 Foddw UNedder inventory ble pam chquiadw maths yn amlwg m哋 i beth ddweud fiddell arriveio ei rôl hwmmustaeth i chi eisiau chi ddim yn so wrestling amaeth ac yn ynnydd yn gagwy cael ei trousers a gynhyrch. Mae mor hwn ar fy nredig yw bitterbelau napad, drwy ironig, i wneud a chwrs-glock yn ddefnutwriting drofwm cynnyddnad,nd yn yn ei gydych a gall hyn Chyrom pan gynhyrch i walch gan eineil yn amlwm ar ry gewein wedi oponau a answers mwyn i chi resulio i gilyn fel i leidredon yn unedig gypa mor ynghyd na wedi ei ddech yml等等 ac i ddat summon I call on Arrian Bridges around seven minutes, please, Ms Bridges. A thousand affordable homes across the north and west of the Highlands will have more positive impact than a thousand houses adding to Inverness's urban sprawl or TAC on to Nairn. The first time I heard those words to that effect was from Elsa Rayburn of Community Lands Scotland. Then I heard it again when talking to Ewan MacLachlan from Ascent Development Trust about their ambitious community-led housing placemaking project in Loch Inver, and more. Four or six new homes and villages would be transformational. We have a commitment to build 11,000 new affordable rural homes by 2032. All too often, our rural and island communities are low on the priority list. Let's not leave it until 2028 to turbocharge that effort. We have what we need in place to deliver the experience and the effort in all parts of rural and island Scotland. What is needed is input from government to streamline funding and delivery processes, and for public bodies to work with communities constructively, recognising that they have different needs than private developers. The remote rural and island action plan is due imminently, and that plan should acknowledge that we have the know-how and local commitment, as well as a history of constructive partnership working. The First Minister recognised with a commitment of £25 million to help councils by affordable homes for key workers in rural communities that something must be done. We have a range of measures in place or being developed to ensure that we steer housing away from the extraction model to one that will lay the foundations of our wellbeing economy and build community wealth. Those measures include regulation of the short-term let's market and the consultation on council tax on second and empty homes. We still need to get on with the building of new homes in places where there is nothing available. Young people and families are crucial to ensure the long-term future of our communities, but if they can't find affordable homes, they can't stay or settle. Communities in the highlands and islands have been leading the way and are ready to do more. The rural and island housing fund and the Scottish land fund are game-changers, and with greens in government, both of those funds have been secured with a commitment to increase them. Greens also secure the commitment to ensure that community housing trusts are adequately funded so that they can support the delivery of our enhanced rural home building plans. Those trusts are crucial for communities finding the confidence and building capacity to take on their home building and place-making projects. The people at the heart of those organisations have been at this long enough to understand the hurdles that communities have to overcome and can help with the design of the buildings, the financial packages and the mix of tenures. They can also help to put together constructive partnerships. In my region, the work that Communities Housing Trust's CHT has undertaken is not just about housing. It supports communities in place-making and community wealth building by ensuring that there are income generation elements beyond the housing. In Highland, along with housing, the Garelock and Lock U Action Forum has developed 25 houses, a tourist information hub, shops and training facilities. The Staff and Trust in Sky, along with their new homes, workshops and business units, rent a purpose-built health centre to NHS Highland, bringing much-needed medical access closer to people. In Murray, the Tom and Tile and Glam Live It Development Trust has recently handed over 12 eco-homes to new residents and are developing the bunkhouse. Pipeline projects include Ascent Development Trust, Invergarry Development Trust and the Woodland Trust. They have all housing, along with other amenities, in their plans, including woodland crops, past networks, enterprise work units and education and training facilities. I know that, with the affordable housing needs so desperate in my region that Highlands and Islands Enterprise would love to see CHT's capacity doubled. They have told me that we have so much employment potential in the region, but without housing we won't be able to take full advantage of it. I've heard from communities who want to develop co-housing models where housing is designed to include shared common spaces. Hope co-housing in Orkney, supported by the Orkney Island councillor, is taking forward the UK's first rented tenure co-housing model for over-fifties. They say that we will be looking out for each other, not looking after each other. With the Government's commitment to a preventative approach and the rapid closure of care homes in rural Scotland, the model must be urgently explored and invested in, not just for over-fifties but for intergenerational housing for families Let's come back to those 1,000 Highland homes. CHT and the communities that they are working with propose rolling them out just as if we were building a housing development in Inverness at scale. That can be done by setting up hubs, staging areas for materials and equipment at key locations where we aren't starting from scratch every time. Materials would be purchased in bulk for a number of projects. That would reduce costs and carbon emissions from hauling long distances and create local employment, basically utilising the often overlooked North Highland circular economy and community wealth building potential. This model is not just for Highland. It could work in other parts of my region and in the south of Scotland. I have focused on rural housing, but we also have beautiful but neglected town centres that are ripe for redevelopment into housing. In the south of Scotland, we have the transformational mid-stiple quarter in Dumfries, which is supported by the south of Scotland community housing trust. The project is being keenly studied nationally and internationally, and Scott Mackay from the project will be the keynote speaker at the upcoming town centre regeneration conference in Murray. As the minister will know, town centre redevelopment and retrofitting aligns well with our new national planning framework. Initiatives like that should be enabled across Scotland, and that needs to start with a pilot project fund for market towns, similar to the rural and island housing fund. I welcome the minister's keenness to understand the need in Scotland's rural and island places and his intention to make visits, but communities know what they need. They have a proven track record and tremendous network for peer-to-peer learning. Community-led housing enables rural communities to thrive and is an investment in people and place. Let's support communities to get on with it and follow their lead. Let's deliver on the bute house agreement commitments, fund the enablers, invest in the set-up of the hubs for materials and prioritise a dedicated workforce. Let's start rolling out community-led housing at the scale needed to reach our ambitious commitment to 2032. Given Brexit has already made far more difficult for farmers and rural businesses to recruit people, I am sure that all members will welcome the new housing minister's creation of a £25 million fund for affordable homes for key workers in rural areas. That comes on top of a commitment to deliver 110,000 affordable homes by 2032, with at least 10 per cent in remote rural and island areas. I also welcome the minister's announcement of a delivery plan to address the issues of transport, repopulation and economic development. In Balmaha, a rural village in my constituency, a 20-unit project supported by the community's housing trust and the Scottish Government cannot get on site because there are no contractors willing to work in this area. That is something that I hope the minister will urgently consider in his delivery plan. While welcoming the new providers, we should recognise the significant contribution that community-based housing associations and the co-operative movement have made to housing across Scotland. However, the Parliament also needs to recognise that this movement is under severe threat from the Scottish housing regulator. The regulator was set up to protect the interests of tenants. It is completely independent of Scottish ministers. It reports to this Parliament only once a year. Unlike Oscar, its decisions cannot be appealed to an independent body. I worked for housing associations for 25 years, but I am not just talking from personal experience here. A former director of one housing association said that our tenants did not need protection by the regulator, but they needed protection from it. The regulator has intervened in several community-led housing organisations in recent years. It has involved third party investigations by consultants approved by the regulator and paid £1,000 per day, resulting in costs of literally hundreds of thousands of pounds of tenants' money. It has resulted in several community-based housing associations merging with larger organisations. A recent proposal to merge Read Vale, one of Glasgow's most successful community-owned housing associations, prompted the director of one representative body to claim that the regulator has an unwritten merger culture, which reflects an indifference to community ownership. At the same time, the regulator presided over the failure of Scotland's second-largest landlord, which owned 12,000 properties, Dumfries and Galloway Housing Partnership, or DGHP, for short. Following serious Government failings, DGHP concluded that it could not continue as an independent organisation and joined the Wheatley group. However, it is far worse than that. In January 2020, Scottish Housing News reported heavy-handed interventions by the regulator staff with one common theme of bullying. It said that the style of work employed by the regulator is aggressive, over-the-top and frightening. A constituent recently contacted me and presented me with credible and supported evidence of the regulator's bullying. That approach resulted in staff feeling suicidal and unable to work. However, when I asked the regulator's chair to independently investigate the very serious allegations that he refused, saying that the regulator's board had been assured by their staff that all was in order, he also failed to release information to me that I requested as a member of Parliament. Members will be aware of the tragic case in England where headteacher took her own life following an offset inspection of her school. I am worried that, without an urgent independent investigation into the regulator's practices, something here like this could happen in a Scottish Housing Association. It is great that rural housing organisations that are mentioned in an Arianne Burgess motion can flourish and innovate and long may that continue outwith the regulator's scope of activities. Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. I congratulate Arianne Burgess for securing the debate, but before I get into the meat of the subject that she has raised, I think that what Evelyn Tweed had to say should be taken extremely seriously, and I think that it should be investigated by the minister as a matter of urgency and taken forward in some way. However, when we are coming on to community-led housing, which is the subject of the debate, I know how passionately Arianne Burgess feels about this, because we both sit on the cross-party group on housing. We had a session recently, in fact it was our last meeting, when we looked at community-led housing. We discussed some of the projects that Arianne Burgess has already mentioned, such as the one in Garelock, the one in 25 affordable homes that are being built, and the one on staff-in as well. It is fair to say that community-led housing is a success story where it exists in Scotland, and for good reason it provides an additional supply of homes. It helps the local economy and local industry. It encourages investment into communities. It helps younger people to realise their housing ambitions. At the meeting that I mentioned, we heard from Elsa Rayburn, who is the chair of Community Land Scotland, and Ronnie Mackay from Communities Housing Trust, and Mike Staples of South of Scotland Community Housing. Following the meeting, we wrote to the then Cabinet Secretary, Shona Robison. I sent a letter, as convener, last month, and we had the following asks. The first one was that the Government should publish the remote, rural and islands action plan. The second was that they should consider forming a Government action group, and the third was to commit to funding the activities of intermediary organisations. There are two more. The fourth was to review grant conditions for community-led housing, and the final one was to make available funds for urban community-led housing, mentioned, of course, by Arrian Burgess, because it is not just rural housing that we are talking about. Fast forward, and we get a dedicated housing minister. To his credit, he has responded very swiftly to the CPG and sent a letter dated 12 April. I am happy to share it with any member who wishes to see it. It covers most of the things that we contain in our letter. In some respects, it is quite vague, not unusual for a minister, but he has responded. He has also offered to meet with myself, and I think that that should also include Arrian Burgess when we have that meeting. I hope that he will attend a meeting of the cross-party group on housing, where we can discuss the subject. I recognise that he feels strongly as well. I think that this is an example of where Parliament can work together. It shows the value of cross-party groups. If we remove party politics from it, we can achieve good things. I thank the minister for his encouraging response and his approach to it. I thank Arrian Burgess once again. Before I begin, I refer members to my register of interest as the owner of a private rented property in the North Lanarkshire council area. Today's debate, particularly on the rural and island housing crisis and the role community-led housing, is very welcome. I congratulate my colleague from the local government housing and planning committee for securing the debate in time today. Although I am a MSP for central Scotland, there are many rural villages in my region, which, if you speak to those who live there, will tell you that they feel very distant from Edinburgh, Glasgow or any other city in Scotland. They will tell you that they know best what suits their area and what does and does not work. It is a sentiment that would be reflected in all of Scotland's communities. However, it is a vital reminder for us that one-size-all fits policy or decisions rarely work for all of Scotland and, even worse, sometimes they can have that negative impact if they lose the buy-in of communities that the impact is not the desired way. We can all agree that more can it and should be done to facilitate community-led housing and remove barriers to locally-based projects, which rely on local knowledge and the local input about what people's needs are and what they think are the solutions for their own towns and villages. Last year, I visited the Western Isles to hear and learn about the severe housing crisis there and the impact on the cost-11 crisis that they were facing. When I visited the islands, they were at the start of a devastating winter that would leave 80 per cent of residents in fuel poverty. They felt badly let down by the UK Government's energy support scheme because their heating oil and solid fuel had not been capped. Residents and council local organisations said as well that they felt let down by the Scottish Government, too. The TIG, the organisation tasked with delivering the area-based scheme for the council, cited a lack of rural proofing within the PAS 2035-2030 retrofit standards as the reason for the closure of its insulation department with the loss of 14 jobs and the loss of that service. The Hebrideen housing partnership told me about how their maintenance regime, when it comes to maintaining their stock, which is absolutely crucial when you consider that stock bears the brunt of the Atlantic weather. They talked about how a potential social sector rent freeze might impact on their ability to do that good work. I also heard about the huge variation in the costs of building housing in the Western Isles. There are tens and tens of thousands of pounds more to build in Barra than it would in Lloos, when most decision makers in Edinburgh would consider the Western Isles one homogenous area, when, in fact, there are real, real differences there. Although we debated Scotland's national housing emergency yesterday for rural and island communities, as Ariane Burcher's motion points out, that emergency is compounded by the diverse and significant challenges facing rural and island communities with some of the implications that have for sustaining their rural populations. From various fuel poverty, the increased costs of just about everything and the ability to access healthcare, education and poor digital connectivity all interact with that housing crisis and are what make island and rural life extremely challenging. Local people will tell you that they know best what does and does not work for them, so we should just trust them to tackle their own local housing emergency. They know best and we should give them the tools to do that. I now call Liam McArthur to be followed by Paul Sweeney. Thank you very much. Since being elected to represent Orkney back in 2007, the challenges around housing have rarely been off the radar, but I cannot recall a time where demand for housing has been so out of kilter with supply, where the need for new investment but also new thinking and new approaches has been so obvious and indeed urgent. I very much thank Ariane Burgess for allowing Parliament this brief opportunity to debate at least some of the issues, concerns and the potential solutions in this area. The motion, of course, focuses specifically on community-led housing and that is entirely reasonable, although it is worth acknowledging that this is only one element of a wider debate, albeit an important one. I welcome the specific rural target that is now set within the Government's overall commitment to building 110,000 affordable homes by 2032. That is helpful. However, we are off the pace in meeting either the overall and the rural specific target. Underlining the urgency for the minister coming forward with the remote rural and island housing plan originally promised for spring this year, indeed it would be helpful if the minister could spell out what role he expects community-led housing to play within that plan, including co-housing, which is not mentioned at all in the Government's vision housing to 2040. Whatever is in the plan, it will need to go hand in hand with a commitment to adequate funding. Without question, funding gaps remain the single biggest issue highlighted by all the stakeholders that I have spoken to in Orkney, including all those involved in community-led housing initiatives. The source of those costs are many in various inquiring lands, and planning permission can be costly and time consuming. That is often the obstacle at which community-led housing projects fall. Projects are often competing for land with private developers who have easier access to funds. Material costs are high and getting higher. In the pre-construction phase, getting surveyors reports, building warrants, legal advice can run into the six figures even for quite modest development. There is often a relative shortage of contractors and professional support in rural and island communities, particularly where there is a lot of building going on. That is certainly the case in my Orkney constituency. Looking further ahead, the introduction of very welcome higher standards in relation to passive house will inevitably increase costs further. Knees high in increasing costs are not being matched at the moment in terms of increasing commitments to funding, and the value of the funding that is currently available is being inflated away. The Government needs to address that particular issue, and, as Mark Griffin said, there will be variability in island groups and rural areas. In the time remaining to me, I particularly welcome the reference in Ariane Burgessy's motion to the co-housing project in Orkney. As I say, it was not recognised in the housing to 2040 strategy. I hope that that will now be addressed. It is an initiative that builds a community of homes with shared functions and amenities, bringing together groups of private individuals who are, as you say, looking out for rather than looking after each other. It provides collective living and is mutually supportive, and it does have particular benefits for older homes and the population. It addresses issues of social isolation and loneliness through joint activities and interactions. In turn, it keeps individuals engaged within the wider community and strengthening those communities as well. I hope that the co-housing model is slightly different in that it is a rental model rather than the leaseholding model, which has been more traditionally pursued. However, it offers older people the opportunity to between independent living and care homes informal retirement housing reduce care costs and maintain that sense of independence and agency. However, there are challenges. There is no obvious source of funding for the pre-construction phase. In the case of hope co-housing, that amounted to more than £150,000, so the Government needs to look at those particular aspects. It is also making it easier for community-led housing projects to acquire land and to be facilitated through the planning process. However, community-led housing is crucial to sustaining and building resilience in our rural and island communities. I very much hope that the Government will embrace that. Take on board some of the ideas that have been referred to in this debate, and they will certainly get my support in those endeavours. I now call Paul Sweeney, who will be the last speaker before I ask the minister to respond. Community-controlled housing associations are vitally important to the prosperity of communities across Scotland. In recent years, we have seen more and more of them swallowed up by larger locally unaccountable housing associations. Many with head offices outwith Scotland. That is a great shame. The whole purpose of social housing in Scotland is to ensure that there is a social element to the basic commodity of housing and that there is a rich history of success in the community-controlled housing sector. It is not or at least it should not be a method for wealth extraction or the stripping of assets currently owned and managed in the community. It should not be a corporate game of boardroom monopoly with no get-out-of-jail free-car for tenants when the big boys fail to deliver. It should not be a lever by which to control finance, remove democratic power and exert unwelcome external influence. Original pioneering days of the Glasgow corporation slum clearances and the First Community Housing Association set up to save those tenement districts in Glasgow. It was done on the basis that those taking control of the assets management committees have committed volunteers elected by local people who were rooted in their communities and knew what was best for the local people who lived and worked there. That was a very genesis of community-controlled housing associations and, sadly, I fear that we are swiftly departing from that stated aim. Let me put on the record that not all large housing associations are bad. In some instances they are very good and there is undoubtedly a role for them to play in the sector. However, what we are now seeing is community-controlled housing associations that are financially robust, solvent and providing great services to their tenants being taken over at board level and railroaded into mergers with promises of a land of milk and honey. There is no better example than this than the Reidville Housing Association in East End of Glasgow, which was the member for Stirling who pointed out earlier. It was set up in 1975 by one of the first community-run housing associations in the UK. They acquired a swath of tenement properties in Deniston and prevented the evisceration of that community. Since then, they have refurbished their 900 properties and brought their community back to life through the introduction of traffic cammy measures on a very densely populated part of Glasgow. It is one of the most attractive communities to live in this city today. They are financially robust, they are solvent and they are able to easily provide the services that their tenants and the wider community require. Yet they have been earmarked for what is being dubbed a transfer, but in reality it is a takeover. The Housing Association looking to acquire Reidville's assets and stock have named themselves Places for People Scotland, but in reality they are a massive English-based parent company called Places for People who operate in Scotland as Castle Rock, Edinburgh Housing Association, some of our Edinburgh colleagues may be aware of. They may also be aware that the parent appoints Castle Rock, Edinburgh Housing Association's board and can remove members at will, as well as placing their own staff on the board. Currently at Reidville, the board is elected annually at its AGM by the tenants and other service users and are free and able to stand for election. This is a democratic right that we ripped away and the Places for People and Castle Rock, Edinburgh, get their way. To entice current Reidville residents that they are offering a five-year rent freeze guarantee despite the Housing Regulator's website showing that the rents elsewhere in the country of this Housing Association are up to 26% higher than the Scottish average. Let's have a quick look at their performance compared to Reidville's. The average rent charged by Reidville for a free bed flat is £69 per week, places for people charged £98 per week. Reidville has a current overall satisfaction rate of 95%. PFP has a satisfaction rate of 81%. 89% of Reidville's stock meets SHQS standards, quite shockingly only 73% of PFP's stock meets those standards. Reidville's average response time for emergency repairs is three hours. PFP takes 14 hours on average, over four times slower, and, for non-emergency repairs, Reidville takes, on average, one day. PFP takes 17 days, yes, 17 times slower. The whole thing stinks, Presiding Officer, and it begs the question why. Why would a Housing Association predominantly based in England with an outpost in Edinburgh want to acquire a Glasgow-based housing association? I think that the answer is quite straightforward. Profit. They know that it will be incredibly profitable in the long term due to the area in which Reidville sits, and they know that it will be incredibly profitable because Reidville is a profitable organisation with zero debt. Just before I finish, Presiding Officer, I am conscious of time, the minister and the Government will be more generally wondering why this is a political issue and not something that can just be left to the regulator to sort out. The reality is that, unless we introduce legislation in this place that compels the Scottish Housing Regulator to provide on-going and practical support to community-controlled housing associations to ensure that they are not swallowed by poorly-pahoring bear moths, the charade will continue unabated. Organisations that have a proven track record of bringing about real regeneration, real prosperity, real inclusivity to neighbourhoods and communities are being lost. If we are all going to stand to you wondering why it is happening whilst allowing it to happen, then we are all complicit. The modus operandi of these big unaccountable housing associations is to build new solar schemes. We do not need that, especially not in Glasgow. We need strong, locally-run, community-controlled housing associations rooted in our local areas, determined to grow and develop with quality and inclusivity at the forefront of their minds, along with providing a real influence and growth for tenants and volunteers. Let's be clear that every other sector in this country—the big players and corporates—do not do this at the goodness of their hearts. They are doing it because it makes them very rich. They can dress it up all they like with promises that they will not keep, but I can assure them that we and the local community will fight them every single step of the way and ask colleagues across all parties to seek to agree the need for legislative and regulatory change urgently to preserve and further develop a community-controlled housing model that continues to serve Scotland's people well and deliver the real and measured outcomes for its communities that we sorely need. I now call on the minister to respond to the debate around seven minutes please, minister. Thank you, Presiding Officer. First of all, I refer members to my register of interests. I welcome—this is the third housing-related debate within a week, and I think I'd said yesterday to Mr Griffin and others—I'd welcome as many housing debates as possible just to discuss the issues that's been raised. Today, first of all, I'd like to thank Ariane Burgess for bringing forward this debate to highlight the important role at community-led housing plays in rural and island communities, as well as the vital role at organisations play in supporting areas to bring forward their own housing projects to meet the needs of people in their own localities. Housing of the right type in the right place can have a powerful and generational impact, as we all know, supporting people to access housing and need, enabling young people to stay in the communities in which they grew up and supporting local businesses to retain and attract employees. Community-led housing plays an important role in our broad approach to deliver more affordable homes in our remote, rural and, of course, island communities. I also take on the point that you made, Mr Sweeney. It's not just in our remote and rural and island communities. It's across Scotland and in our urban communities, as well, and I'll pick up that issue with you later on, if that's okay. The Scottish Government wants everyone to have a warm, energy-efficient home that meets their needs. That's why housing is a key part of independent missions published this week. Now, we're clearing equalities, opportunity and community document that affordable housing is a key part of our mission to prioritise our public services. The document sets out two important plans for rural alias. The first one is, obviously, the publishes a rural delivery plan, in that focus on how all parts of the Scottish Government are delivering for rural Scotland, including our policies and areas such as agriculture, land reform, repopulation, economic development, transport and, of course, housing. We'll also publish a rural and island housing action plan that will set out our approach to rural housing delivery, including support for community housing projects. When that is published, I want to meet up with as many stakeholders as I possibly can. That's open to anybody in the chamber here. Please invite me to come along and speak to organisations that you think would be useful in that context. The plan will include up to £25 million from our affordable homes budget to allow properties, including empty houses, to be purchased or long leased and turned into homes for rural and key workers and others who need affordable housing in rural areas. That's an addition. I very much welcome the funding that he's referred to. As I understand it, that's targeted through councils and RSLs, which is, to some extent, understandable, but it does exclude development trusts who can play a pivotal role in the delivery of housing in rural and island communities. I wonder whether he might look to reflect on whether the routing through development trusts might be added to that funding pot. I thank the member for the intervention. I'll look into that and come back to you if that's okay. That's an addition that's been said in the £30 million programme through the affordable housing supply programme. That fund plays an important role in offering community organisations and others not able to access traditional affordable house funding away to deliver affordable homes in remote rural and island areas, while complementing delivery through our mainstream programme by councils and housing associations. Of course, the point that he made there, Mr MacArthur, is about development trusts. That programme has been a success. Between 2016 and 2017, in 2021 and 2022, we supported delivery of 8,000 affordable homes in rural and island areas. We are now working towards our target of 110,000 homes by 2032, which, of course, 70 per cent will be able for social rent, and 10,000 will be in the remote rural and island communities. That's backed up by £3.5 billion of funding in this parliamentary term. Alongside that new delivery, it's important that we ensure that local areas have the tools to make the use of their existing housing stock. I'll come on to that and some of the contributions just in a little minute or so. Over the past decade, the growth of online platforms has failed to trend for residential homes, particularly in tourist hotspots, to be changed from primary homes to short-term lets or second homes. Of course, that can cause problems for local residents and make it harder for local people. Particularly young people are those with fewer resources to find homes to live in. We also remain concerned about the number of empty homes in Scotland, which could potentially be brought back into use for people to live in. There's a review going on in that moment, which will be published later on this year. On 17 April, we announced a joint public consultation with COSLA on giving local authorities the power to increase council tax in second homes and empty homes, as well as considering whether the current non-domestic thresholds for self-cating accommodation remain appropriate. That is the first joint consultation with COSLA, recognising that local authorities have an essential role in considering the right balance in their local areas, taking into account local needs. I know that every community is different in that. While some communities have experience of delivering housing solutions to meet their own specific house needs, there are those who don't. Ariane Burgess mentioned about the South of Scotland community housing, and about community housing trust among other organisations. Of course, those communities have been and continue to be vital in supporting those communities to realise their housing ambitions. Opportunity, equality and community are vital to everyone no matter where they live. Delivering affordable housing in rural and island areas presents additional challenges, however. We cannot lose sight of that. The delivery of more homes in those communities is absolutely vital, with solutions developed collaboratively by partners, including community groups, rural housing enablers and local authorities, among others, to drive projects forward to delivery. We mentioned about community-led local development, and that is key in supporting thriving resilient rural communities. The community-led local development network of local action groups works across Scotland's rural and island communities. That is important to deliver grass-root projects, with local determination, which can address a number of rural development projects. I want to touch on a few of the contributions. Ariane Burgess mentioned about construction and employment, and that would be something that I would be keen to discuss with her. I think that that is important, not just in our rural communities, but in looking across our delivery programme. I totally agree that community-led housing is an economic enabler in the wider community. It can drive on communities. Mr Griffin mentioned his visit to the western Isles Isle. I also visited South East a number of months ago with the Social Security Committee on housing, and that would drive forward economic prosperity. That is vital and important. The point that Eveline Tweed made regarding the regulator operates independently of that report directly to the Scottish Parliament. I am happy to take up any issues that were raised by her and Paul Sweeney in that regard. Graham Simpson mentioned about the meeting with the cross-party group. We are delighted to meet up with him in the group and hopefully come along to the next meeting if we can get a date on the diary. I am more unhappy to do that in that regard. Mark Griffin talked about his visit, and I think that that is important. Eveline Tweed Minister, thank you for taking an intervention. I hear what you are saying. You are going to look into the concerns that both myself and Mr Sweeney raised. Yes, I completely understand that the Scottish Housing Regulator is independent of government. However, if it is operating in a way that is not good for community-led housing associations across Scotland, is it not for the Government to look at that? I thank the member for that contribution. As I said, it is obviously supporting to the Parliament itself. I will take advice from officials on that regard about how we can address. I am happy to meet with myself and Mr Sweeney to discuss those issues and to meet with officials to discuss the issues that you have raised. Paul Sweeney, please. I thank the minister for giving me that point. The Glasgow West Scotland housing association forum has been very strident in its concerns about the behaviour of the regulator, not just that but the culture of consultancy that is crept in and around. It is a very insidious and potentially corrupt practice that needs to be urgently investigated. I urge the minister to look into it. I will take that on. I am happy to meet with myself and Mr Sweeney in that regard. The point that he made, Mr Sweeney, on community-controlled housing associations, is key. It is not just for our community-led organisations but throughout Scotland. You have mentioned that in your speech on how important it is in some of the areas in Glasgow. Mr MacArthur mentioned community-led housing in the target. That is incredibly important. The co-housing model is something that would be worth considering. I worked with a number of extra-care housing groups and set up an extra-care housing task force, which had a parliamentary event here and a stall here. I think that that model is keen to try and look into how we explore rural housing in that regard. I would like to thank members for their contributions. As I said, I am delighted that this is the third housing debate that we have had in a week. I am aware of the time, so I am just going to conclude. I want to close again by thanking Ariane Burgess for bringing this debate forward and to all those who have taken part. Alongside me, I recognise the crucial role that community-led housing plays in the vital rural and island communities. As I said, the offer is out there again. I am happy to visit any suggested groups that you think would be worthwhile to go visit. I am grateful for the work that has been and continues to be undertaken by communities and rural housing developers to deliver more affordable homes in our rural and island communities. They deserve that. That concludes the debate, and I suspend the meeting until 2.30pm.