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Thank you.

Finally, we have spoken a lot about homes this morning, but there are issues with other buildings such as hotels, hostels and boarding houses. The UK Government consultation on and review of the ban on the use of combustible materials in and on external walls of buildings said that those types of buildings could present an equivalent or greater sleeping risk and, as such, should be captured within a ban on combustible facade material. Is the Scottish Government supportive of that approach and are you taking that forward?

I will now move on to assessors and assessments. How many qualified assessors work for the companies that are contracted by the Scottish Government to conduct single building assessments? On average, how many assessments will they be able to complete each month?

Good morning, minister and officials. Minister, you and I have had exchanges regarding Awaab’s law, and I am pleased to see that it will feature as part of the Housing (Scotland) Bill, as it rightly should. My question relates to the number of homes that are no longer deemed habitable under the tolerable standard. You and I have had exchanges regarding that in the chamber.

When I asked a topical question on the issue on 11 March, you said:

“The increase in the tolerable standard failure rate is due to the introduction of smoke and carbon monoxide alarm criteria. The vast majority of the failures were in the private sector.”—[Official Report, 11 March 2025; c 6.]

However, the response to the freedom of information request that was made by my party in January 2025 shows that there are still council homes that do not have such interlinked fire safety alarms fitted in them. That includes 2,800 homes in Fife, 800 in Aberdeen, 524 in South Lanarkshire and 500 in Edinburgh. The committee would be interested to hear an update from you, minister, on whether the Government is engaging with local authorities on that. It fits in with making sure that homes are safe and secure for people to live in.

Okay. We know that the open call will be extended until June. I must admit that I was hoping for more information on the time frames, the scope and the numbers. I have not received that from the minister this morning. It would be really helpful if he could provide that information to the committee at the earliest opportunity because I think that that is what people need at this point, which is eight years down the road from when Grenfell happened.

I want to know about the assessed capacity of developers to undertake remediation work while still meeting new building targets. We are, of course, in a housing emergency, and it is appropriate for us to look at the need to build more homes—on which I am sure that we are all in agreement—and to make sure that developers are carrying out important remediation work at the same time.

I appreciate the detail, because I think it important that we tease it out. I have a follow-up question. There are 107 properties in the pilot programme. Given that the programme was launched in 2021, why do we still not know, four years later, which of the properties are subject to Scottish Government-led remediation and which are not?

Thank you.

I appreciate the explanation, but, having asked two questions, I still do not know how many buildings will be subject to Government-led remediation.

Before I ask questions regarding assessors and the open call, I will go back to the pilot entries for the cladding remediation programme. As we know, there are 107 entries as part of that pilot. In the past, I have attempted to tease out an answer from the Government on when the works will be completed on the five properties and the pilot entries. Will the minister give an update on when those works will be completed and, indeed, when the works on the other 102 properties will be completed? We need to start moving forward. You are right in your assessment that things have been too slow, but if we are going to progress at speed, we need to know when the pilot programme will be completed.

Amendment 1010 seeks to insert into the Housing (Scotland) Act 1987, alongside new sections 36A to 36D, a new section to ensure that a person who identifies as homeless has the right to request a review of the various stages of support that they receive, if they feel let down or if they have not been recognised as homeless. It relates to comments made by other members this morning about tightening the definition of the ask and act duty to ensure that all the relevant bodies that will undertake those particular duties know exactly what is expected of them and that everyone can receive the level of service that they believe that they should receive, should they present in such a way.

That is where my concerns lie with this particular section of the bill. The minister has lodged amendments that the Conservatives are supportive of, but I think that there is further work to be done on the bill as it stands, particularly to ensure that public bodies have the confidence to ask and act and that, as Jeremy Balfour rightly pointed out, no legal challenges can happen on the back of the legislation. We all need to be incredibly mindful of that in relation to the ask and act duty. I believe that the right of review should be contained in the bill. After all, if someone wants to request a review to see what level of service they should receive and to benchmark that against the service that they did receive, what will happen through that process—and, indeed, what will happen to them should they follow that route—has to be made clear in the bill.

I believe that the bill needs to be tightened. I am happy to work with the minister and my colleague Alexander Stewart on amendment 1010, but, again, with regard to the ask and act duty, I think that Jeremy Balfour hit the nail on the head when he talked about how the bill’s weaknesses have been laid bare at this morning’s committee meeting.

Amendment 1010 seeks to insert into the Housing (Scotland) Act 1987, alongside new sections 36A to 36D, a new section to ensure that a person who identifies as homeless has the right to request a review of the various stages of support that they receive, if they feel let down or if they have not been recognised as homeless. It relates to comments made by other members this morning about tightening the definition of the ask and act duty to ensure that all the relevant bodies that will undertake those particular duties know exactly what is expected of them and that everyone can receive the level of service that they believe that they should receive, should they present in such a way.

That is where my concerns lie with this particular section of the bill. The minister has lodged amendments that the Conservatives are supportive of, but I think that there is further work to be done on the bill as it stands, particularly to ensure that public bodies have the confidence to ask and act and that, as Jeremy Balfour rightly pointed out, no legal challenges can happen on the back of the legislation. We all need to be incredibly mindful of that in relation to the ask and act duty. I believe that the right of review should be contained in the bill. After all, if someone wants to request a review to see what level of service they should receive and to benchmark that against the service that they did receive, what will happen through that process—and, indeed, what will happen to them should they follow that route—has to be made clear in the bill.

I believe that the bill needs to be tightened. I am happy to work with the minister and my colleague Alexander Stewart on amendment 1010, but, again, with regard to the ask and act duty, I think that Jeremy Balfour hit the nail on the head when he talked about how the bill’s weaknesses have been laid bare at this morning’s committee meeting.