 Good morning, and welcome to the seventh meeting in 2024 of the local government housing and planning committee I remind all members and witnesses to ensure their devices are on silent and that all All other notifications are turned off during the meeting Stephanie Callahan MSP will be joining us online today and the first item on our agenda Is to decide whether to take items four and five in private our members agreed Great, we're all agreed. The second item on our agenda today is to take evidence as part of our housing to 2040 inquiry in a roundtable format and we're joined by Chris Burt who's the associate director for Scotland at the Joseph Ran tree foundation, Dr Caroline Brown who is the director of Scotland Ireland and English regions at the Royal Town Planning Institute, Stephen Connor who's the development manager at the tenants information service Emma Jackson who's the social justice strategic lead at Citizen Advice Scotland, Hayley Kay who is a representative from Living Rent, Professor Ken Gibb who is the director at the UK collaborative centre for housing evidence at the University of Glasgow, Gordon McCrae who's the assistant director of communications and advocacy at Shelter Scotland, David Mahoulish who is the director at Scottish Property Federation, Ronnie McCrae who's the chief executive officer at communities housing trust, Rianan Sims who is the senior policy officer at Crisis and Stuart, Chris Stuart who's the president of the Royal Incorporated Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland and I welcome you all very warmly to our meeting and I'm going to begin our conversation this morning by inviting everyone to very briefly introduce themselves. I'm Ariane Burgess, convener of the committee and also MSP for the Highlands and Islands region and we'll go this way. Emma Jackson, social justice strategic lead for Citizens Advice Scotland. Chris Stuart, president of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland, also a practicing architect with 35 years experience in affordable housing and several projects on site and a pacifist designer. Rianan Sims, senior policy officer at the Homelessness Charity Crisis. I folks am Willie Coffey, deputy convener of the committee and also constituency MSP for Kilmarnock and Irvine Valley. I folks am Ronnie McCrae, the chief executive at communities housing trust, we're a community support body. Good morning, David Malhearsh director of the Scottish Property Federation, principally representing in this context investors, developers in the built rent sector. Good morning everyone, my name is Maree McLean MSP, I represent the Clive, Inc and MoGuy constituency. Hi everyone, my name is Stephen Connor, I'm the development manager with the Tenants Information Service and we provide expertise in tenant participation, community engagement and customer-led scrutiny of housing services. I'm Caroline Brown, I'm the director for Scotland Island and English Regions for RTPI Scotland. Morning, Miles Briggs MSP for Lothian Region. I'm Chris Birt, the associate director for Scotland for the Joseph Ryan Tree Foundation. I also put on record that I'm a member of the Aberfell Lee Development Trust, we focus on social housing but I'm not here in that position. Good morning everybody, Pam Gossel, member of the Scottish Parliament for the West Region of Scotland. Hello everyone, my name is Ken Gibb, I'm the director of the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence at the University of Glasgow and for last year I've been working with the Joseph Ryan Tree Foundation on aspects of housing to 2040 and perhaps mechanisms and reforms that might be of assistance to its goals. I should also say that I'm on the committee of Shelter Scotland as well. Good morning everyone, I'm Ailey Kay, I am from Living Runt, which is Scotland's tenant and community union. I sit on both the national campaigns group and I'm also the city of Edinburgh chair. Morning, my name is Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland. Good morning, I'm Gordon McCrae, assistant director at Shelter Scotland, the Housing and Homes' campaigning charity. Great, we're good to have you all here. We're now going to turn, oh yes, sorry, Stephanie, I'm going to have to work hard to remember you're there, but I can see you, so do you want to introduce yourself? Thank you, convener. Good morning, panel, I'm Stephanie Callaghan, member of the Scottish Parliament for Uttingston and Bale South constituency in Lanarkshire. Great, thanks very much. We're now going to turn to questions from members and please indicate if you would like to come in to me and or respond to something else that somebody else has said. The intention of this that should be a free flowing conversation rather than a question and answer session, although sometimes it can be difficult to achieve that, but let's see how we can do today. So I'd like to start with a few general questions. Just generally to what extent, be interested to hear to what extent you think the vision expressed in housing to 2040 is still fit for purpose and deliverable and kind of connected to that. Do you think that the Scottish Government's legislative programme and its housing policy more generally is seeking to deliver on the ambitions of 2040 in a current way that considers the housing system holistically? So I'll start with that. So is it still fit for purpose and deliverable and is the Government doing it in a holistic way? I'm not going to somebody come forward who ever feels prompted. Yeah, Gordon, thanks. I was happy to start. Is it fit for purpose? No. It's not been fit for purpose since very shortly after it was published. It was published just before the last election. It had some key deliverables in there, such as a house building target during this Parliament. That was scrapped about three weeks after the election. The Bute House agreements have preceded that. There's never been a delivery plan for this that took two years to set up a strategic board. So they met a handful of times and I think we heard from them last week that its own board struggles to identify positives beyond just the mere existence of a statement. I think the housing 2040 vision which was only published just before the tail end of the Parliament was built on a number of very good conversations and good consultations. It contains many things we would like to see but it remains detached from the reality of people's lives on the ground. Today we anticipate that there will be new homelessness statistics that show that the situation is not just continuing to get slightly worse but has escalated even further. And we expect there to be a vote in Parliament today that cuts the housing budget. So for us any suggestion that the housing 2040 strategy is the right way forward, that we're making good progress, when you compare that to the reality on the ground, I think anyone making that case could be accused of making a statement akin to gaslighting. It has never been this bad and yet we're talking about a strategy that was never properly implemented from many years ago. So we think it's time to look again, I think also ending homelessness together. The other strategies that's beneath us has real challenges now too. So we do think it's time for a new plan for housing in Scotland that builds on the best bits but is actually deliverable within the context of the current Scottish public sector. Okay I just want to go into that a little bit more though because certainly what we heard last week is that the plan, the vision is good but the issue was that there wasn't a plan for delivering it and I'd just be a bit concerned if we kind of went back to the starting point again and created another plan and created another vision on our plan and then so just a bit concerned about that. So could you just say a bit more about where you think we need to begin and is there something in the vision that is useful that we could actually act on? I think I'd be more concerned if there was nothing useful in the plan. There's definitely things around decomoditising housing and ensuring everyone has a home but there is no means to get that to make that vision a reality. So I think it's dangerous territory actually to sit there going we've got the right ideas when there is no plan for making that real and I think it's vital that we appreciate that people are being harmed by our failure to deliver on this. This is not an abstract academic debate about something that we do once all the other nice projects in the Scottish Government's plans are delivered. It is not hyperbole to say that people are literally dying in Scotland in no small part due to the poor provision of housing and the cuts in homelessness services and I think if we have these kind of conversations in the abstract rather than that reality I think we're just going to perpetuate the same problems we've been facing for the last few years. At one point I'd like to come back to you on some more detail on that but I think I'd like to bring some other people in Chris. Yeah I probably should have mentioned in my introduction but I did work in the 24 he I kind of was part of the community engagement group that worked on that which was back in 20 I was pre-covid anyway I know that and I spent a long time driving a white van from Orkney to Gala Shields visiting communities islands cities you name it so I was part of that process and that discussion with other communities of Scotland I'm sorry for not mentioning that it's pretty pertinent and what I'm kind of aware of is so much has changed since then I mean we've been through Covid we've been through quite a strong emphasis now in the construction industry and retrofit which didn't really feel came through in the vision I think the vision was quite aspirational I think there's so much good things in there and that we should we should think hard about those but I do know that in the construction speaking a bit more for the construction industry here rather than opposed for perhaps more planning things is we are at the moment kind of struggling to to build up the skills to tackle retrofit I know that from visiting various schools across Scotland that it's hard for us to even gather interest from from the pupils never mind thinking about how we start to gather the skills on that and we ourselves we've got five fantastic schools of architecture in Scotland and we ourselves are busy introducing retrofit into the curriculums within our schools so that we can start to garner those those abilities to tackle it so I think that's where perhaps the emphasis has changed and that is our biggest challenge now I feel retrofit I know there's a lot of emphasis on new build perhaps in this conversation but that's that's where we've got to start thinking okay thanks very much for bringing in the retrofit I certainly some aspect that I do agree with you on that David Mahouz you want to come in and then Rhiannon just to say I do agree retrofit is a hugely important part of the vision and indeed even the issues on supply but I think from our perspective I think there's no answer to the housing crisis that we have that doesn't involve a major supply new supply of new housing across the whole country from our perspective it literally took decades to get some of the major institutional investors funds and so on re-interested in in the residential sector and that will only ever be a part of this solution but I think it could be an increasingly important part and I think there's a huge opportunity there but it will be important that it it does diversify as a contribution to the to the housing supply crisis which we begin to see where where that market has now taken off south of the border but we are somewhat paused at the moment in Scotland awaiting well regulatory decisions really before we can move forward thanks very much for that I and Rhiannon you wanted to come in so housing to 2040 is a is an incredibly ambitious strategy and it has commitments right across you know planning housing quality affordability any energy efficiency and so on but the primary test for whether we're achieving the ambition that that sets out and should always be whether everyone has a safe place to call home and I think that that's why you know homelessness charities in particular have been raising the alarm bells is because right now with tens of thousands of households in the homelessness system the government is is failing on that commitment and and as Gordon mentioned the biannual homelessness stats are being released today we haven't had a chance to see them yet but we can predict that those stats will show the number of people in the homelessness system is at its highest since records began with people spending longer in in temporary accommodation and a record number of children growing up in temporary accommodation as well and the reason we can predict that those statistics will say that is because it continues a longer term trend which which shows that the actions haven't been delivered within that that ambition and aspiration set out in the in the housing to 2040 strategy and we're seeing that come through our kind of frontline services with more and more people seeking help but also we're seeing it through academic research as well for example with Harriet Watt University forecasting and homelessness increasing by a third by 2026 unless we see significant sort of policy change from both the Scottish and UK governments okay thanks Ronny you want to come in and then Emma yeah I mean from a from a rural community delivery perspective there is lots of good policy out there 2040's got some good elements but it's not deliverable we're needing to have a more holistic approach we need to consider how that fits with the climate challenge with depopulation there's lots of opportunities to do a lot more a lot quicker if we can join the dots across a range of housing not just affordable housing business housing retrofit everything needs to be looked at and my concern with 2040 is it's a little isolated and not integrated enough with all other policies and until we do that we're not going to be able to deliver so we need to look beyond just housing is our feeling community enablement community empowerment and circular economies can you just say a little bit more about the opportunity you're saying there's a opportunity a lot more quicker if we can join the dots a little bit more specific around the dots that need to be joined I know there's policy mentioned there but kind of on the ground I mean basics are that there's not enough people here to build houses or retrofit or businesses across especially rural Scotland can't house their employees can't attract employees can't deal with the depopulation issues without housing so looking at housing without looking at the depopulation the climate crisis proper place making it makes delivery extremely challenging okay thanks very much Emma I think undoubtedly you know that the ambition of the vision is something that we all agree on you know a safe secure and affordable home is absolutely essential for people to live a decent dignified and healthy life and in a just and compassionate Scotland that that is something that everybody should be afforded the opportunity to be able to have but to pick up on Gordon's point about the harm that citizens are continuing to experience across Scotland because of either lack of access to housing or the precarious nature of their housing arrangements right now at Citizens Advice Scotland we are seeing people experience harm at scale right across the country as you perhaps know from from from your own work and within your own constituency not having somewhere safe and affordable to call home impacts on all aspects of your life your physical and your mental well being which just has a devastating impact on individuals and our network of bureaus across Scotland are seeing that day in day out as people come in crisis situations and that has a huge cost not just to that individual but it has a cost to the whole of society in general and as we consider what is needed in terms of building more social homes at pace and scale to consider reducing the budget on on that is deeply deeply concerning and I think perhaps rather than considering potentially what it is that could be saved by 200 million what would be the real cost of not investing in that as we would potentially continue to harm more citizens what would be the additional cost to our NHS to our local authorities to our education systems and moreover what is the cost to those individuals as they are robbed of their potential so we really really must face the reality of the devastating situation that far too many people are facing right now thanks very much Emma for that Ken you wanted to come in and then Chris Burt yeah thanks so the first thing I would say is that I think housing to 2040 is a remarkable document in terms of the vision and the claims that it makes for what it wants to try to achieve it has a clear diagnosis and it has a very lengthy list of recommendations but it kind of falls down and I think we said this before you know at the time that it lacked a real blueprint for delivery in terms of periodic gateways monitoring evaluation gathering the data and the indicators to really judge what was going on so that you know objectively one could could rearrange or re-steer the whole the overall project secondly I think that the sum of the vision is really really ambitious I mean it's hard to it's hard to not to go over the top with it actually because I mean one case in example would be the the plan to despeculate the housing market essentially to stabilise house prices so that landlords would earn rents over returns only capital gains real capital gains would have been pulled out of the system over a period of time nobody else that I'm aware of anywhere has tried to make that a conscious part of policies it may be because it can't be done but it's also reflects that you need to really make system level change to achieve that and I think progress on that is non-existent I mean I think the first parliament said there would be reviews of housing taxation but you know I'm not aware of any evidence of that but more to the point we really need to get going in tax housing tax forms a critical issue maybe talking about a bit more later on the other area which I think is really emblematic of these kinds of implementation issues is temporary accommodation the issue seems to me with temporary accommodation particularly in the central belt cities as the large and growing inflow the growing stock of people in temporary accommodation who are not getting out of it and the the challenges of where they can go not enough new social supply and not enough turn over in the social stock to where it's really the only two places you can generate that so that takes us right back to the importance of the affordable supply program and it's kind of in escapes capable so and finally I say just to really echo what Emma's just said last summer solace in their report with a latch show stressed in need for really serious kind of cost benefit analysis of the investment benefits but also the costs of not investing in social housing if if we're gonna have these disproportionate budget cuts in housing there needs to be ammo that housing commentators and government has to actually make cases to in defense of social housing and that's just a really important thing we don't do enough of. Okay thanks very much I'm gonna bring in Chris Burt and then I see how the hands are coming back around but Chris come on in. Just firstly to echo one of the points that Gordon made I mean the distance between the vision of 2040 which I mean I'm like Ken there are bits of it which are genuinely radical and which would hugely improve the housing system in Scotland but we are some distance from that a long way and and that is about a lack of delivery on those key parts and the costs of that are what Emma set out I mean I think I think temporary accommodation is a particularly insidious part of it you know if you think about any parent who's moved home will worry about where their child can go to school or get nursery places or whatever if you're in temporary accommodation that agency is taken away from a parent you you live on thin ice all the time that's a horrible situation for anyone to experience never mind 10,000 households I mean it really is shocking and I think that comes back to to the main point I think to stress is prioritisation like we housing in 2040 is extremely broad because the housing system in in some ways is complex but in some ways it's not we don't have enough houses we don't have enough affordable houses for for low income people in our society and what baffles me about these budget decisions that we have at the moment is I have been in many a different place singing the praises of the Scottish child payment it's an excellent policy it'll make a big difference to to families with children but if we put up people's housing costs where's that child payment going people will strive all the time to keep a roof over their heads so it doesn't make any sense to meet both in terms of housing policy to choke off the supply of social housing which I think should be our priority right now today part of that's about reversing the the cuts to the budget but part of that is about taking on the immediate pressures on homelessness and temporary accommodation and if that means that we need to have difficult discussions about timing of retrofit etc then we need to have them let's stop pretending we can do everything at the same time that the sector is worried the sector is lacking in confidence we need to inject that confidence back in the Scottish government need to be extremely clear on what their priorities are in the short and medium term to get this back on track or the the situations which people face across the country just now will worsen and poverty will worsen this parliament has legally binding child poverty reduction targets which today's budget could take us further away from okay thanks before i bring people have already spoken in i'd like to i think a lee would you like to come in a lee and i think also steven you haven't spoken yet one yeah so i think i just have to echo what chris said is that you know this policy is really ambitious but what's happening on the ground now doesn't align you know there was a 16 cut to the affordable supply budget and then last year and then one that 26 percent this year three local local authorities have declared a housing emergency in edinburgh there's 192 bids per council homes so there's all this talk but again there's no delivery on it and i'm worried that when we talk about supply when we don't interrogate what form of that supply is that we're going to make things worse you know we've seen that with purpose built student accommodation that that's exacerbating the student housing crisis things like built rent are particularly exploitative because they don't deliver affordability so i think if this government is actually serious about rebiting the housing crisis then a massive investment in affordable housing is really the only way to go steven thank you i think we can all agree there's really been more challenges facing the housing sector under our today quite often when we talk about the the challenges that are facing the sector we focus on the the organizations the landlords that are delivering that as well we our tenant members absolutely empathize with our landlords and trying to sort of juggle all these priorities at once but ultimately what you see what you see is we don't hear the voice of tenants when we talk about this and ali's just made a really good important point there our tenant members we're strategic partners the scottish government we were involved in the delivering the consultation and partnership the scottish government for housing to 2040 and a lot of members have said here today is our tenant members absolutely support the aspirations of that that that strategy ultimately in reality they'll echo a lot of points around the table here and say that where's the money budgets are being cut and quite often we talk about budgets being cut and how that impacts on landlords delivering at a local level but we don't often talk about how that impacts on tenants and if we're going to cut the affordable social housing program if we're going to stop building homes if we're going to prioritize retrofitting homes and decarbonizing homes it's tenants rents that pay for that the majority of tenants rents that pay for that and so housing to 2040 really aspirational and old kens working in the group that looking at affordability as well there's a commitment to maintain tenants rents an affordable level but ultimately our tenant members will turn around and say well it's coming out of our pockets at a national level for cutting budgets it's tenants rents that have to go up it's rent increases that have to go up to enable their landlords to deliver on these these priorities these targets so yeah I think that's one thing we need to take into consideration Scotland's got a unique legal framework for tenant participation and considering the impact of the current financial crisis at the moment and the social economic inequalities that surround the sector there's never been a more important time to ensure that tenants are sitting around the table making decisions in partnership with the landlords and that's what we want to see at a national level as well as a local level okay thanks very much for that before I know Gordon and Rihanna you indicated you want to come back in but I'm going to bring in Pam Gulsaw with she has a question so we're going to add that to the conversation and then I'll bring in Gordon and Rihanna and anyone else and you can either pick up what Pam is also bringing into the conversation or bring back the points you wanted to bring back we're going to do a bit of a conversation weave Pam come on in thank you convener earlier on obviously listening to everybody's evidence is so important Rihanna you spoke about primary test has to be where everyone has a safe home and Emma you spoke about citizens facing harm due to the fact that they don't have the right housing housing 2040 acknowledges and commits to implement and embed homelessness prevention pathways for marginalized groups and yet a shocking number of victims are left in limbo after leaving violent households over times accompanied by their children over on an average survivors of abuse are stuck in temporary accommodation for hundreds of days this despite the domestic abuse protection 2021 act which passed over three years ago so would witnesses agree that we are not seeing quick enough action to implement recommendations to improve housing outcomes for victims of domestic abuse and other marginalized groups and I'd like to ask you hand that question first then Emma and then open up to anybody else thank you yeah I mean I would 100% agree that it's it's shocking that the domestic abuse protection act hasn't yet been implemented I'm not you know I'm not sure what has happened there but when it comes to I mean homelessness prevention is is kind of the main thing that my organization talks about and the housing bill absolutely provides an opportunity to introduce new measures around around preventing homelessness but I would agree with you that if we can't get this right for specific groups who face very unique routes into homelessness and then then we can't really solve the problem so a one-size-all a one-size-fits-all approach just won't work in terms of homelessness prevention um so we have we already have prevention pathways a lot of policy development has gone in over the last few years since housing to 2040 was published to develop um you know pathways for women and children experiencing domestic abuse pathways for care leavers for young people um but when you look at what those documents contain it's it's a it's more lists of recommendations and what we're not seeing is the implementation in place so I think if this you know if the housing bill and the prevention duties are to be a success they need to be used as an opportunity to put in place genuine prevention pathways for the different groups who experience different sorts of triggers into homelessness um but I wanted to go back to to what Ken was saying about the need for appropriate sort of cost-benefit analysis in making decisions around budgets as well because uh recently freedom of information requests have shown that um Scottish councils last financial year spent over 160 million on temporary accommodation which is a rise of 50 percent in only three years and in a context where we're stripping out um 196 million from the affordable housing supply program budget um that is just an unsustainable uh kind of picture that we're looking at so we basically we need both we need we need proper um investment we need to continue investment in in affordable social housing um but we also need to introduce these new prevention measures and do that in a way that that caters for um different groups and bad different routes into homelessness. Thanks Emma. Undoubtedly the the experience of those fleeing abuse situations um is something that needs particular focus um and as Riana has mentioned it's just one of a number of groups that we really must be aware of um and I think it's really important for us to consider that when we particularly focus those on the greatest needs we have the opportunity really to benefit anybody everybody um the phrase in the disability sector is known as what is the cut curb effect when you look at making something accessible for one group you then have the potential of absolutely benefiting everybody um so you do raise one group Pam that we're very aware of um there but there are other key groups who face particular harms and issues within um accessing housing that we're very aware of at Citizens Advice Scotland um there are growing issues for older people particularly in the private rented centre sector and independent age just recently um produced a report that really highlights some of the particular issues that those are facing at Citizens Advice Scotland we're seeing a rise in a demand for advice um for disabled households particularly families with a disabled child um was a sort of real concern to us as well um and then we know that we have very particular issues for those living in rural communities as well um and we've got to remember that we're talking about people in all of these situations and so there's an intersectional um lens that we must view these and because you can be living in a rural community and be disabled and perhaps have been um a victim of domestic abuse and therefore the issues that are compounding um you and in terms of what you're facing um can can be really particularly very very difficult and so as we think about making sure that housing is able for all we will only be able to do that by having a laser sharp focus on those who have the the greatest needs um yeah okay thanks for that um I'm just going to uh I think that's really important way into that detail I just want to kind of pull it into uh back into a bit more of a general space I'd be interested to hear um in terms of the short term I think we've begun to touch on it uh in terms of the short term housing problems uh against the longer term um housing policy aims um do you think that the Scottish Government is adequately balancing I think we've already heard that maybe that's not the case but just um be interested to hear a little bit more about if you think that the Scottish Government has adequately balanced the need to address the short term housing problems against the longer term policy aims and where in the mix do the priorities need to change I mean I think um somebody already did talk about it it was Chris Burt you were talking about priorities but yeah just that balance between yeah Gordon I mean it's been mentioned a couple of times but the homeless distance are now out and the it shows a three percent increase in in children in temporary accommodation but when the the key thing when it's I think it's central to the assumptions that sit behind what the future legislative program is what the you know how we assume that interventions will work this idea that if there are duties on public bodies that and there's a there's attempts to get people into into those you know to reach those services then we can prevent we can either start to address the circumstances that are driving either their poverty their housing insecurity if we look at the existing duties today statistics show that one of the the failure to accommodate that's a local authority not being able to offer any accommodation has gone up by 1400 percent in the last six months that's going up from 105 cases to 1500 cases in six months this is not a this is past the point of of short term long term well this is this is right now the homeless the system is on fire and the scottish government statement that they sent to you is we're overall we're making good progress that dissonance just does not make sense to me and I think I'm afraid that is you know on the on the day that the budget that can it's not just a it's not just a capital budget that's being cut we can also see things that the homelessness volunteer sector grants that it's not something she'll to do but there are other charities who rely on that income to be able to provide those interventions they are being cut the overall capital the overall spending to local authorities to provide the services again not just the homelessness services but the mental health the drug the drug and alcohol treatment they are being cut we just have to have an honest conversation about what is it we're able to do what is it we expect the the housing sector to be able to do there's a capacity issue you know we can't we can't just expect homelessness to the homelessness services to pick up every case we can't as as steven mentioned we can't expect the housing revenue accounts to pay for improvements and properties the zero carbon zero carbon agenda and develop new new new buildings I think there is there is a real danger that we just continue to do another version of the of the same and it's real question marks now about things like the prevention duty why are we going why impose new legal duties we think they're broadly the right the right thing but actually unless that's properly funded we may be adding more breaches into the system it raises question marks about the future of the human rights bill that's that's coming down the line really important progress something that's in the housing to 2040 strategy but again what is the point in government passing legislation if there's no means to deliver it and actually adds to the adds to the crisis locally and I mean we are angry about this and there is there is a passivity and a lethargy when it comes to government and civil service you know the question mark about what's happened with the protection of people fleeing domestic violence that's been sitting waiting to happen for the last three years there was promises around compulsory purchase orders compulsory sale orders still not happened now we all say well there's been Covid and there's been other things of course there has but if we then wake up to statistics like these and say how did we get here and you know you've already heard solace warned about this you know the housing regulator warned over a year ago there was local authorities making housing emergency declarations people have been saying this for for about two years and yet and I'm particularly angered by the statement in the papers for today's for today's session from the in the ministerial correspondence because it just feels like a deliberate attempt to say one thing and do another and that feels like we're being gaslit all the time and we're asked to be very polite and very and very constructive but the reality is people's lives are being are being harmed by the decisions in this building thanks very much for that I just want to come back then so obviously there's the 20% 26% cut and that's a problem so obviously more money into the housing budget is important to to actually be able to do some of this but what would you say because housing takes time to build we heard from Chris Stewart already that is our struggle to actually attract people into the sector to actually build the houses or to retrofit the houses so what do you think is our priority what do we need to change policy wise type of housing that we build I don't know right we we're still trying to do affordable accessible you know everything featured housing but if we have this emergency in terms of homelessness and we need to get people house what do we absolutely need to prioritize well it's already in the the temporary accommodation task a finished group report and we've also set in the housing emergency action plan that shelter published we need to acknowledge where we are just now in terms of construction costs and and buy more properties for for people who are homeless and that is distinct from the role acquisition can play in an overall growth and supply we are in a in a housing emergency because of the breaches in homelessness we need to make specific priorities around how we act how we take people from temporary accommodation and then to settle the accommodation too many local authorities their approach to acquisition is is basically buying back from a social stock or maybe buying the last tenement in a block for for a housing management purposes what we would say is that basically denies 2.2 million dwellings in the country as being suitable for purchase to house people permanently who are stuck in temporary accommodation and that's before you add in the other 1500 people who aren't even entering into temporary accommodation for us it's about a medium term acquisitions program that involves new money new approaches that actually connects the people in the homeless system with with that there's a role for national government the 60 million that was made available is not new money it's existing money that's been that's been earmarked for acquisition and there's actually no role for for the scottish ministers in doing that it's it's called the national acquisitions plan but actually it's just some guidance for local authorities to to do it on the ground we need leadership from on a national level to to drive this change we're not getting that just now okay i think that's very constructive and helpful thank you ailey so i think um in the immediate term one of the things that we haven't really touched on here is affordability obviously living rent welcomed the rent cap although critical of it because it failed to include new tenancies and only covered those in situ we think it's an absolute mistake that the scottish government is lifting the rent cap and lifting the eviction moratorium on the basis that it acts as a preventative measure you know if you deliver affordability in the prs which doesn't actually exist at the moment um but it helps local authorities in terms of homelessness presentations it keeps people in their homes and that's so important um currently we are seeing tenants being served 70 percent rent increases that's a de facto eviction you know if you're in a local authority where they they've declared a housing emergency you're going to be homeless there's so what we need right now is the scottish government to act on their powers in terms of bringing in with the housing bill really strong rent controls to act as a preventive measure and deliver affordability in the prs in addition to that i think something that can be probably changed in what living rent believes is around planning communities want affordable and council homes we've campaigned to ensure that there's council homes these decisions are agreed upon at the local authority yet they're turned over by the scottish reporter so there's a real dysfunction between what local communities want and empowering local communities to build place um for the benefit of everyone and then what happens on the national level and that there's been overturned so i think it's really important that we look for greater integration with the planning systems and local authorities as well and also deliver affordability in the prs okay thanks i'm going to bring in chris and then right thanks very much and i know you mentioned earlier i was talking about the construction industry and we don't feel particularly prepared for for the retrofit challenge we were experiencing the same thing in our earlier strategic work and it's just interesting here what ailey said there but working with communities we're just experiencing so much community fatigue participation fatigue that when we go into um you know an urban quarter it's very difficult to get people to even speak to us um that there's a whole raft of reasons why that might be um but one of it is definitely they've been consulted so much and nothing has happened and also these are so many false promises and it's it's in many respects is up to us to be a bit visionary and and and look for large strategic plans but but we are now thinking much more in terms of things should be done incrementally the way we piece back communities should be done in an incremental kind of a way and it's very important to have something that and whether that might be some of the aspects of housing that you're describing there something has to happen quickly so we try to make sure that there's an early stage which will get built very very quickly it doesn't need to be very much but it needs to be something has to be seen to happen on the ground and some of these are very large strategic plans we work on and some of them are smaller more local neighborhood plans as well but it's really hard to get communities engaged because i think they've lost a bit of trust so i think it's really important to get that back thanks very much ken that's good thank you i wanted to raise some things that we looked at with the work with Joseph Rowntree so we did a deep dive into the delivery mechanism of the affordable housing supply program and i think we found a number of things that could be improved or at least there should be a debate about them some of these things are political choices and you know that's but there's a debate that needs to be had so to give you some examples we haven't had a financial capacity study of the housing association the council sector since the last one which was about 2010 so we rely on the voices in a room or the trade trade bodies but we don't have a kind of objective sense of the totality of that financial capacity i think there's a good case for an updated affordable need study for the scotland as a whole but also i think there's a strong case for and this is something audit scotland and their report affordable supply said as well i think there's a strong case for trying to like more closely the local honda modelling with the actual outcomes on the ground because it seems to a large extent that the supply program spends a lot of money and kind of leaves the outcomes at a local level to what the what seems to be we need we need to have a close connection to the local outcomes that are there we also think that and this is where the politics comes in we have a we have the spatial allocation of capital resources for the housing supply program is peculiar we have a thing called the shift which is a formula which allocates resources to the 30 local authorities who are not Glasgow and Edinburgh and that currently has a higher waiting for debt deprivation than it does for affordability and that obviously has consequences for where resources go that that's been in place since the middle of last decade or just after that it should surely be looked at again to and perhaps done in an open transparent way as to what these waiting is ought to be and alongside that Glasgow and Edinburgh through the transfer of development funding get a large amounts of money which which aren't really based on any formula they go back to the stock transfer days that really needs to be updated and changed seems to us the other the other issues the other two issues that are worth mentioning about the way the program works is that first of all a lot of a lot of councils like Edinburgh rely on underspends elsewhere to get extra money later in the year we think there's a really strong argument for not annualising the system in the way we do but to give councils who run the ships a year or two to actually allocate their resources if everybody would be able to make better decisions we think on that basis the father final issue which again very political but clearly a lot of local authorities use their supply program in part to reprovision so they're basically replacing older stock with various issues clearly with a shorter future life with with new stock that's not adding to supply of course that's replacing supply and replacing with better quality new stock now that's that's a good thing but should that be the priority right now when the shortages are so high so I think that's that's a question I'm not saying how strong that one's view should be in that but we should be we should be debating that can I just ask you on the the ship the moving away from annualising it is that possible to do given the Scottish government has to work on an annual budget I mean it's a conversation we've been having quite a bit around multi-year funding and all that kind of thing is that it would it be possible to do that what would be the mechanisms well I think I think it's the nature of the thing I think ways have to be found to try to try to do that we've we were thinking that a tour even a three-year program would make sense within a parliament so perhaps you could have two programs within within a parliament but I absolutely get that as we're seeing right right now that I mean the other point I guess is that taking a multi-year approach is actually there's a kind of that's that's there's a prior argument saying well we really want to defend this program over over life-level parliament so we'll make these commitments in the basis that we won't have these kind of rather shocking cuts half halfway through that again it's really about giving housing a higher priority in the agenda of this decision-making over the budget okay great thanks so I'm just gonna sort some things out a little bit process wise so I want to bring colleagues in we may have started to touch on questions you wanted to to ask so I'm going to bring in Marie McNair but I have a stack already of people and actually Caroline you haven't had a chance to speak yet and I think on this topic around the kind of balancing short and long term it'd be great to hear from you on the planning side so maybe if I bring you in and then Marie I'll bring you in with your question but then I'm going to go to David Mahoulish and then Chris Burton and Emma so let's try to do it so we're just basically do a process where we'll keep the conversation going and every so it's like lasagna every so often we'll add another another question to it and you can choose to pick up on that or you know go back to something else you wanted to to to get on the record so Caroline yeah thank you convener um I've listened really carefully to the things that have been said and I agree with many many of the points made and there are some real challenges in the planning system because clearly the planning system is central to the provision of new housing all new housing requires land to be allocated and consents to be granted through the system and we know that there are in some cases reasons for that taking a long time you know getting things allocated and then getting the consents in place but there are also reasons to do with finance and viability there are lots of parts of Scotland where you know the market cannot provide housing and this is goes back to the absolute importance of the funding for social housing and affordable housing and the role of councils and and RSLs in the provision of new housing in many places they are the main way of getting new housing in those locations because the market simply there's not enough profit for private investors and past builders to take on those sites plus issues around morality and dispersed sites you know those those economies of scale the skills and and resources and so on I think um touching on Ailey's point about disconnect there are definitely places where planning um rubs up against other things so that maybe the reporters not uh not agreeing with uh things happening at the local level but we also see tensions between planning and building regs for example and that can affect things like conversions of historic buildings so we can get planning offers that are very keen we've got really interesting schemes coming forward but um building control can put some kind of fairly sizable barriers in the way and these conflicts about again that's like sort of delivery holding up delivery staining staining um innovation on the ground and I just wanted to make a point about finance because we've talked quite a bit about temporary accommodation that puts a big pressure on local council budgets and in relation to the planning system this may sort of seem a bit out of sort of centre but actually it puts pressure on the planning system even when we've had increases in planning fees those planning fees are going often to help support and prop up the council budgets so the investment in planning the money that's coming into the service from development isn't then being reinvested in the skills and the planners that are needed to deliver the placemaking the new approaches so there's in some authorities there's a real pressure on that they they've got increased fees but they haven't got any increase in their staffing and their skill base because that budget is being swallowed by those bills for temporary accommodation so this this creation of pressure at the local level is affecting planning and planning delivery if we want to switch planning away from being a reactive just dealing with an application waiting for things to happen if we want to switch away from that into a proactive placemaking bringing people together and enabling development and new housing to happen we need we need skills we need people and we need that resource in local authorities to enable that to happen okay thanks very much for that's that's what npf4 is asking us to do okay muria you want to come in with your question thank you convener but just before i ask my question they're just declaring interest as a former councillor up until 2022 obviously i go to later on in the agenda thanks in your experience how well the scottish government and those responsible for working to achieve housing to 2040 aims including local communities tenants and residents in delivery plans steven you spoke earlier about the importance of tenants being at the table so you might be the best place to to kick off the response to this but also are we seeing whether outcomes are improving for communities tenants and residents yeah so as many people on the table know tiz we as an organization we support tenants to sit around the table and work in partnership with our landlords ultimately as we say there's a there's a unique league there's a statutory obligation to undertake tenant participation tenants are entitled to demand value for money and whether rent is being spent and invested in their homes and in the communities and some of the points we're talking about earlier on we're talking about priorities that have been towards housing to 2040 a lot of tenants our tenant members that we work with absolutely advocate for the majority of the the rent being spent in delivering new social housing and the communities they are very aware of the fact that waiting lists housing lists continue to grow and i think one of the things we're keep when we talk about the budgets and how things are being spent and we provide a sort of unique approach to supporting tenants to every year there's a legal obligation for landlords to consult with their tenants on their proposed annual budget and rent setting process for the year ahead and we advocate for supporting tenants to negotiate the rent levels that they're going to pay and how that money is going to be spent and one of the things i think maybe it's consideration to take away from today as we know we have the regional networks in place for tenants to work in partnership with the scottish government as there's probably a greater role to be for tenants to actually be sitting around the table and having discussions much like we are having right now to influence how budgets are going to be committed and spent in years to come and so yeah and we continue to see sort of supporting tenants and we what we see is our organization we see the service we provide and tenants voices we see it going from strength to strength however as i said earlier on at a local level tenants absolutely empathize with their landlords in terms of juggling a number of priorities and actually trying to negotiate a number of challenges that are ongoing at the moment while living in the midst of a crisis tenants are obviously negotiating a cost of living crisis landlords are negotiating and inflated them construction costs as well and so tenants absolutely are aware of that at a local level what we are seeing is a lot of frustration in terms of when at a national level budgets are being cut how that is passed on obviously to landlords at a local level and ultimately delivering more affordable homes and delivering energy efficiency and net zero decarbonization of homes is ultimately going to have to come from rent increases it's coming out to tenants pockets and that's where the concerns come because as we say it's very aspirational as part of housing to 2040 we acknowledge rent affordability is something that you must maintain rent affordability something may obviously at kens working with the group obviously we need to get a definition for it as well alie's mentioned that rent affordability doesn't currently exist in the private rented sector but how do we maintain affordable rents if ultimately we're going to continue to increase rents year on year on year to deliver on all of these challenges so that's one of the things we would advocate for at a local level tenant participation customer led screw at near housing services continues to go from strength to strength I think we could do more to see it at a national level as well we know we've got alie here representing live and rent we've got ourselves here from the tenants information service but it would probably do well to actually have some tenants sitting around the table in particular actually to share their views and opinions great thanks very much I mean for another piece of work we're doing we are doing some tenant participation so that's been very helpful just on continuing on the piece around including communities involving local communities tenants and residents and delivery plans maybe Ronnie community's housing trust maybe want to come in on that yeah like I've seen earlier I think there's a lot of opportunities my concern is that the housing system if you like at the moment is is too inflexible and there's not a will to work with the different partners whether that's in communities or businesses or service providers we need to take a more holistic approach to housing delivery we're all hearing just now that delivery is not happening but there are opportunities to improve that but it does need a more flexible approach from Scottish Government housing system look like making the system work I mean Chris Chris is working in Aberfelde the system is difficult is housing and business businesses are a real problem to get working together the Scottish Government's housing system is not a particularly willing partner for businesses we're working with projects in on places like call and say and on businesses but they're two they're separated we're managing to join them and on that projects but it's not a happy marriage and it should be is there something that needs to change in policy or is it an understanding or is it the needs to make it a happy marriage my feeling is the policies are there I think it's maybe a culture it's maybe a letting go a little bit from from maybe the civil service of control and if we're gonna if we're gonna deal with the housing and get more affordable homes built we need to we need to look at the whole sector especially the community sector on the business sector on the service provider okay great thanks I'm gonna go back to my so David Mahool is you wanted to come in a while ago and Chris Burt also and Emma so I'm gonna go back and you can come back with you may have forgotten the points you wanted to make sorry about that but I do come back in and pick up any and scoop up anything else that's been added to the conversation of David thank you yeah I was my remarks is really going to be that it's everything I've heard is really just underlining this is it's a crisis of availability and that yes that's not all about new build in a flight it is about reinvesting in in homes empty homes that may have fallen vacant even and I completely agree with that I mean that would be helpful indeed for the for the net zero agenda because obviously if all that carbon's already been invested in an existing building it's helpful to bring it back to life as a home however there's often good reasons why they've fallen vacant and a lot of a lot of those properties that are quite difficult to deal with so it will it will certainly not necessarily be an inexpensive approach but I'm not disagreeing that we have to get our empty homes back into use but on availability and a lot of the 20 and 2040 vision did talk about choice for people at the home where they wanted how they wanted to live in it and so on and we agree in that and that's why we do think that the the supply of new new properties into the housing market is is critical including purpose built rental homes in the private or the mid-market sector in particular the public finance point has been made strongly and I just say that I cannot see it improving significantly in future years and to my mind that means that the government needs to seek innovation in the way that it gets finance years ago after the financial crash might remember the work of sft they brought in something called the national housing trust my recollection is I don't think it did many homes it was maybe 1400 something like that and maybe it wasn't exactly right as a policy but there was something in that kind of innovation that I think needs to be looked at and I think the key point and that was really the strength of the public sector common as we've sadly seen this year private companies can and will go bust just like overnight and be gone authorities and government will be around notwithstanding financial pressures that they have now there's also been some examples further south and this is purely for affordable and social housing where agreements have been made with you know pension funds from around the world let alone just in the UK to bring forward new investment and work with social housing affordable housing providers I think we need to see more of that in Scotland in particular the points you know made about btr and intense rides well I mean some of the some of the funds I mentioned they already had their own rank caps in place even without legislation pretty close to be honest to the kind of policies that we've seen brought forward by the government and I wouldn't say that they are exploitative at all so you know these people are looking for long-term moderate rental income streams for the long term 10 20 30 years and I think that kind of investor is something we do want to see but as I said earlier we do want to see as it's happened self the border diversify as an offer so discounted rents with market rents single family renting and so on which is really only just begun literally there's barely a couple of thousand units in Scotland there's 50 times that number in England that's how far we are behind in that sector in terms of the the sort of tenant view on that well independently every year it is analysed in terms of how happy tenants are with what they're getting in that new market and it's a really strong response I have to say they do look at who lives in its average incomes and so on so convener would be happy to send that to the committee for the information yeah that would be great I mean just on the kind of stats you quoted there between Scotland and the south of the border development how does that break down in with population given that I think Scotland has five points something million and I'd be interested to understand it in that kind of relationship how many houses are we building per population would be interesting to hear you can send that to us that would be great yeah happy to send that I think there was analysis ready did last year looking at for example where the big two cities Glasgow and Edinburgh compared to those populations south of the border and they were somewhere low down there in the 70s which as cities clearly in population terms they're not that far down in but I will send that to you yeah thanks very much Chris Burt thanks I'm going to pick a few random bits of your lasagna if I may so apologies for some awkward segues here but one of the questions that you asked Ken about the multi-year capital budget I think one thing it's worth reflecting on well firstly that the capital budget of the Scottish government has been cut significantly since the financial crash and I think we can look across one of the fundamental weaknesses of UK economy is a lack of infrastructure investment so I put these comments within that context but the capital budget of the Scottish government is far more predictable than the revenue budget it's easier for the Scottish government to make reasonable assumptions of what about what a capital budget will be over the coming few years in a way that it's it's harder on the revenue budget which relies more on income tax revenue so I do think like I think there's a I think the Scottish government can make a decent guess of the revenue budget too but I think on the capital it's it's easier and less risky particularly if you're making over longer term decisions so I think I think that's one thing for the committee to to keep in mind I just want to go back to one of the points Stephen made earlier and I think this is where we get into slightly risky territory when we talk about new models of finance or new models of renting if you imagine a kind of a dial and social housing is an investment of us as a society into a home for everyone at an affordable level and as the grant level for social housing goes down and borrowing comes more into the line particularly for for housing association the cost switches from general taxation and public spending on to low income tenants and as I understand division for housing to 2048 that's going that dial is going the wrong way and I think that that's where it was said this in my in my written submission the the private rent sector is not a bad thing in and of itself but we have too many low income tenants or tenants on fragile incomes who are having to rely on it and so it's putting those tenants most acutely and landlords in extremely difficult position so I think we we have to keep in mind that dial and to stop it going that way because that is part fundamentally part of some of the causes some of the worst effects are seen just now I think just to round it off the the Scottish government is often accused of not doing preventative spending and I think maybe that's fair but on things like social housing it there there is not a better example I can think of off the top of my head of preventative spending on social house building it can stop so many of the other bad outcomes that we see and then for example in in a in a rural setting it can have those advantages of affordability etc but can also build community can build place in a way that perhaps it would be different within an urban setting I think that all of these things are why the work that Ken's doing is so important we have to look really hard at how our policy is working in practice now frankly when we asked Ken to do that work we were doing that in the context of a much higher social housing budget so that that has changed the exam questions that were slightly but we have to ask these difficult questions about where the places that are putting money into what are our urgent priorities because if we keep trying to do everything you end up doing not very much okay great for that yes a good point I think priority is coming through as a theme today Emma you wanted to come in a while ago so pick up wherever you want to that's great thank you convener I wanted to perhaps make a few points around helping people to remain in the homes and they have like undoubtedly we must be building more homes at pace and scale but we also need to do more to enable people to remain in their homes Ailey and a few others around the table have spoken about affordability which is an absolute critical issue to allow people to remain in the homes that they have but there are perhaps two other things I'd like to pick up on in terms of accessibility and the adequate standard of homes we we have an aging population and an increasing population of disabled people who need homes that are fit for purpose to particularly be able to to meet physical disability needs and if your home is not accessible then it is impossible for you to remain in your home so accessibility is something that we must really place a level of focus on and we really need to look at the adequate standard of repair that are within the housing sector out there in particular private rented sector the most recent version of the scottish housing condition service survey indicated that 52 percent of private rented homes would fail the housing quality standard and from our network of bureaus across scotland we see many people coming and seeking advice about the conditions of the homes that they are renting we recently produced a report titled in a fix which shows something of the extent of the issues that people are facing and I think often we can talk about a lot of big numbers and a lot of statistics so we have these conversations it's really important that we do that but it's also really important that we think about the individual lives and families that are being affected about this so I want to share an example with committee today that an east of scotland cab has shared with us they're working with a lady I'm going to call her Claire that's not her name but Claire's been desperately trying to resolve a severe damp issue in her property for the last nine months she already had an autoimmune condition so as you can appreciate mold and damp is only going to make that worse but the difficulties that she's had and been trying to achieve a repair have severely affected her mental health and her mental wellbeing she's been given a lot of false promises about the repair being made and it not happening to the extent that she felt that the level of stress of remaining in her home was too much for her and she decided to leave but she then found herself in the situation where the council were indicating to her that she would actually be considered guilty of abandonment and therefore would actually lose her home and you can imagine how deeply devastating that would be to hear your news when you're already juggling physical and mental health conditions and she feels that she has been forced to move back into her property fearing not only for her own health for that of her children and so we have got to help individuals like Claire to be able to remain in homes that are fit for purpose and that are safe and out of an adequate standard otherwise what we are doing is then adding to the already rising statistics that we've heard today of people who are facing homelessness yeah thanks very much for that damp and mould is certainly something the committee has taken interest in and we've been doing some evidence sessions on that I mean I just on the on the point of remaining in home so I was at the rural housing scotland conference last week and there was a part of that was the cedar land talks and somebody who was speaking pointed out that we've got around 40 000 empty homes we've already touched on the need to kind of tackle that there's 20 000 second homes I think in rural they were basically pointing out where can we find potential for housing but I thought one of the things that was striking was 900 000 homes in Scotland and I do need to find out where they got this statistic 900 000 homes in scotland with single people living in them and what I've come upon is quite a few situations where there are single people who really want to move they want to downsize so yes we need to keep you know totally take the point of supporting people to remain in a home and then there's another bit of the puzzle and I think this touches on what Ronnie's been talking about the holistic bit how can we look at all of the housing stock in the different situations and then say okay these people live in big houses they're single they're desperately needing to move out and so we can get families in there so there's something there like how do we start to move these things together Caroline you indicated you wanted to come in on that yeah it's interesting you picked that up because I've heard similar stories um from other parts of the UK um so that that wanting to downsize and in areas where there's demand high demand particularly things like second homes developers taking the opportunity to buy up smaller properties and extend them you know so so thinking about sort of bungalows and that sort of thing putting on extensions and selling them as family homes but then deny people the opportunity to stay in their community as they retire and want to downsize so I think there is a definite role for planning here for policy to be um thinking about that nuance at the local level so where you have those sorts of trends happening that the local planning authority can then intervene and maintain the diversity of the housing stock in the area by you know refusing those sorts of extensions and things and that's also really tricky because you can say well there's also demand for um family homes in those places but aging in place is a really important idea and I think we haven't really grappled with that in planning policy yet and it cuts across some of these things about anticipating future housing need and providing for it and maintaining that provision and not allowing it to be undermined by you know speculative development and redevelopment of housing a tricky balance yeah for sure certainly thanks for that I'm going to bring in Ken then I'm going to bring in Pam we are like well I think we're supposed to be here for a maximum of two hours for this morning so it's such a good conversation but we do have quite a few things to get in so I'm going to start bringing in colleagues a bit more rapidly but Ken come on in I just wanted to raise a policy idea that Christine Whitehead at the LSE discussed in a report in England recently where she was looking for you know housing policy ideas post the UK election and her focus was on stamp duty in England and obviously it's devolved in Scotland to LBTT and her idea was to focus on the under occupation problem of older households and to essentially grant them a complete 100% tax relief from from stamp stamp duty on our case LBTT on the basis that that would be an incentive and nudge to encourage people to to move at the margin it won't make a huge difference but it would help them at the margin but the second point they made was that by creating a chain of moves you could actually pay for itself because you would generate more more tax tax revenue so just just an idea I personally I would probably want to scrap LBTT altogether and raise that tax revenue in different ways with property taxes but as a short-term way of thinking about these things it's worth at least having a discussion about it thanks very much it's always very helpful when somebody comes in with an idea that there's something that can bring about a chain of moves okay Pam your question thank you convener David you spoke about having obviously a different diverse supplies of new homes into the market and in written evidence from the Scottish property federation wrote about the potential of emerging house tenures like bill to rent they wrote that there were around 17,000 bill to rent homes in the pipeline but they also said there is no guarantee these will be delivered due to uncertain policy environment could the Scottish property federation expand on the benefits of bill to rent housing and what sort of action should the Scottish government take to make Scotland a more attractive place to build homes in all tenures yes thank you so 17,000 in the pipeline but as mentioned earlier there's only around 2,000 at best now that are actually in operation at the moment the I mean it offers flexibility so for employers looking for people to come in it's it's usually very urban brownfield sites in fact almost universally urban brownfield sites so all of those planning criteria are usually addressed very straightforwardly and I think it's got huge potential particularly for places like Glasgow trying to reinvent city living for example and other parts of the country so it is a different concept I would argue it's at best around 10 years old in the UK as a whole so this is still really really an embryonic sector in the housing market and I think what it does is it offers different services so you know this all concierge type approach that you that maybe was more famous in Europe or America perhaps and simply hadn't been here before it's not the traditional PRS let's put it that way it's usually single owners as well and as I said quite often that will be you know a pension fund looking for long long-term returns in terms of the policies unfortunately and most of them have been quite explicit about this there was we were paused whilst we wait to see how the 2016 legislation would pan out and I think so there's some discussions earlier I mean some of that was quite you know radical open-ended 10 years so people can stay in the home that they rent for as long as they wanted almost so you know but they got the head around that and then and then obviously we had a new deal for tenants proposed for long-term rent controls in in Scotland which made a lot of the investors pause significantly and particularly the the rent freeze announcement which they they didn't expect didn't know about and there was without a doubt a very serious loss of confidence by investors in the way that was done what I would say is rent controls per se I think if the policy if the bill is is good it's something they can work with they would still want to come to Scotland and build out those 17 000 homes in a relatively quick period of time we have been directly told of some of those investors who've reallocated their investment to other parts of the UK and that's and that's unfortunate we're also aware just to touch on a point which was made early by Ailey you know some of those former sites for what would have been built a rent have now gone to PBSA because of investors at the sites they don't really know the shape of policy to come I mean I think the housing bill I think due to be introduced by the summer recess but then the ongoing process it could take a further six eight months and regulations even longer so there's a lot of uncertainty for those investors who are sitting with mandates and demands from their investors you have to make that money work at some stage so that's the concern we think we see built rent as additionality you know traditionally you've had private house building for sale okay so wind up please so we saw it as an additional you know to the supply crisis and that's why we feel there's that opportunity there's thanks very much for that I'm going to bring in Willie Coffey with a couple of questions thanks convener I just wanted to go back briefly to the homelessness service issue I mean curiously this committee doesn't have a remit in homelessness it's one of the curious things about the Parliament it's a sister committee that has that responsibility but it comes up here very often as it has this morning but I wonder if I could just ask about the kind of wider support homelessness services that we should be providing the regulator made some fairly pointed comments about systemic failures and some councils to deliver this and I've been saying it's not just about the numbers of houses build more houses we solve homelessness it's a wider issue than that and I heard one of your comments Ronnie earlier and he said you need to look beyond housing numbers only and there's a wider package of services to help to get people through that particular situation so I just wanted convener to just touch with colleagues what are those wider support services that we should be deploying and asking our councils to lead on to help us to get through that issue and I'm going to invite Ronnie to say something because you mentioned it yeah well I mean going back to place making working with communities working with businesses working with service providers and the care sector for example really really struggles to get housing in rural areas housing for special needs all of these things are really struggling to be delivered we don't have anyone to build houses or renovate houses in the rural area and that's at a time when rural areas are wanting to repopulate and regenerate so it's for me it's about joining the dots and and doing the renovations or the upgrades or the new bills but we can't do that unless all sectors are working together health sector education sector everyone and communities are doing a lot you know they're building their own school community own schools community owned health centers but the housing system needs to work with that more effectively and like I said join the dots the environment sector using more local materials creating circular economies we can do a lot more but we all need to be pulling in the same direction there's evidence in front of us it tells us there's over a hundred thousand empty houses in scotland at the minutes a variety of 10 years and empty houses second homes abandoned unoccupied long-term voices a whole mixture of that but what is it we should be doing more to assist people in the are having problems today in terms of homelessness to get them out of that situation is it providing more houses is that the solution only okay or is it a wider range of support issues that we need to be thinking about to bring in Gordon and then reamon best question can um it doesn't work without more houses but there is there is also other things that we we need to do we host the um scottish empty homes partnership there is definitely more we can do on empty homes we're doing some analysis just now we should show that quite a significant proportion of what we call what we've previously thought were private empty homes are actually owned by social landlords so there's actually far more we could be we could be doing there but in terms of the service delivery part of the problem is we don't know how much money is spent on homelessness services or or associated services because of the way that the central funding is allocated to local authorities there's no lack of ring fence and lack of transparency so actually be able to critically assess the scale of services is hard we look at areas like justice and health and elsewhere one of the best thing some of the best things we can do is just make sure people aren't released from the justice system into homelessness that still happens far too regularly far too frequently we're credibly concerned about the size of the prison population and some of the suggestions that there may be a moves towards another early release scheme and if that is not properly planned that will put additional impact into the homelessness system we've seen that passed we see discharge from hospitals into homelessness there was a really good piece of work Fife NHS did with shelter and it was shared with with the Scottish Government about how do you get advice and support into the literally into the hospital so that people when they when they're in there for a prolonged period of times and they're coming in with other issues they aren't moving back out into homelessness there's lots we can do but we go back to there's really kind of three things that need to happen overall we buy and build enough homes to reduce affordable housing need we make better use of the existing stocks that's empty homes allocating to homeless households using second homes i think it's a case to look at purpose built you know self catering and buy there is a case to i don't i wouldn't want to say it's it's the cases yet made but there's a case to look at them differently from how existing properties are repurposed into those sectors in terms of rent controls and so on but the big last thing is fully funding homelessness and prevention services but we have to start from understanding as audit scotland have said i actually have to understand what what is the scale of investment we're currently making so we can assess how that should develop and grow as time goes on okay we've got our action plan there reanna and then Emma um thank you um so yeah i think that there's there's a lot of research that shows that people spend too much time cycling through different services and and particularly the hard edges research showed that it's it's too often the homelessness service that ultimately ends up sort of um carrying the can for that group especially those with kind of complex needs um so we might see people you know in terms of being released from prison um or being discharged from from hospital or a psychiatric ward or something you know being uh sometimes not even at the moment not even being able to get this the the support that they need from the homelessness system itself um with with the number of breaches that we're seeing but um this is exactly what the prevention duties are trying to to address the prevention duties that will be part of the um upcoming housing bill um so part of that part of that picture is around extending um the definition of those who are considered at risk of homelessness so um if for example um somebody is is due to be released from prison that they actually automatically sort of meet a definition of being kind of threatened with homelessness and that they're they're able to um access the support that they need um much much earlier than they are currently um but there's another part of of the prevention duties is is exactly around trying to bring in the role of other public services in this so it's not just seen as a housing and homelessness issue um so we cut that they're sort of referred to um as the sort of ask and act duties so that other services have a role um in a kind of uh routine inquiry to to ask people about their housing situation and try to identify where someone might be at risk um you know they might be accumulating rent arrears or they might be living uh in in a home that is unsafe for them to live in um and try to kind of basically pull pull in the the support that they need um at that point at that early intervention point uh before it reaches crisis point and and at the moment what we see is even when somebody has um might approach a council homelessness service um knowing that they are at risk of eviction that they're often told come back when you have your eviction notice you know and that's that's not the situation we want we don't want people to actually be forced to reach crisis point before they're told that they're able to access any help um so i i think there's more work to be done in terms of what what that looks like in practice and there's more engagement that has to happen with those other services but i think that that that this new legislation will provide the the hook and the opportunity to do that and to bring in the role of those other services okay thanks so um if you've got new and new things to add to this particular bit i'm going to bring in Emma and then Chris Burt and then we'll if you can ask your next question that would be great yeah we know that homelessness is like the absolute pointy end of the crisis but i think it's important just perhaps to remind ourselves that people are not experiencing issues in isolation and we need to be thinking about what's happening to people's lives as a whole really at the moment i mean undoubtedly the cost of living crisis is having an absolute devastating impact on people and pushing more and more people towards homelessness who perhaps otherwise wouldn't we see an absolute skyrocketing demand rise in demand for food bank usage across scotland indeed it's citizens advice scotland that's something that we are witnessing as well we're also seeing a rise in what's known as deficit budgets so people's budgets are simply broken and there is just not enough income to pay for all of the essentials that we all need we are seeing a huge rise in demand for energy advice we've provided over 65 000 pieces of energy advice at cast over the last nine months alone and we've got rationing self-disconnection and energy debt happening at scale and so this is the absolute turbulence that people find themselves in at the moment that is unfortunately for too many people culminating in a crisis which is making sure that making pushing them towards kind of facing homelessness and i think as we look at all of these issues we need to both have laser sharp focus on housing and the provision of more homes and being able to work with those in the most complex needs to get them into housing housing situations but we also need to have really good joined up policy coherence across a number of areas so that we can really ultimately deliver person-centred support that's going to make a material impact and benefit to people's lives and so it's that really joining up across different areas obviously the role of this committee is a laser sharp focus on housing 2040 but how do we join up with other areas and initiatives that are going to get us towards the ambition that we want for ourselves here in scotland as we think about things like a minimum income guarantee and how we can guarantee that our citizens do you have enough money to live on so it's that completely joined up approach that we need to be taking thanks very much for bringing in that broader and more holistic approach and and yeah the fact that people are not only having a housing challenge but also the the energy pressures and rationing and self-disconnection and things like that food banks and all that comes with it the pressures of cost of living uh chris burr you wanted to come in yeah i'll be extremely fast because emis just said some of what i was going to say in another fundamental issue here on top of the things that gordon ryan talked about is the inadequacy of the social security system i mean universal credit is such that people are destitute never mind never mind able to live live a decent life things like the five-week wait deduction sanctions etc all increase the risk of of homelessness and the other thing in this space and it is a symptom of of our over reliance on a private rented sector for low-income people is the inadequacy of local housing allowance as well and it's failure to keep up with people's actual rents they're appreciate those are those are largely reserved matters but i mean we cannot overlook the the the impacts that they have on people's lives okay thank you very much for that do you want to come in with your next question thanks for that just just very very briefly emis you all those factors that you mentioned there have you got some evidence and stats that show quite clearly the direct correlation between those experiences that people are having and them becoming homeless so yeah at citizens advice scotland people are not approaching us just for advice on housing there's this sort of comorbidity then alongside needing to seek advice across other areas and it's the impact of all these different intersectional issues we produce a quarterly cost of living sort of data set that begins to indicate how these things are impacting but we can certainly send that to committee to make sure that you have all the that information available brilliant thanks very much a brief question for me convener it was just about housing quality just simply to ask you are we trying to do too much we want houses to be green to be digitally enabled we want to retrofit them i think chris you said we're trying to do too much at once and we might have to prioritize so what's the thoughts of colleagues around the table about that are we trying to do too much at the same time and do we need to prioritize steven sorry yes i think one of the things i mentioned earlier on was that i mean we support we proactively support tenants to be actively involved in the annual budget and rent setting process and we don't see that as a one-off discussion throughout the year and we see that as a cycle tenants are involved sitting around the table with the landlords having these discussions so if a landlord's going to propose to deliver we're going to increase your rent let's say by four or five percent tenants demand to know what you're going to deliver in turn in return for that and one of the things you've mentioned there is in the past we've probably seen yet absolutely a lot of developing organizations have been saying yeah we want to increase social housing we want to build more homes we want to continue with them planned maintenance we want to continue with them responsive repairs just a piece in the picture probably about approximately about one-fifth of every pound every tenant's pound the rent that's been spent is on responsive repairs and taking into consideration the cost of living inflationary cost construction costs far outstrip regular cpi at the moment and that's becoming more and more challenging for landlords to continue to deliver a high quality high function and responsive repair service and tenants that we work with we ensure that they're fully aware of that so again the empathize with our landlords but ultimately it's their rents that they deliver these services and when we talk about planned maintenance plan maintenance tenants absolutely that we're engaging with tenants absolutely agree that they want their homes to be more energy efficient and you asked earlier on are we trying to do too much some of the focus we're talking about is yeah absolutely we need to continue to build more social housing we need to make sure that tenants rents continue to remain affordable but the other side of it is tenants do want more energy efficient homes and I mentioned earlier on about the real challenges obviously households are facing in terms of increasing energy costs astronomical energy costs so when we start talking to tenants about moving towards decarbonisation we're now aligning net zero promises alongside increasing energy efficiency with the new social housing net zero standard and tenants absolutely agree we want our homes to be more airtight we want our homes to be warmer more efficient we want them to be more affordable but some of the technologies that are out there are absolutely concerning for them because they're hearing a lot of there's a lot of hearsay out there that a lot of the new technologies can be installed in their homes is ultimately going to be the detriment of tenants again and it's going to be it's going to put their energy costs up even further their homes are going to be colder because their landlords can't keep up with retrofitting their homes on existing budgets so yeah I would say if I go back to tenants that we engage with I would say absolutely they prioritize more energy efficiency they prioritize building more social homes they want to maintain really high functioning energy efficient sorry they want to maintain high functioning responsive repair services but when we talk about net zero technology at the moment decarbonisation and sometimes they're coming back to us and saying that's something we wouldn't mind leaving for just now until technology gets better until energy costs come down so that they're not plunging them further into into crisis thanks yeah I've got a few people so Caroline and then Ailey so just very quickly and perhaps to pick up the other side of the equation which is about commercial private development rather than social landlords we know from our members that there is definite scope to push developers to be more ambitious about the quality of the product that they deliver and there are some really good examples of authorities in Scotland that have been able to do that and so front loading their system doing a lot of pre-application work having honest conversations with developers to say these sorts of proposals are not good enough we need more of this we need you know more green space and we need more attention to the design so there is definite scope you know to keep our ambition about quality low-carbon housing that's energy efficient and and safe and healthy but you know there are also limits and I recognize that developers would also come back and say there are extra extra costs to that but there are some good examples of authorities that are pushing and they say some of the households are really surprised actually what they can achieve you know when we push them so they can do they can do more so we shouldn't downgrade our expectations too much thanks thanks very much for that you don't need to say it now but it would be super to hear maybe some examples of those local authorities where they've been managed to do that so we understand that would be great Ailey yeah I don't think what we should put anything on the wayside so because we've got a temporary accommodation crisis that means we should forget about retrofitting as Emma really quite eloquently put like we we do need a holistic approach that you know things for example fuel poverty just is increasing year on year and if we put retrofitting to the wayside then fuel poverty is going to get worse you know I'm a young person I'm very worried about the climate crisis and we need to always keep that crisis at the forefront when we build our homes you know for a planet and also for people but just in terms of trying to do too much there's so the broad higher level stuff and what the policy objectives are but then also what the reality is on the ground and from what we understand is that social landlords are struggling to access funding for retrofits so there's things that are already in place but are very hard to access currently so great a look into maybe the smaller cogs of the mech of the system would be helpful in achieving these things as well rather than deprioritizing what are fundamental priorities I am a project architect in the big pacifist project in Scotland which is 19 new bill flats in north Glasgow which we're just bringing to a conclusion and it really is looking towards the future there and we know that there's a lot of misconceptions about this technology and I think we need to spend a lot of time in simple language and speaking to the public about them and what exactly these things are and pacifist is technically very proficient you know and it does deal in air-tightness and it will deal in high levels of insulation and whatever but it is essentially a quality assurance project and it's all about collaboration with contractors it's a fact that the mental health of contractors improves in passive house kind of projects it's about actually when I go along most of my time I spend actually in validation or in inducting contractors into how passive house kind of works and they really buy into it and when I go along I'm photographing things not to prove that it's been done wrong but it's been done right and people really appreciate that so it's not just terms of quality in that these are energy efficient it's quality that they've been built correctly and all the parts of the buildings that are in the right place and that mentality can extend into structural elements such as wall ties it can extend into fire stops it can extend into whole realm of what we might think quality might be so this is actually a cultural change that's happening and I think we really have to kind of buy into it it's a medium term I wouldn't say it's long term because they will pay themselves off very very quickly these buildings and you can open a window in a passive house building if you want to it's not a prison it actually is a very much a people thing so I think we have to kind of get some of the concepts of what is high-end quality technology over in some simple terms so people kind of understand what these are thanks very much for that and that's a helpful addition to the conversation I'm going to bring in Miles Briggs with a question thanks convener my question actually has been touched upon by a few witnesses today but I wanted to to ask around a solution for this because I've been looking at some of the homelessness stats which are out as we've had this meeting today and specifically what stands out for me as an Edinburgh MSP is around Edinburgh has more than twice the national rate of household to now in temporary accommodation so I wanted to ask we know that there's different circumstances and challenges in different parts of the country and geographically the challenges around urban and rural communities but just wondered in terms of policy and what the government's suggesting within the housing bill for example where that is actually being taken into consideration especially around allocation of resources cosler being one part of this conversation as well so just wanted to put that out there to see what other options models should be available to take that into account okay anybody want to pick that up obviously but I think the Edinburgh is a really important case in point actually because it what highlights is the constraints on land and development and what that means longer term there has been a fundamental failure to plan for the for the future in Edinburgh we you know Ken touched on earlier the kind of over reliance on underspends and other local authority areas to try and go year to year what we see is we would argue a continued upholding of kind of different answers to different questions of the big role of mid-market rent for instance because it's financeable because it's fundable has said so it's kind of lent into this idea that well at least we can do something we can build them but that's not an answer to the record number of people in temporary accommodation it's not an answer to to the homelessness emergency but also we need to take a step back and say there are plenty of people making money from the housing system you know when we when we look at the system we say the system is broken and biased it's biased against people with protective characteristics but it's broken because we can see I mean the competition markets authority launched an investigate an inquiry yesterday and they said that volume house builders are making more profit than they should be in an otherwise competitive market we see 50 percent of private rented sector landlords have no mortgage and yet their rents are continuing to keep pace with those that the most leveraged so Edinburgh becomes that microcosm because that's where we have the overheated housing market but we I can't offer you particular solutions to all of that but we can't say if we're going to prioritise anything we should prioritise homelessness that is where people are facing the most extreme harm I don't think we can go as quickly on all things you know for instance we've already said should we be allowed longer for second hand purchases of an acquisition to bring them up to quality standards so that we can we can we can offset that that opportunity cost there is always an opportunity cost to any policy intervention right now the the acceptable the acceptable opportunity cost is increasing homelessness I think that we we really have to recognise that is the the situation that we're in just now what we would argue is that we have to balance that with things that how long does it take to get to to some of the housing quality standards how long does it take to get to to some of the the other areas and the last thing I would say is I think we need to look very carefully at some of the some of the developments that are taking place around the outskirts of Edinburgh hope proportion are actually going to be social housing as opposed to affordable housing it's quite a it's quite an elastic term that doesn't doesn't actually address housing need and then I think there is a bigger picture around how central government funds are allocated on the basis of need rather than the basis of the basis of historic formulae which I think Ken adequately covered earlier on okay thanks Rhiannon well yeah Edinburgh is a special case I think and it's I'm not going to pretend to have all of the answers for that particular housing crisis but just to add to that picture the the spend on temporary accommodation Edinburgh increased by 193% in three years and it went from 16.7 million to what is now 49 million last financial year so it is huge amounts of public money being poured into that but at the same time what we're seeing is you know I sit in an office on on Canon gate and alongside our client services staff and on a daily basis I hear them saying I'm so you know exhausted and you know upset of having the same conversations with clients again and again about you know basically them having to present at the council every single day because they're being turned away without being offered temporary accommodation so it's kind of like we have too many households in temporary accommodation and at the same time we're having people I mean Gordon referenced the number of breaches of the duty to accommodate going through the roof and that's that's what was our client services are seeing on a daily basis so you know it's a tricky one to say that we should that we should over the long term we do need to reduce our reliance on temporary accommodation but in the short term we need to make sure that everybody who needs accommodation actually has it and one of the things that I've been working on with with edinwood council is the the need for really more kind of diversity in the types of temporary accommodation available and actually to I think we'd I think it would be a cheaper and easier solution to put in place more specialist forms of supported accommodation which are available for people with really that the most complex needs you know people with for example alcohol related brain damage and that kind of thing you know Rowan Alba have a really good model that could be made more widespread and we're not we're not talking about a large proportion of the of the homelessness population who needs that kind of intervention it's it's small it's like five or ten percent but actually these are the people who are presenting to services again and again it's the repeat homelessness and actually if we can if we can introduce solutions which are targeted at specific groups and provide groups with the kinds of accommodation that they actually need then we might be able to kind of free up some of the you know attention of those services that are supporting them and I would say that housing first absolutely needs to be part of that solution as well there's you know most people will be able to manage a mainstream tenancy with the right supports provided so if we can make sure that we can we're continuing to fund housing first properly and providing this kind of specialist supported accommodation for those with the highest complex needs I think that that would be really valuable as part of the solution for Edinburgh but it won't go the whole way okay can I just ask and and I think kind of this has been the elephant in the room we're all talking about the housing bill we have legislation which isn't being followed through by our councils and the parliament government this committee will spend most of the rest of this parliament looking at a housing bill and bringing all these into one piece of legislation would it not be better given the emergency situation we have to look at actually what's gone wrong with all the legislation we have passed over coming on 25 years now and and actually focus on getting that right for different communities and just wondered whether or not a housing bill which you will invest all your energies into is the right thing at this point in time or actually making sure we get the legislation we currently have performing okay so just so Miles has kind of preempted the next set of questions in a way and pushed us into another conversation really and so before we go there if it's okay Miles I just want to stick with the more general housing to 2040 and then we can go back to Miles's question and I saw Chris you put your hand up there just because we were going to move into a specific bit about the cost of living tenant protection interim measures and I think that might fit better there I just wanted to bring in a quick question and I'm going to Ken I'm going to direct this at you because in your written response you were talking about some work that you've been doing I think it's the JRF work you worked with but you mentioned something about the need for institutional reform ideas including a new housing and land agency so that is something that hasn't really come up in this conversation it is the issue of getting the land to actually build the housing on so if you could just talk a little bit more about that idea I know we're talking a time where there's budget cuts and a new agency might not be possible but I just want to understand how you think that could help us okay well I think we're by no means the first person first group of people to start talking about this so I think there's a sense that a national agency I mean drawing on some successful experiences with other agencies such as Scottish homes in the past such as English partnerships in England and home homes England now that there are ways of facilitating land assembly on a bigger basis the evidence that we gleaned from talking to local authorities around the housing supply program did frequently suggest that although they can take longer bigger sites are an important way forward and it kind of chimes with some of the restoring of interest in new new towns and that sort of thing as well an agency that can support that but can also help with the funding of social housing can also help with trying to do something that Scottish Futures Trust have been doing in the past put all that in one place and doing so on national scale and having a clear rural remit as well so as I said I don't think there's much that's particularly new in that kind of idea but as a way of trying to find a medium to long-term way to help facilitate the kinds of changes that we need and to be much more actively involved in the land market you know following some of the things that the land land commission have been proposing all of that seems all to add up and it would seem to me that with the well be interested to know if you imagine that the land housing and land agency might be helping with things like we've got the presumption against out of down development we've got the brownfield sites kind of pointed towards developing on brownfield sites but I hear that developers are not keen to kind of go into that space would would the agency kind of help with paving the way for housing on those kinds of sites well I think in the past I mean you know a couple of decades ago we also had a huge amount of brownfield development going forward and builders who'd previously shown less interest in it saw the opportunities because they were being directed in that way so they were incentivised to to build their own divisions which were purely about about brownfield and they made that work very effectively so I think it's a it's about recreating or thinking through the reasons why policy was successful at pushing them in that direction it certainly was very effective at the time but it has it has obviously fallen out of favour okay great thanks Caroline you indicated you want to come in I think that that there's been quite a bit of discussion around that idea of some kind of agency to bring sites forward and I know it was also mentioned in the CMA report that was mentioned earlier that came out yesterday as a potential recommendation for the Scottish Government to consider I think there's particularly in rural areas we can see there's a there's a barrier for small sites and not attracted to volume house builders but they could be attracted to SMEs but there are barriers there around getting planning consents in place and a land agency could help with that to cover some of those upfront costs and then get those sites into you know to be developed quite quickly so I think there's there's a really interesting conversation to be had about that and it's definitely has some potential in Scotland can I just ask for the barrier is that there's upfront costs in terms of getting that site developed to a point where it can be built on yes I get it so preparing all of the reports that required for a planning consent can be a big barrier for a small small builder and the costs of those have gone up as the complexity of the planning system has increased and the types of assessments that are required so these sort of the small sort of one or two man sort of bands that used to be the kind of joiners that would see a site and develop it on the edge of a settlement a lot of that has gone away because of those barriers about just getting the sites getting a consent in place it's you know you need some specialist skills to be able to do that and it's the upfront cost and uncertainty so having an agency that could help with that either through the skills so providing that planning support or by you know pre-funding that you know there's potential there it was discussed at the there was a rural housing workshop last week which Ken's colleagues were running which was discussing some of this not thinking so much about barriers but what are the things that working or could work and we could scale up great okay that seems like yes that was a very good bit of work I kind of caught the tail end of it Chris you wanted to come in on this and then we'll go to the Miles's question about the housing bill actually this is linked to both yours and Miles question because I think you know in terms of agencies etc whether we need to retrospectively look at what we've got it surprises me often how little we know about where we are now you know that like having a good understanding of what housing needs and demand are across the country we just we just don't have that and I think some of the things that you know in Ken's forthcoming report in the affordable housing supply programme a lot of the things in that like you know sort of aging financial delivery mechanisms and stuff why have we looked at these in detail for a long time it just seems bizarre we were spending a lot more money than we are now on it we the reason we asked Kent is a bit of work on this was to could we get more in terms of poverty reduction from the housing supply programme that's obviously our focus but I do think you know having a more granular insight into what we need across the country would be would be incredibly powerful because otherwise we do fly blind a wee bit on on some of these solutions that lots of people have talked about yeah I think that's a good point and and thanks for raising the housing needs demand assessment because what I understand again from really good word that's happening in Orkney that that assessment actually doesn't uncover the real need in communities because people who live in especially rural communities don't put themselves on a list because they don't believe there's going to be any possibility of housing so we haven't really kind of you know clarified that and it's kind of digging underneath that certainly work that's being done by some housing folks in Orkney is kind of getting to that real real need at a local level okay so yeah so Miles's question about do we need the bill or do we need to kind of go back and look at what's already available and kind of dust it off Gordon it's difficult to see what difference the proposals in the bill will make to people who are homeless today and I think that's the that's the the kind of standpoint for us we're broadly in favour of the the aspirations that that that sit behind that there's a couple of areas we want to reserve judgment till we see the draft because Scotland has quite a fully formed right-space system we just need to make sure it doesn't create unintended consequences but if we are saying the priority right now is the housing emergency is the unprecedented scale of um law breaking by local authorities and we have to call it what it is you know when you talk about breaches of duties it's a nice way of saying breaking the law local authorities breaking the law there's no consequence to it and now and our solution to is to add more duties that they need to that they need to to comply with whatever the merit of those of those duties in isolation you know in isolation then there's then something is broken about our policymaking framework and approach and and and certainly I would be concerned if the bandwidth and the energy of the sector was going into something which which won't address real harm real real problems right now and I think we do have to listen to the front line in local authorities who are telling us very clearly they are they can't cope they're unable to cope and they don't have the and the regulator is the one saying settlement comes to Edinburgh and Glasgow but we reckon as we know there's other local authorities in this situation they do not have the means to meet the level of demand so there were past the point of regulation so in that context what should the priority be is we think it's about it should be about resolving the the situation of people who are stuck contracting the homelessness system now and that might mean having to take a different approach to when we schedule in that bill okay thanks yeah and well first of all I think it's difficult to well firstly we haven't seen the the housing bill yet and we know we we believe it's going to include several different parts so you know we've heard a lot about the national system of rent controls about provisions around tenants rights a new approach to homelessness prevention and even things like a requirement on on social landlords to to introduce domestic abuse policies so so the housing bill does is intended to do a lot of things and so I presume I'm not sure which bit of the bill your question is around but obviously I can mostly speak speak to the prevention duties but but I do think that they're you know there's something here around recognizing that that those different parts that are contained within the scope of one bill you know are intended for different things and some are more controversial than others I suppose but I mean we've talked a lot today about the the reliance on on temporary accommodation that we're currently seeing and I can understand people's concerns around local authorities and other public services abilities to meet new duties when they're already in breach of existing duties but I think I think we'd all agree that something needs to be done to kind of introduce a more preventative approach and introduce a more approach an approach that basically shifts our emphasis onto early intervention and shifts our resources resources towards early intervention as well because we can't continue as we are and we're just you know this is the situation is only going to get worse but it's more important that it than that it's basically we we need to remember that the people at the heart of this because homelessness is a it's a traumatic experience it harms people and you know especially if you if you have repeat homelessness but even for for a household you know or children who are having their first experience of homelessness if you can do something earlier further upstream to to prevent that from happening and remove the experience of homelessness from somebody's life story then we absolutely need to do everything we can to make that happen because not only will that affect that that child um now but it'll go on to affect that you know their lives um further down the line and that that impacts on them it impacts on the people around them their relationships but but also on on other public services further down the line as well so you know um I think I think we all need to to recognize that the the principles of what we're trying to to achieve are the right ones and and if this legislation and these duties can provide an opportunity for us to try to get that right then then we need to take it and because it's really a kind of moral obligation on us to do that okay um David you indicated you want to come on and then I'm coming in and I'm going to move on to the final questions that we have still to cover which is more focused on the cost of living tenant protection Scotland act but David very briefly delivery agency yes please but we need the funding to to make it happen on the bill um I think the most crying out need that our members are reporting is certainty and in that sense we don't see the likelihood so it's a bit of a pragmatic response really we don't see the likelihood of it being pulled but we are crying out for some certainty on on the details and will we go forward from here because the investment is not going to hang around is the key thing but I'd certainly you know we have a lot of sympathy with you know what's worked what hasn't worked and what could have been better with all of the incentives the last 25 years for reasons that have been given by other speakers I don't think there's anything we need to address that couldn't have been done before now great thanks very much for that so this next bit may not be relevant to everybody but maybe it is relevant to everybody so this really now is the cost of living tenant protection Scotland act 2022 regulations questions about that we just thought rather than inviting you all back in for another separate session or some of you we would just do do it while you were here so I'm going to start and then we've got three more questions so basically I'd be interested to hear whether you agree in the principle that the Scottish government needs to use its powers to amend the rented adjudication system to smooth the transition away from the cap and whether you agree with the proposed system in the regulations anybody Ailey do you want to pick that up that's what you were poised to yeah so obviously as a union we'd love to see further measures like the rent cap extended there were problems with the rent cap I think we're all aware of that that it failed to protect tenants who were on a joint tenancies so such as tenant swaps and then also for new market rents however it did provide a lot of relief to tenants who are sitting in there and that was really important because when we talk about affordability and things like rent controls everyone acts as if they're you know this well think you know we did have rent controls at one point and that you got rid of them and so you know we can do it again we can have rent controls in terms of the rent adjudication process we're really disappointed by what this government has proposed it's not going to protect tenants it's really inaccessible you know I don't really understand the maths of it and more importantly I think it relies too heavily on things like free market rents and we've heard from the minister for tenants rights that the way the system works is that they're just going to have rent offices going on to things like zoopl and looking at the current market rents which is just by no means a way to deliver affordability as a union would obviously recommend to extend the rent cap there's obviously legislative constraints with that because of the way the first rent cap and rent freeze was introduced with the cost of living more importantly what we're also concerned about is that this rent adjudication process only runs for a year and because we don't know when the housing bill will be introduced there's going to be no man's land between the end of the rent adjudication process and the introduction hopefully of permanent rent controls in addition to that the rent adjudication process doesn't take into other fundamental things that are challenging tenants such as EPC and the quality of the property it's our position that a landlord should not be able to serve a rent increase notice if there is serious disrepair so mold and damp that's 50% of properties in the PRS or if properties have an EPC of D or below tenants who are already facing fuel poverty they shouldn't have to be faced with a rent increase as well and just in principle why should you charge more for a property that is not of good quality so to say that we're disappointed is probably understatement but we'd really encourage the Scottish Government to look at other options before the introduction of permanent rent controls that are more comprehensive and actually can deliver affordability for tenants who are in crisis at the moment okay great thanks very much for that i'm going to bring in willy with the next question and then i'm going to bring in david mohol as she's indicated to what speak and then steven thanks it's kind of a following from that really it's about the mechanism of applying the rent increases as i understand it if the proposed rent is less than the open market rent then the proposed rent is fine by and large if the proposed rent is more than the open market rate then the open market rate would apply but if the difference of variation is potentially six percent or greater then a taper applies is that too complicated will tenants understand that should we leave it to rent server scotland to explain that or is that basic principle and may are fair and effective in a balanced way of achieving this yeah so ily do you want to come back on that i've been david steven and emma um so from what i've understood is that those incremental measures were to stop things so someone sitting in for a nominal five hundred pound tenancy to stop them jumping up to one thousand five hundred pound so there's that recognition that you know for long-term tenants they're going to have a different rent to what zoopla is saying but one of the benefits of the rent cap and the rent freeze was that it was universal and it was easily understood so people could take a calculator out and understand that oh my rent's gone up by more than three percent um and that's what's really important about delivering good policy that is affordability that's also accessible um there's been talks of potentially producing a calculator something but we're really struggling now um with our resources to get people to even explain what this means to tenants um and in terms of the rent cap was set because it was legislation this is a process that people may not have access to so if you don't speak english you're going to have to go through the rent service if you're a working class person who typically works over 40 hours a week on shift work you may not have the time to go through the service so in terms of one delivering affordability but we also need to deliver accessibility and ensure that it is inclusive for everyone um and so yeah i think the way that the mechanism works just really won't be functional for most tenants it's completely it will put people off from using it and then we'll see an exacerbation in um rent rent increases above the 12 percent cap for example okay yeah thanks steven oh no sorry david moholish you want to come in yep thank you thank you steve um we thought it was a pragmatic response to the situation uh that the government found itself in um it's uh i think i was just explained um so long as it was supported by uh open market rent i think six percent is is the maximum and then it gets tapered after that to a maximum of 12 percent there'll be some landlords who have seen no rental increase since 2019 potentially um so i think that there has a lot of landlords in the situation where um they hadn't had a rent increase for a significant period of time um we felt it was a pragmatic step in the right direction towards towards resetting the market um accessibility to rent service scotland absolutely agree with that um there's a wider question i think as well convener in terms of the resourcing of rent service scotland and some of the background data um i think the ons analyzed this and i think it was the ons found that i think 86 percent of scottish rental data was based on new market less um which because of the imbalance in the market tend to be higher in terms of increases so we thought it was a pragmatic step uh was the feedback that most of our industry gave us thanks very much steven thank you um i suppose just following on from uh well david and alie's comments there were sort of focusing on the private rented sector i suppose from us predominantly operating in the social rented sector um well as i mentioned earlier on there's a there's a legal framework there's a stat there's a framework in place for tenant participation and i think at the time that the emergency bill was introduced um well it it's no surprise it's sort of blindsided obviously a lot of people um i think the one thing that was quite alarming was it the timing of it um blindsided a lot of landlords that were already in the midst of um negotiating their that budget and rent setting process for the year ahead on the other side of it is um as well intentioned that it was to protect tenants applied across the full rented sector at the time um and tenants our tenant members in the social rented sector absolutely advocate for they want to negotiate their rent levels on an annual basis there's a legal duty for landlords to do so and they want tenants want to continue to do so um so tenants um the our tenant members are absolutely aware that um their rents their rent increases that pay for obviously the services that they they receive and also the investment in their housing stock and in their communities and they want to continue to have a say in that process um so we welcomed that when it was ultimately removed from the social rented sector however um the guidance was there to obviously encourage landlords to be mindful about um how how large our rent increased that we're going to apply um and what we've ultimately seen at the same time was obviously the cost of living crisis um as well as landlords struggling with inflationary costs as well so um ultimately a lot of our tenant members absolutely again empathize with our landlords they're up they need to run operate as a business first and foremost um it's not financially viable to continue to increase rent well below cpi um long term that puts tenants homes tenants at their tenancies at risk um so we always advocate for tenants to be able to obviously proactively negotiate their rent levels for the year ahead um that being said um early represents living rent and in Glasgow we're the unique we get funding through um Glasgow's communities fund and um we absolutely recognize um we keep an eye on um national policy um we see not we were against strategic partners of the scottish government we were involved in the consultation for housing to 2040 and also thereafter for the new deal for tenants the rented sector strategy which eludes to supporting private rented sector tenants to have the same rights as social rented sector tenants um for that reason we used funding in partnership with Glasgow city council to um trial a unique um tenant-led housing commission for the private rented sector um and living rent were represented on that um as well that that body it was um 11 private rented sector tenants sitting around the table with stakeholder organizations such as cash such as shelter as well um and effectively working together to identify what the key issues were with Glasgow's private rented sector but also moving towards making recommendations for reform and rent controls is absolutely one of them now ultimately we as an organization we support that we were looking to support private rented sector tenants to have a proactive meaningful platform to engage with the local authority to make improvements um thankfully we've seen some of those recommendations reflected within Glasgow's new housing strategy rent controls obviously wasn't one of the ones that were there to take forward but the commission in itself did acknowledge and Carol said mentioned this earlier on that um I think one of the things we need to prioritize first and foremost is getting the data we need to we need to we need to know what tenants what rents that they're paying um a lot of the the models we base it on are looking at um new lets that are coming in and we're missing a lot of data for existing tendencies that are in there at the moment and maybe that's a priority we know the new the rented sector strategy eludes to that we need better data to better inform us before we put rent controls and measures in place so I think us as an organization and the commission as a body as well in Glasgow absolutely recognize that that there's got to be work done from local authorities to understand what private rented sector tenants are currently paying in rent before we can then look at what rent controls are appropriate all right thanks very much for giving us that wider context and that kind of innovation of kind of collaboration in Glasgow Emma you wanted to come in on the questions yeah I think putting measures in place so that people aren't hit with large rent increases as we exit the emergency measures is a good thing um but we do have a number of concerns um about what's being proposed and move forward on rent adjudication um like Ailey's already indicated we feel that there's a lot of complexity about this and we too are struggling to communicate that to our advisors across the 59 bureaus at Citizens Advice and if we can't get our advisors to understand the process how do we get tenants and individuals to be able to understand that and that complexity which is therefore creating a barrier to accessibility um really is a very real issue we also just have some general concerns about um how people renters will be empowered to use the system um we already know that people are not coming forward to use redress and at the moment particularly engaging with something like that because of fear of being evicted um is really kind of holding people back so actually how many people are going to actually use this and get a good and successful outcome out of it is something that I guess that we're really concerned with and finally just to pick up on Stephen's point about data it's absolutely critical um we desperately need robust timely and available data um about the private rented sector to be able to help us to make all of the decisions that we've been talking about this morning okay just before I bring in Marie McNair with another question just on the data are there are there things already in place where we gather it that could easily be moved into you know pulling that information together are you aware of anything I see a nodding head over here maybe I can one of the situation one of the situation could be could be relatively easily utilised to gather about that data but that's a case that's been made for about six years and I think goes back to that kind of lethargic uh lack of urgency and the other bit for me and on the six percent above the low thing um is this continued reliance on on market rents and there's no conversation of the cost I'd say 50 percent of private landlords have no mortgage and if they're able to set there if the assumption is is that the starting point is the market rent and they are able that then we're talking about super profits being made across across the sector but the absence of data is is crucial okay did you say 50 or 60 50 percent according to according to UK finance if you look at the number of biotelect mortgages compared to the number of properties I like that's a UK figure rather than the Scottish one okay great Marie do you want to come in with your question it's unfortunate for you but but and how reliable is the data to allow rent officers and the tribunal to to make an informed decision really so this is one of the things that's not very reliable at all and before the introduction of the rent adjudication process as it currently stands that we forget that you know letting agents will also buy up in one area and so when you're using open market rents based on one block they're setting those prices against themselves so there's a whole other element and who controls the market as well it's not just numbers into a system it's obviously very controlled by profits and so that's one of the problems with it again what Gordon said about landlord registration I think that's hugely important and I think this lack of data that was available is one of the reasons why rent pressure zones failed because local authorities didn't have the data available to them that if you made it a requirement every year for landlords to report their rent to landlord registration you'd have the data there and it's a relatively easy thing to implement and then also in terms for empowering tenants as well that they would see on the database that you know this landlord has increased the rent by 200 300 pound a year in theory so in terms of empowering tenants to challenge that as well that's hugely important um so yeah just to say that the dust is really important and that um relying on sites like zoopla and uh what are the other letting agent sites just yeah it's not the way to go about it thanks for that Ely Chris I think that point talks to the kind of inequality of arms if it can put it like that within the sector in that it's it's far easier for landlords to vindicate their rights to their property which they rightly have than it is for tenants to vindicate their rights to a decent home an affordable home etc because it's much harder for them to prove that the the market is acting to disadvantage them and I think what the conveners refer to is how that data is collected is is very important and often you know the Scottish government did a lot I'm sure a lot of the people around this table were reached out to by the the teams of civil servants trying to get insight into into what this would mean it's it's data which frankly it's incumbent upon the Scottish government and local government to get because then that inequality of arms remains if we want to as Gordon was referring to the start if we want people to be able to vindicate and defend our rights whether it's for a new bill or through the UNCRC or whatever else people need good data to be able to make those arguments yeah I was going to say that I think of the new rent control proposals as rpz 2.0 really it obviously has inclusion of new new tenancies as well but it's exactly the same fundamental issues about how do you you need data to be able to monitor and assess what's going on in a local market the whole point of these models is to create at a at a spatially well-defined local area what's going on so you need to know what's going on and zoopla and all that excellent new rent data they've got doesn't do that job it can't do that job we recently did a study for chart institute housing about local housing allowances where we did an foi to find out the breakdown between new new rents and existing tenancies used by the rent service at each broad rental market area and absolutely dominated by the the new the new rents so so there's a really serious question I think if turnover is is variable in local markets as it's going to be relying on just new rents will not tell you what the actual underlying market rent is so and I think as as gordon says said earlier the obvious place to go is is is to reboot the landlord registration system so that we do get all rents and we have property card basic property cards with stick size and type would probably be enough in an address to be able to do the analysis but there seem to be roadblocks to that that seem to stop it being able to be pushed forward during the consultation back in 22 the implication and it was that's what the government wanted to do but the in discussions subsequently they seem to be there seems to be complete ambiguity and lack of clarity but whether that is something that they think they can pursue okay thanks for that is there anything so apart from in the in the registration for his landlord registration apart from declaring the rent is there any you say reboot it is there anything else that we can add into that at the same time as I say if you could add in some some prop some property characteristics length of tenancy some something something similar just says a little bit about what the tenancy looks like you just have a what the economists would call a really powerful hedonic database where you could actually link together rent to location to property type other characteristics and you'd be able to see you'd be able to do that would open up the analysis right what about things like EPC ratings absolutely yeah that kind of a gas boiler check I wouldn't go I wouldn't go too far because I seriously I wouldn't go too far but you don't need a lot to be able to do the kind of things you want but there are obviously there are specific policy things of interest yes okay great thanks very much for that okay so I'm just going to bring in the final question from who's that oh online Stephanie Callahan who's been listening intently to a discussion thanks very much convener and some really really important points there I think made around data however I'm interested in hearing from the panel about what they see as the impact of homelessness at the end of eviction provisions thank you anybody want to pick that Rhiannon yeah I mean so that the cost of living acts provisions coming to an end at the end of March is a real worry in terms of a potential rise in evictions I think especially alongside these rent adjudication measures being introduced at the same time I think you know crisis supports the rent adjudication measures because it is as colleagues have said a kind of pragmatic approach it's almost like the only way out of the situation that we're that we have now but I think it needs to be accompanied by a public awareness raising campaign to let tenants know that you know if they do experience a rent increase that that there are things that they can do that they can go to their local cab or they can go to the rent service Scotland my worry I suppose is that without that that you know tenants are going to be worried if they challenge rent rent increases directly with their landlord that they might be at risk of eviction and potentially illegal eviction so I think there needs to be public messages out there that makes it clear that what is being put in place and that what tenants rights are in relation to eviction and the new eviction grounds being made discretionary rather than mandatory and so on and there's obviously a role for advice agencies in that as well but yeah the homelessness monitor Scotland which is a research report which was recently published surveys local authorities and one of the key things that came out of that was their local authorities concern around a steep rise in eviction from the private rented sector as these cost of living act provisions come to an end at the end of March so yes it's just one one more thing I think that is kind of adding to the pressures and the concerns at the moment thanks Gordon I think it's important to say there's not been an eviction ban for most of our clients because of the the very low floor that the the exceptional rears was set at which was always below the average level at which an eviction would take place enemy most landlords did do work with with their tenants so we've always held that it was the act was a fundamentally flawed piece that the other bit is we then there's no doubt that we will see more evictions as this you know we've got we advise people every day on our helpline that are saying that my landlords told me as soon as they can they're going to increase the rent as Emma said you know it's likely that people will you know if they push it to 10 percent above is that really worth trying to access the rent right you that the service is I think a bit of a mishmash the other thing is the courts do not have the capacity to to defend these actions so I think we are looking at a bit of a cliff edge here where we're going to have people unable to access advice landlords and tenants equally unable to really navigate the system and I think there will be some online calculators and so on for those people that can that can access them but it's it's it's another source of it's another shock potentially to the homelessness services at a time when it can ill afford any new any new expansion of need okay thanks Pam you wanted to come in with a small supplementary yeah thank you it's it's actually my question I'm coming in but what they're speaking about oh yes right yes yeah thank you convener last week we heard that the changes to the regulations are viewed too many as confusing and today we are hearing that basically missing data basically could cause a problem as well and this is something that Callum I'm going to say the name right I think Shomsak from the Chartered Institute of Housing mentioned as well how important data is and also we're hearing today from the side of tenants as well but let's speak about the landlords now from their side and looking at that do you feel that first of all with all this areas of confusion and missing data right should these regulations still go ahead the second thing is do you feel that this would impact upon the supply of housing because this is taking investor basically out of this market will have less houses out there basically to rent as well out so that means we're going to come out with that is it going to come out with a bigger shortage of homes should we be having a balance in this for tenants and for obviously landlords so it's my question's kind of around the fact that how do you balance that and should these regulations go ahead and David if you want to go ahead and I'm looking at you first yeah the data point is one we've always been worried about and and the capacity for rent service Scotland equally we've talked to RSS directly have them into our members always been worried about that going back years and back to RPZ and and so on we do think these regulations are a pragmatic response and therefore yes I mean if something was going to happen then then then they should go ahead because in a way I think they they do try and avoid that cliff edge for tenants and you know there's no doubting there are some landlords there who have been frozen in terms of their income and are you know financially the financial viability of continuing as landlords is an issue without a shadow of a doubt many more are looking to exit the sector we're told so so for those reasons we agree I would encourage the the committee to have a look at what the ONS is proposing in terms of trying to improve that balance between sitting tenant rental changes and that should help and that and that that work has been done they've sampled it so that should help these new provisions hopefully in terms of investors we've talked to I have to say they felt this was a sensible step forward and you know and therefore there's more discussions going about that future supply properties off the back of of these there was widespread uncertainty before that I have to report as to what would happen come 31st of March okay thanks at Ailey I can't see how the rent adjudication process would necessarily affect supply because it's for sitting tenants rent controls on the other hand there is obviously that argument about supply which also just doesn't really seem to be true Germany has one of the biggest PRS yeah systems in terms of housing and it has rent controls you know France has rent controls like UK the UK and Scotland obviously are actually out with Europe for not having a form of rent controls in terms of supply I don't really I think that's more of a red herring and in in Scotland the rental market actually increased by 3000 properties of during the rent cap and you know we've heard we read the documentation as well and that landlords have actually said the changes at a UK tax level were more decent of disincentivising than rent controls in terms of that so I don't think rent controls torpedo supply essentially yeah thank you for that because thank you for that information because obviously this was highlighted last week from our witnesses quite a lot that there would be an issue and there is an issue there are people by be moving out the market so if you've given those stats I will go back and check those stats and see what's happened yeah no thank you thanks very much and finally Emma just very briefly to kind of come in on this because I think it is an important conversation and bring landlords into this that citizens advice we provide advice both to individuals and to indeed landlords as well you know sort of I think Ailey's made some excellent points which I won't go over myself but I do think we do have a role to play in making sure that good landlords don't leave the system because they do play an important part in designing the rent control system that we want for the future and we need to see what it is that we need to do in terms of facilitating training and advice and support for landlords within that but if I take our mind back to the start of the conversation about prioritisation and what are the biggest issues that we face and where is the absolute burning platform so that we see right now it is not with landlords it's with individuals who are experiencing the absolute worst of the homelessness crisis that we're seeing across Scotland today as I was preparing for coming in today and reading some of I guess the devastating examples that we see throughout the cab network and I know Rhiannon and Gordon would be able to share equally harrowing stories but something that really struck me was in the east of Scotland cab at the moment they're working with an individual who has found themselves homeless because of affordability issues and he's now living in a tent in a rural community can you imagine what it must be like to be sleeping in a tent in rural Scotland in February that is where the burning platform of the issues that we have are right now and that's absolutely where our attention needs to be okay thanks very much for for that pointing us in a particular direction there at the end of that conversation so thank I think it has been a really good conversation I we probably could have had a couple more hours to unpack some of the kind of bits and pieces that were raised across across the room and throughout the conversation but really appreciate you all giving the time to this discussion today I'm now going to briefly suspend the meeting to allow you all to leave the room but colleagues we're going to need to press on with some other bits and pieces quite soon thanks thanks willy the next item on our agenda today is to consider the following negative instruments local governance scotland act 2004 remuneration amendment regulations 2024 ssi 2024 slash 24 and then the most non-domestic rating valuation of utilities scotland amendment order 2024 ssi 2024 slash 25 there's no requirement for the committee to make any recommendations on negative instruments do members have any comments on these instruments no one has any comments is the committee agreed that we do not wish to make any recommendations in relation to these instruments we are agreed thank you we previously agreed to take the next three items in private so as that was the last public item on our agenda for today I now close the public part of the meeting