Nick McLaren incoming LABSS Chair reflects on the AGM and gives his hopes and aspirations for the year ahead

The 39th AGM and first LABSS Annual Conference highlighted all that is good with the building standards services that Local Authorities in Scotland provide.LABSS is all about working in Partnership to secure a safe and sustainable built environment and it was a real pleasure to welcome Marco Biagi, the Minister for Local Government and Community Empowerment and Bill Dodds, Head of the Scottish Government’s Building Standards Division.  Both spoke excellently, welcoming our work in introducing a trial Partnership Working Scheme and the Dispute Resolution Process and giving clear pointers of the Government’s expectations. I look forward to working with both in the year ahead.
Indeed, partnership working is the key to our future success.  LABSS actively engages with 20 different professional and trade organisations, all aimed at exchanging ideas and views and ensuring that the Scottish Building Standards and the service that we provide continues to recognise the evolution of products and design to meet customer expectations and public demand.
Working with LABC, our partner organisation in England and Wales, the AGM also saw the launch of our new website.  I hope you enjoy it, use it and let us know what you want from it!
The most important partnership of all is the partnership of LABSS members. Our members hold so much knowledge and expertise that often has gone unrecognised, so it was a real pleasure to see the delight on the faces of Len Murray and Brian Tierney as they and their teams at Angus and Glasgow received awards for  customer service and team recognition. Angus Council Building Standards has an enviable reputation for understanding and delivering what its customers expect, while the Glasgow team successfully faced the pressures and challenges of ensuring that the Commonwealth Games infrastructure was safely delivered on time and in a manner that did Glasgow and LABSS proud.
The year ahead will be challenging, but I can promise on behalf of the LABSS Executive that we will look to build on the successes of 2014-15 and do all we can, on behalf of our members, to work towards the reappointment of local authorities as the sole building standards verifiers beyond 2017.