National Coring Programme Good Practice Guidance

For over 20 years, local authorities and utilities in Scotland have participated in a national coring programme which seeks to measure compliance with aspects of the specification for utility reinstatements. These programmes are undertaken roughly every two years and involve taking core samples from a number of reinstatements to assesses whether those samples comply with the specification. This results in each core sample either passing or failing the checks.

Since 2012, the commissioner has set the expectation that for each utility, 90% of core samples will pass the checks and has issued penalties to organisations which have failed to meet this standard.

The Commissioner has recently re-iterated this requirement with the publication of Commissioner Good Practice Guidance no. 2.

The next National Coring Programme is due to commence in February 2025 with samples being taken in the spring and final reports expected in summer 2026.

Kevin Hamilton, Scottish Road Works Commissioner, said

“The National Coring Programme is a key measure of the quality of utility reinstatements being undertaken in Scotland. Over the 20 plus years of the programme, quality has improved significantly and it is vital that utilities understand that they need to achieve a high pass rate in order to maintain this quality.

For that reason, I believe it is important to re-iterate my expectation that achieving a 90% pass rate in the national coring programme is good practice.”