 Good morning, and welcome to the eighth meeting of the local government housing and planning committee in 2022. I would ask all members and witnesses to ensure their mobile phones are on silent and that all other notifications are turned off during the meeting. Willie Coffey and Mark Griffin are both joining us remotely for today's meeting. We are also joined today by the convener of the social justice and social security committee, Eleanor Whitham, who is joining us for both evidence sessions on the coronavirus recovery and reform Scotland bill under agenda item 2. I welcome Eleanor to the meeting. The first item on our agenda is to decide whether to take item 4 in private. Item 4 is consideration of the evidence that we have taken on the coronavirus recovery and reform Scotland bill. Are we all agreed? Thank you. We are now turned to agenda item 2, which is to take evidence on the coronavirus recovery and reform Scotland bill at stage 1. This committee is leading on scrutiny of part 4 of the bill, which makes provision to strengthen the protections from evictions for private rented tenants. We will hear from two separate panels of witnesses today with the first consisting of stakeholders and the second being with the minister for zero carbon buildings, active travel and tenants rights. We are joined remotely for our first session by Alistair Houston, who is a solicitor and head of housing and court department at the legal services agency. Matt Downey, who is chief executive of crisis, John Blackwood, who is the chief executive of Scottish Association of Landlords and Andrew Watson, who is a researcher at the University of Glasgow. I will aim to bring all witnesses into the discussion, but members, if you wish to direct a question to a particular witness, please make this clear to assist our broadcasting team in operating cameras and microphones. If any of the witnesses wish to come in on a particular point, please let me know by typing R in the chat function and I will bring you in at an appropriate point. I intend to allow around 75 minutes for this session and I will now open up the session to questions from members. I would like to begin with a question, which I am going to initially direct to Matt Downey. Do you agree that the Tennessee proposals in the bill will contribute to the Scottish Government's objective of addressing the harms caused by the pandemic and tackling systemic inequalities made worse by the pandemic? Matt. Good morning. Thank you for the invitation and thank you for the question. I fundamentally do agree that the important backdrop to this is not just the pandemic, but also the Scottish Government's housing to 2040 aim that the housing system will be tenure-neutral in Scotland with the purpose of everybody, regardless of where they live, experiencing the same affordability, security and other arrangements that allow for their housing to be successful. It is also the case, although that ambition exists, that those in the greatest housing need have the fewest housing options. We see that through our services every day and we know it to be true, particularly in relation to homelessness. My view is that the provisions laid out in part four of the bill absolutely do help to achieve a much greater sense of equity and improve life chances because it is our view that the private rented sector can be a safe, secure and appropriate tenure and that putting it on the stable footing and equal footing with the social rented sector can be achieved by the measures that are set out in the bill, but through others that I hope to get into a bit more today. We can move from the private rented sector being a cause of homelessness to a really good solution to it. Perhaps that will give you some idea of the comments that I would like to get into later, but I fundamentally agree with your proposition. Thank you very much for that, Matt. A painting on optimistic view. I would like to bring in John Blackwood for your perspective on that question. Yes, and thank you, convener, for inviting me along morning to give evidence. Certainly a concern that we have going forward is about investor confidence in wanting to continue to provide valuable housing in Scotland, and that is something we certainly, as the Scottish Association of Landlords, would like to focus on. We are certainly hearing from landlords up and down the country that they are concerned about the future viability of their businesses here in Scotland, and many are opting to sell up and exit the market even now. A big concern that we have going forward is that, very soon, we could see the doors to private renting being firmly closed to perhaps those who rely on it most, and we need to find ways to overcome that. Is there a need for those changes to be made permanent now, as opposed to as part of a wider package of changes that may be introduced as part of a future housing bill? I will bring in Andrew Watson on that one first. I think that the general point that I would make is that, including the change in the wider Covid recovery strategy, it may well have been overlooked in some quarters. I have seen very little discussion on social media linked in it, whereas the new deal for tenants consultation has received significant coverage in social media commentary. It might therefore have been better to locate the proposed changes within a single PRS-focused consultation. Something that we will return to later as well is that there is a lot of change in the PRS building on a period in which there has already been a lot of change. Sometimes, perhaps in the impact assessments that are associated with looking at specific impacts of specific pieces of legislation, rather than looking at the impact on the whole. For example, it states in the financial memorandum that it is unlikely that there will be any significant loss of landlords due to that legislation. That may or may not be the case, but when it is taken in the round with changes to energy performance, future rent controls, etc., it may well have quite a profound effect on supply. I think that having a separate from the consultation into the 10-inch new deal is potentially a little bit damaging. Thank you for your response. Alistair Houston, do you have any thoughts on the idea of making the changes permanent now, as opposed to part of a wider package? I think that I am quite keen to see them being made permanent just now. I would echo the comments from Matt Downey about equity of tenure. I do not see any reason why the private residential sector should not be put on an equal footing with the social sector. It is important to note that, for the purposes of the resolution of homelessness, the private residential tenancy is already a statutory option for local authorities to fulfil duties to a homeless person. It is therefore important that tenants in that sector enjoy the same protections and ultimately harmonisation across the sectors. Thank you, convener, and good morning, committee and panel. Before I ask my question this morning, I would like to refer members to my declarations of interests—or sorry, my register of interests—as I am still a serving councillor in North Lanarkshire. Building on the answer that Andrew Watson gave in relation to the need for a consultation in particular, the PRS consultation, how sufficient was the Scottish Government's consultation overall on the bill's proposals? It was set out as would be standard and normal with a consultation process. I think that, certainly from the landlords that I have spoken to, they were not immediately aware of it because it was very much branded as a covery recovery bill. Therefore, it may not have reached the attention of some of those that it was perhaps designed to. As I said, there is obviously a lot of other things going on in the PRS at the moment that may be distracted attention from that bill. I am not sure, but the level response has been compared to other similar types of consultations, but it does not strike me as being a massive response to date. However, you may have a different opinion on that. The consultation, from a perspective of completing it, was user-friendly and easy to understand. However, I agree with the comments of Andrew Watson that it may have been missed by some stakeholders, given that it forms part of the wider bill. However, I do expect that those stakeholders who are particularly active in the sector were aware of it, and certainly the organisations that we work mostly with were involved in formulating responses. John Black, please, from the Association of Landlords. Yes, to concur with everything that has been said, there has been a consultation period. We have been involved in that consultation, which is obvious as a result of our involvement today. Of course, wider landlords have been made aware of it as well, through our membership and ways of engaging with our members at a local level and a national level. I take the point that we need to look at the bigger picture of the private rented sector. What purpose does it serve and how can we properly and proportionately regulate it for the future, and at the same time instilling confidence in landlord investors? I want to remind the panel that, if you want to come in on a question, put an hour in the chat function if we have not directed a question to you, and that way we can bring you in. We are now going to move to questions from Willie Coffey, who is joining us on Blue Jeans. Thanks very much, convener, and good morning to everybody. My first question is probably aimed at Matt. Can you tell us a wee bit more about the impact that the temporary removal of mandatory evictions actually had? What were the advantages of that as you see it? Thanks very much for the question. The advantage from our perspective is that when it comes to individual circumstances, a system whereby the ways in which homelessness can be prevented and circumstances can be improved are not always raised, and they are not always clear when it comes from a mandatory system. Therefore, discretion in every sense allows for a sensible conversation that prevents the human misery and cost and the degradation that homelessness brings. Obviously, that does not make eviction impossible, and eviction will still take place. We would always say that that is appropriate, and we need to be supported in this sector. There are lots of ways in which that can happen and could be improved. However, what we discovered in the last couple of years is that homelessness through the private rented sector has decreased significantly because of those measures. The applications or homelessness assistance in local authorities on the basis of eviction from the private rented sector have plummeted, and that is because of the range of measures that were in place. That relates to the previous question in the sense that what we now see is a lot of concern from local authorities about pent-up situations of rent arrears and other situations where that is the time to bring in those measures and to bring in all discretion so that each and every one of those cases can be dealt with on its merits, rather than a one-size-fits-all decision from the tribunal. Matt, you mentioned that there was a significant drop in the levels of homelessness. Do you have any… Your submission mentioned some of the figures, but do you have them to hand? Just so that the members can be aware of that, what was the actual drop in the homelessness numbers that we experienced? The numbers of households presenting as homeless due to a loss of rental tenancies fell by 15% to 7% in 2021, compared to the previous year. That is 4,651 people down to 1,999. That is a really significant drop. Any other panel members want to respond to that issue about the benefits of the measure that was introduced, or can I move on to the next question, convener? John Blackwood would like to come in. Thank you very much, convener. This is something that we did report on in our consultation response. We did analyse all the eviction cases that went before the first year of tribunal in 2021. One of the issues that we had was how many tenancies were protected as a result of all grounds being discretionary. We found that there were only three tenancies that were protected as a result of all the grounds being discretionary. Do we see the impact of the measure being negligible effectively? I agree with what John Blackwood said, but I reiterate that the primary reason for the massive drop was the extension of notice periods to six months. That had a significant effect on the number of tenancies proceeding or not to eviction. That was incredibly successful, but it also had a number of intended outcomes. It meant that, by the time that most cases were agreed at tribunal, that 13.8 months or so worth of rent was in arrears. You need to balance the success of people not being evicted in the savings to local authorities in terms of emergency housing provision, with the fact that we have basically transferred the costs of housing those individuals from the public to the private sector. The second question is probably for John. To what extent do you think that the proposal to remove the mandatory eviction grounds provides us with the right balance between the rights of tenants and the rights of landlords? Could you say a little bit about that, please? Our main concern relates back to the 2016 act, which was the introduction of the new private residential tenancy. That was very much hailed as a new piece of legislation that would give tenants importantly greater security of tenure, which is what the Government intended to do. Beyond that, it was hailed as a bit of legislation that would support private landlords and give them greater security and safeguards effectively when it came to the tenancy regime overall in the grounds for repossession. In the past few months, all that we have seen in our sector is a slow erosion of all those safeguards that were promised to us by the Government and the Scottish Parliament. The net result of that is that we are seeing private landlords feeling that we do not want to be in this sector any more and are considering to sell up. From our recent survey of members, one in three are considering doing just that. The overall impact that that will have in the provision of housing in the private rented sector is going to be dramatic. We need to, as stakeholders and certainly as politicians, consider that. The impact that that has on providing much-needed housing for those that need it. John Swinney and Ersy Allister want to come in to speak. Thank you. I can appreciate John Swinney's comments about the lack of certainty when all the grounds have been made discretionary. That lack of certainty can cut both ways that at present and as is proposed in the bill, the discretion that would be available for the first-year tribunal in relation to the private sector differs somewhat from that available to the sheriff court and the social sector in that it is really an absolute discretion in the first-year tribunal. You can contrast that with that available to the sheriff court where at least there is a list of statutorily prescribed factors that the court is of particular regard to, which are absent from the legislation. That, coupled with a lack of statutory guidance, means that the interpretation of what is reasonable in a particular case falls entirely with the particular tribunal on a day. I do agree that that causes a lack of certainty for both parties that they can be influenced by tribunals members' individual views, the differing and waiting of circumstances in different cases and so on. I believe that it is possible to have discretionary eviction grounds, but to have a more rigid framework behind them to enable parties to work through them and have a better understanding of what may or may not be reasonable when it comes to eviction. Thank you, Rolster. I see Andrew Watt. I want to come in and maybe Mark Finlay, just on whether we have the right balance. I think that it is important to note that this is a revisitation of the debate that was held during the introduction of the PRT when it was concluded that the combination of mandatory and discretionary powers offered the correct balance at that time. The research that we recently carried out, Nick Bailey and myself, did recommend the temporary extension of discretionary grounds for rent arrears through to September 2022 on the basis that the extended notice periods were to be removed. That was primarily to provide an extra layer of protection as the pandemic moved to a kind of endemic stage. I have to note that 43 per cent of landlords that we surveyed were happy for that to be the case, although a third did disagree. We did not ask them about making those changes permanent, but we did ask them about that on the pre-action grounds and they were steadfastly against that. I would note that our recommendations took a cautious approach. I think that it was based on the situation that we faced at the time, but it can be argued that, despite the impacts of the pandemic, which have been many and varied, there are still grounds in which discretionary consideration is appropriate. Again, it comes back to the supply imperative. The thing that is always rolled out is—I think that John has already mentioned it—certainty, but a landlord knows that they can get a property back after a fixed period of arrears in a fixed period of time at the tribunal is absolutely key to the investment case for the PRS, not just for the quarter of a million small landlords dotted around the country—5 per cent of the population, incidentally—but also for the bill-to-rent sector. When you start looking at grounds such as landlord intentions to sell the property, why would a landlord sell a property? There are any number of reasons, but, as it is an investment in most cases, one of those might be to buy an annuity to pay for later life care and not have uncertainty around being able to get the property back when required could cause issues with that investment case again. It is similar to where we look at landlord's intention to live in the property. For example, I relocated for work once and I rented out my property for a couple of years on the basis that I knew I was going to get that back when my assignment down south had finished. I no longer had that certainty, but I would potentially make different decisions about what to do with that property. I think that that is the much broader, wider consideration that we need to have. Landlords are extremely heterogeneous. They have very different motivations. Many of them are investment-based, but, again, they are for different reasons. By treating it as a one-size-fits-all, which is what the mandatory thing I think it is, I think that it is a mistake and that it is something that we should really be looking at in a bit more detail. Okay. Thank you very much for that, Andrew. Is there any final comment on that from the balance whether we have got it right, Mark? Yeah, so thank you. I think it's important to note that there are two sides to this. From the tenant perspective, it's really important that the rights and chances that people have within the private rented sector are looked after from their perspective too. I do think that the timing is right and the timing does relate to Covid recovery, which is why it's appropriate to be in this bill. I would say, though, that if there is a period of time once this is enacted that we can assess whether it is actually true that we're losing landlords from the market and why we're losing landlords from the market, then that allows for any further changes to be made. I think that it's important to pursue with this and then see what changes actually occur, particularly because it's not just around the discretionary grounds, it's about obviously the pre-option protocols and other things that relate to this. We need to see it as a whole system and whether, A, the evictions, particularly that local authorities are worried about coming out of Covid, do happen and then, B, whether landlords do exit the market. If that's the case, what needs to happen in addition in the future? I think that now is the time and this is the right balance, as you suggest. Thank you, Matt. I see, convener, that it's time to bring John back in. Yes, that's fine. John, if you want to come back in. I'll be very quick. I think that one thing to bear in mind is that landlords are investors. We have to see them as investors running businesses. As has already been pointed out, some of them will have a future plan to reinvest, to sell up. It's part of their pension plan. It's a natural process that they will go through at some point, or they're just renting temporarily. It's their own home. They want to have security to move back into their own home, which is very different to social landlords. They either have a statutory duty or they're providing a social function there in housing. The motivations and the factors behind the business operation of that housing sector are very different. Largely, in the whole, we are dealing with individuals, people who own just one or two properties. When they feel that their investment is, quite frankly, at risk, they are going to get nervous, as all investors do. The reluctant investors, as it is anyway, hence why they've invested in bricks and mortar. What we are hearing from our members is that they are incredibly concerned and that they are planning on selling now, not later. We've got an issue now with a housing shortage in Scotland today. That's not something that we should wait until it happens next year or in a few years' time. We need to actually deal with that issue today. John Finch, I'm going to now move on to questions from Paul McClellan. Thank you, convener, and morning panel. Can I refer everyone to my registering system? I'm still a servant councillor on Eastland Council. My question really was just going to be talking about investor confidence, but I think that seems to have been picked up in the last question. I suppose for yourself, John, it comes back to the point that Matt probably made about where that goes for the next year. I don't know if you want to come back in on that particular point, but I don't know if anybody else wants to come in just talking about investor confidence, because it is a balance that Willie Coffey mentioned before. John, I don't know if you want to just address the point that Matt made about that and if anybody else wants to come in. I can understand the rationale about lex, wait and see, but I'm really working at the coface. I see the impact that legislation and impending legislation is having on investor confidence today, and that's quite alarming for me to see that. We've already seen a 7 per cent reduction through landlord registration figures in the last four years, and I'm hearing every day of landlords saying, you know what, my tenants just given me 28 days notice to leave, which of course they can under the private residential tenancy, and now they are thinking, you know what, maybe now is the time to sell this property. Over 60 per cent were citing the fear of impending legislation as being the motivating factor to actually sell all the anti-government rhetoric that the anti-landlord rhetoric that they are getting from the Government. We need to address that. We need to address how we can ensure that we've got a continual supply of housing in the private rented sector, and I'm concerned that we're not seeing that, and we'll just see a further reduction from our figures. We could see a further reduction of conservatively 36,000 properties lost to the private rented sector over the next 10 years, and that's a big chunk of the sector just vanishing. Now, of course, those houses are still lived in by people, but they're being sold, and I imagine we'll continue to be sold to homeowners. So that's serving a need there, but what about renters? Some people will always have to rent and choose to rent, and we need to be able to make sure we've got an adequate supply for those renters going today, as well as in the future. Thanks for that. I suppose just a question just to understand the Association's membership a little bit more. In terms of your membership, you said that most of them might be tended to have one or two properties. What's the approximate breakdown? Do you tend to have it as most do in one or two properties? Are there bigger players in the room of your own 15, 20 properties? Just to understand from that point of view, can you give us an approximate breakdown in your membership? Exactly. Obviously, you can imagine, we've got a wide range of membership from them, but the majority in Scotland do just own one or two properties. We know that through landlord registration statistics, so to memory it's about 75 per cent of the landlords in Scotland have underfying properties. That's your stereotypical landlord there. They're not big corporate organisations, so they're relatively small investors who are, of course, at the mercy of legislation change. That's not just about tenancy regime, it's about wider factors as well, too. The pandemic, of course, has an effect on all our lives. Many people have thought that the house sales market is incredibly buoyant. Maybe now this is a good time to bring forward the retirement plans, so that has an impact on supply of housing as well, too. There's a whole range of factors that are impacting now, and we need to address the leaky bucket issue of those properties being lost to the rented sector today, rather than wait for that. As I would see it become an even bigger problem for the future. Can I bring in Andrew? I was keen to pick up a point that you mentioned. Andrew, you mentioned it about obviously not just the association of landlords, but the PRS sector and the built rent sector. I'm just keen to expand a little bit more on that and the evidence that you had. Again, I think that we're talking about the landlords, but the built rent sector is obviously a really important part of the 10-year mix. I don't know if you want to say a wee bit more on the point that you made about that particular sector. The survey that we carried out had very few responses from the built rent sector, but that's to be expected, because that's representative of the built rent sector in Scotland. It's still very, very anemic. There is a massive pipeline there, but pipelines don't mean houses that people can move into. The position that we're in is that the PRS is the answer to all of the housing ills at the moment. Historically, there's a transitory home for transitory populations, students, young professionals, and now the regrowth of the sector over the last 20 years plus has seen it be an answer to every housing type and every type of household. That's fine, but that naturally puts things at loggerheads because we want to have the flexibility and we want to have the investment, but at the same extent we want to have the governance structures that we might see in social housing and things. There's a bit of work to make sure that we can put all of that together. I don't think that it's as simple as it is as drip feeding the bits of legislation through. I think that we need a much larger, more holistic plan for how this works and what we actually want the PRS to provide and how that dovetails and fits in with house building programmes, et cetera. The investment case for small landlords is the same investment case as it is for the bill-to-rent sector. On the most part, there is some irrational behaviour among landlords. They keep houses because they have a sentimental attachment to it, because it's attached to an area that they used to live in. Those strange financial decisions are made by landlords, but on the whole, the majority of them are not willing to lose money on the long-term basis. They very much see the private rented sector as a bank account and their capital is sitting safe. The investment fundamental is there. The bill-to-rent sector is obviously a lot more advanced in their analysis, in their expectations and in the research that they carried out, but it's very, very similar in terms of how the legislation impacts and affects them. I think that, returning to the point that I made earlier, it's not simply looking at just this issue here. If we're trying to get investor confidence, it needs to look as if we're having this holistic approach to the PRS. When I think about the context of changes recently, for example, removal at mortgage interest rate relief and enforced common changes in energy efficiency, the new deal for 10-inch rent control, it does genuinely worry me about what that will do to supply. Our survey found that landlords are really disenfranchised with the sector, they fail under siege and they view policy makers who are being biased against them. That may not be the case and people may completely disagree with that characterisation, but the landlords that completed our forums and took part in our interviews had a very strong feeling about that. I think that an important other contextual piece here is that the financial memorandum uses the annual rent figure of £8,300 to emphasise the rental return that landlords can receive. That's a bit of a red herring because the actual rental income is not the headline figure from an investment perspective. What we're really interested in is net yields and capital growth. I'll work on another piece of research at the moment, not yet published, but it shows that... Sorry, Mr Watson, if you can draw, we've got other questions and I really appreciate your responses and if you could just bring to a close that would be great. Thank you. I'll just quickly finish this, but on the yields, I think it's quite important. The mean net yield and capital growth for landlords is very healthy. However, there's about a quarter of landlords who had a net yield of 3 per cent or lower, which is dangerously close to the best returns in Saren's accounts now, and about a third had a net negative capital growth rate. For all there are landlords who... That isn't an issue. There's a big chunk of landlords that do not have a lot of wiggle room, so I think that that's an important point to make. Thank you for that. In the interest of time, we have to get on, but I'm glad that you did make that point. I just want to see if Matt or Alastair would like to come in on any of Paul's line of questioning there. If not, we'll move on. Alastair would like to come in and then Matt. Just very quickly, I think that there's been a lot of discussion about the motivations and planning that are taken by landlords, but I think that it's important that the private rented sector is not solely defined by those motivations and planning. As I've already said, it is there in legislation that the private rented sector is meant to provide long-term permanent homes for tenants. The landlord's interests obviously must be taken account of because it is a sector that is needed, but it shouldn't be the overriding interest in conceptualising what the private rented sector is. Thank you. Matt. Yes. Alastair has made my point slightly already, but I think that it's worth returning to what those proposals really are about. It's not about seeking, from my perspective, that private landlords should be disadvantaged or driven out of the market. It's simply that. Discretion allows for individual circumstances and support needs of tenants and landlords to be taken into account, as opposed to that not always being the case. That is a change that feels like a common sense move from our perspective that should be if it's a system that functions in the right way to everyone's advantage. To the extent to which landlords and landlord bodies feel like there's an agenda against them, that should be dealt with seriously, if that's the way people feel, because we do need landlords in the private rented sector to function and to want to be in that market. There are specific schemes that can help that. It's only 50 per cent of local authorities in Scotland that have what we would see as a fully functional, private rented sector access scheme. There are things that can be done to help landlords as well as tenants, but from our perspective, it's important to note that this isn't going to stop evictions, it's going to lead to some more common sense decision making where it doesn't currently already exist. I'm going to move on to questions from Graeme Dey. What evidence, if any, of the impact of the temporary introduction of the pre-action protocols, has it led to a reduction in rent arrears as it prevented applications for evictions being made to the tribunal? The simple answer to that is that we have no evidence of it, and I think that that's been cited by other respondents to the consultation as well too. We don't see evidence and certainly anecdotally speaking with our members, we're asking them, of course, they have to comply with their requirements and we aid them in being able to do that and support them through that process, but we do ask them, has it had an effect? Basically, they're turning around saying no, the tenants still do not communicate with us in the worst case scenarios, so it's not actually, perhaps, supporting those most in need. On record, obviously, we do support the continuation of it because we see an advantage there in the sense that it provides clear guidance to landlords as to what they ought to be doing. It's a big question that we've been asked by our members for years, as to what to we do when a tenant gets into arrears, how do we communicate with them, et cetera, et cetera, so the pre-action requirements goes a long way to supporting landlords and tenants, get through, perhaps, the most difficult of times, but in reality, for the harder of the cases, is it having an impact with not seeing the evidence of it? Presumably, the harder cases, it wouldn't have an impact on anyway. Exactly, and that's why we would support it. You don't want to throw the baby out of the bathwater because you never know, in some cases, that it has to encourage the tenant to seek advice or it's signposted them correctly, which is what's in the interests of everyone, both landlords and tenants. One thing that I certainly would like to get across is a good news story. Throughout the pandemic, we have seen great evidence of landlords and tenants working together to overcome the issues with rent arrears, and I think that that's been really encouraging to see that, and perhaps that's resulted in a lot less cases of eviction going to the tribunal, as well. Anything that we can do to continue that, and if pre-action requirements in some way aids that process, then that's fine. Let's not get rid of it for the sake of it, but what impact is it having when we're unsure? There's been no evidence, no research done on that as we'll get. You have a point about being unsure, but perhaps it focuses mind, the very existence of it. The whole idea is that, as an organisation, we support best practice in the sector. We want to encourage landlords to work with their tenants and build sustainable long-term relationships. That's in the landlord's interest as much as it is in the tenant's interest. The pre-action requirements give some form of guidance to landlords to be able to be able to say in those circumstances that this is what you can say to your tenant, this is how you can sign post them. Is that a good thing, of course? That's a good thing, and that's why we would support it. Anybody else want to come in on that? Can I move this on then? Some of the written evidence to the Parliament's call for views has suggested that the impact to the pre-action protocol is going to be quite limited, because there's no duty on the landlord to comply with the protocol. Isn't it the case that landlords would be ill-advised not to comply with it, in any case, because of the consideration that will be given to the participation in this, when it comes to any process that follows? I'm just seeing lots of nodding heads there, so we're probably not requiring to pursue that. John Mawr, do you want to come in on that? I'm sorry, I apologise, convener. Yeah, just the 2020 regulations make it very, very clear that for an eviction case to be considered by the first tier tribunal, they must take into consideration how the landlord has complied with the regulations. I think that certainly any landlord would be ill-advised to have completely ignored the pre-action requirements, because it certainly won't result in probably them not getting that eviction that they're desiring. Not only that, as I was mentioning earlier, this is a good practice tool for every landlord and letting agent in the country too, so it can't be healed as a bad thing, surely? Thank you. Can I just one final question? We keep talking about this in relation to landlord participation. I'm a little bit unclear on everything I've read on this, Mr Willough. Is there any kind of expectation on tenant participation in this process? Now, we're told that it will be a consideration for the tribunal if a landlord has failed to engage in it. Are we of the view that that would be a consideration against the tenant if the tenant had failed to engage? Is anybody got a view on that, Alasdair Houston, perhaps? I think that the issue with any pre-litigation requirements is that they are focused on the party who is bringing the litigation. Whether or not, as they are in the social sector and for heritable creditors as well, there are similar requirements. They are mandatory, they have to be completed, otherwise the action can't be brought. The exact amount of work that may be involved if tenants or homeowners in the reposition sector participation is not existent, there is little that the party wanting to bring the litigation could do. Certainly, if a tenant does not participate, does not respond to attempts by a landlord to make contact, then in no way does the tribunal make any—there's no negative influence on the part of the landlord. It would be within the sphere of reasonableness for a tribunal to weigh that into the assessment of reasonableness against the tenant. I personally am in favour of harmonisation of seeing the reaction requirements being elevated to that mandatory status, so that they are a fixed set of requirements that all landlords would have to go through. Again, if they do not yield much participation, they are not a high hurdle for the landlord to overcome. I share some of the findings of the recent research, which was that about 95 per cent of landlords who were in current arrears at the point of survey had attempted to engage with tenants and around half of the tenants had responded, and around half of the time repayment plans had been agreed, but only around half of the time had those been adhered to. I think that being realistic about how effective that can be is important, but it is very clear that we all know that research clearly shows that early engagement with debt problems is the key to resolving those debt problems. It's right to go ahead with that entirely, but we just need to be realistic about the impacts that it can have and monitor those in some way moving forward. Matt Russell also wants to come in on that. I think that it's important to say that, in real-life situations, it's not always the case that either a tenant would be complying in the way that they should do. I think that we ought to be open and honest and say that, and sometimes it's important to note that from the balance of responsibilities we need to take that into account. However, I would also say that there are a number of cases where, particularly when it comes to rent a raise, there's not much that the tenant can do. I was talking to a tenant the other day in Edinburgh who'd been placed by local authority away from a domestic abuse perpetrator in a property that she could not afford. In that situation, the landlord wasn't doing the right thing, and we had to step in as a support agency to try and manage that situation. That's why the system needs discretion. That's why the system needs, probably also, more requirements on local authorities to be able to refer, as John referred to, the difficult cases to a homelessness prevention route so that we don't go all the way through to somebody being evicted in a situation that could have been prevented beforehand. It's just important to note that the individual circumstances are never cut and dried, and that's why the discretion is needed. I'm now going to bring in Mark Griffin, who's joining us on Blue Jeans with a couple of questions. Thank you, convener. I just draw members' attention to my register of interest as an owner of a private rented property in North Lanarkshire. I might come to John first and just ask how aware he feels that tenants and landlords are of the current temporary requirements regarding the pre-action protocol. Do you think that anything needs to be done to improve awareness of that? It's certainly an organisation that we promote to our members and advise our members off to our helpline and our different ways of communicating with our members. I think that more needs to be done about it because, obviously, landlords are going to be the first people to know that the tenants are rears, and they could be the crucial conduit to the tenant getting the all-important help that they need. Anything that we can do to get more information to landlords in the wider public in Scotland would be really useful and beneficial there. As with most of situations around debt and rent ar rears, there's no difference. What we're trying to encourage both landlords and tenants to do is to talk and just communicate with each other. Often tenants, at that point, when they get into ar rears, is that they don't talk to the landlords. They actually break down any communication that they have with the landlord. We need to try to reverse that and encourage them to work with the landlords. Likewise, the landlords could often come to us and say, but I don't know how to help the tenant. At the end of the day, the tenant needs to get money. If they've not got money, how do you solve that problem? They're not aware of the different agencies and organisations that are out there that could support the tenants. The pre-action requirements go some way to doing that. I hope that they are, in at least some cases, beneficial to sustaining that relationship between the landlord and the tenant. I take the point that more information about it needs to be made available to landlords who are not members of an organisation such as the Scottish Association of Landlords. John Finch, if I could come to that as well, if you're able to give a perspective from any of the tenants that you're coming into contact with, whether there's a level of awareness of the pre-action calls on their rights? Yes, thank you. I totally agree with John Finch. We do need to see more awareness. That applies to tenants, landlords and local authority housing and homelessness teams. I think that there is just to bring in again the situation where only 50 per cent of local authorities either commission out or have sufficient private rented sector access and other arrangements where they know the fullness of their private rented sector and they intervene in the ways that they need to. There is a system here to knit together. If it's a system that should be based on any principle, it should be the principle of prevention, a prevention of arrears, prevention of homelessness, prevention of difficulties for individuals. The tenants that we speak to, almost nobody would understand that they have the sorts of protections that we're talking about in terms of technicalities here today. That's the job of skilled individuals working with individual people and landlords to make them aware. Quite often, the work that we do match landlords and tenants' right circumstances, because it's always the case that a tendency might break down if those circumstances aren't right. I completely agree with John Finch. It needs to be much more, I think, but following the bill's successful passage, communication with landlords and the tenants about what's available. If anyone has a take on that, I think that there needs to be specific changes to the existing regulations and, perhaps, if there's any change-required guidance to set out in more detail what's required under the pre-action protocol. I think that they should largely follow the procedure in the social sector where there are a set of mandatory pre-action requirements that have to be followed and are not factored into an assessment of reasonableness but rather mandatory procedural steps that have to be taken into service of a notice. I also agree with what John Finch and Matt has said about awareness and the role that the local authority could play. I appreciate that private landlords are not social landlords with their own welfare rights staff, and I think that the local authorities could play a bigger role in providing sources of information for agencies that tenants can be referred to to try to achieve an outcome of, or the end of, a sustainable tenancy, but also in the case of housing debt for an assist in the landlord getting that debt repaid. If the requirements were strengthened and made mandatory, that would mean that, in every case, there should be a good standard of compliance. Thanks, Alistair. I don't see anyone else in the request to speak, so I'll turn back to you, convener. Thank you, Mark. I'm now going to bring in Eleanor Wittam. Thank you, convener, and good morning to the panel before I ask the questions that I've got left, because a lot of the questions have already been asked and answered, which is fantastic this morning. It's just to declare my interest that I am still a sitting councillor in East Ayrshire Council. I'd like to direct to my first question to Matt Downey. I know that crisis has promoted responsible use of the private rented sector for those who are homeless or at risk of homelessness for many, many years. As we've already heard, we know that, year on year, pre-pandemic eviction levels from the private rented sector exceeded those of the socially rented sector. Matt, how do you think that the proposals contained in this section of the bill will address that, and do you feel that captures all of the recommendations and outputs that we've seen from the reconvened Harsag homelessness and rough sleeping action group and the social renewal advisory board, especially now that we're facing the additional pressures of the cost of living crisis? Yes, thank you. The proposals in the bill, in part 4, are absolutely in line with the homelessness and rough sleeping action group and the social renewal board. They're also in line with the prevention and review group and the proposals that are being consulted on by the Scottish Government on homelessness prevention itself. They work, but they have to work together. There are a set of things that are interlinked that are about the sensible protection of balanced rights for tenants and landlords. The here and now of the situation is serious. Every single local authority in Scotland is expecting an increase in the need to prevent homelessness out of the private rented sector, according to our survey in the Scottish homelessness monitor. We know every day in our services that people are coming to us with severe needs in terms of rental rears and the increased cost of living is exacerbating that. There may be arguments for delay in some cases technicalities for how it might work, but there's no argument for delay in terms of human needs as far as we can see it. In that sense, that absolutely completes the picture. We do need to make sure that the pre-option protocol is a work that people are aware of and that it works. We need to make sure that private landlords are reached and supported and incentivised by some of the supports that are available from East Asher and other councils out there that are really important in sustaining their place in the market. For us, that is part of the Covid recovery that makes sure that homelessness prevention is at the heart of it and that's why we support it. We shouldn't have to see people reaching the very edge of homelessness before they get support and before their homelessness rights kick in. What people have told us time and again is that what they would rather is that they have the choices that people who don't have to have a homelessness application have in front of them. That means being able to speak to your landlord, being able to work out a different path. Maybe it means a different tendency sometimes. Maybe it means prevention and through some other route, but that is a significant step forward from our perspective. Should it go through and we fully support it? Thanks very much for that. I don't know if anybody else wanted to come in on that or not. No, thank you, Matt. I'll move on to the second question that I've got and the final question that I have. I would like to direct to John Blackwood, if I can. During the height of the pandemic, we did meet in the private renters sector resilience group that was set up at the time. I'm really glad to hear that, anecdotally, there was a great support for the fact that landlords working hand in hand with tenants to do that prevention work because we did speak about that a lot at the time and to get that kind of support and information out. How do you think—I know that this has already been touched on, but how do you think that we could improve on that going forward? My committee, the social justice and social security committee, at the moment, have an open inquiry about problem debt and poverty. We know that people who are in that situation often find it really difficult to engage in services at times. You've got members and members across the country who aren't members of your association landlords. How do we join up all those services so that the support agencies, councils and landlords can work cross-sector to prevent homelessness as far upstream as we can? Going back to the pre-action requirements received when they were introduced, there wasn't part of the emergency measures that needed to come in to deal with an emerging pandemic. I guess, as we're looking at, hopefully, we'll go out of the pandemic into the stage of it being endemic. If those pre-action requirements continue, we'll need to look at them again. What purpose do they serve? I think that we all probably could agree that they do have a purpose, but in what shape or form should that be going forward? At the beginning of the pandemic, I have to be honest and say that I had concerns about massive rent arrears being built up as everybody did. Of course, landlords have been no alternative but to applying for eviction. That didn't happen. That was a good use story. We were delighted with that. The reason that we can see as to why it didn't happen is because landlords and tenants did work together. Everybody understood that, although they had very different vested interests and came from different viewpoints in that landlord-tenant relationship, they were keen to work together to sustain the tenancy, and they appreciated that everybody was going through a difficult time. With both parties approaching it from a point of view of, let's see how we can work out, let's see how we can solve the problem, that was terrific and resulted in a good outcome for everyone. Often, when somebody gets into rent arrears for whatever reason, the relationship between the landlord and the tenant breaks down very quickly. That results in the landlord feeling that they are the wronged party, that they have nowhere to go for help and that they have no alternative but to go for eviction. I am optimistic that in the future, if we look at the exact detail of the pre-action requirements, we can refine them in a way to make them more user-friendly for situations that might arise in the future. Often, that could be just appropriate signposting. Maybe that is all that is needed in the very early stages of intervention. As you well know, as rent arrears get higher, that difficulty increases and the tenants either head in the sand and just fail. There is no way out of that. There is no solution, so we need to intervene early in that difficult situation between the landlord and the tenant. I am hopeful that perhaps a refinement shall we say of the pre-action requirements going forward might achieve that. Generally, lots of landlords would look at them and say, what does all that mean? It is a lot of bits of paper, processes that you need to go through. How user-friendly is it? I think that there are big questions about that, but I had to be brought in quickly at the time when it did. Now is probably the time for us to look at the detail of the requirements and make sure that we get the right information to the right people when they need it. Thank you very much. I have one final question. I will keep you on the screen, John, because it is for you. Can you explain your concerns about the removal of eviction ground 8 from schedule 5 of the Housing Scotland Act 1988? It is a bit technical. It is just to flag it up as an issue, and perhaps there might be a requirement for transitionary measures to be brought in here. I can completely understand that, of course, if all grounds are going to be discretionary, what is the point in having ground 8 in the 1988 act? I completely understand the thinking behind it. However, what we are conscious of is that landlords could today be issuing eviction on ground 8. If they came to us, they would get advice not to just do it on ground 8, use 11 and 12 as well to assign it in their response to the consultation. Beyond that, there is a risk that we are run by taking a week completely. If notice has been given to use that ground today, it could well be a year before that case comes before the first-year tribunal, and of course that landlord assuming that this receives royal assent over the summer, the landlord might not be able to rely on that ground going forward. At the very least, some consideration should be given to transitionary measures to protect the landlord's interests when using ground 8 in the meantime. That is really where we are coming from with that. Even to be perfectly honest, leaving it as it is without repealing it would have no impact on the actual policy intention of the legislation before you. We do not think that it would have a negative impact just to keep it. Thanks very much for that response. That was great. I just also wanted to come back and say thank you also for the painting of the picture that you gave in response to Eleanor's question around how everybody really did pull together and tried to find the solutions here. We are trying to find the rays of hope or the chinks of light that came out of the pandemic, and clearly that was something that people were pushed into a situation where everybody had to play their part and find a solution that worked. I am going to bring the session to a close unless anyone on the panel does have a final remark that they want to make. We do have a little bit more time, but very brief, nothing more, no shakings over the heads. Thank you so much for joining us this morning. I think that the evidence that you have given to the committee has been very helpful in helping us to consider our next steps. I am now going to suspend the meeting to allow for a changeover of witnesses. We now turn to our second stage evidence session on part of the coronavirus recovery and reform Scotland bill, for which we are joined by the Minister for Carbon Buildings, Active Travel and Tenants Rights. Mr Harvey is joined today by Scottish Government officials, Greg Walker, who is the bill team leader, who is joining us online, Yvonne Gavin, who is from the private housing services and is the team leader, and Craig MacGuffey, who is the lawyer. I welcome our witnesses to the meeting and, as Mr Walker is joining us remotely, I would be grateful if Mr Harvey would make clear if he wishes him to respond to a specific question to allow broadcasting to bring him in. I tend to allow up to 75 minutes for this discussion, but before I open up to questions from the committee, I now invite Mr Harvey to make a short opening statement. Well, thank you very much, convener. Good morning to yourself and the committee, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to say a few words at the start about the tenancy provisions in the coronavirus recovery and reform bill. Obviously, a word of thanks also to everyone, individuals and organisations who engage in the consultation process, which has helped to inform the development of the bill, and for the comments indeed from those who have provided a response to the committee's call for evidence. A few words first about the general overview of the bill before turning in more detail to the tenancy provisions. The Scottish Government's priorities are to continue to lead Scotland safely through and out of the Covid pandemic and to address the inequalities that have been made worse by Covid progressing toward a wellbeing economy and accelerating inclusive person-centred public services. As part of learning lessons from the pandemic, the Government is committed to reviewing the impact of Covid on the Scottish statute book. The bill extends to around 30 different topics, most of which are being scrutinised by the Covid-19 recovery committee or other subject committees. In relation to the tenancy provisions in particular then, part 4 relates to eviction from properties in the private rented sector and the effects of the Covid pandemic have quite undoubtedly led to a reduction in income for many households across Scotland. We know that some of the most financially vulnerable citizens in Scotland live in the private rented sector. The impact of the pandemic, both in the immediate and longer term, means that some private tenants are finding themselves in significant financial difficulty. In recognition of that, the two emergency coronavirus acts from 2020 introduced a number of key provisions to protect tenants and we are now looking to make two of those permanent because we believe that they have improved fairness in the system, better balanced the needs of tenants and landlords and explicitly given tenants support when it is most needed. The first is private landlord pre-action protocols in relation to evictions on the grounds of rent arrears. The second is to ensure that all eviction cases going before the first year tribunal housing and property chamber are considered on a discretionary basis when previously some eviction grounds would result in a mandatory eviction order being issued. Looking at the pre-action protocol provisions first, those formalise the steps that a private landlord should take to support a tenant who has fallen into rent arrears and to do so as early as possible. That aims to ensure that all steps have been taken to sustain a tenancy before the landlord takes action to evict. It sets out three key areas of action that a landlord should take to support a tenant in rent arrears. Firstly, for landlords to give tenants clear information regarding their rights in relation to eviction, how they can access information on financial support and debt management, and an overview of their tenancy agreement. The second action is for landlords to make reasonable efforts to agree with the tenant a reasonable repayment. The third action is for the landlord to give reasonable consideration to the steps that the tenant has taken. The tribunal has to take it into account the landlord's compliance with the pre-action protocol when deciding whether to issue an eviction order or not. Pre-action protocols have been in place in the social rented sector for a number of years, so making that provision permanent for the private rented sector is an important step toward ensuring the parity of rights across the rental sector that the Scottish Government wants to see. During the bill's consultation, some private landlords and their representative bodies advised that they already take that action to support a tenant who has fallen into rent arrears. That provision formalises what is already seen to be best practice by professional landlords within the sector. The second provision is ensuring in all cases going before the first tier tribunal that eviction is only ordered where it is reasonable to do so. All eviction grounds therefore become discretionary. Prior to the emergency legislation, if eviction was being sought on certain grounds such as three or more consecutive months in rent arrears, the tribunal were obliged to issue an eviction order. By ensuring that every ground of eviction is discretionary, we ensure that the tribunal is able to consider all relevant factors in eviction cases and determine whether eviction is reasonable in those circumstances. That would include consideration of whether a private landlord has undertaken all the steps that they should have as part of the pre-action protocol or any proactive steps that a tenant may be taking to reduce rent arrears. It is worth highlighting that similar provisions have been in place in the social sector for many years. I am aware of the responses that were received during the 12-week consultation for the bill and in the committee's own call for evidence. Diverging views do exist on the tenancy provisions that we are seeking to make permanent. Tribunal discretion in particular is seen by some private landlords as creating an unfair balance of rights between tenant and landlord. Private landlords argue that that provision could drive up costs, increase risk and dent investor confidence. It is important to note that the tenancy provisions do not prevent a private landlord from seeking to recover possession of their property. Instead, the provisions introduce additional layers of protection simply to ensure that all avenues have been exhausted in sustaining a tenancy and that the eviction itself is reasonable given the individual circumstances of the case. The tribunal having discretion allows it to take into account all the circumstances, both of the tenant and the landlord, to come to a fair and appropriate conclusion. Conversely, tenant representative groups have strongly welcomed our intention to introduce the private landlord pre-action protocol and tribunal discretion on a permanent basis. You will be aware that organisations such as Shelter Scotland, Citizens Advice Scotland, Living Rent, Public Health Scotland and Police Scotland support this move, highlighting that the negative financial impacts of Covid are on-going and that the tenancy provisions will help to deliver a recovery from the impact of the pandemic. Indeed, Shelter Scotland specifically states that tribunal discretion provisions will disproportionately impact for the better on people with lower incomes and help to deliver a wellbeing economy. Convener, part four of the bill supports the Scottish Government's Covid recovery strategy and our overall objective of addressing the harms caused by the pandemic and tackling systematic inequalities made worse by the pandemic. It also supports the Government's draft rented sector strategy, on which, as you will be aware, we are currently consulting. That aims to deliver a new deal for tenants, giving them more secure, stable and affordable tenancies with improved standards of accommodation, new controls on rent and more flexibility to personalise their homes. We have already committed to bringing forward a new housing bill in the second year of this Parliament to deliver on some of the legislative commitments that are contained within the strategy. In conclusion, convener, as I said at the beginning, many of those people living in the private rented sector are among some of the most financially vulnerable in our society. In particular, that applies to people who have an income but are still living in poverty due to the longer-term impact of the pandemic, coupled with ever-increasing living costs. I think that we are all painfully aware that that situation may continue to be exacerbated. Making those tenancy provisions permanent will therefore provide an important extra layer of security for those households, as well as helping to ensure a parity of right for renters, whether they are renting from the private or the social rented sector. I would also emphasise that those provisions still enable landlords to recover possession of their property in circumstances in which tenancy is genuinely unsustainable. Thank you very much, minister, for laying out very clearly to the committee the intentions of the legislation making these two pieces permanent in part 4 of the bill. I will open up to questions. I would like to begin by asking you how the reforms presented today fit into the programme of work that was outlined in the new deal for tenants consultation and the forthcoming housing bill, and what more needs to be done to increase awareness among tenants. Thank you. To take the first part, the new deal for tenants consultation launched in December did make clear that we have more work to do to strengthen the rights of tenants and improve the quality of the private rented sector. It included the two changes that we are considering today, and I think that that is very consistent with the direction of travel more broadly toward a private rented sector that has more comparable rights compared with the social rented sector. To have those provisions in place now and then fail to make them permanent would mean a degree of confusion for landlords and tenants if we were to seek to revisit the question in the year 2 housing bill. The learning that we have from the exercise of those provisions on a temporary basis is that they provide an additional level of protection. We consider that any negative consequences are extremely slight and entirely reasonable. The costs, for example, are pretty low in terms of if tribunal takes a little longer to consider the circumstances of an individual case where there is discretion if there previously hadn't been. Any negative consequences are extremely slight compared with the strong advantages of having that additional level of protection. Therefore, the clear argument is to make those provisions permanent now rather than to go through a period of allowing them to lapse and then considering reintroducing them again in the year 2 bill. As for awareness, I think that that is an extremely significant issue that will never go away. Because we know that the private rented sector is something in which landlords have been flow over the years, people move in and out of the sector and tenants move in and out of the sector all the time. In particular, a great many younger people in their first home might be in the private rented sector. I think that there will always be an on-going need to ensure a high level of awareness of rights and of the law as it stands to protect people in the private rented sector. We are currently partway through a tenant rights awareness raising campaign, and that has been a really important way to give people some very basic facts in the top-line messages but also point them in the direction of much more significant and detailed information should they need it. We also work closely with organisations such as Crisis in Shelter Scotland who need the additional level of support that they can provide. The issue of awareness is probably one that will never go away. We will always need to keep making sure that those people who are moving into the private rented sector, both as landlords and as tenants, become aware of their rights and obligations. Of course, the sector is a fluid sector with people coming and going, and what rises up in my mind in your response is that this is about looking to other countries. Is the private rented sector a common thing in other countries? How do other countries do it? We see that the private rented sector and the social rented sector and that combination in Scotland is normal. Is that normal in the Netherlands or do they tend to go down the line of more socially provided housing? Is there always a mix in other countries? I suppose that if we were certainly to look in the European context there is always a mix, but the mix is different in different contexts. Germany, for example, has a much bigger private rented sector but has had some of the rights and protections that we are seeking to explore and develop in the year 2 housing bill already in place for quite some time. In some European countries there would be very little difference in the rights and protections that tenants have between what we would call the social and the private rented sector and the distinction between who is the housing provider as a private organisation or a social organisation doesn't have the significant impact on the different experience of the tenants as it does in this country. However, the consultation on the new deal for tenants and the development of the year 2 housing bill is going to be informed by consideration of all of those examples and experiences from other contexts. Some respondents to the Parliament's call for views on the bill thought that the proposals could negatively affect investor confidence and the supply of privately rented homes. What estimate have you made on the impact of those changes on the supply of privately rented accommodation? We have engaged extensively on the provisions in the bill. I touched in my opening remarks on the consultation that took place. It is possible that making all eviction grounds discretionary could lead to some increase in costs for landlords in certain circumstances, as I mentioned earlier, if the consideration of a particular case takes a little longer, for example, due to the need to take individual circumstances into account. However, we think that it is highly unlikely to lead to significant additional costs to landlords. On the pre-action protocol provisions, I think that the Scottish Association of Landlords have made the point during the consultation that many landlords already take this course of action to support tenants in rent arrears. So, compliance with those would not increase costs at all or even increase the amount of work or the actions that are necessary for those who do follow best practice. It would have the additional advantage of encouraging and requiring that good practice by those who previously have not, but we do not believe that that would create any significant additional costs for landlords. One of the key issues of the debate on the introduction of the private residential tenancy was to ensure a balance between the rights of tenants and the landlords. That is why some eviction grounds remain mandatory. How does the proposal to make all eviction grounds discretionary retain an appropriate balance between the rights of tenants and landlords? I think that, most fundamentally and put it at the simplest level, it allows the tribunal to consider all of the circumstances relating to the landlord and the circumstances relating to the tenant. Landlords are, of course, if tribunal discretion is made permanent, if the committee agrees with our proposal. Landlords will still be able to pursue eviction where they believe that it is necessary. It does not fundamentally end or curtail those rights of landlords, but being able to take into account the individual circumstances, including those caused by the pandemic, but not limited to those, will provide a far fairer balance of rights for everybody involved. I think that in your earlier evidence session, for example, the example was given of a private tenant who had to be moved in order to escape an abusive or a violent situation at home and faced additional costs because of the price of the property that they were moved into. That kind of circumstance needs to be taken into account and understood. There will be others that members, I am sure, from all parts of the country will recognise from their constituency and regional work of people, for example, in a rural area where there is very little alternative housing available, and even if a landlord has a reasonable case to make, they also need to balance that against the reasonable experience of the tenant if no alternative housing is available. Those individual circumstances need to be balanced. They need to be taken into account. We believe that giving discretion to take into account the individual circumstances on all grounds will allow that proper balance to be struck and has done during the period when the emergency legislation has been imposed. I will seek some clarity at a point that I raised with the earlier panel. It is not clear on anything that I have read. When the tribunal was sitting making a judgment in cases, is the discretion that it has sufficient that a circumstance in which perhaps the landlord had followed fully or sought to follow fully the pre-action protocol, but a tenant had ignored all such approaches and there were no reasonable grounds for that having been not the kind of circumstances that you have touched upon earlier? Would the tribunal have the discretion to take into account the fact that the tenant had not engaged in attempts to find a resolution? The requirement to comply with the pre-action protocol rests with the landlord. It requires them to take reasonable steps. If a landlord takes reasonable steps and is met with a tenant who will not engage, then they have clearly still met that test of making reasonable steps, making those efforts to make information available, to explore repayment schedule, for example. If they have made those efforts, then they have clearly met that test and that circumstance would be taken into account under tribunal discretion. Do you take account of the fact that the tenant perhaps, with no good reason, had failed to engage as well? Is there two sides to that as my question? Yes. The ideal that we are looking for is to increase the number of situations in which an alternative route is found, an alternative resolution is found. If a landlord makes those approaches and a tenant engages constructively, then hopefully they would never need to reach the tribunal in the first place, because they would find another way of resolving the situation and sustaining the tenancy, which is what we are looking to achieve. I suppose that it seems fairly clear that if a landlord has gone through those steps and been unable to engage properly with their tenant and that the tenant has refused to do so, that is clearly a circumstance that the tribunal would be able to take into account. I am now going to move to questions from Willie Coffey, who is joining us on blue jeans. Thank you very much, convener, and good morning, minister and to your colleagues. The landlord's association told us that temporary change ate all the evictions discretionary, really had little impact on the tribunal refusing an eviction order. Could you say a few words about this? If that is the case, why would changing it to make it a permanent arrangement actually benefit tenants? Well, yes, thank you. The Scottish Association of Landlords have put forward some figures in their submission suggesting that the number of cases in which discretionary grounds being mandatory during the emergency legislation having altered the outcome is very small. I think that it is really important to recognise that the impact on those small number of cases is extremely significant. Even if a relatively small number of people see a different outcome to their tribunal case, the impact on their lives is going to be extremely significant. The deeper point, and perhaps the bigger impact of that, is the one that is harder to measure, which is the cases that do not go to tribunal in the first place. If a landlord, for example, who previously might have thought that I am going to the tribunal on grounds that are mandatory grounds that would result in a mandatory determination for an eviction order and that that is now discretionary, if they reach the view themselves that they have not gone through a reasonable course of action, that the individual circumstances of seeking that eviction are not reasonable, then they would be more likely to not proceed with that eviction in the first place. A little bit like what I was saying to Graham Day, what we are looking for is to maximise the opportunities for a negotiated outcome, a reasonable settlement and for action to be taken that can sustain a tenancy rather than end one. Again, whether it is about requiring the pre-action protocol, those reasonable steps of engagement, or it is about ensuring that landlords know that they are more likely to result in some kind of resolution if they try to sustain the tenancy rather than going straight for eviction, then we are likely to see a sector that does see the resolution of any problems like that as the first option. As I say, this is good practice already in relation to the private rented sector. Those landlords who follow best practice will already be going through those steps and would not pursue eviction if they thought there was any chance that a tribunal might consider the circumstances unreasonable. In terms of the pre-action protocols that have been mentioned through the meeting, some of the respondents have also said that there was little evidence to support the positive impact that they actually had. Can you share a few words with us about how you see that? Did those measures help us to reduce overall rent arrears or prevent eviction orders going to the tribunal and so on? Could you say a few words about that for us, please? Yes, absolutely. Again, this is a question that might be a little hard to quantify, a little hard to put precise or objective numbers on, because the nature of the pre-action protocols means that they are undertaken prior to taking any action to the tribunal. We wouldn't necessarily have official statistics as such on where those actions led to a successful resolution of the problem, but given that there has been an overall reduction in the number of eviction cases seen by the tribunal over the course of the pandemic, it's fair to say that that provision has contributed to supporting tenants and landlords to achieve that kind of positive resolution to those problems and to sustain the tenancy. For example, where tenants have been able to secure additional sources of financial support as a result of the signposting that landlord undertakes during the pre-action protocol, that would clearly help them to resolve that situation. The Tenant hardship grant fund, for example, which the committee will be well aware of, would be one source of additional support that has been there during the pandemic, as well as discretionary housing payments, and other forms of money advice and financial advice that a tenant might be able to access from the voluntary sector or community organisations. If the landlord is actively signposting a tenant in these circumstances, it may well end up that this becomes a case that we never have to count. We should see that as a positive. I can see that. The formalising of it gives us a kind of consistency of practice across the sector, so that tenants get the same treatment right across the boat. Yes, indeed. It not only closes that gap between the social and private rented sector by making something that has been a permanent and social rented sector a permanent feature of the private rented sector, too. It also, as the Scottish Association of Landlords made clear in their evidence, simply normalises what they consider already to be best practice. I think that that is consistent with the general direction of travel, what we are looking to achieve in terms of the private rented sector more generally, is to close the gap in the outcomes that people have depending on where they are renting and to raise standards across the board. I think that that measure is getting pretty much across the board support probably because it is pretty clear that it is going to achieve that objective. I am now going to move to questions from Paul McClellan. I just want to touch a little bit more on the pre-action protocol. A few questions around that one was, obviously, some written evidence had suggested that the impact to the pre-action protocol will make this. There is no duty on the landlord to comply with the protocol, so probably the question is why is there not that legal duty, I suppose, and would a legal duty not ensure greater compliance? I saw the discussion on that as well as part of your earlier evidence session and I think that if I remember rightly John Blackwood from the Scottish Association of Landlords said that a landlord would be poorly advised to pursue a request for eviction taking that to the tribunal if they had not gone through that, because there is the expectation that the tribunal would consider the landlord's compliance with that as part of their consideration. What we are looking to do is to make permanent the temporary provisions that were put in place during the pandemic, and making that permanent is the simplest and cleanest way to achieve that continuation. We might be able to consider at some future point perhaps in the year 2 housing bill whether there are wider views, if the evidence that we gather from between now and then shows that the protocol should be amended to create a greater legal duty to ensure compliance, then we could consider that. At this point, we have temporary provisions in place, making those permanent is the cleanest and simplest way to ensure that we retain that additional level of protection. I think that it is pretty clear that we can have confidence that any landlord that feels the need genuinely believes that, in the circumstances that they are acting reasonably to pursue an eviction will have gone through the pre-action protocol steps in the first place in order to demonstrate to the tribunal that their actions are reasonable. The follow-up for that is, again, that the Scottish Government has introduced financial support measures, including the tenant hardship grant, to support tenants throughout the pandemic. I suppose that the key thing, and I think that that has been very gratefully received, will the Scottish Government provide any financial support to tenants to support the recovery from the pandemic as we come out of that, because obviously it is not just going to be a click overnight or anything, so it has just been considered. Yes, indeed. The grant fund is focused on helping those tenants who are struggling financially. I think that it would be fair to say that, given the current circumstances more widely than just the operation of the private rented sector, we are all very conscious that the cost of living crisis is already severe and may continue to be exacerbated. Some of the actions that we can consider will go beyond my brief. I know that the social justice cabinet secretary wrote to councils in December and also followed that up again just last week, reiterating that payments from the tenant hardship grant fund should be made to those who are in the most financial need and facing the risk of homelessness, in particular those in the private rented sector who may be at risk of eviction. There are those in the social sector whose already low incomes have been hit hard by the pandemic, and they can also get help with this scheme. As part of the pre-action protocol, landlords should be making tenants who are at risk of losing their homes due to rent arrears aware of all the forms of financial support available, not just the tenant grant fund. I think that it is fair to say that it will continue to be on-going debate across the whole Parliament and across a number of different portfolios within government to ensure that we try to take the most ambitious approach that we can to supporting people through the cost of living crisis. That will apply to people with a housing brief, but it will certainly go beyond that. I want to bring in Graham Day with a supplementary on this issue. You are right, Minister John Blackwood, the Scottish Association of Landlords, was quite positive about that, but he also suggested that they would be keen to perhaps have a dialogue around the refinement of the protocol and some of the detail and how it was presented. Is that something that you would be open to? Yes, indeed. I think that the fact that we are at the point of having temporary provisions, we are seeking to make those permanent now, but we have a housing bill, a live consultation right now, but also a housing bill expected to be introduced in year 2 of the Parliament, actually gives us the opportunity to continue with the current system that has been put in place on a temporary basis, continue to gain evidence and understanding and learn from experience of its operation, and that will inform any consideration of proposals to refine or adjust in the year 2 housing bill. I would like to bring in Megan Gallagher. We have spoken a little bit this morning about the workload of the tribunal, and we know during the pandemic that there was a decrease in the number of applications for eviction orders during the pandemic period, and that would be expected, but I would like to ask whether, as we move out of the pandemic, the workload would therefore increase again, and will cases take longer to consider? It is up to the tribunal to decide what circumstances they take into account, and that would determine how long a case might take to consider. It is possible that some cases would take longer to consider whether there are particularly exceptional or unusual circumstances, but that will not always be the case. The evidence that we have to date suggests that that effect will be modest. My view is that the most important impact is of ensuring that most tenancy exits do not go to the tribunal. Recognising that but also recognising the intention of that to encourage negotiation and agreement between tenants and landlords where there is a problem. If we are successful in doing that, and the evidence shows that the temporary provisions have been successful in doing that, then any additional burdens of workload will be manageable, and the effect would be modest. The financial memorandum that accompanies the bill also explores the costs to the tribunal in greater detail. Where there are quantifiable costs to discretionary decision making, it is worth noting that the introduction of the pre-action protocol and the tribunal being obliged to consider a landlord's compliance with it before making the decision will again reinforce that it is in the landlord's best interests to engage with a tenant early to prevent arrears from building up in the first place. That early engagement could prevent the need for eviction proceedings altogether, which ultimately would reduce the costs on the tribunal. I will expand a little bit on the term that you used in your modest in relation to the backlog that could come in on the back of that. Does the Scottish Government expect there to be a backlog in terms of whether or not the bill has progressed? I think that when I used the word modest, I was referring to any increasing cost of consideration of individual cases. We are all very aware, as some of your witnesses in the earlier session, where there is a significant concern across a number of different local authorities about the scale of rent arrears that have been built up during the pandemic, and that is why we are so committed to ensuring that that range of financial support is available. Not only the tenant hardship grant fund but the £82 million that has been provided for DHPs to support mitigation of the bedroom tax and housing costs, additional funding to local authorities to ensure that they have the resources available to support people in their areas. We have a range of support and intervention measures in response to the pandemic itself, and the additional funding that has been passed in this year's budget to ensure that we are supporting people with their housing costs. I do not think that there is any getting away from the fact that the impact of the pandemic financially on people has not yet fully played out, and that that is happening in the context of the wider cost of living crisis is going to be a challenging period for tenants and landlords, as well as for the organisations working to support them. The permanence of the provisions in this bill will help to ensure that the greatest opportunity is taken to resolve disputes between landlords and tenants constructively and to avoid the need for eviction proceedings, wherever that can be done, and that tenants can be sustained. I just wanted to ask what the Government's view is on whether there will be any impact of the bill's proposals on local authority homelessness services, and to ask the minister's view on how he thinks the proposals linked into the Scottish Government plans to improve homelessness prevention? Thank you very much. That is hugely important. Of course, there have been periods when evictions in the private rented sector were the most significant, the largest route into homelessness. That has perhaps declined proportionately, but there is a real concern and a desire to make sure that that does not become the scale of a problem that Mark Griffin is rightly concerned about. The pre-action protocol and the tribunal discretion provisions are both safeguards that I think can help to prevent eviction into homelessness. The protocol in particular encourages and supports that dialogue that I referred to earlier between landlords and tenants to work toward establishment of repayment plans to help clear rent arrears and sustain a tenancy and to make sure that tenants have access to the financial support that can also help them. The organisations that you will have heard from have made similar points shelter in particular, saying that the pre-action requirements for eviction proceeding on grounds of rent arrears introduced an important preventative measure for eviction in homelessness. This extra protection for renters against evictions should be made permanent. The pre-action protocols encourage landlords to help their tenants to access the support and advice on rent arrears management before eviction action is taken, helping them to manage their debt and to remain in their homes. I think that there is a clear sense from the organisations that work most closely on homelessness and rightly challenge the Government to continue to look to do more on homelessness prevention that these measures will be a positive step in that direction. By no means suggesting that they are the only steps that we need to take, but they will certainly be positive in helping to achieve that. I also want to ask about some of the provisions in the temporary coronavirus legislation that are not being taken forward on a permanent basis in this new piece of legislation, specifically around extended notice periods that landlords need to give tenants to end their tenancy and the ban on evictions. Is there a discussion or debate that has been within Government about continuing to make the extended notice periods permanent and any discussion about aspects of a ban on evictions in certain circumstances? Thank you. That is obviously a hugely important question, and it is one that we have actively considered within Government. There were four key measures during the pandemic, two of which we are discussing making permanent today. The others were the eviction ban that came to an end last year, as areas dropped out of tiers 3 and 4. As Mark Griffin says, the extended notice periods that came to an end at the end of this month, albeit, I would note that we have put in place transitional protection for tenants who are already facing action. The emergency legislation that was put in place was a temporary public health protection measure. In putting forward legislation of this nature, the Government needs to demonstrate the requirement for it, demonstrate the need for it, and it was on the basis of public health protection, aimed at ensuring that people could stay safe in their homes for as long as possible in those unprecedented circumstances of the pandemic. Just because a measure is not being retained right now, it does not mean that the logic of it is lost. The new deal consultation that we have on going at the moment asks for views on winter evictions and also on reviewing the grounds in the private residential tenacy. The experience that we have had during the pandemic will inform those reforms, but the provisions that we have put forward need to be demonstrated as being necessary and proportionate on their own terms, and simply extending those when the pandemic circumstances themselves do not pertain is not an automatic given. We believe that, in the case of the two provisions that we are seeking to make permanent, the experience is very clear that that will have an on-going value and also that it is proportionate and reasonable as a means of achieving the Government's legitimate policy objectives of reducing the gap in outcomes between private and social rented sectors and also raising standards across the private rented sector. If we seek to make changes in relation to the issues that Mark Griffin has raised, we will do so as a result of the consultation that is currently under way and in the proper development of a full bell on housing in year 2. I hope that that is enough to answer Mr Griffin's question. I think that that was a good answer and really illuminated for the committee why you weren't taking that piece forward. I would like to bring in Miles Briggs with some questions. Thank you, convener. Good morning minister, good morning to your officials as well. I wanted to go back to where we started really with regards to rationale for doing this, because I think that in a number of your answers you've described different work streams which are currently out to consultation or potentially will be launched next year. I just wanted to look at the fact that analysis of the consultation on this bill does show that a majority of responders were opposed to those proposals. Why have the Governments decided to bring them forward when in fact next year this could be an opportunity to look at this and widen it out potentially to further things within housing? It seems a bit of a dog's breakfast that we're doing all these different sections at this stage when in fact there's an opportunity next year to do this. Well again, I recall some of the discussion from the earlier panel session that you had this morning on this. I think that what I noticed was that some of the discussion on whether the permanence of these professions should be considered in the year 2 bill almost considered the current course of action in isolation rather than comparing it to that alternative course of action. If we were to consider this for the year 2 housing bill then effectively you have a situation where these provisions apply in the social rented sector but don't apply in the private rented sector, then you bring them in, then you let them lapse, then you bring them in again and I do think that that would lead to significant confusion and almost bewildermint to be honest, both for tenants and for landlords and a significant risk of confusion at the tribunal level about precisely what they're supposed to do to treat each individual case at different times. I think that the evidence and experience that we've had from the operation of these two specific temporary provisions is that they are both proportionate means of achieving a legitimate objective of the Government and that they've demonstrated a wider long-term value that transcends the particular circumstances of the pandemic. Having that in our approach of letting them lapse and then bringing them back in again would cause far more confusion than any additional clarity that would come from consultation. I would reinforce the fact that the strong support from particular organisations that are concerned with the rights and interests of tenants but also the prevention of homelessness gives us confidence that those measures will have a positive effect. Mark Griffin raised some important points with regard to preventing homelessness. That doesn't seem to become a key part of this. For example, with regard to responsibility for homelessness services, my own council here in Edinburgh is currently missing out on about £9.3 million of funding because it's administered by the council, not by an integrated joint board. I've raised this about five times now with ministers and haven't got an answer of why that situation's been allowed to occur. The council, I believe, is still trying to get answers. Why is something like that, which is really important, not being part of those measures to try to make sure that we see across Scotland that sort of problem taken forward and fixed? I'm imagining that I will try to bring that forward maybe in the housing bill but there's lots of things which has been highlighted to us. It's only this specific issue that ministers have taken forward in this bill when, in fact, there's lots of other things we should have been looking at. There's a great deal that we are actively looking at in the development of the housing bill that will come forward and the consultation on the new deal for tenants. I would welcome any constructive proposals for the ideas that we should be considering for inclusion in that bill. I'm not sure if Miles Briggs is referring to correspondences that he's had with me. It doesn't immediately ring a bell. It may be that it's other ministers who've dealt with that, so I'm not going to try and answer on their behalf around correspondences that I haven't seen, but I'll certainly take on, if Miles Briggs wants to write to me about it, to continue to explore that and to discuss it with other colleagues who may have already considered his correspondence. The fundamental point about this bill is that it does give us the opportunity to make permanent provisions that were introduced on a temporary basis during the pandemic. That's its fundamental opportunity. Those two provisions of the four that I mentioned earlier in discussion with Mark Griffin have clearly demonstrated themselves to be positive in terms of the impact that they have on people's lives of resolving some of those disputes between landlords and tenants, but also proportionate measures that can help the Government to achieve its policy objectives beyond the pandemic. The bill is the opportunity to do that relatively modest step in making permanent successful temporary provisions, but the wider question about other considerations that we need to take with the Government will, of course, be open to constructive suggestion from all sides on that as we develop the next piece of housing legislation itself. I appreciate that, and I'll take your offer up minister to write to you about some of this as well. Finally, and it goes back to Graham Day's point, I think that there are significant concerns within the private rented sector that they don't feel that they've been able to maybe get the minister's ear to really look towards how this is going to impact on them. In terms of drawing up of guidance, what's your plans with regard to including the sector? I think that it's important that the devil will be in the detail and that guidance being developed beyond what is currently in place from the public health emergency legislation Parliament passed, but where that will be influenced. I know that you gave Mr Day a commitment to listen to the sector, but where their suggestions will actually be taken on board for that guidance as well. We certainly will continue to listen to the sector and to recognise, as one of your witnesses in the last session said, that the word he used was heterogeneity, the very different circumstances of landlords in the private rented sector. I've certainly met with the Scottish Association of Landlords and other organisations that represent the sector on the landlord side, as well as those who represent the interests of tenants. There's probably a need to recognise that there is a shared interest here in achieving the two goals that I set out earlier of closing the gap in outcomes between the social and private rented sectors and raising the standards across the board. Good quality, responsible professional landlords will see that as being in their interests as well. They don't want low quality, what sometimes get called rogue landlords operating in the sector. The professional and high quality parts of the private rented sector will want to see and do want to see good standards across the board and an end to unscrupulous or unacceptable behaviour. We do need to recognise that, on a wide range of other issues beyond the specific measures that we're talking about today, as you heard in the earlier session, there are concerns around, for example, energy efficiency and the move to net zero. All political parties support that move to net zero and I think that the private rented sector itself recognises that there is work to do, that on average has a lower level of energy efficiency than the rest of the housing stock and that impacts on the affordability of housing for tenants as well. We need to make sure that we're supporting the whole sector to move forward with that agenda as we do with the rest of society. The Government continues to commit to working with the sector, listening to the sector and understanding its concerns, both from the point of view of those diverse landlords out there and in particular those who want to work with us to raise standards and the perspective of tenants as well. I would now like to bring in Eleanor Whittam. Just before I ask my question, I was reflecting on your own view about looking at across the world for examples of how companies and countries operate. Here's one that I don't think we should ever take. I grew up in Montreal. Montreal is a city of predominantly renters and predominantly in the private rented sector. Leases run to 1 July every single year and every year on 1 July about 70,000 households move. It's called Montreal Moving Madness and I don't think that we should ever seek to emulate anything like that. The question that I've got reflects just what Miles Briggs was speaking about and what Mark Griffin was touching on. We know that the private rented sector is a huge help in helping us to address homelessness. Those who are at risk of homelessness or who are indeed homeless have used the private rented sector for many years to get secure tenancies. Indeed, the 2016 changes really did strengthen that. However, we also know that pre-pandemic we had a lot of evictions from the private rented sector. Do you think that those two proposals specifically are going to help us to reduce that going forward? Do you think that they capture the recommendations that we've seen from the reconvened HRSAG group, from the housing policy circle within the social renewal advisory board and indeed the prevention review group, who are now consulting on those prevention duties, which incidentally I wish that they were looked at in 2001 when we were first looking at the homelessness etc act? Just your thoughts round about that. I take the cautionary lesson about Montreal. I'll make a note that we won't seek too many lessons from that circumstance. Having said that, the longer term work beyond those particular measures will include looking, for example, at the issue of winter evictions. Again, across different European countries there's a range of different approaches taken to that. We're going to be consulting on what the options are to recognise the particular circumstances in winter with the increased financial costs that people face at that time of year. For some parts of the winter, there's a lack of access that people may have to services if they need them at short notice. The similar concerns might be expressed that if you have a protected period from winter evictions, what happens when that comes to an end and do you get unintended consequences of that? We want to understand everybody's perspective on a proposal like that and make sure that we design provisions that will be right for Scotland's circumstances. The picture that Eleanor Whitton paints about the role of the private rented sector in relation to homelessness is what we should be aspiring to. The private rented sector is one that provides flexibility, provides people who are facing the risk of homelessness with ways of resolving that and avoiding that risk, but also provides the opportunity for people to move out of homelessness and get a tendency that's going to be right for them, that's going to support them, that's in the right place and at an affordable price. That's what we should be aiming for, and it can do that. There have been other times when the private rented sector has been, as I said earlier, the biggest source of people becoming newly homeless, and that's what we need to avoid. Again, the requirement for pre-action protocols in line with what has already been acknowledged as best practice, good practice by good landlords who do want to avoid evictions. Let's recognise that good professional landlords don't like the idea of instability in their tenancies, they want stable tenancies that work, and having that goal of avoiding eviction, of trying to sustain a tenancy where it's possible, of reaching a way of doing that through discussion with the tenant, through pointing them in the direction of money and vice-services, financial support, that is absolutely a very clear way of making sure that we avoid a situation where people could face being evicted into homelessness, where it is avoidable, and having the tribunal discretion including the ability to take into account the circumstances in which the landlord has attempted to go through those steps of the pre-action protocol. I think that those steps will not be a silver bullet, no one's suggesting that this is the only thing that we need to be doing, but will clearly be positive and beneficial in trying to prevent homelessness, and I think very much in line with the work of the groups that are looking at those issues that Eleanor Whitton mentions. Thank you very much. Minister, I have another 2B questions on the back of that. We heard from Don Blackwood of the Scottish Association of Landlords that they did seek to do that really collaborative work with their tenants, and we do know that there is a variant picture across the country for maybe landlords who aren't involved in that association. What more can the Government do to make sure that those support services on the ground are adequately resourced, that there's clear guidance around how landlords and also housing associations that maybe have support services in the wider area, or indeed local authorities, how can they all work together across sector to make sure that those pre-action protocols deliver the results that we need to prevent the homelessness upstream? I think that in some circumstances the awareness-raising work is particularly important here. As we said earlier, the diversity of the private rented sector is very significant. There will be landlords and perhaps maybe a little bit more likely to be the kind of landlords who join an organisation like the Scottish Association of Landlords who are aware of best practice and also who are aware of the range of places they can sign post-attent to for additional support if they need it. There will also be landlords who might not necessarily have encountered that before. Maybe they never intended to become a professional landlord, maybe they've never had a tenant before, and it's a new experience for them or never had a tenant who's in difficulty before. If that's a new experience for them, they need to know, they need to have access to the information about how they can support their tenant, as well as having the requirement and the expectation that they should try. I mentioned earlier some of the ways in which the Scottish Government funds and supports and works with organisations in the public and voluntary sector to provide the services, but we also need to make sure that landlords and tenants are aware of those sources of support and can engage with those steps that we described in the pre-action protocol and do so with confidence and knowing what's required of them and where they can get additional help if they need it. Perhaps that's something that then could be looked at as to the landlord registration scheme, so maybe there's a role for local authorities when landlords are having to mandatory register with the local authority that that is communicated effectively to them as part of their duties going forward. My final question is just round about perhaps an unintended consequence that could come on the back of this, and it follows on from Graham Day's comments. We did hear from John Blackwood that there are going to be circumstances that landlords might find themselves in and if mandatory grounds are removed. If the prevention of homelessness for that landlord is an issue, so if they need the property back, because of their financial circumstances, they have to sell or move into it, how much is the tribunal going to pay cognisance to that fact? I think this is where the phrase I started with, I think in my opening remarks about striking the balance between the interests and rights of landlords and tenants comes in. The tribunal will take into account the circumstances as they pertain to landlords and tenants. Having some grounds where a tribunal is required, mandated to produce an eviction order, shifts things heavily in one direction. It overbalances things in terms of not taking account of the tenant's circumstances, but giving that tribunal discretion doesn't do the opposite. It doesn't take things to the other extreme. It sets things in balance and makes sure that the circumstances applying to both are taken into account fairly. That concludes our evidence on the bill and the committee will be invited to consider a draft report in the coming weeks. I now suspend briefly to allow our witnesses to leave the room.