making it easier for you to get the advice and guidance you need. This will include using more online maps for mobile devices, improving public access (the planning portal) by improving its functionality and making it work better on mobile devices.

Next year we’ll also see the launch of eDevelopment.scot the new single landing page where users can access ePlanning and eBuilding Standards for the submission of applications.