 Good morning and welcome to the 11th meeting in 2023 of the Local Government Housing and Planning Committee. We've received apologies from Marie McNair this morning and may remind all members and witnesses to ensure that their devices are on silent and all other notifications are turned off during the meeting. The first item on our agenda today is to invite Ivan McKee to declare any interests. The interests I have laid out in my MSP declaration of interests with regard to ownership of some rental properties. Thank you very much Ivan and welcome to your first meeting of the committee. The second item on our agenda today is to decide whether to take item 5 in private. Are members agreed? Thank you, we are all agreed. The next item on our agenda for today is consideration of the following negative instruments. Private residential tenancies and assured of tenancies, prescribed notices and forms, temporary modifications, Scotland regulations 2023 SSI 2023-58, non-domestic rates, transitional relief Scotland amendment regulation 2023 SSI 2023-63, non-domestic rates Scotland Act 2020, transitional provision regulation 2023 SSI 2023-64 and building Scotland amendment number 2 regulations 2022 amendment regulations 2023 SSI 2023-65. There is no requirement for the committee to make any recommendations on negative instruments. Do any members have any comments on any of the instruments? No comment but just to declare an interest as an honour of a private rented property in relation to the private residential tenancies and assured tenancies regulations. Thank you very much for that. Is the committee agreed that we do not wish to make any recommendations in relation to these instruments? We are all agreed. The next item on our agenda today is to take evidence on building safety. Last May, the committee took evidence from stakeholders and the Scottish Government on building safety and the committee agreed to return to this issue on an annual basis. We are joined in the room by John Paul Breslin, who is the building standards team leader from Stirling Council, local authority building standards Scotland. Welcome. Callum McQueen, who is the technical surveying manager, e-survey chartered surveyors. Allister Ross, who is the assistant director at the head of public policy Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland Association of British Insurers. We are joined online by Nigel Sellers, who is the senior specialist valuation and property standards from the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyers. I welcome all the witnesses to the meeting. We were also due to hear from Chris Ashhurst, who is from the high rise Scotland action group this morning. Unfortunately, he is withdrawn this morning due to ill health. We will try to direct our questions to a specific witness where possible, but if you would like to come in, please indicate this to the clerks. Nigel, if you can do this by typing an R in the chat function, we will bring you in. There is no need for you to manually turn on your microphones, as we will be doing that for you automatically. I will begin with the first question. Nigel, I have two questions. I will start and direct them both to you. If anyone else wants to come in on these, I think that maybe they were possibly more appropriate for Chris, but unfortunately he is not here. I would be interested to know if homeowners and buyers are still experiencing problems in moving or obtaining mortgages due to the zero valuation of homes caused by concerns over fire safety. If so, what impact is this having on people affected? I am aware, Nigel, that you have some comments around the idea of zero valuations. I would be interested to hear that as well. Thank you. Can I just check if everybody can hear me? Absolutely. This has been a room. Thank you for having me and apologies that I cannot be in the room in person. I just want to open up by clarifying the term zero valuation. Zero valuation is actually a technical term used in the process of valuing a property for mortgage lending purposes, where a value is unable to provide a value at that moment in time, such as a value undertaken inspection, but there may be insufficient information available to them at the point of inspection. This then results in a zero valuation being applied to the property, which signals either the lender or the value of themselves that further information is required before the valuation can proceed. It does not actually mean that the property itself is worth zero or has a zero value, so I just want to clarify that. Moving on to the questions to how things are going in the market, there has definitely been, in the past 12 months since the group met more positivity in the market, that the feedback that I have been receiving from RSS members operating in the space is that valuations are taking place, lending is proceeding. In December of last year, the RSS produced new guidance in this space on the valuation approach for properties in residential buildings with planning. Although that guidance is specifically for England only, the intention is, over time, to extend that guidance to include Scotland, as well as to envisage a more positive view months ahead, and when that guidance at the appropriate time is extended to include Scotland, as well as to provide more certainty for valuers, lenders and ultimately these holders in the space. Does anyone else in the room have anything to add to that? If you've got questions that are focused for you a little bit later. Nigel, I'd be interested to hear about the operation of EWS1, has that improved since the committee last considered the issue in May? I'm not too close to the actual operation of day-to-day EWS1 forms, I'm responsible for the standards of setting at the RSS and EWS1 forms. I do appreciate and I'm fully aware that the EWS1 process in Scotland has its well documented challenges of the tenure system, and the single building assessment more fingers cross come and hopefully alleviate some of those challenges there and provide more clarity for people in this space. That's what I can comment on at the moment. The system over the past 12 months in Scotland, as regards the use of EWS1 forms, hasn't really changed. It's a lending requirement for buildings over a certain height, with certain claring materials on the outside, and that hasn't changed in Scotland over the past 12 months. Great, thanks very much. OK, we're now going to move on to questions around single building assessment, and that's going to be led by Miles Briggs. Good morning, thanks for joining us today. I wanted to ask a couple of questions, firstly, with regard to how you would rate the progress that is being made in Scotland around the Government's single building assessment programme to date, and some of the pitfalls that we're seeing potentially coming forward. And why we've not seen that four nations approach to this, I suppose, is one of the key things I'm concerned about. Calmael, maybe bring you in for your views on that. I'm not sure why it's not been a four nations approach. I've not been involved in that at all, but my involvement is with the valuation work that we do for lenders, clearly with devolved nations, the approaches have been taken individually. In the one case we've seen where this has progressed to remedial work taking place, there's a list of 105 other properties. I think that, in theory, is the pilot of 105 properties. It's really important for householders to see the potential end of this. That one project, which has managed to be complete, is there anything around that which has shown a Scottish example of being able to progress this work in a way in which we can get these all firstly surveyed but then delivered? I've not been involved at all in that project, I've just heard about it. It is good that the Scottish Government stepped in and paid for all the work and the building understand is soon to be fixed. The issue from a valuation point of view is that current lender guidance is that that building will not be acceptable until the work is complete, whereas elsewhere down in England, because of the Building Safety Act, some lenders will consider lending on buildings before the work is complete. That's a distinction at the moment between the system in England and the system in Scotland. Does anyone have anything to add on that point? I mean, I'm happy to come in and perhaps add a little bit to that. I, along with various other colleagues, including Chris Asherst, sit on the Scottish Government's Cladding Stakeholder group, and so we have been involved in a number of aspects of this, including the development of the SBA. I'll defer on that to the update that the Cabinet Secretary gave in the papers for the meeting, and it's useful to see that progress set out. In terms of the Four Nations point, building standards is a truly devolved matter across the Four Nations. You've got this challenge around the property tenure, which has delayed progress in Scotland as opposed to other parts of the UK. I think that I sit in an equivalent group in Wales as well, and we can maybe come on to that later if time permits, and just give you a contrast to the progress that's been made in that jurisdiction, as opposed to Scotland, but it's been a significant amount of work that's gone into the SBA. I mean, from an insurer's point of view, the SBA, I think it's useful. It's not unhelpful as a development. When the draft is being developed, we understand the perspective of taking a more holistic view, rather than just looking specifically at cladding wall systems. That's to be welcomed. We discussed the details of the draft with the major property insurers in the sector. It's all good stuff, but that's already information that insurers will be seeking when they're coming to quote for these kind of properties. So I think it's a useful step forward. It won't dramatically change the approach of insurers because they were already seeking most of that information, but it's not unhelpful to have it collated in a single document. That's helpful. In terms of the detail within that single building assessment, is there real differentiation now, though, between what potentially is happening in Scotland and in England and what that might mean moving forward? In Scotland, we're now talking about a high and low risk. In England, they're talking about almost a high, medium and low risk, and everything then in Scotland with any potential risk being classified as high. I'm concerned that we're not really on the front foot on this work in the first place anyway, but that could potentially also present another issue for getting this work done and the cost of actually being able to meet this. I wonder if there's anything to say on that as such. Not on the single building assessment, no. I've been involved in that. No, and locally no-ones. What do you think could be done to speed up the delivery of the assessment programme? Measures, for example, the establishment of a dynamic purchasing framework to help improve timescales. What we're being suggested could help. Is there anything else you think could be... Well, there's a lack of engineers and qualified people in Scotland to carry out that work. That's well known. Clearly, if you had 20 people in the country who were qualified to do the work, you would do it quicker. At the UK level, £40 million has been committed to deliver that in England and Wales. I'm not sure the Barnett consequentials of that necessarily have come through to individuals who do that work in Scotland. Do we have the professionals to be able to do that work? There are, as I said, only three or four individuals in Scotland who are qualified, who are engineers, chartered engineers who are qualified to inspect and comment on high-rise buildings. Thanks. I've got a couple of other questions to maybe come back to later. Thanks, Miles. We're now going to move to a question from Annie Wells. Thank you, convener. Good morning, panel. In a letter to the committee just last month from the former Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice housing and local government, it noted that a walking watch has been applied in relation to two buildings. Do you believe that this is sufficient? I think I'll come to John Paul first on that one. Thank you. I've seen the media press and I've read the documentation. The waking watch is there to address the flats that have a kind of stay-put evacuation, so individual flats would have an alarm go off. The waking watch is there to put in what kind of simultaneous evacuation process, so if something is identified they have the options to then start evacuating out everyone on mass or in a co-ordinated phased way. So that's a kind of ant-hoc arrangement, a temporary arrangement to put in place until measures can be addressed to Claddon or maybe different types of detection alarm systems can put in. I think it is recognised as being an acceptable interim measure. Don't know if anyone else has anything to add on that. Maybe just make the point that the waking watch, as the cabinet secretary said in her letter, is an interim measure and I think they're looking at the installation of an alarm system in there. But this touches on one of the issues that we'll come on to later on where I think the cabinet secretary refers to it as safeguarding residents and preservation of life and that's the priority there. So as John Paul has said, you can efficiently and quite quickly hopefully get everybody out of the property. But waking watches on their own won't address some of the wider kind of fire safety issues. To give you an example, if you have a waking watch and it's triggered, you can alert the residents, they can get out hopefully efficiently, hopefully safely. The waking watch presumably would also alert the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and I don't know if there's a prioritisation and calls on certain buildings that have waking watches and they can respond and arrest the fire. But in the absence of sufficient fire safety measures, things like compartmentalisation systems and other measures to contain the fire within particular units, you could face the prospect that people will be able to get out of the property but the property is still significantly and extensively damaged. Now the way you're going to address that ultimately is the installation of things like automated fire suppression systems, whether it's sprinkler systems, miss systems or whatever, but something that can be triggered when the alarm goes off to preserve as far as you can the property as well as the preservation of life. So the waking watch is effective certainly for safeguarding residents but it's not really going to do a great deal in terms of the protection of preservation of the property. Thank you very much for that. Thank you, convener. Thanks, Annie. We're now going to move on to questions on the Scottish Safer Building Accord with Ivan McKee. Thanks, convener, and welcome to the panel. As I indicated, I'd like to ask about the Scottish Safer Building Accord and what your view on the likely success of that is. So it would appear that some progress has been made on negotiations but our understanding is that those have reached a deadlock between the Government and developers so really just to get your perspective on where you think the accord is and what the likely success of it is. From my point of view, from evaluation side, if the developers were to hold their hands up and say that they will carry out repairs to buildings that needed work then that potentially could allow lenders to lend on those buildings and on flats in those buildings and that could open up the housing market for them because at the moment in Scotland in these buildings people can't remortgage generally speaking and can't sell the flats. Right, and is it necessary to have the accord in place to deliver on that? There would need to be a commitment from the developer that they would pay for the costs of the works that were required. Okay, any other input on that? From the lab's perspective, labs are fully supportive of the ongoing discussions and securing an agreement. We see that as very positive. I'd just like to say that the building standards system in Scotland has made some significant changes as we've all referred to previously. It's really improved the levels of safety within the built environment. It's very critical that we keep moving forward in that regard. Any kind of work in Scotland should comply with the technical standards in Scotland fully. Okay, so I'm just following on from that. When the cabinet secretary announced the accord, she said that if necessary they would make full use of the powers available to us to run parties to the table, including if necessary, using legislation to do so. Do you think that it's time for the Scottish Government to be looking at that legislative route? I believe that there is. In other documents that I've read, I think that that is something that they are looking at and had early discussion on. I think that existing enforcement powers aren't... They weren't really envisioned, but it wasn't considered at the time when they were created for this type of scenario, so it may be something completely new. Is there anyone else who has any thoughts on that? Okay, thank you. Thanks, Ivan. I'm now going to move on to a series of questions from Mark Griffin. Thanks. Come to Alistair first. I just have a question about how the insurance industry has adapted, essentially, since Grenfell to potentially provide homeowners or tenants with affordable insurance in buildings that are clad with potentially combustible materials. As well, is there a different approach to different parts of the UK or is the insurance industry acting unregimented way right across the piece when it comes to providing insurance for homeowners or tenants? No, so the insurance products that are being sold are being sold right across the UK. So it's the same basic insurance policy that you buy, whether you're based in London or Edinburgh or Belfast or Cardiff. But they will need to respond to the different regimes and the different circumstances in each of the devolved nations and England because you get different regulatory systems there. So the insurance industry had concerns about the fitness for purpose of building standards and regulations before the Grenfell tragedy. There have been a number of incidents going back to the early 2000s where there have been fires that had accelerated far faster than anticipated and there were concerns. There were some issues particularly around food manufacturing plants and the kind of insulation that had been used there. So there were existing concerns that the system wasn't quite working and particularly that developments hadn't been built according to the spec of the plans and the fire safety measures that were set out hadn't necessarily been installed or hadn't been installed to the correct level and also some of the materials that were previously regarded as safety use were actually not as safe as had been understood and subsequent fire testing has revealed that. The tragic events and the loss of life at Grenfell brought that into very sharp focus. So after that you saw an insurance market that had perhaps underpriced some of that risk previously based on the knowledge and understanding that was present there from developer's plans from the various regulations and so on insurers based their underwriting criteria on those. When it became apparent that those were actually no longer fit for purpose you saw the anticipated response in terms of pricing. So insurance is risk reflective is to ensure because of the lack of safety measures the more expensive it's going to be and that's likely to be affected reflected in the price. So you've seen an increase in pricing and that's obviously a great concern. The Secretary of State for levelling up housing and communities wrote to the financial conduct authority so the insurance industry regulator and also the competition and markets authority asking them to investigate the cost and availability of building insurance because you'd seen that the higher premiums were a symptom of the fire safety concerns and it was becoming there was a lack of availability and also a limit to affordability. So the Secretary of State had asked the two regulators to look at that. The financial conduct authority took that forward and they produced a report in September of last year and that recognised that there had been significant increases in the price. It didn't find that there was an excessive profit being made by insurers as a result of that. They recognised that the financial risk had increased and so that was reflected in the pricing. And they asked us to go away and look at that so the ABI was asked to lead a project which we're doing. We'd actually already started the work before the FCA had made that recommendation but we're working with a specialist property insurance broker, McGillan Partners and we're also working with our member companies that write property insurance for multi-occupancy buildings. We're also working with the reinsurers there and we are providing regular updates to the FCA and to the department of levelling up housing and communities and also to the Scottish Government and to the other devolved nations as well. So that work has been going on and that's been looking at developing what's called a risk sharing scheme. I'll maybe go into a wee bit too much detail but it's maybe worth just getting on the record. So previously insurance for these higher risk, high rise buildings would have been they would have been insured on what's called an excess layer basis so insurer A would agree to insure the first five million of any loss so when there's a fire or a feather or another name pearl they would cover the first five million of that loss. Insurer B might then come in and agree to take on the next 10 million if the claim went that high and that would have a separate fee and a separate arrangement and then insurer C might come in and say well if it's going to be a total loss of the building then we'll insure up to say for argument 50 million. What that meant is that you were spending the risk of ground because some of those insurers could only take that amount of financial risk on to their own books. What you're doing essentially is insuring you are taking that financial risk from the property owners on to your balance sheet and in return you're charging them a premium so they're able to transfer that financial risk over to you. Insurers then need to make sure they have sufficient capital to carry all that risk. Now as the potential cost of these incidents went up that was reflected in the charges around that excess layering so the price went up and also the capacity in the market reduced so insurers had less capacity to take on that financial risk because it was so much greater than was previously understood. The risk sharing system which we're working on at the moment and is on track to be launched this summer is taking a different approach so under that one insurer would take on all of that risk. What they would then do is reinsure or seed it to reinsurers in the market. What that should mean is that the overall cost coming down is going to be more cost efficient to do it that way. You have to be very careful in how you construct that, it's quite a complex approach it's got a lot of different people involved in that you also have to abide by competition regulation as well so it's taken a long time, it is complex but we're making good progress and as I say that should be operational by the summer. At that point you should start to see over the next 12 month period of insurance renewal, you should see that reflected in the pricing but what I should say is that this is a fixed term response so that scheme is likely to run for around about 5 years. The ultimate solution the ultimate way to get insurance premiums down is the completion of remediation in these buildings to improve the fire safety and then that will be better understood and that's when you should see prices come back down. That's really helpful that level of detail is well really helpful. Do you members have any indication of any properties where residents are just finding that increased level of premium before remediation happens just as unaffordable and some buildings going uninsured? By definition if they're not able to get insurance we wouldn't necessarily pick up on that. I'm aware of a lot of very challenging cases in different parts of the market. Chris Ashers would probably be better placed to comment on that and he may want to do a future meeting. What you're seeing is it taking a lot longer to get that insurance in place. Brokers and the factors and the property agents are having to work harder to start the work earlier and have to work hard to place that in the market. You're seeing some innovative solutions coming through as well where some properties are ensuring each unit on an individual basis rather than ensuring the entire block. But I'm not aware of properties that absolutely cannot get insurance. There are some that are paying significantly higher amounts but that's reflected with the risk that's involved in their particular properties. Thanks for that. A question now for Callum and Nigel. Just to ask if surveyors and fire safety assessors are still having difficulty getting indemnity cover for their work or if that's something that's gotten a bit easier since we last covered that a year ago. I don't know if Callum you would have any knowledge of that. I don't know about insurance for engineers and surveyors that carry out the actual assessments of the buildings. I don't know if Nigel's got any information on that at all. Nigel, do you have any knowledge for that? Not on the fire engineers, no. But I just had anecdotally that generally speaking the values that are present in this space, the members that we work with are finding attaining insurances is slightly easier than last year. But as Alice points out ultimately, when there's certainty over remediation of buildings that will give more comfort to the wider stakeholders. In fact we come out as well Mark. So through the Scottish Government's stakeholder group that's an issue that's come up in the past and again anecdotally what we've heard is that the fire safety engineers are able to get that insurance they're more often buying it now on a case by case basis for individual pieces of work that they're carrying out so the market is functioning and is open but the professional identity market more generally is quite challenging one and there are a number of factors to that it's an area where there can be quite a lot of risk because you're insuring on a claims occurring basis where claims are coming back from not just the last 12 months but potentially years or even decades back so you're taking on quite a lot of long tail risk here if you are insuring that and you're reliant on the individuals that you're insuring whether it's fire safety engineers or surveyors or whomever to have a lot of good housekeeping in terms of good record keeping up to date training and development records good management of the supply chain the subcontractors you're needing an awful lot of evidence to understand what kind of risks could be present in that business there's been work within the industry to improve the access to professional identity insurance so the international underwriters association has done a lot of work developing some model clauses which are drafted in a way that elicits a lot more information from the insurer for the insurer and gives them a lot more confidence so that they're able to take on a bit more of that financial risk that was previously unknown but you have got in terms of the construction sector and trades related to the construction sector it's quite a litigious sector there's an awful lot of claims raised that it's quite complex they can tend to run for several years once construction's been completed and go back historically so all that can be quite challenging but the the professional identity insurance market is opening up a bit and is improving this is not a particularly Scottish or UK phenomenon this is a global phenomenon but we are seeing that the market is now starting to improve and hopefully that will continue to be a question for Alasdair again, just because you touched on your experience working on the Welsh group as well we are considering progress of actual cladden remediation not assessments and everything that goes before actual remediation where are we in Scotland in comparison to England Wales, I know Wales the Welsh Government have a number of schemes already in operation in terms of the pack to the loans and the different funds where are we in terms of progress on the actual remediation of the problem so, as we've touched on already the big differentiator in Scotland is the 10 year system and so that presents a unique set of challenges for this particular market so, Scotland's at a different point in the process it's largely down to the 10 year position and again, if Chris Ashworth was here he could probably speak very very knowledgeably on the challenges you face in getting all the owners in a block to agree on a course of action into commission or whatever else compared to in England or Wales a freeholder making that decision on behalf of these holders so it's a different approach and what I would say is in Wales there are some similarities in terms of the approach Scottish Government has taken it's more than just looking at planning specifically it's about the overall fire safety of the building there's a number of measures in Wales that may be worth touching on so in September of 2021 Welsh ministers set up their building safety fund and what that has done is that's to come back to what Wales raised earlier in terms of procurement that has given them the option to appoint a single consultant and go direct to market and the Welsh Government is directly procuring surveys so rather than giving money to freeholders or to leaseholders to do all that work themselves the Welsh Government has taken the active decision to procure 260 digital surveys from a single provider and today I think that has led to 144 intrusive surveys and so they're making progress with that I think the equivalent figures that the cabinet secretary provided for the committee were around I think it's about 105 106 surveys that are under way in comparison in England I know that the department for levelling up housing and communities publishes data on a monthly basis the latest data I think from February I don't know if the March date is available yet but the February data indicated that it was some like 95% of the 400 plus properties in England that they're working on are surveys that are under way not necessarily completed but they're certainly under way I mean Wales has also taken quite a specific approach that where there's a, what they describe as a genuine dispute over responsibility for remediation of fire safety then Welsh Government has determined that leaseholders will not be held financially liable for that they don't have the same legal protection that leaseholders in England do under the building safety act and again that's a question for Scottish Government to consider is to what extent the protections can be provided for the owners in Scotland we don't have a leasehold system but the owners in Scotland and see if they can be protected Wales has also introduced a developers pact they signed that off last year and that has secured the involvement I think around a better living of the major developers there and they've gone from that pact to actually having a legally binding agreement now which is supported by the the major developers in that particular market they've also introduced a developers loan scheme so they've set aside £20 million support to carry out some of the remediation work I think that's probably in the kind of mid or smaller size of the construction market but that's available there and again that is a loan rather than a grant so Welsh Government has been very clear that that is a loan that has to be paid in time and you've also got a leaseholder support scheme and so the Welsh Government has been concerned about the financial but also the wellbeing of the leaseholders that are in flats with combustible cladding safety issues and so they're providing independent financial advisers which the Welsh Government will pay for so they can help to understand their financial situation and in circumstances where the best option for that particular leaseholder is to sell their property either to transfer the financial risk on to somebody else or just to move out completely there'll be support for that and that will be supported by the Welsh Government's Development Bank for Wales it's equivalent to the Scottish National Investment Bank and it's actually prepared to fund the purchase of those properties take them off leaseholders and then once they're remediated the intention would be to repurpose them in social housing so bring them back into the market so you've got that capacity there so you know there's some interesting approaches in Wales that's not necessarily something that you would lift and shift for Scotland wholesale but I know certainly there's an ongoing discussion between Scottish Government and Welsh Government about some of these steps just now Northern Ireland doesn't have the same extent of claring problems and also because you don't have a functioning executive at the moment there they're really constrained about what they can do there and in England as I said you've got a different system entirely and that is making progress and that's updated on a regular basis I think that building safety funding in England is something like 4.5 billion so you've got significant differences in the kind of scale of funding but that's progressing as well okay, that's really helpful thank you, Max Alistair thank you very much, those responses were really helpful we're now going to move on to questions from Willie Coffey thank you very much and good morning to you all I wonder if I could ask some questions about building standards in general but firstly do you think that the building standard changes that were introduced recently as last year deliver higher levels of fire safety and what evidence could be drawn as a committee to demonstrate that, maybe start with Colin perhaps that's something that I think John Paul would be the expert on because it's not really a valuation issue yep I'm here today as the chair of LABS, I'm also team leader at Stirling council, I was just saying to my colleagues earlier on we're one of the few authorities that don't actually have a building above 18 metres just by the natural environment we live in so I've not been involved directly with the working groups that created that and worked on that but I'm aware of the changes to the technical standards my opinion is that it does make a significant change the threshold being brought down to 11 metres the most recent change about non-combustibility that is a significant step also the scrutiny that we take the rigor that we actually look at now the evidence we take is I think it's the most significant in the UK I was going to come to John Paul any way the column does I've got to give you a chance isn't the Wallace Monument over 18 metres not residential not residential in meeting the high-rise building I'm pretty certain of it a number of issues have been raised with the committee when we previously looked at this and with me as a constituency member could I share an example with you and ask for your opinion on it a retired person bought a flat and subsequently wanted to sell that flat only to discover that it had no fire safety measures and no sound insulation in the house having incredible difficulties you might imagine trying to sell it now I fell between the developer the builders responsibility and then of course the local authority to inspect and so on I'm in that territory of whose responsibility is it to assure a person who's about to buy a house that it's fit for purpose these other measures like sound insulation so I was going to come to you anyway on that join Paul to see if you could assist with that type of inquiry in Scotland the current system even with the recent changes to the technical standards the completion submission is down to the relevant person which is the building owner the building standards system we take reasonable inquiry currently that's a notification plan for key stages we come out if we don't get notification we look at alternative evidence regarding sound you know if it's something that the sound standards apply to there would be sound test there would be periodic inspections at certain key stages but ultimately the relevant person is the owners or relevant person sometimes a builder or a company they are the ones who are in a completion submission saying that the building fully complies with the technical standards we undertake reasonable inquiry by looking at what sign inspections we've done what evidence we've gathered what alternative evidence if there's been areas we couldn't see if we just couldn't get out to see certain aspects of it that all would factor in and if we see that meets reasonable inquiry which is defined and there's guidance on it we would either accept it or else we don't find it meets that kind of level, that threshold we would reject it and list the reasons Is it thorough enough John Paul to to find deficiencies that are as serious as that though because it clearly wasn't in this particular case so I'm wondering if whatever new standards we have introduced will give people the assurance that this kind of thing can't happen in the future particularly for fire safety but for other matters as well that I've mentioned is it has it improved could that happen again it's maybe coming on to another piece of work I know it's kind of mentioned here it's the compliance plan manager role that is forward looking what we've talked about earlier on today is more retrospective is looking at the instance from the past with the new regulations and it's one of the things that's in trial at the moment I can talk about it later on but that is looking at oversight from the relevant person employing a suitable professional at the reasonable inquiry the same way that building standards do that will be, as I say, it's in trial at the moment but that's one of the things we're looking at about having it at the outset very early on engagement and dialogue about looking at the risks of the individual project identifying what the compliance risks are and then setting out early in the building launch stage prior to approval what needs to be seen, what needs to be evidence what needs to have alternative evidence what the compliance plan manager would be overseeing and doing their own independent checks prior to the verifiers coming out so there is certain aspects of it and this is what the futures board working group's been looking at it's one of the streams we've been working on for a couple of years so there is improvements to be made but we are working with the Scottish Government trying to deliver on that Do you see there being a check list almost of things that should be there almost like an MOT type certificate certificate of compliance of construction or something like that because we're all laypersons buying a house we wouldn't know I wouldn't know if there was sound insulation in my house if I was buying a new house so you're relying on the professionals to tell you that there's a set of things that are required and for that to be signed off in a sense and is that, do we have that yet in that kind of system? It would be the difficult one to answer new build, yeah you can tie regulations that were enforced when something was constructed older properties sound insulation if it doesn't fail to a greater degree if it was kind of a separate wall of fashion beforehand and it's been converted into flats there wouldn't really be a regulation you could apply in that regard so a simplistic list would be I don't think it would really be possible certainly something that as I say Scottish Government and labs and other stakeholders could certainly strive towards I can't think of an easy solution in that regard Do you recognise that this is an issue that's a potential issue even going forward now that when people do buy a house one of their principal concerns must be is it fire safe and somebody should tell them there is and they should be able to see that and documentary evidence there is without opening up cavities and having a look surely that should be recorded somewhere and that assurance that the house you're about to buy complies with all these requirements do people get that as purchase system or is it through the survey process from the building standards process we take reasonable enquiry but it's not something specifically for the end user there's no way that a surveyor even if you did what we call a level 2 inspection a more thorough inspection it's not an intrusive inspection fire safety usually are hidden issues behind cladding, cavity barriers they should have sound insulation they just wouldn't be seen you inspect a building you only look at what you can visibly see on the surface so those sort of issues wouldn't be mentioned in any kind of survey report unless it was an intrusive building survey and I would assume that your constituent who had that issue was because there was an EWS1 assessment done on the building and then a qualified person went along and had a look and did some intrusive inspections and that's it's been commented on a couple of times that the EWS1 system has shone a light onto some of the issues in buildings but without you know the developer has the responsibility for building it the local authority for passing building control then after that no one else will inspect a building and consider those matters at all unless an EWS1 assessment is carried out therein lies the actual problem convener that when the house was constructed the builder subsequently went out of business and couldn't perform any remediation and the owner was basically left with it and unable to sell it and it's that issue I'm trying to get that here whether we've improved that those circumstances are not for the public in Scotland buying and selling houses John Paul I would say that the Scottish Government one of the work streams are looking at post completion powers so that's something that's been in dialogue for a while but it's very early doors it's about possible again I'm speaking behalf of the Scottish Government but high level issues about an opportunity that they could maybe do is something that's very early days and still looking at the legalities of it and whether it would be building standards or another who would be the person to enforce it because it could be a period of time after completion has been granted Do you know if there's any equivalent work going on with the UK Government in this area and I was talking about building MOTs it was a phrase we used at a previous committee to try and articulate this better for purchases is that a concept that makes sense to us? Do you know if the UK Government are going down that route of trying to provide greater assurance to the buyers that their house is fit for purpose in regard to the issues that I've mentioned? No, I'm aware that they've extended the responsible person who's usually the building owner of the freehold they've extended their responsibilities in terms of fire safety to I believe it's the entrance doors to the flats but no, I'm not aware of any equivalent to what the single building assessment would be would be a full and detailed inspection of each building Nigel, have you anything to offer in that regard of realising I've not come to you yet if you could help me? No, I'm not too close to any additional information on that from the UK Government perspective but I think there's some broader work that's been done across industry with agents, with surveyors, with fire engineers actually for almost a confidence about information around a building properties are marketed that the potential purchases are given as much information as possible and they're fully aware of what type of building they're buying into and if any sort of mediation work has been done is under way or any fire safety assessments have been undertaken play information is sort of passed on to consumers at the earliest point community and I think that's the whole broader transaction piece I think that will help more assurance to buying and sending of these types of properties Okay, thanks very much Nigel thanks several of me for your contribution Thanks Willie, we're just going to come back to Miles who's got another question There's a few questions further to the theme Willie was pursuing there because I think one of the issues which has been raised with me was with regards to the new regulations not including schools, hotels hospitals and potentially other high-risk buildings I just wondered what your view was why they haven't been included Let me come to you That's regarding the high-risk living meter There was certain scope of which it could be applied I think it does include certain high-risk buildings In England and Wales it's specifically included but I think they're still permitted to have this cladding on them Maybe we need to get back to that I was under the impression that there may be certain footprint areas and things but if it's a high-risk building regardless of our technical standards certain things can't be on them It's called the A1 or A2 I know a lot of this is technical as well when we're asking between the two systems as well and just finally I wondered in terms of SMEs and what we're referring to often as potential often buildings what data if any you have on what that looks like in Scotland and SME exposure in Scotland to that and what could be a significant cost for these companies as well which I might not be able to meet in the future whether or not there's any data on that you're aware of from a building standards perspective I don't have any knowledge of that information No information on that Thank you That brings us to the end of our questions but I thought maybe I'd just open it up and see if there's anything that we haven't and we've asked questions but you might have something that's important for us to hear so if there's anything else that we haven't covered I'd appreciate hearing from you Callum A comment about the building safety act in England that has unlocked lending because the government has a statute which now has a presumption that lease holders will not pay we don't have that in Scotland there's no statute behind it, it's just the single building assessment so that's obviously something that the Scottish Government haven't done but obviously if the government were to give an assurance about certain buildings that they were going to cover the cost then I believe that that would be considered by lenders Okay Bring us more in line to the situation in England at the moment So it comes back to the need for some legislation potentially there Possibly Anything else from anybody else? I'm sure it doesn't have to be Okay, great So that brings us to the end of our evidence and we really appreciate you coming in to talk to us As we agreed at the start of the meeting to take the next item in private I will now close the public part of the meeting