Seòmar agus comataidhean

Given what the minister said about some technical issues that he has with my amendment and given his willingness to discuss it in order to bring it back at stage 3, I will not move the amendment.

Amendment 2 not moved.

Section 10—Appeal against arranged remediation work

I hope that members will follow my train of thought throughout this group of amendments—there are quite a lot of them. These are probing amendments that seek important clarification from the Government on how the responsible developers scheme will operate. The bill does not set that out clearly in a number of areas.

Amendment 67 seeks to amend section 20(1), which would empower the Scottish Government to create several responsible developers schemes. I am interested to understand why several schemes would be needed and how any resources that are provided would be administrated within those schemes.

Amendment 68 seeks to ensure that developers and those in the supply chain make proportionate contributions towards remediation.

Amendments 71 and 72 seek to address issues with regard to paying fees into the scheme. There is no clarity on how much those will be. As we move to stage 3, we need to know how that aspect will operate.

Concerns have also been expressed about the opportunity for a right to appeal. It is important that we consider anyone who will be excluded from the scheme and what impact that could have. That needs to be clear in the bill. My amendment 78 seeks sufficient detail on the right to appeal that may be created through regulations.

All of us have accepted the need to create the right environment for developers to fix cladding and to fund remediation works that might take place. That is important. Amendment 79 would remove powers to create a prohibited developers list. There is concern about what effectively blacklisting companies in Scotland would mean. For some small and medium-sized enterprises, that could be hugely damaging—it could put them out of business.

Through my amendment 3, I am keen to probe the Government’s position on turnover. In the rest of the UK—in England—SMEs with an annual turnover of £10 million have been excluded from the scheme. We know that housing completion rates have been low recently and the impact that that can have on rural and island communities, where most housing is being developed by SMEs. What impact assessments have been carried out on how the bill will impact on those SMEs? I take on board that a limited number of SMEs are exposed to the buildings that are included in the first phase of work.

I hope that these probing amendments are useful to help us to consider the unintended consequences on developers. I am happy to work with the minister ahead of stage 3 to iron out some of the detail, but I think that it would be useful to have clarification on the scheme and on any unintended consequences that might lead to developers being blacklisted.

I move amendment 67.

The minister touched in his comments on amendments 76 and 77, and I think 78, and some of the concerns around where a right of appeal is currently not strong within the bill. I do not know whether the minister is therefore minded to discuss that ahead of stage 3. For SMEs, there is concern about what will effectively become a blacklisting exercise by the Scottish ministers. There have previously been concerns about such practices taking place in Scotland and I am concerned about what that will look like, especially when SMEs will be included in all the legislation. I wanted to seek more detail on that.

On profit margins, there has not been clarity from the Scottish Government on what has already been taken into account as a UK-wide profit margin and where the Scottish legislation would take that UK-wide profit margin, again, rather than profits that are raised or secured only here in Scotland. The Scottish Government needs to provide clarification on those areas at stage 3, because none of us wants to see developers going out of business and not realising the resources that will be needed, specifically around orphan buildings. Driving up the number of orphan buildings is not in the interests of anyone.

Will the Scottish Government provide more detail on that at stage 3? I am happy to work with the minister on drafting workable amendments, specifically regarding amendments 76, 77 and 78.

I listened to what the minister had to say, and I am happy to work with him at stage 3. I feel that there will be a black hole at the end of the bill if we are not able to take stock of how effective it has been. I hope that we can work to create a useful amendment at stage 3, especially with regard to amendment 80.

The minister has outlined this, and I welcome the fact that the committee can do annual health checks in the future, but that will fall within the committee’s work timetable. The time that we might have to do an annual piece of work might be limited, so the burden is on the Government to provide Parliament with updated information on how we are progressing with assessments and remedial work being commissioned, so that residents and the wider public in Scotland can see when the issue is being assessed and we get to an end point at which we can say that buildings in Scotland are safe and that the cladding problems have been rectified. That needs annual reporting back to Parliament beyond the committee.

With that said, I am happy to work with the minister ahead of stage 3 on what I hope will be a proper workable amendment to bring the three amendments together. There are issues, but all three amendments could be brought together in an amendment at stage 3. In that case, I will not press amendment 1.

Amendment 1, by agreement, withdrawn.

Amendment 4 not moved.

That would be helpful. We have discussed empty homes at length. I know that a number of councils do not have the resources to invest in building maintenance. It is welcome that a lot of councils are employing housing officers specifically to look at empty properties, but we do not seem to be pushing down on the number of empty homes. We have heard this morning about all the problems with cladding and RAAC, and about what is creating even more housing need.

What is the Government’s plan for empty homes? Has the Government considered establishing a national empty homes fund, which councils could bid into? In Edinburgh, more than 3,000 council-owned properties are sitting empty. Can councils look at getting such properties back into use?

Thank you.

Good morning to the minister and his officials. I have a couple of questions. First, I will ask about the post-implementation analysis that the Government has undertaken of some of its policies. It has been two years since about 500,000 properties in Scotland were identified as not implementing the interlinked fire alarms policy. What analysis has been done of that? Do all local authorities and housing associations now comply with that policy?

I know that there is anecdotal evidence that privately owned homes implement the policy only for a sale and not before. Is there any data on that?

Two years ago, the Government allocated £500,000 for vulnerable and disabled individuals to access support for implementing the policy. Has that all been allocated, or was that money not spent?

Thank you for that. It would be useful to keep the committee updated on some of that work.

You talked about barriers. Looking back at the Government’s rent control policy, I note that housing associations warned us quite clearly that mid-market rent development would dry up—the minister, in fact, was asking a number of questions about that when he was a committee member. Indeed, we have seen that happen for housing associations. Is there a specific commitment to look again at that issue for housing associations to try to get mid-market rent development going again? Is that central to the discussions that the minister has outlined, too?

Rather than discussions, the most important issue is outcomes and what will actually make a difference. In Edinburgh, the loss of mid-market rental properties has been catastrophic for our housing market, so getting those back is really important.

I want to move on to homelessness. The Scottish Housing Regulator has reported systemic failures in the delivery of homelessness services by some councils, with other councils being at risk of failure. What has been the response of the Scottish Government to that and to the fact that councils across Scotland have declared housing emergencies? The Scottish Government has not declared a housing emergency, but some councils have, including the City of Edinburgh Council in the region that I represent.