A review of working practices on roofs installed and inspected by council staff over four years has found more than 400 did not meet best practice as set out in the British Standards.
Now councillors in Dundee are being asked to approve over £4m of work to bring the affected roofs up to the recommended British Standards.
Dundee City Council’s policy and resources committee will be told that in 2015, the British Standard (BS) covering the installation of roof tiles was revised to reflect the increasing frequency of wind events in the UK.
One significant change recommended increased numbers of tile fixings to be incorporated into both new build and replacement roofs to ensure long term durability of the roof tiles.
These changes were not incorporated into work practices by Dundee City Council’s construction services division or picked up through site inspections by the council’s clerks of works until the problem was identified late in 2019.
In January 2020 investigations identified 450 roofs that were not installed to the full requirements of the 2015 British Standard, covering 262 owners and 894 tenants.
Since January 2020 all domestic roofs renewed by the construction services division have been installed in accordance with current standards and inspections have been carried out by clerks of works to verify them.
Investigations into the situation were significantly hampered by restrictions on council services during the first Covid-19 lockdown when all non-essential activity was severely curtailed.
Councillors will be asked to approve £4.4m of corrective action for those roofs installed in the affected period to ensure consistency, long term durability and integrity as well as full compliance with the current British Standard. It is expected to take 30 months to complete the works from a start date early in 2022.
Arrangements in a number of council areas including the design and property division, construction services and housing, will be reviewed to ensure that relevant new or changed legislative and regulatory requirements are identified and, where appropriate, addressed in a timely way.
The policy and resources committee meets on Monday (November 22).
Dundee City Council
Dundee draws skilled workers from a 60-minute catchment population of 640,000 and has a local population of over 140,000. The availability of a large pool of highly skilled labour is a key feature in the Dundee economy. Flexibility in the labour force is currently more prevalent in Dundee than in Scotland as a whole. All forms of labour market flexibility - part-time, temporary employment, self-employment and shift work - are widely operational within the city. Labour force stability in the city is excellent, enabling companies to plan with confidence. Labour turnover levels are less than 5% and absenteeism averages 2%.
