Seòmar agus comataidhean

Apologies, convener. I am keen to know what measures the witnesses feel should be taken to improve care in Scotland’s mental health system for those with complex needs, including autism, acquired brain injuries, personality disorders and dual diagnoses.

You mentioned health and social care partnerships and integration joint boards. It seems that, every financial year, decisions are made at that level that militate against the creation of long-term value in mental health services. I could rhyme off a number of recent decisions in Glasgow, such as the decisions on Flourish house, the Notre Dame Centre and the Sandyford clinic, that do not chime with the objectives that have been set nationally. There seems to be fragmentation and a lack of accountability across the system when it comes to designing services that are focused on the needs of patients.

With regard to recommendations, what do we need to do to improve a structure that leads to poor data collection, a lack of co-ordination and a lack of accountability?

I am disappointed that the cabinet secretary does not see the logic in having amendment 440. The fact that the Reidvale case was so unique demonstrates the need for the extra safeguard of having a settled majority of tenants. In the case of Reidvale, there was a significant level of discord in the community about contentious transfer; the way to deal with that is to have a settled majority.

As the cabinet secretary highlighted, in every other example of a transfer of engagements in Scotland, there tends to be a supermajority in support of that transfer of engagements. I would like to see a supermajority requirement in the bill. It would be a good safeguard and a demonstration that we have learned the lessons of what happened in Reidvale. In one of Scotland’s most-deprived communities, the loss of more than £100 million worth of community-owned assets would have been devastating.

I would like to work to build support for amendment 440. Therefore, I will not press it now but will look to return to it at stage 3. Given that there is agreement on the sentiment behind the amendment, we could perhaps discuss whether there could be more appropriate wording or an appropriate measure to provide for the extra threshold for tenants, which would bring it into alignment with what is required for shareholders. The reality is that a two-thirds majority is required with shareholders, so why not increase the threshold for tenants as well? That would bring everything into alignment. It would be a neat and logical process.

Amendment 440, by agreement, withdrawn.

Section 30—Scottish secure tenancies etc: keeping pets

Amendment 263 moved—[Maggie Chapman].

The purpose of amendment 440 is to bring the legislation on housing into alignment with sections 109 to 113 of the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies Act 2014. That would mean that registered social landlords could transfer engagements only if two thirds of tenants vote in favour of a resolution to do so. Currently a simple majority of tenants in favour is required to proceed through the process.

Section 111 of the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies Act 2014, which governs shareholder voting and takeovers of societies and is legislation that applies across the UK, stipulates that a special resolution must be passed at a general meeting by at least two thirds of the eligible members who vote.

I was motivated to lodge amendment 440 by what happened at Reidvale Housing Association in 2023 and 2024. Had the measure in amendment 440 been in place then, the tenant ballot would not have reached the threshold required for the proposal to proceed to the special general meeting, at which the two-thirds majority requirement to transfer engagements was not met.

In December 2023, Reidvale Vale Housing Association proposed to transfer its housing stock of 900 properties, valued at around £180 million, to Places for People Scotland. In a tenant ballot, which was open for 32 days and in which 72.9 per cent of tenants cast their vote, 61.8 per cent of tenants voted in favour of the proposal. Had a two-thirds majority rule been in place, the proposal would have fallen at that point because it did not meet the threshold of 66.6 per cent.

As you may know, Reidvale Housing Association was one of Scotland’s first community-based housing associations and was formed after the Housing Act 1974. In 1975, it had around 900 homes in the Dennistoun area of Glasgow. There had been significant concerns about its governance and investment, and the board had decided to seek a transfer partner to take over the association—its tenancies, properties and staff. However, there were significant concerns about the process being railroaded through with coercion, and the Glasgow and West of Scotland Forum of Housing Associations resisted the proposal.

The forum highlighted concerns about the tenant ballot. At the time,

“GWSF director David Bookbinder said the 61.8% ‘Yes’ result”

in favour of transferring the housing stock

“must be viewed in the context of previous transfer votes, most of which have generated positive results by at least 90%.”

Indeed, if we look at the transfers of engagements of housing associations over the last few years, we see that they have largely had the support of over 90 per cent of tenants. I think that only one fell below the 90 per cent level, which was for the Pineview Housing Association and Kendoon Housing Association transfer, and the support for that was 88 per cent.

Clearly, in instances in which transfers of engagements are sought, they should enjoy the support of the vast majority of tenants for the propositions to be reasonable. With yes votes in transfer ballots normally exceeding the 90 per cent threshold, it was clear that there was a concern in Reidvale’s case, as almost 40 per cent of voting tenants opposed the transfer, despite the offer of a five-year rent freeze. That was hardly a resounding vote of confidence.

The requirement for a supermajority, which would require support from two thirds of the tenant body, would make it clear that there was a settled majority view on what would be the best future for a community-based housing association. After all, it is a one-way road from being a community-based association to joining a large national housing group. There has never been a case in Scotland when a large national housing group has devolved or spun out a small community-based association, so I think that my amendment 440 is important in order to protect the sector.

Once it had the required tenant approval of the transfer, which was in place by a simple majority, Reidvale Housing Association went on to hold a special general meeting of its shareholders on 16 January 2024 in order to seek ratification of the transfer of engagements to Places for People. At the meeting, 138 shareholders, or 66.3 per cent, voted to reject the takeover and backed continued community ownership, with only 70 shareholders, or 33.6 per cent, supporting the transfer. It was clear that that was a huge victory for community-based ownership, after a grass-roots campaign that was fighting against an overwhelming narrative that there was no alternative but to transfer to a large national housing group. Presenting a counter-proposal was very challenging but, nonetheless, the proposal cut through and was able to win the support of shareholders. The chair of the Glasgow and West of Scotland Forum of Housing Associations, John Hamilton, said at the time that, as an obvious supporter and promoter of community-based housing associations,

“GWSF welcomes the 2 to 1 decision of Reidvale’s members not to ratify the outcome of the tenant ballot. We recognise many of the concerns expressed by members, including the impending loss of community assets, and the inevitable disappearance of local decision making. The relative closeness of the separate tenant ballot, with less than 62% in favour, compared with the usual 90+% yes vote in previous transfers, was a clear sign of the anxiety and uncertainty felt by many tenants despite the promise of a five-year rent freeze.”

That is why I think that amendment 440 is reasonable and coherent. It proposes the prudent measure of bringing the voting threshold for tenants and shareholders of housing associations into alignment with a two-thirds threshold. That would serve to provide extra protection for community-controlled housing associations against what are often cynical attempts to railroad through irreversible takeovers of community-controlled assets and risk pitting tenants against member shareholders, which has been a worrying trend in Scotland’s housing sector in the past few years. It would be particularly fitting for the committee to support the amendment now, because this year marks the 50th anniversary of Scotland’s first community-based housing associations being established. The proposal has the backing of the Glasgow and West of Scotland Forum of Housing Associations.

I move amendment 440.

I appreciate the cabinet secretary’s points. I said that 52 CPOs have been pursued by Glasgow City Council, of which 34 have been concluded, but there are more than 1,600 long-term empty homes in the city, which gives an idea of the scale of the issue and of the power and bandwidth that are needed in order to tackle it. I welcome the opportunity to continue the discussion about how we might achieve the optimum approach to giving local authorities greater powers, codifying as best practice what Glasgow is already doing and expanding Glasgow’s capacity, as well as that of other local authorities.

Where I disagree with the cabinet secretary is that I think that there could be benefit in including that in the bill. There is an analogy with listed buildings. Sections 42 and 43 of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) (Scotland) Act 1997 created a mechanism known as the listed buildings repairs notice, which is analogous to a repairing works notice for any residential property. The notice creates an escalation procedure towards a compulsory purchase order.

The explanatory note that was published by Angus Council says:

“The local authority can serve a notice on the owner of a listed building specifying works it considers reasonably necessary for the proper preservation of the building. It is appropriate for consideration when a building is neglected and the need for permanent repair accumulates to the point there is potential for serious harm. If after a period of not less than two months, it appears reasonable steps are not being taken for its proper preservation, the local authority can begin compulsory purchase proceedings. The Council can acquire a listed building that is not being properly conserved if this will facilitate its repair either by the Council or through an appropriate repairing owner to which it is subsequently passed.”

I feel that there is a similarity of intent there. That is a statutory measure that councils can exercise—they do not do so often enough, but that is another story—and I think that there should be a similar mechanism for inhabited residential property, so that we can create a formalised system of escalation through the repairing works notices that are already in place, culminating in a compulsory purchase order. Perhaps that could be achieved through an amendment to the wording.

I thank colleagues who have spoken so eloquently about their respective amendments so far. I am here primarily to speak to amendment 477. The intention behind it, as the minister suggested, is to address long-term dilapidation in privately let property.

The synopsis of the amendment is that, if a property in private let is deemed to be substandard by failing to meet the repairing standard or the tolerable standard for a period of longer than 12 months, the tenant would have a right in statute to apply to the local authority to initiate a compulsory purchase order process or an escalation to a compulsory purchase order for the property and, therefore, to transfer it to an appropriate local registered social landlord, whether that be the local authority itself or a third-party housing association. The Scottish Government could underwrite that procedure and recover the costs of the purchase over a reasonable period—for example, 25 years from the receiving social landlord’s taking ownership of the property—which would have the effect of making the policy effectively cost neutral for the Government. It would allow for established best practice of using CPOs to take over long-term vacant housing stock to be expanded to housing stock that is in generally poor condition, although habitable—which already happens in Glasgow in areas such as Govanhill—and for the approach to be accelerated and scaled up.

Glasgow has been at the forefront of using CPOs to tackle problems of long-term vacant properties, which has increased affordable housing supply and ensured the upkeep of pre-1919 tenements, of which there are around 70,000 in the city, with an estimated repair backlog of £3 billion. The CPO process has been a way of responding to the blight that has been caused by derelict, abandoned flats and homes that have been left vacant for a variety of reasons, or properties that have previously been let out but are now below the tolerable standard.

Glasgow’s promotion of CPOs has sent a message that the local authority is active in taking steps against private landlords or other individuals who fail to address problems with their property. Although that is a last-resort measure, 52 homes across Glasgow have been pursued for compulsory purchases since 2019, and 34 of those processes have been concluded. In the other cases, 13 owners opted to sell voluntarily to housing associations, and a further two properties were sold to or occupied by family members, which means that the planned CPOs were not continued. In all cases to date in which the CPOs have been confirmed, once Glasgow City Council has invested in the property, it has entered into a back-to-back agreement with a local community-based housing association, which has carried out the necessary repair works to bring the property up to a tolerable standard and back into active use in order to provide affordable housing for those who need it. Given the housing emergency in the city, the need is particularly acute.

Some of the properties that have been targeted have been lying empty for more than 14 years, while other properties have been designated as being below the tolerable standard for more than five years. All those empty properties, because they are generally tenement stock, create environmental blight and affect neighbours and the wider community. The benefit that is derived from bringing those and other homes back into use is significant, particularly for tenants and owners who live in close proximity and have suffered as a direct consequence of abandonment.

However, given budgetary constraints, there is a limit on how much any local authority can achieve through CPOs alone. The steps in making and obtaining CPOs are complex, time consuming, costly and resource intensive. In Glasgow’s case, they are also dependent on establishing a partnership with a housing association, because the city does not itself manage social housing. The housing association must be willing to take on the property after the council purchases it, because, without that, there is a risk that the council would be paying money to acquire assets, which would cost further sums to repair and still be left on the council balance sheet.

Even with back-to-back purchases, the cost and resource implications of seeing CPO cases through to confirmation limits the number of CPOs that the council can promote. The council has indicated that its preference would be to expand the process to compulsory sales orders, which I know that the Government has been considering. The officers of Glasgow City Council consider that that could address the situation relating to up to half of the long-term empty homes in Glasgow. However, that is not on the horizon—indeed, I do not believe that the Government has published timescales for that—and the bill provides us with an opportunity to put in place a potential remedy that would create a proper demand signal and a system of escalation in statute.

I appreciate the cabinet secretary’s comments. There is a really good system in Glasgow—albeit not one that has worked at a scale sufficient to address the housing emergency in the city—and there could be an opportunity to codify that in the bill, giving local authorities the confidence to create a more sophisticated system. That could perhaps be underpinned by Government investment to supercharge the opportunity to use CPOs at scale. I know that the Government is looking at a law reform procedure for CPOs, and this might tie in with that. There is an opportunity to use the bill to do something positive to address the housing emergency in Glasgow and elsewhere.

That is helpful. On the point that was made earlier about resource and capacity, surely creating that clear demand signal would indicate where there is a gap. It might be helpful to have those expected target times against each type of treatment and pathway, so that there would at least be a clear signal of where we are not meeting those standards. Would it be helpful for that to be defined in the bill?

That is helpful.

Does the financial memorandum take appropriate account of potential costs if treatment options, as defined in the bill, were to be expanded? Does anyone in the room have a view on that?