 Cymru, a chynau'r 17 ymddianyddion o'r gwaith oedd y Gweithleidydd a Gweithleidydd yn 2019. Felly, rwy'n cael ei bod yn fawr i ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddechrau. Y genadau 1 er gyd yn mynd i'w cilydd i'w ddweud o'r genadau 4, 5 i'r ddiogel, rwy'n credu i'r ddweud. Mae'n ddweud i'w ddweud. Agend item 2, the committee will hold its second evidence session in the empty homes in Scotland. I'd like to welcome Sarah Jane Lane, executive director of Scottish Lands and Estates, Andrew Mitchell, regulatory services manager, housing and regulatory services, City of Edinburgh Council, Joan McClellan, senior strategy officer, corporate and housing services, Falkirk, Maureen Flynn, strategy and policy advisor, housing and technical resources, South Lanarkshire Council and Isabel Butt, vacant property development officer, Perth and Kinross Council. We'll move straight on to the questions that I'd like to start with Graham Simpson. Thank you very much, convener. Morning everyone. We had the Scottish Empty Homes partnership before us just the other week and their view is that every council should have a dedicated empty homes officer so I'm not sure because I haven't checked which among you have that but perhaps you could say if you do what difference that makes and if you don't, why don't you and whether you think it matters. If I go first then I think Edinburgh's in the process of changing so we had an empty homes officer. The committee decided a couple of years to mainstream it in order to make a broader base of staff doing that. Recently as part of the council's budget there's an agreement to fund once again an empty homes officer so we are currently in the process of recruiting to that post in order to give a renewed focus on empty homes. We have an empty homes officer. We've had an empty homes officer since 2003. We're part of a shared service initially with Lake Manningshire Council and Stirling Council but since 2016 we've had our own dedicated empty homes officer. We now have two empty homes officers and they share, they work on buybacks and empty homes and it's made a big difference to us. The number of empty homes that we've brought back, we've brought back the last six years or just over 400 empty properties back into use. That's impressive. So you went from having no empty homes officer to two? Yeah, it's one full-time equivalent. They do work on our buyback scheme as well. Two officers. Okay, there's a full court council. It's South Manningshire Council. We don't have a dedicated will. We have a development and private sector team and part of their remit, part of their responsibility is in relation to empty homes and the open market purchase buybacks that you mentioned as well. The thinking behind that is that we want to ensure a strategic approach to empty homes and linking it clearly back to our local housing strategy and we think that that is, in terms of effectiveness and resources, we think that's the right response in South Manningshire. A strategic approach is council speak and not many people outside of councils will know what you mean by that. I think that we just want to make sure that the link back to our local housing strategy, which is where we would kind of identify our priorities in terms of housing supply and demand within South Manningshire. So the development and private sector team fit in as part of that overall approach. Let's say that they have a wider remit, they look at the empty homes but also open market purchase and it also housing supply across South Manningshire. So it's part of that, I would say, a more holistic approach, I think. Market purchase is waiting until houses are on the market. It's not tackling empty homes necessarily. I'm just mentioning that in relation to the fact that it's a wider, the team has a wider remit. Okay, and Isabel But? Yes, we've had, in Perth and Cunroth council, we've had empty homes officers since 2012. We deal with it slightly differently because we're in planning and development whereas all the other empty homes officers sit in housing. So there's two of us who work part-time so it's 1.6 full-time equivalent and we bring back 150 empty homes per annum. We're on target this year for that. 150 a year? A year. And how long has that been going on for? Well, it's since 2012 but it's not been 150 every year that's our target for this year. And that's assisted by having an empty home's officer. So that makes a big difference. Okay, that's very useful. Can I ask about the use of the council tax levy, which is available to you for empty homes, and whether any of you have used that and how you've used it? Again, the position in Edinburgh is that the council is utilising those powers to its maximum. There is a staged process of depending on how long the property is empty and the money generated is then used to contribute to the council's affordable homes. So the council is, wherever possible, exercising that income stream as a way of funding other things and of discouraging homes from remaining empty. So you do use that but in every case? I think that there is some discretion for some extreme cases but the vast majority of cases I think the council will use that and will not apply the percentage. Okay. We've been using the levy since 2017 and it's for property that's been empty for more than 12 months. We do have discretion. They can apply for discretion if the property is undergoing major works. Discretion is for 50 per cent and it's usually for six months although they can apply for further discretion after the six months as well and it's used to fund the empty homes officer. Oh, the extra money goes towards paying for the empty homes officer. How many people in the Falkirk area have asked for discretion to be applied? I'll be honest, I don't know. I need to come back to you with that. We introduced the additional levy in April of this year so it's fairly new within South Lancer. We also carried out a full review as part of the preparations for introducing it and that's resulted in some changes of categorisation so in terms of the information that we have let's say we carried out a review in advance of starting the additional levy. In terms of discretion there is limited discretion. There is discretion primarily for where it's a new owner of a property, taking on a property, taking on an empty home. I'm going to come back to you on the discretion question but if we can hear from Isabel. We've used the levy for the last two years and we use discretion with it as well and I think the carrot and stick approach has worked very well and it's been about 70 properties per annum over these last years so it's 140 in total that we've given discretion for where owners are working to repair their property so we would give them 90 per cent council tax charge for 18 months while they're doing the work. Let's just come back to that because we had a session in private with people from various areas of Scotland but there were some from South Lancer, the rural part of South Lancer and so the question arises around this discretionary power which you don't appear to be applying in South Lancer so I had some people whose homes had become empty or they'd bought empty homes wanting to do them up. They clearly wanted to renovate them, they were renovating them and then they were hit with this extra council tax charge and these are not rich people so that then appears to have meant according to what we heard as a committee that that could actually affect the renovation work, it could actually mean that these homes would be empty for longer than they would be and I guess the councils that apply the discretion are doing it for that very reason so why are you not doing that in South Lancer? As I say, the scheme has just been newly introduced in South Lancer since April of this year obviously we're monitoring the introduction of the scheme and the effectiveness of the scheme and whether the encouragement because it is a carrot and stick approach in terms of encouraging owners to bring their properties back into use and we're monitoring that closely to see do we need to rebalance it in any way or is it acting in the way that we expected or anticipated it would. In terms of discretion I think the distinction has been made between owners who have owned the property for a number of years and for whatever reason brought it back into use and new owners who are looking actively to bring the property into use. I think that's the distinction but like I say what we are doing is monitoring that closely to see is there any rebalancing need and run or is it working in the way that we anticipated. Well according to what we heard there wasn't much monitoring going on because the individuals that we spoke to were hardly having any contact from the council and I think that will be the advantage of having an empty house officer is that there would be a direct contact and it just seemed to me it sounded more stick than carrot what your approach. The development and private sector team the team are available to provide information and advice and support to owners so it's we know we don't have a named individual we have a team and from our point of view that was actually better and so far as you weren't you were having that across a wider group of people that ability to provide information and advice and support to owners was a team responsibility as opposed to an individual. Do you monitor I guess this could apply to all of you how long properties have remained empty any sort of serious cases like you know up to maybe a properties being empty for over five years say do you have records of that kind of thing our records could always be more sophisticated but yes in general terms we're able to roughly know how many years a property has been empty in terms of edinburgh's approach our activities focused largely at properties that are causing community problems which are a number in which in terms of the resource available that's who we choose to target that resource at but we do keep some statistics. We do have a date for when the property and approximate date when the property became empty so we do have an idea of properties that have been empty for a longer period of time and we do try and target them as much as we can and try and engage with the owner as much as we can okay yes likewise um our database comes from council tax we know how long they've been empty and they're the ones that we prioritize along with yeah and south lansha we also are able to tell how long the properties yeah we yes we have records of how long based on council tax records as well of how long the properties have been empty and do you prioritize those cases not specifically no no you don't because um when i was a councillor in in east cubride uh there was a there's a house in in my ward in the mosnuke area this is my final question convener um and that has been empty and boarded up for over 10 years it's a blight on on the area where it's in nothing's been done um so that's the kind of example where in my view an empty home's officer could be taking proactive action um to get that house back into use so if you you know if you kept proper records and took action on it you know we you know we could we could we could see some improvement have records we we have we share the same records as other authorities are saying as well i think sarah jane let's see if that's okay convener just from a property on his point of view the um the lack of consistency in application of the discretion when it comes to the council tax levy is quite frustrating um it's not just south lansha we're currently dealing with cases in scottish borders council in middle odine council areas just now where people have active plans to you know active repair plans some of them are actually waiting for building warrants from the council and they're having the you know the 200% levy applied without any discussion and just to pick up on your first point about the value of empty homes officers feedback from our members is that they really value the support which is given by dedicated empty team empty homes officers or teams because they can actually bring in other disciplines from the council and you can you can draw in expertise um but the you know the these guys really understand the issue that's being faced by the owners of the properties so it's it's definitely a valued resource thank you thank you grem Alexander you want to just just following on from mr simpson's questions can i ask about town centre which have empty properties now the majority we found especially in in that location would be a maybe a business on the ground floor and then on the first or second floor there are empty properties can i ask how you've been tackling that specific issue because that seems to be one of the bigger problems in ensuring that we get people back into living and dwelling within a city centre if i can kick off in that actually my first job first full-time job which was longer ago than i'd like to admit here was for ruxford district council i am tackling that very problem you know 25 nearly 30 years ago still still got the problem but again it was about an individual property basis there wasn't a blanket approach but what we did was was look at them as sort of joint housing and economic development so we tackled it together rather than tackling the housing and and the properties separately and that seemed to seem to work thinking about the regeneration that happened in in hoik and kelso at the time but it was also linked to long-term leasing and one of the things that that did work was rather than just sort of saying to people bring these properties back into use let them to whoever you want you tied them into arrangements with the local authority and it's still relevant today so that you ensure that the housing supply isn't just the short term it's that long-term housing supply but it was about incentives you know that it was about money it was about helping these people bring the properties back into use we do concentrate on town centres and we have got a grant scheme that will assist owners so we've used some of the council tax money to set up small grant schemes one of them is a feasibility fund which if somebody is needing architects drawings or quantity surveyors or engineers we can match fund their fees and also we've got an empty homes initiative grant where we give a grant to for conversion of commercial to residential or upgrading residential properties and that's tied into a local housing allowance rental for five years if I could just comment it's part of our affordable housing supply programme we are actively identifying sites within town centre areas as well for just what you're saying where it's maybe falling into disrepair or it would be a regeneration project to bring properties back in in the town centre areas particularly looking at Hamilton and East Kilbride okay can I just ask a couple of questions based on your earlier responses why did Edinburgh decide to do away with her empty homes officer in the first place was that just a purely budget decision which ended up costing them money no not at all so although we didn't have a dedicated empty homes officer we had a member of staff who had that within their role and actually one of the significant challenges we face is having people to go on the ground and go and visit these properties and inquire so that element of that was co-located between one of my teams who have responsibility for private rented sector property anyway and who are out on the ground carrying out inspection of visiting the community and the thinking was that that element of the work better sat amongst those teams and what we will move to in the next three months is that element of work will continue to sit on the grounds with that teams however there will be an empty homes officer in order to give a focus within the council for that so I don't think it was a budgetary measure it was thinking that the resource needed to be doing that false finding the properties inquiring about where the ownership was and dealing with individual property owners that you thought you could do without the empty homes officers and you're now finding you need the empty homes officer because it gives a point of contact for both the tenant that build out the home owners. I need to be somewhat careful because these are different committee decisions taken by different administrations but the current thinking is that it needs a renewed focus of having that empty homes officer attacked as the point of contact which we'd build upon I suppose having the officers on the ground. Okay thank you and I'm afraid I have to go back to South Lanarkshire and ask why you've just implemented the empty homes. Sorry the levy? What? Yeah yeah yeah the levy. And others and having implemented it. I'm sorry I'm not sure of the answer to that I can find out the background to that and come back to you. Okay but it takes it again it takes us to it looks like South Lanarkshire they're doing things a wee bit differently than most of the other places and do you have any statistics that show that the method that you're taking has been more successful than the empty homes officer the methods that the others have shown today? I take the point that was made earlier that any empty home is something that we want to look at and can potentially cause problems within our community I take that point but at South Lanarkshire we are well below the national average in terms of empty homes. Empty homes in South Lanarkshire in September 18 was 0.62 I understand that since we've carried out the review and introduced a levy because of recategorisation that has fallen further and is likely to be much lower than that again so I think what we think is that we've got this wider approach a team to help and provide advice and information and that the way that we've set up is effective for the circumstances that exist within South Lanarkshire so you know while I'm not minimising any having any empty homes I think we feel that our approach is effective and is working. Certainly the evidence we got in private sessions suggests that the need for somebody that people with concerns could contact a named person would be really really beneficial so I would suggest that South Lanarkshire at least look at trying to make sure that the information is out there for where they should go. The information is out there I mean we have a when we were contacting any owners you know in relation to the introduction of the levy we produced a leaflet we've got information on our website we're signpost owners to the team and to the availability of the team to provide advice and information. Can I just ask a number of other questions what do you think of the main reasons why homes become and remain empty? I mean there's a number of reasons it's not one overall reason I don't think there's it's poor marketing they've got other priorities they've not realised you know how much time and money it will take to refurbish a property there's issues with repossession the death of family member the reasons can be really really complex and they usually require you know the empty homes officer to give them specific advice and tailored advice and information to help them bring it back into use. A landlord's point of view I suppose there's another couple one is money you know the financial costs of bringing properties up to the standard now required to let in relation to the repairing standard and energy efficiency you know everyone wants to have high standard homes but the costs of bringing some of these very poor quality properties and there are some very poor quality properties in rural areas up to the standard. You have a high standard ton? Yeah that's something yeah we all want that and landlords want to be able to deliver that but the cost of bringing up to that is probably greater than many of them realised. Either when they brought the property or when they've looked at the property. There's also risks from a landlord's point of view some of these are not real risks they are perceived risks but a lack of understanding possibly about the new private residential tenancies and how they how it works worries about being able to get your property back and that's where the empty homes officers can actually offer advice to those landlords who maybe are just you know unaware of the realities of the tenancy regime especially those people who are who've inherited properties and suddenly become landlords by default. We find at the moment that there's lots of people looking for advice and shelter do a great job but you've still got some landlords who are really reluctant to let properties because of this perceived risk to their asset. Andrew? I think the issue about markets I think isn't one that applies in Edinburgh given the strength of the housing market in Edinburgh I think we're re-come across issues of people actively choosing to sit on the asset and not wishing to dispose of it and we have had examples of people when we engage with them saying what has it got to do with the council it's their property we're leaving it vacant. So there is some issues there again from a random perspective because of our HMO markets and student market the issues about the private the appearing standards and that is just not an issue we face locally because the demand for student accommodation and for short term lets us such that you know any property that's you know sitting there vacant and somebody might want to sell there's quite a market for it in Edinburgh to buy. Different problem from some other areas in Scotland. Did anybody else? Isabel did you want? Well I think one of the other things is that a lot of empty homes they're actually the owners are actually working on them but it's maybe ill health or something like that and it's just taking a very long time or quite often maybe tradesmen buy properties to work on when they're quiet and they're not quiet so things are happening but just very slowly and I think that's where the discretion helps as well that they've got a fixed timescale and they know that if they don't have it back in use then it'll be back on the 200 per cent council tax. Yeah and in a case like that then the advice is to continue to keep in touch with the council and let them know what's going on and show evidence of what's going on etc. Kenny, you wanted to come in on this. Just to what Mr Mitchell touched on morning panel you talked about the issue of people perhaps sitting on properties for speculative reasons and I noticed that in all of the responses that came in you were the only one who suggested there should be additional powers and you mentioned compulsory sales orders which are already being considered but you do have some caveats about that in with regard to the potential you know legal issues which could occur could you just talk us a wee bit through how you think that could work and the drawbacks that you think may be involved as well. Yeah so as our experience is there's one end you could have advice guidance and support to land loss to bring the properties back to use at the other end of the scale your only other option is compulsory purchase order which I think this council is considering a small number of cases but given the cost and the legal risk that is not really a tool that could be deployed on large scales so between those two there is really nothing and what the council has said is that it is interested in the compulsory sales aspect of it but it would depend on how that then comes out of Parliament and what that actually looks at I think if it was a process as complicated and as costly as the compulsory purchase order then that would be less attractive to the council if it was something a bit more slicker from one to a better description or less onerous or less risky financially to the council then that would be something that council certainly would consider but until the detail of that is known it's difficult to say other than the council is interested and thinks there's probably a gap between as I say advice and support and compulsory purchase. Yeah I mean my understanding is we've obviously still to see any perspective legislation on that but the idea is it's to be fairly simple and straightforward whereby properties where nobody's done anything with for years are effectively put up for auction but I notice no one else raised that particular issue I'm just wondering what the other members of the panel think about that particular policy tool specifically for empty homes in your area would it be useful? I think it would be useful. We don't tend to use CPO for single dwellings or we haven't up till now but we are looking at using it for large ISOR properties maybe in the town centre like big hotels and things like that but I think there is a case for CPO but if compulsory sales well yes for using CPO but also I think definitely compulsory sales orders would be good if they are quicker and simpler to use. Yeah that's key. I would agree with those comments that I think it'd be a useful tool just depending on how easy it is to apply and simple. I think it would just be good to have another option available as well as you know advice and information on CPO and any other options are always you know. Okay, did Scottish land in estates? Wishes with the use of compulsory sale orders when they were first talked about I mean the arson is that you know that last stop you know when all other intervention has failed and as long as they are used they're workable for the local authorities then surely they'll be more effective than the CPO regime which which isn't being used at the moment and of course that there are other wider land form measures that communities can use as well as local authorities. I think the neglect and abandon provisions might offer opportunities for areas where there are empty properties for a community to actually exercise their rights if the local authority doesn't want to do that so that enforced sale as a backstop is something that we as property owners accept in extreme situations. Thank you for that. Okay, Alex. Yeah, can I just briefly go back to the council tax? How successful has the councils having the ability to have this this surcharge? How successful has that been, you know, has it increased the number of homes coming back in? Yes, I would say it definitely has. We've found you know that we were saying we're 70 properties per annum and now rather than us having to write out to empty home owners, they're now phoning council tax complaining about the surcharge and they're put directly through to us so we're finding it much easier to engage with home owners because they're already contacting the council rather than us having to to get in touch with them which is usually by letter or something, a lot often not replied to. Yeah and the flexibility, this question because that's what people who've experienced were saying that it seems to be a hit or a mass depending on what authority. Do you think there needs to be better guidance, further guidance in terms of flexibility? What we seem to be hearing in one of the sessions was that people were trying to get their house fixed and they were coming up against other barriers and then to top it all off they were then being told to have to pay double council tax and that they said meant that it was delaying them having the funding to actually get the house back in a decent shape. So this flexibility, is it? Who decides in terms of flexibility and is there a need for further guidance? I think because the guidance is just guidance I think every local authority seems to be interpreting it differently so I mean I don't know if it needs to be more explicit and needs to actually say that you know there needs to be discretion or a certain amount you know it needs to be six months discretion I'm not sure but there seems to be differences between every local authority. When we introduced our surcharge we didn't initially have discretion and then we were finding lots of cases where people were coming to us and saying well I just can't afford to do this work so we had to actually put these cases to our revenues manager and he then did a paper to the council but it might be that there is a case that is not rather a discretionary it's part of the legislation possibly. Perhaps get a look at that paper that you're talking about and the final point I would make is you mentioned that you used some of that additional funding for to support town centre housing development what about other authorities that extra funding that's coming in how is it used to try and support getting more empty homes back into into ownership use? I think as I explained earlier I think the funding stream in Edinburgh is mainly used to supplement the affordable homes given that councils trying to build thousands of new homes in order to deal with some of the housing issues in the city that was a political decision of the council that money coming in from that would be used to supplement and support that and in effect be put to a positive use rather than paying for existing council services. It's been used for the supply of affordable homes. It's only recently been introduced and the impact and the effect on the revenue streams is still to be assessed. We also use it for salaries for empty homes staff as well. Okay, right, thanks very much. Annabelle? Returning to the issue of enforcement. On the issue of compulsory purchase orders, I think it was Falkirk council in their submission who said that you've used it twice. Any indication of the usage in other council areas represented to you today? We took a report through committee at the request in January of this year. We have identified about four or five quite problematic properties that have been sitting bordered up because of anti-social behaviour and concern in the community. Having been challenged by councillors to see what more we could do, the option is compulsory purchase. The downside of that is funding the compulsory purchase order whereas the advice that we are getting is that you could be up to £20,000 to £30,000 per property and, although she might recoup that at the eventual sale, it is at up-front costs. We are currently working our way through some business cases in order to ask for financial permission to pursue some of those compulsory purchase orders in the most problematic cases. You say that you've been given advice that the cost could be anything between £20,000 to £30,000, but, first of all, that's quite a wide margin of variation. Also, what is the principal cost and what are the costs and how is that broken down? The principal cost is raising the court action and the risk factor, as I understand it, I'm not from our legal services but the risk factor is that if the court process is disputed and fought, the more resistant to the compulsory purchase order the person is, the higher the legal costs. Our main focus is on information advice and support and liaison with other departments in the council to see how we can bring the property back into use. We would only consider our compulsory purchase order in exceptional circumstances. Have you been any recent? Not that I'm aware of, but I welcome back to you and I think not that I'm aware of. We've had one but not in the recent past, some time ago. Obviously, there's a feeling that the CPO route is not your first choice, and Mr Gibson has aired the issue of the compulsory sale order powers, which we would hope to see. Short of that in the interim, particularly councils have other enforcement options available. Is that not the case? Work notices, for example, maintenance orders? Short of trying to tackle ownership by CPO, there are other routes. I just wondered what extent, if any, local authorities make use of the other powers that they currently have? My teams in the council would deal with those powers. I think that I would describe them as powers to mitigate problems. If somebody is having water ingress because they are linked to home above them or there's a problem caused by safety, the council has powers to intervene. However, that doesn't often move as much forward in terms of resolving empty homes. It's mainly a case of managing the impact of it as opposed to solving the long-term empty homes problem. I have my suspicion that you would find this patchy across Scotland because, in doing so, the council is taking on the financial risk of, if you enter the property, you repair the property to solve the problem, unless you can find the owner to get them to pay the bill, then you bear the cost. I'm not sure to what extent those powers are actively used across the country. For example, you raised the issue of tracing ownership in a minute, but with regard to the example that you gave a moment ago about properties with regard to which the council was actively looking at the cost benefit analysis of CPOs, in circumstances where you anticipate that there could be a challenge so that the owner is not going to just lie down and give up the property, that would suggest that those would be circumstances where actually you could seek to have the owner or seek to have repairs affected and that the owner would have to pay up. What analysis do you do of that? It seems that there will be circumstances in which, if you feel that the risk of challenge to the CPO is such, there must be other things that can be done to get, if there is an active owner, or at least an identifiable owner, to have the owner pay out so that the building is not an eyesore, which one can think of many across Scotland, for example. I take your point, but I don't think that there is powers to stop a building being an eyesore. I think that there is a power to stop it if it is causing a nuisance to other residents or the wider community. You could argue that it is a nuisance or it would make the property unsafe. If it is just boarded up and looking unsightly, I am not aware of any specific power that would allow the council to require the owner to do something about that. Certainly, I would need to go back and double check, but my view is that the properties that we are considering a compulsory purchase order is where we have exhausted all options of engaging with the owner, and they are simply either not able or not unwilling to, for various reasons, to move forward. Therefore, the compulsory purchase order is the last option that the council has to bring a resolution. There are powers that we have. Definitely, empty homes officers do not have any enforcement powers, but we speak to building standards in environmental health. The difficulty is that building standards are more concerned with public safety for a building, and if a building is dangerous or they are more concerned about just fencing it off and keeping the public away or possibly removing some slates that have fallen off or something like that, that is what their concern is, rather than bringing the property back into use. It comes down to budgets. Again, environmental health and building standards do not have budgets to carry out the work. If there is no chance of getting the money back, often we cannot put a charge on the titles for some of the legislation, so it is just too much of a risk and they do not have the money to do that, unfortunately. Any other thoughts from Falkirk? The rest are reluctance to use work notices because, again, because the budget costs, if you do seven notices, we have to go in and undertake the work and not be able to get the money back from the owner and not having the budgets available in the council. It is just too risky. Mr Mitchell raised the interesting question of where the owner is not readily identifiable. In those circumstances, what steps are open to you at the moment to try to trace the identity of the owner? It is very difficult, I think, once you have exhausted the normal means of trying to trace the owner on the land register, letter the property, ask neighbours, etc., inquire with the police. We have a significant number of cases where we do not know the reason why they are empty simply because we cannot find or get in contact with whoever happens to be the occupier or owner of the building. That, in itself, is a challenge. It is more likely to be the case if somebody is perhaps in hospital. That can be traced sometimes, but often not. Or if a deaf person has the estate, we are to contact him, etc. There is no immediately obvious place to go to find that information and it is a real barrier in some of our cases. Any other examples or areas in which you find a potential solution to those conundrums? We can use people finding companies to try to trace owners or the Queen's and Lord's treasurer's remembrance. It is a useful point of contact as well, where it is a property where somebody has died without leaving a will or something like that. In terms of the tracing of ownership, are there any things that you feel would help local authorities? Any improvements that could be brought about that could help you in your task? Any particular obstacles at the moment? You mentioned, for example, somebody being in hospital and that you might manage to trace them, presumably if there were some way of dealing with data protection issues that might help local authorities. Again, your examples are based on feedback on the ground. You can then join the dots and then think that that person might be in hospital, then you go and ask the questions of the relevant section, but unless you have that indication, there is no central register of who happens to be in hospital at any one time. It is often by the fieldwork that gets you out of the back and itself is resource intensive. When there lives abroad, even in southern Ireland, we have difficulty tracking people down, or if the property is owned by a company or a trust that has registered abroad, it is just virtually impossible to get in contact with the owner. Is there a limit to how long a property can be lying empty where you cannot get in contact with the owner, despite the fact that you have made all reasonable attempts to do so? At that stage, you can take some action? As I think in the Edinburgh case, the answer would be no. I think that there are the ones that we are pursuing a CPO and are pursuing because of the impact in the community. I am sure that, if we went back and checked the data, there will be a number that is just empty that is not causing any impact to the community other than the loss of the home to the housing supply, and they are probably just sitting there in abeyance, absent any power to— So that they can live there until they fall down? What, they can stand there until they fall down? Pretty much. I want to look at the question of financial support, because I think that councils provide schemes of assistance and the Scottish Government has provided various schemes in the past. So, without going into the detail of your schemes of assistance that you have given some information on, do you think that we need to improve the financial incentives and the financial support that is available to owners to bring property back into use? I think that our local experience is probably not so much relevant to us, given the buoyancy of the housing market. Maybe we will give the issue of providing public funding to homes that are quite buoyant housing market then be sold on. I suspect that we will be more of an issue where some of the areas where the housing market is not strong and communities are feeling that impact. I am not just talking about giving people money. If, for example, the council tax supplement was to be made a thousand per cent and kick in after 10 years, I mean, those kinds of financial incentives that I am talking about, as well as grants and loans, et cetera. I suspect, again, that the answer would probably be that any income would probably still be diverted to building affordable housing given the pressure of the council. The other pressure that the council faces is, of course, short-term lets in the loss of thousands of properties to that. Again, those are probably more likely to receive priority rather than grants for empty homes, although it is an important issue and we are not complacent about it as compared to some of the other issues, not what is high up in the risks. Others, if we are known or just need 10 grand or 20 grand to bring a home back into use, are you in a position to assist? Yes, we are. We have also used the Government's interest-free empty homes loan fund as well. We have exhausted that, too. Our grants and loans are always used up, and there is always other demand in the pipeline as well. You have an annual budget that you set for it and it is always used up. Are you keeping it the same or are you attempting to increase it? Where there is additional funds, they sometimes get a top up during the year, but it has been the same for a few years. Those are loans to your scheme of assistance? No, there are grants and loans. There is a Scottish Government empty home loan fund, which is an interest-free loan, and we also have our empty homes initiative grant, which is £15,000. Anna, you are finding them quite successful in terms of... Very successful, yes. Okay. South Lanarkshire and Falkirk, are you? In South Lanarkshire, our focus is on information and advice, not a specific loan or grant, but what we would do is signposts, if there was any available loans or grants to the individual, we would signpost them to that, but we do not provide a budget ourselves. Have you ever provided a scheme of assistance or has it ever been contemplated? There is a scheme of assistance, but I would need to come back to you with more information on that. We are part of the empty homes loan fund, but we have really struggled to spend that, I will be honest with you. Owners are reluctant to give their properties up for five years for affordable housing. We are reviewing it at the moment, and I think what we have found is that owners probably need a grant or a loan to occupy rather than to make it available for affordable housing. We were looking at that. Okay, in terms of landlord. From a member's point of view, the rural empty property grant, which was a grant a few years ago, which was exactly like the new empty homes loan fund, when you did turn your property over, I think it was for 10 plus years for affordable housing, was really useful. The private sector housing grants and the loan scheme that used to be there, which had everything from a few hundred pounds a deal with a specific problem up to the private and the rural empty property grant, was really useful. It allowed you to deal with all the different, I suppose, a whole spectrum of reasons as to why properties were empty. Again, the difficulty is that different local authorities take different approaches to this, so you could be in person, can Ross be able to access it, but you could be in another local authority and that support just isn't available, so that's the challenge from a landlord's point of view, is the inconsistency of support that's available. The rural fund that you were talking about was a national fund? That was a national fund, and that one definitely was. It was a national fund from Community Scotland, I think it was at the time. Was that ever evaluated? I don't know if there was an official evaluation, there may have been, but it was subsumed into new funds, but those funds really are focused on new build, and they seem to work a lot better for new build and for bringing properties back into you. The rural and islands housing fund that we have just now just doesn't seem to be quite hitting the spot when it comes to empty properties, and I'm not sure why that is. So is it your view therefore that we need to look again at the funds available at a national level, which used to be in place, which could assist in bringing homes back into use? I think so. I think that when you have targeted schemes, rather than the broad schemes that can cover any kind of housing, when you have targeted schemes to address a real problem, they do seem to work. We still have properties across Scotland, which were brought back into use as a result of those, and they are still providing affordable housing 20 odd years later. Okay, thanks very much. I just want to ask about VAT. Sergi, when you say in your submission on page 6—sorry, it might be our page 6, or I think it's your page 2—that when you're refurbishing a long-term let, VAT cannot be reclaimed. You say that there is an HMRC incentive scheme where an owner of a property empty for two years or more can apply for a letter to prove that the property has been empty. Then, if it has been, and renovations are carried out by VAT registered trader, they may be eligible for a reduced VAT rate of 5 per cent, and if it's 10 years empty, 0. I'm not quite sure if you're saying something different or not. I think that we're probably talking about the same thing. I think that it's different VAT treatment depending on where your property is in that kind of spectrum of emptiness, if that makes sense. It does appear that the longer you leave it empty, the more chance you have of HMRC having a slightly different approach to your VAT, which is counterintuitive to what we're trying to address here. That seems to be the feedback from the members in terms of VAT. Falkirk Council's evidence says that if you have two years or more, you can get a discount of 5 per cent. That would be helpful. You get that would be helpful, because if you get nothing at six months and nine months, you leave your property empty for two years to trigger your 5 per cent VAT. That seems counterintuitive to us. I understand that. That is certainly the case, because we give out letters confirming how long properties have been empty for where property owners can provide that to their contractor and they just pay 5 per cent on the invoice. They don't have to reclaim it or anything, but we don't really see many people holding their property for two years just so that they can get it. I must say that it's normally long-term empty properties that are being brought back into use. I think that that's very helpful. On the question of data, we have data from the national records of Scotland. We have data from the assessors, which councils hold on council tax liabilities. The empty homes partnership told us last week that they are embarking a project to better to improve the availability of data, particularly at a more detailed level to know exactly where empty homes are, especially. Do you, as councils, know where all the empty homes in your council area are, as opposed to just the gross number? Yes, we do know where they are. We have addresses and we can put that on as GIS and have a look at them. We have done that. It hasn't been terribly helpful. It seems to be all the settlements within our council area have empty properties and spread across the rural area, so there wasn't any particular area that showed up as a particular problem. We do know how accurate it is. I'm not sure, because there are always properties that owners don't want to admit to the council that the property is empty, because it would have to be 200 per cent. According to council tax, a property may be occupied, but it's not. We can't say that the information that we have is absolutely accurate. It's hard to know how it is. Do you have any idea how many people might be failing to disclose that it's empty for fear of getting out? A small number that we've come across, but I'm sure that there's a lot more out there. Any other issues around data? I think that we've just recently, in our most recent report, been asked by elected members to do that exercise of looking at it per ward of the council to see if there was any particular hotspots. I think that our experience, perhaps, might be slightly different, that it appears to be fairly consistent across all the wards within the council, with slightly more in the city centre, but generally there's no discernible pattern that we have gone through that exercise. As my colleague said, it's based on people who are known and being charged a surcharger in that category, whereas if you are not known to the council or the assessor or haven't declared, I hesitate to use unknown unknowns, but there's that kind of number there that we have come across, like my colleague, a small number that we have detected and obviously surcharged on that basis, but to what extent authorities can actively look out empty homes in order to charge us. Our charge is questionable. We know where they are. We have the addresses. We've analysed that and there's no particular area other than potentially some rural areas where it's around a mismatch between supply and demand. The issues are wider than empty homes. It's around, let's say, a mismatch just due to changes in population, economic changes. It's a much wider structural problem than the empty homes, where the empty homes are a part of that, a feature of it, but other than that, they're understanding where the empty homes are. They didn't throw up any particular areas other than a question around rural. I mean they don't throw up any particular obvious areas especially, but it does allow you to make contact or attempt to make contact with owners and find out if there's any patterns in terms of why they're empty. That presumably depends on how much resource you have to do that through empty homes officers or any other service. I'm just wondering, as a matter, I mean this is just an anecdote, but 25 years ago there's an empty house on the outskirts of Edinburgh. 25 years ago, we wrote to the land owner asking if we could buy it to improve it and they said, no, today it's still empty. I'm just wondering, as a matter of principle, whether that's right. You know, whether someone should be allowed to leave a property empty for 25 years. I'm not going to use the committee to put in a bid for it, are you? Sorry, I'm not using the committee to put in a bid for it, are you? No, no, I'm not interested any more a bit, just as a matter of principle. I certainly, from my perspective, my tolerance of empty homes appears to be reducing and certainly if you take your account so I suspect it's probably one of the properties that's on our problem hit list in terms of ones that we are concerned with. I think 10 years ago it wouldn't have been in any of these radar in terms of a problem in terms of empty homes. It might have been in terms of anti-social behaviour, perhaps, but in my sense it's in a political environment that's working and it's less acceptable and there's more willingness to use some of the other powers that we spoke about earlier. Is that house going to be part of the effective housing supply? No, there's no excuse for it being empty for that law. In principle, we should be looking at whether through finance, fiscal incentives or enforcement powers or acquisition powers to bring all property that is empty into use. As a matter of public policy, that should be our goal. We're all agreed on that. I think that the only exception is where those properties, as someone said earlier, are in areas where the housing need is a mismatch with the housing supply, so bringing seven or eight-bedroom properties back into use when the demand is for one and two-bedroom flats doesn't seem right unless you convert that property. The conversion of some of those properties is fairly problematic and planning has been turned down in some areas for the conversion of large houses. I suppose that's the only situation where you might bring it back into use and its current form might not be the best approach. I'm definitely, yes, subject to there being proper controls to protect people's rights, so that if you look at the range of powers that councils have, they all have a check and balance in terms of to make sure that they're used appropriately. Subject to that, then, I see no reason why an empty home should be continued to sit there as an asset. In Edinburgh, for example, you're saying that because the market's buoyant, potentially it's not so much of a problem, but you did say earlier that you're focusing on empty homes that are identified through people that come to you saying that it's a problem. However, there are empty homes sitting there that are not a problem, but there's still a problem in the sense that they're out of the housing supply. Will it be Edinburgh's intention to bring all the empty homes back into use or to do as much as it can to bring every empty home back into use? I can't prejudge what the council will do once we see the powers, but I think that the council is giving a commitment to look positively at the powers. As I say, if you look at some of the issues that we've faced in terms of short-term lets, there is an acute concern in Edinburgh, the amount of properties that one way or another are being lost to the supply of affordable housing in the city, and making what is already a challenging environment more difficult. I can't imagine that the council wouldn't look at those powers positively. Just as before, I bring in Alexander Stewart. This is for you, Serigent. Why do you think that there are proportionally more empty homes, properties in rural areas? I think that it's not fit to do with market failure. We mentioned before that the properties that were in the rural areas might not meet the modern demand, either in terms of size, location and quality is a big issue. If you look at the Scottish house condition survey, the quality of some of Scotland's rural properties is very poor, so some of them are sitting empty just now waiting renovation. Some of it is because of strange links to other pieces of legislation, whether that's agricultural holdings legislation or other bits and pieces. Sometimes housing legislation doesn't fit with other stuff. What then results in is empty houses, and that's something that we're trying to address with the Scottish Government and others, because it's wrong to have farm cottages sitting empty, but at the same time, if you've got farmers and others who are reluctant to have people in the middle of farming operations because of either health and safety or other issues, you kind of understand why a property might be empty, but then we have to look at, how does that property meet housing needs? How do you support the farmer? How do you support the estate in making that available? There's no one reason. I think that somebody said earlier that there are so many reasons, but it's further complicated in the rural areas because of this interplay with agricultural holdings. What would be the effectiveness of the loan funds or the Scottish Government's rural and island housing fund tackling these empty properties? As I touched on earlier, the rural and island housing fund hasn't quite hit the mark. Again, because of the obstacles of applying, it's very difficult for an individual to apply to the loan fund, which means that it's probably more suited to larger-scale development, and by large scale I mean four or five new houses, not massive scale, whereas the rural and empty property grants and some of the local authority grants were very targeted at individual properties. Because most of those are property-by-property basis, that's why they worked better in tackling the empty homes. Advice on how they could make it more applicable for single houses? I think that changing the eligibility criteria for who can apply, although I appreciate that as with any Government loan fund, you have to have that kind of high barrier to access public funds, but if you're restricting access to groups, companies, constituted bodies rather than individuals, then it's unlikely to hit some of the rural and empty properties that we're talking about. We've already had some discussion this morning about the housing strategy and the links that there may well be, so can I maybe ask each of you how sufficiently joined up is the empty home strategy linked with the wider housing strategies to ensure that you get that need? Because there obviously is a disparity at the moment between what you want, what you have and what you can achieve. Who wants to go first? We don't actually have an empty home strategy. Our empty home strategy is embedded in the local housing strategy, so it is just one, and that's where our target for bringing back empty properties lies. But do you think that that's robust enough? Do you think that that is sufficient enough to have? Because in other locations there are the two? I think that it works well for us. For you? For us, yes. Okay. Morhyn, you touched on the other about how the strategies were linked. Like my colleague here, our approach to homes is embedded within our local housing strategy, so we can see that our local housing strategy has been our encompassing, our overall approach to housing supply and demand and contributing to balanced housing markets, and that's why we've taken the approach that we have. And in amongst all of that, there has been some budgetary funding that's helped to try and assess that from the strategy that you're trying to put together? Yes, I would say so, yes. I'm not wanting to go back to the previous question, but I think that one of the things that we haven't really talked about this morning is housing sustainability, and that's where I think having a wider focus is a benefit. When we're talking about rural communities and perhaps there being a mismatch between supply and demand, I think that one of the approaches that we're taking through our local housing strategy is to think about sustainability. How do we ensure the future sustainability of the housing within these communities and making sure that it's fit for purpose? And sometimes that can be about consolidation rather than always wanting to bring every property. It might be that actually there's an oversupply in particular areas or an oversupply of a particular type or a particular size, so I think we find that's a benefit where we can actually link it back to what's sustainable within that community and what is going to be best for the residents of that community. We are doing a piece on empty homes, which is why that's been our focus. Of course, Falkirk does have an empty homes plan, and it's also embedded within the local housing strategy. We're reviewing our empty homes plan this year, but empty homes is within our housing supply target. We've got a target for bringing back empty homes within our local housing strategy. Do you have enough resource to fund that? From your original budget? Or are you bringing extra funds in to try and make that happen? I'll be honest, I'm not sure. I suppose that empty homes is clearly embedded in our overall approach to housing supply and housing strategy. It is, but there are a number of issues that the council is currently challenged by. We're considering rent pressure zones, we're considering the impact of short-term lets. Empty homes is an important factor, our approach to mixed tenure, improving the standard within those blocks where if there are owner occupiers, how you deal with them. It is an important part of that. In terms of resources, available resources are stretched across all those fronts. Empty homes is competing against a range of good causes within that basket of issues that the council is trying to maximise the impact of its strategy and actions in order to improve the situation. You've identified that having the dedicated support and mechanism there to ensure that that becomes the case will make a massive impact and has made a massive impact in your communities and councils already. It's a no-brainer in reality. By investing in that and supporting it, it is making a big difference. We've already heard what's been happening elsewhere in the United Kingdom about how they've tackled some of those policies and have developed very, very good abilities to make things happen. However, it has to be focused and financially viable and supported to make it develop effectively in your own communities. On the issue of taxation, which is in the Scottish land estate submission, we touched on VATL, which is a reserve. In your submission, you talk about capital gains tax, which is also a reserve. What change would you like to see in that in capital gains? I don't think that we're suggesting that there should be any change. I think that we're just outlining what the taxation levers or taxation considerations are at the moment in terms of property owners deciding to leave their property empty or not. There weren't any specific taxation changes that we thought could be made. From what I've read, there's a kind of frustration in it. That's why I asked the question, as you say. If, however, the accommodation would be retained as a tied house or rented as a holy home, it would have been eligible for agriculture or business relief. It's almost as if you feel the same kind of consideration should be given towards other properties. Landowners are always frustrated with the taxation system, but what we were trying to draw out there was this disparity of treatment between something that is, again, back to agricultural holdings. Is it a property in a farm or is it a house? There are a number of cases where judgments would suggest that there are different treatments of houses that are deemed to be part of the farm and ones that are not. I'm just curious as to, given those points that you've just raised, that you don't want to see any real change in the regime then? It's one of those really complicated ones. There might be changes that would be advantageous in terms of bringing empty properties back into use, but we would be disadvantageous from a farm sale. It's looking at those altogether. There might be taxation levers that, if you looked at the empty homes aspect of it, could act as a lever, but we then have to understand what the implications might be for properties that are part of farms and estate sales. Do you think that the balance is right then, at the moment? I think that it probably is, but I think that we would have to do some modelling just to see how many properties would fall within the residential and how many properties would fall within the farm and the agricultural property relief element of it. It just shows for us that taxation is not about delivering social policy and that's a frustration. I suppose that's a wide frustration that trying to get HMRC to think about taxation from a social policy point of view to from a housing point of view is something that we've tried to do for a while. It seems ludicrous that you can get IHT conditional exemptions for pieces of works of art, but you can't get them for affordable housing, which is an asset that is arguably more public interest than some of the national pieces of works of art. Again, we were raising the fact that you have taxation that seems to be treating different houses differently, and it's something that we could look at. Is there anything else to get any comment on this particular area? I just might be on an observation that any changes to tax rules to incentivise empty homes that can be brought back into use should be about use as a home. We have a separate concern about the tax system incentivising people to have short-term lets, so we'd need to be careful that any change didn't make that problem worse. Thank you very much, and I now thank the panel very much for attending today's session. That was very useful. For us, Nick Stepp is an inquirable way to make a visit to Stersia to visit communities impacted by empty homes. We'll also have a private discussion on today's evidence and on Nick Stepp's at the end of this meeting. Thank you very much again for your attendance.