 Good morning and welcome everyone to the 20th meeting of the education and skills committee in 2017. I am pleased to remind everyone present to turn on mobile phones and other devices on to silent for the duration of the meeting. Apologies have been received from Julian Martin I welcome Claire Adamson who is attending as a substitute. The first item of business is a decision on whether to take items of business in private. Firstly, is everyone content that item 6 of this meeting be taken in private? Secondly, do members agree to consider the draft report on school infrastructure in private at future meetings? Thank you very much. The next item of business is the third and final evidence session of the committee's inquiry into school infrastructure. This inquiry is focusing on the lessons to be learned from the incidents at Oxgang's primary school in January 2016. To date, the committee has heard from representatives of local authorities, the construction industry and Professor John Cole, the author of a report into school closures in Edinburgh. This week, we have a hearing from the Scottish Government and Scottish Futures Trust, and I welcome to the meeting Kevin Stewart MSP, Minister for Local Government and Housing, Bill Dodds, head of building standards, Andrew Daley, head of school building team, Scott Bell, head of procurement and construction who are all from the Scottish Government, and Peter Rickey, deputy chief executive and director of investments from the Scottish Futures Trust. As I mentioned last week, it is important to note that there is an on-going fatal accident inquiry relating to the accident at Libertad and High School in 2014. Will therefore avoid discussion on specifics of that accident to ensure that this committee does not impinge on the work of the FAI by exploring matters that may be sub-judice. I understand that the minister will make a short statement. Very briefly, convener, I would like to start by thanking the Education and Skills Committee for the invitation to appear today and I very much welcome your inquiry into that very important issue. I hope that the committee will agree, particularly given the detail within the written evidence provided by the Government and Scottish Futures Trust, that we have not been complacent with regards to the swift action that we took immediately after the Edinburgh schools issue first materialised. Subsequently, the steps that we have taken since the independent inquiry into the construction of Edinburgh schools published its report in February. Importantly, I understand that the committee has already heard evidence from Professor John Cole, a number of local authorities and representatives from the construction industry. I very much welcome that. As I am sure that the committee will strongly agree, we must all work together to understand the full implications of the failings in our public buildings and schools and learn any lessons from all our findings into those issues. I am committed to putting in place all the necessary requirements, legislative or otherwise, so that none of the public buildings and schools let down our pupils, teachers and parents in such a manner again. Thank you again for having me here today, and I am happy to take your questions. Thank you very much, minister. Can I start off by asking a question before I pass you over to my colleagues? Do you agree with the co-report that the quality assurance procedures were inadequate, and if so, should the Scottish Government look at local authorities to implement a standardised approach to the quality assurance in future capital projects? I think that in the case of the Edinburgh schools, the quality assurance was not what it should have been. I am absolutely adamant that we get that right, and that is why I said in my opening statement, convener, that I am willing to look at any means, legislative, regulatory or otherwise, to make sure that we get that absolutely right. I have met just the other week with 30 of the 32 local authorities to discuss the issue in more depth. What I am very much aware of is that quality in certain places seems to be much better because those councils have chosen to continue to use clerks of work for all schemes. I think that there are lessons to be learned there. I will look extremely closely at your findings as a committee, as well as look at the work that we have been doing across the board as Government and with the help of the Scottish Futures Trust too, to make sure that we put everything in place, to make sure that we get that absolutely right. Thank you for that. Just a short supplementary. You said that you spoke to 13 out of 32, and the ones with clots of works showed that they had the highest safety standard, to suppose, would be appropriate. I think that it would be fair to say, convener, from the read-out of that meeting, which I have looked at very closely. Those authorities that had clerks of work in all projects seemed to have very little difficulties at all in terms of the situations with their schools and public buildings. I think that that probably tells a tale. Obviously, we will do some more in-depth analysis into that, but my broad view would be that those authorities who had clerks of work on every job seemed to do much better than those who did not. That would cut across the method of financing for projects? Yes. I think that there were a number of councils where they stated that, no matter what type of finance was used, they had a clerk of works on the job. Thank you very much, convener. That takes me neatly on to Liz Smith. Just to pick up on that point, minister, we obviously had very considerable discussions about the type of finance that might be appropriate. Professor Cole hinted that it is not so much about the source of the finance. It is about overseeing how that finance is spent. As you have rightly said, in terms of the scrutiny of the procedures, that is the important bit. Does the Scottish Government have a view about the appropriate sources of finance, or do you think that this debate is much more about how it is spent and the oversight of ensuring that all the checks are made? You are right to say that Professor Cole and his report said that that was not down to the financial model that was used. I could sit here for ages, convener, as well as many others, to talk about the feelings as I perceive them to be with PFI, PPP. I am not going to do that, you will be glad to hear that. However, he said in the report that it was not necessarily the financial model. It was not the financial model that caused these difficulties. However, in saying that, I think that in terms of the model itself, I think that some local authorities were maybe a little bit lax in thinking that all of the risk went on to the body that was carrying out the work. You could say that the body would have the financial risk, and that folk could understand. However, as far as I am concerned, the risk in terms of the building standards and the delivery of the project to make sure that it is absolutely right does not rest with that other body. That still rests with the local authority or other body that is contracting that work. I ask the question, because if the debate is about the type of finance and how that is managed, that is a slightly different debate that we have to have from one where it does not seem to matter where the source of the finance is but how it is overseen in its spending. To pick up an interesting point that you made just now about the responsibility element, because I think that it is pretty clear from the evidence that we have taken and from what the Scottish Government has said so far, that it is about the responsibility lying with people who will be on the job permanently and with the absolute cast iron guarantees of assuring that a good job is being done. If that is true, if it is about the responsibility, is it your opinion at this stage that some changes might be required to ensure that that responsibility lies entirely with those who have the ability to deliver the spending on that project? I will go back to the report that Professor Cole said, because I think that puts it into context. He said that there is no reason why properly managed privately financed public sector buildings should not be capable of delivering buildings constructed to a very high standard. If best practice approaches to ensuring the quality of design and construction are properly incorporated. Beyond that, the report is clear. The fundamental failure was in construction, quality and supervision. There are wide-ranging recommendations in that report, and I am sure that the committee has studied in depth. Those focus, especially around construction supervision, are relevant to financing and procurement approaches, but the construction supervision here is the key. It is construction supervision across the board. It is construction industry themselves that ensures that the work that is being carried out complies with the very rigorous standards that we have got. It is also, in my opinion, the duty of the body who has procured that building to make sure that it is going up properly, safely and to the standard that they expect. Beyond that, obviously we have our building standards regime, and there should be compliance right about that. The core report itself was not particularly critical of our building standards regime at all, but it was extremely critical in terms of those fundamental failures, in terms of construction, quality and supervision. It was also critical that witnesses came to this committee, and it was critical in the fact that it was not clear about where the responsibility lied. It was too easy to shift the responsibility onto somebody else. Can I finish my question and ask whether you believe that that is one of the most important answers that you have to give us as a Scottish Government to be very clear about where responsibilities lie and if necessary to legislate on that? As I said at the very beginning, convener, I will look at all of this in depth. If that requires legislative change or regulatory change, we will do that. As I said at the very beginning, convener, I will look closely at the findings from your inquiry and take cognisance of that, look at that very carefully and see if any of that needs to be incorporated into any changes that we make. However, I think that there are some simplistic changes that could happen straight away without legislative change or regulatory change, and that is to make sure that the right folk are overseeing those projects, no matter how they are financed, but the right folk are there on the ground to oversee those projects. I refer again to my point about clerks of work. Thank you very much. Mr Reekie, do you have any comment on the stage? Thank you very much, convener. First, as you said, I am a civil engineer, a charter civil engineer by background and training, so I come at this from the view of a long time in this, in the construction industry and in procurement in particular. I think it's important to say also that there have been a lot of changes, as you've heard from other witnesses already, in the way we deliver buildings from the time that the Edinburgh PPP1 schools were built. What we're doing now in schools delivery is we're working on individual schools rather than large batches, so that allows it to be a focus on the individual development of what's right for any one building. I think you heard local authorities and indeed head teachers give evidence on that before. We have now a much more detailed specification for our buildings rather than, as again you've heard before, the very high-level output specification that left a lot of the design development to the industry that was the case at the time of PPP1. Construction methods have changed, so we're using a lot more steel framing systems than the brick and block and we're working a lot more closely with designers, clients and contractors during the development process and also we've got a different role from SFT in supporting those authorities as they move to the handover of buildings to help them get what they're contractually entitled to and move to that really important stage where they're monitoring a building in its operation. But there are, as everyone's seen, varied practices throughout and the coal report has been really helpful in highlighting those practices where there are different, as we've heard, monitoring regimes in place for different authorities. There are different ways that designers interact with construction and there are different payment approaches throughout the industry. In my view it's really important that we are able to come up with ways of delivering quality buildings that work within any of those approaches because the industry has grown up with different approaches to procurement and delivery for some very good reasons and all of those, as the minister has said, are capable of being done in a high quality way with the right systems and processes and people wrapped around them. So construction monitoring is important. There's also important points around the way designers pass their production information to the guys on the ground that have to do the building. There are some important points around how the as-built information, exactly what was constructed, comes back to an authority so that that can be retained and all of those lessons are being learnt through the way we deliver right now on the ground but there's obviously more that we can do. Thank you very much for that. I've heard what Mr Eke is saying there about the NPD system. The core report seems to be indicating that PPP 1 is where the major issues were and where the major lack of oversight was. How did that change moving into PPP 2, that it was perhaps better controlled? Convener, I think it's often difficult to look at what changes are at various points. There were construction changes for one. A lot of the PPP 1 schools, and Mr Reitie and others made correct me here, were built under design and build procurement methods. As I said earlier, I think that in terms of all of that, where folk seem to think that, you know, I'm handing this entire project over to someone else, they were handing over as they thought the risk as well, when they should have been monitoring much, much more closely. In terms of the methodology used in construction, they were different in PPP 2, and I think that that has been picked up. The design of buildings now is very different with modern approaches to building, insulation and construction, leading to much less frequent use of what has been called the brick and block construction found to be defective, which was PPP 1. However, in saying all of that, I'm not complacent about all of this at all. I will continue to seek assurance about the quality arrangements that are being put in place now, with the new techniques that are being used in terms of the construction. I was very interested that the local authority building standards Scotland stated that building standards has no remit over the quality of the build. You think that it's in the name of building standards that there would be a certain degree of reassurance there from building standards, yet that didn't seem to happen. Clearly, the organisation that represents building standards is saying that that is not the remit of building standards. I'll take a Mr Dodds in a minute, if you don't mind, convener. The key thing in all of this, in terms of meeting those standards, in terms of the certification, is that it is up to those who are doing the construction to make sure that they are compliant with those building standards. I'll let Mr Dodds come in with a more in-depth response about how our building standard system works at this moment in time. Good morning everyone. The building standard system, when you talk about quality, what we're talking about there is the quality to ensure that a building is properly built. The responsibility is ultimately the owner's responsibility under the Building Scotland Act. In this case, it would be Edinburgh's education authority. They have the responsibility to ensure that the way that the building is constructed is in accordance with our technical standards. In many cases, quality is embedded there because you need a certain quality to keep the rain out, you need a certain quality to make sure that the building is adequately ventilated, for example. There is an inherent requirement for quality in that to meet the standards. The word quality in building can be used in many different forms. For example, someone who is extending their house or putting in a kitchen or something, the quality of the way the tiles are laid or whatever. That kind of information has been passed on to the other committee that is looking at building standards in more detail. They are asking about quality building standards and the role that building standards perform within the overall framework of the system. Very much the local authority building inspector or building control officer verify the drawings at the front end to make sure that the specifications are all properly set out. It's incumbent on the owner then to build the property or the building the way they should. Then it's a last check. As we've heard here, there are many other actors who have a role to play the designer, the constructor, the developer and, in many respects, the last man standing as well as the local authority building inspector. I think that role from what we're hearing, although there wasn't expressed criticism of building standards within the core report, there were some issues there that need addressing, particularly around the role of building standards, the nature of the inspections and the consistency that local authority are undertaking those inspections. That's to differentiate between the role of building standards or building control, as it's called in England, and what we would say is that it's a supervisory requirement for building owners. If I'm a guy on the street and I think about building standards, I think about safety, I think about reassurance that building standards will protect against a faulty build. You're telling me that isn't the case? No, no. I'm certainly not saying that by any means. I've worked for 40 years in the building standards system and it's in my DNA to ensure public safety. I have to say that that is certainly not the case. In fact, fairly recent events will show you that the regulatory regimes within other countries are being put under extreme scrutiny at the moment. I think that Scotland has a very good building standards system. It didn't work? Again, for all the reasons that have been set out, it was about the quality of workmanship, it was about the quality of supervision. Building standards are part of the overall process and I think that's what the minister is keen to explore as we go through here, that every constituent part of it should build to get compliant buildings at the end of the day. Looking back, would you not say that building standards seem to have been rather remote? In respect of Edinburgh schools? In respect of Edinburgh schools and the other issues that have been found in schools across Scotland. Again, what you've got to appreciate is that these are large complex buildings that would require an almost daily presence to undertake those inspections. The role of building standards is to ensure that the builder undertakes the proper checks and balances throughout the project. I don't think that an ordinary man in the street would understand that. Let the minister in and see if you can clarify. I think that building standards has a major role to play in this. As I said, we will look at what is required, if any change is required there. The key thing in all of this, convener, is the fact that building standards officers cannot be on site all of the time. There is a role in terms of the regime that we have in place in terms of those that are designing, those that are constructing, the owner of the project, whoever that may be. They all have a role to play in ensuring the quality of that building. They have a responsibility to make sure that they are complying with the standards that have been laid out. As Mr Dodge rightly pointed out at the very beginning of the process, building standards will look and make sure that the drawings and everything, all the technicals, are absolutely right. If Mr Beattie is suggesting that building standards officers should be on site at every project all of the time, I don't think that that is practical at all. That comes back to the point about the entire ownership of the situation where clerks of works seem to have worked very well in terms of the major projects to make sure that there is complete and utter compliance at every stage. Can I suggest that that is not what Mr Beattie is saying? Well, I am not quite sure that he can speak for himself, but what I took from Mr Dodge's response was that we are not sure what building standards are for except for the look at the drawings at the beginning and the look at the finished item at the end. Is there any check on all those other component parts that you have talked about through it? Does building standards have a role to make sure that all those other component parts have been seen to? If they are, why have some of those parts been missed? There are two things there. After the building is issued, we have a situation or a system now where the building standards survey along with the owner develop an inspection plan. It is called the CCNP, a construction compliance and notification plan. That has been introduced since 2012. The idea behind that is to identify the high-risk items that might require inspection using the scant resource that local authority have sometimes to do this. They target the high-risk building elements. We were aware that the coal report was about to be published. We knew there would be findings from that. I discussed with the minister about how we could update that in the wake of the coal report. That is the work that we are doing just now. Essentially, what should happen is that there will be a plan with the developer, the builder and the local authority that specifies the key stages of construction that they want to see. It might be the foundations, the external walls or the roof. They would work their way through that plan being notified by the applicant of the particular time to look at the building or whatever. At the end of the day, there would be a completion certificate and an inspection to make sure that the building was properly built. I know that a number of local authorities are now supplementing their building standards staff with what they call building inspectors. They are not clack-of-works, but they appreciate that the focus is now moving more towards inspection. Although it is not their role to be a clack-of-works, they are supplementing their current building standards staff with additional resources. I was in Glasgow recently and they have taken on to three building inspectors. A number of councils are changing the staffing structures to move them more away from the paper-based approach to assessing building want applications to more of on-site presence. That drives up the build quality again and that extra pair of eyes overlooking the shoulder of someone who is doing that. In Edinburgh, the situation was such that the work was almost hidden by the time someone would see it. The walls would be put up, wall ties are very difficult to see. Even a cursory walk around, structural engineers were not able to identify that it was a problem until such a time has started to do. I do not mean to interrupt here and I know that two of my colleagues want to come in further to this, but if that is the case and you cannot verify the work then, how can you sign it off? The idea again is a part of a process that is driven by the building developer who may have someone overseeing the inspections, as far as the procurement process is concerned. There are a number of processes before the building standards inspector comes along. It is incumbent on the owner to make sure that their building is being built properly and they should engage proper assurances there. I think that Peter could probably spell out a bit more. I will let Mr Ricci in later on, but I have a Tavish Scott and then Daniel Johnson. I have a lot of sympathy with the argument that you have just made. Someone has built my own extension to my own house. I had building control all over me all the way through. What I am interested in is the one rule for private developers building, for example, a small house, and another for these large complexes, as you rightly said earlier on, large complexes, constructions of a school, where, as far as you have all described it this morning, there might be three visits during the course of that school being built. I have to say that I have been to a council fair recently where there were 40 inspections that were not taken as a school, but having said that, you would not necessarily find the defects that were found in the Oxgang schools because of the nature of the build. That is just part of the issue here. I guess that, going forward, the lessons to learn when we were talking about identifying high-risk areas, I am quite sure that most local authority now will have targeted wall ties and certain other high-risk elements that they will be focusing their attention on now. In events that have happened over the last couple of weeks, there will be a close focus on some of the fire-related issues as well. Building standards have very much a role to play, but it is part of an overall process where there should be checks and balances from the design right through to the building want approval, right through to how it is constructed. What Mr Stewart is suggesting is that we are looking at a holistic approach to tackling each of those individual components so that they work together rather than being in siloed thinking and making sure that there is no duplication and that everyone, the roles and the responsibilities are all set out properly. That seems very sensible, but your concern is that the system did not work, did it? We cannot avoid the fact that the walls fell down, so the system did not work. My colleagues have all been saying, what has building standards been doing when those walls were falling down? The system has not worked, has it? Convener, I think that it has not worked. That is quite clear from the co-report in terms of the entire way that that project was dealt with. I go back to the point of— So what is going to happen then? Well, we have already had some changes in terms of building standards over the peace. In 2013, for example, local authority building standards services introduced a risk-assessed approach to site inspections that targeted building elements that were at the greatest risk of non-compliance. I would expect those building standards folks right across the country to ensure that they have that targeted approach to make sure that, where there is risk, they are there to ensure that things are being done right. Beyond that, I think that, in some regards, convener, over the peace, building standards in local authorities have been somewhat of a Cinderella service. I have, in recent times, signed off on an increase in fees with the intention of allowing local authorities to invest much more in their building standard services so that they have the people to be able to carry out all the functions that are required. The key thing in all of this—we cannot escape this at all in terms of responsibility—is that the building owners themselves, or the building owners in terms of authorities, are ultimately responsible for compliance. That responsibility is theirs. There are other parts of the system, including building standards, which will look at very closely what has gone on, but ultimately, in terms of the day-to-day construction of a project, the owner is ultimately responsible for that compliance. I do not think that anyone will disagree with that. You said that a number of times, Minister, and I think that the committee gets that and understands that, but all you are really seeing there is welcome to the world of law, because all that means is that we are into the High Court or whatever. It does not help Daniel Johnson to pupils whose wall fell down. Great, we are into law. I wonder if I could ask the Scottish Futures Trust, if you don't mind, Mr Rickey. Is this system now all works? Is it such that when you are building schools across Scotland, for example, the kind of things that your colleagues have here have been describing is in place? In other words, there is a clock of works regularly on site, regularly looking at these projects so that the wall ties that we were talking about in graphic detail the other day are going in far enough into the blocks so that the darn walls do not fall down? I have started to talk about the changes that have happened since PPP 1, and we can talk about inspection monitoring, and I will do so, but I think it is important to look at the whole system of developing and delivering building assets. We need a well considered strategy by an intelligent client in customer procuring authorities that understand from whichever way they go about procuring and indeed funding their buildings, they understand the contractual structure they are entering into, what they can rightfully expect a contract to do and what they need to do for themselves. Is that not your job? We provide a framework. We are not the client. The local authorities are the client. You are kind of our client because you are building these schools on behalf of us, the Parliament and the Government. We set up a framework within which those can be delivered, and that way of working, as I have said before, is much more about the individual development of schools rather than a focus on large batches. We use a more detailed specification so that there is a lot more engagement between the users of the building and the designers and the contractors. There is a partnership approach which allows that team to work together throughout the development stage before it gets on site, rather than that being at quite an arms length through a competitive procurement process, as was the case in PPP 1. There are a lot of changes to construction technology, so whilst there are still some brick-and-block walls for very good reasons, where in a gym hall, for example, you might need a brick facing because of what the planners require, and you might need a block internal wall to get the right rebounds for your balls, most cases that construction system isn't used in different approaches, then we have the supervision and monitoring. As you heard last week, different local authorities have taken different approaches to monitoring over a number of years, and all of our contract approaches that we use in SFT allow for clerks of work to be included. Some authorities have used them, some have not. Why would there be the difference there? I think we found that a very strong piece of evidence that the Minister has reflected on that as well. Is it because those budgets are so tight that the contractors don't have the money to employ clerks of work? It's not about contractors employing clerks of work, it's about the procuring authority having that team in place to deliver buildings in that way. They've got to have a budget for that. They've got to employ those people, don't they? Local authorities, if they're the client, health boards, if they're the client, different public bodies need to have a total budget for their organisation and a budget for their projects. I agree with you. Just in terms of improving a system that needs some work on it, do you not think the Scottish Futures Trust might have a role in that? These are your schools being built all over Scotland. Do you not think you should have a monitoring role in terms of what's happening? I think on the individual building sites, I don't think the Scottish Futures Trust is the right organisation to deploy clerks of works across building sites all around Scotland. I totally get that, but who is then? That should be the individual authority that's procuring the building, and they can have that through a directly employed team. As you heard last week, many authorities carry that as an in-house resource, or it can be engaged on a project-by-project basis if it's an entity that does less procurement. They can contract for it on short-term basis. That would need to be part of either the ongoing running cost of the organisation if they're like a serial procurer and they have that as a team in house, or it could be built into the project cost if there are less frequent procurer and need to engage that service on a project-by-project basis. Thank you. It could be built into the project cost. That would be part of a sensible way forward on these kind of projects. Either way, it can be done. Follow-up on these points around building control. Mr Dodds, you spelt out why the construction methodology meant that it wasn't able to check, but surely that's exposed to the deficiency. Surely, if we have a building control regime, it's there to detect faults. Professor Cole said that there wasn't the capacity for building control to do more than verify the specification. There wasn't the capacity to check whether or not it would be implemented. He wasn't saying that that was historic, but he was saying that it was current. I was just wondering if you could reflect on those two points. I'm trying to get this as short as possible, but at the end of the day, the resources and local authority, as the minister pointed out, if we're talking about today, the schools were built something like 10, 15 years ago, at a time when they were being built in bulk. There was a different system in place, so there was probably at a time of a building boom, probably a shortage of skilled workers. There was a whole range of issues that were probably surrounding the construction of those schools at that time. Again, there would be a need to build these schools pretty quickly, I would imagine. Mr Cole has explained that in his report about some of the construction methods that were there. As far as building standards are concerned, yes, they're a final check. They check the building warrant specification and make sure that everything is a pre-emptive system that we have in Scotland. It's on the drawings, everything should be built exactly the way it should be built. If it follows the drawings and the specification, the local authority will only need to undertake certain checks to make sure that things are being built properly. It may well be, but apparently, if you look at the Cole report again, there are quite a number of inspections carried out in those schools, but a number of them seem to focus on drainage and other items, and that is why we changed the process to looking at high-risk items from then on in. Can I just put this point to the minister then? Reflecting on that, despite all of that, those checks by your own definition failed, don't people have a right to expect that if buildings have gone through the building control regime that they're safe? Frankly, saying that the owners have to take responsibility isn't good enough. What's the point of the building control regime if it's not picking up on those faults? The point of the building control regime, convener, is to make sure that what is being built complies with the standards that the very robust standards that we have. There is always room for improvement, but we have fairly robust standards in terms of the Scottish building standards regime. Building standards service itself, as I pointed out earlier, has changed in terms of the way that it operates in terms of dealing with those areas where there is deemed to be the greatest risk. As Mr Dodds has pointed out, in the past, Professor Cole pointed that out in terms of the Edinburgh schools. There was a focus on things that were not as important, like the drains that Mr Dodds mentioned. That has changed in terms of the regime that has taken place. Again, convener, in terms of looking at that as a whole, if there are any other situations that I think require change, then we will do so. I come back to the point that I made earlier about investment, because there needs to be that investment in building standards across Scotland. There needs to be improvement in certain areas where building standards have not been as good as it should be. Another thing that I did recently was to allow local authorities to have the verification contracts for a number of years. Normally that would be six years that the minister would sign off on. In this case this time, the good-performing authorities who are doing well in terms of building standards are allowed to have six years. Those who are doing not so well have three years, and we will revisit them. Three authorities, which I think are not doing well, where I have sent Mr Dodds and his team to give them advice on what needs to be done, have one year. Those three authorities are sterling Glasgow and Edinburgh. You said that there needs to be investment. You agree with Professor Cole that there is not currently the resource and building control to make the verifications that we need on our buildings that are being built right now. What I am saying, convener, is that I recognise that there needs to be investment in building control in Scotland. That is why I have allowed for an increase in fees and would expect local authorities to put in additional investment into their building standards sections within councils. That is an area. Having been a former councillor myself, that is an area where there has probably not been due attention paid by elected members at local authority level to ensure that their building standards services are fit for purpose in doing the job right. Cole has given us all the opportunity to reflect on that, and I hope that councillors across the country will pay due attention and will scrutinise much more their building standards service and to ensure that it is capable of carrying out the job that it should be. A couple of the supplementaries, first Johann, then Cole and then Clare Adams. I will ask a question. It seems to me that Mr Dodds is saying that there are scant resources, not just to have high standards but to ensure that they are applied. Who yourself have said at building standards was the Cinderella service. Perhaps the decision of the Scottish Government to target local government cuts has been proven to be mistaken. When you are talking about investment local government, there will be a commitment in that regard. We have all this complexity around the futures forum and all the checks and all the people. In fact, a matter is that a wall fell down because somebody did not put a walltie on it and it did not get picked up by anybody. I think that that really says to something beyond. There are clearly issues around the way in which, because of PPP, people did not take ownership, if you like, but it seems to be very basic that it is possible to construct a building that is not safe and that the check and balance against poor workmanship is not picked up in the inspection regime. One of the things that came out from evidence in the past couple of weeks is the necessity to police the construction industry, because if you do not police it, it will cut corners. Surely that is profoundly depressing that we are ending up in a position where people will cut corners and create dangers for the want of a clacker worth checking them. What are the proposals by the Scottish Government to make the construction industry safer and to create incentives for high-quality construction with good workforce management and we will go into training later? A culture that has led to levels of fatalities in the construction industry is still shocking. Do you accept the picture that the construction industry has to be policed so closely because it has left its own devices and will build things that are not safe? I can clarify one point that Ms Lamont made. The Scottish Futures Trust was not around when PPP-1 was on the go. We have a much more robust check than there was when there was PPP-1, which of course was a number of years ago. In terms of the construction industry, we have talked about the holistic approach in dealing with all of that. I have already had a round table with the construction industry and others following the co-report. I was very pleased that Professor Cole himself was able to attend an event that I hosted with a number of stakeholders. I have written to the construction industry, I have met the construction industry and beyond that we are following that up with a further summit in September to look across all of the aspects of the construction industry's failings in that regard. Also, the construction Scotland's industry leadership group is now actively co-ordinating the development of an industry-wide response to the report. Ron Fraser, who is a retired director from Carillion PLC, is leading on that. They recognise that there were failings. They will respond, as I have said, and we will look closely at what they have to say about those matters. It would be fair to say that, in terms of Cole himself, many folk in the industry were shocked by the findings of that report. We have a real job of work to do in ensuring that standards are brought up massively in some cases and that everyone recognises, no matter who they are, that in terms of constructing a building and completing a project, that has got to be done absolutely right. John Lennon was saying that it is atrocious, that subcontractors, in particular, exploited failures in the system in order to presumably cut costs and maybe even take on unskilled workers and so on to do those jobs, which presumably saved them money. To restore credibility, would you agree that those subcontractors who put at risk the lives of children in the schools and so on should not be allowed to bid for work again in the public sector? The exclusion of subcontractors within public contracts has been strengthened with the regulations that were passed in 2015. That means that we can take into account past performance against contracts. I am not aware of examples of that per se coming forward. There would be an element within a test that would be required in terms of whether, when we exclude a contractor from a public procurement, there is potential for a legal challenge in test. I am not aware of any situations where that has arisen yet. However, the regulations have been changed so that we can exclude contractors based on elements of past performance. Surely the test is very simple. If they built substandard clearly deliberately, then they should not again be let loose on a public contract. I think that part of the problem here would be that contractors subcontract and you do not know who the subcontract is. Could sometimes what you are doing is getting a couple of joiners in, or not criticizing joiners, but any tradesperson in to do something, I doubt very much that you would have some foresight of that. As Mr Bell said, some of the changes that have already been made, we will look carefully at what Mr Beattie has said. Another thing that came up in the report, and often subcontracting is to individuals rather than companies. One of the things that was picked up in the report was the way that some subcontractors are paid. If you look at the report where it talks about the way that bricklayers are paid in terms of piecework, how many bricks they lay, and adding in the ties takes more time. In terms of looking at the way that the industry itself pays people and deals with that, it is something that I have a great interest in and will continue to raise with the industry, because at the end of the day I do not think that that works. I do not think that that works, and I think that that needs to be resolved. Thank you, Claire. John Lamont mentioned funding for local councils, but councils now have the flexibility to use council tax increases to fund such services. I would like to ask the minister if he would like to see some of that funding diverted to building control investment. Another question that I want to ask is whether I have come as a substitute member today, so I have not involved in a lot of the evidence sessions. What I would like to ask Scottish Futures Trust and the Minister is that, if a school was procured today, are you confident that the systemic failures that we have witnessed have been minimised? Let me deal with your last point first. I think that they have been minimised. Obviously, working with the Scottish Futures Trust, within government procurement services and with building standards, we will continue to do all that we can to minimise that even further. In terms of raising council tax to invest in building standards, councils should not have to do that in terms of building standards, because the income from building standards to the council is normally much, much greater than the investment that goes into building standards services by councils. I do not have all of the figures in front of me here, convener, about how much income local authorities take and how much they are investing back in their building standards, but I am more than willing to write to the committee with that information. However, I would reiterate that the income that they take in is normally much more than what they are spending on the service itself. Before we move on to Claire Hawke, I would just like some clarification. We are going back to what we started with in this section, the building standards. How do you sign off something? Is there almost like a tick box where the ties have been put in, somebody signs off to say, yes, we put the ties in? Therefore, does that mean that when you signed off something, there is a record of who has said that safety aspect or that building aspect has been done? Therefore, you can quite clearly go back and say that that is the problem there. They told me that that was done, and that is their responsibility. You asked for short answers. That may not be necessarily a short answer. As short as it can. Just to follow on from what the minister said about funding there, we have found, as I have went round councils, that councils who fund their building standards services are the council departments that seem to be performing the best. The investment that is going on is shown in their service. The councils were awarded six-year contracts or the period for being a verifier. You tend to find that the money that is going in has been invested in the service and it is running pretty smoothly. The corollate is that the ones who do not invest so well are the ones that seem to have some difficulty. Those are the ones that we have targeted, and that is part of the ongoing process to try and make sure that local authorities are investing those funds within their services to get that consistent level of approach across Scotland. As far as signing off the inspection plan that I mentioned earlier, it does set out the key stages that should be inspected. It is incumbent on the building standards survey to tick those off that you have seen them. At the end of the day, they sign off the completion certificate, so if you go into a local authority now, you should be able to ask for the CCNP or the plan, pull it out, have a read through it, see when it was inspected, who inspected it, there will be a computer record of that as well. From now on, I would have confidence that I would hope that if you went into a local authority for a new school you would see a completion, a CCNP process there that you can then work your way through and see the number of inspections, what was looked at and what day, and then that gives the comfort for the surveyor to sign it off at the end. Again, what I would say is that with resources, some authorities will have the luxury of being able to inspect a bit more than others, and what we are trying to do is level that playing field to get the same level of consistency across Scotland as far as that is concerned. A small point to be there, but I think it is an important one. The Government invested in ebuilding standards, which is an IT system that now allows local authorities to connect. Most of those systems were paper-based systems, as has to be said, in local authorities. Now we have the ability, if an authority is having some difficulties, we can use expertise from other authorities to help them out in that regard. Mr Dodges is rightly pointed out once again on those authorities that are not doing quite so well. We have used Mr Dodges and his team to go in and give them help and advice, but it is up to the local authorities themselves to decide what investment they are putting in. I would suggest that those authorities that are not doing so well, the elected members there, should look at the level of investment that is going in and act accordingly. I suspect that that may well be mentioned in our report. Thank you, convener, and thank you to the panel for coming along this morning. I want to pick up on a theme that I had questioned in the two previous panels in this inquiry on whether the follow-up activity in relation to the specific problems that are identified in Edinburgh is considered to be adequate and what actions have been taken to monitor that activity? Convener, if I can start off with that and then I will bring in colleagues, because from the very start of this, Government was straight on to Edinburgh and also to other authorities to make sure that everything was in place. My predecessors wrote immediately after the situation arose at Oxgang school to all local authorities. The Cabinet Secretary for Education on 27 April after that asked for updates on what was happening in that regard. I could go on even down to the point of when coal was published. I spoke to the chief executive of the city of Edinburgh for assurance that works had been carried out to comply with coal. Again, we wrote to all local authorities asking them to take cognisance of the report and to do the necessary inspections. We have had help from the Scottish Futures Trust in dealing with local authorities and other public bodies on those things. I received a letter yesterday from the city of Edinburgh Council after prompting it at the meeting for an update on what it has done. Convener, I am trying to find that letter within the copious amount of notes that I have here, which I cannot at this moment. It was about the fire-stopping aspects of it. I will share that letter with the committee, which should give you some degree of comfort in terms of the work that has been undertaken. I ask whether you are able to give any comment on the issue that occurred in schools. What assurance or reassurance we have that this is not an issue that has happened in other precured buildings such as hospitals, community centres and so on? While we have concentrated here today on schools, Scottish Futures Trust and colleagues across Government have been in touch with other public bodies to make sure that they look at buildings that were procured around that time with similar design and build. That includes the health service and other public bodies. It might be wise, convener, for Mr Reekie to come in to give you more depth about the work that has gone on by the SFT to ensure that we are safe in those regards, too. I led SFT's work in the wake of the closure of the schools in Edinburgh. The reason that we were able to deploy a team to help out is that we have an in-house team with engineers, architects, surveyors, the relevant professionals in there that we supplemented quite quickly with an experienced and senior structural engineer working through these issues for nearly a year. We took a role of sharing the technical information from the City of Edinburgh Council with other public bodies to allow them to undertake their own assurance activities. You can imagine that the technical team at Edinburgh was rightfully very focused on dealing with the issues in the council and they were also faced with inquiries from all over Scotland and further afield asking them what have you found? What does it mean for us? What should we be looking for? So we were able to act as a single point of contact and the Edinburgh team made time to speak to our team and we then shared the technical details with other local authorities and public bodies to allow them, as I said, to undertake their own assurance activities, which have been going on in some depth since then. That included, as I said, all local authorities and public bodies, the health service and others across Scotland. It's been reported, I think, that the issue, and John Cole has said, is not likely to be limited to schools. There have, I think, been areas of non-compliance found in other buildings, nothing anywhere near as serious as in Edinburgh schools, but that assurance activity has been undertaken by individual authorities that own and maintain buildings and they will be following up on any non-compliances that are found. That falls on somewhat from that. I'm still trying to get my head around the process that was followed in the immediate aftermath of an incident. The incident that we had at Oxgangs was that the wall fell down, a visual inspection was carried out, pupils were sent back into the school and it was only later once the deeper inspections had been carried out that the school was closed once again. My understanding is that that process, to immediately go to a visual inspection, was the agreed process that was followed. Was that a locally agreed process or are there national guidelines or a national agreed process for what you do in the aftermath of incidents like that? It would be very difficult to write a set of guidelines that cover every single incident that could happen in what are very complicated structures with both structural elements, mechanical and electrical services and so on and so forth. There are no national guidance that I'm aware of that say, in case of finding an issue with wall ties, you must do the following thing. What happened was that the technical teams on the ground did their immediate response based on what they'd seen and as they uncovered more of the issues, and it's been reported that the issues around header ties became clear as other schools were inspected, that then as the ripples spread, the response spread and different authorities based their assurance on what had been found in Edinburgh. Whilst I agree that it might be good to have a sort of handbook that you can turn to the right page for every sort of incident, I think that there's too many variables so it would be impossible to do that and the right thing to do is to have agreements in place and arrangements in place with qualified professionals who are able to respond appropriately at the time and Edinburgh, I know, and their contractor did deploy those professional teams very quickly. I understand entirely what you're saying about the range of incidents, the range of scenarios to plan for and it would be impossible to come up with a comprehensive list of responses, but it does seem to me quite unsatisfactory that in response to a wall collapsing, a visual inspection was carried out and it was only after that that decision was made to go for deeper inspection. A school was reopened before being closed again because more significant issues were found. It doesn't seem like a satisfactory response and yet, as far as the education authority was concerned, it was the correct response. Convener, I think that in terms of immediate processes when something like that occurs, I think that we need to reflect on that. I agree with Mr Greer in terms of wanting to see or, as best we can, a process that takes full account very quickly and assesses risk very quickly so that necessary action can be taken. I will look again at that aspect of that visual inspection and the further inspection, how long that took and whether something else should have been put in place in that regard. Most of that is, of course, a matter for local authorities, but I understand your real concern about that and I will reflect on that. Earlier in the committee session, Paul Mitchell from the Scottish Building Federation expressed grave concerns about the dilution of skills that were being planned around construction apprenticeships. He raised the question of unilateral action by the SQA in redefining what some of those courses were. I think that we have already heard the importance of the autonomy of the craft person in building trade. I have friends who work in the construction industry and I think that workers in the industry are very often put into circumstances that are not necessarily safe for them. The trade unions have been highlighting that over a period of time. I wonder what the Scottish Government's response is to the question about the skills that are needed in the construction industry, the level of skill there, what you can do about that, but how do you address that concern? I think that that must be a real concern. The SQA unilaterally, as we are told, is making new decisions on apprenticeships that could have consequences in terms of the quality of work that is then produced in the construction trade unilaterally. One of the best parts of the job that I have as minister for local government and housing is going to a number of construction sites and seeing new housing going up. When I do that, I always take the opportunity to meet apprentices because, as far as I am concerned, it is extremely important that we get young folk, men and women, into the construction industry to make sure that we can deliver for the future. I am always asking them what they think of the quality of the training, the college course and how they are being treated by their employers. Most of them are not backward in coming forward and telling you exactly what they think, and that is a good thing in my book. Ms Lamont makes a specific point. There are no plans to dilute the level or quality of craft apprenticeships. SQA's level 2 qualifications in the sector were first accredited in 1993, and different erasions of those qualifications ran until 2012. There were some changes at that point in time. CITB is currently reviewing the level 3 craft apprenticeship frameworks, as the existing ones are due to expire in August, I believe. Government facilitated a meeting of employers and stakeholders earlier on in the year. We will continue to listen to what CITB and others are saying. Following consultation with industry by CITB, the SCULS test will be built into the SQA to best ensure their independence, the quality of the SQA and the apprenticeship going forward, and there is no planned change to the duration of craft apprenticeships in that proposed framework. I hope that that gives some assurance to Ms Lamont. Just to be clear, Paul Mitchell is wrong when he says that the SQA unilaterally has decided to dilute the courses. He has expressed concern on behalf of the industry. If he is wrong, that is obviously something that he is not aware of, but he was very critical. I am sure that you have seen the passage in the official report. He is very critical about his concerns about the SQA acting in his way. He also talks about CITB not being helpful. The reason that matters is that the quality assurance on-site in his argument would be reduced, because the level of skill of people working there would be reduced. I reiterate what I said previously. There are no plans to dilute the level or quality of craft apprenticeships. I will continue to talk to apprentices to see exactly what they think. You have the assurance that the Government wants to ensure that there are folks entering the industry and that craft apprenticeships are vital to ensure the future of the construction industry. Would that be an option for you then? I know that you have talked about various summits and so on to bring together the Scottish Building Federation with the SQA and the CITB to thrash out some of those issues, which clearly are a matter of such concern that they would have brought before the committee. I will have a look at that, convener. A number of those issues do not fall into my ministerial portfolio, but I will certainly talk to colleagues about that issue. In that case, we will suspend the meeting for a few moments to allow the winces to leave. I thank you very much for your attendance this morning. Thank you very much, convener.