 Good morning, and welcome to the 23rd meeting of the local government and Cundice committee in 2017. Can I remind everyone present to turn off mobile phones and, as members' papers are provided in a digital format, tablets might be used by some members during the meeting? We're not quite all here yet, but no apologies have been received, so hopefully we'll have a full house of MSPs here shortly, and we move to agenda item 1, which is building regulations and fire safety in Scotland. The committee will take evidence on the scrutiny of building regulations and fire safety in Scotland, and I welcome Kevin Stewart, Minister for Local Government and Housing. Good morning, minister. Good morning. Bill Dodd's head of building standards Scottish Government, and Dave McGowan, assistant chief officer of Scottish Fire and Rescue. Good morning, gentlemen. Thank you all for joining us this morning. Minister, I understand that there's an opening statement that you'd like to make to the committee, and we'll begin to hear that now. I'm grateful for the opportunity to talk to the committee about the steps taken by the Scottish Government to ensure that building regulations and fire safety are robust. That work has added urgency following the tragic events at Grenfell Tower, and my thoughts and deepest sympathies are with all those affected by that tragedy. In the days following the Grenfell Fire, the Scottish Government took immediate proactive steps to establish a ministerial working group on building and fire safety. That was set up with the primary aim of offering public reassurance and ensuring any action that we needed to take as a result of what we know or will find out about the Grenfell Tower fire. The work of the group has been twofold, convener. Our first focus was to respond proactively and immediately to offer public reassurance of the fire safety of high-rise buildings, in particular high-rise domestic buildings. The nature and the scale of the work has been resource intensive, and I want to express my gratitude to local authorities, housing associations and the other organisations involved for their responsiveness to our requests. That helped the ministerial working group to establish very quickly the extent of the use of ACM and high-rise buildings. I also want to record my thanks to the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service for the steps that they immediately took to prioritise home fire safety visits in domestic high-rise properties. Over 1,200 visits have taken place, and everyone who has requested a home fire safety visit has received one. Inspections of high-rise residential buildings have also carried on with almost 900 carried out since Grenfell. 60,000 fire safety leaflets have also been distributed, providing reassurance to residents. The ministerial working group is conscious, however, that reassurance to the public on fire safety must be on-going. We have commissioned a targeted national fire safety campaign for high-rise domestic buildings, which will launch shortly, focusing on key messages, including fire safety, evacuation and stay put procedures. The second focus of the group has been on a wider range of measures to enhance and strengthen building regulations, enforcement and compliance, as well as fire safety. Today, I am able to inform the committee that I have appointed two established leaders in their field of expertise to chair the two groups that will take forward the review of building standards. Professor John Cole will chair the review of enforcement and compliance, and Dr Paul Stollard will chair the review of fire safety and building standards. I am delighted that we are so fortunate to have two chairs of such a high-caliber leading this work. While Scottish building regulations from 2005 prevent the cladding of high-rise domestic buildings in the same type of ACM found on Grenfell, ministers are very aware that, whilst this cladding was clearly a major contributing factor to the rapid spread of the fire, it may not be the only one. We will therefore be ready to respond to any relevant findings or recommendations that emerge from the Grenfell Public Inquiry, and our work programme will remain flexible to allow us to take any appropriate actions. While it was important to understand what buildings have ACM on them, it is equally important to understand that the presence of ACM cladding by itself does not necessarily mean that a building is defective or dangerous. It is the extent of use of ACM as part of the overall cladding system that forms part of the judgment of the safety of the building. It is that information that we sought to collate. We quickly gathered information from all local authorities that no social high-rise buildings were clad in ACM. We then gained clarity from 31 local authorities that no ACM was found on building warrant applications of private domestic high-rise buildings. Glasgow City Council reported the presence of ACM on some private high-rise properties. We offered Glasgow assistance to further interrogate the information that they hold, and they have now accepted that offer. We expect them to establish soon the exact number of buildings with ACM, the type of ACM and the extent of its use as part of a cladding system. From this convener, we expect Glasgow to provide the same information that we have received from other local authorities. As you rightly noted during your last evidence session, Glasgow City Council have a responsibility to those residents to progress this work as a matter of urgency. I hope that the brief overview of what is a very complicated issue is of use and that you recognise that the ministerial working group is taking all of this very seriously. Our work programme covers a number of important streams of work, and we have put mechanisms in place to ensure that we are able to take action as needed and when needed. For that detailed opening statement, you will appreciate, given the nature of the committee last week, that members will want to start by discussing the Glasgow situation in the first instance. I am also conscious that we are doing a wider inquiry here, so for a while we would intend to ask some very specific questions about Glasgow and move on to some wider issues. I think that it is reasonable to ask your views minister in the first instance. The way that members of the public that this committee discovered that there were issues in Glasgow was wholly inappropriate, the communication to this committee and indirectly to the wider public was done in such a way that it has potentially caused additional fear and alarm that was perhaps not necessary. Do you think that that is something that the local authority should be reflecting on and remedying as soon as possible? I am very disappointed in some of the things that were said last week, convener. The ministerial working group received information from the chief building standards officer, Mr Dodds, regarding the information that Glasgow had provided the working group. We were unhappy at the lack of detail that we received. As I have said, we received full details from other local authorities, convener. Mr Dodds has asked for that information to be interrogated further and for the information that we require to come to us. We also, as the committee is probably aware, have offered Glasgow help along the way. We recognise that Edinburgh and Glasgow, as bigger cities, had more work to do than some other authorities. Edinburgh accepted that help and had received somewhere in the region of about 150 person hours to help them to deal with the information that we required. Glasgow refused that help and it was not until the council leader instructed the officers there that they had finally taken that help and we moved folk in there yesterday. The key thing in all of this, convener, is getting the right information. You are right, not having the right information can cause alarm out there. That is why it is so important that we have the right information before we take the next steps. Beyond that, convener, I was particularly disappointed at some of the answers that were given to the deputy convener's line of questioning on those issues. Ms Smith rightly asked questions about responsibility. The response from the witness was that, in terms of legislative powers, there is not much that local authorities can do other than notify people. That is extremely disappointing, convener, because there is a number of powers. Glasgow City Council is responsible for the verification and enforcement of building standards. If they feel that there is a danger out there, they have the ability to act, either if the owner does not do the work themselves. The local authority can do that work and then recoup costs later. I would expect people to know the full extent of the powers that they have under the Building Standards Act 2003. I aim to ensure that all building standards officers know what their responsibilities are in that regard. I would expect that the vast bulk of them will do anyway, but I will take steps to write to all local authorities around that so that they know exactly what their responsibilities are in that regard. That is helpful, minister. It was staggering that the assistant head of planning and building standards at Glasgow City Council would not know what his statutory powers were in relation to building standards and enforcement. I know that you are led to the committee in September to outline that. We want to reassure people in Glasgow and across the country. One of the things that you mentioned, minister, was that a lack of clarity in the information that Glasgow had given the ministerial working group. I am assuming that lack of clarity was not an issue for Edinburgh. The support that was offered, records were interrogated. What kind of lack of clarity have you had from Glasgow? What is it that they have not done well enough? I will take Mr Doddson to give you the lack of clarity, because some of this is detailed and technical as you are very well aware, convener, in terms of the briefings that you have had to yourselves previously. Out of the 32 local authorities, 18 of them have high-rise buildings. 18 responded very quickly and did not have a difficulty in putting together the information that we asked for. As I said previously, convener, we recognise that there may be more work for Glasgow and Edinburgh and that is why we offered the support that we did. Edinburgh took up that offer of support. Glasgow did not. It now has that support in. We have an email from Glasgow, which my officials received at 8.16 this morning, which says that they are on track to complete the necessary work by the end of this week. I will be keeping a close tab to make sure that that work is completed as soon as it possibly can be, because you are absolutely right, convener, that we need to take any actions that are necessary to come from the completed information that we receive. In terms of the detail of what has been asked, I would pass on to Mr Dodds, if you do not mind, convener. Of course, Mr Dodds, yes. Good morning, convener. It is mainly clarity around the extent of the cladding. For example, many high-rise buildings can have a combination of different cladding types, whether it is render or rain screen cladding or ACM. The majority of the requests for clarity are around probably the age of the building, the height of the building, the extent of the cladding material and so on and so forth. Some of the descriptions that we are giving to us are two floors, a penthouse flat or whatever, so there was a clarity around the extent. I think that it is quite important to clarify that, in Grenfell, the entire building was overclad with ACM materials. It was a complete enclosure of ACM material, so what we are trying to do is establish whether we have a Grenfell type arrangement, where the building is completely overclad in an ACM product or whether it is in isolated areas. That is the clarity that we are asking. There were also some questions around planned retrieval and looking at on-the-ground inspections and clarifying whether some of the information was absolutely as it should have been, so that request is going back almost line by line now, asking for that additional clarity. We have been given a reassurance that we will get that clarity. I hope that by the end of this week. I suppose that the obvious question to ask is why Glasgow put a return on that clarity in the first place. I can guess that there are two potential reasons for that. One is that they did not know what was expected of them, so I would be asking why Glasgow did not know what was expected of them, but other local authorities did know what was expected of them. Secondly, their record-keeping over a number of years in relation to building warrants is perhaps not up to scratch. As you rightly pointed out, other local authorities managed to undertake this exercise quite quickly. Edinburgh with that additional help. It is very disappointing that Glasgow has not managed to do exactly the same thing. I will hand over to Mr Dodds in terms of record-keeping. What I would say to you convener and the committee may already be aware of this, but in terms of the verification, my responsibility in terms of appointing verifiers, recently that reappointment took place. A number of local authorities who were performing well got the maximum six years of verification. Those who were average got three and three local authorities who I thought were performing poorly, or not as well as they should be. That is Glasgow, Edinburgh and Stirling, got one year. Beyond that, we agreed that we would audit those local authorities in November to make sure that all the things that they were doing were up to scratch, which would include record-keeping. On the details of record-keeping issues, I will pass to Mr Dodds. It is safe to say that the information that we gave out to all authorities was equally consistent. We met Edinburgh officials quite early on, in the middle of July, and went through the process of establishing what the ACM should be. There was a number of requests to Glasgow to have meetings, but obviously what happened there was that summer holidays intervened and so on and so forth. There were a number of phone calls as well, where it was explained the position that we were in, the information we were looking for, was to establish that information. I believe in Glasgow that there were some difficulties in retrieving documents from archives and so on and so forth. I know that Glasgow has been going through some issues with IT, they have changed their IT system and so on. It is something that we will certainly look at during the audit process, the record-keeping within Glasgow, to make sure that the type of information that is being retrieved. The two surveys that we have in there just now will be working through those records, and no doubt we will get some feedback from them to establish exactly what the issue was in retrieving the information. Could there be a positive legacy for Glasgow where the Scottish Government works with the local authority to provide support in relation not just to making sure that the record-keeping is spot-on, but the retrieval of that information can be done speedily and effectively to reassure, but also to make sure that the information that is put on building warrants and related documentation is as it should be as well. Rather than just assure ourselves that Glasgow has got all this information accurate as of Friday in relation to informing owners and residents in those properties. In six months, or one year, or two years, we may have to get through this whole process again to interrogate building warrants for another reason, hopefully not a disaster on the scale of Grenfell, but we may have to reassure ourselves that products used in the construction phase of any development was the correct material. Will lessons be learned? Not just Glasgow, there are 32 local authorities out there. Others seem to have moved much more speedily and successfully on this, but is there lessons to be learned from local authorities on how speedily and quickly we can pull out the required information of the building warrants system? Camerawr, prior to the situation at Grenfell, I had to make the decision around about that appointment of verifiers. The decisions about audit and all of the rest came before the situation, but it now becomes more apparent, I would say, that certain local authorities require help and the expert help that we can provide. I have been very clear, as has Mr Dodds throughout, that if local authorities feel that they need a hand from my officials, some expert advice to ensure that the exporting of good practice is taking place, then that will happen and can happen. The disappointing thing, and Mr Dodds has been a little bit diplomatic, is that Glasgow refused to meet with officials around about this. They did not seek a meeting and we can be nice about holidays and all of the rest of it, but they had the same opportunity as others and did not take it. The other disappointing thing, and I can reiterate this enough, convener, is the fact that they refused help when it was offered. It took the intervention of the council leader to get building standards officers in Glasgow to accept that help. That, to me, is unacceptable, convener. I think that you get nodding heads from committee members here. We also believe that it is unacceptable not to take the required expertise and support when it is such a priority to protect public safety and residential properties in Glasgow. One final question for myself, then, and I want to let the deputy minister in to explore other lines of questioning. Much was made of the fact that fire and rescue in Glasgow were unaware of the situation. Mr Macgaun said that Scottish Fire and Rescue sits on the ministerial working group. In terms of the lines of communication, yes, I absolutely believe that Glasgow City Council should have immediately told Fire and Rescue in Glasgow, but Scottish Fire and Rescue were in the ministerial working group. It was not outwith the realms of possibility that Scottish Fire and Rescue could not pick up the phone and speak to the team in Glasgow. Just in terms of future proofing of all of this, on reflection, was there maybe more that could have been done at the ministerial working group level to notify Fire and Rescue within Glasgow? Convener, as you rightly say, the fire service serve on the ministerial working group, which is very important that we have their input. In terms of inspections and the rest that have happened, I will hand over to Mr Macgaun, because although that information did not come from Glasgow to the Fire and Rescue Service, he will be able to tell you the level of inspection that has taken place in Glasgow, not just since, but over the course of all of this. Just in terms of the point regarding the information that was passed to our local crews in Glasgow, the information that we received as part of the ministerial working group on 8 September was unclear, so any information that we get, which is definitive about any risk within any premises, passed directly to our local crews, who clearly must know the information about the risks within their particular area. As soon as we received more substantial information, albeit incomplete, those were passed to our local crews straight away, who at the same time were in dialogue with Glasgow City Council. In terms of the buildings that were found by Glasgow City Council and the information that was eventually passed to the ministerial working group, there were 57 properties. 42 of those properties have actually already been visited by operational crews as part of the standard quarterly inspection programme that our operational crews conduct across the whole of Scotland, and those 42 visits actually occurred since Grenfell. Since that tragic incident, the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service concentrated the programme of inspections, which, as I say, is a regular programme throughout Scotland anyway, but we thought it right to conduct a concerted and concentrated programme of inspections. Those 42 were on the radar, and they were on the records of local crews in Glasgow. The other 15 are getting complete as we speak today, so we're hopeful by this time next week that those inspections will be complete by our local crews on the ground. Okay, that's very helpful. It's also useful to say at that point, convener, that in terms of the remaining 15, it would be the norm that every building over 18 metres would be reported to the fire service. And that routine inspections would take place. Those 15s are not on the routine list, is my understanding, but I'll hand back to Mr McGowan on that and then come back in, convener. Yeah, thank you. Simply because the information that we received from Glasgow City Council was rather incomplete, and it wasn't definitive enough to say whether the buildings were, were even all high-rise premises, which obviously are those premises that we concentrate our inspection programme on. Regardless of whether they are or not, we're making it a point to actually visit those 15 premises, even if they are what we class to be medium or low-rise. If they are indeed high-rise for our inspection purposes, we'll include those as part of our ongoing inspection programme within Glasgow, but it was unfortunate that we didn't have clear and definitive enough information following the last ministerial working group to get out there straight away until we received that information last week from the City Council. Okay, thank you. Now, I've got other members of the committee wanting to come in. Minister, you mentioned we're deputy conveners line of questioning last week, and I wish she's keen to follow up on some of that. Eileen Smith, MSP. Thanks very much, convener, and thanks for coming this morning, minister. Yes, I think my line of questioning last week, we had limited time, but I was trying to ask the council why they didn't act immediately then with the information that they had, and it seems then to me that they may not have had that information in the first place if the ministerial working group hadn't been set up and asked for the information to be forthcoming, but once they got that information, I think that questions are still outstanding then, and why they didn't take the offer of help that has to be resolved as to why that was the case, and also why they didn't then act immediately on the information, but one of the answers that Mr Barlow gave last week, and it was actually to the convener, was that they obviously felt that, in passing over the information that they had, that was enough at that point for fire and rescue to know about it, because what he said on the record was, therefore, that the fire service at the highest national level in Scotland will be part of the information that we have provided. There seems to be some kind of communication breakdown. I did mention the word red tape, which Mr Barlow didn't seem to take kindly to last week, but what I meant by that was why delay, so I just wondered if you're in a position to give us any kind of answer to that. I know that the council have now instructed that Glasgow City Council take the assistance, but what we saw last week was there was information there. Glasgow City Council clearly felt that they had done their bit, if you like, in passing it to the ministerial working group. They went further than that in saying that fire and rescue clearly knew about it because of that, and therefore there was a gap. I wonder if you could maybe comment any further on that, because I don't think that I've got a clear answer as to why they didn't take immediate action. I don't think that you've got a clear answer either, convener. Can I take Mr Dodds in on the technicals first, and then I'll cover the rest of it, please, convener, if that's okay? Of course, Mr Dodds. Okay. In the first point about the assistance, I think that Glasgow City Building Control believed that they had the requisite number of staff and qualifications to be able to undertake that assessment to collate the information. That was their assessment. We asked a number of times whether they wanted assistance and were given reassurances that the information was forthcoming. It didn't come through as quickly as other authorities, and we had more dialogue with other authorities. That's safe to say as well. On the second point, but why didn't they act on the information? I guess that's something that you probably need to speak to Glasgow about specifically again, and I think that it's something that we would want to take up, you know. Again, my sense on it is that the level of information and the detail of the information would be incorrect to act on limited information and set here running. Limited information would be incorrect to act by the ministerial group, do you mean, or by the City Council? Glasgow City Council, I think that if my interpretation of what was being said last week is correct is that they were collecting this information, and it wasn't full information that they had at the time. Therefore, to act on that limited information, they were having a reluctance in doing that. Again, I think that what came over in the meeting was that they thought that their undertaking was simply to supply the ministerial working group with the information and that thereafter the ministerial working group would be responsible for doing something with that. Whereas in the past, what has been happening with the ministerial working group is that the information has been getting fed back, for example with the schools, the state and so on and so forth, and when it has been found, the actions that have been taken by the local authority have then went on to expand on. Now that you have found this material, the information you have got, what are you doing with it, and then thereafter the reassurances were given to the ministerial working group. Ultimately, it is the building owner that is responsible for their own buildings. At the time that the last committee meeting, the information had just come to hand. My understanding is that, because of the limited nature of that information, Glasgow is looking for guidance on what it is going to do with it. I think that there is a very important strand here, and that is about responsibility, and two is responsible for what. As Mr Dodds has rightly pointed out, the building owner is ultimately responsible for compliance. However, the Building Standards Act 2003 says quite clearly that Glasgow has the responsibility for the verification and enforcement. If at any point Mr Barlow or his team felt that there were dangers, then they should have taken enforcement action. The only way that the ministerial working group could take any enforcement action would be if I used powers under the 2003 act removing enforcement powers from a local authority and directing those enforcement powers myself. If I thought that that was a necessary step to ensure safety, then I would do so. Glasgow, in a press release last week, said that it was confident that those buildings were safe. I take it that that is the judgment of Mr Barlow and his building standards team before that went out. However, we still need to get all the information that is required to see what needs to be done. However, we ourselves, in terms of the fire and rescue service and in terms of Mr Dodds, at every point have offered the help that is required. We have dealt with our responsibilities, and that part, the part of your questioning last week and the responses to your questions, deputy convener, was that the part of all of this that disturbed me the most and the fact that there seemed to be a lack of understanding about the responsibilities under the building standards Scotland act 2003. If I might convener, what I would probably want assurance on is that if any local authority did find something that was of concern then that they would act immediately in the future, I think that's what we would need to know. I would expect any local authority to take action if they felt that that action was necessary. Convener, if I were to find that a local authority were not to be taking actions required, then I would consider invoking the powers that I have under the 2003 act and dealing with that enforcement myself. A few more lines of questioning specifically around the Glasgow situation before we move on. So, if members are seeking my attention to come in, please bear that in mind, Mr Simpson. Thank you very much. I'm relieved to hear that the fire service now know where these buildings are, and that by the end of today you'll have looked at them all. Do the people living in those buildings know yet, because this was a line of questioning last week, have they been told? Convener, again that would be the responsibility of Glasgow to inform the building owners, and I would expect the building owners to inform residents. In terms of the question that Patrick Harvie posed last week, I would go further than that and have the expectation that, if the information comes through that there are difficulties in the building, to Glasgow, building owners and others would co-operate in doing a door-to-door information handling service, because I think that that's what people would deserve. However, convener, as it stands at this moment in time, we are still not certain about what the situation is in all of these buildings, and I think that we need to get all of that information, which I said earlier, Glasgow hopes to have by the end of this week, and then we can look to see what is required in that regard. Convener, as in every other situation, what I would say is, if the Government can help in some way in terms of disseminating information, we would do so. The building owners themselves, of course, would have the responsibility to deal with any situation that is found to be wanting, according to the building standards regime. That is where we are at. We still do not have all of the information to get to that point. I again refer to the situation of the Glasgow pressure release last week, which says that, as far as they are concerned, there are no safety issues at this moment. As I said last week, minister, I do not think that it is up to you or the working group to inform the owners. I think that that is just a matter of courtesy from Glasgow City Council. They do not appear to have followed. I do have a concern that it is taken until only yesterday for them to allow officials in. Given the frirori that happened last week, I would have thought that they would pull their fingers out, having dragged their feet for weeks and weeks and weeks, refused offers of help. Given that they are effectively on notice, you have given them only a year's verification. What is your feeling about what will happen if they fail your stringent tests after that year? I am going to keep a very close eye on all of this. We were going to be doing so prior to this situation anyway. We will look at what the audit brings out, and we will look for improvement. If improvement does not take place, I have to consider whether I use my powers to appoint another verifier to deal with the situation in Glasgow. I want to clarify a point that Mr MacGowden made about the inspection of 42 of the 57 buildings. You understood and understood them as part of routine visits. Presumably, you were inspecting stairwells, alarms, sprinkler systems and doors that things operated. To be clear, you were not inspecting the cladding or anything like that. Although, as the minister says, our information is still a bit incomplete, what appears to be the case is that all those buildings complied with the building rigs when they were built, pre-2005 standards. According to Glasgow City Council, they do not have any evidence that they pose any fire risk. To be clear, you were not looking at that. Maybe you can give a brief indication of the kind of things that you were looking at. Yes, absolutely. Without going into too much of the technical detail around the legislation, building owners in such premises have a responsibility to ensure that what we class as the common areas, so the common stairwells and access to the building and access into those common areas and then into the flats, is maintained to a standard that allows firefighters to attend, fight the fire safely and it's also for the protection of firefighters themselves. The buildings themselves don't come under the scope of legislation which would require a fire safety enforcement audit to take place, they would be classed as relevant premises, these are not relevant premises. So our programme of quarterly operational intelligence and reassurance visits are for those two distinct purposes. So first of all to provide reassurance, particularly after Grenfell, to the residents of the buildings, but perhaps more importantly to gather operational intelligence for firefighters and fire crews to ensure that they have sufficient means of access. So they do look at the roads accessing the building, the means of access into the building, we will look at the integrity of fire-resisting doors, we will look at the clearance of the stairways, the presence of rising mains and fire lifts, but we won't look at other aspects, it would be looked at under a fire safety audit. So it is quite comprehensive but we certainly, you're absolutely right, we do not look at, we don't have the responsibilities nor the particular skills to look at what could be classed as intrusive inspections into cladding, in the presence of cladding and whatever grade that cladding might be as well. So it's a distinct responsibility that the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service has in that regard which we discharge through our programme of quarterly inspections. Okay that's helpful thank you. Okay, any other members on the Glasgow situation? Alexander Stewart. Thank you convener. The minister talked about responsibility and I think that that is the crux of this whole matter. The Glasgow City Council had a responsibility, the owners of the buildings have a responsibility, the fire service have a responsibility and all within that everyone playing their part would assume that everything would work. Obviously here we had a communication breakdown and it went awry. Now what lessons can be learned from this whole process? You know at the fire service are looking at how they can tighten things up. You minister have said that if things don't happen you will take powers that you have that you could use but you know that the situation should never have arisen at a committee meeting that it did last week for us to find out that kind of information and that's the bit that really bothers me that it only came to light because of some questioning that happened where all these organisations have a responsibility and that responsibility was not managing or was not managing to filter through to make sure that everyone was safe or secure or there was no anxiety that these buildings could have a problem. So it's how we manage that and learn from that because as I say you know that the situation could have been much worse if we hadn't been aware of it or if something had happened in the interim when we assumed that the responsibilities were being carried out. Cymru, I agree with Mr Stewart that we need to look at the communication situation and all of this. I think that you know in terms of the line of questioning that the committee had last week and you know having sat on the other side my line of questioning would not have been any different. You know I am very disappointed in the answers that were given, the lack of clarity that was given in response. I think it could have been said without any difficulty whatsoever because the committee as everyone else out there was aware we had 31 local authorities who had reported back saying that they had no difficulties with private high-rise, sorry, we had one authority. Now I think that it could have been said quite easily here last week that we are still working through, we may have a difficulty but we have been asked to provide further information and to go back and check so that we can give people the real information that they require and that we will take any action that is required if we find anything that requires that action. That could have been done last week. That in itself bothers me to a huge degree and you could be assured that we will be doing everything that we can to make sure that local authorities are open and transparent about all of this because we have been as open and transparent as possible right the way through this in terms of everything that has come to light, whether that be in terms of hospitals and so on and so forth. I would expect that openness and transparency or the public will lose trust in what we are doing. Beyond that, convener, in terms of responsibilities and Mr Stewart rightly outlined the responsibilities of building owners, councils, the fire and rescue service, my officials and others, we also have a responsibility as elected members to make sure that during the course of all of this if we need to tighten up regulation, if we need to change legislation then we can do so. Convener, our legislation here is much more robust than it is elsewhere on the islands, but I am not complacent about that. I think that we need to take a long hard look and I will be putting over the recommendations that this committee makes and also taking the advice of the experts that we are putting in place and others, including parties that do not serve on the ministerial working group labs and the FBU. I have been over the course of the piece going and talking to tenants too in Aberdeen and Glasgow, where I talked to residents and tenants from Glasgow, the Lanarkshires, Inverclyde and others. I think that we have to take on board what they have to say too in terms of getting this absolutely right. The 2003 act itself is, if I can say it, a fairly good piece of legislation and the fact that it allows us to change regulation on the advice of experts quite quickly. I think that that is one of the reasons why our legislation is more robust, because we have been able to react, but we have also been proactive in terms of changes as and when required. Yes, there are responsibilities for all of those folks, but we also have a responsibility in making sure that we take the action that is required in any changes in legislation and regulation. I want to bring in Jenny Goldberg to move on from the Glasgow situation. Minister, I hope that I did my job as a Glasgow MSP properly if I did not just put on the record that all social rented high-rises in Glasgow do not have this combustible or ACM cladding, and that they are safe. I have got many, many high-rises in my constituency in Glasgow, Mary Hill and Springburn, and I have a constituents contact me because people watching the tell and reading the newspapers do not always pick up the message. They just hear that there are properties that could be at risk, and I have had worried constituents contacting me from social housing in my constituency, and I have been able to reassure them, but I am just getting that key message again today that those properties are safe. If you could do that, and I second minister, I would be very grateful as an MSP in Glasgow, but also that there will be hard-working and diligent officials in Glasgow City Council today working as hard as they can to get all the required information, who are just doing their job. They are not part of that internal decision-making process of how they deal with building work. They are just doing their job, and what I suppose they will want to hear, and the people of Glasgow want to hear, is that we have moved on from what Glasgow has or has not done well, it is self-evident. They have done a lot of things that have been pretty poor, but this is now a partnership approach with the Scottish Government, and it is under control, and we can move forward on that basis. First of all, I give the assurance that all social housing in Glasgow is free from this material. Go further than that and say that we have reports from all 32 local authorities that that material is not on socially rented properties anywhere in Scotland. Like you, convener, I have a fair amount of high rises within my constituency. Aberdeen has 59, most of which are in my constituency, and I want to be able to say to folk throughout Scotland that all 32 local authorities have reported back and there has been no findings of any of that cladding, kind of cladding, used in Grenfell on any socially rented property in Scotland, any high-rise socially rented property in Scotland. Some folk are sitting at their desks and doing other things, probably out and about looking at this and doing the job that they are being asked to do, and I thank them for doing that job. You are right that we now have Scottish Government help in Glasgow. We should move forward. The key thing for me and all of this, and I think that the key thing for everyone should be, is gathering up all of the required information. As I stated earlier from the email that we received this morning, it looks like that work will be completed by Friday. They are on track to do so. We must work in partnership to make sure that that is done, and then we move forward in taking the necessary actions from there. Just to broaden it out a bit about the remit of the ministerial working group, there is a technical question about how that information was gathered in the first instance. We heard a couple of weeks ago now from the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations that they conducted a survey with their members. Likewise, COSLA told us that they conducted a desktop exercise. How was that information communicated to local authorities originally? Was it through a letter? How did you ask them to gather that data in the first instance? We asked local authorities to gather up data. We have also asked others to help us to gather up data, including the likes of the Scottish Property Federation. We have also asked internally other Government departments to look at aspects of their estate, health obviously, the prison service and a number of others. I am looking to colleagues here. I have probably missed a number of folk off that list. If I could hand over to Mr Dodds, please, convener. It was an evolving task through the ministerial working group. Initially, it was a high-rise domestic social housing. We wrote a letter, and then it became apparent as we were going through the process that more and more detailed information would be required. For example, with schools, we had asked for heights of buildings, areas and so on and so forth. We were very much following the UK Government process, because we were getting this information released to us bit by bit. It was quite an evolutionary process. Initially, we started with letters, then with proformas, and I think that it became quite apparent that the level of detail and the level of information that housing associations, for example, held was sometimes quite extensive, but sometimes limited. That is why the ministerial working group took the decision to have a building inventory of all high-rise buildings in Scotland. Therefore, we are working now with contractors to develop an inventory that will have all high-rise buildings, the age of them and the type of them. That will help to inform us of future ministerial decisions on what other measures we may want to take on existing stock. It is horses for courses, the different building types, the type of information that we are requiring. Essentially, it was ACM, as it is present, what is the extent of it, what is the age of the building, the heights of the buildings. It was that type of information that we are looking at. It was very much building-based, depending on the nature of the risk of the building type. One of the others that I missed off the list, and it is important to put on the record, is that we also asked the Scottish Funding Council for help in terms of student accommodation, too. When that data came in on reflection now, if there will be any physical inspections by anyone from the Government essentially going out and working directly to check that the information submitted was accurate? I will hand over to Mr Dodds in terms of the technicalities and then I will come back. I think that that is something that the working group that has been set up for the enforcement side. I know that the committee in previous sessions have obviously heard a fair bit of evidence about that. It is all very well having it on paper and you have got plans in the office. How do we know that that product is the product that is found its way onto the building? We have had limited examples of products being substituted or so on and so forth, so it is by no means certain that what is on the building warrant and what has been specified has found its way onto the building, and that is a big issue. I think that you are quite right to raise that and that is something that John Cole will take forward as part of his review of the enforcement and compliance with building regulations to make sure that not only is the paperwork correct when the building warrant is issued but that there is a means of signing off to make sure that what was specified is what is appearing on the buildings. We do not have widespread knowledge of that happening. There have been limited examples of that being reported in the press and things that have been dealt with. By and large, the processes that have been gone through have demonstrated that what has been found on the buildings has been compliant with building regulations at the time the buildings were built. We have an example of Napier University, where something went on the building that should have been there, and they discovered that very quickly and took action. Again, I would reiterate the point that building owners are responsible. Any building owner in Scotland who has any dubiety about the cladding can send that cladding for testing to make doubly certain if you like. That is available to building owners, too. We can disseminate that information to the committee. That is an offer that has been made by the UK Government. Minister, you said in your opening statement that everyone who has requested a home fire safety visit has received one. That is perhaps a question to Mr MacGowan. Those visits are obviously not compulsory and we know that more vulnerable groups are not likely to offer themselves up for those kinds of visits. Have you prioritised certain groups? Have you given direction on who should be taking first for those visits? As part of our normal work, even before Grenfell, we do a lot of work with partners in a local area to identify who the most vulnerable are in our communities so that we can concentrate our resources and offer home fire safety visits to them a lot of the times they come through a referral process. That is part of our work that we are looking to do a lot more of in the coming years. We are conducting a bit of research at the moment and we are working with health and social care to try to identify quite forensically and specifically who is the most vulnerable, not in terms of households but individuals. That is who we want to concentrate on. In terms of the work that has happened around home fire safety visits since Grenfell, we have prioritised those. Effectively, for the purpose of public reassurance, anybody who has asked for a home fire safety visit who lives in a high-rise premise has been prioritised along with those others who seem to be most vulnerable. Previously, we would have assessed their risk and the likelihood of them having a fire, but simply because of Grenfell and to provide a little bit more reassurance, if they have asked for one, then they have received one. Thank you. Moving on into other areas, convener, if that is okay. You may have seen a report on the BBC this morning, which was to do with sprinklers in high-rise flats. They had done some research, some FOIs through the fire service, actually. They discovered that, since 2009, 15 people have died and more than 480 have been hurt in high-rise fires. High-rise fires are buildings over 10 stories according to the fire service. But there were no deaths in any building where there was a sprinkler system. Only one of those casualties was in a tower block with a sprinkler system. On that basis, I realise that it is just very basic figures whether that tells you anything about whether we should have more sprinkler systems in blocks where they do not exist. Can I go first and then I will take in Mr McGowan? That report also had comments from Brian Sweeney, ex-fire officer, if I remember rightly from my reading very early this morning. He also talked about other factors as well, which may make a difference. I will take Mr McGowan in terms of technicalities in all that and use his expertise. What I can say to Mr Simpson is that the ministerial working group has already said that it is going to look carefully at all those situations in terms of the use of fire suppression systems. Beyond that, convener, I am grateful to members, fellow MSPs, who have provided us with information about new products on the market, which could be used in terms of fire suppression. Jointly, between the fire service and building standards, we are looking at those things as well. Obviously, convener, one of the things that we have done, and that I have announced today, is that we will look and see what Dr Paul Stollard comes back with in that regard. We will interrogate all that information at the ministerial working group and we will look at all that very carefully indeed. I will hand you over to Mr McGowan, convener. Thank you. You are absolutely right, minister. It was the fire service that provided those figures, which are absolutely factual, just to provide a little bit of context. It is absolutely not to make light of 15 tragic deaths and high-rise premises since 2009. Scotland experiences approximately 40 to 45 fire deaths per year. Those have been on a steady decline and continue to be in a steady decline. Over that period of about eight years, when 15 fire deaths occurred in high-rise premises, Scotland would have experienced, in the nature of 360, I would get exact figures, but in the nature of 360 fire deaths. The majority of our fire deaths in Scotland occur outwith high-rise premises, but that is not to diminish the fact that, tragically, 15 people died in high-rise premises. There is something we can and should do about that. What we focus on in the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, similar to what I was talking about regarding our home fire safety visits, is the prevention measures. In particular, they are quite bespoke and innovative prevention measures to allow us to stop fire deaths in the future, and most of our fire deaths occur, as you might expect, to the most vulnerable in society who tend to succumb within our fire. Those can be, in the majority, in many cases in the last few years, single private dwellings in remote rural locations, which are at the other end of the scale of somebody living in a high-rise building. It is just to emphasise that we are doing a lot of work at the moment. We have just commissioned a piece of research between the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, the Fire Industry Association and also the building's research establishment in Watford, who are carrying out the tests on cladding at the moment, to look quite specifically what we can do in the future to target better those most vulnerable and provide, as I said, quite bespoke and quite innovative ways to improve their chances or rather reduce the chances of having a fire but improve their chances of surviving if they do happen to have a fire. There is already quite established research taking place regarding the use of sprinklers or automatic fire suppression systems because there is quite a wide range of automatic fire suppression systems that you can put into a building, whether it is of an industrial use or whether it is somebody's dwelling. We are quite keen. Our position is that the use of water suppression systems in an automatic nature can be very effective indeed. Every piece of research shows that. The piece in the BBC this morning backs that up. However, we think that it would be more effective to apply resource and install systems where the need is on a risk-based approach rather than sprinkler buildings per se. That research we assume will back up research that has happened before, that has been conducted before in the last five or six years, but we actually wanted to say something quite specific about Scotland and why the BRE has approached Scotland because of our can-do approach to doing something specific about this particular problem of trying to reduce fire deaths across the country. Is the BRE study looking at the most vulnerable in society as a wider thing about fire safety systems? It is specifically looking at the most vulnerable because we already have quite a range of evidence to identify who the most vulnerable might be and those tend to be the ones who not just necessarily have a fire but tend to succumb from a fire, but we are only talking only 40 to 45 fire deaths per year. It will not ignore the fact that we have to continue installing prevention measures in other people's houses because we are talking about thousands of people not just identifying 40 or 45, it is thousands of people across Scotland. We will focus on the most vulnerable but that is not to the exclusion of other properties and other individuals who may be at risk. I am just going to ask you about something else and it is some of the evidence that we have heard and that is where people do small-scale repairs in their homes. They may start off with say a fire door, they will do some DIY or get some tradesmen in or whatever and they put a replacement door that is not a fire door. That has been a concern for the committee. Is this being addressed by the Government or the working group? We will certainly take a look at that, convener. As it stands at the moment, if somebody was to replace a fire door, there is no building warrant required for that, but that fire door, that replacement should be of no lesser quality and rigor than the one that it is replacing. I have noted over the piece that the committee has asked a number of questions around about that. I will ensure that we look at that and at the groups that we are establishing. I will take a look at that to see if that is an area that needs to be tightened up. Can I just check, minister? Before we move on, there are on-going consultations in relation to smoke alarms and fire alarms at the moment. I am just conscious that the other reviews on going that will look at sprinkler systems and other form of fire suppression systems. Will they be linked somehow? Obviously, there is a mixture of methods that can be used to mitigate fire spreading or stop them starting in the first place. Will that be looked at in isolation or will it link into the other on-going consultations? We brought forward the consultation on fire and smoke alarms and domestic dwellings. It was due to come to pass later on this year, but we brought it forward to see what is required in that regard. I think that it was Mr Stewart at one of your previous meetings that said that some of the emphasis of late has been on the private rented sector, because that was the area that seemed to be most risky. That is the case that we have developed much better regulation in the private rented sector. It is now time for the social rented sector and owner occupiers to catch up in that regard. That piece of work is a 12-week consultation. We will look at what is required from there, what that brings back and what is required. Anything in terms of fire suppression would come later. Obviously, the ministerial working group needs to have a rigorous look at all of that and take the advice from the fire and rescue service, from our building standards colleagues and from others, including the groups that we have established before we make a move in that regard. Can I just check as well? If there was been a move in relation to sprinkler systems or other systems, do we know just now, in terms of record keeping in relation to properties that are high-rise, those that do or don't have sprinkler systems? Is that recorded within local authority building warm records? Where would that be held? Would 32 local authorities have to go through their records again to look at that? Or would we just change the law and then they would have to comply with that change in the law? There is a lot in that, but I am just conscious of how do we know what the current situation is with sprinklers other than the legislative situation? Again, the building inventory that we are looking at will ask that specific question. Does your high-rise building have sprinklers fitted? Part of the question is around the readiness for an existing high-rise building to be able to facilitate sprinklers. Not all buildings are structurally sound enough to take the installation retrospectively as sprinklers, so at the present time it is safe to say that there is only limited use in existing high-rise buildings of sprinklers just now. There are not that many within Scotland. We did ask briefly one of those early information requests, but again what it threw up was the requirement to have this more detailed structured look at the existing stop to see exactly what it was. The installation of a sprinkler system would require a building warmth, so yes, we would be able to find out if the committee wanted it. Again, we have asked local authorities for many pieces of information. They have been very supportive of us. We are trying our best through the ministerial working group to focus the information requests to the priority areas, and that is why we felt the building inventory that we could go and ask a contractor or someone to go and work with local authorities to get all that essential information to us. I think that, in all of this, we have been quite methodical in terms of the work that we have been carrying out. As I said in my opening statement, this is pretty intensive work. In the main, local authorities and other bodies have responded extremely well to the requests for information. Others have asked me why we focused in certain areas first. Obviously, those domestic properties have been the main focus where folk are sleeping at night, but we have been working through that list methodically. Mr Dodds maybe wants to say something about current standards in suppression systems, which I think is also important for the committee to know about new standards for new buildings. The working party that we have, the one that we have, is looking at the new building codes of the new building regulations. They will be charged with looking at the latest research. We have undertaken research a number of times along with our fire service colleagues about what type of building we should be looking at. For example, we have introduced sprinklers to schools over 18m high-rise buildings. There is a programme of looking at the latest research and then changing the regulations. For example, the next couple of building types that we will be looking at will definitely be student accommodation, hotels and other high-rise buildings that have sleeping accommodation. That will be very much part of the focus of the work that we are taking forward in the future. We are absolutely not complacent in any way. My fire service colleagues are absolutely convinced that sprinklers have a role to play, not just in new buildings, but that we have to draw the distinction about putting it into new buildings. The retrofitting of quite intrusive systems into existing buildings needs to be dealt with, probably, separately. As Mr Dodds said earlier today, it is the building owner's responsibility for ensuring that safety upkeep and maintenance of buildings. We have heard quite a lot of complaints about enforcement of building regulations. That is an issue that Mr Cole will be taking forward to look at. My question is really over the longer term. Some of these buildings are 100 years old or so. When people buy a property, they really do not know what is in it or what work is being done. Even whether there has been a breach of building regulations in the past that could have an impact on the building, not necessarily just for fire, but obviously for structural reasons and all the rest of it. I wonder if that will form part of Professor Cole's remit. I should look at your news release that you put up at six minutes past 10 this morning. It does not include the remit of the two working groups. I wonder if you could provide the committee with a copy of the actual remit. Convenor, I will do that. I have announced the chairs today. I have not had the opportunity to meet with the chairs to talk about remit and I would do that first of all before dictating what that remit should be because we need to use their expertise to have a look and see what they think requires to be done. The reason why I have not had the opportunity to meet with them is because one of the gentlemen only agreed yesterday. I will meet with him and we will let the committee know what those remits are after the discussions that I have with him. Those two people have taken on the role without knowing what the remit is? I think that they have a broad overview of what the remit of the work that they are about to embark on. They are both experts in the field, but they are obviously things that they may want to look at in some depth. I am not going to rule that out. Mr Dodds knows those two individuals much better than I do. I have had a fair amount of dealings with Professor Cole of late, and I think that the committee would probably agree that in terms of his report on Edinburgh schools, he did a robust job. I would hope that the same thing will apply in terms of the role that we have asked him to do here. We have shared draft remits with both of the chairs. At the present time, they are reviewing those. Of course, they will want to see those and work their way through. The particular question that you asked about existing buildings, there was a previous committee in the Parliament here that looked at that very issue about existing buildings. At the present time, the building standards system looks after new buildings. There were powers introduced in 2003 for defective buildings that gave local authorities the ability to be able to establish before something became dangerous. If a chimney just started to look a bit shaky, it wasn't dangerous. We have increased the powers for local authorities to deal with defective buildings. It is a discretionary power, but we had a committee meeting looking at aspects of dangerous buildings and building MOTs. I know that there are some pilots going on and looking at some of the issues around some of our historic buildings. However, that is not scheduled to be part of the remit at the present time. It is something that I can discuss with Mr Stewart if he wants to… I can do no more than encourage. If it is helpful to the committee, there are some good graphs in terms of the procedures that should be followed in local authorities to deal with dangerous and defective buildings so that we can pass on to the committee. It is quite easy to understand and it would give you an indication of how all of that works. The information that you provide would be very well published. We will do that, convener. Mr Daws, did you want to add to that? No, no, that is that sort of thing. Mr Wightman, do you want to follow up on any of that? I encourage you to have a remit that could look at this, because you talk about building a database of high-rise buildings. Obviously, the owners are just 57 in Glasgow alone that were the subject of the controversy regarding cladding, etc. Let us assume that there are 30 properties in each that may well be more. That is 1,500 or 2,000 owners. Obviously, they buy a flat, it met the building regs. Well, they would not even question whether it built the building regs. But now, five, 10, 15, 20 years later, we know more. Yet, those owners, as private individuals, are not going around testing their cladding or whatever. It is very difficult for them to understand that the building they live in might need some attention. That is a problem that occurs in the short term. Even in the longer term, 40, 50, 60 years down the line, problems can arise as a consequence of our new understandings about buildings, about materials and all the rest of it. It seems to me quite important that the remit should include, not exclusively, but should include some consideration of how we maintain institutional knowledge going from generation to generation about what is in a building, what work is being done and what standards were applied. I will reflect on what Mr Wightman has asked for there. I am not going to commit to anything because, at the end of the day, as I have pointed out, there is a raft of work that has to be undertaken here. We have done it methodically. I think that adding a number of other things into the mix at this moment may not be the right thing to do, but I will reflect on what Mr Wightman has requested and look at that in some depth, discuss with my officials and take a decision after that. I have a number of questions about the database of high-rise buildings, but I am aware that we are short of time, so perhaps you could come back with some more information about the scope of that database, how frequent it will be updated, what information you will be seeking from owners and what the purpose of that is for the longer term insurance of the safety of high-rise buildings. I have rolled up all the questions that we would be keen to ask. Do you have a general reflection on that just now, and you could write to us? More than willing to write in detail on that point or any other point, convener? That is very helpful. We would like to know that. Mr Stewart, you have got some questions. We have heard some evidence with reference to the skills shortage that seems to be taking place in the building industry. That has had a knock-on effect on how things have progressed and the standards that are going forward. What is the Scottish Government's view on how that should be addressed, and what are they doing to tackle that skill shortage? On my day-to-day business, I have been visiting a fair number of building sites in recent times. One of the things that I always do and always ask, if I am on a building site, is if there are any apprentices there, because I am keen to hear their views, because they are the future of the industry. Almost to a man and a woman, and we are seeing more women, I would like to see more in the construction industry, would say that they are enjoying their apprenticeship. When I ask the question, would you encourage your mates to join the industry, the answer is yes. Now, I think that we need to promote in conjunction with the construction industry itself the trade and how good a job, how good a career, entering construction can be. Convener, it is disappointing that, in some regards, it is the smaller building companies that have more apprentices than some of the larger ones. I encourage the larger construction companies to look at workforce planning and to take on more apprentices. I know that my colleague Jamie Hepburn has had a number of discussions with the CITB and others about apprenticeships and other issues in terms of getting folk into the construction industry. I do not have all the detail of that to hand, convener, but I am more than willing to find out from Mr Hepburn exactly what has been going on in that regard and pass that to Mr Stewart. One other thing, convener, in terms of the construction industry, a conservative estimate at this moment says that 10 per cent of the construction industry workers in Scotland are European. In some of the sites that I have visited, including one in my own patch in Aberdeen, 70 per cent of the construction workers on that site were European nationals. Now it would be a great loss to us, a disaster in fact, if these folks were to go and to leave Scotland and leave the industry here. Mr Stewart, do you want to follow up on that? I think that the minister makes a very valid point about the role of apprenticeships and coming through and making sure that we have that stream of people. But at the other end of the scale for the individuals who are older in the process, but also trying to encourage people to become more involved in the industry, I think, is very important for us to go forward and make sure that we have a collective responsibility of ensuring that the industry is progressing effectively. I think that you also make a very valid point about the EU nationals. As I said, it is very important that we do all that we can to ensure that that is the case. The main thrust of it, Minister, would be about how we develop that skill base and how we ensure that skill base that continues to grow and develops within the industry itself. Things that the Scottish Government can do to ensure that that is the case and providing some support, some mechanisms to ensure that they have that work force planning and that they have that understanding going forward. I have made some suggestions to industries that I have been going out and about. Here in Edinburgh, a site in Pennywell, which is an area that is being regenerated and we have good quality housing going in there, I had the opportunity to meet three apprentices there, two of whom were very local and lived very close to the site that they were working on, one who lived in Edinburgh but not so far away. They were keen to tell me that they had never thought about the building industry at school. While a lot of other things came up in terms of discussion at school and in terms of careers, construction was not one of those things. I do think that industry itself would be good for them to get into schools at an early stage. In the north-east of Scotland, we have seen for a while a real problem in terms of recruitment in oil and gas. Industry went into schools to encourage folk into that career path. The same can be done with construction. Anything that I can do in that regard or anything that I can do to help with ministerial colleagues to allow that to happen, I would do so. I will give a time check to members here. We are overworked time but we have run this about 10 past 11 and we need to move on because we have another panel of witnesses. I hope that we can get some more questions in that time. Elaine Smith. Thanks, convener. I have a few questions to help with our general look at the building standards issues. Just on that last question that Alexander Stewart was asking, the last line of questioning, I do recall that we did have a college of building specifically in Glasgow, but I think that that is now part of the wider Glasgow College. I do not know whether that has had any bearing on courses being run, et cetera, but maybe that is for another day. Minister, you mentioned something earlier about making sure that what is specified is used in construction. We did hear evidence that the use of clark of works can help to improve compliance with the building standards. I wonder if there are any proposals that you might have for any action that you could bring forward to ensure that clark of works are used in larger public and private sector projects. I know that it would be difficult with the private sector projects, but maybe if we are thinking about contracts and when you are putting out contracts forbidding, is there any way that the procurement process could contain something around the need for a clark of works? Convener, there is separate work going on at this moment on procurement of public buildings. That is taking place in parallel with the work that we are doing. I have said before, convener, to the education committee in terms of evidence that I gave there in regards to school buildings in the co-report, that the local authorities—I have spoken to 30 out of the 32 local authorities—the day after Grenfell, which was primarily supposed to be about coal and became about Grenfell, again early action. At that meeting and other meetings that I have had since, those authorities, those public bodies that have used clark of works in terms of their projects, they have had the least problems in terms of any defects at a later stage. I think that it is wise not only for the public sector but for the private sector to look at the personnel that they have got on the ground, because I think that this is my opinion. It seems to me that having an experienced clark of works that would have to be may actually be spending to save a lot in the future. I could probably provide the committee with some examples of that, rather than just my anecdote, which may not be 100 per cent correct. The one that does stick in my mind was Fife where using clark of works in their major projects, and they had very little difficulty. I am looking at Mr Dodds to see if my memory serves me well, I think that Glasgow raised that last week when we were giving evidence as well about the schools that used clark of works. I think that that was helpful. I am looking at the convener, but we would appreciate the further information. I can provide further information on what is going on in parallel around procurement, if that is useful to the committee. That would be helpful. I move on to perhaps something around the verification issue. We have been taking evidence on whether or not it should be kept in the public sector. If you look down to how things are sometimes it is not, and it is maybe the private sector that carries out that role of the building control. I would be grateful for your thoughts on that, but if I could just tie it up with, we have heard some calls for building standards fee income to be ring-fenced, for the provision of building standards services. I would be grateful for your view on that suggestion. I am conscious of the time, so I am rolling all that up. We also had the report from Unison, which talks about building stress, overwork stress and stuck in the office. In the key issues, it mentions that the overwhelming majority of respondents felt that their workload had got heavier in the past few years. They talked about morale being low and the reasons given where further budget cuts to local authorities increased workload and the lack of a pay rise are key reasons why they would not expect morale to get any better. Those are obviously concerns for the functioning of the whole building control sector. I am afraid that that was three things, First, on verification of the public sector, the ring-fencing of the income, and then also on the report about the workforce in the sector. Three things. First of all, I should probably refer members to my register of interests, because I am a member of Unison. Let me start off with the verification function itself. I took the decision in May, if I remember rightly, to reappoint local authorities as the verifiers. I did that after reflecting for a long while and looking at the evidence that I had. I did it differently from predecessors. I was not entirely happy, as you have gathered from previous answers, I am sure, about performance in three of those local authorities. That is why they have been reappointed for one year only. Those authorities that were average were reappointed for three years. Those authorities that are doing well were reappointed for six years. I will continue to look at all of that, convener, as we move on. If I were not to reappoint a local authority in a specific area, that does not mean that I would then necessarily go on and appoint the private sector. I could give that verification role to a neighbouring authority, for example. You can be assured, convener, that all of that I will keep looking at very closely indeed, including the audits that I have talked about, which will take place in November. On fees themselves, the committee will be aware that I took the decision to raise fees. I have gone around the country and have said that my expectation would be that I have allowed for that increase in fees, some of which we will retain to beef up building standards here. However, I would expect that additional income to be used to boost building standards services in local authorities. I should point out, convener, that some of the authorities are not doing quite so well. It is not because of a lack of fees coming in. I will continue to monitor that. Ms Smith is well aware, convener, that this Government has tried not to ring fence, tried not to dictate to local authorities what they should be doing in these regards. However, I will keep an eye on this. If there is no improvement, I will obviously enter into discussions with COSLA around about this, if there was a need—a felt need—to ring fence. In terms of the general scenario of pay cap and work, the First Minister has made clear that this Government will look to remove that pay cap. In terms of work itself, it is incumbent of all employers, no matter who they are, whether they are in the public or the private sector, to make sure that their employees are in a positive place and that they are not overly stressed or overly burdened. I will follow up on the issue of, if you are retaining some of that funding for Mr Dodd's department, I presume, is what you are talking about, minister. Is there a place at all, given the situation back to Glasgow of the offer perhaps not being taken up quickly of the help? Is there any—I raised this a long time ago, it seems, now, in evidence when I was asking for comments way back at the start of this process of looking at building regulations—is there any place for a central flying squad type arrangement whereby there are officers who could centrally take on a role around the whole building regulation verification process? Convener, Mr Dodd has been the flying squad of late. I do not know if you will appreciate me calling him that or not. We will find out when I go out of the room. One of the reasons why, convener, we have retained some of that money is to beef up building standards division here, because a lot more of their work has been focused on helping others elsewhere. As I have said, Mr Dodd's has been to Stirling, he has been to Edinburgh, he has been to Glasgow, he has been to a lot of other places as well, and we have those additional audits that we would not normally have. Convener, any local authority can call upon the expertise of building standards and we are putting in place a team that will be able to respond to any needs. As it stands at this moment in time under the 2003 act, building standards is still a matter for local authorities. I think that in terms of the verification and the enforcement, they are best placed on the ground to do that. However, if they require additional expertise, they know that they can come to us and get that. Beyond that, I would reiterate what I said previously, if there was an authority that was not performing and not dealing particularly well with some of the situations that they face, I would look to use my powers under the 2003 act to deal with that. In order for me to deal with that, I would have to rely on expertise probably from other authorities as well as from the building standards division. My main focus is to ensure that the right emphasis is put on investment in building standards, not only just here in Government but also out there in all 32 local authorities. I hope that all elected members, whether they are here in this place or whether they are in local authorities, will look at building standards a little more than we have previously done in the past. I have a final one as well, but I will ask you first, Ms Smith. I am conscious that we have got about three minutes left, so both of us will have to be very brief. Thank you, convener. It is a slightly different subject. The FBU highlighted a 24 per cent fall in the number of uniformed fire safety inspection officers, which they said put remaining staff under considerable pressure. I wondered if the Scottish Government would look at fire safety inspection officer staff and in funding, particularly in light of the increase in work loads. I think that it came to light during the course of debate last week that the Government put in an extra £27.1 million, if I remember rightly, to the Fire and Rescue Service this financial year. On the inspectors themselves, I will let Mr McGowan answer. Obviously, inspectors have been doing an absolutely immense job of work before Grenfell, but especially since Grenfell. I am very thankful for the efforts that they have put in. Thank you. Just to confirm the figures at the start of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, there were 89 uniformed fire safety enforcement officers. This year, we have 73 posts. Five are currently being filled at the moment. I think that it is also important to let the committee know that we also have 13 specialist non-uniformed auditing officers who carry out the same role as our fire safety enforcement officers. Our focus absolutely is on the work that those officers and their non-uniformed colleagues do and the outcomes as well. So, in terms of the number of audits, they have stayed stable over that period of time. We carry out upwards of 9,000 audits within relevant premises every year, but more importantly for us, what we are trying to achieve through those audits is the number of fires and non-domestic premises falling. Actually, this year, within the first quarter of this year, they are at their lowest since the start of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, so we recognise the figures. The figures are absolutely, as I have just reported. However, our outcomes are greater than they ever have been in terms of number of non-domestic fires since the start of the service, which, for us, we want to continue to do so with the number of staff that we have. If you were mopping up exercise with some of the questions, I hope to ask, so maybe just brief reflection of what you have to say to the minister in relation to some of those. If there is anything at all that you require, then let us know and we will respond as quickly as we can by writing. Okay, so I am just going to put on the record two or three things because I will inform what we are on report. We have heard that in relation to new bill properties that sometimes fire safety assessments can fall between two stools where buildings are partially occupied, but not necessarily always having that kind of... We will clarify on that, but what you have had in evidence is not necessarily what happens, but we will clarify all of that with you. Okay, so the clarity, or to take on the suggestion that has been made, that there should be a fire safety assessment of new bill properties prior to completion certificate by the fire service, so we will leave that sitting there. The FBU has obviously suggested an intrusive inspection of all high-rise properties. Mr McGowan has already talked about the type of inspections that do already take place, so we will leave that sitting there. Finally, there did not appear to be a standardised national standard for fire risk assessments, and there was a suggestion that there should be some kind of very specific national guidance to standardised approach across the country. I am not saying that is accurate minister, I am just saying that we have heard that in evidence, so we are duty bound I think to raise that at committee while we are here. Sure. We have seen that evidence, convener. We will respond to you in writing with a detailed response about that. It has been a long evidence session, minister, and Mr McGowan and Mr Dodds. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you for the opportunity, convener. Any final remarks you want to make, minister, before we close this evidence session? Obviously, I and the ministerial working group will look very carefully at the recommendations that the committee makes. In terms of all that we need to do to make sure that people are safe in Scotland, we need to work in partnership. I hope that we can do that with all partners across Scotland to get that absolutely right. I thank everyone for their time this morning. We will suspend briefly, but we will move a very quick load to agenda item 2. Good morning, and welcome back to local government committee. We now move to agenda item 2, which is the committee's inquiry into homelessness. The committee will take evidence on its inquiry into homelessness, and we welcome Bridget Curb, the Glasgow housing options steering board, a few of the king campaigns in public affairs manager, Shelter Scotland, Jules Oldham, Head of Policy and Operation Homeless Action Scotland, and Dr Neil Hamlet, NHS Health Scotland. Thank you everyone for coming along here this morning. Apologies words more for the delay in relation to the starting of this evidence session, but we felt that we had to let that last evidence session run its course, quite a significant issue. As is, of course, our tackling of homelessness. We're delighted to have you all here. I'm not sure if we'll get an indication of any opening remarks, but I'll give witnesses the opportunity if there's any opening remarks they wish to make. I see lots of nodding heads, so we'll just go from my left to right. Bridget, do you want to start? Good morning, everyone, and thank you so much for the invite to come along and talk to the committee. I am Bridget Curr, the housing options project manager, standing in today for Suzanne Miller, the chair of our housing options steering board, and I think it's important to reflect the partnership that's encompassed within the steering board. Glasgow Health and Social Care Partnership, Glasgow City Council, the Wheatley Group, Glasgow and West of Scotland Forum of Housing Associations, the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations, Shelter and Fiona, here is a former member of our board, so it's lovely to see her this morning again, and Glasgow Homeless Network. A key focus for our approach to homelessness prevention is tenancy sustainment, so a central component of our approach has been to help sustain people in their accommodation, for all the reasons that that's so important. The challenges that face in Glasgow are well documented in terms of the scale of homelessness, the complexity of need and the city's complex housing landscape, with 60 plus community-based and national housing associations operating in the city, so partnership has been a central component of our strategy, as we have sought the active involvement of RSLs, health and social work, and third sector colleagues to develop and promote a culture of shared responsibility for vulnerable people needing housing advice and those at risk of homelessness in the city. Our model is a very practical model, and we've had our recent second independent evaluation, which is the basis of our submission to the committee, and that shows that our model protects the rights under the homelessness legislation. It shows very effective outcomes for customers with higher levels of need, demonstrates the business case for housing options in Glasgow, and shows its significant potential prevention savings. Thank you. Okay, thank you very much. Fiona King. Hi, good morning. Thank you for inviting Shelter Scotland to be involved in this really timely inquiry. We're delighted that the committee are taking it forward. Shelter Scotland has offices across Scotland and various support projects and advice workers, and I suppose we see the impact and consequences of homelessness on a daily basis. Last year we helped more than 21,000 people facing homelessness or experiencing bad housing, and we had 800,000 unique visits to our online get advice service. So we know there's high levels of housing need, and we are striving to ensure that everyone in Scotland has a safe, secure and affordable home, because a home is the foundation of nearly everything else that a person can achieve in being part of a thriving community. So there's very high levels of housing need, which is why we launched our far from fix campaign this time last year, and we've been calling for leadership and action around homelessness. There's a lot of good work going on. There's a lot of good pilots. There's lots of good people. There's lots of good projects, but we want to see it driven forward at a national level. So this inquiry is an absolutely perfect opportunity to drive forward some really challenging recommendations, because there are real problems. Every 19 minutes a household in Scotland becomes homeless, and there were 28,000 homeless assessments last year, so it is a big problem. And what we want to see is a sort of strategic whole system response to homelessness and the prevention of homelessness. It can't be just homelessness teams. It can't be just the third sector. It's great to see Neil here today because we need health, we need social work, we need criminal justice, we need education, we need all parts of our public sector and our third sector working together. We are in the middle of a housing crisis. In addition to the homelessness problem, there are an additional 142,000 households waiting for housing on council waiting lists, and these are all part of the problems we're facing. We need to see temporary accommodation tackled in a really meaningful way, both conditions, length of stay, how it's being resourced, how it's being funded, and is it working for people? Of course, I'm sure we'll talk about it, but welfare reform is an ongoing concern for everyone on this panel, and we need to see how we can address that more comprehensively. Really delighted the committee heard from service users in the last session. I think that was a really excellent but also quite challenging session, and one of the things that came out of that was the real need for good housing support, joined up support to help people move away from homelessness. So service users must be at the heart of all of this work in this inquiry and any recommendations going forward. I think there's a big challenges, but there's also a great opportunity for this committee, and I look forward to the discussion. Thank you very much. Thanks for inviting Homeless Action Scotland here today. We are the national membership organisation for homelessness in Scotland in our 43rd year. We represent the far and wide everyone who is working within homelessness across the country. In particular, we look forward to discussing further the use of bed and breakfasts and night shelters. That's something that's high on our agenda priorities, in particular now that we're pleased to see the spotlight on rough sleeping, but we don't want us simply to move from people on the streets moving then into bed and breakfasts or inappropriate accommodation. I welcome discussing that further today, along with many other points, but I'll come back to those once we come to those questions. I'm here representing NHS Health Scotland, but I'm also here as a co-author of a report that I did on behalf of the directors of Public Health across Scotland called Restoring the Public Health Response to Homelessness, and that came out in 2015. On the back of that, there's been quite a significant change in the relationship, particularly between public health and also healthcare services and homelessness and housing. It can really be summarised in that a healthy, and I use the word healthy, home, and I use the word home rather than house, is an underpinning bedrock for wellbeing right across the life course. It's important from conception right through to the death bed, and at each stage the house has a very significant part to play in allowing all the other resources that lead to wellbeing. It's important also in the fact that health and social care, as they come together, they talk about providing care and healthcare at home or in a homely setting. Once again, we have that underpinning need for housing and wellbeing and health to come together. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you to all of our witnesses for opening statements, and we'll move straight to questions now. Graham Simpson. Thanks, convener, and welcome today. I'm just going to kick off with a general question, and it's for all of you, but it's based on the submission from Homeless Action Scotland. Where you make the quite bold statement, we know how to eradicate and prevent homelessness. So my question to all of you is how? Well, I don't think it's one answer, and I think that the main issue, if we had kind of just one answer, yeah, that would be lovely, but that's not the case. So the main reason behind homelessness in Scotland is relationship breakdown. So we need to look at that and need to kind of look to see what we can do in prevention in relation to that. But I think it's looking at what we can do better around accommodation and fast accessible kind of routes to accommodation, support where required for that accommodation, and there not being any kind of need to wait for that support if and when required. We need to be realistic around that, that somebody might need support for three, four months, then not for a year or two, but actually be able to then access it again when need be kind of later on. We also need to take into account the kind of mental health state of people at their most vulnerable point. So allowing for not only support, but support that actually has background and knowledge on how to help people at that most vulnerable and critical point. And as Fiona mentioned in our opening statement, part of that will also be all kind of areas of expertise working together. It can be quite difficult for different budgets, different pots to kind of all work in collaboration when you've got somebody with maybe a range of different areas of need. So what we don't want to continue with is somebody going from pillar to post to pillar to post to actually get all the right areas of support because that's how budgets can work. So it's kind of about budgets working together and organisations working together with accommodation and support. Yeah, I probably echo a lot of what Jules has said, but I suppose it comes down to, I suppose maybe what you meant in submission and we'd feel the same is there's a lot of data out there. There's been a lot of research. We know what help and advice would help prison leavers to avoid homelessness wherever possible. We know that care leavers need certain support mechanisms. So a lot of the work has been done. It's about taking it forward in a comprehensive, sustained, well-funded strategic way, but it is about a supply of good quality of affordable housing in the places people want to live, and that's a long-term commitment to delivery of homes. That's one element, but I suppose it's not just bricks and mortar. I think this came out really clearly from the session last week. It's housing support and it's the support that meets the individual person. Homeless people aren't one homogenous group that all need the same thing, and I think you heard from the people who have experienced care, how distinct their support needs are, but there's other people who need a range of support needs, money and debt advice. There's all sorts of things, but if we don't put support in, you're giving people the keys, but they're destined to fail certain groups of people. So it is housing supply, it's support, but then it is also not just a money thing. It's joining up all of the different priorities and it's different parts of the public service and funded third sector working together. We have examples where different departments within the same council aren't working strategically together and have obviously got their eye on either their KPIs or their outcomes or their budgets. We don't want the housing management team to be working against the homelessness team or the housing options team or the social work team or the environmental health team. We really need all the different departments to work together, so they're the kind of three things that we know needs to happen and would help to make a step forward in responding to homelessness. Okay, thank you. Bridget Curman, do you want to come on that? Yes, thank you. Again, I would very much support the comments of my colleagues here, but I'd like to talk a bit about our approach in Glasgow, which is a very practical and hands-on approach to the prevention of homelessness. So we have a comprehensive housing interview with people who either present to homelessness services or come to RSLs for housing advice. That's not just about an assessment for homelessness or a waiting list application. That includes a comprehensive financial assessment along with a consent to share information in respect of the underpinning needs that that person may have, which prevents them from finding, securing and maintaining a home. We couple that with an active referral system, so I very much take on board with both Joes and Fiona, I have said about some of the difficulties in joint working across departments. We have active referral systems, name contacts in health, in social work, in housing benefit, the Scottish welfare fund and third sector organisations. We have developed a range of support services, which includes low-level housing support, mediation services and all of that has been supported by a bespoke joint training programme for RSL staff and homelessness staff. We've trained just under 1,000 staff now in Glasgow to implement this approach, and we provide on-site coaching and mentoring for eight weeks in all of our locations. We now cover 72 per cent of the social housing stock in the city to implement that practical approach. I'd like to give two practical examples of how that has been taken forward. It seems to me that victims of domestic abuse, for example, having to go homeless, so to speak, is something that we would want to radically improve. The Wheatley group has a policy whereby victims of domestic abuse do not have to present as homeless. There is a separating partners policy and the Wheatley allocation policy that enables them to access housing without that. Granted, Wheatley is a big RSL. It's got enormous commitment to this issue, as do many of our other RSL partners. We'd like to see and propose the development of protocols across RSLs in which they could develop reciprocal arrangements. My other last example that I'd like to give is a contrast between a PRS tenant in Glasgow who'd lost his job, pre-housing options and post-housing options. A private rented sector tenant in Glasgow having lost his job would go homeless, so to speak. With housing options, we were able to make representation to that landlord on that person's behalf to accept to reduce grants to local housing allowance for a period enabling that person to focus on the priority for them, which was finding another job, rather than getting caught up in housing, temporary accommodation, etc. That was very effective. Shelter, who are one of our partners, did the training for us on the private rented sector, which propelled that during our implementation of the programme. That's very helpful. Dr Hamlet, as I just put on the record, you mentioned the Piedl group. Sometimes I work very well with Piedl group, but they have just consulted and changed their allocations policy under choice-based letting. Not with great engagement, I have to say, certainly with myself, despite my efforts and maybe the nature of an MSP as you get to see things when they don't quite work and you don't get to see the success stories. For my constituents watching that I represent, I just have to put something on the record in relation to how choice-based letting is that it isn't working in relation to Piedl group, but I'm very grateful that you've put the positive things that are happening on the record. That's important, but I have constituents who I didn't say in something that would certainly be on the phone and emailing me about that. Dr Hamlet, sorry for my indulgence. Could you come in now, please? On the question of eradication of homelessness, I think I'm right in saying that Finland has made some excellent progress on that. An examination of the changes that they made at policy level in Finland would bear fruit. When I look at the issue of the eradication of homelessness, I use a framework that consists of five easily-rememberable Rs. The first one is Rafters and that is all about the availability of housing. We know about that and you've talked about that. The second one is relationships because we know that the greatest cause of people becoming homeless is a breakdown in relationships. The creation of good relationships and again that starts from the cradle and so that brings in whole issues around what we call ACE's adverse childhood experiences and that was one of the key preventative points that we raised back in that report in 2015. We've got Rafters, we've got relationships. Once you have both of them, you then are in a position to take advantage of resources and those resources might be welfare benefits, they might be a good education, they might be a job, they might be just the network of people around you that prevent you from actually experiencing homelessness. I believe the order is important. You need the house, you need the relationship which gives you access to the resources and after that comes what I call restoration or recovery because all of us need sleep, all of us need a home which is the place where psychologically we are safe, we're comfortable, we're fed and we can relate and get on with our living. Without that our stress levels are very high and so the need physiologically for sleep is as important as we have a physiological need for a house. That brings in the whole issue of Maslow's hierarchy of need and it would be interesting to debate how that hierarchy of need is inverted as we see in terms of the responses that you may well have had from some of your experts by experience that will have spoken to you previous weeks. After that comes resilience because if you have those other four hours you're then in a position to be able to bounce back from a situation which could actually land you into a homeless setting, so those five hours I would commend to you. Thank you very much. I want to follow up on that Mr Simpson. Indeed. Thank you very much and thanks by the way for all your submissions, I enjoyed reading them. I'm particularly impressed with the one from Glasgow Housing Options where you were just telling us in great detail about how that operates and how the joint working was really impressive. You've got 52 partners in the city which is extraordinary if you can get all them working together, that's brilliant. I want to move on to discuss one of the things you mentioned, temporary accommodation, because we've heard there are real issues out there, A with the standard and B with the length of time that people are staying in temporary accommodation, have you got any thoughts on that, any evidence that we could use? Who's catching my eye? Joe's old and let's start with yourself again there. Okay, well it's a difficult one to really get the true statistics around temporary accommodation because often people will be in and out and back and forwards through local authorities and so actually I'm not terribly sure that the current figure is 10,873 households came forward for the last year or are currently in temporary accommodation, but I'm not really sure that gives you the full picture in that somebody can arrive to temporary accommodation, that's not entirely suitable for maybe a location for them at that point or just their circumstances other people in the building, they then return to local authority, they end up in a different temporary accommodation, that doesn't work for for every reason or maybe yeah they can basically go from pillar to post for on average three different places back and forwards through a local authority until they're in a temporary accommodation place that they'll be in for for some time, so to start with yeah just just highlighting that the figure around that's quite difficult to gauge because just depending if that's seen as one case or not. Too often now though it's actually the bed and breakfasts are being used, it's about eight nine years ago since I worked in front line services and at that point I remember saying actually we're going to eradicate the use of bed and breakfasts and that was that was a goal and that goal seems to have kind of just just left us there's I've discussed this with many local authorities in the last few weeks and everybody's saying yes we've we're needing to use bed and breakfasts more more and more and that's not it's just simply not acceptable. I realise it's something that can't be changed overnight and we need a long-term plan need a long-term strategy there to actually take that and really really change things but just to just to give you the picture of of how that works if you're in temporary accommodation in a bed and breakfast you'll arrive you're given a room often with many others who are in the same circumstances as you in that so it's not the very nice bed and breakfast that we would head to on our holidays so yeah you're you're in a very basic room with very basic communities and often asked to leave at eight o'clock seven eight o'clock every morning you're then expected to have somewhere to go throughout that day with very little funds available to you and then only able to return there about kind of five o'clock at night at best you don't have access to somewhere to to cook often not even a kettle so and not somewhere to be doing your own laundry you know all these basic fundamentals aren't there and it's simply not acceptable that we're that we're actually putting more and more people into that to that type of accommodation and so i think that needs a bit of a it is not an overnight solution it does need a focus and and a focus kind of nationally to eradicate that and the other element of that that i'd like to highlight is night shelters which are also on the increase in use and by those again i'm going to return to when i was last in front line services at that point a night shelter was used in the month of december and churches would take it in turn to to provide a floor space for people who were in need kind of dire need at that point to have a floor space for that night and then they were to turn the next night if nothing else had been provided so rewind to then yes it was in the month of december now we're looking at often october often as far through febru march that these are provided how we've got to this just just seems incredible and something that we really need to be working to be providing support within there and and kind of removing that as any kind of resource it's not that somebody even has a bed as such you know they've really just got a roof over their heads night shelters is this just in Glasgow and Edinburgh is it and other places yeah this is further than than just Glasgow and Edinburgh yeah obviously the bigger numbers are Glasgow and Edinburgh but no this is across the country um and certainly Glasgow in particular we've really seen an increase in the use of those so um yeah it's starting to become the norm and that's again it's not not an acceptable kind of solution and strangely alongside that um there's actually um supported accommodation with some voids that weren't always there but people are going into night shelters so we've got something something wrong along the way there um where people are actually just going to the kind of the the quick go-to solution rather than us actually being able to provide something long-term permanent and um as Neil said a home if you're not king yeah i think temporary accommodation is a huge issue and i'm glad committee's focusing on it i think the the world leading homelessness legislation we've got in place is fantastic but the temporary accommodation is a critical critical part of that you can't you can't provide everyone with a permanent home um on on on day one so temporary accommodation is critical but in an ideal scenario it would be a time a short time in suitable accommodation and an opportunity for someone to get the help support advice and whatever else they need to move away from homelessness but unfortunately the average length of time in temporary accommodation is 24 weeks um it's estimated that the local authorities provided just check i've got this right um 3.8 million days of temporary accommodation in 15 16 so whilst there's 10 000 households at any one time it's millions of days worth of temporary accommodation and the picture's really fragmented all over scotland there's different types there's different responses some of it's good some of it's not quite where we'd want it to be but it's an incredibly stressful time for people to be going in and out of temporary accommodation i think it came out really clearly last week that people are going literally pillar to post it's bafflingly complex um you're at the point of crisis and you're doing two days here seven nights here sometimes you're asked to leave sometimes you can stay there for a long time sometimes your housing benefit covers it sometimes it doesn't um it's not it's not really where we'd want it to be um and we know there's an increase in in the use of temporary accommodation three percent up three percent more children this year than the previous year um and so whilst it's a critical part i think there are big problems in the temporary accommodation system and just to just add a kind of human human face to that we've got client a client uh recently a 16-year-old girl with a two-year-old child who was offered a fairly um unsatisfactory b&b or a room in a premier in on the side of the motorway 16 there's neither of those options were appropriate for her and i think this is an opportunity to step back and say what do we want to achieve with temporary accommodation what's the purpose of it there's an incredibly large amount of money being spent on temporary accommodation across the country and i'm not sure it's doing what we as a community as as as uh social landlords or people working in homelessness and housing would want it to do so we need to repurpose all of that time and energy and money into providing better temporary accommodation and we need to improve the standard we need to decrease the time and we need to make sure the support and people aren't left floundering there just to pick up on the point that Jules made around um people not having facilities to cook linking to what Neil said if you're putting a 16-year-old with a two-year-old child in a room where they can't cook not only are you impacting on that person's experience and the trauma they're suffering from being homeless but what are you what are you saying to that two-year-old if they can't even cook a meal it i mean it's it's pretty bad and i'm not saying that's happening everywhere every time but it's also not an unusual case people are stuck in in in temporary accommodation that doesn't really suit suit their needs so it is an area that needs to be really reflected on and what could we do better to the rest of what needs to be done to Dr Hamlet and then to Bridget Curran after that i'm just conscious as well mr Simpson that you're identifying the scale of the problem when we make recommendations we're quite keen to to signposts where solutions might be as well so just bear that and you want to get the scale of the problem out there but we're quite keen to be directed towards potential solutions should be that said mr hamlet i expect me to come up with all those solutions in the answer to this question just now but we'll take you at this moment nice and simple at the root of the temporary housing issue is is the lack of social housing and so it's back to thereafter as we do need more houses in scotland and then there wouldn't be this this shortage and this constant having to move people to and fro i think we need a change in the language because we talk about this agenda in relation to to housing terminologies you talk about terminate you talk about temporary accommodation for me if we're thinking about the person who's experiencing homelessness what they need is a restorative accommodation experience because they will enter temporary accommodation having been through a very traumatising experience evidence tells us that people make an hl one application really quite late in their career of of insecure housing so it's a desperate move for many and in fact some never are prepared to even make that desperate move to to make an hl one application so there we have to realise they come highly traumatised either from an entire life or from a recent experience and so the first thing they need is recovery and i think we should talk about recovery accommodation and focus it then on the person being re-empowered to then be able to step on into whatever accommodation comes down the line thank you thank you my colleagues have all painted the picture that you know exists about temporary accommodation and i think that makes the issue of tenancy sustainment all the more important we need to do everything we can to help people sustain that existing accommodation and as all my colleagues have pointed out that means getting in as early as possible to support vulnerable people so in Glasgow we were able to do two things with our mediation service focusing particularly on young people but now available beyond young people rather than young people getting into temporary accommodation and everyone knows the associated consequences the pathway that that can there for lead young people on for some time thereafter where it was safe to do so we worked with young people and their families to help them return home or to make a planned move if that was the best thing to do we also help them link into jobs and business glasgo because very often some of the issues around relationship breakdown were about behaviour lifestyles that could be addressed in other kinds of ways and the other issue around that I think is about finances people's income and we'll maybe talk about that a bit more in detail later but we were very fortunate as part of housing options to have slab funding which allowed us to co-locate money advice workers one each in each of our three community homeless teams and that was hugely we had the best return made 18 pounds for every pound spent on that fantastic return for direct client financial gain also in debt management meaning people paid their rent they paid their gas they paid their electricity regretfully we lost that money in march which was we were very sorry about but that was that had a huge impact on supporting people to help them at that stage before the move to temporary accommodation thank you jose oldham did you want to come back in on that yeah i just want to come back on on your your request for for some solutions so yeah we we're off the the thought that actually if there's a bit of a step away just to just to clarify this is not supported housing i'm talking about it's temporary accommodation but if there's a step away from more of the the sort of six six in a block type accommodation that that's often provided if that could be more of a move to a broader range of individual flats individual premises and to do that alongside yes local authorities and social stock but also working well with some some private landlords if if they were to get some support within that you might find even sort of accidental landlords you know landlords who hadn't planned to become landlords would be very up for for actually being part of a temporary accommodation scheme with a bit of support in getting that right but in addition to that actually looking to see that the kind of longer term we know that people are spending longer times in temporary accommodation so if someone for example was there for a year which is currently really not unusual unfortunately if they had a property and if they were in agreement very much up to them but if they were in agreement that actually that became their permanent tendency and another property then became a kind of temporary place in place of that then that would be a kind of solution that that's got a bit of fluidity to it but it's also empowering to the person and it needn't be 12 months you know hopefully it would be something that would suit that person if they were if their child for example was about to start school then having that conversation saying well actually you know we don't want you to have this upheaval three months down the line so can we look at this and maybe offer this as a permanent tendency and we'll open up a temporary elsewhere so I think there's definitely solutions there but really stemming from more individual premises rather than us putting everybody who don't have support needs always or not to a great extent into kind of blocks of kind of places and the kind of overarching bit of that that also needs to work is this needs to happen where in a way that people can stay in employment which currently isn't the case it's currently is often just out of the question to take up employment because of cost or to actually continue with your employment because of cost so we need to take that into account as well. Just in terms of things we could do fairly immediately we'd like to see temporary combination standards to be statutory rather than voluntary it's something that we've been calling for for quite some time and I just feel that statutory footing would focus resources in a slightly different way as new laws tend to do and also would give our frontline workers a statutory footing to take forward challenges because at the moment we're not always able to legally challenge accommodation which is unsuitable there's the unsuitable accommodation order but that is a strong piece of legislation but it's a pretty low bar we want to move away and move into something a little bit more aspirational the other thing would be ensuring people aren't left in temporary accommodation with no no communication with no information no support so if they have to be there for a length of time which at the moment with the housing shortage is the case let's try and make that time as beneficial as possible don't leave people with no clue what's happening because that only compounds all of the problems and the issues that they have okay thank you Liam Simpson happy for other members to come in okay worth to be forward by Kenny Gibson thank you convener and good morning to the panel Neil Hamill in your submission you talk about the the multiple needs of homeless people in terms of you know an overlap between drugs alcohol mental health different things that might have affected them Fiona King in her opening statement alluded to the experience of care experience young people and I know that you know last week we we heard from a number of care experience young people I wonder about the rest of the panel's views are then in terms of the specific needs of care experience young people with regard to homelessness I like all your market currently and I do apologize Glasgow there's been a lot of work done between the RSLs and the former council and the Glasgow health and social care partnership and developing a protocol in the statement of best practice to meet the housing needs of young people leaving care in the weekly group has got a strong record in that as have a number of the RSLs and that's proven to be I think with the comments that colleagues have made about the right support helping links for college and for employment that's been very successful and the tenancy sustainment levels for those tenancies are 92 93 percent higher higher than normal weightless tenancy sustainment so I think that proves that with the energy and the commitment there is a substantial amount that can be done to support young people delighted at the ordering of the questions because we've moved from rafters to relationships and and I firmly believe that's the right way to go about it what we're talking about here is what are the transition points when people can fall into a state of homelessness and and you cite a very important one which is leaving care and I try and summarise those critical transition points where people can fall into homelessness and those are the points where surely we need to provide safety nets and springboards to help people not fall or if they do come up quick and I use the terms leaving and losing because there is either a loss or a leaving in almost every form of homelessness it may be as you say loss of a home or leaving an institution and so on and so forth there's a whole range of them and I think that's a useful way to approach the whole concept because if we can identify the transition points then we can start looking at preventative approaches and I think when you when you work your way back through the causation the chain of causality you get back to the importance of adverse childhood experiences of which many are experienced by those in children and care it is as Neil says identifying those transition points but we do know what they are care leavers are overrepresented it's not a huge number but they're overrepresented in homelessness figures as are prison leavers and this comes to the very heart of prevention we know they're going to be leaving the institution it doesn't come as a surprise to anyone that's exactly where we should be focusing resource because it's apart from being horrendous for the individual it's much more expensive to let them fall and then keep picking them up and keep picking them up go go preemptive go try and tackle that get in there take a homeless application or ideally don't take a homeless application provide the housing and support that people need before going round the homelessness route so I think I think the the people last week did it a lot more justice than I'd be able to the experience and also the things they feel they needed but I think it is identifying which we've already done those critical points and front loading the services trying to trying to get in there much much much earlier I think all of the focus is still too much on the point of crisis even the housing options approach which we are 100% supportive of and have been involved with that is when someone's identified a housing need we need to wind back the clock a wee bit to try and identify where the cracks start showing and not wait till people get into crisis I just add to that point I think Fiona's points absolutely so well made to get in early intervention and that's where I think the contribution of housing associations speaking from a Glasgow perspective is absolutely critical because housing associations housing officers in the main they've got their own patch they know who their tenants are they know what their issues and difficulties and part of the difficulty for them in Glasgow before housing options had been knowing who to contact if you anticipated a problem and then how to secure that support and assistance how to go up the chain how to escalate and joint work with housing options has made a huge impact on building those relationships for the long term that don't wave a magic wand and sort out very complicated problems but do find a pathway through them okay all up to that then I appreciate what you're saying Bridget Curran and obviously you open by talking about the mediation that you offer in Glasgow but with regard to getting to the housing associations before they get there in terms of preventing even getting to the housing associations what we were hearing last week is that there are certain government reforms that are being brought in by the UK government that are making people's life more difficult so universal credit rollout benefit cap cuts the housing benefit all the things that were coming out from our witnesses last week that are making their lives far more difficult and that's before they get to the housing association and we've also had the statistics out from the national audit office across England and Wales showing a 60 percent increase in the homeless population so there are things that are happening to the homeless population before they arrive at your door and in terms of mitigating the effects of that a note in the shelter submission you say it's unlikely that the Scottish Government will be able to sustainably mitigate all of these changes and do the rest of the panel agree with that statement people have to get better make an eye contact with you sure I think right go for it I mean I think I think that we have grave concerns about the rollout of the role welfare reforms the rollout of universal credit it's in our submission we are involved in lots of the working groups we submitted to the social security bill recently as part of the scour group we've met with the minister last week to to discuss some of the specific things that shelter would like to see in the new social security bill I think you're right it's creating an even more complicated and at times detrimental landscape for people it's getting harder to navigate and we believe that some of the welfare reforms are pushing people further into poverty one of the particular groups who are being impacted on disproportionately as young people and without going into all of the detail of the very complicated welfare reforms that we're seeing but if people are unable to afford to move into a permanent let that that throws a real spanner in the in the whole delivery of the homelessness system and I think that that is a real problem that we're seeing I think the problem with mitigating and I think there's some really positive steps forward I think trying to mitigate the removal of housing benefit for 1821s is a great positive step forward mitigating the bedroom taxes is really positive but that's a long term expensive commitment and there's you know we're seeing the problems piling up one on top of the other and I suppose it's how long we're able to do that. Naughty, Jules Oldham, then Dr Hamlet, I'll let you back in later. Just on the note of universal credit we know that arrears are one of the biggest areas of concern having spoken to a number of local authorities on this and how their teams are dealing with things it does seem that there's a bit of a disjoint with homelessness teams and eviction teams in not not everywhere but but certainly enough enough of the local authorities across the country to be a concern to us so we would certainly recommend that actually that's something that that is rolled out across the country that that actually there there is that need for eviction teams and homeless teams to be working really closely together and as a part of that to actually look at the the current protocols and when when the eviction is actually starting to to progress we know that it's very likely there there'll be at least six weeks arrears but actually from the the stats so far that could even be sort of 12 14 weeks etc so why not now actually be looking at the protocols across the country and and just just dealing with that really at the the core prevention case rather than us dealing with a whole lot of stress for for somebody receiving the the paperwork they're about to be evicted etc and when it's something that's really out with their own control and we could do that right now as universal credit's actually rolling out before it goes kind of far and wide and kind of do a bit of prevention work there we seem to have moved seamlessly from relationships to resources and I think it is it is a big big issue because we face a bit of a perfect storm in terms of some of the impacts of welfare reform and we're seeing evidence of that so the question is what can we do about it and I certainly think there are promising collaborations appearing for example I've been in quite a number of events where DWP have been coming along and explaining what kind of exceptions they can make for those who find themselves in a homeless setting which perhaps frontline workers were unaware of so certainly in Fife we've been able to get some very useful discussions at a local level between DWP and the folks that work within the prison service these through care support workers that you'll have heard about when these people all get together then you start to find ways to help for example the prisoner coming out through the gate and then finding he's got no money for a fortnight and so you know these kind of things are there are there are promising pieces of work and I think it would be good to encourage them and if you haven't had evidence from DWP it might be something worth doing that's very helpful dr hamlet predictor I just wanted to make a comment in terms of mitigation about the importance of financial advice for people but agencies are very worried about the impact of universal credit and welfare reform and I think people are increasingly worried themselves about how they are going to manage and I've said earlier about the access to slab funding which was used by like more than half of the users were tenants of RA sales some of whom had their own money advice services because I think it's sometimes people in debt find it very difficult to approach people and tell them the truth about what their situation is and for information one of our team members one of our housing options team has been seconded to development and regeneration services in Glasgow city council to develop a housing options response to benefit cap for people in the private rented sector and we're beginning to look at some of the very interesting work that's that's emerging from that much convener I mean that was a point I was going to touch on in terms of you know you know that the importance of financial advice you said earlier on that for every pound that was being put in there was an 18 pound benefit and yet you also said that the Scottish legal aid board funding was cut from march what was the reason behind the decision for that that being cut given the the obvious benefits to your client base we were delighted to have had the funding for the period we had my understanding is that the money was redirected elsewhere in Scotland and because that's my understanding of it because slab certainly I think would have been happy to continue to have funded our work and we would love to get that funding back if that were possible yeah so you're obviously looking for a much money we're actually talking about anyways it was 203 000 pounds and for 203 000 pounds we had two pound two million and direct client gain we had 1.45 million in debt management and it was the twin side of that that meant it was about income maximisation but also debt management and our experience debt management has become a critical issue for people and in our previous conversation about welfare reform there are huge concerns about the impact that we'll have on families and family incomes yes i see 1643 clients were assisted by that actually so that's obviously concern that's been taken away now all the all the submissions are really excellent and today just this morning we obviously got housing options evaluation 2016 so I don't think all members have had an opportunity to absorb all of it but I have to say from what I've been able to pick up from it is a fascinating document but one of the things that you obviously point out is somewhat modestly you see the implementation of housing options in Glasgow coincides although you're not claiming direct responsibility the steep decline in homelessness assessments which are down from 8 299 to 5 929 over three years and you talk about how in Glasgow the continued decline exceeds the scotish rate and there's a strong evidence that a rights-based approach is a key principle of model operation and I mean it all looks very positive to myself but when I looked at the other the other papers homeless action said that with regard to the options approach there's definite areas of improvement and you do touch on that and some of it towards the end of your own paper and I'll ask colleagues about that in a minute but Shelter who I mean if you're kind just a minute ago said that Shelter are 100% support of the housing options but in page 11 of your submission or page 11 of the submission we've got it says we share the concerns raised across the sector that housing options is sometimes being misused to essentially gate keep homeless services and resources housing options might not be used as a rationing tool for housing so I'm just wanting to try and square the circle and try and find out what people are actually thinking about the housing options model what are the how it works successfully but again what the kind of drawbacks of the model are and just a final point before I let Bridget Carrings I know you're desperate to obviously answer you do say on page seven of the of the evaluation that despite positivity staff don't feel content delivering tailored advice and every housing option given poor availability of quality housing system and delds etc so I wonder if you can kick off with your successes and perhaps areas where you feel on further improvements can be made and then we'll go on to what Jules Oldham and Fiona King thinking if Mr Dr Hamill is any comments as well because Fiona King was much more subtly bursting to get in as well as we were mentioning that that's a technical expression to get in but because Bridget Carrings might be able to respond to some of the concerns that Fiona King might raise so it might just be good to do it that way so Fiona King. Great yeah so Shelter Scotland is 100% behind the housing options model when applied correctly and I think that is the key thing we've published I think two housing options investigations and reports which are happily forward to the committee I was on the steering board in Glasgow for a time and I think the idea that you look at someone in a holistic way and you look at their financial situation their needs their requirements their housing experience their financial situation and consider all of their options and then give them advice and support and guidance to make a choice that suits them you can't argue with that as a model it's much more sort of a mature holistic way of trying to match a house or a home with a person but I think the undercurrent is that we're essentially trying to ration a pretty scarce resource and I think everyone on this panel will be aware that the Scottish Housing Regulator published a report on housing options and it was they also identified some pretty substantial queries about housing options and in its application it's applied differently across all 32 local authorities the statistics and the impacts are quite different across all the two local authorities there's different different models different ways it's being approached and I think the issue of people being denied access to services is a really important one and one that we at Shelter Scotland are looking into in more detail it's difficult to quantify if someone's being turned away from services but we do have anecdotal evidence from our frontline staff that in some places on some occasions people aren't being able to make a homes application which is a problem and so statistically it's unclear how big a problem that is but by offering someone a housing options service and looking at all of the different things that may impact on their housing solution we don't want to see people being denied the right to make a homeless application because that is a statutory right that people have as is temporary accommodation and housing options doesn't trump that it should be part of that mix and I think the model that was being designed in Glasgow when I was a part of it absolutely understood that and that housing options and homelessness are two halves of the same coin it's when housing options or if housing options is being used in a way that doesn't allow someone to make a homeless application if they wish to that's where there's a problem but it's it that is a difficult thing to quantify and we're doing a bit more work on that. Mr Gibson did you mention that Jules Oldham might have something to add? Yes she did. I'm the only quoting from her own paper actually where she's saying there's a definite room for improvement so I just want to expand a wee bit on that. Yeah I think I mean that ethos brilliant we're absolutely behind that but there is there's a lot of need for a housing options worker to have a wealth of knowledge and therefore a wealth of trainings needed we know that the toolkit was started to come together some five years ago but is yet to come to fruition so meantime you've got quite a few kind of bits and pieces of training happening all over the country but if I was to be a housing options worker I would find that that's that's quite a tricky place to be in and have that that vast array of knowledge that that's required to be able to give people really tailored support so I think I think we we're hoping to see a bit of bit of momentum on the the toolkit itself but also not see that that's going to answer everything with that training. I think there's there's also a bit of a need now for it to to move out with the local authorities themselves so if you ask many third sector organisations about housing options it's still not known and that feels like a bit of a missed trick as far as I'm concerned this is by now we should really see third sector organisations and local authorities knowing kind of how to work really well together to to kind of be able to provide the the broadest range of possibilities for someone. We sat in a number of different assessments and different local authorities just to get a feel for what what was happening and who was doing what in what ways and we saw great work taking place but there was often a bit of repetition in what was being offered within local authorities. Now of course you've got the kind of only only so many options available within one area but it was kind of felt that that was almost kind of restrained because somebody didn't quite have that that knowledge as well so for example does someone have enough knowledge to help where somebody has I don't know a mental health issue and being able to pick up on that I mean that that's quite a skill set that we're asking for there so there there needs to be significant kind of input on training etc around that or at least be able to get the right direction if somebody's in a need to help with their mortgage or years so you know these are these are really quite diverse topics and to have quite the right skill set to do that it's taking a lot and we need to to get a bit of momentum on the training but also be bringing in the third sector wherever possible to kind of really be upping the the skills kind of back and back and forwards there so after all that but as your current role like you know I know you're not speaking about housing oh sorry Dr Hamlet I didn't spot you in my apology people who are who are approaching housing options have obviously got a degree of housing insecurity and that brings up the issue of the interplay between physical ill health and mental health and housing insecurity and so we need to bring together and I think we're beginning to do that the importance of secure housing for the wellbeing of the individual and so they may well be turning up with headaches with psychological issues to general practice and the solution lies in housing and so being able to get bidirectional referrals from housing options not just homelessness application officers but from housing options to health and from health to housing options is one of those upstream preventative approaches now how we make that happen in it would be lovely if it was written into the new evolving arrangements around primary care primary care contracts if such were possible and we within the public health sphere are trying to make inroads into attendance at these housing hubs that you may have heard about whereby councils in groupings of about five or six meet together and I think there is a very valid contribution that public health can bring to the debates that they would have thank you and now finally Bridget Kerner that I'm conscious you can always pick up housing options from Glasgow experience but there's a lot and that's what any information you can give us would be really helpful well thank you so much for that question and for that for that series of questions and I'd like just to start off by talking about Neil's final point about the west of the hubs the west of Scotland hub has been critically important to us in the development of our thinking because you're with partner local authorities it really is the only RSL that's in any of the hubs it's a place of really good argument and discussion and we would love to have you come along Neil to the west of Scotland hub so I'll organise that invitation for you but to get back to the reduction in homelessness we do believe that our housing options approach has made a significant contribution to that but we would not sorry we would not take away from the commitment and work of so many other people that are involved in trying to address homelessness in Glasgow and doing lots and lots of good work but our contribution we think has been very strong the issue around gatekeeping our steering board actively sought the contribution from Shelter and from GHN to have third sector representation on the board right from the very start to ensure that the critique that Fiona has highlighted was part of our thinking from day one and we knew that gatekeeping was a very legitimate concern we knew from the experience in England that some of the huge reductions in homelessness that had happened there there might have been some concern that gatekeeping was happened we wanted to make sure it did not happen in Glasgow and our second independent evaluation comprehensively demonstrates that it doesn't there are higher homeless applications in Glasgow than in Scotland and people who approach home housing options for homeless advice 20% of them do 24% consider a homeless application and 26% absolutely make a homeless application so we are very confident that gatekeeping is not an issue for us in Glasgow we don't have housing stocks so we don't have a housing service and I think my understanding is that another local authority areas housing options is delivered through the housing service and it's got a focus on homelessness prevention and dealing with homeless applications for us in Glasgow we have had to work with RSLs so we have had to develop our tenancy sustainment element of that and we have had to talk with housing colleagues about what makes it difficult for you to keep people in their accommodation and that's when they told us it's joint work with health it's joint work with social work it's housing benefit it's the Scottish welfare fund so we have invested heavily in developing proactive partnerships in which there is a raft to use in those ways again of colleagues in health and social work in the north east of Glasgow the north west of Glasgow the south of Glasgow actively working not alongside housing options workers but working alongside colleagues in community homeless teams and working alongside colleagues in RSLs to support people and the fact that we have a steering board that has continued to meet for the five years of the development of the housing options approach demonstrates the commitment from the Glasgow health and social care partnership homelessness is a key priority in its strategic plan the commitment from the west of Scotland forum the Scottish federation of housing associations shelter and ghn to ensure that our approach is robust and meets people's needs and the point about staff I'm so glad you raised the I mean we want to do a lot more about encouraging staff to be more confident in the range of options that are available and we've got lots of work to continue to do that but we have I mean there's one situation I always think about this is a couple who lived in the east end of Glasgow who lived in a third floor tenement flat adequately housed had gone to the local housing association and would have been told adequately housed you know really not much we can do but with the housing options approach the housing officer in the housing association did a financial assessment looked at other options and that couple are now living in a shared equity front and back door house of their dreams so there's lots of opportunities to develop lots more options. I think Fiona King might want to come back on some of that after Fiona if you like. Yeah sure just really briefly to say I think it's really encouraging to hear Bridget talking about the model that's developing in Glasgow I think the interplay between the statutory duties and the housing options approach is is quite complicated and it's quite varied in different local authority areas but the absolutely critical point is that for some people there won't be any other options than making a housing homelessness application, the private renter sector renter policy guarantee schemes, family mediation, transfer whatever all of these different things may not be an option for some people and by that I mean the people with the most complex and the multiple exclusion homeless who don't have those as an option and so it is critical that those people are helped and facilitated and enabled to make a homelessness application without delay. I think prevention is the key to addressing homelessness but when someone is clearly homeless and needs that assistance that is why the legislation is in place and that is absolutely the right thing to happen and temporary accommodation is absolutely the right thing for them so it's not to confuse the two for some people there are no other options. Okay thanks now it's just to say obviously I think everyone again prevention is obviously better than cure in terms of training I know again in the evaluation report it says it and I quote the longer the housing options models deliver the more competent staff become with its delivery and I'm sure we will see further progress but I'm just going to ask you know if you want to talk to different models of approach across Scotland and I'm just wondering if there is a I think the housing hubs thing seems to be a great idea for exchanging best practice but is there a a kind of best model or does it have to be something that is adapted to local circumstances and is there a consensus on the way forward in terms of where housing options fits in with addressing homelessness specifically or is there no is there not yet a consensus where that model fits in in terms of the entire homelessness picture that we have in Scotland. I think every housing options service really needs to be tailored to the local area every local authority has got a different interplay with housing associations different geography different people different you know client group different job market everything so the the when housing options model when it was introduced by the Scottish Government was deliberately left to local authorities to develop their own models and the hubs was supposed to facilitate that and that joint working there is a lot of best practice sharing there's been a lot of conferences and events and papers and evaluations so I think that's the best way forward is to continue to share that best practice I think the regulator have got a role to play in checking that okay the models might be different but are the is there some consistency in terms of a sort of minimum standard and outcomes I think for individuals but I think what's going to apply in Glasgow with the 69 67 housing associations and what have you is going to be different in Murray or or in the islands or in Fife or wherever so I think I understand why I know there wasn't a consistent roll out of one approach because it just wouldn't apply in every circumstance but I think toolkits and Scottish Government monitoring and evaluation has got a real role to play to ensure that it's not anything goes I think wanted to come in and I hope the committee is aware of the data linkage work that is being done currently by the national records of Scotland it's reference five in in our submission from health Scotland but that will be ready shortly and that will give us 15 years worth of data in relation to HL1 data and health outcomes and I believe they've also managed to source the it'll now be a couple of years worth of prevent one data which obviously is the database that's looking at the the housing options approach so that could give you a very early picture of what is certainly the different outcome from the perspective of health care needs with the arrival of the housing options approach and again it might be worth seeking evidence if it's ready in time while you're meeting the other thing I would want to draw your attention to is I think and I'm speaking here as a as a doctor not a housing expert but I think the the whole thinking around housing support is based on what was at 17 areas from the supporting people period and we've moved on a long way and we now think much more out of our boxes and I would like to suggest a review of what you consider as housing support could maybe be a bit more holistic and might be worth a review okay thank you Bridget Carlin could I just bring to the attention's committee the significance of the housing options toolkit that's being developed that's been progressed by North Lanarkshire Council on behalf of the west of Scotland hub across all the hubs every single Scottish local authority has signed up to that it's about to go into procurement it should be operational from April next year and that includes a wide range of tasks within that so extends into the areas we've talked about not just housing advice but health and wellbeing and the Ruth Rafter resources relationships scenario that Neil was talking about earlier and that I think will be very helpful in ensuring not uniformity because I don't think uniformity is the answer to anything but consistency and high quality good customer focus advice for people in housing need and so I forgive me one last thing this is just bonus point about complex multiple needs I would like to again bring to the committee's attention that in our evaluation we asked the team to look at whether our model met the needs of those with complex multiple needs and we had one-to-one interviews with a range of service users supported by the third sector organisations and the answer back was that it wasn't for many of them they're immediate focus is on survival and on all the associated consequences of the problems that they face so I just want to support that okay now I got a time check to witnesses I know we were delayed but I want to get a maximum of time for giving evidence but probably our 10 maybe 15 minutes tops tell you this to run its course so hopefully we'll get some more questions and I'm keen for y'all to put your views in the public record but if it reinforces what someone else is saying just let us know that you agree with that and that'll let us kind of move forward as effectively as possible Alexander Stewart thank you convener thank you panel can I look at the sort of housing first proposals now there has been some very positive feedback and there's been some discussion about how that is working I know that NHS have had have looked at two local authorities and that specific response but I'd like to get a sort of role and a view from y'all as to how you think it plays in supporting the response to homelessness in Scotland and how beneficial the concept is so far the time to put on the record that the committee is going to Finland next week to take a substantial amount of evidence from all the stakeholder groups in relation to housing first and wider housing and homelessness policies well we're very conscious that other than New York Finland's own other areas upscaled isn't any significant sense and we want to get a real feel for it as a committee so you will also help inform us ahead of our trip next week so just wanted to put that on the record Jules Oldham yeah we we holy back the the importance of housing first and in fact I think we were on the first organisations to bring it over here not not actually put it out there but work with turning point for it to come about and we've done a few evaluations of local authorities who have embarked upon housing first so absolutely we are totally behind it but I think what's important to know is that housing first is for a very small number of people and to really make it work is to really work and focus on the people who absolutely will will kind of meet the model our concern is that if it was to go kind of what we'd like to see it far and wide across the country but were it to go too far to to those who didn't meet the model requirements that becomes diluted and doesn't quite have the the kind of effect that that really should have so we would we would kind of say absolutely all for it but kind of go with with caution to kind of to ensure that it really benefits those who who it's there to benefit for we've already seen a few local authorities mentioning that they're they're embarking upon housing first who actually aren't and they're doing maybe a homes first type scenario and actually when you delve into that a bit further what's really happening there is somebody's is that a local authority is really carrying out the legislation well so somebody's getting a tendency when a tendency is available and supports being provided that's not housing first it's really good practice and we want to see that as well but it's yeah so it's kind of the points of it not being diluted it really being there for those who it will absolutely benefit and for there to be good practice happening yes but let's not call that housing first I'm trying to be brief I broadly agree with everything Jules has said but just to just to say that the outcomes are fantastic for housing first on the very small scales that it's been delivered and the pilots have been carried out but it requires kind of choice and flexibility in both housing provision and support that we just do not have in abundance at the moment I mean the accession last week if if committee took anything I would hope it's that there's a desperate need for better housing support housing first to get the outcomes that you would seek to replicate from the models and the pilots it's it's untimely limited 24 hour support effectively we're struggling to supply basic housing support so I think it's aspirationally fantastic and I think for the client groups who it really works for it's it's a great thing should someone get a house at the point that they are in a housing crisis absolutely it's not rocket science if someone doesn't have a house should they get a house yes if we could do that if we had all of these houses to allocate at the point someone walks into their local authority in the housing crisis we would do that so I think there's a real resource question but the model is one that we support and we'd like to see rollout but not not comprehensive rollout it's part of the solution it's not the panacea to homelessness in scotland and then Bridget Curran the evidence base is absolutely rock solid the european evidence in particular because we're it's closer than north american experience obviously we're building the evidence base in scotland but that that we do have is very positive england already has a network of those working around the housing first and so we really have to do it it's the resourcing thereof which is the challenge and adherence to fidelity of the of the model housing first has operated in glasgo and the glasgo health and social care partnership are actively involved in developing the model further and are working with third sector colleagues through the can initiative and with ghn with big society capital that's very helpful alexander shoot to come back in any way it's quite evident that it's a piece of the jigsaw in in the the dilemmas that we face in tackling homelessness but it's it's only a piece in the jigsaw and as you rightly indicate if you don't have the the financial resource to follow up the support mechanism to follow up then then it is only going to capture a small number of individuals and it's not going to change the dimension and as you rightly indicate last week we did hear some harrowing evidence from people who found that the support mechanism wasn't in place for them in the supports to accommodation so if we agree that it's it's certainly something we should all be signing up to but it's how much emphasis we should give to it to ensure that it doesn't then become something that everyone is trying to achieve and not managing to achieve or as you rightly say because of if they're following normal practice and procedure you would get the normal housing support and if everything's working then you will succeed but as I say my concern is that there may be too much emphasis on it going forward by some individuals and local authorities about what it's going to achieve for them in a short term and I think you've indicated that probably is where you see it falling if it's going to fall in some way will not be successful for for achieving everything it should. I don't think there's a question wrapped wrapped up in that but Fiona King did you want to come in? In Neil's right it's fidelity to the model if you want the outcomes of the pilots and projects we've seen you have to be absolutely stick rigidly to that model and so any any dilution of that is not housing first it's correctly applying the homeless legislation we have and giving someone the house and support as quickly and correctly as you can. I think the committee will want to tease out how Finland has hopefully avoided some of those pitfalls in relation to its upscaling of the system now if there's any additional information of questions you would ask if you were us in relation to housing first in a finished context then please drop us an email to the committee clerking team not a not a big written submission just word you know any just comments and observations because we want to just make sure we're our knowledge bases as strong as it possibly can be but before we head out there Jill's older one did you want to add anything? Just to say that having done a few evaluations I'd certainly want to check with the local authorities that we've done the evaluations with if that was okay to share but if they're fine with that then we'll we'll share those evaluations with you. That would be very helpful Bridget Curran. On the same theme there's been an evaluation of the turning point at Sgamon Glasgow and I similarly will check out if that can be made available if you got it. Okay and it's been whispered in my ear that we're we're taking evidence from turning point on the 25th of October so but it would be good to have any information you can ahead of the committee visit. Okay is it okay to move on from that section Mr Stewart? Okay Elaine Smith. Oh thanks convener. I was listening earlier to Jill's Oldham's comment about a few years ago we were supposed to be moving away from BNB accommodation well actually I was a homeless officer 30 years ago and we were supposed to be moving away then from BNB accommodation but one of the ways of doing it then was in building decent if you like homeless units which were in which actually had sort of contained flats within them in the area that I worked and people could feed you know they had kitchen use etc so that was one of the ways of trying not to use BNB accommodation so it's a shame we haven't I don't seem to have moved that much forward in that time. Can I turn to rough sleeping because as Shelter says it's the tip of the iceberg and we do know there are so many other different homelessness situations reasons for homelessness going on but rough sleeping is quite visible obviously and they're becoming more so as well so I want to just explore explore that a wee bit more and specifically I think when the homelessness legislation was passed and it took away the need for a priority need assessment at a homelessness assessment I thought at that point that that would help with the whole rough sleeping situation because it would mean that anyone would be entitled to be putting temporary accommodation of some kind basically given Shelter I suppose is the way we would we could put it however that that doesn't seem to have worked and I think part of it is this gatekeeping issue where people turn up they're told there's nothing they then have to go and get a lawyer's letter to take back to the house and provider the local authority to try and get action so that's one thing that I would put there on the gatekeeping issue. Can I ask though is it appropriate that its Christian organisation is predominantly in our big cities and possibly elsewhere that are providing this night shelter type of accommodation so you get Bethany Christian Trust in Adenborough who are using different church halls every night as I understand and then you've got the night shelter the Glasgow city mission in Glasgow providing the night shelter accommodation which has gone from one month to more than that so that's in your cities I know in some towns for example in Coatbridge it was church halls that were being open to give people overnight accommodation so how whilst clearly I don't think we would want a long-term option that people were in hostel type accommodation is that an answer what is I'm asking what is the answer and I know that Jules Oldham had mentioned in the submission that there's hostel type accommodation available that wasn't being used so do we need more of that type of accommodation Jules Oldham well I think we do still have the situation where people as you've said are turning up to local authorities and being told there is there's nothing so we need to look at that but we also need to look at the the case where people are turning up and they're maybe offered that accommodation that you're speaking of and they're saying actually I'd rather be on the street so we've got a type of accommodation the hostel style or it's more likely to be where there are other people so yeah it could be a night shelter or it could be a temporary accommodation it could also be a supported place but it's somewhere where if you're feeling at your most vulnerable you're not wanting to be in any building with many other people who are who are really feeling that too who may have kind of what at that time may feel like much many more needs than you or if you're somebody that's trying to steer clear from your addiction and you know that they are going to go into a place where there's other people with addictions it might feel like the safer option to say actually no that that's what i've been offered but that's not not what i'm taking up and that's why we were saying that actually moving away in particular on the temporary side of things moving away from these kind of larger accommodation units I know we've moved away on the whole from like the 30 bed hostels but actually when it comes to temporary accommodation of any type it does seem to be better I'm not talking supported housing here but when it's temporary accommodation for those to be kind of individual kind of properties but can you ask a specific question about that it seems to me then that what has replaced the 30 bed type hostels is Bethany Christian church church halls and sleeping bags and Glasgow city mission with halls and sleeping bags so is that a better option and if you were to take away those options you know if you were to say or if these organisations were to no longer provide that shelter because that's what they're providing what would be the result of that and so this is where I find it difficult I don't think that going back to the Peter mccann house style is is a brilliant idea but at the same time what has replaced it Christian charity has given out sleeping bags and basically a shelter I agree it's completely wrong that's that's why we ask for there to be a kind of long term focus on on kind of working towards us not having that I don't think I could say this winter we shouldn't have that because there needs to be the resources and time to put in to actually be able to provide that the correct accommodation but somehow we do have we have gotten to the point that there are bed spaces available yet people that are going to the churches how that has come about that that I don't know actually on that front but yeah I'm being led by any religious organisation I don't think that's the issue to be honest it's more the fact that we're we're kind of gettowing people in in any type of accommodation in particular in the winter months I think I just clarify convening I don't think I meant that being led by religious organisations was the issue but that's who's leading it in the big cities and actually some of the towns or charitable organisations if you want to put it that way they're stepping into a breach it seems to me that you know I would personally think that it should be the state that should be providing but then that what I'm asking you is does that then take us back to the days of the and I'm using the example of Peter McCann house in Glasgow does that take us back to those days and is that a backward step well and that's what I'm saying I think the answer to that is that we need to have a long-term focus there needs to be kind of nationwide push to actually be coming up with a range of different temporary accommodation in types and styles across cities for this winter as not to say kind of will close the night shelters but hopefully come next winter we've got somewhere within that plan so that people aren't needing to go that there and certainly the winter after that definitely not you know but I think it needs to be across country focus to with a real strategy behind it to to kind of be moving us to to no longer need those church halls there will be some other practices want to come in and give the thoughts on this you're not going to be in Dr Hamlet I think we it really is the tip of the iceberg it's difficult to count and it's difficult to quantify we know there's a 10% increase in rough sleeping but that's literally the people who make homeless application and asked if they slept rough the night before it's not it's a very narrow definition I think anecdotally most people would agree that rough sleeping or visible forms of rough sleeping seem to be going up although that's unquantifiable it's incredibly hard to to really understand fully the different forms of rough sleeping but it's also the most complicated area there's there's lots of reasons why people may or may not engage with services and some of them might be individual reasons I'm sure Neil would know a lot more about this but if you if you're coming with a range of a trauma and complex needs you may have had negative experiences before you may have mistrust of the institutions you're hoping to engage with but then we heard from one of the service users last week that he did approach the council repeatedly and was told there was nothing for him so he slept rough and I think it's worth reflecting on that that's that's the reality is he was turned away he was sleeping in the waiting room and then turned away repeatedly and it was only when a legal agency got involved and and advocated on his behalf so some of its some of its housing some of its per practice on front line and some of its people stuff which is the really hard thing to to disentangle some of it is the the baggage that people come with and their complex needs but it could definitely be helped if more temporary accommodation was made readily available on a daily basis it wouldn't solve the rough sleeping issue but it would it would definitely help if that if that temporary accommodation was more readily available people who've taken a lot of courage to go to the local authority to make an application if they're turned away that could be the one time they choose to engage with services and then they're lost and and that's where you get into cycles of repeat homelessness and long-term rough sleeping. Dr Hamlet. I'm delighted that you've had evidence already from those I call them experts by experience and I think one of the trends that I've seen over the last two three years is an increased expertise of these experts by experience particularly some work that's done by pathways in London such that folk who've been through the experience are are right up for being able to talk about their experience and provide very solid evidence-based advice as to what they see as the best way forward and I commend you for doing that and hopefully you'll you'll have more of that kind of you know folks experts by experience answering that very question which which is best Thank you Dr Hamlet, Bridget Kern. From a housing options perspective as I've said previously in terms of multiple and complex needs there's not a huge response that that we provide directly however we're very pleased to see that the First Minister's announcement about the newly established group chaired by John Sparks and Suzanne Miller from the Glasgow health and social care partnership will be representing GHSCP on that and I think that's a really good opportunity to look at the complexity of the issues and the potential solutions in ways forward. Apologies Deputy convener but we probably have to move on, I'm conscious. We did have a number of questions about the recent Scottish Government announcements in relation to homelessness which we, unless Mr Whiteman was going to ask that, was that your line of questioning? If there's any observations you want to make on the recent Scottish Government announcement feel free to do that now. Briefly would be good because we're almost out of time but then that allows us to mop that up and not have to ask that question separately. So Bridget Kern, you've been very helpful that you've said some of the any other comments from any other witnesses, you don't have to have a comment. Really pleased with the announcement, we're pleased to be part of that action group and we'll work with all partners but we do have a solid evidence base, I think we're excited about taking forward things, a short life action group is kind of what we want to see some action. Okay, point well made. Any other, no need for Mr, Dr Hamlet, I apologize. Very briefly but again it comes from the same programme from Government. At the start I said we need to re-engage public health with housing, that's where we began as a specialism and I think the opportunity to have a new public health body in Scotland, we need to not miss the opportunity for housing expertise being part and partial of that so that we can prevent homelessness as upstream as possible. Okay, thank you. Jo's old message you want to add? No, I think really we would say that the exact same as shelter on that, looking forward to be part of the boards of the group and delighted with what's being said so far. Okay, and I'm breaking all my own rules by letting you back in Bridget Kern, but on you go. Because I hadn't realised, because I would have said this earlier, we are delighted about the First Minister's announcement and in particular about the wide range in review and the review of the legislative framework, because we would like the opportunity to again say that we would like people to have a statutory right to a housing options service. It's important that you put that on the record, thank you. So our final line of questioning this afternoon now, the time's getting on, is Andy Wightman MSP. Thanks convener, I'm conscious of time so I've got a lot I want to talk about but I'll just restrict it really to one thing I suppose. In a number of your evidence you talk about a rights-based approach to housing, which is certainly the context of human rights becoming more and more important to public policies, very welcome. I just wonder if you want to reflect on the evidence that we heard last week from Thomas Lyon, who has had a litany of very tragic circumstances, all as a consequence of the fact that 10 years ago he was a victor because his landlord went bankrupt. Given that the private rented sector has tripled since 1990 9, and given that I've got constituents in Edinburgh who are being driven out of the private rented sector because of the can't afford the rent, and they are now incurring far higher costs than they would because of the obligation of the council to pick all that up, I'm just wondering if some of these rights are rights that we need to challenge in respect of property ownership, because we have over 30,000 empty homes and yet we're spending billions building new ones, and landlord still, even under the new private tenancies act, have the right to evict somebody if they want to sell the property, and as a consequence trigger a whole series of events which hopefully won't be as tragic as Mr Lyons, but in many many cases may well be, do we need to revisit the idea that someone who is in secure accommodation in the private rented sector should be able to be evicted because their landlord wants to sell it, whether it's the owner or the creditor? That's the situation that we come across sometimes in terms of housing options because people will come for housing advice because their landlord either sometimes has to sell the property because they're not making the mortgage payments, so there's a whole host of issues around that, and we give them good quality housing options advice, but in terms of the private rented sector we think there's several things that can be done to improve that, and this was an area of discussion that we had in Glasgow with the integrated joint boards subgroup on housing, health and social work, where there is private sector representation, and they talked about the accredited landlord scheme that's in operation and the opportunities to work with accredited landlords who would not behave in that kind of way with tenants, and that's something that we want to take forward. We also want clearly the issues about affordability in terms of rent charges, and their willingness to accept tenants and benefit, and their appetite to work with community homeless teams to offer longer term tenancies, with their willingness to agree in adaptations and the use of key safes, and their own knowledge within the private rented sector of how they can access support to support tenancies who are in difficulties alongside maintaining and ensure the safety of their properties. That's pretty huge questions there about the private rented sector, but I apologise if you could answer those huge questions in a few minutes. I suppose most critically the new private rented sector legislation coming in towards the end of this year will put tenants on a much firmer right space footing, so you'd still be able to evict if you want to sell your home, and I think that blocking that would be problematic, but there's a restricted list of reasons why you can evict your tenant, and you have to have a specific reason, so taking out that carte blanche to evict anyone was a huge step forward and does put the private rented sector in Scotland on tenants on a much firmer footing than any other part of the UK, so that is really positive. I think it's getting information to tenants, very difficult group private tenants, there's no tenant groups, they're not a homogeneous group, we've got a private rented sector panel where we're trying to get the views of private rented sector tenants and feed in, but it is getting advice and information out to all private rented tenants and those particularly at the risk of losing their home, affordability is a huge issue, there's the option of rent pressure zones in the latest bit of legislation, which as far as I know no council has taken forward, so it would be interesting to see if any councils decide to activate that right to introduce rent pressure zones, but the problems in the private rented sector are numerous and some of the solutions are forthcoming, but we need better landlord registration, we need better enforcement of landlord registration, so there's a few positive steps going on and I think the new legislation will certainly help, but I suppose the example of Thomas Lyon who you brought up, that was a terrible set of circumstances initiated by that action, which was through no fault of his own, but the issues on the private rented sector aside, I don't think the response he got from anyone he engaged with was what it should be and that's probably the bit that's most within the scope of this inquiry is why was one incident, why did that spark ten years worth of chaos and I think that that's the really pressing issue for the inquiry. Thank you for your out, Dr Hamlet. I strongly support the notion in your question that a housing rights approach should underpin sorry a human rights approach should underpin housing policy and I see that from multiple angles not least some of the work that came out for those with no recourse to public funds in relation to human rights approach, so I do think that human rights approach is the way forward and I would also refer you to one of the later chapters, I can't remember which one in the commission on housing and wellbeing that came out a blueprint for Scotland's future in 2015 because there they raised a very interesting discussion around housing in Scotland and the rights versus the economics thereof and I think that would be a very useful discussion. Thank you and Bridget Cym. I don't know that, I said my point sorry. Oh sorry is it Jules, I do up, it's been a very long morning for the cafe. Just briefly I was in Dundee yesterday and saw something really interesting where they were they've got a scheme in fact I think it's working with Shelter too but that Dundee certainly Dundee City Council are working on a one-to-one basis and so a timely project but with landlords to actually help ensure that they can get all the paperwork right any issues with with any tenants kind of that they foresee they can actually be discussing those and kind of looking at how to prevent any of those and it seemed like such a simple solution that actually having a lot more projects in place to be working just with landlords themselves to see how things can be prevented and one of the cases that were actually that was discussed yesterday a landlord actually even reduced the rent to be in line with somebody's affordability just to be able to to avoid getting somebody else in and you know they have a tenant that they trust they're very happy with etc and who would have thought that that can happen but the right communication and them knowing they've got good support from the council there actually has enabled some really positive results so I think there's something we can learn from that actually it's quite a useful project okay just very brief I'm not suggesting I apologise that I'm having to be like this because you waited to the end but time is almost upon us so really briefly yes just response to funer king I'm not suggesting that all those grounds for eviction be removed I'm just questioning the grounds number one and two which are the grounds to repossess on the basis of a sale by an owner or a creditor a situation which is virtually unprecedented anywhere else in Europe and how that appears to be certainly thomas's case that triggered the whole event and as we move forward with the growth in this sector I envisage it becoming more and more of a problem so is it shelter's view that those grounds should should remain or should be removed currently we worked with the legislation we were happy with the grounds because they do represent a significant step forward from from what was what was removed I'd need to come back to you I think and the committee on on changes fundamental changes to private rented sector policy because it's not something I've got to hand and it may or may not be something the committee decides to take forward an interest in it's slightly it's important but it's at the fringes of some of the stuff we've been looking at it's certainly important to work with the evidence we heard that we heard last week apology mr whiteman for curtailing your line of questioning there and thank you everyone for taking the time this morning first of all apologies once more for the delay hopefully you found the lines of questioning rewarding for yourselves it's certainly formed for us if we take forward our inquiry so we will stay in contact with you keep you posted in relation to how our inquiry unfolds a bit when I move to agenda item three thank you so moving to agenda item three which is subordinate legislation the committee will consider negative instrument 284 is listed on the agenda the instrument is laid under the negative procedure which means that its provision will come into force unless the Parliament votes on a motion to now the instrument the delegated powers and law reform committee considered this instrument at its meeting on the 90th September 2017 and determined it did not need to draw the attention of the Parliament on any grounds within its remit I can inform members that no motion to now has been laid and invite members whether they've got any comments to make on instrument before us this afternoon there being no comments can I invite committee to agree that it does not wish to make any recommendations in relation to this instrument are we agreed okay thank you very much and when I move to agenda item four consideration of evidence which is pleased with my greed that will take in private so now move into private session