Retention of STAS Supporting Documentation/Information

There continues to be some confusion in respect of the retention of all supporting documentation/information submitted in support of an application for type approval and also who should hold this supporting information when the STAS Certificate and approval is issued.

LABSS seek to hold all drawing and specification supporting documentation /information on the LABSS Website under the STAS register in the STAS/RD Search pages here https://www.labss.org/partnership-schemes/scottish-type-approval-scheme/stas-search The retention of this supporting documentation/information held on the LABSS website is protected and restricted only to the local authority verifiers to check and confirm the scope of any STAS approval and is NOT for any other purpose. 

NOTE: Only those local authority building standards surveyors who have registered their membership of the LABSS website are able to access these full records and LABSS would urge ALL local authority building standards surveyors to register here https://www.labss.org/user/login to enable them to benefit from this full access to otherwise restricted documents. 

This retention of information by LABSS, does not relief the responsibility on all STAS Lead Authorities to hold ALL of the supporting drawings, documentation and information associated with a STAS submission, in their own document management systems. Ultimately, the responsibility for the storage, future accessibility and retention of ALL supporting information lies with the Lead Authority.

When it comes to specific building warrant submissions using a STAS approval, it is a pre-requisite of any warrant submission that a full list of ALL supporting information must be made available to the verifier by the developer / building warrant applicant – this is a requirement Regulation 4 Schedule 2 of the Building (Procedure) (Scotland)Regulations 2004. The developer and/or the verifier CANNOT rely on LABSS making available any of the supporting information, which they hold under the STAS process, for building warrant purposes. This clear an unequivocal responsibility lies with the developer / building warrant applicant.