 Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the 11th meeting of the local government communities committee. Can I remind everyone present to turn off mobile phones and if the meeting papers are provided in digital format tablets? It may be used by members during the meeting, so if you see them on our laptops, honestly, we're not doing other things. We're looking at our committee papers to better inform the questions that we have this morning. We have a full house, no apologies have been received from MSPs this morning. I'm happy to see. We move to agenda item 1, Subordinate legislation, parts 2, 3 and 5 of the Community Empowerment Scotland Act 2015. As I said, the committee will take evidence for a number of witnesses on parts 2, 3 and 5 of the Community Empowerment Scotland Act 2015, nine Scottish statutory instruments SSIs relating to part 2 community planning and part 5 asset transfer requests were laid before the Parliament on 10 November 2016. Further, SSIs relating to part 3 participation requests are expected to be laid later in the year. Therefore, evidence relating to this section will refer to regulations, which are currently in draft form, and will feed into its formal security of the scrutiny, rather, of the final instruments. With that said, I welcome Ian Cook, director of Development Trust, Association Scotland, Mary Wiley, chief officer, Highland 3d sector interface, Rukir Shah, policy manager, Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations and a well-kept face around here. I'm pleased to say that John Wilson, chairperson, Glen Boyd Neighbourhood House and GNH. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for attending this morning. It's been indicated that there's no opening statements at this stage, so we'll go straight to questions with the witnesses who are okay with that. Andy Wightman has indicated that he would like to ask the first question. Thank you, convener. The statutory instruments that we're considering now are just part of a broader package of statutory instruments that are necessary to deliver the Community Impairment Act. Given the complexity of some of the instruments and the detail that's gone into the Government has consulted on them earlier this year, I just wanted your view as to whether that consultation has been broadly adequate, whether you feel that the responses that either you or others have put in have informed the statutory instruments as they've been the ones that have been placed before us just now, and whether you're broadly content with that outcome. Okay, who'd like to go first on that one, Ian? Okay, I'll kick off then. If I could focus on the asset transfer instruments, because that's the one that we've been most involved in, both in terms of our historic work, but I've also been involved in the working group that's been producing the statutory guidance. I think that, as an act, you would have to say that there's been lots of opportunities for consultation at different stages, probably more than the average act in the Scottish Parliament. In this latter part of the process, my sense is that there's been a bit more of a reaction from local authorities and public bodies against asset transfer provision, and I think that's led to a situation where, for what we've seen of the guidance, and obviously we've just got sight of that fairly recently, it looks reasonable, but my concern would be that what you're facing is a wide range of attitudes in local authorities and public bodies ranging from local authorities who totally get this or are up for this, who we do for some time to others that are far more recalcitrant, I suppose. My concern is that I think that the guidance as it stands will work with the local authorities who are interested in doing this and want to do this and have been doing this, and much less convinced that it will challenge the public bodies and local authorities that are less keen to engage in asset transfer. Okay, would anyone like to add further to that? It doesn't have to be specifically an asset transfer, but anyone would like to add to that? Mr Rawson? Thank you, convener. The Aeons outlined some of the concerns that have been raised regarding local authorities who are not as willing to participate in the community's asset transfer process. From the Glen Boyg perspective, Glen Boyg has been involved in discussions for almost two years now with local authority about developing a community asset transfer policy and looking at those with three organisations in North Lanarkshire. The difficulty is that that process stopped when it realised that the Government was going to come out with its own guidance. My fear is outlined by Aeons that local authorities who are keen to fully participate, fully engage in the process and work with communities who are interested in community asset transfers will do that job well. The difficulty is that the other local authorities who are reluctant and resist that move look at some of the responses to the consultation that took place over the summer by local authorities and other public bodies. They seem to throw in a number of areas about the ownership of the land, about what can be transferred and what shouldn't be transferred to communities. The reality is that the community asset transfer process and community empowerment was about trying to ensure that where communities could justify making application for community ownership, the public bodies would work with those communities to help it to happen. The difficulty is that many agencies will use the consultation process and possibly use the guidance that will be issued to resist working with communities to look at community asset transfer, whether that be geographical communities or communities of interest. I would say that there has been a very long leader in terms of consultation around the community empowerment bill and then subsequently act. I think that there was a community empowerment reference group on which I was a member as well that was set up two years in advance when the act came into being. A very long high-level engagement and a lot of interest at the time, it was quite evident right from that point, from right from the start, that there was a quite fundamental shift difference in thinking between the local authorities and community and voluntary organisations on the other side. That split in thinking seemed to carry on all the way through. I'm not surprised when I hear colleagues Ian and others say that there has been a bit of a pushback from local authorities more recently. One of the things that we realised during the consultation for the act bill itself was how much of an interest there was in providing a facility for those local authorities that would be quite interested in transferring assets or engaging more closely with their communities to have vehicles and mechanisms over which they could do that legitimately and much more easily. One of the problems that we did identify at the time, and this was particularly in relation to participation requests, something that we were a bit concerned about, was those local authorities that already had very good relationships with communities. If there was a more formal mechanism that was coming on board, there would be a little bit of a, we were a bit concerned that they might then say, right, hang on a second, we will prioritise the formal mechanisms and some of the more informal conversations we're having with communities would then suffer as a result. It's something that I've just seen echoed in what John Wilson is saying as well around shift in priorities. It's part of the kind of thinking that I would suggest within local authorities that where there is a more formal mechanism in play, then there is an almost expectation that you should put your energy and resources into that. I'm a little bit concerned that those local authorities that have advanced and had good relationships with communities, particularly around asset transfer, around participation and so on, might get tempted away from that. If the guidance is too prescriptive, then there is a danger there. In terms of the guidance as it's been consulted on within the last couple of months or so, my concern is that we've not been able to get the same level of engagement and interest and enthusiasm in that level of detail as we have had during the build-up towards the community empowerment bill in itself. I do feel that some of the provisions that are now coming out are being done very much more off the hoof and less in more considered engagement as has taken place for the bill itself. Thank you. Mary Wail, would you like to add anything to that? Just a general point is just to echo some of what has already actually been said. I think that there is a challenge. I would agree that there's been a long run-up. We've had good opportunity to input. What I'm a wee bit concerned about is that I know the effort that we put into Highland and actually going out and consulting specifically with community groups who have multitudes of questions around right from the very introduction of the bill and the questions around that. I'm not convinced that there are people throughout the whole of Scotland who have confidence in understanding the bill enough to engage communities to educate them so that they are able to put forward the questions that could have influenced what was put in through the consultation. I think that for me there's been a bit of a gap in terms of how we educate people particularly at this stage once we get down to the finer detail. Those answers have certainly inspired a couple of supplementary questions from MSPs, but Andy, do you want to follow us on that first? Yes. No, thanks very much. I mean, I agree obviously that this has been a long process and it's almost a bit exhausting at the end here, but at the end here we have the instruments that make this work and will give communities the opportunity to actually utilise the act for the first time. Building on those answers, I mean, I'm just wondering in a general sense as well, if you look at participation requests, if you look at asset transfer, the rules around this are complex and bureaucratic necessarily, so perhaps given the act, but picking up your point, Mary, working with communities, I mean, how important is it going to be to get a kind of easy-to-use guide to those powers because at first blush communities are not going to look at a statutory instrument and they don't just have these powers, they have powers under other legislation, land reform act, et cetera, to look at and to evaluate the best way forward and informal approaches, of course, have always been a route and how do you navigate a process whereby the local authority might be insisting that you use formal routes when informal routes might be more productive? Massively so, I mean, not just the guidance, but actually how they're supported to understand that and implement that. Communities are phenomenal, but they don't always always agree with each other, let alone anything else, so I think they need a lot of support within that. We're very lucky to have had support across agencies specifically from Ditas when we've been out engaging with communities. We need more collaborative support to make sure that they understand, but yeah, they need an easy-to-understand document that they can, to some extent, hold the local authority and other public authorities to account against. Thank you, I'll add to that. Mr Olson, yes? Convener, just on Mr Whiteman's point about bureaucratic, the legislation, as I understand it, and someone who sat on that side of the committee in the last session of Parliament, who went through the committee's scrutiny of the legislation, my interpretation of what we were attempting to do was to make it easier for communities to engage, easier for communities to actually make requests for community asset transfers, and not to make it too or overly bureaucratic, because, as Mari said, the difficulty is when you start making things overly bureaucratic, then the bureaucrats take over. Communities won't have, in many cases, simple ambitions to be able to take on the running of, the ownership of or the delivery of services within communities. If you have a reason where it does become overly bureaucratic to allow them to do that, then, in my view, frighten the communities from fully engaging and fully participating in that process. It is about trying to make sure that what we have in place is legislation, which we have. It's the guidance that's in the statutory instruments that are now being laid before Parliament. The legislation was quite clear. We want to make it easier for the community engagement to take place. If we get statutory instruments that make it more difficult and more bureaucratic, then that defeats the purpose of community empowerment and community engagement in the process. There are three classes, three scenarios here. One is those local authority relationships, where the local authority just does not want to transfer the assets or does not want to engage in the participation. In that case, they will easily find ways around any kind of guidance, any kind of rules that are in play through the Community Empowerment Act. Then there are those local authorities or departments of local authorities that are very keen and are very interested. They totally get the idea of enhancing and encouraging their communities to make the best use of the assets in the area or make the best use of the opportunities to engage. They will be doing it anyway, regardless of what the Community Empowerment Act might do. It's the scenario in the middle. It's those local authorities where there is a little bit of ambivalence. There are some champions within the local authorities who totally get it, who want to support their communities, and there are others who remain to be convinced that they can become a powerful tool for them to use to say, actually, there is a route here that we can follow, there's a process here that we can use, and it can reassure those who are less inclined to follow along with it, to try and give it a shot. That's where I think the most value of the provisions that come into play, and I think that that is where the guidance needs to speak to. Okay, thank you. Mr Cooke, do you want to add anything to that? It's a point. Okay. Is it okay to move? A couple of members are now for supplementary, so we'll take Graham Simpson to follow up over with McGuire. So thanks for your opening comments. It's very interesting, actually. I speak as a serving councillor in South Lanarkshire, where a lot of this work has been going on already. Interested to hear about North Lanarkshire, because Mr Wilson, you're involved in the group, which has taken over a community centre, I understand. Is that right? We currently lease, on a monthly basis, a former community centre that was run by the local authority. We run a number of services from that community centre, including the local post office, but it's only on a month-to-month lease basis. I'll go into detail later on about some of the issues that we've faced in terms of trying to move that forward from being just simply at least to ownership of that building. Okay, but from what you're all saying, the message that I'm getting is that, basically, councils can use this legislation, use this guidance, however they like. Therefore, the question is, is it robust enough? Mary Ridley, do you want to? I think that we need to expand it beyond councils, to be honest with you, because having spoken to a number of people in the community, it's not just council assets that they're looking at, so we need to be careful. Yes, councils will, but do you know the NHS potentially? How is it going to work within our national bodies, like Police Scotland, Fire and Rescue, etc? So I think that we need to be careful of that. Okay, any additional comments from our witnesses, Mr Cook? In answer to the question, is it robust enough? I would probably say, at the moment, no. I think that it could be tightened up. If this exercise is about shifting power relationships between the communities and the wider public sector, then getting the guidance right, getting the data right, as MSPs have said, is really crucial. I'm not quite sure that I've got the balance right. I think that it will always be difficult, because this is also about shifting minds and changing cultures within organisations and communities. That will take time, but I think that it's an opportunity to get the guidance tighter that would make it more robust. Okay. Anyone else want to go in relation to that before we move on? Okay. Do you want to follow up on any more of that, Graham? Yes. I'd like to know how you would make it tighter. I think that, from what I've seen of the guidance, and I've only looked at it since the end of last week, one of the most obvious areas, I think that if we don't get right, we'll lead to a lot of wasted time and effort by communities and potentially a lot of wasted public money. At the moment, there's what's called a validation date, so there's an informal process where the community can approach the public body over an asset, et cetera. But nothing really happens until there's a formal application from the community for an asset transfer request. At that point, this validation date kicks in, and what that means in practice is that the asset in question cannot be then sold on in the intervening period until the process is concluded. The problem is that, to get to that point, community organisations are going to have to quite often change their governance, set up a company, they're going to do business plans, feasibility studies, options, appraisal exercise, a lot of work and effort. Again, all these ducks in a line is quite a challenge. In the meantime, the local authority or the public body could just go ahead and sell the asset, which is really the question about, is this the best use of community's time? Secondly, who's going to fund that work if they know—I mean, is the Scottish land fund or the big lottery really going to fund that sort of feasibility business planning work if they know that at the end of the day the local authority could just go ahead and sell that asset in the intervening period? Okay, thank you. Can we perhaps move on, if that's okay just now, Graham? Can I ask a very short question? You can, but after Bruce McGuire, who's indicated that she wants to come in? Convener, I suppose it's exploring that type of thing a little bit more. There's always going to be a bit of a tension between sort of balancing the bureaucracy, if you want to call it that, that's required to make sure that the transfer is going to be competent and it's going to be worked well, and empowering folk or giving communities that maybe don't traditionally have the skills that are needed, like you said, setting up, changing their governance. It's almost like running a business a lot of the time, taking over these things. I just want to explore a little bit more how we get to a really good point where we've got—because it is public assets that we're talking about—giving over them. Although the sound of doing things informally and quickly and easy, we need to do that. We also have to protect these public buildings and services. I'd just like to hear your opinions on that kind of key bit. How do we make sure that our communities are ready? That's it, really. I can say that that's a question and a query that came up when we spoke to communities a lot. They're very conscious of the fact that if they or other members within their community are to take on these assets, then they want to make sure that their process is there. I have to say that they had no particular solutions around that. I think that we need to go back to basics and making sure that people have opportunities to develop their skillsets and that they're supported there for them. We need to have robust but fair processes for making sure that they're actually making effective use of those. Mr Olson, thank you, convener. From the Glen Boyd perspective, the community has been ready for almost 17 years to take on assets. We have attempted over the last nine years to acquire firstly the community centre that we have the lease on, but when that fell through because the planning restrictions that were being placed upon the community decided to look at another site and were involved in negotiations for five years with the local authority about a community asset transfer. We're now back to looking at the community centre because the council came back and said that it's part of their review of facilities. Would you be interested in looking at the community centre? We said yes, so that would be useful for us to do that. Can I say that in terms of public assets, the communities themselves are more than aware than anybody else about what public assets are and want to defend those public assets. When you're getting told that a community centre has been used for 20 hours a week by a local authority and that's how many hours a week they hire that out, and a community can take on the ownership of that. At the present moment, the community centre in Glen Boyd is used for approximately 70 hours a week, so that shows you the balance that has got to be struck between talking about public assets and community ownership. Many communities throughout Scotland want to take on the ownership because they see the failings of the public bodies in relation to how these facilities or land has been operated. Communities themselves and many communities throughout Scotland understand the very concept of public assets, and they want to ensure that the best use of those assets is being achieved, and if that means taking on ownership, that's an opportunity that should not be hoping from moving forward. It is about looking at the whole issue about the public asset and the community good that can be achieved by those asset transfers. It's a good question, and I don't think that we've ever suggested that asset transfer or community ownership should be easy, because you're right, there's a lot at stake, and it's important for the communities to get this right as it is for the public body who's disposing of the asset. I think that what we talk about is sustainable asset transfer, so it's getting the process right that gives the disposing authority the confidence that this isn't going to bounce back in a year's time or two years' time or whatever, but over the last 10, 15 years in Scotland we've actually achieved a lot of experience about how to do this really, and the success rate is impressively high, certainly a lot higher than say the startup of private sector businesses etc, so I don't think that it should be easy, but I think that it has to be fair and it has to be proportionate, and really if this bill, or this act, is about empowering communities, we can't really have them run around the place, doing all sorts of work that might ultimately lead to nothing. That's going to disempower communities rather than empower communities, so there's something quite fundamental at the heart of this discussion. Mr Shah, yes? I think the answer might actually lie outside the community empowerment act and guidance. Scotland recently has been selected to be a pioneer in the open government partnership, which means that over the next two years Scotland will directly be able to showcase how it is being open, transparent, participative and engaging to a global audience, so there's a bit of a momentum and incentive behind that, certainly at the Scottish Government level now, and what I would say is that if you think about asset transfers, participation requests, and all the various instruments within the community empowerment act, if at the same time you also had a very open approach, so for example decisions made by the public authorities around their assets were much more transparently and openly shared with the communities, with the public. If the data that is available that is fed into the decisions that are being made by the public authorities is openly shared in a much more transparent way, if all these decisions, engagements are much more transparently shown, then the harsh hard light of day will then easily show up where a decision has been made merely in response to the fact that community is seeking to own, to have an asset transfer of a building, if that is the reason why suddenly a public authority site is to sell a building, or alternatively if it is a much better approach to sell that asset in cost-effective, then if it is a much more transparent and open process that's around there and everybody knows what the situation is, then the community itself will be much more able to decide whether it should invest those resources into exploring whether it should do a feasibility study and so on. I think that this entire provision, in combination with an open government approach at local and public authority level, might be the trick that's missing from here. Ruth Maguire? Really interesting answers and I think just to reflect on what John Wilson said. I know certainly within my own constituency there are examples of a community of taking a huge amount of time through no fault of their own but they have got there now. Equally, sometimes when we talk about community or voices of community it's not always reflective of the whole area, it's sometimes people with the skills and the confidence to make their voices heard, so it's just getting that balance to make sure when we're talking about what the community wants that it is reflective of the whole community and getting the balance of that process right is crucially important. I think that because you name checked Mr Wilson, you should ask Mr Wilson how you make sure that you're actually represented to the whole community, not just those who seek to be involved? Glen Boyke has regularly held surveys amongst its population in Glen Boyke. We do open days, we do any plans for the last, as I said, over nine years now with any plans that we've had for the community regarding new facilities or services then certainly those plans have been made available and the local community have had the opportunity to come and view them. That's been displayed amongst the various groups that we've helped support so the views and aspirations of those individuals and groups can then be reflected in what we're trying to achieve. So there is a balance there in terms of ensuring that communities, the wider community, is being consulted, informed and being able to participate in the process. We also have an annual general meeting in which the population in Glen Boyke is invited to attend so that they can express their concerns or views or hear what's happening in the community and we also provide regular newsletters. I know that every community group doesn't do that and I agree with Ms Maguire given my past work experience that it's good practice to do that and make sure that, if you are speaking on behalf of a community, the community knows that you're speaking on their behalf and that way they can be reflected in the views and opinions that have been put forward. Clearly, if you look at some of that and throw it to the other side, if you look at public agencies and local authorities and the things that they have done to communities without any consultation then, hopefully, this is a lesson that can be learnt on both sides, not only by the community but by public agencies that they have to be more forthcoming in terms of the consultation processes that they use when they're doing things to communities. That's a very appropriate point, Mr Wilson. Mary Wily, did you want to come back on some of that? I just have a quick point because we spoke to over 100 community organisations and community representatives around this act and I have to say that this was the number one issue. There is no easy solution to it. It becomes even more difficult when we start to talk about communities of interest or association other than just territorial geographic communities. However, I think that it's something that we as support mechanisms for communities need to be very strong on. There's not going to be a perfect answer to it, but it will have to be unique to each community. I don't know if Mr Shaw or Mr Cooke wants to add anything in relation to that, Mr Cooke? I mean just briefly. I mean, again, I think that it's a good observation. There's no easy answer to it, but if a community is trying to utilise either the community right to buy or asset transfer, they have to demonstrate public support. In some cases, that's quite an undertaking to do that, really. I think, as Mary said, that it is about sharing good practice or whatever. But also, within the guidance, it's quite clear about what community bodies, and I think the point that John makes is that there has to be some democratic accountability mechanism built into the bodies that can take on assets and particular public assets. I think that we've got the framework right. Communities are, by definition, quite messy. I think that you will get tensions, etc., but I think that we can share good practice and build on that. I don't think that, for me, that's a particular showstopper. I think that there's other more technical issues that we need to try and focus on. Mr Shaw, do you want to add anything? No. Mr Cooke, thanks. Do you want to follow up before I move on? Do you want to follow up on anything? You wanted to come in briefly earlier than the moment passed, or do you want to come in now? No, I think that I could still ask. I also want to ask about the participation, but I don't think that you've quite moved on to that yet. Maybe you can understand it before you move on to that. I'll briefly ask Mr Cooke to come in with what somebody said earlier. You expressed concern, Mr Cooke, earlier about—sorry, I should say, thank you to all the witnesses for coming, since it's the first time I've asked them. You expressed concern earlier about maybe if a community is going to go through the whole process of trying to take over the asset transfer, and meanwhile the local authority or the public body sells it, would there then be some kind of case for, if you reach a certain point, that it should be frozen? Is that something that we could look at whether that would be applicable? That's right. At the moment, it's quite far into the process where the asset is frozen, and it just seems to me, for the community to get to that point, they've got to invest an incredible amount of effort and energy, probably access quite a lot of public money for a venture that could ultimately be quite successful. Just to give you one example, I've got a phone call this week from one of our members, I'll tell you it's in Glasgow, and it's a development trust, very experienced, own other properties, et cetera. There's been a janitor's house lying vacant for 10 years in that community. The development trust were speaking to local school, coming up with a project that they both think could benefit the school and the community. The development trust then contacted the local authority and said, here's what we're thinking, what's the situation, and the response was to put that house immediately out for sale and to market it. That reflects some of the attitudes that this bill has got to take on. I think that that's an experienced development trust in that sort of situation. If we're thinking of less experienced organisations, particularly in disadvantaged areas, then we've got to give them a fighting chance. I think that the point of where the asset is frozen is crucial to getting this bill of legislation right. Again, if a community has been using an asset, for example, as John Mawls and Outline to Glenbud Neighbourhood House, that it's a month, two months, it would seem then that if they were expressing an interest, it wouldn't seem fair if the local authority were to suddenly decide that that asset should be commercially sold off. Is that the kind of thing that you might be thinking about? Absolutley. If Mark McRitchie had been here this morning from Cwndy Central in Glasgow, they've ran an organisation from what was formerly Methodist Halls and Mary Hill Road in Glasgow for, I think it's only 20-odd years. They've poured lots of money that they've used themselves to try to keep the burden of water tight to develop it, et cetera. A number of years ago, they asked the local authority if they could buy the asset because they've put a lot of investment into it, and it made a lot of sense. The council said, yes, so you had a willing buyer, a willing seller. There was no problem about the price. Five years later, that's not happened. I don't know what happens in these situations, but there seems to be inbuilt blocks within the culture or the mechanisms of some local authorities and some public bodies that operate against us. Again, that's what this guidance needs to be able to address. Also, Elaine, you've given me the opportunity with Mr Cook mentioning Mark McRitchie. He mentioned at the outset that we were hoping Mark could come along today. He's the chief executive of Cwndy Central Halls in Glasgow and an organisation that I know very well and I commend the work that they do. Thank you for mentioning that. You can perhaps tell me after the meeting, I wonder if that janitor's house is in my constituency because either it's in my constituency or I know a very similar situation elsewhere within Glasgow possibly. Mr Wilson, I think that you were in name check. Do you want to come back in and add before we move on? Just to follow up on what you said, at the point that a community declares an interest in either land or premises, I would argue that the local authority or public body should then put a phrase on that to say that the community interest has been declared. Because in terms of some of the responses that we saw in the consultation process over the summer, the local authorities and other public bodies are talking about feasibility studies, business plans and valuations that are having to be carried out. The community organisations or community groups are having to carry that out to take forward the business case for acquiring that asset. That all takes time to acquire that money and it takes time for that work to be undertaken. It's a good example that Ian highlighted. If a local authority is then made aware that there is a vacant property or a piece of land that they then decide to put it on the market, that defeats the whole purpose of the community empowerment and that community being able to acquire that asset for the community benefit. Is there a period of time that you suggest in terms of three months, six months? I don't know how long the piece is string, but I'm just thinking out loud in relation to the fact that lots of communities may make an initial declaration of interest and not have the capacity or the support to follow up into a bit of freezing a whole range of assets. So would it be three months, six months? Are you thinking about a cool-off period with the council that could not market that land or property? What would the balance be, do you think? I think that it's all of those, convener. It's not either three months or six months or a cool-off period. My view would be if the community have identified an asset or potential asset transfer, that local authority should take that on board and should work with and assist that community group to go through the hoops that they're being asked to go through by that local authority. As I said, to do a feasibility study, to do a business plan and to make sure that the group is able and capable of moving forward will take time. Whether that piece of string is three months or six months or even 12 months is whether or not the local authority or public body then basically declares that land to be frozen or asset to be frozen until such times as the community group has the wherewithal to either come back and say, we are interested in taking this forward, we've got the resources to do that, we can provide all the information that's required or the community to come back and say, look, we've had a look at the business case for this, it's not working for us and we're quite willing for the local authority to dispose of that in any way that they want. That's part of the difficulty, though, is that in many cases it's when the community identify a piece of land or an asset, that's when the local authority finally realise, oh, that's on our books, we need to think about selling that or making some capital gain out of that asset. Thank you very much, Mr Wolfson. I do want to move on, Alexander Stewart. Thank you very much for the answer so far, I think it's been very relevant. As a serving councillor in Perth and Cynros, I certainly have seen the massive engagement and the excitement that communities have when they have the opportunity, but that sometimes leads to frustration because of the complex issues that they then become involved in. As you've already said, one size does not fit all and they've seen something be successful somewhere and think, well, we can do the same and then they find that there's more obstacles, there's more, and that becomes then disappointment and then you get a bit of disillusionment. So I understand the need and the opportunity that we have with the guidance for where we are, but I'm not quite sure how we get through that because they say, you know, I've seen two groups trying to do the same thing and one's been very successful and the other one has not got at all forward and become really frustrated by the process and think that the whole process is not working for them. So it's how you manage that and I think that the guidance needs to still be involved much more to try and give them a flavour of what they might anticipate and expect because, as you say, if the local government or the health board or housing, whoever it has control of it, doesn't want to give control away in some respect, then the frustration then moves forward. So how can we try and square that circle and ensure that, you know, there's a good response and there's a good outcome for the communities because, as I say, I've seen ones that have been so excited and so enthusiastic and it's worked well and others who have just been so turned off and frustrated because of the regulations that they've now found themselves in building. That brings us back to the details of the guidance against Mr Struth, which is helpful. So how can we change or review the guidance? If this guidance comes into force, how would we perhaps review it to develop it at some point in the future or your thoughts on that would be welcome. Mr Cook previously mentioned a lack of robustness in some areas. Mr Shad, did you want to come in and make some comments? Yeah, sure. I suppose, you know, there is definitely a case for strengthening the guidance and possibly even strengthening regulations off the back of that as required, but the danger that we should probably be aware of not falling into is merely having to chase bad practice by issuing more and more regulations, more and more guidance, because that takes you towards more bureaucracy, which will then might work for one or two cases, but for everyone else it just becomes quite bureaucratic. The danger of course is that those public authorities that genuinely don't want to play ball will always find a way around this and it will just then create endless bureaucracy for everybody else as we try and introduce more regulations. I do genuinely think that, as I referred to below before, that the open approach, so for example strengthening freedom of information requests, speeding up the publication of decisions in minutes and things like that, the open decision making, that kind of thing, I think has a very strong part to play here, because if you take the case of the janitor's house, if the public authority, the local authority, knew that they would have to explain their decisions or they would have to display their decision making very publicly, they might think twice about taking that decision, and if they did take that decision, they would need to be really confident that the decision that they made was actually in the best interest of the community more widely. Okay, thank you. Mr Cooke, did you want to add anything? I think that it's a good question, it's one of the challenges around this irrefictivity. We've got 240 members from Scotland and we get phone calls at different points in the process from different groups at different stages. It seems to me that there's things that we can do within the guidance, and there's things that are beyond the guidance, but we've also got to kind of not lose sight of really. I think, as I was saying earlier, I don't think that it should be an easy process. I think that what you're trying to do is test whether there's a credible proposition from the community, and I think that part of all our jobs and I think that the guidance helps with this, is that the committee is going to this with our eyes open, so they know the implications of this, they know how much voluntary effort is going to be required as opposed to staff and et cetera, they're clear about the business plan. For me that's the key thing. I just think that too often that the business plans are quite weak, and sometimes local authorities themselves are not the best readers of business plans in my experience that we'd have to say as well. I think that, with the actual guidance itself, we've also got to, if we're serious about, and it seems to me that the Scottish Government is increasingly placing greater expectations on communities, we have got to keep investing in communities and ensuring that there's a kind of support around communities to make sure that these endeavours are long-term and they are sustainable. Mary Orr, any words to it? Yeah, I just want to echo what Ian Swithie said. There are elements that you can tighten up within the guidance, but there needs to be things that sit in with the entire act, the whole ethos, the policy, if you go back to what the principal is talking about. We need community development, we need to invest in community development and in communities themselves. We need to make sure that the guidance does allow for that credibility of community voice. I had an experience actually working with Ditas a wee while ago, we were working with community and part of the reason that they struggled to get anything going was the fact that they had a very small number within the actual community. The community itself wasn't bought into the prompts principle, they couldn't develop their business plan, so it's supporting communities to make sure that they actually have the full buy-in from the whole community. I think that there are things within the guidance that you can do to strengthen that, but outside of that, I think that there's more that needs to be done. Mr Wolkson, and then we'll move on to the next question. I'll go back to Mr Stewart's original question about the expectations of communities. In the example that we gave of two organisations in Perth and Kinross, one that had a good experience, one that had a bad experience. There is also a learning curve for public authorities as well and local authority staff, because it's not good enough just to say that the communities who want to engage in this process have to be trained and have to be sufficiently knowledgeable about what they want to do. There is also work that has to be done in terms of public authorities about their staff, understanding what the legislation and the act is about and what we are hoping to achieve through the legislation and what was envisaged through the legislation was greater community empowerment. If we have resistance in public agencies or local authorities to community asset transfer at whatever level, then that can cause barriers to be created for the communities themselves from acquiring those assets. It might not just be the chief executive for the council leader. It might be somewhere down in the machinery that is saying, you know what, I'm not really keen in transferring this asset, I see a better use of this asset for something else, rather than giving it to the community to operate. It's about trying to ensure that as well as communities being informed and trained and sufficiently knowledgeable. It's also about local authorities and public agencies being suitably knowledgeable about what the objectives of the legislation that is set out are and that is about giving communities greater influence and greater control over what is delivered within their communities. Okay, thank you, Mr Watson. We've got about just under 10 minutes left for questions. A couple of MSPs still want to come with themes. Possibly a third MSP might take you back in, Andy, if there's time, but Kenneth Gibson has some MSPs just now. Thank you, convener. I mean, we're all supportive, I believe, in this room of community empowerment and community ownership where possible. I'm sure everyone would agree that the initiative for community ownership should come from the community itself, but in the area that Ruth and I represented a few years ago, the local authority decided, more or less unilaterally, to try and offload community assets on to communities who simply not only were not prepared for that but had no desire to take on those assets for a whole variety of reasons that I'm sure you'd be familiar with. So what kind of advice can we give to communities in those circumstances? What kind of support can we give them? Okay, Mr Watson. I think I know the case that Mr Gibson is referring to about a transfer of an asset that was running at £0.5 million annual loss that the local authority decided to transfer over to a community in the hope that it would be able to run it and take on that debt. The reality is about, and this is where it goes back to the sustainability, the business plan and looking at the assets themselves and whether or not you do have a community group that is fully versed in what they're being, in the case of the example given by Mr Gibson, where they were being offered an asset transfer by a local authority. At the end of the day, all the information has got to be made available to community organisations if they are going to take on an asset and what they're actually involved in taking on that asset. It's not just about, as we've given the example, local authorities deciding to dispose of assets and we'll just give it to the community. If we can't run a profit, then the community can take on the liability and the responsibility for running those facilities. It's about ensuring that any community organisation is fully aware of any of the issues that may arise from taking on. That really comes into looking at the business case for taking on an asset and ensuring that that is viable. I think that one of the strengths of the act is that any asset in the community can make a bid for any asset. That kind of mitt against the danger of the public sector just trying to dispense of their liabilities as opposed to assets. Part of the work that we do, which is funded by the Scottish Government, is to encourage community organisations to make a critical choice and understand if an asset is a liability, could the liability be made an asset and, in some cases, it could be. I think that we've got some really good examples of turning that around. In my experience, community is kind of working on market failure, either private sector market failure or a public sector market failure. It's quite challenging, and I think that you've got to go into it with your eyes open, as I've said. As John has pointed out, critical is the business plan. If you can't make it stack up, if you haven't got the capacity to do this, then you shouldn't be going anywhere near it really. Sometimes a good outcome for us is the community to explore it and then come into a conclusion that it's not for them or there's maybe another asset that would be better suited for their purposes. Because of the time constraints, if Mr Riley or Mr Shard doesn't need to come in on this, can we get some of that dialogue back and forward to help us? If that's okay, if it's a burning issue that you must raise, please do let me know, but I know that Mr Gibson wanted to follow up on that. Just a short follow-up. It was about six or seven years ago that Northeaster Council decided not to reduce its own liabilities and to help with its budgetary issues that would just simply set to communities, either you take over the community centre or it's going to close and basically put a gun at their heads now. Obviously, there was a furory about that and these things didn't actually come to pass, but I'm obviously concerned that with this legislation and local authorities and other bodies being under continued pressure, there could be a push for organisations that are not ready and it's just how we can cushion communities because what we want to do is encourage people to take over assets where they have the potential and the community capacity to do so, but on the counter to that, we don't want people to be pushed over a cliff and at the end of the day, the asset could in fact potentially be lost because the public body doesn't want it and the community is not ready to take it on board. Kenny, I think that's a really helpful point that you're making. I'm not sure whether there are specific answers to that other than agreeing with the point, but would it in Mr Shah then we might move to the next line of questioning if that's okay Mr Shah? I think the key thing there is the furory. The furory was there because it became public knowledge that that's what the plan was to try and offload assets that needed to be enhanced and possibly offloaded to communities where they could then bring in big lottery money or whatever it might need to repair and enhance the assets. I think in terms of the core of the question, if there is a facility and obligation for the public authority on request to share any information, any kind of feasibility studies that they have commissioned about the assets that they hold on request from the community so that they are looking at a particular asset or building, then suddenly you're starting to open up the conversation a bit more and the community in question can make a better informed choice on whether it is worth them going down that route or indeed they need to demonstrate that even in knowledge of an assessment done by the authority they still want to pursue this because there is still advantage there to pursuing it and repairing the asset and so on, then that should still be acceptable but the key thing here is that conversation needs to be opened up, the documentation, the analysis, the data, all of that needs to be shared much more openly, I think that's the key. Is it also reasonable to assume that we shouldn't assume that something is a liability just because a local authority or other public body is losing money because they're not being run as a business and I'm thinking of Carder community centre in my constituency where Glasgow life put the power locks on and a few months later we took the power locks off along with local housing association and by definition saved the local authority money by because they disinvested from the local community that was never intended to be run as a profit so should we be expecting local authorities or other public bodies if the asset is going to be continued to be used for community benefit not just to be passing the asset to the community but also providing a dowry or a revenue running cost to some of that and I'm sneaking in here ahead of you Elaine but I'm just wondering if that's an important thing to put on the record or has that happened elsewhere or should it be happening? I think that it's really helpful. We were trying to get to the problem this morning so it's kind of quite confrontational. We're trying to get to the point where we have a constructive dialogue between the public sector and the community sector and we know respective strengths and we come up with solutions for particular projects so I think that suggestion should be on the record because there's examples of it helping particularly short term and certainly seems it changes the mindset of the local authority to it's not just about getting rid of the assets it's about how do we work with this it's a redefining the partnership with the community to try and make this work in the longer term. I indulge myself to put that on the record so thank you Mr Cook and I should point out that £1.2 million later from the Scotchhop Regeneration Fund the community has a new community centre with the housing associations that anchor tenant because the community got involved in trying to save what they saw as a community asset which is the real win. Elaine, my apologies. This will have to be the final question, I'm afraid. Elaine Smith. Okay, which I think probably brings me quite nicely into anyway and it's about the section on participation requests which I think we've really covered particularly but I was interested in and I thank John Wilson and Glen Boyke neighborhood house for giving us the annual report in the section on that about consultation. I know a bit about that having been the constituency member for that area and now regionalists member so I'm aware of that particular consultation that's mentioned in the annual report but following on from that then I wonder how, if I can specifically ask John Wilson how the community participation requests might work from that and would there be a lot of unfunded costs around that for community groups? John, just before you come in and I'll allow you to supplement that as well Elaine but if other witnesses have maybe some final remarks around that as well now would be a good time to make it because we're getting very short for time. Sorry John, John Wilson. No, it's okay convener. The issue about participation requests as you've seen from and the part of the reason for submitting the annual report shows the Glen Boyke neighborhood house is involved in delivering a range of services and some of those services are delivered by the neighborhood house stand alone in terms of childcare services, the elderly services but some of the other services are delivered in conjunction with the local authority and the health board so in terms of participation requests then the Glen Boyke has made is actively involved in the and actually run some of the services that are being run code bridge wide so we've got a good relationship but it's trying to ensure that that relationship is maintained and that other communities have that opportunity to be engaged in that because the earlier we talked about the liabilities and convener you made reference to your example of the liabilities in a community facility that the community took on and then we're able to turn that around. In many respects community participation could actually see better delivery of services within communities and could actually be more beneficial to local authority to the general wellbeing of the population if communities are allowed to get involved in the decision making and the participation process that local authorities are actually making in their own areas. Do you want to come back to some of that Elaine? No I think it's obviously very interesting example but I suppose in general for the other witnesses just to ask whether there's anything that should be covered by the participation request process that's not maybe included in the draft regulations and just to get the reviews. Okay so this might be the last opportunity you have to speak so feel free to add on anything else that you haven't felt you've been able to say on the record so far so Mr Coot will take you first. I think in response to the question what I would say is that it seems within this particular measure of the act that there are two things that maybe need to be disentangled there's the right to participation so the right for information the right to be engaged whatever and that's great but within the right there's also the right for communities to request to deliver or co-deliver a particular service which I suppose relates to joins particular experience truly for us that's the more exciting part because that seems to be the kind of new part of the act truly and I do think that perhaps the guidance would benefit from disentangling both these issues. Miss Miley? Yeah just a couple points when we've done our engagement work around the community impairment that this is a section of the act that they are most interested in and without a doubt even explaining all the points that you just picked up on that spectrum that they could potentially use it to get involved in they have dived straight into good delivering services so that's the part that they are focused on what I don't think that we've done enough yet to really get over is this outcome improvement process and that's what you're actually asking to participate in that is by nature a very public sector a very bureaucratic way to phrase it and I think we need to break down some barriers around what does that actually mean and how does that apply in terms of what I'm trying to do but I think it's very exciting aspect of the act and we're looking forward to seeing how it works in practice. Mr Shaw? Absolutely slightly more blunt version of what my area said but when we first saw the proposals for putting in the participation request in the outcome not the delivery site the request to participate in the outcomes we were quite concerned that this almost seemed like you know a request to be heard and a jarred quite a bit you know are we at the stage within local authority engagement with communities that we have to actually have a process where people need to be requested to be even heard so it jarred quite a bit there we were also I think I mentioned might mentioned earlier that you know quite concerned that those departments within public authorities that already have a very good relationship could this could kind of like draw the energy away from it because you know civil servants and officials would feel the need to focus their energy on those areas that had a much more formal process having said that it is still quite early days to see that there's potentially a lot of value where there are much more bureaucratic authorities in play where they need to have a much more formal process in order to even get a conversation started it is very early at this stage to tell how that's going to pan out and I suspect we will need to revisit guidance in this area over the next year in the coming years. Can I just finally check with witnesses given the fact that the statutory instruments do come to this committee whether you would be content for them to come into force but with the caveat that this is not the end of the story and it has to be reviewed and monitored going forward and I'm not trying to put words into your mouth but eventually it does come to this committee and that's why we're doing the scrutiny so would you be content all the caveats given would you be content for them to come into force or otherwise it'd just be good to get an indication of that Mr Cook? If there was possibility for them still to be tweaked before that happens we would be quite supportive of that but certainly I think the suggestion of maybe reviewing them after a period of time to look at where the weaknesses are we'd probably be quite welcome as well. Okay Ms Wiley? Yeah by and large I would also point out that there's other things that need to sit alongside them which is noted in the paper and the practicalities of it but yes. Of course Mr Shaw? Yeah I think the review is quite important continuous review okay Mr Wilson? Yeah to say that all the SSIs have to be taken together and looked at rather than just piecemeal adoption of the SSIs and like others have said that this should be under constant review particularly by this committee in relation to the legislation and I'm sure we want to do that very helpful evidence session can I thank all of our witnesses for attendance this morning can I also put on the record that we will also be taking evidence from a number of public bodies Police Scotland, Highlands Islands and Enterprise, NHS Ayrshire and Arn, SPT and Scottish Natural Heritage at our meeting on the 23rd of November so thank you once again that concludes this agenda item can we suspend briefly before we move on thank you. Okay good morning everyone and we now move to agenda item 2 which is draft budget scrutiny 2017-2018. The committee will take evidence from a number of witnesses on the Scottish Government's draft budget 2017-2018 and given that the draft budget has yet to be published the committee has agreed to undertake pre-budget scrutiny looking back at what was actually being spent in 2015-16 and to the extent possible future years. This is the second of two evidence sessions on pre-budget scrutiny this session will focus on housing aspects of the draft budget and we have a large witness panel this morning which I'm delighted to see so we have Nicola Barclay, Chief Executive Holmes for Scotland, Mary Taylor, Chief Executive Scottish Federation of Housing Associations, David Bookbinder, Director of Glasgow and Letters Scotland Forum of Housing Associations, Tony Cain, Policy Manager, Association of Local Authorities and Chief Executive Chief Housing Officers rather, Fraser Stewart, Director of New Gorbos Housing Association, Julie Fitzpatrick, Manager of the Director of the Horizon Housing Association and Professor Kenneth have Director of Policy Scotland University of Glasgow, just make sure there's no one else on my other sheet there that I've missed out. Thank you everyone for coming along. We were some very specific questions about what to ask you as the evidence session goes on but I should perhaps just open up by saying one of the few areas in the Scottish Government budget where we anticipate a significant financial commitment given the other budget pressures that would be housing around the Scottish budget. That seems to be clear so we're quite interested to know initially what the opportunities are in relation to maximising the benefit for affordable housing from that budget and perhaps that's a good place to open up and as we go through that we can look at some of the challenges to make sure that happens so we'd like to start on what the opportunities are or what they have been from previous budgets also. Mary Taylor? First of all can I commend the commitment to increasing the amount of investment going into housing. I think it's very welcome and helps to restore some of where we were before with a steady housing supply and a fairly stable system and I think all of our evidence will highlight some of the difficulties that we all face in trying to get back to where we were in terms of the impact of the disruption on our current practice but there's no question that the commitment to investment over a five-year period and at a rate which helps to achieve affordable rents that are affordable to the people who need to live in them is hugely welcomed by all and sundry and bears out I think the research that was commissioned by the SFHA Shelter and CIH the professional body for housing about the extent of the unmet need in Scotland which identified that there was an unmet need of 60,000 so a target of 50,000 is not quite the 60,000 but I don't want to be drawing the short straw on this occasion I think if we can get to the 50,000 we'll be doing really well. Okay thank you. Mr Bookbender? As Mary said the commitment to 50,000 homes along with the increased grant rates is hugely welcome. You asked about opportunities and I suppose to cut to the chase from the forums point of view one of the real opportunities here along with the scale and the numbers game that obviously has to be played as part of achieving that target there's an opportunity to align the broader Scottish Government direction of policy in terms of empowering communities in issue obviously you've just been discussing in the previous session with this major house building programme and we have some anxieties that that opportunity may be being missed in some parts of Scotland in terms of maximising the role of those organisations community controlled housing associations that have played a role for so long in the wider regeneration of those communities that is a real opportunity to align those two things it's early on in the programme we've certainly got some anxieties that the community controlled associations are being squeezed out at the current stage. Okay make a back to that Mr Bookbender at some point any additional comments in relation to where the opportunities sit? I think we think that this is the first time to our knowledge that the Scottish draft budget has made an explicit acknowledgement of the contribution that accessible homes as well as affordable homes can make to addressing poverty and health inequalities and so in in in that context there's a real opportunity to then look at how those 50 000 homes that are delivered really are built and shaped with some national direction to link into the national health and wellbeing outcomes so that's a terrific opportunity our concern and hopefully we'll get a bit more chance to talk about that later this morning is that what there isn't perhaps is the corollary of our focused investment to deliver that. Okay thank you yeah Mr Gibb. Professor Gibb sorry. I just wanted to really add that you used the word benefits and I think there are important economic benefits. We know that there are big multipliers attached to investment in housing and house building and construction in general but more than that my colleague Duncan MacLennan often talks about housing as what he calls essential economic infrastructure. The idea that if you build new housing supplies, social affordable and private housing you are able to sustain greater economic growth in the future because you're supporting the locations where people want to live, you're protecting, you're giving people a reason to stay somewhere, you're attracting new people into an area but more to the point as far as the Scottish government is concerned you're creating a tax base, you're creating potential tax revenue by that investment as well which obviously in the future is going to be much more important. Okay thank you Professor Gibb. Anyone else wants to come around the opportunities Mr Gibb? If I may I think while I would echo much of what has already been said and certainly the local authority sector welcomes the medium term commitment, welcomes the increase in grant levels, welcomes the support and the very strong commitment that the Scottish government has given around affordable and particularly social rented housing. If we have a concern, if I have a concern it's that, these are organisations that plan on a 30 year horizon and they're involved in delivering an asset with a hundred year, at least a hundred year life. A five year planning horizon is all very well but as we sit the sector is still recovering and doing its best to gear up from a very substantial reduction in resources four or five years ago it takes four years to train an electrician or a joiner or a plumber. We are in the process of increasing the number of apprentices, increasing the number of trainees, increasing our capacity to invest and deliver some idea if we are faced in four years five years time with another sharp reduction in investment much of that capacity will be lost again and much of that energy will be wasted and many of those people drawn back into the sector particularly trainees, particularly apprentices will find themselves without a job again so the longer term matching some of the financial planning horizons against the actual asset and organisational planning horizons is an issue for us. Okay, yes, Nicola Barclay. Finally, I'm not sure if I'm the last one to speak at this particular bit. I just want to reinforce what Professor Gibb was saying about the benefits of all 10 years of homes. Obviously the session here today is very much focused on the affordable delivery but we can't forget the impact that the private sector has on that through their section 75 obligations and how they work in partnership with the affordable sector and locking sites which provide accommodation for all. It would be a full house if Mr Stewart wished to comment. I don't know if you want to add anything. I would just say that I'm concerned that if there's too much of a rush things may be done, not be done to the quality that's required. I mean, just speaking from a Gorbils perspective, we've just demolished 65% of the housing stock that was built in the 60s and 70s in the Gorbils and I've got a real concern that the quality and the thought that goes into planning and the means of procurement and so forth may not deliver sustainable housing and sustainable communities and that's got to be a real concern. The capacity, which has been hugely diminished by some previous governance initiatives, is possibly not there to deliver this as quickly as everybody would like and I don't think that people should panic in that context. I think that you should spread it over a further period of time if that is necessary. An additional year to do the right thing would be the right way to invest public money. I might just follow up on some of that and bring some of the other members in. It was quite interesting hearing from Nicola Barclay in relation to its affordable housing but the private sector has a role as well. As all MSPs do, we start to look at our own constituencies. In Hamilton hill, in the Maryhill and Springburn constituency, we've got a proposed development partnership developed with Scottish Canals, Glasgow City Council and various other providers. 200 social rented houses, 200 private houses, it's unclear who the private delivery agent will be but they're starting to talk together about what that housing mix might look like. Elsewhere in my constituency there's large swathes of land that we're really quite desperate to see developed for the correct type of housing development so yes social rented but also we're keen to get a mix there so I suppose my question is the social rented sector and the private sector are there deep and meaningful links in conversations that take place because there must be significant opportunities because in possible part for example when I met a local housing association the chief exec said you know I would always have said what we want is more social rented housing here but we actually want private housing as well because we need a mixed community so are those conversations taking place with local authorities housing associations and the private sector? They certainly are, our membership is majority as private sector but we do have RSLs as members as well and a lot of our members have built a really good relationships with local housing associations across the years and whenever they acquire a site and they have section 75 obligations they know which RSL they're going to speak to, they've spoken even before they put the bid in to buy the land so that they know it's going to be a mixed tenure development from the very beginning. I think we have learnt lessons of the past where we've had swathes and swathes of maybe either RSL stock, social rented stock on its own or private stock on its own and there's lack of community facilities for either and so I think as a former planner we've recognised as a profession that you have to actually plan for new communities you can't just assume it'll happen so you have to make sure you've got a mix of tenure in there so people can stay within a particular area as they move up through their own housing journey they may start out in a social rented unit they may then be able to move to a mid-market rent or may with the benefit of something like help to buy move on to that housing ladder but they don't want to necessarily move out of that area where they've grown up where their friends and family are so it's really crucial that we all work together and which is why we all sit on the joint housing policy and delivery group recognising this got to be a joint approach. Mary Taylor, do you want to add anything to that? I mean I think I'm glad Nicola raised the point about the joint delivery group because that's at the national level and I think that that's where those conversations definitely take place and there are good conversations taking place but it also has to happen at the local scale and I think that we're at the moment we're all waiting for and at the local scale some people are actively engaging in a process around producing what's called the ship the strategic housing investment programme which should set out every local authority should be setting out what not only the needs but also the opportunities are for all kinds of housing tenure you know without regard to tenure so in other words covering all of them so that they know where the investment can take place and will ultimately will take place in the local planning agreements which will be signed up in the aftermath of that but I mean I think my concern if I have a concern here it is that we are aiming to hit the 35 and I think we probably need to overshoot the 35 because not all sites can be developed at the same speed and Fraser's absolutely right to say that there's a danger of rushing at some things unless we get the parameters right at the start and we there's a real danger of building in mistakes so I think we need to be working closely at the local scale involving all the potential parties to see who can contribute what to meeting need and and then that will that that should produce a potential oversupply but but attrition I think will mean that some of those actually fall by the wayside anyway. Okay any additional comments in relation to that Mr Cain did you want to come in? I mean I would deserve that the strategic planning framework for housing at a local level has been developed specifically to encourage and strengthen local working between the public sector and the private sector so if you look at the processes around the housing needs demand assessments which has to involve a wider range of partners through local housing market partnerships and the process of developing local housing strategies it all requires the local authority to engage with a wider range of partners including the private sector and Nicola and I both served on a local housing market partnership in my own area a number of years ago so I think that has improved enough familiarity is getting better and you see some of the benefits of that in a number of quite explicit investment decisions which are putting invested in rented housing whether it's mid market or social rented as a lead investment into into larger private sector schemes which allows the developer the confidence to go in to put in the infrastructure to open a site and to start to build and give them the space to test the market and develop a product so I think that joint working is there it's improving there's always scope for improvement but it is better certainly than it was 10 or 15 years ago so Fraser Stewart I think I'd like to make a contribution just simply in the context that the Gorbill is probably the biggest and it's recognised as probably the most successful urban regeneration project in the UK since 1992 and at the very heart of that has been the community controlled housing association and that's been a key characteristic of its success and that's undeniable and that's accepted by all of the people that come to visit there everything's got to be done in the context of of collaboration and an agreed framework and typically that would be led by the local authority a huge concern of mine is that if it's left to the private sector and this is no fault of the private sector that the partnerships which may well be developed are with well-kent faces as opposed to the most in my opinion or other people's opinion the most appropriate developer which in virtually every single case we would argue is a community controlled developer they don't always exist so that's not always possible so there are cases in Glasgow where community controlled developers have been marginalised therefore their expertise the kind of expertise that we've bought to a process for the last 25 years which has led to huge success will be lost and I just think that if it's about community empowerment about recognising the quality that communities can bring to things you just have to look at the Gorbills I think that's a key point yeah and a couple yeah it's about a couple of members to come in on that and that that was going to be my final point you know then I'm going to take Graham and on that my final point would be the people that matter of course are the communities that are there that are in housing need I do have concerns Mr Stewart if you're saying there's a disconnect between some of the strategic planning that's going on and local community controlled housing associations that would worry me deeply I'm just wondering what discussions take place at a local authority level not just with say large housing associations and developers but actually with local communities as to the type of housing need and aspirations they have to build communities rather than just I can only speak in my constituency that the first time a community knows about new housing development is when they see the sign go up and the engineering work start and then I get calls to my office saying is that social housing can I get a house so there's really a disconnect with the local community with some of these developments I'm worried if there's a disconnect between community with community controlled housing associations as well so how do we fix that what's what's going on it could start with nationally agreed protocols with regard to how community engagement ought to be undertaken in areas of major and indeed also minor regeneration and the prospect of the inclusion of appropriate community controlled organisations should be taken on board that doesn't happen as part of the process sometimes it happens by accident sometimes it happens deliberately and certainly in mary hill what's happened deliberately through a strategic framework created by the council but it hasn't happened in other areas wouldn't indulge in mary hill because that's my area other members do want to get in before to give them something in mary taylor and then we'll move on to the next question I think I want to just clarify how the system ought to be working and we haven't seen the ships yet so we don't actually know we won't see them before the end of this month so it's kind of early to be judging whether people have had the opportunity yet but what ought to be happening across the country is that people should be having discussions about what scheme what land they have what schemes they have an appetite to develop on what terms so that those can be put into the mix and I know that I know from a number of conversations with people in local authorities across the country that that sort of thing is going on and I think it has to go on because it needs to be open to everybody to make that contribution in order to meet the target but I think that the later stage around involving communities is once schemes are actually in the programme in the agreed programme and then communities have every opportunity through the normal planning channels and through engagement with community councils and all of the rest of it to know what's being proposed for their areas and I think that that so it shouldn't it shouldn't be left to the point where if communities aren't engaging with the process that's different but there are processes there that allow communities to engage okay yeah I mean in my experience I was taking Julie Fitzpatrick in my experience sometimes communities are looking for co-production so when the initial plans emerge they don't want to be consulted in phase 2 plan and phase 3 plan they want to be sitting down with the planners and saying let's shape this community together and certainly in my constituency that that doesn't always happen but let's not pretty judge what's about to come out Julie Fitzpatrick just two points really one horizons based in in west Lothian and I suppose just to take a very practical example we are involved in a couple of developments just now in two quite small villages and one is with a local development trust so it's very much community led and partnership based so I think there are some models perhaps emerging and that's related to the rural housing grant model and very much a kind of co-production the other one is in is in stony burn in west Lothian where again the community council were probably the people who initiated the discussion and then the local authority responded to that and that's taken a very long time to deliver for all the reasons that Tony referred to in terms of what's happened over the last four or five years but I think there are there are models there and there's some good practice there and in terms of the ships that certainly both at a local level and various other local authority involvements we are generally invited to discussions about the content of the ship so I think there's some good stuff going on the other thing I just wanted to talk about is in relation to your the point about co-production is that when we talk about communities we are also talking about communities of interest and I think what we do see is a lack in quite a lot of the strategic strategic plans of the of involvement and your co-production of disabled people in coming up with those and so that's where there's perhaps room for improvement. Thank you. Now we're going to move on now. Graham Simpson followed by Elaine Smith. Thanks convener. I just want to pick up on this point first raised by Mr Bookbinder about you're basically talking about the smaller housing associations being squeezed out of the market that's certainly been mentioned to me by some of the smaller associations in my area I mentioned it in a speech in the chamber but unfortunately the housing minister didn't bite perhaps we'll get a chance to quiz him on it. I just wonder I guess it's a question for all of you because you're all involved in the sector how do we sort that out how do we get more variety of people involved how do we spread the load how do we take it away from the big boys and pass it down to the smaller associations. Anyone want to comment on that David Bookbinder? It goes back to my point I'll be brief I mean it is early days at the moment as I said some of the impressions we have got is of associations who've asked to be at the table and haven't necessarily found themselves with schemes in the current ship and that we suspect that will be confirmed by some of the ships that we see in the next couple of weeks. In a way it will be true in some areas that some of the smaller associations Tony mentioned the ramping up that's needed and that takes time and that will be the case for some associations. I suppose what we're talking about is those associations that have said we're ready and we can you know despite the problems of previous years we are ready to make a contribution. Hopefully this I mean the forum would say this this doesn't need to become any kind of us and them in terms of in terms of other providers. This is a huge programme and there should be room for everyone and it seems that you know there's maybe a missed opportunity. Our members by and large will probably be proposing smaller schemes that complete or hopefully contribute completing the sites they've had their eyes on for a few years in their area. That does take more programme managing to deal with a larger number of smaller projects but it is that essential community input to go along with other parts of the programme. It does take more management and maybe our first impression is if councils may find it easier to deal with a larger provider doing a larger project than five providers doing smaller projects but it's early days. I just want to comment in relation to that Fraser Stewart and then Tony Heane. I think if you want more empowerment and co-production and indeed ownership from smaller groups that's got to become part and parcel of local authority and Scottish Government policy and protocols to give that priority because otherwise smaller players will not actually be able to compete with the bigger players. They have to actually be given a very definite priority because of the added value they bring. That currently doesn't happen. It didn't have to happen 15 years ago because there weren't any big players. Now you've got an absolutely huge Scottish group and a huge number of large English-based RSLs looking for development opportunities and in that context the smaller players need, I would argue, statutory protection and the bar set higher for them to encourage them to up their game. I think that I would simply observe that local authorities have a responsibility to have an eye on the provider framework locally and make strategic decisions about by whom and where investments take place. That should be done transparently. It should be done openly in collaboration but there are 60, 62 housing associations in Glasgow, 90 or so developing associations across Scotland. It's pretty unlikely that they're all going to get a slice of the pie. I'm not necessarily helpful if we start from everybody's got to get something if our objective is the most efficient and cost effective way of delivering the houses we've got to deliver. So I think it's not for me to defend individual local authorities. I would expect decision making to be open, transparent, explicit and based on the set of strategic objectives around the provider framework but that's likely to mean some organisations don't get what they want. If that's what's going on that'll be unfortunate for them as associations but I think that's something they should be raising with the local authority. Okay, thank you. Mary Taylor and then Nicola Barclay. I would just like to echo what David said. This is not about us on them and the SFHA represents all types of association of all scales right across the country and I made the point earlier that everybody needs to be making a contribution to meeting need for some that will be on a very small scale, for some it will be on a very large scale. I think I'm right in saying that about 40 associations until recently have actually been actively developing out of nearly 160 that there are across the country and that's fewer than it was five years ago as a consequence of the cuts so that's where the gearing up needs to take place. Now some people are taking time to do that. It has all the same issues of training people up that Tony referred to earlier about electricians because you need intelligent clients to be commissioning at the start of the process and that takes time for people to gear up and there are all sorts of other issues that various of us have commented on around the risk assessment that associations are having to make about whether to develop on what scale to develop on what terms to develop over what period and with what partners and all of those discussions are actively happening right across the country so that people are making their own judgments about how far to develop on what scale and to just echo things that Julia was saying, not just about the generality of needs but also about some of the very particular needs particularly around the health and wellbeing agenda to be able to support more supported housing which is actively being undermined by some of the changes that are coming down the line from Westminster around the local housing allowance in relation to local supported accommodation. I just wanted to use the analogy what's happened in the private house building industry and the reduction in SMEs in the sector and those who are still there are not being supported by the planning system. Given the scale of the challenge of solving this housing crisis we are seeing huge sites being allocated which will be controlled by one or two big players and you're not having the opportunity for the smaller local builders to come in and do smaller sites and I would assume that it's very similar for the RSL side we need to make sure that we've got a balanced land allocation that suits a number of different types of provider. I'm just going to say that just to kind of reinforce what David and Mary said that I said in my written evidence that it seems to me that for a long period of time that some associations have made a rational and active choice not not to develop and 48 out of 160 I'm sure it is the case that there are some which are kind of want to be at the table and are not at the table where they're already community anchors that's very unfortunate but I think I should also say and sort of declare an interest in this that I'm the chair of one of the housing associations who are a Scottish subsidiary of a UK national body and I just wanted to make the point really that it's not just that it's not that them and us in that sense and the co-production question also relates to housing associations themselves. We've been involved in joint ventures and working in partnership with community controlled associations and we hope to do more of that in the future and we think there are mutual benefits to both groups. Thank you. Graham Simpson, do you want to add anything to that? No, I'm keen to hear the other members of the committee. Elaine Smith, to be followed by Ruth Cawire. Thanks very much, convener. I did have a specific question for Mary Taylor from the evidence that was provided but could I just pick up on something that you said first of all in your answer there and it was that you talked about the changes that were coming with regard to local housing allowance so could I explain that a bit further with you particularly given the intimations from the Scottish Government that they might be holding off on taking control of the social security until 2020? Could you maybe expand a bit further on what implications you think that that might have on budgets and particularly for supported accommodation? I would draw a distinction between the powers that will come under the Scotland Act to the Scottish Government because those are around universal credit flexibilities and the powers to top up other benefits and to continue to mitigate and so on. At the moment what you're committing to as a Parliament is bedroom tax mitigation in full but there are other implications of other welfare benefit cuts from Westminster which may also need mitigation in future on top of the bedroom tax. The universal credit flexibilities I think we have been working hard as the national body to ensure that there is a robust commitment to protect landlord income in all of this so that if a tenant is eligible for support through the welfare benefits system that that support for housing costs can be paid direct to the landlord rather than going to the tenant because that's affecting our cash collection rates on the basis of what we're monitoring at the moment. I'm not going to mention figures because they're really quite alarming but if they were to be replicated on the scale that would be seriously damaging to the sector. Local people who know that are factoring that into their risk assessment around universal credit. On top of that we have the local housing allowance situation which was announced this time last year which is not affected by the Scotland Act or the additional powers and what that's doing is already affecting new tenants aged under 35 because the LHA rates that they're eligible for which is appended to the back of Tony's paper from Alachow are already higher than most social rents so already there are gaps emerging of between £5 and £15 a week for people aged under 35. Most social rents are actually under the LHA as things stand at the moment but there are one or two that aren't. The big issue down the line is the area of supported accommodation and we hope to have further dialogue with the Scottish Parliament on this in the near future. We're waiting at the moment for the DWP to publish research that they undertook in Wales, England and Scotland on the cost of supported accommodation which has a direct bearing on projects of supported accommodation for disabled people, physical disability, learning disability, people with mental health problems, older people and so on because this is no longer about people of working age, this is right across the population but until we see that research and until we see the exact detail of the proposals which are due to come in in three years time well it's less than three years now but it's difficult to judge but as I say all of those things if you work in an area in an association which provides predominantly supported accommodation and you think there is a risk that all of your tenants not just the new tenants might have their housing and support costs capped to the level of the LHA which is born private sector rents which you've got nothing to do with social housing funding or rent levels then you might reasonably think is it safe for us to develop this that or the other project if we don't know that we've actually got a rental income security as Tony said for 30 years down the line. I did actually ask a question. I just said that that was a helpful way to take us through because obviously the social security committee in this place will look at some of that but how it directly impacts on investment for affordable housing would be of direct interest to this committee. Apologies Elaine sorry Mr Bookbinder. It was just to complement what Mary said just we gave an example in our evidence if you imagine a new build scheme coming off site in April 2018 or that or anytime in the three years after that it's quite possible that 50 or 60 percent of the lats might go to people under 35 some of them coming out of homelessness some from the waiting list etc a proportion of them a good proportion of them may well be in receipt of benefit. Supposing the rent is eight I don't know 80 82 pounds a week whatever in April 2018 68 quid is as much as they'll get from the benefit system because of the LHA cap that's a huge shortfall for maybe half the lats in that new build scheme so it's just to give a graphic example if you like. Just wanted to supplement a little bit what was said there absolutely agree with with Mary and David and the point about supported accommodation is that already the Westminster Government is talking about ways in which people who live in supported accommodation might be exempt and so on but absolutely that is going to constrain investment in what may be a really necessary resource again to align with health and social care integration and outcomes from that but the other point is really not about supported accommodation but horizon specialised is in integrated inclusive communities where we provide housing for disabled people just as ordinary housing so the people who live in there the rent levels are often higher because of the degree of adaptation of those properties but they're not in a category and certainly our calculations at this stage are that there are probably in some cases shortfalls of 40 pounds a week for some of them. There's a link to the investment because without some sort of capital support to support the build costs for this type of housing the only way then of supporting it is higher rents and that's where we get into a bit of a double whammy really for these people. The other double whammy is that universal credit has specifically excluded from eligibility any costs for a tenant related to adaptations so there's a number of different things coming together. I mean I wouldn't disagree with anything that's been said so far what I would add though and you would have seen in other evidence we have focused primarily on the impact around the homelessness service on a number of fronts and I think that is our major concern I think we'll deliver the 50,000 houses I have a bigger concern of what happens to homeless folk over the next five years and looking at the LHA cab 11 of the 26 stockholding authorities are already charging more for a one-bedroom flat than the shared accommodation rate in their local area there are another five who are within a distance of that who are likely to get captured within that group within the period of the freeze of the LHA up to 2050 so we're in a place 2020 we're in a place already where that offer if you offer a single homeless person who's on benefit a property which their benefit won't cover that would not be regarded as a reasonable offer it's not an appropriate outcome and you wouldn't be able to make that offer local authorities are already talking about restructuring rents in order to bring their rents down below the LHA cap to allow them to continue to meet their need we obviously have a concern now housing associations across the piece offer about 23 24 per cent of the homeless folks already significantly lower than that in the local authority sector but even that relatively low level of accommodation at homeless folk across the sector is fairly threatened by the impact of the LHA cap particularly on young younger single homeless folk to clarify this impact on the ability of social landlords to seek hag funding to build because the business model around that and the revenue insecurity from rents because we're doing the budget scrutiny here we're concerned about that if that is the case it will play out in a number of different areas if a landlord can't be certainly get the rent in at a particular level and that level is required to fund the scheme then either they'll be looking for more money or they'll they'll they'll not go if capital grant to support the scheme or they'll get to support lower rents or they'll not go ahead with the development so it will in the medium term unquestionably impact on on the development programme as does the current uncertainty around rents and support funding in the supported sector because although it appears there may be arrangements to assist with the funding of existing projects how you plan for funding for new projects is now extremely problematic so there is a real difficulty for providers in thinking we want to provide this new 15-20 units here in three years time because there's no certainty anymore about how the how the core result how the core revenue stream that the the rental stream is going to be a vital one. Mary Taylor and then we'll let Elaine back in to to move to mention some of that Mary. Let's suppose I mean maybe a worked example is is quite useful so if if it costs £150,000 to build a house to the standards that are required to including land and fees and all the rest of it and the 80 and 70,000 of that is being funded by grant then the other 80,000 for the sake of argument has to be funded from private borrowing by a housing association it will be public borrowing by a local authority but in order to commit to that borrowing whichever whichever type of landlord whichever type of funding you have to have confidence in your ability to repay that over time and that's where when 60% of our rental income is is derived originally from housing benefit because the tenants that we're letting to even with the modest rents that are charged for for social housing still needs support to pay those rents then are then any change that disturbs if you like the security of that rental income long term is going to be a matter of great concern and and any responsible landlord looking to develop new housing will be having to factor those kinds of things into the equation in taking decisions about whether and and to what extent to develop. Okay, I'm going to bring our vice-gamer back in Elaine Smith to follow up on that and then seamlessly you're going to see Elaine take over the chair because I've got another meeting that I have to go to the First Minister's appearing at the convener's group in a short while and I have to go and prepare for that so Elaine do what to follow up on some of that. Thank you very much, convener. Just to say that I think it is in the shed, I did raise it in the chamber a couple of weeks ago via a question so it's obviously something I think we need to explore a lot further but the specific question before I take over this chair was for Mary Taylor and it was on the evidence and it was about the separate fund for special needs house and the subsidy working group recommended that but it was not accepted. I just wanted to ask specifically if you know why it was not accepted, maybe you can give us a bit more information. I was on that working group and no good reason was given. Sorry, was that a question to me? Well, only because it was in, I picked it up from the SFHA submission so perhaps maybe to yourself first and then to Fraser Stewart. Okay, thank you. At the time, Alec Neill was the cabinet secretary responsible and the subsidy review group, which Fraser was on behalf of the forum and the SFHA was on not through me personally, had recommended that if the objectives of having more people living at home or in homely settings and living independently in those settings was to be achieved then there needed to be more of a strand of investment protected for that area. I have no idea, frankly, why that recommendation wasn't accepted because all of the other recommendations I think bar 1 on environmental funds were accepted and implemented with immediate effect and certainly had absolutely the desired effect of getting people to look again at development because the risk profile had changed. It's Mr Stewart, sorry. It's me. There was no good reason given for that not flowing through the system and it does have a huge impact, particularly in organisations like horizon where a disproportionate amount of funding is going to special needs because the thinking is that the overall development will subsidise the special needs aspects of it. So the majority of what you're doing is, for example, wheelchair accessible housing, then you haven't got a chance. But beyond that, in Glasgow, I think our target is 10 per cent of housing to wheelchair standards. That is not achievable by our organisation because the on-costs of that kind of housing are phenomenal. So for them not to be taken account of in the capital end of things, the grant side of things is just plain wrong and that should be addressed if there's enough money to do that. Unfortunately, I don't think there's anything that the capital side of things can do about the other dysfunctional nature of the benefit system. We can't put Scottish Government's money into subsidising things that are plainly wrong on the revenue side. It's got to be dealt with by revenue contribution, if at all. How does that fit with the bedroom tax mitigation? Well, the bedroom tax mitigation, for example, worked really well in Scotland, so that was perfect, so that was done on a revenue basis. The grant system, I think that local authorities are moving to bring down certain costs below the LHA to protect under 35-year-olds. It's potentially politically the wrong thing to do. I completely sympathise with why you would want to do it and to find ways of making sure. But I think that a far more sensible way would be for Scottish Government to be able to consider giving direct revenue subsidy, because if you do that at the provider end, you're just going to let rents be set by Westminster policy, and who knows where that would end. It would be a very dangerous precedent to set. I wasn't involved in any of the subsidy working groups, so I can't say why that wasn't a decision made for a subsidy. However, I could guess that one possible reason was that it might have been quite difficult to work out how much, so I just wanted to offer that we're probably talking about two different types of additional grant that are required in order to support building of the types of homes that we need. One is at the more specialist end, and perhaps the approach, which is the kind of flexible approach looking at one on a case-by-case basis, is more appropriate there, which I think is what the working group had kind of come up with. However, the other is really about just how do we make sure that this portfolio of new housing is going to include enough housing that is going to be easily adaptable to housing for wheelchair users and for a range of other needs. It's not going to widely known that you need a house as big as a wheelchair user for someone who uses a Zimmer, for example. Horizon has done work with our parent company, Link, on looking at how much does it actually cost for that additional floor area, those wider doors, and some of that additional space that you need. We certainly would be able and be delighted to work with the Government on coming up with a specific figure that would encourage and support the housing industry to deliver better results than it has managed to do over the past few years. Thank you very much. I'm just about to take over the chair now as a convener's left, but I'm going to call Ruth Maguire to ask a question while I move. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I'd like to talk a bit about the subsidy levels. I was interested in Professor Gibbs's submission where he spoke about the parity between social landlord and local authority subsidy benchmarks. You stated in your evidence that you thought it was right, but maybe the proportions were wrong. Could you expand on that a bit? I should start by saying that I wasn't on the subsidy working group. I think that there are other people here who know a lot better about this than I do. Tony and I were talking about this before we started. My position is that, in principle, it seems to me that you might imagine that, in general, because local authorities can borrow longer-term and from the public sector, they should be able to get a better deal on average than housing associations, that is a case, perhaps. Tony may have a different view about that. That may be a case for suggesting that local authorities could survive with a slightly lower grant on that basis, other things being equal. To me, that doesn't say anything about what the ratio or the right correct disparity ought to be. There are clearly implications of that because that changes the size of the pot available to both groups. That obviously has an impact on what councils could do. I think that that's the implication that follows from that. As I say, I couldn't possibly begin to say what the right ratio is, but I'd be interested to know from my colleagues here what some of the thinking was about that. Thank you. Since Tony Cain was mentioned, perhaps we'll ask him to comment. It's a common misconception that local authorities or local authority housing services can borrow at rates that are lower than those available to housing associations. HRAs, housing revenue accounts are charged at the pool rate, the internally calculated average for all the councils borrowing, and currently they range from just under 4% to about 5.75%. Local authority landlords are paying nearly 6% even now on their borrowing, so we're not getting any cheaper. My concern about the differential, and again, this is not an area where we have made it in our evidence because I'm far more concerned about what is happening in the homelessness services and mental health services across Gond, but our concern about the differential is simply this. It means that council tenants pay a higher proportion of the cost of every new house that is built in the social rented sector than RSL tenants, and my question is very simple. Why is that fair? They're not any better off. They're not any less likely to be dependent on housing benefit. They're not any better equipped to pay that higher proportion, but council tenants, through their rents, pay a higher proportion of the construction cost of new social rented houses than their counterparts, often in the same street in the RSL sector, and my question, when the issue is raised again, will be help me out to understand why that is fair. I don't believe it is. Thank you. It's handy to get questions on the record, but at the moment I think it's the members that are asking them, can I come back to do to McWire? I'd be interested in the answer to that question as well. I suppose I'm going back a little bit now, thinking about housing for older people or adapted housing. We've heard that we need mixed-tenure communities, so I suppose it's just what can we do to help the private sector to build these types of houses as well, or what can be done to make sure within these mixed-tenure communities that that kind of spread is there. Tony Cain, you were nodding. On the issue of accessibility and wheelchair-accessible housing in particular, I think the sector as a whole generally plans around identified needs and, for the most part, I think is doing a reasonable job. The vast majority of people over the age of 60 in this country—some of them are 80 per cent of everybody over the age of 60, and I'm fully not older people here in particular—are owner occupiers. The question should be how do we get more wheelchair-accessible and highly adaptable housing into the unoccupied sector, not how do we get more into the private sector, the social rented sector, because that's where the issues around accessibility, particularly for older people, are going to start arising in a big, big way in the next 10 years. Clobacly, would you want to come in on them? I'm nodding away there. I think we have a huge amount of selling to do to older people who are in their own homes to persuade them to downsize. As an industry, we provide much of a product at the moment. There are one or two main players who do housing for older people who you will know—I don't need to advertise them. There are far more in England that are providing older people's housing, but we only have one player in Scotland and something that I have raised with our members, and it seems a little appetite at the moment, but I know that one of the SNP manifesto commitments was to look at some kind of help-to-buy model for older people. Have you yet to see any detail of what that's going to be like and be very happy to work with government to try to shape that as they bring it forward? I don't think that it will be a help-to-buy as a mortgage product. It will be some kind of way of incentivising people to move out of that large, maybe historically family home and to move into accommodation. I think that once you've got a financial incentive and a product there, our members, the housebuilders, will start looking at providing suitable accommodation if they see a market opportunity. Do you want to explore anything further? No, that's fine. I have Kenneth Gibson next on the list. Just on that last point, when I was a council in Glasgow way back in the 1990s, when people had large houses, there was a big shortage of those family houses. They used to offer the tenants smaller houses in better parts of the city, in actual fact, to try and free up those larger houses. I thought, though, that if you're an unoccupier and you're selling a four-bedroom or a two-bedroom, the incentive is that you'll make quite a bit of money. Probably if your mortgage is paid off, I'm not really sure how much support the taxpayer should give, but my question, I was going to ask the same similar question to yourself, convener, in terms of the Westminster cuts to housing benefit universal credit for social housing tenants posing a significant threat to the successive new bill programme, but I think that I was adequately answered by the panel. I'd like to ask Nicola Barkley something about her submission. She says that, and I quote, despite slippage in programmes and projects, having RSL support, builders have encountered local authority unwillingness to add shovel-ready affordable housing projects to ships programmes, this is hampering the delivery of affordable homes, as it means that Scottish Government subsidy cannot be secured. I'm just wondering if you can tell us some of the difficulties that are being encountered here and how those can be countered. This is in response to when we asked members for feedback on those questions. Members who have noticed the opportunity of the 50,000 affordable home requirement from government and have moved into that sector but aren't RSLs, they're private developers, and are trying to get build partnerships with local authority to get their sites into the affordable housing programme, but because they're not in the ship already, they've been restricted from doing so. It's the lack of flexibility. Can you tell us why this is happening? What's the motivation behind this from a local authority perspective in the view of your members? I can't answer on behalf of the local authority, whether it's the fact that they already have their ship in place or did have at the time and didn't want to change what was in it, whether they felt that a new site coming in would make something else drop out at the bottom. I'm not close enough to the individual example to give any greater detail. I can hear Mary saying something beside me. You might be able to offer some light on that. Ile, do you wish to add to this? I think that Nicola offered a possible explanation. I've not heard of examples of this and I'd want to know more before commenting in detail. Any other panel member wishes to contribute? It's likely to be about strategic fit. It's as simple as that. The programmes are relatively long-term, three or four years, and propping up towards the end of a programme and saying, I've got this, how about it, isn't necessarily always helpful. Nicola Barclay? This is maybe a developer who's moving into this market area but hasn't had the history and to understand the relationships that are already in place and the processes that are in place and when is the right time to put your sight forward to go into a ship, so it may be that. I'd be happy to go in and find out more if you're interested in Mr Gibson. Thank you. Ken Skipson? Thank you very much, and just this is how we forward actually again on Nicola's paper. I mean you say here in your paper that you know we should continue to look at ways that efficiencies and delivery can be increased and I'm sure we won't agree with that but you also say at the moment there's a different design brief and expectation of finished product for every new affordable scheme RSL or council and this could be argued does not result in the best use of money. I mean I suppose the count on that is that we'll end up however all the houses being the same boxes across the country. Are you arguing therefore for some kind of hub approach effectively? I think we need to look at standardising house types. You can do that without them all looking identical from the outside. There's the real lack of efficiency when you have eight different RSLs with eight different versions or eight different variations of design which should be fairly standard design in the first place so I think there are efficiencies to be made. I don't think we should be looking for identical houses all across the country. We want to always reflect some of the local vernacular but you can certainly make efficiencies in design especially if we're going to be looking towards modular construction to increase the supply. That will help that more manufactured style process of housing delivery and will speed up the process as well. Mary Taylor, you indicated. Well I'd like to echo the point about the move towards modular construction off-site prefabrication. They're all pretty interchangeable terms I think and we do need to modernise the way in which we approach construction but that does require long-term planning and long-term commitments for the capital investment to be made by the usually private sector developers who produce that kind of housing. I know from discussions that we have had with some of those together of their nervousness around expanding their capacity unless they have confidence in the long-term supply. I don't agree that the way that we're doing things at the moment is inherently inefficient which is what you were implying and I'm not convinced from what I know of the costs of modular and prefabricated construction that it's necessarily cheaper but possibly if we were to move to greater volume it could be cheaper and all I would say to you is that I have seen with my own eyes in ALVA a scheme by Link Housing Association where the external cladding on the scheme makes it suitable for the fit in with the local environment in a way in which the buildings as they arrive foil wrapped off the back of a lorry I kid you not. You would think that they were all going to be exactly the same but once they've been clad they look much more suitable. I'm going to bring Mr Gibson back in but Julia Fitzpatrick was indicating first. Just very quickly and it was just really about that point about standardisation I think if I speak for my own association one of the reasons for needing to vary is that all housing associations are working off a design standard that was completed in 1998 and it's really in need of improving and updating and that would let us get to a point where actually we could have some variation but actually stronger design standards and that would be a really good base for something that could also read across I think to the private sector very constructively. And briefly, Kenneth Gibson for another follow-up. I think that we have to appreciate that because I mean Mary Taylor you know in your submission you say that local authority should make greater use of their power to use new supply funding to support housing associations working closely with their local authority to acquire and improve private tenement flats which have fallen to poor condition. I mean I would go beyond that. I mean certainly in the rural areas of my constituency you know there are a lot of people who are resistant to schemes if you like, even if it's only eight or 10 or 12 houses being built in a village they'd much rather the local authority or housing association took over a derelict cottage or something like that and restored it and brought that into the public you know sector whether it's local authority, RSL. Is that something that you're looking to do not just beyond flats but perhaps in other types of housing? Mary Taylor, please. I mean I suspect the point that you're citing was actually in the Glasgow forum submission but I don't disagree with the point and I think all I would say is that there it was definitely mine so well you know it better than I do obviously. Sorry about that. I there are people across there associations across the country doing this kind of work and have been for years but it has to be with a local climate of responsiveness and there's so there has to be some reception. The problem with the subsidy framework is that it only works for new housing and so we have members who would really like to be developing housing which already exists which is actually system built housing which would lend itself to being occupied by older people in a more supported environment than they currently live in but the subsidy framework doesn't allow any investment other than by them through their normal revenue programmes and as it's simply not affordable. David McBainter, please. It's to add to Mary's point as well as the additional subsidy for tenemental improvement the key to making it work is that the housing association working hand in hand with the local authority because without the local authority's ability to support owners with at least some of the costs that owners will be faced with in the situations and indeed to support improvement post acquisition it's very hard to take those tenemental schemes forward but we're nonetheless hopeful that as the current five-year programme develops more and more local authorities will see this as a part contributor to the overall new build programme or new supply programme. Thank you very much. Could you bring it in, Alexander Stewart? The acquisition of housing in the second hand market is already an important part of the affordable out of the supply programme and it's not quite the case that it's not supported by the grant arrangements but it's not explicitly dealt with in the guidance around it so Scottish Government officials are approving grant for the acquisition of individual properties out with the home and support fund but it's being done in a relatively ad hoc way. Something like 10% of the houses developed in the previous five years were actually purchased, they weren't built at all. What we have argued is that there should be a more explicit approach to funding individual acquisitions but that needs to be backed by a strategic framework for those acquisitions in the local authority and in their conversations with the housing association. Edinburgh, for example, has quite a sophisticated programme of disposing of houses where they've got one left in a block and maintenance of it is a problem and acquiring houses where only two are sold and getting majority control makes a difference to their management and the service to their tenants. Most other landlord authorities are developing those kind of frameworks. It now needs that strategic framework to be matched by a clear and explicit position within the affordable housing supply programme but I think it's an important part of the programme, absolutely. Thank you very much and apologies for not seeing you there. Mr Alexander Stewart, please. We've heard some very strong evidence this morning from your all and I take on all that you've said. When we're looking at what we're trying to achieve ensuring that the dynamics and the ageing population that we have and trying to ensure that we capture them, we're attempting to capture the ones that are at the other end of the scale, who are the younger ones who don't have opportunities and are trying to get the opportunity. The balance of trying to fit in here creates a dynamic that can be problematic, that we're not really fitting it properly, but the whole system isn't working for everybody. We need to then be specific as to who we try to represent within that base. I'd like some of your views on how we attempt to do that and then the stock itself. There's going to be an opportunity within the building of those houses to deal with energy conservation and all of that. Should we be using that funding to try to ensure that the stock is at a reasonable and strong level? Or do you think that that is a potential slight waste of money in going into trying to achieve that, where we could do more with the money if we were trying to deal with some of the disparities that we have across the sector? Do you have anyone, Mr Stewart, that you specifically want to ask first? We've all gone to answer it, convener. It's quite a broad question. Someone wants to volunteer. Do we have any? I think that you're right to highlight that it's at both ends of the spectrum, because I think that people in the middle are relatively well-housed, unless they're homeless. Life crises, as I think recent press coverage has highlighted, can hit anybody at any time and can result in homelessness and destitution. It's young people who are particularly badly off at the moment. I don't think that we're doing anything specific about young people, but they should be met if we're meeting the general needs of the population. I think that it's about older people or people with particular needs, whether it's around disability or support needs or whatever. It requires a more focused endeavour. It struck me in the earlier part of the conversation that one of the things that the committee could do was to ask for an analysis of the ships that come in. I'll forgive the pan there. No, 32 ships will come in just before Christmas, as it happens. Sorry, I'll not pursue that joke any further. It would be appropriate for you to ask for an analysis of what sort of needs are being met by those ships and, in particular, how far they go to meet the needs of older people and people with particular needs, which we'd highlighted as not being responded to previously. If they are falling short, then maybe there's a need to go back to ministers with that specific recommendation and ask them to explain why that wasn't accepted the first time around. David Bickbank. I may have misunderstood part of the question, but I don't think that any of us around the table would think that, in the new social affordable housing programme, the energy efficiency standards, which would come through the building regulations, should be changed in any way. They are rightly challenging, but they are a key part of keeping that house affordable in the long term and in the current climate. That's absolutely critical. Whatever issues we're trying to address elsewhere in the system, I don't think that any of us would think that it should be at the cost of energy efficiency. Professor Gebb, I wasn't sure if you were trying to catch my eye or not. That's fine. However, Tony Cain seems to... If I may. The issue of the existing stock and how it's treated and maintained is absolutely critical. 80 per cent of the houses standing in 2050 are currently standing, and many of those are not good enough, so far as energy efficiency is concerned. To prepare for the Scottish Government, the Scottish Energy Efficiency Programme and National Infrastructure Priority is in the process of developing a response. There are some big asks being made by organisations like the existing Homes Alliance about how quickly houses should be brought up to an adequate or an appropriate standard. I think there's a judgment in there about what's achievable within the resources available, but that conversation is a relatively strong one. The issues are fairly well understood, and the risks associated with it are fairly one. One of the risks being that if you insist that a property can't be occupied unless it meets a particular standard and it costs too much or it's beyond the owner or it's beyond the landlord, what happens to that property? That takes you to a secondary question about the rate of demolition at the current rate of demolition. The standing public sector housing would need to be standing still in 900 years' time. We don't demolish very many houses and at some point we'll probably need to think about demolishing more than we do, but more broadly, issues around older people, back to what I said, most of them live in owner occupation, not all of them by any means have substantial houses with no mortgage that they can sell, and some big research published by Scottish Futures Trust and the University of Stirling, not that long ago, indicated very clearly that there's a growing cohort of low-value owners who may still have substantial mortgages, and may have taken out an interest only mortgage 30 years ago, who now stand very little chance as the age of moving from their first floor, four and a block flat to something more appropriate in the unoccupied sector. So there is a substantial challenge with that particular group of owners that we need to be thinking about. Mary Taylor wants to come in, could I ask you to be brief? I think in addition to the point that Tony has made, it's really important to recognise that much of the existing stock is tenemental in nature and requires collective solutions, and when you have multiple ownership in tenements, that's very difficult to achieve. Jelia Fitzpatrick, please. I always think that it's a slight shame when we think that if we start thinking about things as being binary into younger, older people and that there's something around the new homes that we build, and again back to the question about design and looking at proportions, our argument would be that we should be looking at 10 per cent of these 50,000 new homes that are built to a design standard that would accommodate easy adaptation for full wheelchair use, but we also need to look at another intermediate standard, which means that there are a broader range of homes that are suitable for a large majority of homeowners. In relation to the existing stock, a key thing is about adaptations and a proportion of that existing stock will not be adaptable, but quite a lot of it is. We're looking at the moment that the Scottish Government has got adaptations demonstration sites, the evaluation of those is under way, and I think there'll be a lot to learn from how do we make the funding systems and again the investment systems. I would argue for a higher base level for 10 per cent of the new build and then allow for more investment in adaptation. Thank you, Alexander Stewart. Do you have any brief further comment on which case I turn to Andy Whiteman, please? Thank you, convener. I just want to pick up a point made by Professor Gibb in your evidence where you talk about there's a strong case for providing relevant but non-budgetry housing spend information, for example tax breaks and benefits. We're scrutinising the budget, obviously, and it appears from all of your evidence that, broadly speaking, you're pleased with the direction of travel, the kind of money that's being talked about, the ambition that's being talked about and the programmes that are developing. Nevertheless, there are still serious problems around existing homelessness, specific needs of sectors such as the elderly, disabled, etc. I'm wondering if Kenneth Gibb and perhaps others might comment on what are the other non-budgetry spends that might be looked at. For example, if we could eliminate the uplift in land value that arises as a consequence of planning, approval would release about 30 per cent of housing costs. If we could look at issues around planning, for example, in central Edinburgh here, a lot of properties are being bought up by Air and B&Bs, and they would be far better as properties in the social rented sector, but we don't seem to have much control over that. What we could do to increase the amount of spend on existing homes, particularly tenement properties—there were one block of 100 tenants in Edinburgh threatened with eviction housing association just recently taking them over—those issues are not going to go away, either. Thank you. Mr Wightman has put forward a few thoughts of his own there, but Professor Gibb, perhaps you could contribute. Two broad things, I'd like to say. One is that, to understand the housing system, we need to think about the budget as a whole. The budget, in the broader sense, not just a budget that the Scottish Parliament has a direct say over, but the things that are spent on housing are subsidised or taxed, which are relevant. That includes things like the land building transactions tax, the additional dwelling supplement, which is part of that as well, and the tax breaks to the buy-to-let sector in the way that they change. Those things are all relevant. We have talked a lot about benefits, but clearly the benefit system is important. We need to present those figures, even though the Parliament does not have control of some of them, in order to see what the totality of what is going on is to have a better sense, perhaps, of the choices that are open over how we decide to allocate our funds. The other part of that, which was a little bit off what Andy Wightman was asking, but I think that it is very relevant, is the way that we present our budgets. I was involved in the previous Parliament infrastructure committee, and we discussed it at some length. How do you present the fact that we spend money in year one? We might have some decisions to build, then some building work and then some outputs, and we do not really track through the way we go from inputs through to outcomes, which is after all outcomes are meant to be the centre of what the Scottish Government works all about, but the way that we have our budgets, we are talking about spending now for outcomes in the future. We need to follow that through in a much more systematic presentation way in order to see how effective things actually are. I would support a much broader, system-wide approach to thinking about what is spent on housing, even if it is not spent and the decisions that are made by the Scottish Government seem to be very important, but we also present them in a much clearer way than we currently do. Many thanks. Mr Wightman was interested in any other panel members' views on that. Can you indicate if you would like to contribute in our dash to keep it brief, please? I think that when we are looking at the budget, we have to look wider and in our written response to question 8, so I will not bore you with it because you have it in front of you, but we really need to focus on the funding of local authority services, especially around planning, building control, rose construction, and consents. These are all going to be required to deliver those 50,000 homes and more, and at the moment we are seeing them in decline, people leaving not being replaced, and we really have concern that they are going to struggle to cope with all the applications coming across the desks. The other big key thing for me is how we fund education. We were delighted to see that the infrastructure loan fund that the Government came out with, the £50 million loan that was there to unlock sites, but it specifically excluded education provision, and I recognise that £50 million would not get you very much in terms of education, but we need to look at how we fund education because it is probably the biggest blocker to sites coming forward, sites that are sitting there in plans, with planning consents, with developers lined up, but there is no solution to how we deliver the school that is required for those houses, so that is something that I would really appreciate scrutiny of and further conversation on. Thank you very much, Tony Cain. Just two very quick points then. The absence of taxation of housing in use unquestionably encourages overconsumption, and you see that in the under-occupation figures in the under-occupied sector, and I think that distorts the market and is something in the longer term needs looked at. In response to your point about the landlord in Edinburgh, the other problem we have is the private rented sector legislation allows landlords when their businesses fail or when their businesses change or when they decide to disinvest or reinvest elsewhere simply to evict tenants. There is no protection for tenants in those circumstances, and that seems to me to be, and this reflects the evidence that we gave at the time, wholly and appropriately. Mr Wightman, I think that the issue... Yes, Kevin Gibson. I want to supplement to that, but Nicola Barber talked about planning there. Do you believe that one way of resolving the issue of declining numbers of people working in plan departments et cetera would be to have full cost fees for applications? Nicola Barber. As part of our submission to the planning review, we have suggested that we need to increase planning fees, and the house building industry would support that in return for a faster, more efficient service, absolutely. Thank you, and it's an interesting issue raised about the education provision. Could I bring in briefly Graham Simpson and then we're going to have to draw the session to a close? I actually don't have a question. Excellent. In which case I will go around the witnesses and ask if you would like to add anything further to what you've said, or if you have a burning issue that you would like to share with us that hasn't come out because the right questions haven't been asked, then this is your opportunity to do that. We'll start with Nicola Barclay. Thank you. The one thing that I thought we would talk about, but we didn't, was help to buy. The new scheme that we have in place, the affordable help to buy, is working very well. We do have concerns in the changing world that we're living in, what the impact will be on the mortgage markets. It was set up at a time when things were looking much more certain than they are perhaps now, given the geopolitical climate that we're now in, and the tailoring down of the help to buy from £200 to £175 as a ceiling price does concern our members that we'll end up with a help to buy that only is going to be of use to people in very small parts of Scotland because of the ceiling price, so I'd like to reinforce that point. Thank you very much. My way of conclusion is that some of the challenges that we're facing have potentially inflationary cost implications and the potential to slow down the pace at which we can deliver on the target. That doesn't say anything about the appetite to deliver on the target, but about some of the real practical constraints and some of those that might be worth returning to it on a future occasion is around the use of public land and the valuation of public land, which is still not just about privately owned land, it's also publicly owned land, and the way in which the utilities respond is not just the planning departments, it's also the utilities respond on the development of infrastructure for opening up new land opportunities. There's obviously going to be huge pressure to deliver at scale, pressure on local government, pressure on the Scottish Government. I think it's of some encouragement today that we've spent some of the time thinking about the community-led nature of the provision, the quality and diversity of that provision, and we need to make sure that those things are on the agenda as that pressure to deliver at scale is something that we all deal with. Thank you, Fraser Stewart. Just like to say, I'm really worried about the—we might be underestimating the logistics of this challenge and the scale of it. I don't know if we'll be able to deliver it and I think that we have to look at that very closely. Given the range of issues and questions that have been asked today, I think that we can see that we've got to ask ourselves a question, do we have a coherent and consistent Government policy to deal with all of these aspects? Do we have the right machinery in Government to have all of these questions properly addressed? I would doubt that we currently do. I think that, since the demise of Community Scotland, there's been a huge resource missing there, and that should be revisited. I think that, in the context of all the considerations that community ownership and empowerment needs to be given formal prominence and priority, because it hasn't been given that. It could potentially, whether on the vinyl list, it's given more support and more of a challenge and you've just heard all the community empowerment stuff earlier on. If you want co-production, if you want ownership, you're going to have to support it. The last thing is that I'm seriously scared about modular construction. I have to see what happened to the Gorbals, or no where near being able to do it properly in Scotland. No where near it, so don't overeg that one. We should get there, we should put a lot of money into research and that would be, Government should be supporting that, but we're miles away from that. Standardisation is hugely difficult and won't work in the inner city until we move on to what the Japanese are like when we're about 30 years behind them. I simply draw the committee's attention to the particular points that we make in our evidence around the homelessness service and vulnerable homeless people, the multiply excluded homeless who currently suffer levels of ill health and early death, well beyond that of our most deprived urban communities in Scotland. You're talking about an average life expectancy for a woman of 43 and a man of 47 who are long-term in the homelessness service. They're being failed by a health service, particularly our mental health service. There are significant aspects of the homelessness service and temporary accommodation that need to be improved. Thank you, Julie FitzPatrick. Connecting Mary's point about the inflationary pressures, particularly in relation to the demographic change and older people in terms of the need for some additional premium in the subsidy to support housing, new housing for older and disabled people, but to link that to the earlier point that Ken Gibb made around looking at the budget much more widely perhaps than just housing because the cost benefits of that to the health system in relation to enabling independent living for longer in communities and without the level of care, it will come back that way. Thank you and finally, Chris Gibb. Three quick points inspired by Tony Cain. First of all, I'll carry on talking to him about the costs of local authority housing finance outside, but more importantly, I think he made a really important point about tax breaks to own owner occupiers. I mean, there's a lot of nodding around the table about that, but that's the hardest kind of political thing to log jam, to break, is things like capital gains, things like council tax and such like. With recent experience, he suggests how hard it is to make radical reform to the council tax. Final point, I think that I wanted to make from what Tony Cain said. Early on, he made a really important point about the need for long-term planning, long-term proposals to run through the housing programmes that we want to deliver. A lot of public policy analysts argue that it's hard to make policy programmes that should run over one whole part of Parliament into a second one, but we can do it, and it is done, and it has been done in housing. The homelessness legislation, its implementation, shows that it can't be done, so I think it's not something that we should dismiss the idea that we should really have longer than five-year plans around these things, because it reflects the long-term nature of what we're actually interested in. Thank you very much. I'll just pick up on one thing that was said and advise the panel that we will be taking more evidence next week on community empowerment, which you might want to take an interest in that session next week as well. I thank you all very much for attending this morning and now into the afternoon. I'm going to now move the session into private session, as previously agreed. Thank you again for coming along.