Good morning, and welcome to the seventh meeting
in 2024 of the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee. I remind all members and witnesses to ensure
that their devices are on silent and that notifications are switched off. Stephanie Callaghan MSP will be joining the
meeting online. Agenda item 1 is to decide whether to take
items 4 and 5 in private. Do members agree to do so? Item 2 is a round-table evidence-taking session
on the “Housing to 2040” strategy. We are joined by Chris Birt,
associate director
for Scotland of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation; Dr Caroline Brown, director for Scotland,
Ireland and English regions at the Royal Town Planning Institute; Stephen Connor, development
manager at the Tenants Information Service; Emma Jackson, social justice strategic lead
at Citizens Advice Scotland; Eilidh Keay, who represents Living Rent; Professor Ken
Gibb, director of the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence, based at the University
of Glasgow; Gordon MacRae, assis
tant director for communications and advocacy at Shelter
Scotland; David Melhuish, directorof the Scottish Property Federation; Ronnie Macrae, chief
executive officer of the Communites Housing Trust; Rhiannon Sims, senior policy officer
at Crisis; and Chris Stewart, president of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland. I warmly welcome our witnesses to the meeting. To begin our conversation, I invite everyone
to briefly introduce themselves. I am the convener of the committee and an
MS
P for the Highlands and Islands. I am the strategic lead for social justice
at Citizens Advice Scotland. I am the president of the Royal Incorporation
of Architects Scotland. I am also a practising architect, with 35
years of experience in affordable housing. I have several projects on site and I am a
Passivhaus designer. I am a senior policy officer at the Crisis
homelessness charity. I am the deputy convener of the committee
and a constituency MSP for Kilmarnock and Irvine Valley. I am the chi
ef executive of the Communities
Housing Trust, which is a community support body. I am a director of the Scottish Property Federation. In this context, I principally represent investors
and developers in the build-to-rent sector. I am an MSP for the Clydebank and Milngavie
constituency. I am the development manager of the Tenants
Information Service. We provide expertise in tenant participation,
community engagement and customer-led scrutiny of housing services. I am the director for Scotland, I
reland and
English regions at RTPI Scotland. I am an MSP for the Lothian region. I am the associate director for Scotland for
the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. I put on the record that I am a member of
the Aberfeldy Development Trust, which focuses on social housing, although I am not here
to represent that organisation. I am an MSP for the West Scotland region. I am the director of the UK Collaborative
Centre for Housing Evidence at the University of Glasgow. For the past year, I have been workin
g with
the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on aspects of housing to 2040 and mechanisms and reforms
that may assist with the strategy’s goals. I am also on the committee at Shelter Scotland. I represent Living Rent, Scotland’s tenants
and community union. I am on the national campaigns group and am
the chair for the city of Edinburgh. I am an MSP for Central Scotland. I am assistant director at Shelter Scotland,
the housing and homelessness campaigning charity. It is good to have you here. I apologis
e, I have missed Stephanie Callaghan. I will have to work hard to remember that
she is there. I am the MSP for the Uddingston and Bellshill
constituency in Lanarkshire. We turn to questions from members. Please indicate to me if you would like to
come in or to respond to something that somebody has said. The intention is that this should be a free-flowing
conversation instead of a question-and-answer session, although sometimes that can be difficult
to achieve. Let us see how we do. I will start
with a few general questions. To what extent do you think that the vision
that is expressed in “Housing to 2040” is still fit for purpose and deliverable? Connected to that, do you think that the Scottish
Government’s legislative programme, and its housing policy more generally, seek to
deliver on the ambitions of “Housing to 2040” in a coherent way that considers the
housing system holistically? Whoever feels prompted can come forward. Is it fit for purpose? No. It has not been
fit for purpos
e since shortly after it was published, which was just before the last
election. It had in it some key deliverables, such as
a house-building target for this parliamentary session. That was scrapped about three weeks after
the election—the Bute house agreement superseded it. There has never been a delivery plan. It took two years to set up a strategic board,
and that has only met a handful of times. As I think the committee heard last week,
even the board struggles to identify positives beyond t
he mere existence of a statement. The housing to 2040 vision, which was published
just before the tail-end of the last parliamentary session, was built on a number of very good
conversations and good consultations, and it contains many things that we would like
to see. However, it remains detached from the reality
of people’s lives on the ground. We anticipate that new homelessness statistics
coming out today will show not just that the situation is continuing to get slightly worse
but that it h
as escalated even further. We also expect that, in Parliament today,
there will be a vote that cuts the housing budget. Therefore, I think that anyone making the
case that the housing to 2040 strategy is the right way forward and that we are making
good progress, when it is compared with the reality on the ground, could be accused of
making a statement akin to gaslighting. The situation has never been this bad, and
yet we are talking about a strategy from many years ago that was never properly i
mplemented. We think that it is time to look again. The other strategy, ending homelessness together,
has real challenges now, too, so we think that it is time for a new plan for housing
in Scotland that builds in the best bits but which is deliverable within the current context
of the Scottish public sector. I want to go into that a little bit more. In last week’s meeting, we heard that the
vision is good but the issue is that there was not a plan for delivering it. I would be concerned about g
oing back to the
starting point and creating yet another vision and another plan. Can you say more about where you think we
need to begin, and whether there is something useful in the vision that we could act on? It would be even more concerning if there
were nothing useful in the plan. There are definitely things that are, such
as decommoditising housing and ensuring that everyone has a home, but there are no means
to make that vision a reality. I think that it is dangerous territory to
sit the
re and say that we have the right ideas when there is no plan for making them real. It is vital that we appreciate that people
are being harmed by our failure to deliver on this. This is not an abstract, academic debate about
something that we can do once all the other nice projects that the Scottish Government
has planned are delivered. It is not hyperbole to say that people are
literally dying in Scotland in no small part due to the poor provision of housing and the
cuts in homelessness servic
es. If we have these kinds of conversations in
the abstract instead of about the reality, we will just perpetuate the problems that
we have been facing for the past few years. I would like to come back to you for more
detail on that, but first I will bring some other people in. I probably should have mentioned when I introduced
myself that I worked on the community engagement group for housing to 2040, which was before
Covid. I spent a long time driving a white van from
Orkney to Galashiels, vis
iting communities, islands, cities—you name it. I was part of that process and that discussion
within the communities of Scotland. Sorry for not mentioning that—it is quite
pertinent. I am aware that so much has changed since
then. We have been through Covid. We have been through quite a strong emphasis
in the construction industry on retrofit, which I feel did not really come through in
the vision. The vision was quite aspirational, and there
are so many good things in there that we should thin
k hard about. Speaking more for the construction industry
than the planning side of things, I know that we are struggling to build up the skills to
tackle retrofit. From visiting schools across Scotland, I know
that it is hard for us to even gather interest from the pupils, never mind thinking about
how we start to gather the skills. There are five fantastic schools of architecture
in Scotland, and we are busy introducing retrofit into the curriculums in our schools so that
we can start to garne
r the abilities to tackle it. That is where, perhaps, the emphasis has changed. I feel that retrofit is our biggest challenge
now. There is a lot of emphasis on new build in
this conversation, but retrofit is where we have to start thinking. Thank you very much for bringing in retrofit. That is certainly an aspect that I agree with
you on. I agree that retrofit is a hugely important
part of the vision, and it is even part of the housing supply issue. However, from our perspective, there is no
an
swer to the housing crisis that does not involve a major new supply of new housing
across the whole country. It took literally decades to get some of the
major institutional investors, funds and so on interested again in the residential sector. Such investment will only ever be a part of
the solution, but it could be an increasingly important part. I think that there is a huge opportunity there,
but it will be important that it diversifies as a contribution to the housing supply crisis. We are b
eginning to see the housing market
take off south of the border, but it is somewhat paused at the moment in Scotland; we are awaiting
regulatory decisions before we can move forward. Housing to 2040 is an incredibly ambitious
strategy, and it has commitments right across planning, housing quality, affordability,
energy efficiency and so on. However, the primary test for whether we are
achieving the ambition that it sets out should always be whether everyone has a safe place
to call home. That is
why homelessness charities in particular
have been ringing the alarm bells. With tens of thousands of households in the
homelessness system, right now the Government is failing on that commitment. As Gordon MacRae mentioned, the biannual homelessness
statistics will be released today. We have not had a chance to see them yet,
but we can predict that those stats will show that the number of people in the homelessness
system is at its highest since records began, with people spending longer in te
mporary accommodation
and a record number of children growing up in temporary accommodation. We can predict that they will show that because
it would continue a longer-term trend, and that shows that actions reflecting the ambitions
and aspirations that are set out in the housing to 2040 strategy have not been delivered. We are seeing that trend in our front-line
services, with more and more people seeking help, but also we are seeing it through academic
research. For example, Heriot-Watt Univer
sity has forecast
that homelessness will increase by a third by 2026 unless we see significant policy change
from both the Scottish and United Kingdom Governments. From a rural community delivery perspective,
there is a lot of good policy. The housing to 2040 strategy has some good
elements, but it is not deliverable. We need a more holistic approach. We need to consider how the policy fits with
the climate challenge and depopulation. There are many opportunities to do a lot more
and do it a lot
more quickly if we can join the dots across a range of housing—not just
affordable housing but business housing and retrofit. Everything needs to be looked at. My concern with the housing to 2040 strategy
is that it is a little isolated and not integrated enough with all the other policies. Until we integrate it, we will not be able
to deliver. We need to look beyond housing to community
empowerment and circular economies. Will you say a little more about the opportunities
that you mentioned? Y
ou said that there was an opportunity to
do a lot more and do it quicker if we join the dots. Will you be more specific about the dots that
need to be joined? You mentioned policy, but what about what
happens on the ground? The basics are that there are not enough people
in Scotland to build or retrofit houses. Businesses across rural Scotland in particular
cannot house their employees, attract employees or deal with depopulation without housing. Looking at housing without looking at depopulatio
n,
the climate crisis and proper placemaking makes delivery extremely challenging. Undoubtedly, we all agree on the ambition
of the vision. A safe, secure and affordable home is essential
for people to live decent, dignified and healthy lives. In a just and compassionate Scotland, everybody
should be afforded the opportunity to have that. To pick up on Gordon MacRae’s point about
the harm that citizens continue to experience across Scotland because of a lack of access
to housing or the precariou
s nature of their housing arrangements, at Citizens Advice Scotland
we see people experiencing harm at scale right across the country. As you perhaps know from your own work and
within your constituency, convener, not having somewhere safe and affordable to call home
impacts on all aspects of someone’s life—their physical and mental wellbeing. That has a devastating impact on individuals. Our network of bureaus across Scotland sees
that impact day in, day out as people who are in crisis situatio
ns come to them. That has a huge cost, not just to that individual
but to society in general. It is deeply concerning that, as we consider
what is needed to build more social homes at pace and scale, we would consider reducing
the budget. Rather than considering what could be saved
by cutting £200 million, we should ask what would be the real cost of not investing in
that, as we might continue to harm more citizens. What would be the additional cost to our national
health service, local authorit
ies and education system? Moreover, what is the cost to those individuals
as they are robbed of their potential? We must face the reality of the devastating
situation that far too many people face right now. “Housing to 2040” is a remarkable document
for its vision and the claims that it makes for what it wants to achieve. It has a clear diagnosis and a lengthy list
of recommendations, but it falls down. We said when it was published that it lacked
a blueprint for delivery in terms of periodic g
ateways, monitoring, evaluation and gathering
the data and indicators to enable us to judge what was going on so that one could objectively
rearrange or resteer the overall project. Secondly, some of the vision is very ambitious,
and it is hard not to go over the top about it. One example is the plan to despeculate the
housing market and stabilise house prices so that landlords would earn only rental returns. Real capital gains would be pulled out of
the system over a period. Nobody anywhere els
e that I am aware of has
tried to make that a conscious part of policy. It might be because it cannot be done, but
it also reflects the fact that you need to make system-level change to achieve that. Progress on that is non-existent. The first Parliament said that there would
be reviews of housing taxation, but I am not aware of any evidence of that happening. More to the point, we really need to get going
on housing tax reform. It is a critical issue, and we might talk
more about it later. The
other area that is emblematic of such
implementation issues is temporary accommodation. The issues with temporary accommodation, particularly
in the central belt cities, are the large and growing inflow, the growing stock of people
who are in temporary accommodation and are not getting out of it, and the challenges
of where they can go. There is not enough new social supply and
not enough turnover in the social stock, which are the only two places where that housing
can be generated. That, inesc
apably, takes us right back to
the importance of the affordable supply programme. To echo what Emma Jackson has just said, last
summer, the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers, in its report
with the Association of Local Authority Chief Housing Officers, stressed the need for serious
cost benefit analysis of the benefits of investing in social housing as well as of the costs
of not investing in it. If we are going to have disproportionate budget
cuts in housing, housi
ng commentators and the Government need ammo to make the case
in defence of social housing. That is an important thing that we do not
do enough of. Thank you. Other hands are going back up, but I will
bring in Chris Birt first. I want to echo one of Gordon MacRae’s points. Like Ken Gibb, I think that bits of the housing
to 2040 vision are genuinely radical and would hugely improve the housing system in Scotland,
but we are some distance—indeed, a long way—from that, because of a lack of delivery
on those key pacts. Emma Jackson has set out the costs of that,
and temporary accommodation is a particularly insidious part of it. Any parent who has moved home will worry about
where their child can go to school or whether they can get a nursery place, but for parents
in temporary accommodation, that agency is taken away from them. They live on thin ice all the time, which
is a horrible situation for anyone to experience, never mind 10,000 households. It really is shocking. It comes back to t
he main point that I want
to stress, which is prioritisation. Housing to 2040 is extremely broad because,
in some ways, the housing system is complex while, in other ways, it is not. We do not have enough houses—and, indeed,
not enough affordable houses for low-income people in our society. What baffles me about the budget decisions
at the moment is that I have been in many a different place, singing the praises of
the Scottish child payment, which is an excellent policy that will make a big dif
ference to
families with children. However, if we put up people’s housing costs,
where is that child payment going? People will strive all the time just to keep
a roof over their heads. As for housing policy, it makes no sense to
me to choke off the supply of social housing, which should be our priority right now. Part of that is about reversing the cut to
the budget, but part of it is also about taking on the immediate pressures of homelessness
and temporary accommodation. If that means having
difficult discussions
about, say, the timing of retrofit, we need to have them. Let us stop pretending that we can do everything
at the same time. The sector is worried and lacking in confidence,
and we need to inject that confidence back into it. The Scottish Government needs to be extremely
clear about its short and medium-term priorities to get the sector back on track, or the situations
faced by people across the country will worsen, as will poverty. The Parliament has legally binding child
poverty
reduction targets, which today’s budget could take us further away from. I echo what Chris Birt said. The housing to 2040 policy is really ambitious,
but what is happening on the ground does not align with it. There was a 16 per cent cut to the affordable
housing supply budget last year and a 26 per cent cut this year; three local authorities
have declared a housing emergency; and in Edinburgh, there are 192 bids per council
home. All this talk is happening but, again, there
is no delive
ry. What worries me is that, when we talk about
supply but do not interrogate the form of that supply, we make things worse. We have seen that with purpose-built student
accommodation, which is exacerbating the student housing crisis. Things such as the build-to-rent process are
particularly exploitative, because they do not deliver affordability. If the Government is actually serious about
remedying the housing crisis, a massive investment in affordable housing is really the only way
to go. We
can all agree that the housing sector has
rarely faced more challenges than it does today. Often, when we talk about those challenges,
we focus on the organisations and landlords that deliver the housing, and our tenant members
absolutely empathise with our landlords who have to juggle all those priorities. Ultimately, though, we do not hear the voice
of tenants when we talk about this. Eilidh Keay just made an important point. Our tenant members are strategic partners
of the Scottish Government
. We, in partnership with the Scottish Government,
were involved in delivering the consultation on housing to 2040, and our tenant members
absolutely support the strategy’s aspirations. In reality, though, I would echo a lot of
the points that have been made by people around the table today and ask, “Where’s the
money ” Budgets are being cut. Often, we talk about budgets being cut and
the impact on landlords delivering at a local level, but we do not often talk about the
impact on tenants. If we
are going to cut the affordable housing
supply programme, stop building homes and prioritise retrofitting and decarbonising
homes, it is tenants’ rents that will pay for that. Housing to 2040 is really aspirational; Ken
Gibb is on the group that is working on affordability, and there is a commitment to maintaining tenants’
rents at an affordable level. Ultimately, however, our tenant members will
say, “It’s coming out of our pockets.” At a national level, if we cut budgets, tenants’
rents have
to go up. Rents will increase to enable landlords to
deliver on those priorities and targets, and we need to take that into consideration. Scotland has a unique legal framework for
tenant participation. Given the impact of the financial crisis and
the socioeconomic inequalities that surround the sector, I would say that there has never
been a more important time to ensure that tenants are sitting around the table, making
decisions in partnership with their landlords. That is what we want to see
at a national
as well as a local level. I call Pam Gosal to add her question to the
conversation. I will then bring in Gordon MacRae, Rhiannon
Sims and anyone else either to pick it up or to go back to other points, so that we
have a bit of what I would call conversation weave. Listening to everybody’s evidence is so
important. Rhiannon, you said that the primary test was
ensuring that everyone had a safe home, while Emma Jackson talked about citizens facing
harm due to not having the right hous
ing. Although housing to 2040 commits to implementing
and embedding homelessness prevention pathways for marginalised groups, a shocking number
of victims are being left in limbo after leaving violent households, oftentimes accompanied
by their children. On average, survivors of abuse are stuck in
temporary accommodation for hundreds of days, despite the fact that the Domestic Abuse Act
2021 was passed more than three years ago. Do witnesses agree that we are not seeing
quick enough action to im
plement recommendations to improve housing outcomes for victims of
domestic abuse and other marginalised groups? I agree 100 per cent that it
is shocking that the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 has not yet been implemented. I am not sure what has happened there. Homelessness prevention is the main thing
that my organisation talks about, and the housing bill will absolutely provide an opportunity
to introduce new measures around preventing homelessness. I agree that, if we cannot get this right
for spe
cific groups that face unique routes into homelessness, we cannot solve the problem. A one-size-fits-all approach to homelessness
prevention just will not work. We already have prevention pathways. A lot of policy development has gone in over
the past few years since “Housing to 2040” was published to develop pathways for women
and children experiencing domestic abuse, care leavers and young people. However, what those documents contain is lists
of recommendations, and we are not seeing their im
plementation. If the housing bill and the prevention duties
are to be a success, they need to be used as an opportunity to put in place genuine
prevention pathways for the different groups who experience different triggers into homelessness. I go back to what Ken Gibb has said about
the need for an appropriate cost benefit analysis of budget decisions. Recent freedom of information requests have
shown that Scottish councils spent more than £160 million on temporary accommodation in
the last fina
ncial year, which is a rise of 50 per cent in only three years. In a context where we are stripping out £196
million from the affordable housing supply programme budget, what we are looking at is
an unsustainable picture. Basically, we need both to continue proper
investment in affordable social housing and to introduce those new prevention measures
in a way that caters for different groups and their different routes into homelessness. Undoubtedly, the experience of those fleeing
abuse situation
s needs particular focus, but, as Rhiannon Sims has mentioned, they are just
one of a number of groups that we must be aware of. It is important for us to consider that, when
we focus on the greatest needs, we have the opportunity to benefit everybody. It is what is known in the disability sector
as the curb-cut effect. In other words, by making something accessible
for one group, you have the potential to benefit everybody. Pam Gosal has highlighted one group that we
are very aware of, but at C
itizens Advice Scotland, we are aware of other key groups
that face particular harms and issues around accessing housing. First, there are growing issues with older
people, particularly those in the private rented sector; indeed, in a recent report,
Independent Age highlighted some of the particular issues that those people are facing. Secondly, we are seeing a rise in demand for
advice from disabled households, particularly families with a disabled child, which is of
real concern to us. Thirdly
, we know that people who live in rural
communities face very particular issues. We must remember that, in all those situations,
we are talking about people. We must view those situations through an intersectional
lens: people can be living in a rural community and be disabled, and they might have been
a victim of domestic abuse, too. Therefore, people can face compound issues,
which can be particularly difficult. We will be able to ensure that housing is
available for all only if we have a lase
r-sharp focus on those with the greatest needs. Thanks for that. It is really important to go into that detail. I want to pull the discussion back into more
of a general space. Do you think that the Scottish Government
is adequately balancing the need to address the short-term housing problems with longer-term
policy aims? We have begun to touch on that question; indeed,
we have already heard that that might not be the case. Somebody—Chris Birt, I think—talked about
priorities, but where in the
mix do the priorities need to change? The homelessness stats that have been mentioned
are now out, and they show a 3 per cent increase in the number of children in temporary accommodation. However, the key point—and I think that
this is central to the assumptions that sit behind the future legislative programme and
how we assume that interventions will work—is that if there are duties on public bodies
and attempts to get people to reach those services, we can start to address the circumstances
t
hat are driving their poverty or their housing insecurity. With regard to the existing duties, today’s
statistics show that the failure to accommodate—by which I mean a local authority not being able
to offer any accommodation—has gone up 1,400 per cent in the past six months. In just six months, it has gone from 105 cases
to 1,500 cases. We are past the point of talking about the
short term and the long term; right now, the homelessness system is on fire, but according
to the statement that the
Scottish Government sent to the committee, we are, overall, making
good progress. That dissonance just does not make sense to
me. Today the budget is being cut—and not just
the capital budget. Things such as homelessness voluntary sector
grants are being cut. Shelter does not use them, but there are other
charities that rely on that income to provide homelessness interventions. Overall spending to local authorities to provide
those services—not just homelessness services but mental health, drug
and alcohol treatment
services—is being cut. We have to have an honest conversation about
what we are able to do and what we expect the housing sector to be able to do. There is a capacity issue here. We cannot expect the homelessness services
to pick up every case. As Stephen Connor has mentioned, we cannot
expect the housing revenue accounts to pay for improvements to properties, the zero-carbon
agenda and the development of new buildings. There is a real danger that we just continue
to do an
other version of the same thing. There are real question marks now over things
such as the prevention duty. Why impose new legal duties? We think that they are broadly the right thing,
but unless they are properly funded, imposing them might just add more breaches into the
system. There are also question marks over the future
of the human rights bill that is coming down the line. It is really important to progress something
in the housing to 2040 strategy, but, again, what is the point of the Go
vernment passing
legislation if there is no means to deliver it, and it actually adds to the crisis locally? We are angry about this. There is a passivity and a lethargy in the
Government and the civil service. There is a question mark over what has happened
to protecting people fleeing domestic violence, because we have been sitting and waiting for
that to happen for the past three years. Promises were made around compulsory purchase
orders and compulsory sale orders, but those promises have no
t been met. Everyone says that there has been Covid and
other things. Well, of course there has, but then we wake
up to statistics like these and ask “How did we get here ” The committee has already
heard SOLACE warn, as the Scottish Housing Regulator warned over a year ago, that local
authorities are making emergency declarations. People have been saying these things for about
two years now. I am particularly angered by the statement
in the ministerial correspondence in the papers for this meet
ing, because it feels like a
deliberate attempt to say one thing and do another. It feels as if we are being gaslit all the
time. We are asked to be very polite and constructive,
but the reality is that people’s lives are being harmed by the decisions that are being
made in this building. There is the 26 per cent cut, which is a problem. Obviously, it is important that more money
goes into the housing budget to be able to do some of this work. What would you say has to be done, given that
housin
g takes time to build? We have heard from Chris Stewart about the
struggle to attract people into the sector to build or retrofit houses. What do you think should be the priority? What do we need to change policy wise? Is it the type of housing that we build? We are still trying to have affordable accessible
housing with all kinds of features, but if we are in a homelessness emergency and need
to get people housed, what do we need to prioritise? It is already in the temporary accommodation
task
and finish group report and the “Scottish Housing Emergency Action Plan” that Shelter
published. We need to acknowledge where we are on construction
costs and to buy more properties for people who are homeless. That is distinct from the role that acquisition
can play in overall growth and supply. We are in a housing emergency, because of
the breaches of homelessness duties. We need to create specific priorities in order
to take people from temporary accommodation and put them into settled accomm
odation. The approach to acquisition taken by too many
local authorities is, basically, to buy back former social housing stock or the last tenement
in a block for housing management purposes. Such an approach denies that 2.2 million dwellings
in the country are suitable for purchase to permanently house people who are stuck in
temporary accommodation—and that is before you add in the other 1,500 people who are
not even in temporary accommodation. Therefore, Shelter’s position is that we
need a
medium-term acquisitions programme that involves new money and new approaches
and which connects the people in the homelessness system with that housing. There is a role for national Government in
that respect. The £60 million that was made available is
not new money—it is existing money that has been earmarked for acquisition, and, in
that, there is no role for Scottish ministers. It is called a national acquisitions plan,
but actually it is just some guidance for local authorities to do that o
n the ground. We need leadership at national level to drive
that change, but we are not getting that just now. That was very constructive and helpful. We have not touched on the issue of affordability
in the immediate term. Although Living Rent welcomed the rent cap,
we were critical of it, too, because it failed to include new tenancies and covered only
those in situ. We think that it is absolutely a mistake for
the Scottish Government to lift the rent cap and the eviction moratorium, as they a
ct as
preventative measures. If you deliver affordability in the PRS—which,
I should say, does not exist at the moment—it helps local authorities with homelessness
presentations and keeps people in their homes, which is so important. Tenants are being served with rent increases
of 70 per cent. That is a de facto eviction. If you live in a local authority area that
has declared a housing emergency, you are going to be homeless. What we need right now is for the Scottish
Government to act on its p
owers by using the housing bill to bring in really strong rent
controls that act as a preventative measure and which deliver affordability in the PRS. In addition, Living Rent believes that planning
changes can be made. Communities want affordable housing and council
homes. We have campaigned to ensure that there are
council homes, but even when such decisions get agreed at local authority level, they
then get overturned by Scottish Government reporters. There is a real dysfunction between what
local
communities want and empowering them to place build for everyone’s benefit, and what happens
at a national level, as can be seen in the way in which those decisions get overturned. Therefore, it is really important that we
look for greater integration with regard to the planning system and local authorities
and that we deliver affordability in the PRS. Earlier, I talked about the construction industry
and the fact that we do not feel particularly prepared for the retrofit challenge. We exp
erienced the same thing in our earlier
strategic work, and it was interesting to hear what Eilidh Keay just said about working
with communities. We are experiencing so much community and
participation fatigue that, when we go into an urban quarter, it is difficult to get people
even to speak to us. There is a raft of reasons why that might
be, but one reason is definitely that people have been consulted so much and nothing has
happened. There have been so many false promises. In many respects, i
t is up to us to be a bit
visionary and to look at large strategic plans, but we are now thinking much more that things
should be done incrementally, with, say, communities being pieced back together in an incremental
way. It is very important that something happens
quickly, which might bring us back to some of the aspects of housing that have just been
described. We try to make sure that there is an early
stage that is built very quickly. It does not need to be very much, but something
must be
seen to happen on the ground. Some of the plans that we work on are very
large strategic ones and some are smaller, local neighbourhood plans. It is really hard to get communities engaged,
because they have lost a bit of trust, and it is really important that we get that trust
back. I want to raise some points that we looked
at in the work with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. We did a deep dive into the delivery mechanism
of the affordable housing supply programme and found a number of things th
at could be
improved, or at least on which there should be a debate. Some of those are political choices, but a
debate needs to be had about them. I will give some examples. We have not had a financial capacity study
of the housing association and council sector since the last one in about 2010. We rely on the voices in the room or the trade
bodies, but we do not have an objective sense of the totality of the financial capacity. There is a good case for an updated affordable
housing needs study
for Scotland as a whole. As Audit Scotland said in its report on affordable
supply, there is also a strong case for trying to link more closely the local HNDA—housing
need and demand assessment—modelling with the actual outcomes on the ground. It seems to a large extent that the supply
programme spends a lot of money and leaves the outcomes to the local level. We need a close connection to the local outcomes. We also think—this is where the politics
comes in—that the spatial allocation of capita
l resources for the housing supply programme
is peculiar. We have a thing called the SHIF—the strategic
housing investment framework—which is a formula that allocates resources to the 30
local authorities that are not Glasgow or Edinburgh. That formula currently has a higher weighting
for deprivation than it has for affordability, which obviously has consequences for where
resources go. That has been in place since the middle of
the previous decade or just after that, and it should surely be loo
ked at again, perhaps
in an open and transparent way, to consider what the weightings ought to be. Glasgow and Edinburgh, through the transfer
of development funding, get large amounts of money that are not based on any formula
and that go back to the stock transfer days. That really needs to be updated and changed. Two other issues about the way that the programme
works are worth mentioning. First, many councils, including Edinburgh,
rely on underspends elsewhere to get extra money later in the
year. We think that there is a strong argument for
not annualising the system in the way that we do, but instead giving councils, which
run the SHIPs—strategic housing investment plans—a year or two to allocate their resources. We think that everybody would be able to make
better decisions on that basis. The final issue is again very political. Clearly, a lot of local authorities use their
supply programme in part to re-provision, so they are basically replacing older stock
that has various iss
ues and that has a shorter future life, with new stock. Of course, that is not adding to supply; it
is replacing supply with better-quality new stock. That is a good thing, but should that be the
priority right now, when we have such shortages? I am not saying how strong one’s view should
be on that, but we should debate it. Is it possible to move away from annualising
the SHIPs, given that the Scottish Government has to work on an annual budget? We have been having quite a bit of conversation
a
bout multiyear funding and that kind of thing. Would it be possible to do that? What would be the mechanisms? It is the nature of the thing, and ways have
to be found to try to do it. We think that a two-year or even a three-year
programme would make sense. Perhaps we could have two programmes within
a parliamentary session. However, I absolutely get that point, given
what we are seeing right now. Taking a multiyear approach requires a prior
argument in which the Government says that it wants to
defend the programme over a parliamentary
session and so makes commitments on the basis that it will not have rather shocking cuts
halfway through the session. Again, it is about giving housing a higher
priority in decision making on the budget. Thanks. I just want to sort out a couple of things,
process-wise. We might have started to touch on some questions
that colleagues want to ask, so I am going to bring in Marie McNair. However, I already have a stack of people
who want to come in—and I h
ave just realised that Caroline Brown has not yet had a chance
to speak. It would be great to hear from her from the
planning side on this topic of the balance between short and long-term approaches, so
I will bring her in now and then bring in Marie McNair. I will then go to David Melhuish, Chris Birt
and Emma Jackson. I am just trying to keep the conversation
going. It is a bit like lasagne; every so often,
I will add in another question, and witnesses can choose to pick up on that or go back
to
something else that they want to get on the record. I have been listening really carefully to
what has been said, and I agree with many of the points that have been made. There are some real challenges in the planning
system. Clearly, it is central to the provision of
new housing; after all, all new housing requires land to be allocated and consents to be granted
through the system, and we know that, in some cases and for various reasons, that process
of getting things allocated and getting t
he consents in place has taken a long time. However, there are other reasons to do with
finance and viability. There are lots of parts of Scotland where
the market cannot provide housing, which brings us back to the absolute importance of funding
for social and affordable housing and the role of councils and registered social landlords
in the provision of new housing. Indeed, in many places, they are the main
way of getting new housing, because there is just not enough profit for private investo
rs
or house builders to take on those sites. There are also issues such as rurality, dispersed
sites, economies of scale, skills and resources and so on. Coming back to Eilidh Keay’s point about
disconnect, I would say that there are definitely places where planning rubs up against other
things. It might be a case of a reporter not agreeing
with things happening at a local level, but we are also seeing tensions between planning
and building regulations, which can affect, for example, conversions
of historic buildings. There are planning officers who are very keen
and there are some really interesting schemes coming forward, but building control can put
some fairly sizeable barriers in the way and those sorts of conflicts can hold up delivery
and stymie innovation on the ground. I also wanted to make a point about finance. We have talked quite a bit about temporary
accommodation; it puts a big pressure on local council budgets and—I know that this might
seem a bit off-centre—it puts pre
ssure on the planning system, too. Even when we have had increases in planning
fees, those fees often go to support and prop up council budgets, which means that the money
that comes into the service from developments is not being reinvested in the skills and
planners that are needed to deliver place making or other new approaches. That is a real pressure in some authorities;
they have increased fees, but there has been no increase in their staffing or their skills
base, because the budget is be
ing swallowed by the bills for temporary accommodation. The creation of pressure at local level is
affecting planning and its delivery. If we want to switch planning away from being
something reactive—that is, something that just deals with applications and waits for
things to happen—to a proactive place-making approach that brings people together and enables
development and new housing, we need those skills, those people and that resource in
local authorities. That is what national planning fra
mework 4
is asking us to do. Marie, did you want to ask your question? Just before I do so, I declare an interest
as a former councillor, up until 2022. That will be applicable to discussions later
in the agenda. In your experience, how well are the Scottish
Government and those responsible for working to achieve the housing to 2040 aims including
local communities, tenants and residents in delivery plans? Given that Stephen Connor talked earlier about
the importance of tenants being at the tabl
e, he might be best placed to kick off responses. Secondly, are outcomes improving for communities,
tenants and residents? As many people around the table will know,
TIS as an organisation supports tenants to sit around the table and work in partnership
with landlords. Ultimately, tenant participation is a statutory
obligation and tenants are entitled to demand value for money where their rent is being
spent on and invested in their homes and communities. We spoke earlier about the housing to 20
40
priorities. Many of the tenant members whom we work with
absolutely advocate for the majority of their rent being spent on delivering new social
housing in their communities. They are very aware that housing waiting lists
continue to grow. When we talk about how budgets are being spent,
we take a unique approach to supporting tenants. There is a legal obligation for landlords
to consult their tenants every year on the proposed annual budget and on the rent-setting
process for the year ahead.
We advocate for supporting tenants to negotiate
the rents that they are going to pay and how that money will be spent. One idea to take away from today is that we
know we have regional networks in place for tenants to work in partnership with the Scottish
Government. There could be a greater role for tenants
in actually sitting around the table and having discussions, much like the one that we are
having now, to influence how budgets will be committed and spent in the years to come. We continue
to support tenants. We see our organisation going from strength
to strength in the service that it provides and in its support for tenants’ voices. However, as I said, at the local level, tenants
empathise with their landlords, who have to juggle a number of priorities and are trying
to negotiate a number of on-going challenges. We are living in a crisis: tenants are negotiating
a cost of living crisis and landlords are negotiating inflated construction costs. Tenants are absolutely aware of tha
t at the
local level, but we see a lot of frustration when budgets are cut at national level and
that is passed on to local landlords. The money for the delivery of more affordable
homes, energy efficiency and the decarbonisation of homes towards net zero will ultimately
have to come from rent increases and out of tenants’ pockets. That is where the concerns come from. “Housing to 2040” is very aspirational. We acknowledge that we must maintain rent
affordability. Ken Gibb is working with the gr
oup that is
defining that and Eilidh Keay has said that rent affordability does not currently exist
in the private rented sector. How do we maintain affordable rents if we
continue increasing them year-on-year in order to deliver on all those challenges? That is one of the things that we would advocate
for. At the local level, tenant participation and
customer-led scrutiny of housing services is going from strength to strength, but we
could do more to see that at national level. Eilidh is here t
o represent Living Rent and
I am here from the Tenants Information Service, but it would be good to have some tenants
sitting around this table to share their views and opinions. We have some tenant participation in another
piece of work that we are doing, which has been very helpful. To continue the theme of including and involving
local communities, tenants and residents in delivery plans, I invite Ronnie Macrae from
the Communities Housing Trust to come in. As I said earlier, there is a lot o
f opportunity. My concern is that the housing system is too
inflexible at the moment and that there is no will to work with partners, whether those
are communities, businesses or service providers. We must take a more holistic approach to housing
delivery. We are all hearing that delivery is not happening. There are opportunities to improve that, but
we need a more flexible approach from the Scottish Government. What would that look like? It would be about making the system work. Chris Birt is w
orking in Aberfeldy. The system is difficult and there is
a real problem in getting housing and businesses to work together. The Scottish Government’s housing system
is not a particularly willing partner for businesses. We are working on projects in places such
as Colonsay, but businesses can be separate from that. We are managing to join them together on that
project, but it is not a happy marriage, although it should be. Is there some policy that should change, or
do we need a different under
standing? What would make that a happy marriage? I feel that the policies are there, but that
we need a change of culture and a little bit of letting go of control by the civil service. If we are going to deal with housing and build
more affordable homes, we have to look at the whole sector, especially at the community
and business sectors and at service providers. David Melhuish, you wanted to come in a while
ago, as did Chris Birt and Emma Jackson. You might have forgotten the points that you
wanted to make, but please come back in and scoop up anything else that has been added
to the conversation. Everything that I have heard just underlines
that this is a crisis of availability. Yes, it is not all about new build; it is
about reinvesting in empty homes that might have fallen vacant—I completely agree with
that. That would also be helpful for the net zero
agenda because, if all that carbon has already been invested in a building, it is helpful
to bring it back to life as a home. How
ever, there are often good reasons why
buildings have fallen vacant and a lot of those properties are quite difficult to deal
with. It will certainly not necessarily be an inexpensive
approach, but I do not disagree that we have to get our empty homes back into use. On availability, the housing to 2040 vision
referred to the choice for people to have a home where they want it and to live in it
in the way that they want to. We agree on that, which is why the supply
of new properties to the housin
g market is critical. That includes purpose-built rental homes in
the private or mid-market sector in particular. The public finance point has been made strongly. I cannot see that situation improving significantly
in future years. That means that the Government needs to seek
innovation in the way that it gets finance. You might remember the work of the Scottish
Futures Trust, years ago, after the financial crash. It brought in the national housing trust programme. My recollection is that it did
not deliver
many homes—something like 1,400 or 1,500—and maybe it was not exactly right as a policy,
but there is something in that kind of innovation that we need to look at. The key point was the strength of the public
sector covenant. As we have sadly seen this year, private companies
can and will go bust overnight and be gone. Authorities and Government will be around,
notwithstanding financial pressures. There have also been some examples from further
south—purely for affordable and social
housing—of agreements being made with pension funds from
around the world, not just in the UK, to bring forward new investment and work with social
and affordable housing providers. We need to see more of that in Scotland in
particular. On the point that was made about build-to-rent
developments and tenants’ rights, some of the funds that I mentioned already had rent
caps in place, even without legislation. To be honest, those are pretty close to the
kinds of policies that the Government has br
ought forward. I would not say that they are exploitative
at all. Those people are looking for moderate rental
income streams for the long term—10, 20 or 30 years—and we want to see that kind
of investor. However, as I said, as has happened south
of the border, we want to see diversity in the offer—discounted rents, mid-market rents,
single-family renting and so on. That has really only just begun here—there
are barely a couple of thousand units in Scotland, and there are 50 times that number in
England. That is how far behind we are in that sector. Every year, there is independent analysis
of how happy tenants are with what they are getting in that new market. There is a really strong response, I have
to say. The analysis looks at who lives in the housing,
average incomes and so on. I would be happy to send that analysis to
the committee for your information. That would be great. You quoted stats for developments in Scotland
compared with south of the border. How do those figures brea
k down in relation
to the population, given that Scotland has five point something million people? It would be interesting to understand the
numbers in that context and to hear how many houses we are building in relation to population
size. It would be great if you could send that information
to us. I would be happy to send that. Last year, Rettie did analysis of the big
two cities—Glasgow and Edinburgh—compared to those populations south of the border. They were somewhere low down, in the 70s,
whereas they are clearly not that far down in population terms. I will send that to the committee. Thanks very much. I will pick a few random bits of your lasagne,
if I may. Apologies for some awkward segues here. You asked Ken Gibb a question about a multiyear
capital budget. A point worth reflecting on is that the Scottish
Government’s capital budget has been cut significantly since the financial crash and
that one of the fundamental weaknesses of the UK economy is a lack of infrastructure
inv
estment. My comments are made in that context. The Scottish Government’s capital budget
is far more predictable than the revenue budget. It is easier for the Scottish Government to
make reasonable assumptions about what its capital budget will be over the coming few
years than its revenue budget, which relies more on income tax revenue. I think that the Scottish Government can also
make a decent guess at the revenue budget, but it is easier and less risky with the capital
budget, particularly in
relation to longer-term decisions. That is one point for the committee to keep
in mind. I will go back to a point that Stephen Connor
made earlier, which is where we get into slightly risky territory when we talk about new models
of finance or new models of renting. If we imagine a dial, social housing is an
investment by us as a society into a home for everyone at an affordable level. As the grant level for social housing goes
down and borrowing comes more into the line, particularly for housi
ng associations, the
cost switches from general taxation and public spending on to low-income tenants. As I understand the vision for housing by
2040, that dial is going the wrong way. I said that in my written submission. The private rented sector is not a bad thing
in and of itself, but we have too many low-income tenants or tenants on fragile incomes who
are having to rely on it. It is putting those tenants, most acutely,
and also landlords, in an extremely difficult position. We have to keep
in mind that dial and stop
it going that way, because that is a fundamental part of some of the worst effects that we
are seeing just now. The Scottish Government is often accused of
not doing preventative spending, which is maybe fair. Off the top of my head, however, I cannot
think of a better example of preventative spending than social house building. It can stop so many of the other bad outcomes
that we see. For example, in a rural setting, it can have
those advantages of affordability and
so on, but it can also build community and place
in a way that would perhaps be different in an urban setting. All of those points are why the work that
Ken Gibb is doing is so important. We have to look really hard at how our policy
is working in practice. When we asked Ken to do that work, we were—frankly—doing
it in the context of a much higher social housing budget, so that has changed the exam
questions slightly. We have to ask these difficult questions about
where the places are that we a
re putting money into and what our urgent priorities are, because
if we keep trying to do everything, we end up doing not very much. That is a good point. Priority is coming through as a theme today. Emma Jackson, you wanted to come in a while
ago, so pick up wherever you want to. I will make a few points around helping people
to remain in the homes that they have. Undoubtedly, we must build more homes at pace
and at scale, but we also need to do more to enable people to remain in their homes. E
ilidh Keay and a few others around the table
have spoken about affordability, which is critical to allowing people to remain in the
homes that they have, but I will pick up on two other issues in relation to that: accessibility
and the adequate standard of homes. We have an ageing population and an increasing
population of disabled people who need homes that are fit for purpose, particularly to
meet physical disability needs. If their home is not accessible, it is impossible
for them to remain i
n it, so we must place a level of focus on accessibility. We also really need to look at an adequate
standard of repair in the housing sector, in particular the private rented sector. The most recent version of the Scottish housing
condition survey indicated that 52 per cent of private rented homes would fail the housing
quality standard. From our network of bureaus across Scotland,
we see many people seeking advice about the conditions of the homes that they are renting. We recently produced a
report, titled “In
a fix”, that showed the extent of the issues that people are facing. Often we talk about a lot of big numbers and
statistics when we have these conversations. It is important to do that, but it is also
important that we think about the individual lives and families who are being affected,
so I will share an example with the committee. An east of Scotland CAB has told us about
a lady it is working with; I will call her Claire, but that is not her name. Claire has been desperate
ly trying to resolve
a severe damp issue in her property for the past nine months. She already has an autoimmune condition, so,
as you can appreciate, the mould and damp will only make that worse. The difficulties that she has had in trying
to achieve a repair have severely affected her mental health and wellbeing. She has been given a lot of false promises
about the repair being made but it has not happened, and as a result she felt that the
stress of remaining in her home was too much for her.
She decided to leave the property, but she
found herself in a situation where the council indicated to her that she would be considered
guilty of abandonment and therefore would lose her right to a home. You can imagine how deeply devastating it
would be to hear that news when you are already juggling physical and mental health conditions. She feels that she has been forced to move
back into the property, fearing for not only her health but that of her children. We have to help individuals such
as Claire
to be able to remain in homes that are fit for purpose, safe and of an adequate standard. Otherwise, we are adding to the already rising
statistics that we have heard today of people who are facing homelessness. The committee has certainly taken an interest
in damp and mould, and we have been taking evidence on that issue. On the point about remaining in a home, I
was at the Rural Housing Scotland conference last week, part of which was the Scottish
Ecological Design Association—SEDA—
land talks. A speaker pointed out that Scotland has around
40,000 empty homes—we have already touched on the need to tackle that—and there are
20,000 second homes in rural areas. They were basically pointing out where we
can find potential for housing. One striking figure was that there are 900,000
homes in Scotland—I need to find out where they got this statistic—with single people
living in them. I have come upon quite a few situations in
which single people want to move in order to downsize.
I totally take the point that people need
to be supported to remain in a home, but this situation is another bit of the puzzle. It touches on what Ronnie has been talking
about—the holistic bit. We need to look at all the housing stock and
the different situations and be able to say, “These people live in big houses, they are
single, they are desperately needing to move out, and we can get families in there.” How do we start to move those things together? It is interesting that you picked that u
p,
because I have heard similar stories from other parts of the UK of people wanting to
downsize. In areas where there is high demand, particularly
for things such as second homes, developers are taking the opportunity to buy up smaller
properties—bungalows and that sort of thing—and extend them and then sell them as family homes. However, that means that people are denied
the opportunity to stay in their community when they retire and want to downsize. There is a definite role for planning poli
cy
in thinking about that nuance at the local level. Where those sorts of trends are happening,
the local planning authority can intervene and maintain the diversity of the housing
stock in the area by refusing extensions and such things. That is tricky, however, because there can
be demand for family homes in those places, but ageing in place is a really important
idea that I do not think we have really grappled with yet in planning policy. It cuts across issues such as anticipating
future hous
ing need, providing for it, maintaining that provision and not allowing it to be undermined
by speculative development and redevelopment of housing. It is a tricky balance. For sure. Certainly. Thanks for that. We are supposed to be here for a maximum of
two hours this morning. It is such a good conversation, but we do
have quite a few things to get in, so I will bring in colleagues a bit more rapidly. I raise a policy idea that Christine Whitehead
at the London School of Economics and Political
Science recently discussed in a report in
England. She was looking for housing policy ideas post
the UK election. Her focus was on stamp duty in England—obviously,
in Scotland it is devolved under the land and buildings transaction tax. The idea was to focus on the underoccupation
problem of older households, essentially through granting them 100 per cent tax relief from
stamp duty, which, in our case, would be LBTT, on the basis that that would be an incentive—a
nudge—to encourage people at th
e margin to move. It would not make a huge difference, but it
would help at the margin. Secondly, by creating a chain of moves and
thus generating more tax revenue, the initiative would pay for itself. That is an idea. Personally, I would probably want to scrap
LBTT altogether and raise that tax revenue in different ways through property taxes. However, as a short-term way of thinking about
those things, it is worth at least a discussion. Thanks very much. It is always very helpful when somebody
comes
in with an idea—something that can bring about a chain of moves. David Melhuish spoke about having diverse
supplies of new homes on the market. In written evidence, the Scottish Property
Federation wrote about the potential of emerging housing tenures such as build to rent. It wrote that there were around “17,000 BTR homes in the ... pipeline, but
there is no guarantee they will be delivered due to the uncertain policy environment.” Will the Scottish Property Federation expand
on the bene
fits of build-to-rent housing? What sort of action should the Scottish Government
take to make Scotland a more attractive place to build homes of all tenures? There are 17,000 build-to-rent homes in the
pipeline but, as mentioned earlier, only around 2,000, at best, are in operation. The concept offers flexibility. For employers who are looking for people to
come in, it usually—in fact, almost universally—involves very urban brownfield sites, so all the planning
criteria are usually addressed ve
ry straightforwardly. It has huge potential, particularly for places
such as Glasgow that are trying to reinvent city living, as well as other parts of the
country. It is a different concept. At best, it is around 10 years old in the
UK as a whole, so it is still an embryonic sector in the housing market. It offers different services, such as the
concierge-type approach that may have been more famous in Europe or America but has simply
not been here before. It is not the traditional PRS, let us
put
it that way. It usually involves a single owner, which,
as I said, will often be a pension fund that is looking for long-term returns. When it comes to policy, unfortunately—and
most investors have been quite explicit about this—we were paused while we waited to see
how the Private Housing Act 2016 would pan out. Earlier discussions were quite radical—for
example, open-ended tenancies for 10 years, so that people could stay in the home that
they rent for as long as they want, almost. They go
t their heads around that, then we
had the new deal for tenants—proposals for long-term rent controls in Scotland—which
made a lot of the investors pause significantly. In particular, we had the rent freeze announcement,
which they had not expected and did not know about. Without a doubt, there was a very serious
loss of investor confidence because of the way in which that was done. On rent controls per se, if the bill is good
and they can work with it, investors will still want to come to Scotl
and and build out
those 17,000 homes in relatively quick time. We have been directly told of investors that
have reallocated their investment to other parts of the UK. That is unfortunate. To touch on a point that was made by Eilidh
Keay, we are also aware that some of the sites for what would have been build to rent have
now gone to purpose-built student accommodation, because investors at those sites do not know
the shape of policy to come. The housing bill is due to be introduced by
the summe
r recess, but the on-going process could take a further six or eight months and
the regulations could take even longer. That is a lot of uncertainty for investors
that have mandates and demands from their own investors. At some stage, they have to make that money
work. That is the concern. We see build to rent as additionality. Traditionally, you have had private house
building for sale— I have to ask you to wind up, please. We see build to rent as additional to the
supply crisis. That is why we
feel that there is an opportunity. Thanks very much for that. Willie Coffey has a couple of questions. I will go back briefly to the homelessness
service issue, although the committee has no remit on homelessness. That is one of the curious things about the
Parliament—a sister committee has that responsibility. However, the topic comes up with us very often,
as it has this morning. I will ask about the wider support—the homelessness
services that we should provide. The regulator made some fairl
y pointed comments
about systemic failures in the delivery of those services by some councils. We have said that the issue is not just about
the numbers of houses—build more houses and we will solve homelessness—but goes
wider than that. Ronnie Macrae commented that we need to look
beyond housing numbers only and that there is a wider package of services to help people
get through that particular situation. I want to touch with colleagues on what wider
support services we should deploy and ask o
ur councils to lead on to get us through
that issue. I invite Ronnie to say something, because
he mentioned it at the outset. To go back to placemaking—working with communities,
businesses and service providers—the care sector, for example, struggles in rural areas
to get housing for special needs. All those things are struggling to be delivered. We do not have anyone to build or renovate
houses in rural areas, at a time when rural areas want to repopulate and regenerate. It is about joining the
dots to do the renovations,
or upgrades or new builds. We cannot do that unless all the sectors work
together—the health sector, the education sector and everyone else. Communities are doing a lot. They are building community-owned schools
and community-owned health centres, but the housing system needs to work with that more
effectively and, as I said, join the dots: using the environment sector for more local
materials and creating circular economies. We can do a lot more, but we all need to
pull
in the same direction. According to the evidence in front of us,
there are at the minute more than 100,000 empty houses in Scotland. Empty houses come in a variety of tenures:
second homes, abandoned, unoccupied and long-term voids—that sort of mixture. What more should we do to assist people with
homelessness problems to get out of that situation? Is it about providing more houses? Is that the only solution, or do we need to
think about a wider range of support to solve that issue? Thanks,
Willie. I will bring in Gordon MacRae, then Rhiannon
Sims. I will be as quick as I can, convener. No solution works without more houses, but
we need to do other things, too. As hosts of the Scottish Empty Homes Partnership,
we think that we can definitely do more on empty homes. Some of our analysis shows that a significant
proportion of what we had previously thought were private empty homes are actually owned
by social landlords, so there is far more that we could be doing in that respect. Pa
rt of the problem with service delivery
is that we do not know how much money is being spent on homelessness services, or associated
services, because of the way in which central funding is allocated to local authorities. There is a lack of ring fencing and transparency. As a result, it is hard to critically assess
the scale of services. With areas such as justice and health, one
of the best things that we can do is to ensure that people are not being released from the
justice system into homele
ssness, which still happens far too regularly and frequently. We are incredibly concerned about the size
of the prison population and some suggestion of moves towards another early release scheme. If that is not properly planned, it will have,
as has happened in the past, an additional impact on the homelessness system. People are also being discharged from hospitals
into homelessness. NHS Fife did a good piece of work with Shelter,
which was shared with the Scottish Government, on how to get ad
vice and support into hospitals,
so that when people are there for prolonged periods of time, or they come into hospitals
with other issues, they do not move into homelessness when discharged. There is a lot that we can do in that respect. However, three things need to happen. First, we need to buy and build enough homes
to reduce affordable housing need. Secondly, we must make better use of existing
stock by allocating empty homes to homeless households and using second homes. I would not say t
hat it has yet been made,
but there is a case for looking in a different way at purpose-built self-catering and buy-to-let
properties, how existing properties are repurposed into these particular sectors, the issue of
rent controls and so on. Lastly—and this is important—we need to
fully fund homelessness and prevention services. As Audit Scotland has said, we have to start
by understanding the scale of current investment so that we can assess how that should develop
and grow as time goes on. We
have our action plan. A lot of research shows that people spend
too much time cycling through different services. In particular, the research in the “Hard
Edges Scotland” report showed that, too often, homelessness services end up carrying
the can for the group of people who have complex needs. At the moment, people who have been released
from prison or have been discharged from a hospital or psychiatric ward are not always
able to get the support that they need from the homelessness system, an
d there have been
a number of breaches of the homelessness duty. That is exactly what the prevention duties
in the upcoming housing bill will try to address. As part of the picture, we need to extend
the definition of those considered to be at risk of homelessness. Someone due to be released from prison, for
example, would automatically meet a definition of being threatened with homelessness, so
that they would be able to access the support that they needed much earlier than they can
at the mome
nt. The prevention duties will also bring in other
public services to ensure that problems are not just seen as housing or homelessness issues. They are referred to as the “ask and act”
duties. During routine enquiries, other services will
have a role in asking people about their housing situation and in trying to identify situations
in which someone might be at risk of homelessness. For example, they might be accumulating rent
arrears or living in a home that is unsafe for them. Public services
have a role in trying to pull
in the support that people need at an early intervention point before a situation reaches
crisis point. At the moment, even when someone approaches
a council homelessness service, knowing that they are at risk of eviction, they are often
told, “Come back when you have your eviction notice.” That is not the situation that we want. We do not want people to be forced to reach
crisis point before they are told that they are able to access help. There is more work to be
done on what that
might look like in practice and more engagement has to take place with other services, and
the housing bill will provide the hook for that as well as offer an opportunity to bring
in other services. I will bring in Emma Jackson and then Chris
Birt, if they have something new to add on this topic, and then go to Willie Coffey for
his next question. We know that homelessness is the pointy end
of the crisis, but it is perhaps important to remind ourselves that people are not expe
riencing
issues in isolation and that we need to think about what is happening as a whole to people’s
lives at the moment. Undoubtedly, the cost of living crisis is
having a devastating impact on people and pushing more and more towards homelessness
who might otherwise not be in that position. We at Citizens Advice Scotland are witnessing
skyrocketing demand for food banks across Scotland, and we are seeing a rise in deficit
budgets. People’s budgets are simply broken, and
there is not enough in
come to pay for all the essentials that we need. We are also seeing a huge rise in demand for
energy advice; indeed, we provided more than 65,000 pieces of energy advice over the past
nine months alone. Rationing, self-disconnection and energy debt
are happening at scale. That is the sort of turbulence in which people
are finding themselves at the moment, and, unfortunately, it is culminating in crisis
for too many and pushing them towards homelessness. As we look at all of those issues, we also
need to have both a laser focus on housing, including the provision of more homes and
working with those with the most complex needs to get them into housing, and really good
joined-up, coherent policy across a number of areas so that, ultimately, we can deliver
person-centred support that will have a material impact on and benefit people’s lives. The committee’s role is to have a laser
focus on housing to 2040, but how do we join up with other areas and initiatives that move
us towards the amb
ition that we want for ourselves here in Scotland, as we think about measures
such as a minimum income guarantee and how we guarantee that our citizens have enough
money to live on? We need to take a completely joined-up approach. Thanks very much for talking about the need
for a broader and more holistic approach, and the fact that people are facing not only
a housing challenge but energy pressures, which are leading to rationing, self-disconnection
and so on. You also mentioned people using fo
od banks—all
of that comes with cost of living pressures. I see that Chris Birt wants to come in. I will be extremely quick, as Emma Jackson
has covered some of what I was going to say. Another fundamental issue, on top of the things
that Gordon MacRae and Rhiannon Simms have mentioned, is the inadequacy of the social
security system. Universal credit is such that people are destitute,
never mind able to live a decent life. Measures such as the five-week wait for a
first payment, deductions and
sanctions all increase the risk of homelessness. Another aspect—and it is a symptom of our
overreliance on the private rented sector for low-income people—is the inadequacy
of local housing allowance and its failure to keep up with people’s rents. I appreciate that those matters are largely
reserved, but we cannot overlook their impacts on people’s lives. Thanks very much for that. Do you want to come in with your next question,
Willie? Emma Jackson mentioned various factors. Can you briefly hig
hlight any evidence or
statistics that show quite clearly the direct correlation between people’s experiences
of such factors and their becoming homeless? People are approaching Citizens Advice Scotland
for advice not just on housing—that co-exists alongside their need to seek advice on other
areas. We see the impact of all the different intersectional
issues; indeed, the quarterly cost of living data set that we produce is beginning to indicate
those impacts. We can certainly send that to the c
ommittee
to ensure that you have all that information available. That would be brilliant. Thanks very much. I have another brief question about housing
quality. Are we trying to do too much? We want houses to be green and to be digitally
enabled, and we also want to retrofit them. Chris Birt has wondered whether we are trying
to do too much at once and whether we might have to prioritise. What are the witnesses’ views on that? Are we trying to do too much at the same time? Do we need to prioriti
se? As I mentioned earlier, we support tenants
in getting actively involved in the annual budget and rent-setting process. We do not see that as a one-off discussion
throughout the year but as a cycle. Tenants get involved by sitting round the
table with their landlords and having those discussions. If a landlord is proposing to increase rent
by, say, 4 or 5 per cent, tenants will demand to know what they will deliver in return for
that. In the past, a lot of developer organisations
would have e
xpressed a desire to increase the stock of social housing and to build more
homes, and to continue with planned maintenance and responsive repairs. Approximately one fifth of every tenant’s
pound of rent goes on responsive repairs. If we take into consideration the cost of
living and inflationary costs, we see that construction costs far outstrip the regular
consumer prices index—or CPI—and it is becoming more and more challenging for landlords
to continue to deliver a high-quality, high-functio
ning responsive repair service. We ensure that the tenants with whom we work
are fully aware of that, so they empathise with our landlords. Ultimately, though, it is their rents that
deliver those services. We are engaging with tenants on planned maintenance,
and they absolutely agree that they want their homes to be more energy efficient. You asked whether we were trying to do too
much. Some of our focus has been on the need to
continue to build more social housing, and we need to ensure that t
enants’ rents remain
affordable. On the other side of that, tenants do want
more energy-efficient homes. I have mentioned the real challenges that
households are facing with increasing energy costs, which are astronomical. We talk to tenants about moving towards decarbonisation,
and we align our net zero promises alongside increasing energy efficiency under the new
social housing net zero standard. Tenants absolutely agree with that approach;
after all, they want their homes to be more airtight,
warmer, more efficient and more
affordable. That said, some of the technologies that are
available are concerning to tenants. There is a lot of hearsay that many of the
new technologies that could be installed in their homes will ultimately be to their detriment. They are hearing that such measures could
put up their energy costs further, while their homes get colder, because their landlords
will not be able to keep up with retrofitting their homes on their existing budgets. The tenants with wh
om we engage prioritise
more energy efficiency and the building of more social homes. They want high-functioning, responsive repair
services to be maintained. When we talk about net zero technology or
decarbonisation, tenants sometimes tell us that they would not mind leaving that for
the moment until technology gets better and energy costs come down, so that they are not
plunged further into crisis. I want to pick up the other side of the equation—that
is, commercial private developments rather
than social landlords. We know from our members that there is definite
scope to push developers to be more ambitious about the quality of the product that they
deliver. There are some really good examples of authorities
in Scotland that have been able to do that—front loading their systems, doing a lot of pre-application
work and having honest conversations with developers to say that the proposals are not
good enough, and that they need more green space or to pay more attention to the design.
There is definite scope to keep our ambition
for high-quality, low-carbon, energy-efficient, safe and healthy housing, but there are limits,
and I recognise that developers will say that there are extra costs involved. There are some good examples of authorities
pushing for that, though, and they have said that some of the house builders are really
surprised about what they can achieve when the authority pushes them. They can do more, so we should not downgrade
our expectations too much. Thanks
very much for that. You do not need to tell me now, but it would
be super to hear some examples of local authorities that have managed to do that. I do not think that we should leave anything
by the wayside; we should not just forget about retrofitting, because we have a temporary
accommodation crisis. As Emma Jackson eloquently put it, we need
to adopt a holistic approach. Fuel poverty is increasing year on year. If we leave retrofitting by the wayside, fuel
poverty will get worse. I am a young
person, and I am very worried
about the climate crisis. We always need to keep that crisis at the
forefront when we build homes, for the sake of the planet and people. On the point about trying to do too much,
we understand—taking into account the broad high-level stuff, the policy objectives and
the reality on the ground—that social landlords are struggling to access funding for retrofits. There are things that are already in place
but which are very hard to access currently, so greater consid
eration of the smaller cogs
of the system would be helpful in achieving our aims, rather than deprioritising what
are fundamental priorities. I can maybe add something, as an architect
of the biggest Passivhaus project in Scotland—19 new-build flats in north Glasgow—which we
are bringing to a conclusion. Looking to the future, we know that there
are a lot of misconceptions about the technology, so we need to spend a lot of time telling
the public in simple language what exactly these things are.
Passivhaus is technically very proficient—it
deals with air tightness and high levels of insulation—but, in essence, it is a quality
assurance project and all about collaboration with contractors. It is a fact that Passivhaus projects improve
the mental health of contractors. I spend most of my time validating or inducting
contractors in how Passivhaus works, and they really buy into it. I photograph things to prove not that they
have been done wrong but that they have been done right, and peop
le really appreciate that. When we talk about quality, it is not just
that the buildings are energy efficient but that they have been built correctly, with
all the parts built in the right place. That mentality can extend to structural elements
such as wall ties and fire stops; there is a whole realm of what we might think of as
quality. A cultural change is happening, and we need
to buy into it. It is a medium-term, not a long-term, process,
because the buildings pay themselves off very quickly
. You can open a window in a Passivhaus building
if you want to; it is not a prison. It is very much about people. We need to explain the concept of high-end,
quality technology in simple terms so that people understand it. That was a helpful addition to the conversation. A few of the witnesses have touched on the
question that I was going to ask about solutions. During the meeting, I have been looking at
the homelessness statistics. What stands out to me, as an Edinburgh MSP,
is the fact that t
he number of households in temporary accommodation in Edinburgh is
more than twice the national rate. We know that there are different circumstances
and challenges in different parts of the country, whether they be urban or rural communities. Are those issues and the allocation of resources
being taken into account in Government policy, including in the proposals for the housing
bill? The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities
also needs to be part of the conversation. What other options and m
odels should be available
to take such issues into account? I do not want to overshare, but the point
about Edinburgh is important, because it highlights the constraints on land and development and
what they mean in the longer term. In Edinburgh, there has been a fundamental
failure to plan for the future. Ken Gibb touched on other local authorities’
overreliance on underspends in trying to work year to year. We argue that we continue to uphold different
answers to different questions. For examp
le, the big role of mid-market rent
housing, given that it is financeable and fundable, has led to the idea that at least
we can do something, but that is not an answer to the record number of people who are in
temporary accommodation or to the homelessness emergency. We also need to step back and understand that
plenty of people are making money from the housing system. We see the system as being broken and biased
against people with protected characteristics. Yesterday, the Competition and Mar
kets Authority
launched an inquiry and said that volume house builders are making more profit than they
should be in an otherwise competitive market. Fifty per cent of landlords in the private
rented sector have no mortgage, but their rents continue to keep pace with rents for
those with the most leverage. Edinburgh is a microcosm because that is where
the overheated housing market is. I cannot offer particular solutions to all
that, but if we are going to prioritise anything, we should prioriti
se homelessness. That is where people face the most extreme
harm. However, I do not think that we can go as
quickly on everything. For instance, we have asked whether we should
be allowed longer to bring second-hand purchases and acquisitions up to quality standards so
that we can offset that opportunity cost. There is always an opportunity cost to any
policy intervention, and right now, the acceptable opportunity cost is increasing homelessness. We have to recognise that we are in that situatio
n. We argue that we have to balance that with
how long it takes to get to some of the housing quality standards and how long it takes to
get to some of the other areas. The last thing that I will say is that we
need to look very carefully at some of the developments on the outskirts of Edinburgh
and at what proportion of them will be social housing as opposed to affordable housing,
which is quite an elastic term that does not address housing needs. There is a bigger picture of how central Govern
ment
funds are allocated on the basis of need, rather than on the basis of historic formulae,
which Professor Gibb adequately covered earlier on. Edinburgh is a special case. I will not pretend to have all the answers
for that particular housing crisis, but I will add to the picture. The spend on temporary accommodation in Edinburgh
increased by 193 per cent in three years—it went from £16.7 million to £49 million in
the last financial year. Huge amounts of public money are being poured
into tem
porary accommodation, but I sit in an office on the Canongate alongside our client
services staff, and I hear them saying on a daily basis that they are exhausted and
upset at having the same conversations with clients again and again about them having
to present at the council every day because they are being turned away without being offered
temporary accommodation. We have too many households in temporary accommodation. Gordon MacRae talked about how the number
of breaches of the duty to acco
mmodate is going through the roof, and our client services
see that on a daily basis. It is tricky because we need to reduce our
reliance on temporary accommodation in the long term, but in the short term we need to
make sure that everybody who needs accommodation has it. One thing that I have been working on with
the City of Edinburgh Council is the need for more diversity in the types of temporary
accommodation that are available. It would be cheaper and easier to make more
specialist forms of
supported accommodation available for people with the most complex
needs such as alcohol-related brain damage and that kind of thing. Rowan Alba has a good model that could be
made more widespread. We are not talking about a large proportion
of the homelessness population needing that kind of intervention; it is a small proportion—5
or 10 per cent—but those people present to services again and again. That is repeat homelessness. If we can introduce solutions that are targeted
at specific groups
and provide those groups with the kinds of accommodation that they
need, we might be able to free up some of the attention of the services that support
them. The housing first approach absolutely needs
to be part of that solution, too. Most people can manage a mainstream tenancy
if the right support is provided. Continuing to fund housing first properly
and provide specialist supported accommodation for people with the highest complex needs
would be a valuable part of the solution for Edinburgh
, but it would not go the whole way. I have a question about the elephant in the
room. We are all talking about the proposed housing
bill but we have legislation that our councils are not following through. The Parliament, the Government and the committee
will spend most of the rest of this session of the Parliament considering a housing bill
and bringing everything into one piece of legislation. Given the emergency that we are facing, would
it not be better to examine what has gone wrong with a
ll the legislation that we have
passed in the past 25 years and focus on getting that right for different communities? Is a housing bill—which you will invest
all your energies in—the right thing at this point or should we ensure that the legislation
that we have performs? Miles has pre-empted the next set of questions
and pushed us into another conversation. Before we go there, I want to stick with the
more general housing to 2040 strategy, and then we can go back to his question. We will have
a specific set of questions about
the cost of living, tenant protection and interim measures, and Miles’s question might
fit better there. I will direct a quick question at you, Ken
Gibb. In your written submission, you talked about
some work that you have done—I think it is the JRF work that you led—and mentioned
something about the need for “Institutional reform ideas” including a new “housing and land agency”. The issue of getting the land to build the
housing on has not come up in this conve
rsation. Will you talk a little bit more about that
idea? I know that there are budget cuts and a new
agency might not be possible, but I want to understand how that could help us. We are by no means the first group of people
to start talking about that. Drawing on some successful experiences with
other agencies, such as Scottish Homes and English Partnerships in the past and Homes
England now, there is a sense that there are ways of facilitating land assembly on a bigger
basis. The evidence tha
t we gleaned from talking
to local authorities about the housing supply programme frequently suggested that, although
bigger sites can take longer, they are an important way forward. That chimes with some of the restoration of
interest in approaches such as new towns. An agency that could not only support that
but help with the funding of social housing could also help with trying to do some of
the things that the Scottish Futures Trust has done in the past. It could put all that in one place, d
o so
on a national scale and have a clear rural remit. There is nothing much particularly new in
that idea, but it is a way of trying to find a medium-term to long-term way of facilitating
the changes that we need and being much more actively involved in the land market, following
some of what the Scottish Land Commission has proposed. All of that seems to add up. A housing and land agency might help with,
for example, the presumption against out-of-town development and development on brownfield
sites. Developers are being pointed towards developing
on brownfield sites, but I hear that they are not keen to go into that space. Would the agency that you propose help with
paving the way for housing on such sites? A couple of decades ago, we had a huge amount
of brownfield development. Builders who had previously shown less interest
in it saw the opportunities because they were being directed in that way, so they were incentivised
to build divisions that were purely about brownfield sites
and they made that work effectively. We need to recreate that or think through
the reasons why policy was successful at pushing builders in that direction. It was certainly effective at the time, but
it has obviously fallen out of favour. There has been discussion about the idea of
an agency to bring sites forward. The CMA report that came out yesterday mentioned
that as a recommendation for the Scottish Government to consider. Particularly in rural areas, there is a barrier
for small sites. Alt
hough they are not attractive to volume
house builders, they could be attractive to small and medium-sized enterprises, but there
are barriers to getting planning consents. A land agency could help to cover some of
those up-front costs and thereby enable those sites to be developed quite quickly. There is an interesting conversation to be
had about that—there is definitely some potential there in Scotland. So, the barrier is the up-front costs that
are involved in getting such sites developed to
a point at which they can be built on. Yes. Having to prepare all the reports that are
required for planning consent can be a big barrier for a small builder. The costs of those have gone up as the complexity
of the planning system and the types of assessments that are required have increased. There used to be one or two-man bands of joiners
who would see a site on the edge of a settlement and develop it, but those have largely gone
because of the barriers to getting sites and consent. It is ne
cessary to have specialist skills
in order to be able to do that. There are up-front costs involved, as well
as uncertainty. Therefore, a land agency could help with that,
either with skills or planning support, or by pre-funding the process. There is potential there. The idea was discussed at the rural housing
workshop that was run by Ken Gibb’s colleagues last week. The discussion was less about the barriers
and more about the things that work, or that could work, which we could scale up. That
was a very good bit of work—I caught
the tail end of it. After we have heard from Chris Birt, we will
go back to Miles Briggs’s question about the housing bill. What I have to say is linked to your question
and to Miles Briggs’s. When it comes to issues such as agencies and
whether we need to look retrospectively at what we have, it surprises me how little we
know about where we are now. We simply do not have a good understanding
of housing need and demand across the country. Ken Gibb’s forthco
ming report on the affordable
housing supply programme will look at issues such as the ageing financial delivery mechanisms. Why have we not looked at those issues in
detail for a long time? That seems bizarre. We were spending a lot more money on the housing
supply than we are now. We asked Ken Gibb to do a bit of work on the
subject because we wanted to find out whether we could get more in terms of poverty reduction
out of the housing supply programme. Obviously, that is our focus, but I thin
k
that it would be incredibly powerful to have more granular insight into what we need across
the country. Otherwise, we will be flying blind on some
of the solutions that lots of people have talked about. That is a good point. Thank you for raising the housing needs and
demand assessment, because, as I understand it—my understanding is based on good work
that is being done in Orkney—that assessment does not uncover the real need that exists
in communities, because people who live in rural commu
nities, in particular, do not put
themselves on a list because they do not believe that there is any possibility of obtaining
housing. We have not really clarified that. By digging underneath that in the way that
some housing folks in Orkney are doing, we can uncover the real need that exists at local
level. Let us go back to Miles Briggs’s question
about whether we need a new housing bill or whether we should go back and look at what
is already available and dust it off. Emma Jackson is laughin
g, because she knows
what I will say. It is difficult to see what difference the
proposals in the bill will make to people who are homeless today. That is our starting point. We are broadly in favour of the aspirations
that sit behind the bill, although we want to reserve judgment on a couple of areas until
we see the draft. Scotland has quite a fully formed rights-based
system, and we need to make sure that the bill does not have unintended consequences. However, the priority right now is the h
ousing
emergency and the unprecedented scale of law breaking by local authorities—we must call
it what it is; when we talk about “breaches of duties”, it is a nice way of saying “breaking
the law”. Local authorities are breaking the law and
that has no consequences for them. If our solution to that problem is to add
more duties that local authorities must comply with, regardless of the merits of those duties
in isolation, there is something broken with our policy-making framework and approach. I
would certainly be concerned if the bandwidth
and the energy of the sector were to go into something that will not address the real harm
and the real problems that are being experienced right now. We must listen to the local authorities on
the front line, because they are telling us very clearly that they cannot cope, and the
regulator is saying—certainly in the case of the authorities in Edinburgh and Glasgow,
although we know that other authorities are in this situation, too—that they do not
have the means to meet the level of demand. We are past the point of regulation. In that context, what should be the priority? We think that it should be about resolving
the situation of people who are stuck and trapped in the homelessness system now. That might mean having to take a different
approach to scheduling that bill. We have not yet seen the housing bill, but
we believe that it will include several parts. We have heard a lot about the national system
of rent controls, provisions on ten
ants’ rights, a new approach to homelessness prevention,
and even things such as a requirement on social landlords to introduce domestic abuse policies. The housing bill is intended to do a lot of
things. I am not sure which bit of the bill the question
is about but, obviously, I can mostly speak about the prevention duties. We need to recognise that the different parts
that are in the scope of that one bill are intended to do different things, and some
are more controversial than others. We hav
e talked a lot about the reliance on
temporary accommodation. I understand people’s concerns about the
ability of local authorities and other public services to meet new duties when they are
already in breach of existing duties, but I think that we would all agree that something
needs to be done to introduce a more preventative approach that shifts our emphasis and our
resources to early intervention. We cannot continue as we are, and the situation
will only get worse. More important than that,
we need to remember
the people who are at the heart of this, because homelessness is a traumatic experience. It harms people, especially those who experience
repeat homelessness, but even households or children who have their first experience of
homelessness. If we can do something earlier or further
upstream to prevent that from happening and remove the experience of homelessness from
somebody’s life story, we absolutely need to do everything that we can to make that
happen, because it will not
only affect that child now, it will affect their lives further
down the line. It impacts on them, on the people around them
and their relationships, as well as on other public services further down the line. We need to recognise that the principles of
what we are trying to achieve are right, and if the bill and the duties in it provide us
with an opportunity to try to get that right, we need to take it, because there is a moral
obligation on us to do that. David Melhuish has indicated that he w
ants
to come in. After that, I will move on to the final four
questions that we still have to cover, which are focused on the regulations under the Cost
of Living Act 2022. Briefly, yes, we would like a delivery agency,
please, but we would need the funding to make it happen. On the bill, the most crying-out need that
our members report is the need for certainty. To give a bit of a pragmatic response, we
do not see the likelihood of the bill being pulled, but we are crying out for certainty
abou
t the details and where we go forward from here, because the investment will not
hang around, and that is the key thing. We have a lot of sympathy with the points
about what has worked, what has not worked, and what could have been better with all the
incentives in the past 25 years, for reasons that have been given by other speakers. I do not think that there is anything that
we need to address that could not have been done before now. We will move on. This next bit may or may not be relevant t
o
everybody. We have questions on the regulations under
the Cost of Living Act 2022 and we thought that, rather than invite all or some of you
back for a separate session, we would just do it while you are here. Do you agree in principle that the Scottish
Government needs to use its powers to amend the rent adjudication system to smooth the
transition away from the rent cap? Do you agree with the proposed system in the
regulations? As a union, we would love to see further measures,
such the rent
cap, extended. There were problems with the rent cap—we
are all aware of that. It failed to protect tenants who were on a
joint tenancy when there were tenant swaps, or those with new market rents. It did, however, provide a lot of relief to
sitting tenants, which was really important because when we talk about affordability and
things such as rent controls, everyone acts as though they are something wild. We had rent controls at one point and Thatcher
got rid of them. We can do it again; we ca
n have rent controls. On the rent adjudication process, we are disappointed
by what the Government has proposed. It will not protect tenants and it is inaccessible. I do not understand the maths of it. More importantly, it relies too heavily on
things such as free market rents. We have heard from the Minister for Zero Carbon
Buildings, Active Travel and Tenants’ Rights that the way that the system will work is
that rent officers will just use sites such as Zoopla to look at current market rents,
which is by no means a way to deliver affordability. As a union, we recommend extending the rent
cap. There are legislative constraints, because
of the way that the first rent cap and rent freeze were introduced as measures to address
the cost of living. More importantly, we are concerned that the
rent adjudication process runs for only a year. Because we do not know when the housing bill
will be introduced, there will be a no man’s land between the end of the rent adjudication
process and the
introduction of, we hope, permanent rent controls. In addition, the rent adjudication process
does not take into account other fundamental things that are challenging tenants, such
as energy performance certificate ratings and the quality of a property. It is our position that a landlord should
not be able to serve a rent increase notice if there is serious disrepair, such as mould
and damp, which is the case for 50 per cent of properties in the PRS, or if properties
have an EPC rating of D or b
elow. Tenants who are already facing fuel poverty
should not also face a rent increase. As a point of principle, why should someone
charge more for a property that is not of good quality? To say that we are disappointed is probably
an understatement but, before the introduction of permanent rent controls, we really encourage
the Scottish Government to look at other more comprehensive options that can deliver affordability
for tenants who are in crisis. My question follows on from what you have
j
ust said, Eilidh. On the mechanism of applying the rent increases,
as I understand it, if the proposed rent is less than the open market rent, the proposed
rent will be, by and large, fine; if the proposed rent is more than the open market rate, the
open market rate would apply. If the variation is 6 per cent or greater,
a tapering process will apply. Is that too complicated? Will tenants understand that? Should we leave it to rent service Scotland
to explain that, or is it the case that the bas
ic principle is fair and effective and
that the process represents a balanced approach? From what I understand, those incremental
measures were to stop, for example, a sitting tenant’s rent jumping from a nominal £500
to £1,500. There is a recognition that long-term tenants
will have a different rent to the market rent that can be seen on Zoopla, for example. However, one of the benefits of the rent cap
and the rent freeze was that they were universal measures that were easily understood. People
could use a calculator to check whether
their rent had gone up by more than 3 per cent, for example. That is really important when it comes to
delivering good policy: it should deliver affordability and the process should be accessible. There has been talk about producing a calculator
or something, but we are really struggling with our resources to get people to even explain
what the approach means for tenants. The rent cap was set through legislation,
but the adjudication process is one that p
eople might not have access to. People who do not speak English will have
to go through rent service Scotland. If you are a working-class person who typically
does shift work for more than 40 hours a week, you might not have the time to go through
the rent service. We need to deliver affordability, but we also
need to deliver accessibility and ensure that the process is inclusive for everyone. The way that the mechanism works will not
be functional for most tenants. It will put people off using
it—then, for
example, there will be an exacerbation in rent increases above the 12 per cent cap. We thought the proposal was a pragmatic response
to the situation that the Government found itself in. As was just explained, as long as it is supported
by open market rents, 6 per cent is the maximum increase; beyond that, the increase can be
tapered, to a maximum of 12 per cent. Some landlords have had no rental increase
since 2019, potentially. A lot of landlords have had no rent increase
for a si
gnificant period. We felt that it was a pragmatic step in the
right direction towards resetting the market. I absolutely agree with the point about the
accessibility of rent service Scotland. There is also a wider question when it comes
to the resourcing of rent service Scotland and to some of the background data. The Office for National Statistics—I think—analysed
that and found that 86 per cent of Scottish rental data was based on new market lets,
which, because of the imbalance in the market,
tend to be higher. That feeds into increases. The feedback that most of our industry gave
us was that it was a pragmatic step. David Melhuish and Eilidh Keay commented on
the private rented sector. We operate predominantly in the social rented
sector, in which, as I mentioned earlier, a legal framework is in place for tenant participation. It is no surprise that the introduction of
the emergency bill blindsided a lot of people. Its timing was alarming. It blindsided a lot of landlords that were
already in the middle of negotiating their budget and rent-setting process for the year
ahead. On the other side, as well intentioned as
it was for the protection of tenants, it applied across the full rented sector at the time. Our tenant members, in the social rented sector,
absolutely advocate for and want to negotiate their rent levels annually. There is a legal duty for landlords to do
that, and tenants want to continue to do that. Our tenant members are absolutely aware that
their rents a
nd rent increases pay for the services that they receive and for investment
in their housing stock and communities, and they want to continue to have a say in that
process. We therefore welcomed the ultimate removal
of the provisions from the social rented sector. However, the guidance was there, to encourage
landlords to be mindful about how large a rent increase they would apply. At the same time, there was the cost of living
crisis, as well as landlords’ struggles with inflationary costs. Ult
imately, therefore, a lot of our tenant
members absolutely empathise with our landlords, which, first and foremost, need to run—to
operate as a business. It is not financially viable to continue to
increase rents well below CPI. In the long term, that puts tenants’ homes—their
tenancies—at risk. We always advocate for tenants to be able
to proactively negotiate their rent levels for the year ahead. That being said, Eilidh Keay represents Living
Rent. In Glasgow, uniquely, we get funding through
the Glasgow communities fund, and we absolutely recognise the need to keep an eye on national
policy. As strategic partners of the Scottish Government,
we were involved in the consultations for “Housing to 2040” and the rented sector
strategy, “A New Deal for Tenants”, which alludes to supporting private rented sector
tenants to have the same rights as social rented sector tenants. For that reason, we used funding in partnership
with Glasgow City Council to trial a unique tenant-led housing comm
ission for the private
rented sector. Living Rent was represented on that body,
which involved 11 private rented sector tenants sitting round the table with stakeholder organisations
such as the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence and Shelter, effectively working
together to identify the key issues in Glasgow’s private rented sector and moving towards making
recommendations for reform. Rent control was absolutely one of those recommendations. Ultimately, we as an organisation support
th
at. We wanted to support private rented sector
tenants to have a proactive and meaningful platform for engaging with the local authority
to make improvements. Thankfully, we have seen some of those recommendations
reflected in Glasgow’s new housing strategy. The recommendation for rent controls was not
taken forward, but the commission acknowledged—as Ken Gibb mentioned earlier—that, first and
foremost, we need to prioritise getting the data. We need to know what rents tenants are paying. A lot
of the models that are used are looking
at new lets, and we are missing a lot of data for existing tenancies. That is a priority, and the rented sector
strategy alludes to that. We need better data in order to better inform
us before we put rent control measures in place. We as an organisation, and the commission
in Glasgow, absolutely recognise that there must be work from local authorities to understand
what private rented sector tenants are currently paying in rent before we can look at what
rent controls may be appropriate. Thank you for giving us the wider context
around the innovation and collaboration in Glasgow. Putting in place measures so that people are
not hit with large rent increases as we exit the emergency measures is a good thing, but
CAS has a number of concerns about what is being proposed on rent adjudication. As Eilidh Keay indicated, we feel that there
is a lot of complexity in this area, and we, too, are struggling to communicate the detail
to our advisers across
the 59 citizens advice bureaus. If we cannot get our advisers to understand
the process, how do we enable tenants and individuals to understand it? The complexity is creating a barrier to accessibility;
that is a real issue. We also have some general concerns about how
renters will be empowered to use the system. We already know that people are not coming
forward to use redress. In particular, people are not currently engaging
with that process because of fear of being evicted—that is really ho
lding people back. How many people are going to use the system
and get a good and successful outcome? We are concerned about that. Finally, to pick up on Stephen Connor’s
point, data is critical. We desperately need robust, timely and available
data on the private rented sector to enable us to make all the decisions that we have
been talking about this morning. Before I bring in Marie McNair with another
question, I have a question on the data. Are there processes in place by which we gather
dat
a that could easily be moved over to pull that information together? Are you aware of anything? I see a nodding head—perhaps Gordon MacRae
can say something on that point. Landlord registration could be relatively
easily used to gather that data, but the case for that has been made for around six years. That goes back to the point about a lethargic
approach and a lack of urgency on the minister’s part. With regard to the limit of 6 per cent above
and below, there is a continued reliance on marke
t rents, and there is no conversation
about cost. As I said, 50 per cent of private landlords
have no mortgage. If the assumption for the starting point is
the market rent, we are talking about superprofits being made across the sector. The absence of data is crucial in that regard. Did you say 50 per cent or 60 per cent? It is 50 per cent of landlords, according
to UK Finance, looking at the number of buy-to-let mortgages in comparison with the number of
properties that are let. That is a UK fi
gure rather than a Scottish
one. Rather than a Scottish one—okay. Marie, do you want to come in with your question? It has been touched on a wee bit already. How reliable is the data to allow rent officers
and the tribunal to make an informed decision? That is one of the areas in which the data
is not reliable at all. We forget that letting agents will buy up
in an area, so when open-market rents are set based on the rents in that area—before
the introduction of the current rent adjudication pro
cess—agents would set prices against
themselves. There is a whole other element with regard
to who controls the market—it is not just about putting numbers in a system. It is very much controlled by profits; that
is one of the problems. What Gordon MacRae said about landlord registration
is hugely important. One of the reasons why rent pressure zones
failed is that local authorities did not have the data available to them. If we made it a requirement for landlords
to report their rent every year
to the landlord registration system, we would have the data. That would be relatively easy to implement. It would also empower tenants, because they
could see on the database whether a landlord had increased rent by £200 or £300 per year. The data is important, as it would empower
tenants to challenge that. Relying on sites such as Zoopla and other
letting agent websites is not the way to go about it. That point talks to the inequality of arms
in the sector—if I can put it like that—in that it
is far easier for landlords to vindicate
their rights to their property, which they rightly have, than it is for tenants to vindicate
their right to a decent and affordable home, because it is much harder for them to prove
that the market is acting to disadvantage them. As the convener said, the way in which the
data is collected is important. The Scottish Government did a lot on that. I am sure that a lot of people who are sitting
round this table were reached out to by the teams of civil serva
nts that were trying to
get insight into what the regulations would mean. Frankly, it is incumbent upon the Scottish
Government and local government to get the data because without it an inequality of arms
remains. As Gordon MacRae said, if we want people to
be able to vindicate and defend their rights—whether through a new bill, the United Nations Convention
on the Rights of the Child or whatever else—they need good data to be able to make those arguments. I think of the new rent control propos
als
as RPZ 2.0. Obviously, they include new tenancies as well,
but exactly the same fundamental issues remain. We need data to be able to monitor and assess
what is going on in local markets, and the point of the models is to create a spatially
well defined local area and to understand what is going on there: we need to know what
is going on. The excellent new rent data that Zoopla has
does not do that job—it cannot do that job. We recently did a study for the Chartered
Institute of Housing abou
t local housing allowances, and as part of that we made a freedom of information
request to find out the breakdown between new rents and existing tenancies that is used
by rent service Scotland for each broad rental market area, and we found that the market
is absolutely dominated by new rent. That raises is a very serious question, because
if turnover is variable in local markets, relying only on new rents will not tell us
what the underlying market rent is. As Gordon MacRae said, the obvious t
hing to
do is reboot the landlord registration system so that we know all rents and basic property
characteristics. Size, type and address would probably be enough
to allow the analysis to be done. However, there are roadblocks that seem to
be stopping that. During the consultation that took place back
in 2022, the implication was that that is what the Government wanted to do, but in subsequent
discussions there has been ambiguity and a lack of clarity about whether that is something
that it thi
nks it can pursue. Apart from rebooting the landlord registration
system and declaration of rent, is there anything else that we could add at the same time? As I said, if we could add some property characteristics—such
as length of tenancy or something similar that says a little bit about what the tenancy
looks like—we would have what economists would call a really powerful hedonic database
that would allow for linking of rent to location and to property type and other characteristics,
which wou
ld open up the analysis. Should EPC ratings and other such things be
included? Absolutely. What about gas boiler checks? I would not go too far— No, seriously, I would not go too far. We do not need a lot of information to be
able to do the things that we want to do. Obviously, however, specific policy matters
that are of interest could be included. I bring in Stephanie Callaghan, who joins
us online and has been listening intently to the discussion. Some really important points have been made
a
bout data. However, I am interested in hearing the panel
members’ views on what they see as being the impact on homelessness of the ending of
the eviction provisions in the Cost of Living Act 2022, so I invite comments on that. The ending of the eviction provisions is worrying
because of the potential for a rise in evictions, especially because that takes place alongside
the introduction of rent adjudication measures. Crisis supports the rent adjudication measures
policy because, as colleagues h
ave said, it is part of a pragmatic approach that offers
almost the only way out of the situation that we are in. However, it needs to be accompanied by a public
awareness-raising campaign to let tenants know that, if they experience a rent increase,
there are things that they can do, including contacting their local citizens advice bureau
or rent service Scotland. Without that, tenants will be worried that,
if they challenge rent increases directly with their landlord, they might be at risk
of
eviction—potentially, illegal eviction. Therefore, public messaging is needed to make
it clear what is being put in place, what tenants’ rights are in relation to eviction,
and that the new eviction grounds are discretionary rather than mandatory. Obviously, there is a role for advice agencies
in relation to that messaging. In the survey of local authorities that was
conducted for the recently published research report, “The Homelessness Monitor: Scotland
2024”, one of the key findings was that
councils are concerned about a steep rise
in evictions from the private rented sector when the 2022 act’s provisions cease to
apply at the end of March. That is just one more thing that is adding
to pressures and concerns, at the moment. It is important to say that there has not
been an eviction ban for most of our clients because of the low floor that the figure for
exceptional arrears was set at, which was always below the average level at which an
eviction would take place, anyway. Most landl
ords work with their tenants, so
we have always held that the 2022 act was fundamentally flawed. There is no doubt that there will be more
evictions. Every day, people call our helpline to say
that their landlord has told them that they will increase the rent as soon as they can
and, as Emma Jackson said, it is likely that if someone’s rent is pushed to 10 per cent
above what it currently is, they might not think that it is worth trying to access rent
service Scotland. The situation is a bit of
a mishmash. It is also important to note that the courts
do not have the capacity to defend those actions. Essentially, we are looking at a bit of a
cliff edge, with people being unable to access advice, and landlords and tenants being equally
unable to navigate the system, although I think that there will be some online calculators
and so on for people that can access them. However, what is happening potentially represents
another shock to homelessness services at a time when they can ill affor
d any new expansion
of need. Pam, do you have a supplementary question
on that point? I was actually going to ask my main question,
which is on the subject that the witnesses are talking about. Last week, we heard that the changes to the
regulations are viewed by many as confusing, and today we are hearing that missing data
could cause a problem as well. The importance of data was also mentioned
last week by Callum Chomczuk—I hope that I said his name right—from the Chartered
Institute of Housin
g Scotland. Today, we have heard views from the tenants’
side, but I now want to speak about landlords. First, should we go ahead with the regulations,
given the confusion that exists and the missing data? Secondly, will the regulations impact on the
supply of housing? The policy is basically taking the investor
out of the market, and we will have fewer houses available to rent. Will there be a greater shortage of homes? Should we strike a balance in the policy in
the interests of tenants and la
ndlords? Basically, my questions are, how could we
strike that balance, and should we go ahead with the regulations? I invite David Melhuish to answer first. We have always been worried about the data
point, and we have talked to rent service Scotland directly about its capacity. Our members have always been worried about
that. That goes back years—going back to RPZs
and so on. We think that the regulations are a pragmatic
response. If something is going to happen, you should
go ahead with them.
They are intended to prevent a cliff edge
for tenants. Some landlords have had their income frozen,
so the financial viability of their continuing as landlords is an issue, without a shadow
of a doubt. Many more are looking to exit the sector,
we are told. For those reasons, we agree with what is proposed. I encourage the committee to take a look at
what the Office for National Statistics is proposing in order to improve the balance
for sitting tenants and rental changes. That should help. The
ONS’s work has been done, and samples
have been taken. That should, we hope, help with the new provisions. The investors to whom we have spoken have
felt that the proposals are a sensible step forward, and there are more discussions going
on about the future supply of properties, on the back of them. I have to report that there was, previously,
widespread uncertainty as to what would happen come 31 March. I cannot see how the rent adjudication process
would necessarily affect supply, because it
applies to sitting tenants. For rent controls, on the other hand, there
is the argument about supply, which does not seem to be true. Germany has one of the biggest PRS systems,
and it has rent control. France has rent control, too. The UK and Scotland lie outwith what happens
in Europe in not having a form of rent control. The point about supply is a bit of a red herring. The rental market in Scotland increased by
3,000 properties during the rent-cap period. We have been reading the documentati
on, in
which landlords have said that the changes at UK tax level were more disincentivising
than rent control. Essentially, I think that rent controls do
not torpedo supply. Thank you for that information. Last week, our witnesses highlighted that
there would be an issue here, and there is an issue with people moving out of the market. You have referred to some stats, so I will
go back and check them to see what has happened. This is an important conversation, and it
is important to bring landl
ords into it. Citizens Advice Scotland provides advice to
tenants and landlords. Eilidh Keay made some excellent points, which
I will not repeat. We have a role to play in ensuring that good
landlords do not leave the system, because they will play an important part in designing
the rent control system that we want for the future. We need to find out what we need to do to
facilitate training, advice and support for landlords within that system. Let us take our minds back to the start of
the conv
ersation—about prioritisation, the biggest issues that we face, and identifying
the burning platform that we see right now, which is not about landlords, but individuals,
who are experiencing the absolute worst of the homelessness crisis that we see across
Scotland. As I was preparing for today’s evidence
session, I was reading about some devastating examples from around the CAB network. Rhiannon Sims and Gordon MacRae would be able
to share equally harrowing stories. I was struck to hear that a
n east of Scotland
CAB has been working with an individual who has found that he is homeless because of affordability
and is now living in a tent in a rural community. Can you imagine what it must be like to be
sleeping in a tent in rural Scotland in February? Such cases are the burning platform among
issues right now, and are absolutely where our attention needs to be. Thanks very much for pointing us in a particular
direction at the end of that conversation. This has been a really good convers
ation,
and we could probably have spent a couple more hours unpacking some of the bits and
pieces that have been raised around the room and throughout the conversation. I really appreciate your giving your time
for the discussion. I will briefly suspend the meeting to allow
the witnesses to leave the room. Committee colleagues will then need to press
on with some other bits and pieces. The next item on our agenda is for the committee
to consider two negative instruments. There is no requirement
for the committee
to make any recommendations on negative instruments. As members have no comments to make, does
the committee agree that we do not wish to make any recommendations on the instruments? The committee previously agreed to take the
next three items in private, so as that was the final public item on our agenda, I close
the public part of the meeting.
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