 Good morning, everyone. Can I welcome you to the 16th meet-up in 2015 of the Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee? Everyone present is reminded to switch off any mobile phones as they do effect the broadcasting system. As meeting papers are provided in digital format, you may see tablets being used during the meeting. No apologies have been received for this meeting. Agenda item 1 is a decision on taking business in private. Is the committeehoo gyda hyfforddolundeisio'n adnab medication plum yn awrust eto iddo iawn sprth bydd gwerth buuoedd o'u galei ffit sofaeth, ac tra gywodau ac baram ar y ffit cras-angel cyflygedü Ditl y sy'n boreddol and gyffordd y ffitsoft yn grwyffyr. Rhyzaeth yr iawn sprd bydd yoneydd yn wycholod ele�adau. Rhyw gael y fan hy bikel 300 yn cais gweld o eistedd o gwrwiat e resgediate dasig hon y pielinas hywr. Mae chi mei i felline llawer o'is dus野náu gyweithgald, reordog 1982, a Michael Cameron, chief executive of the Scottish Housing Regulator. Can I invite Kay Blair to make an opening statement? Thank you very much, convener, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for giving us this opportunity to again present our work to the committee. As I've said before, we very much welcome the committee's interest in and scrutiny of our work. We are, and I do believe, and I say it often enough, we are a listening and a learning organisation, and we're very keen to hear the views of our various stakeholders, and wherever possible we do reflect these views in how we regulate. I'm delighted to be able today to report the progress we've made on the matters we set out in our letter of 5th of March. Michael and I will also answer any questions that you have on the progress update that we gave you in our written submission. Specifically, the committee asked us that we highlight progress around the introduction of an appeals process and on our work with the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations, the SFHA, and about how we would agree its policy on entitlements, payments and benefits. So, first of all, on appeals. We will go live with the new appeals process on 1 April 2016. We will work with all of our stakeholders, especially tenants, tenant organisations, landlords, their representative bodies, over the coming year to develop that process. We will aim to put in place an appeals mechanism that is transparent, that is accessible, that is proportionate, independent and cost effective. We also need to ensure that it is able and that we are able to act swiftly where necessary to protect the interests of tenants and other service users, so other customers of social housing. On payments and benefits, I'm very pleased to report to the committee that we are now in a position as a regulator to endorse the SFHA's proposed model policy on entitlements, payments and benefits. That includes provisions on the limitation on the personal use by an RSL's governing body members and staff of its contractors, with appropriate flexibility in that code. This model policy takes account of the needs of landlords working in rural and remote communities. The SFHA has issued the model policy to its members and hopes to publish the final version later this week. We have proposed that, in its workings with its members, it emphasises that individual landlords have the flexibility to opt out of parts of the model policy, that they feel are particularly difficult to implement, given their particular circumstances, and that they can adopt different approaches but, of course, still upholding the principles and spirit of the model policy and meeting our regulatory standards. We are happy to work with the SFHA around communicating and promoting its model policy. On other matters, we have had generally positive and constructive responses to our recent consultation on revised regulatory guidance, including that on notifiable events. You may recall that we have always said from the beginning of our existence as an independent regulator that we would constantly review what we would do and that we would, wherever possible, streamline our regulation. We are currently reviewing the independent analysis of our regulatory guidance and we will publish this independent analysis along with our response and the final guidance later in the summer. As I said, it has been a very positive, helpful and constructive exercise. Finally, I would highlight that we are now into the second year of collecting charter information from landlords. The charter has been welcomed by tenants particularly because of the information that it gives them and the ability it gives them to hold their landlord to account. In the second year, they will be able to look at the start of trend information to see how their landlord is comparing not only with peers in the sector but also over time. I think that that is really helpful. Also, on a high note, I am delighted that our work in collecting the charter data and making it available to tenants and to other service users was recognised last week when we won two of the prestigious Hollywood Connect awards, which celebrate public sector excellence in information and communications technology. Clearly, we are delighted to answer your questions now, but that is my opening statement. Thank you very much, Ms Blair, for your opening statement. I wonder if, before we get into the very specific matters that you have highlighted in your opening statement, we might just take a step back and ask you to restate what you see as being the role of the regulator, particularly since it is a body that has a significant investment in public expenditure. How would you justify the existence of the regulator? What do you see as its role? How would you respond to the criticism that we have sometimes heard in evidence that there is a tendency for the regulator to be involved in the micromanagement of individual housing associations and that sometimes your actions are not always proportionate? Perhaps I can start off and I'm sure Michael will have something to say. I think that our role is actually quite simple, and I think that that is because of the statutory objective that we were given when we were set up as a new and independent regulator, and that is to promote and safeguard the interests of tenants and other service users. I think that unlike other regulators, which may have a variety of objectives, we have only one. That is very interesting because it guides all of our work in terms of making sure, basically, that tenants and factored owners, homeless people and other service users actually get a good deal from their landlord. We are very keen to work with the sector, to work with RSLs, to work with local authorities to ensure that they are providing good homes, warm homes, secure homes, safe homes—really important in terms of tenants. We are very keen in terms of our priorities and our risk assessments that we look at where we see the greatest possibility, either for things going wrong or because we have an interest in that particular RSL because of its size, scope or complexity. You mentioned that we have a fair investment in terms of the amount of money. I would point out that we have only around 50 staff and a budget of just under £4 million. We have a very important role in terms of providing confidence and reassurance to lenders in the sector. Lenders have traditionally and continue to see the sector as a safe, secure place for investment. Because of that, the sector enjoys preferential interest rates. Recently, one lender estimated that the value of our regulation was worth around £40 million, which has tenfolded the size of our budget. In terms of justifying our existence, that is quite a good one in terms of making sure that lenders continue to see robust effect of regulation in the sector and that they continue to invest in the sector in Scotland and that that will enable the sector to develop and to build new homes. Thank you for that. Mr Cameron, do you want to address the point that the regulator sometimes—I am not saying that I agree with the point, but the point has been made that the regulator is sometimes involved in micro-management of the affairs of individual housing associations and that sometimes their actions are not always proportionate? We take very seriously our approach to regulation being one of risk-based and proportionate regulation. We, as Kaye has set out, we have regard always to our statutory objective of protecting the interests of tenants and other service users, and that is what drives all of our actions. We undertake anio risk assessment of all social landlords that identifies the key areas that we require to engage with those landlords to get appropriate levels of assurance around how they are operating to protect those interests of tenants and other service users. We publish all of that information. We have gone further than simply publishing the actual plans themselves over the past year. We have published, for the first time, a compendium of our engagement with landlords, both for local authorities and for RSOs. We have also started to publish a series of documents called How We Work, which sets out more information and detail on how we apply and practice our regulatory framework. The first of those documents has been developed in consultation with the key stakeholder groups, the representative bodies of landlords and has been broadly welcome. We will be publishing more of those documents over the coming months. Do you think that the public and tenants know enough yet about how you carry out those risk assessments? It is undoubtedly the case that we can put more information out there. The next of the two, How We Work publications, will focus specifically on how we go about undertaking our annual risk assessments. We will publish one for RSOs and another for local authorities, recognising that there are slight differences in the process and that, with local authorities, we work in collaboration with our partner scrutiny bodies, such as Audit Scotland and Education Scotland, to produce a joint common plan for scrutiny. We will publish how we work on both of those risk assessment processes. Hopefully, that will further enhance the information that is available to tenants, landlords and the general public. I understand that the regulator is due to publish a regulatory advice note in November, setting out the key risks and issues that you will focus on during the risk assessment process. Are you able to update us on that work? That is part of our annual cycle of risk assessment. Every October, we commence the next round of risk assessment. What we want to do this year for the first time is to engage with landlords, lenders and auditors to the sector, tenants, to get their perspective on the key risks that landlords have to contend with, to use that dialogue to help inform our approach to risk assessment, to publish the key risk areas that we will focus on in the coming year, and that we will put that out and promote that as widely as we possibly can. Again, to help all involved in social housing to understand the basis in which we are conducting our regulation. We have received evidence previously from the regional network of registered tenants organisations and other umbrella organisations representing housing associations. Their submission states that many tenants are not sure what the role of the Scottish housing regulator is with regards to investigating concerns of tenants. Linked to that, there needs to be more clarity in what constitutes a significant performance failure and timescales on responding. Can you respond to that statement, McLeese? First of all, it is probably worth restating that the Parliament has empowered the Scottish public service ombasmen to deal with complaints from individual tenants in relation to their landlord. We are not the body that handles such complaints. When a tenant contacts us with a complaint of that nature, we will absolutely work with the tenant to help them understand what the process is, firstly in terms of how they should complain to their landlord and then to the SPSO. We have put in place a process for tenants to raise serious concerns with us when they feel that their landlord is failing and that that impacts on many or all of the landlord's tenants. That is what we categorise as a significant performance failure. I think that we appreciate that there can be potential for confusion between those two roles. We have worked with the SPSO to put more information into the public domain to be as clear as possible around those distinctive roles. We have published a fact sheet on significant performance failures and we updated that in August 2003. We have also published a performance matters report on how landlords are informing their tenants about significant performance failures as a route for their tenants to raise matters with us. Generally, landlords are performing well in terms of communicating that information. As the regulator and to encourage individual housing associations to make that information available to individual tenants? We have required all associations to do that. That is a regulatory requirement. We have undertaken a thematic study into how well landlords were delivering against that requirement. That is the performance matters report that I referred to. We have found that, generally, landlords are performing well in making that information available to their landlords. We have also made as much information available in a streamlined fashion as we can through our website to enable tenants to raise matters with us directly where they have those serious concerns. Can I move on and ask you what are your plans regarding the introduction of value of money assessments? For example, how do you respond to the concerns of Glasgow and West of Scotland forum of housing associations? I quote, "...now is not the time for SHR to introduce a further layer of bureaucracy into their assessment process." The last thing that we want to do is to add further bureaucracy to our regulatory assessments. Value for money is one of those topics that is actually quite hard to define, because I am sure that if I asked everybody around this table you would all have a different definition of what value for money means. However, we are very aware that when tenants talk to us—we have a tenant panel, for instance, of over 400 tenants that we communicate with regularly—they consistently say to us that value for money is one of the key topics that they look for in terms of what they get out of their landlord. We are very aware that that is a key topic. The English regulator has introduced a specific indicator about value for money, but that is much more from an economic perspective. We were keen to start a discussion with various people in the sector, not to say that we were going to introduce a new bureaucratic layer, which is the last thing that I said before that we want to do, but to discuss what value for money means, how landlords are responsible for delivering performance, and how they define value for money in terms of what they are offering as a package to their tenants and to their other customers. We are very engaged. We quite like having debates about strategic issues with various stakeholders in the sector, so this was an initial debate that we had to say, what do you think? Is there something here? Should we be doing more work on this? Should we be asking more of landlords in terms of looking at what they are delivering in terms of value for money? As I say, it was very much an initial discussion that we are having with the sector. I know that you cannot speak for the sector or for the Glasgow and West of Scotland forum of housing associations, but do you think that they have been reassured as a result of the discussions that you have had, or do they continue to have concerns about the regulatory burden being placed upon them? At the discussion that we had, they took a very active part in that, and we sent out a note afterwards agreeing what aspects we were going to cover. Again, I think that at the time we were engaged with them. Obviously, we will continue talking and we will continue listening in terms of, but we also, from a tenant perspective, are keen to ensure that tenants get a good deal and that other service users get a good deal. Michael, would you like to add anything? Perhaps just to say that, in terms of the discussion that we had with stakeholders in May on value for money, we debated after that what our guiding principles might be around taking forward a regulatory discussion on value for money. At the moment, we give landlords a fair amount of scope to define what that means locally. One of our guiding principles will be to move not too far from that position, and we will want to engage fully with the sector around this issue as they themselves develop approaches to demonstrating value for money to their tenants. There are a number of significant pieces of research going on at the moment in the sector in Scotland, and we will want to have regard to that. We are very much, as Kay says, in a position of listening to what the views are of a range of stakeholders on that topic. We will move cautiously in terms of adopting an appropriate regulatory position on value for money, which, in large part, will be based on what we already have in terms of charter information and the range of other information that we receive from landlords. Mike Mackenzie has a short supplementary question. Thank you, convener. I will keep it short, as I possibly can. Initially, Ms Blair mentioned that she may have concerns about housing associations because of their size. I wonder if she can elaborate on that. What size has she got to do with it? In the second point, you mentioned that the lenders had said that they had been responsible for saving the sector £40 million in lending costs. I think that the period was over a year. I am just struggling to imagine how anybody could possibly do that calculation. I would be very grateful if you were able to share information with the committee. I appreciate that it is not your calculation that it is a group of lenders, but, as we know, the lenders have got their sums rather wrong in fairly recent history, so I would really like to know what that methodology was. Finally, I know, convener, just a further point. On the first one, on size, we take an interest in size because, if a very large organisation were to get into trouble, were to suffer financial distress, that would have an impact on the whole of the system. It would have an impact on the sector and on tenants. In terms of size, we are just very keen that we keep close to some of those organisations, particularly some of the bigger ones, which have subsidiary developments and which have quite complex structures. We are just very keen that it is not necessarily that we take an interest because we have a particular concern about any one aspect at the time. It is really just to keep close to them to make sure. It is for assurance from our point of view. In terms of the £40 million, the calculation was done on looking at what standard interest rates would be to comparable organisations in the private sector, as opposed to social housing. However, the exact detail of that calculation I do not have with me at the moment. I do not know whether it is Michael. I will expand on that a little. In the conversations that we had with the lenders, they identified that they estimated the average reduction in the interest rates that were applied was around the figure of 115 basis points. That was directly as a consequence of the organisations that were being lent to being part of a regulated sector. If you extrapolate that basis points reduction over the totality of the sectors borrowing, it comes to a figure of roundabout £40 million each year. We have written more information about that calculation and who exactly it came from. David, you have some questions. Ms Blair, in your opening statement you said that you were a listening and learning organisation. Could you demonstrate how you are listening and learning around the issue of whistleblowing? Yes, indeed. I am going to ask Michael to do this because he has actually got more information at his fingertips. We have become designated as a proper authority to receive disclosures about social landlords from whistleblowers under the Public Interest Disclosure Act. That means that any whistleblower has the protection set out in the act if they come to us. It also places upon us certain duties to publish information around the numbers of whistleblowing reports that we receive each year. We published updated fact sheets in April of this year on whistleblowing, one for whistleblowers themselves and another for landlords who may then have to engage with us around a whistleblowing report that we have received. We consulted with the Glasgow West of Scotland Forum, employers in voluntary housing and the SFHA in producing those fact sheets. We will set out for the first time in our annual report for last year, which will come to Parliament in September. I can tell you that last year we were contacted by six whistleblowers with concerns about landlords. We took no action on two of those because the whistleblowing information lacked sufficient evidence or credibility. We worked with landlords to establish the facts in the other cases, in one we found that there was no basis for the allegations. In the others, the concerns were substantiated in two of the cases and one is still on-going. That gives a sense of our approach to whistleblowing. Have you had any examples of whistleblowers within your own organisation? No. If you have in the future who would guard the guards if, in the sense that you are regulating the sector, I know that there are some further questions on this general issue. What procedure would you have if you had whistleblowing within your own organisation? All of the staff of the Scottish Housing Regulator are civil servants and are fully subject to the civil service code. All of the procedures, including whistleblowing procedures, are there for civil servants. There is an extensive set of procedures. I would be happy to get that information to the committee if that would be helpful. Has there been any discussion about the issue of whistleblowing within any board meetings that you have had in the past? Yes. Yes. Absolutely. We have looked at the policy and agreed the policy and discussed it as a board. Could you also explain in a bit more detail what the role of the special managers will be? Special managers in terms of statutory appointments that we make to register social landlords or local authorities? Yes. Is there a role for special managers over the issue of whistleblowing or is that completely separate? I do not think that there is a lot of clarity on what that role will be, so we would appreciate some information on that. A special manager is a person that we would appoint to an organisation to undertake either certain investigations or to address certain issues or problems that have arisen. We have only used statutory appointments of special managers twice, both fairly recently. Where we do that, we set out fully the remit and the accountabilities so that the organisation that is involved in having a special manager placed with them fully understands that role. We have had some discussions with representative bodies on the issue of accountability of special managers. Special managers that we appoint are accountable to the regulator for the delivery of the actions that they are being appointed for. However, they also need to work with the relevant management committee or governing body of the organisation. Can I give you an example? Let's look at a fictional one, so that I am clear and the committee is clear on the role of special managers. ASL has a whistleblower who says that the organisation is not operating for correct financial accountability. You are concerned about it. You could then set up a special manager to look into that organisation and see if the finances would be done according to the rules and regulations that are laid down by Parliament that you regulate. Would that be a fair fictional example in terms of how you would use it? That is not how that scenario would play out. If we receive a whistleblowing report, the first thing that we will do is assess it in terms of its credibility and the level of evidence that is presented. We may very well decide not to take the matter further if we think that the whistleblowing report lacks credibility or appropriate evidence. If we feel that there is sufficient for us to then engage with the organisation, the first thing we would do is ask the organisation itself to undertake an investigation into the matters raised. They may very well do that using their internal audit function, their external auditors, or appoint an independent body to do that. That sometimes gets confused with being a special manager. Our language for special manager is very much about a statutory appointment that is made by us. Perhaps you could give us a little bit more detail on the circumstances where you would appoint a special manager. You have done it on two occasions. I appreciate that there would be some confidentiality around that, but are you able to describe in general terms the two circumstances in the past? Actually, we have published the information on both of those cases in regulation plans for the organisation's concerns. There is quite a bit of information out there. I would be happy to share that with the committee. In one of the organisations, we became concerned about its financial health. In particular, there was a near risk of insolvency. We were not able to obtain appropriate assurances from the organisation that it was dealing with the issues. On that basis, we made a statutory appointment. We made a statutory appointment to both a special manager role and we appointed three members to the organisation's management committee. I am sorry if I am being a bit slow in this issue. My fictional example, which we recall, was about an RSL where officers demonstrated that there was some financial problem with the organisation. You said that that was not really appropriate, but what you have just described there is financial problems in the organisation and you have appointed a special manager. Why was my example incorrect? The first example that you highlighted was that we received a report from a whistleblower. The first thing that we would do upon receiving a report from a whistleblower is to consider the substance of that. Then we would look to the organisation to investigate that in the first instance. The situation that I have just described in terms of our appointment of statutory manager was following our direct engagement with the organisation over a period of time to try to deal with a number of concerns that we had around its financial viability that led to us having to take that intervention action. Different circumstances. I will not be too much like a dog in a bonus issue, but I am not suggesting that the special manager is the first thing that he does. I think that that is quite understandable. All I am saying is that there is a possibility if there was whistleblowing and you were not satisfied with what the organisation was doing, that you may consider this at the end of the day as one option you may have if you are not satisfied with what the ourselves is doing. I think that if we were concerned that the organisation was not taking the matter seriously or some of the issues that were being uncovered were so significant that actually further action had to be taken, there is the possibility that we could appoint a special manager in those circumstances. Right, that is fine. That certainly adds a lot more clarity. Mary, you have some questions. Before I ask you about communication and engagement, just so that it clarifies things for me, could a special manager be appointed after a notifiable event? A notifiable event could be the first indication that we would need to engage with an organisation and, depending on the scale of the issue, could it ultimately lead to a situation where a special manager became involved? A notifiable event in itself would not necessarily trigger that response. I just wanted to see if there was a connection between the two. I move on to communication and engagement. In previous evidence sessions with both tenant organisations and tenants, concerns have been raised about the methods that the regulator uses to communicate with tenants and tenants organisations and the frequency. Can you give us a bit more detail of the steps that you have taken to improve those things? Yes, I can. Tenants are a very important audience for us. Last year, we asked all registered tenants organisations for their preferences about how they would wish to receive information from us, and they told us largely that they preferred hard copy summary documents. We have responded to that by placing much more emphasis on producing such publications. We have done that for our national panel report, for our registered tenant organisation priority research and for our regulatory guidance consultation. We will also shortly issue a hard copy summary of this year's report on the national panel, and we will send that to all RTOs. We also send the nine regional networks of RTOs, our electronic newsletter, and that goes out on a frequent basis. We have also promoted that electronic newsletter to all RTOs and encouraged them to subscribe, and at least 134 have done so. We continue to work with our committed group of tenant assessors. We have established and provide resources to the new RTO liaison group. We meet with that group quarterly. Alongside that, myself and one of our board members meet annually with the chairs and secretaries groups of the regional network. I also emphasise the role of our national panel of tenants and service users. This is a very important way for us to engage with and communicate with tenants. We published the output of the second year of work with the panel last Friday. The panel now has 430 members, up from 300 last year. Around three quarters of the panel members are not members of any other form of tenant organisation or representative structure. While most of them are tenants last year, we also, through the panel, engaged with 48 Gypsy travellers. Some of them are already panel members. They are all now signed up to receive panel updates and to work with us for further engagements. We will continue to look to broadening out the representative nature of the tenants panel. We will continue to discuss the different representative structures that we engage with for tenants and how we can further improve our communication. Over the past year, we have done a lot to try to ensure that tenants get the right information from us at the right time. The other key thing is that we require every landlord to provide every tenant with a copy of the landlord report that we publish every year on each of those landlords. Do you use the national panel and the tenant assessors to assess the improvements that you have made in your communications? How often do you meet them? We do that. We meet the tenant assessors regularly, and they have been an important way for us to test different developments. We meet all the tenant assessors twice a year, but we engage with them on a far more frequent basis than that, depending on what piece of work they are on. They work with us on thematic studies and inquiries. We involve our tenant assessors in developing the landlord report and the key indicators that we would focus on in the charter. We have also used them to test our IT systems in terms of how accessible and easy they are for people to make use of. That is very much a continuous on-going engagement that we have with our tenant assessors. While there has been acknowledgement that improvements have been made in communications, are there still concerns that it is too slow and maturing and too slow in moving? Do you agree with that? Is there any way that you can move things along more quickly? As I said, we want to discuss those concerns with the RTO liaison group that we meet regularly to better understand those concerns. I think that we put a lot of information out for tenants. We do that regularly. We engage with them in a range of different ways, but we would be keen to understand what those concerns may be and how we can build on what we already have in place. A concern from the regional networks is that you are not visual enough and that the regulator needs to get out there more. How would you respond to that? Maybe I can take that one. I think that that is a good point in terms of visibility. I think that every organisation can be more visible. We have done particularly this year. We have put a huge emphasis behind communication, behind engagement with a variety of our stakeholders, from lenders, Government, landlords to tenant organisations and so on. We have a huge communications plan, but we are quite a small organisation and we have a big job to do in terms of effective regulation, in terms of being risk-based, proportionate and engaging effectively with those organisations where we need to engage. It is getting the balance right. I am very aware, because I come from a communications background, that you can never do enough to communicate. I am very aware that, sometimes, when you put information out, it is not necessarily the information that is most received. We have done a lot of work in making sure that we are engaging with our assessors, as Michael has said, and engaging with our panel to say how good we are at communicating. Where could we be better? What do you want? It is an on-going process, and hopefully, from a good base, we can only get better. The regional networks have also suggested that there is evidence that landlords are reneging on their legal requirement to consult with tenants. How do you feel about that, and would you agree with that? What steps will you take to resolve that? As Michael has said before, there is a statutory requirement for all landlords to give the landlord a report to their tenants. We often hear from tenants that they do not get enough information from the landlord. One of the things that we do, as well as our regulation plans, is what we call thematic inquiries, which are really many research projects where we go in and look at particular topics. At the moment, we have taken the charter and looked at various aspects of the charter, including communication, particularly looking at communication around rent increases, for instance, where landlords are performing well in that area. Mostly, we are told that when we ask tenants and the charter tells us that they are satisfied with their landlord's performance and the information that they get, but we are keen to make sure that we have hard data behind that to make sure that that is happening. The tenants network has suggested that a thematic inquiry be done into the degree of communication that landlords have. Is that something that you would consider? Yes, we are considering it, and that will probably happen this year, depending on our resources. I was going to move on to the issue of the social housing charter annual returns. We have had information from the Glasgow and West of Scotland forum of housing associations suggesting that the use of inconsistent language when reporting on charter performance of housing associations and local authorities is concerning them. Why might that be, and have you any plans to revise the language that you use? It would be worth saying that we would welcome the fact that our publications and the information that we have put out there is generating debate and discussion. That is certainly one of the objectives that we had in getting that information out into the public domain. We collect the same data from all social landlords, from both RSLs and local authorities, and we use the same indicators in our risk assessment of both of those groups of landlords in terms of the charter data. This year, following our risk assessment, we are engaging with just over two thirds of local authorities on matters relating to the charter. We are engaging with around about one third of RSLs, and the bulk of the engagement that we are having with RSLs relates more to financial health matters than to the charter. Proportionately, we are engaging with around twice the number of councils on charter matters than we are with RSLs. In terms of the issues that have been raised, I do not think that there is any evidence that we are being any less critical of local authorities than we are being of RSLs. The two processes that we use to publish the information on how we will engage following the risk assessments are slightly different in that for local authorities. We are part of a broader approach that involves all the scrutiny partners that we work with on local authorities, so the final product is co-produced there. We are not convinced that there are significant differences in our use of language across the two types of landlord. That said, this is the first year that we have done this approach with the charter information, and we would be keen to engage with the forum to discuss our concerns, pick up on those, and to address where we can any issues that may arise. We have a meeting plan for within the next few weeks to do just that. Perhaps no plans to revise, but I will engage at this stage. What feedback have you had on the use of the online landlord comparison tool? We have had exceptionally good feedback. People have told us that it is easy to use that they can get the information that they need. We have had very good feedback about how they can use that information to compare their particular landlord with the chosen group that they choose of peers in the sector. It is very helpful for them. As I said, we have won awards about the ease of use and how we have developed that particular technology. It is working well, and it will be subject to review to make sure that it continues to work well. Have you changed the information that landlords have to submit for their annual return on the charter? No. It has been suggested by some tenants representatives that there has been a change. Is there any reason why that impression might have been given? I actually do not know because there has been no change, so I would be keen to find out why they think that. The major change will be that, because we are in the second year of collecting the data, tenants will be able to compare the second year of their landlord's performance with the first year. It is the start of a comparison, a benchmarking exercise, which will be helpful for tenants to compare over time, but the actual information has not changed. Thank you very much. Dave, do you have a supplementary question? You know that we have a petition later on in an agenda that argues that RSL should be subject to freedom of information. Could you ask your views on that? I understand from the commissioner that the charter requirement falls short of freedom of information and that it cannot be required to provide particular information to the individual. Is the information commissioner's assessment correct? What is your view on that? We do not have a view. My answer is quite brief. Is it something to do with the fact that you have 50 civil servants with your organisation? I could not possibly say. We do not have a view on that. We think that the charter gives valuable information. Most tenants tell us that they are satisfied with that information, but in terms of having a formal view about FOI, we do not have that. Is the commissioner's assessment correct that the charter requirement falls short of freedom of information act? I think that it is safe to say that the charter sets out a standard that encourages landlords to communicate effectively and fully with their tenants. It does not attempt to put in place the same kind of requirements and procedural responsibilities that the freedom of information act does. I think that you would suggest that you would be surprised if a charter did that. Indeed, our analysis of landlords' first annual returns highlights the importance that landlords are placing on being kept informed by their landlord, but the satisfaction levels with how landlords are performing in that regard are pretty good. It is relatively early stages for the charter, and we will continue to monitor and look at the trends in terms of landlords' performance in that regard. At this point, we see no evidence of a risk to tenants' interests regarding landlords' provision of information to them. We are going to move on now, and James, you have some questions. Ms Blair, in your opening comments, you talked about one of the primary functions of the regulator being to be there when you felt that things were going wrong. Would that focus on that explain partly why the RSLs are showing concern about the toning content of the governance matters publications that seem to perceive to be a bit overly negative at times? Is there a role for that publication to be used to disseminate best practice amongst the RSLs? Thank you for that question. In terms of governance matters, we have always said as a regulator that our role is not just to highlight witnesses and bad practice but to highlight good practice as well. Over the last year, we have done a lot in terms of putting out a series of publications called performance matters where we highlight good practice and use that to help landlords in their own induction, training and so on. That has been very helpful. In terms of governance matters, we were very keen when we discovered issues, challenges, particular weaknesses and organisations that, as far as possible, we could share some of that information on an anonymous basis. However, as a learning tool, I have to say that I have heard about the toning content and we have taken that on board. However, a number of organisations have said to me that, as soon as they get the publication, they use it to go and check in their organisation that they are not doing similar things, that they are performing well and that they are not falling into perhaps some of the traps that are highlighted in those case studies. I suppose that I would take some issue with the view that they are all entirely negative and that we have had a negative response, because I think that a number of organisations have found them very valuable as a learning tool to using their own organisation. That said, alongside our governance matters, we ran a series of events called governance events and matters, and we had a hugely positive response about those events. Again, we used the governance matters series as the basis for discussion, which allowed board members to get together, committee members to network, to learn about other experiences in other organisations. I think that that is really important. Yes, we do share bad practice, but we try and do it in a constructive way as a learning tool. Our next issue of governance matters, which will come out shortly, actually talks about an organisation where we identified serious issues. That organisation at the beginning did not want particularly to engage with us. It did subsequently engage with us really constructively, and we had a very positive outcome at the end. The organisation itself would say that it had a very positive outcome at the end. Perhaps a long answer to your question, but I hope that it answers it. Yes, to a great extent it does, but what you are saying is that governance matters deals with the shorthand version here, right? Governance matters deals with the bad stuff, and performance matters highlights the good stuff that is going on. It is not necessarily as black and white as that, because performance matters sometimes looks at issues that are more to do with charter and service delivery, etc. It is not quite as black and white as that. If it is not as black and white as that, as a space in the governance matters to highlight one or two examples of good practice to say that this is the sort of governance practice that you should be following. We have done that. We will continue to do that. One of the other issues that was raised by the RS cells was the matter of trust between the regulator and the RS cells. Can you give us an update on the work that you are doing to take forward the building of trust within the sector? Yes, absolutely. There is a huge push from the board and within the organisation to make sure that we are engaging effectively at all levels. Over the past year, we have continued to have meetings with representative bodies. With the lending community, we continue to make sure that we are regularly in touch with lenders both in Scotland and in the UK to make sure that we are engaging. We have board meetings. I have a chair meeting with the chair, for instance, of the SFHJ on a regular basis. At all levels within the organisation, we are engaging. I think that, hopefully, that is helping trust. My desire is that we understand each other's perspectives, because sometimes they will be quite different, but that we respect each other's perspectives. We have a relationship of mutual respect and understanding. Has that process been improving? Have you been having more meetings? Has there been an understanding from the RS cells about the efforts that you are going to advise versa to build up that relationship of trust? I hope so. I certainly think so. I think that we are making good progress. Sometimes, I have to say that the representative bodies may not like what we are doing, because, as I said, our statutory objective is to protect tenants and to strive for improved performance, even better performance in the sector. Sometimes, we agree to differ. You mentioned in your opening remarks that you are hoping to have a fully formed appeals process in place for April next year. Is that correct? You are currently engaging in a consultation process. I am sure that you understand that it is a two-stage process. Can you flesh out some of the details of that? Yes, I can. I will perhaps speak initially and then Michael will talk about it. We are very keen, obviously, to have an appeals process that is transparent, that is proportionate, that works for us and works for those who use the appeals process. What we have decided to do is to engage at a very early stage with a discussion paper, looking at what the principles should be, what the process should be and what you think of it. That will happen in September. Towards the end of October-November, we will issue having had the response from that. As well as having issued the discussion paper, we will also have meetings and appropriate dialogue with others in the sector. We will then issue a consultation paper in terms of loop. That is our firm proposal. What do you think of it? Nothing really to add to that other than that we want to ensure that there are as many opportunities as possible for all stakeholders to engage with us. That is the motivation for a two-stage process. We want to ensure that we get this right in terms of an appeal process, and we want to ensure that as many people as possible have had that opportunity to engage with us. The umbrella organisations have obviously welcomed the fact that you are doing that, but they are keen that the appeals process itself is truly independent and provides an avenue of redress for all relevant aspects of the regulator's decision making. I take at that your intention for that to be the outcome. The strategic code introduced by the Scottish Government earlier this year sets out the principle of an independent approach to appeals. We will set out to have a full discussion about exactly what that would mean to the range of stakeholders and how we can best accommodate those range of views. It is also important to state that it is critical that any appeals process is proportionate and that it is not a tool that it can be used to prevent a regulator from doing the things that it needs to do. There is always a balance in that to be struck, but we will absolutely engage fully with stakeholders around the very topics that you have set out, the scope of any appeals process and the level of independence that we can ensure is built into that. For instance, with the SFHA, we will go on to talk about the entitlements payments and benefits policy a wee bit later, but if an organisation were to opt out of any element of that due to their local circumstances, and were the regulator to decide that the organisation's identified alternative approach was inappropriate, would they have an avenue of redress to appeal that decision by the regulator? Would that be your intention? I would not want to prejudge the outcome of any discussion and consultation. I think that that very scenario is something that we can debate with stakeholders. Is that a relevant matter to be included in any appropriate appeals process that we put in place? Okay, thank you for that. Can I ask now what progress you have made around issuing of revised guidance on notifiable events, particularly when a senior officer leaves an RSL? As Kaye mentioned in her opening statement, we have had very positive and constructive responses to the recent consultation that we have undertaken on revising our regulatory guidance, including that that relates to notifiable events. Our aim here was absolutely to update that guidance, but also to streamline our requirements. Also, as Kaye said, we are reviewing the independent analysis of the feedback back to that consultation, and we will publish that along with the revised guidance later in the summer. Yesterday, at our board meeting, we agreed to make some further changes to the guidance on notifiable events to reflect further the comments that we have received back from some of the landlord representative groups, specifically on the issue of responses to the situation in which a senior officer leaves. We are confident that, when we publish that guidance later in the summer, it will be recognisably changed to what was there before. Okay, so can you give us a flavour of the change in this stage, or is it too early? It is very much shifting the focus from requiring in most situations an option appraisal to one that is very much focusing on where an organisation has an appropriate and up-to-date business plan strategy that, in itself, is the basis on which it can proceed to move to reappoint a chief executive. It has very much worked with the different representative bodies on the language around that, and it very much reflects those conversations. Okay, that's good, thank you. The final question I have is, what progress have you made on developing a procurement framework agreement on the appointment of consultants? If you recall, that was a particular point of criticism. As I'm sure the committee will appreciate, there are many complexities and technicalities in procurement frameworks. We are currently working with legal and procurement advisers to work through those complexities, particularly to enable us to achieve the ambition that we have of having a framework agreement that is not just available to the regulator but one that is also available to social landlords to access and make use of. We hope to have a clearer position on that later in the year. Okay. I think there's a lot of criticism at the time that these consultants were very expensive and there weren't any actually in Scotland where we had to import them. Do you think that that situation will be addressed by what you're doing? That's our hope that what will happen is that there will be much greater transparency around appointment of contractors, consultants, on the basis of a framework agreement. Obviously, framework agreements are tendered through processes to ensure appropriate value for money. Okay. Thank you. Michael. Thank you, convener. You said in your written evidence to the committee the most recent submission that Ms Blair reiterated it in her opening statement this morning, suggesting that you fully endorse the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations model policy on entitlements, payment and benefits. You said in particular that this takes account of the needs of landlords working in rural and remote communities. That's reassuring but the feedback I have from housing associations across rural Scotland and indeed from the Scottish Federation of Housing Association is that the model policy, the draft model policy, has got a number of real problems with it and that it specifically does not address or take account of the needs of rural landlords. Could you perhaps explain how you seem to have got this wrong? Well for a start I would say we haven't got it wrong because it's not our code. It's the SFHA's code and model policy which they have developed. It's taken some time for them to develop it but we are now in a position to endorse it so I would just like to make that clear at the beginning. In terms of getting it wrong we've worked I think quite constructively and over a period of time to ensure that whatever the SFHA produced was of sufficient quality was meeting our principles around ethics, around integrity and we had very high level principles which we wanted the code to embrace which it now has. We were also very aware of the needs of rural and remote communities and I think it's something Mr Mackenzie that you brought up at the last session and we're very aware that in certain circumstances there is a limited market and in these circumstances of course staff etc should be in a position to use if there is only one contractor to use that contractor, providing of course them they make sure that it's at a rate such as acceptable. So we were very keen in terms of the code that that was spelled out but the SFHA actually took that part out of the code as far as I'm aware because they wanted to make sure that everybody in Scotland if there were particularly difficult circumstances or just special circumstances that there would be flexibility in their code so there is that flexibility that has been introduced into the code. The SFHA have said that they will publish the code by the end of this week and that it will run I think they're proposing that it should run for a year by which time they will have an opportunity to monitor it and to see and review how it's working but it is their code. Thank you yes I was aware of that and I'm still not quite grasping this you know please bear with me that what I'm struggling to understand is that you've said that you fully endorse it yes and yet we don't know quite what the finished version of it is going to be yet and also and I welcome the flexibility but the flexibility as I understand it gives local housing associations the ability to kind of delete certain aspects of the code that they're not comfortable with or feel that's unworkable and substitute their own arrangements now without prior knowledge of that how can you possibly endorse it because well because there are high-level principles and what is said in the code and Michael might have the exact wording but what is said in the code is that in terms of flexibility they can if their circumstances dictate alter the code the SFHG's code as long as they still comply with high-level principles it's back to this sort of comply and explain which we've taken out that or the SFHG have have not accepted that wording because they felt it wouldn't be understood but basically it's said to enable in particularly difficult or particularly challenging local circumstances to allow that flexibility but surely is it not the case then that whilst you fully endorse it in principle you would reserve the right then to come to a different view if you found that you know in these quite subjective and difficult matters that you may take a different view of how any individual housing association chooses to interpret those high-level principles that you've just described I mean I think it's worth restating that what we have endorsed is a model policy produced by the SFHA it's then for individual landlords to decide whether they wish to adopt that model policy and whether they wish to adopt that model policy with appropriate revisions that's for landlords to decide upon it's then obviously the responsibility of landlords to ensure that that policy is implemented and adhered to and that they monitor their management of that policy which is then implemented that's that's for landlords to determine yeah i'm still i'm still struggling to quite understand you know you said in no uncertain terms that the needs of landlords working in rural and remote communities had been particularly taken into account and dealt with but actually most of the representations on that same model policy that i've had that the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations has had and that the employers in voluntary housing EVA have had is on specifically criticisms on those points so you know I cannot understand how you can be of the view that the rural concerns have been fully addressed and that the whole sector is of the view that they haven't been addressed perhaps for further clarification what we asked the SFHA to include in the policy was a statement that said that where local market conditions meant that it was difficult for a member of staff or a governing body of an rsl to achieve a reasonable selection of of contractors that they would be able to in those circumstances make use of the landlord's own contractors we felt that that ensured that in those more remote and rural areas there was flexibility we actually encouraged the SFHA to include direct reference to rural and highland as an example of where that local market condition context could be taken into account i think they were keen not to have an example as they felt that might be interpreted as being the only circumstances in which that flexibility could be used we're then also very keen and this has been our position for some time that landlords have flexibility around how they use the model and that where there are particular circumstances in their context they are able to determine that they wouldn't use specific aspects of the model policy and that they would adopt their own approaches still in the spirit of the model and still adhering to regulatory standards but they have that flexibility and that's what I think gives landlords a degree of flexibility and the opportunity to make it relevant to their own context final question convener given that this is a kind of ongoing piece of work that seems not to have yet got to completion and that it's taken some four years or so and that the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations have asked the committee to keep it under review would you be prepared to keep the committee informed of progress and can ask you stated that you are a listening and learning organisation can ask that you listen a wee bit more carefully to local housing associations and that each attempt to learn about their problems a wee bit more quickly I think on monitoring absolutely we've been more than more than happy to report back to the committee in terms of any matters that come to our attention in relation to this we'll discuss further with the SFHA it's intentions around monitoring I think when any organisation introduces a new policy or proposal makes sense to monitor the implementation of that so we'll discuss with SFHA it's plans in that regard and as I say we can bring back to the committee any instances where we become engaged and have to take a view on a landlord's implementation of the model or its own determined policy in terms of continuing to listen absolutely and I think as Kay has already set out we have a number of processes in place where we gather in views I think our recent event with stakeholders on value for money was an excellent example of where early on in conversations we will engage to help fully understand the range of different views that there are to enable us to take that into account when we're developing approaches and policy thank you thank you perhaps you can summarise for the committee what your key priorities in further developing the regulatory regime will be and in particular how you intend to continue to engage with all the relevant stakeholders in taking forward this work thank you convener in April we published our next corporate plan which covers the period from 2015 to 2018 obviously again I would emphasise the focus is very much on tenants and good outcomes for tenants and other service users so to that end we'll continue to look at our three main priorities financial health absolutely critical in terms of going forward particularly given the context that our ourselves are operating in which is increasingly challenging I think there is a wider range of risk around I'm thinking of things like welfare reform which could impact quite seriously on income streams I'm thinking of pension liabilities of the inflation rate and implications around that so a number of areas that we'll be taking a very keen interest in going forward so financial health is absolutely critical good governance since our inception we put a huge store behind well managed well governed organisations I think inevitably when we find that an organisation gets into trouble it starts off because of poor governance perhaps poor risk management risk mitigation perhaps poor understanding of some of the financial complexities that organisations have got themselves into so good governance will be absolutely critical good service delivery and there I'm talking about good homes good repairs service warm homes a lot of that information comes out of the charter and increasingly we will be looking using our new analytical tools which being incredibly helpful we'll be looking to get a much deeper insight into the organisations we regulate so again it's good service for tenants and others it's financial health good governance in terms of engagement I think we have a huge commitment to engaging with all our stakeholders obviously with representative bodies clearly with tenant organisations and very much listening to some of the feedback we've had today about tenant organisations and where we can do more and taking that on board and we will have a number of thematic inquiries where we will drill down in more detail for instance gypsy travellers is an area that we're really keen to get more information from and to use that information factored owners is another one where we feel perhaps we don't have enough information so again looking at certain aspects both of the customer base but also performance issues and obviously keeping vigilant to new risk it's a it's a complex sector it's a very diverse sector I mean I think one challenge with any model policy is that one size doesn't necessarily fit all in the sector because the sector has become much bigger it's become much more diverse and much more complex and we as a regulator has to have to make sure that we are ahead of the game that we understand the risks the sensitivities and the challenges out there so a lot of our work is analytical making sure that we have the right market intelligence making sure that we're engaging with the lending community which is absolutely critical to the sector to make sure that lending community still sees the sector as a very viable area in which to engage so very focused priorities for the board and the organisation which we will continue thank you do you have anything to add Mr Cameron nothing to that okay members do you have any further questions for the witnesses in that case only remains for me to thank our witnesses for their evidence this morning and for the continuing constructive engagement between the regulator and this committee I'm now going to suspend our meeting briefly to allow the witnesses to leave the room thank you we now resume our meeting of the committee firstly we have agenda item three public petitions committee will now consider two public petitions firstly we have the committee's first consideration of pe 1539 by an booth on housing associations to come under the freedom of information scotland act 2002 believe mr don you have a statement to make yes just for the record just to be in the side of safety I'd like to put on the record that I was a member of the GHA board between 2008 and 2012 which is now of course part of the weekly group okay thank you very much a paper providing details of previous consideration of the petition by the public petitions committee has been circulated for members consideration a number of actions have already been taken by the public petitions committee including inviting the petitioners to appear before that committee and to make a presentation and to answer questions on the petition can I invite members to consider what action it wishes to take in relation to the petition Dave members on the why I put a question to the regulator about this and they were obviously they have no position on it I mean I have to say I'm generally sympathetic to this petition as I pointed out my question and the additional papers from the petitioner the charter is fine and well and I'm not criticising the charter but they make it quite clear and I think Rosemary Agnew says this that the charter falls short of freedom of information right and it doesn't provide the same level of access I'm quoting this to information to enable public scrutiny I mean generally when I can't speak for government my government's very enthusiastic about freedom of information I'm not clear why it can't be extended to housing association if there's particular issues in addition to the recommendations that we've got and actions why don't we write to a cross-section of ourselves and get their first hand view on this is there a practice of who? I'd say ourselves sorry I'd say ourselves no it's getting late in the session convener so perhaps I don't know if it's my speech or your hearing maybe a combination of both but I would think it's useful to get first hand their particular views on this area and to be honest I cannot understand why we're not supporting us I mean free information is something we've supported on a cross-party basis I think I think it should apply to housing associations if there's a reasons why they themselves don't want this to happen let's hear direct from them okay that's fine we'll consider that that suggestion I think it's only fair to point now that a number of the registered social landlords have already written to I think the Public Petitions Committee on this issue so we do have their views on the record but we can consider whether or not to write to them again anyone else Mike? Yeah I mean I'm not necessarily suggesting that I disagree with it but I do think that a factor that has to be considered at a time when public budgets are you know under stress that some of the housing associations and I would imagine particularly the smaller ones me feel that they lack the resources to deal with the inevitable requests under FOI that they would have to deal with and that resource might be you know better spent providing warm better houses and so on so I can't imagine some of these are really quite small organisations and I think it could be quite on there is on them to comply with FOI. Mary and then Alex? Dave, Dave actually covered more or less all of the points that I would have raised and I absolutely support the views that he's expressed the only thing I would add in relation to the points that Mike's just made in regards to resourcing if we do go down the course of action that Dave has suggested and I support in contacting RSLs that could be an area that we could ask them to expand on on the resourcing issue. Okay Alex? Yes on the face of it it's difficult to argue against this proposal and the likely difficulties will be relating to implementation and I wondered if it might be an idea at this stage to cut out the middle of the process and simply engage directly with the Government and see what their views are about progressing this. Okay that's fine. Back in I mean I think the big issue here is that we're under legislative requirement to do this and it's human rights act so no one's disputing what the act says I think what government says is there's some technical reasons why housing associations or RSLs shouldn't be included and there is an answer to that from the petitioner and I do appreciate we've had some information already from RSLs obviously I would suggest that we address the specific point of it costs and obviously those organisations that haven't yet responded would be the ones that the clerks should focus on. Okay do any other members have any? Okay we've got two suggestions one that we write to a range of RSLs asking for their views and perhaps most sensibly focusing on those RSLs who have not yet expressed a view although we could write to RSLs who have already written with a more focused inquiry and there's been a suggestion that we write to the Scottish Government although I think if we were to do that I think we would want the Government not just to reiterate its previous response to the petitioners but actually to respond to some of their points that they've made in response to the Scottish Government's response I hope that makes sense but the Scottish Government has responded to the petitioners already so I don't think we would just want a reiteration of their earlier response are we happy to proceed on that basis okay I think another point that's worth considering is that there is already a consultation on the freedom of information Scotland Act and also on the forthcoming Scottish housing charter now notwithstanding the fact that the petitioners have questioned whether that is a good idea or not I think that that's certainly a formal process that exists and I think that we should encourage the petitioners to engage with that process because that is an obvious route for them to engage with the consultation on the act and on the housing charter dey we state my earlier point is I think my view is that the charter is something that's worthy and is good and worth support and but as the information commission has pointed out it does not give you the teeth that freedom from information act does process can ask here as they suggest and then that we don't encourage people to take part no I think that the committee is always seeking to move forward on a consensual basis so I think we've already agreed to write a range of registered social landlords we will write to the Scottish Government asking them whether it will take the petitioners concerns into account as part of the current FOI Scotland Act consultation and the forthcoming Scottish housing charter consultation and I would suggest with the committee's agreement that we also write to the petitioner encouraging them to engage with the Scottish Government's consultation and the forthcoming Scottish housing charter consultation agreed any other actions at this stage okay thank you very much and we now move on to consideration of our second petition and can I welcome Nigel Don MSP the second petition is to consider an update regarding PE1236 by Jill Fortheringham on the A90A 937 safety improvements attached to the paper for this item is an update from Transport Scotland announcing that Nestran's access to Lawrence Kirk's study is now complete it states that the preferred option arising from the study is an upgrade rather of the A90A 937 south junction to a grade separated junction Transport Scotland concludes the letter by stating that it will now work with its partners to progress this work further including discussions around funding can I invite comments from members Alex thank you very much convener I remember in the summer of 2004 being a signatory to petition 778 which was the predecessor petition to this one it was subsequently closed in March 2005 after the government gave a series of undertakings about safety improvements at this junction which included at the time speed limits of 50 miles per hour the inclusion the installation of speed cameras and an expectation by the petitioner and others that this would progress the improvement of the junction at some point it became subsequently clear that the speed cameras and the speed limits were all there was going to be and the argument has been rehearsed on a number of occasions that since their installation there have been no serious accidents well unfortunately in the last month there has been a further serious accident at that junction the news of the Nestrand report and its recommendations has been welcomed with delight and enthusiasm by the campaigners and people in the area however I'm keen to ensure that we don't make the same mistake as we did back in 2005 and assume that this piece of good news means that the problem is solved funding still remains a serious issue and having the committee having stuck with this over a long period of time and myself as an individual for even longer I think it's important that we don't take our eye off the ball at this stage and on the positive side there is an opportunity for the committee to go forward stick to this issue till there really is a solution in place and perhaps share and celebrate in that success when it comes Do any other members have any comments in which case can I invite Nigel Don? Yeah thank you very much convener this is dear to my heart being right in the middle of my constituency I'm grateful to Alex Johnson for his previous comments this has been taken forward on a cross party basis and clearly I hope we continue to do so there's a variable sense in which the consultants report tells us nothing we didn't already know because anybody who lives anywhere near there needs we know we need a great separated junction and indeed the current arrangements of a speed limit and traffic speeding cameras was actually discounted in the consultation as the first option which wasn't regarded as good enough before they even consulted it it's also clear that Transport Scotland will not give permission for any substantial planning application anywhere near there until there is a great separated junction so it does have to be done and I think we now understand that. I'm entirely with Alex Johnson I would very much welcome it if the committee would keep this open not least because if we read the words to your fatherings and calling on the Scottish Parliament towards the Scottish Government to ensuit, prove safety measures on the A90 by constructing a great separated junction and I'm personally I'm not going to be happy until we've actually got it constructed members will recognise that won't be months that will take years even if there's a positive move immediately so I would be grateful if the committee would keep this open please I don't think the committee needs to do anything else I think the relevant bodies Transport Scotland in particular and Aberdeenshire council know that progress needs to be made and that's all I would ask the committee to do please okay are we agreed that we wish to keep the petition open did you have a further comment you wish to thank Dave generally I'm particularly thankful to John Fulder work he's done on this I know in my previous life in the petitions committee he was a normal member of the committee he was there so often supporting this petition it's a very good petition and I would certainly support keeping it open okay right in that case we agree to keep the petition open that concludes this agenda item I now move this meeting into private as previously agreed thank you