 Good morning and welcome everyone to the 22nd meeting of the local government and community's committee in 2017. Can you remind everyone present the turn of mobile phones? Does meeting paper to provide an digital format for MSPs tablets maybe used by members during that meeting? That's what you're doing if you see us using your phones or tablets. Full house today by MSPs. No apologies has been received. I'm moving to agenda item 1, building regulations in the fire safety in Scotland. The committee will take evidence on the recruiting of building regulations and fire safety in Scotland. A eich gweld i'n fath i cwmysgwm, unrhyw i ddefnyddio Gweithlannu Gywunitys teimlo Caffla, Mike Hwthane, Ffyrr Castell Cymru, David Aken a Alan McHawley, y Lleidon Siwr, Dillunionpent, Scotland, Raymond Barlow, ystafell i ystafell, a'r Sisiwn Llyfridig i'r Dillunionpent, Glasgow City Council. Ac ad yarni, mae'n gael i chi ddechrau. Mae'n allu i bod ymddangos o gêmach arser, a dweud felly rydyn ni'n ysgrifennu iawn arall i chi ei dda. Get to the first opening statement. I will be aware that COSLA is a membership organisation that is representing all 32 Scottish local authorities. We welcome the committee to turn its attention to building standards and fire safety in the wake of the Grenfell tragedy and we would like to place on record our sympathy for every member of the community affected by the FireHack Grenfell tower. At their meeting on 25 August, COSLA leaders asked me to convey this message to the Cossil's focus in the weeks following the Grenfell tragedy has been on supporting the work undertaken by the Scottish Government, including the ministerial working group and the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, to gather relevant information at a national level and support reassurance activity at a local level. We welcome the creation of the ministerial working group and have found the communicative approach of that group to be particularly helpful. On what Cossil can understand, three key policy developments have occurred at a national level in Scotland over the summer. Firstly, the ministerial working group has agreed to bring forward a consultation on the regulation of smoke and fire alarms in homes for social rent. Secondly, the ministerial working group has endorsed a fire safety campaign, which will be led by the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and supported by a number of other organisations, including Cossil. Finally, the ministerial working group's commitment to reviewing relevant standards and regulations is being undertaken. Cossil welcomes each of those developments. It has also been reassuring to learn through the group's information gathering exercise that no council housing to our block has been covered with the combustible cladding material of the sort suspected to have been used at Grenfell Tower. Turning to the response of local authorities, our member's primary focus has been on reassuring the public, particularly the communities that live in high-rise domestic properties. Our understanding is that councils and the fire service have worked extremely well to reassure tenants and that their early and comprehensive response should be commended. Cossil believes that a holistic approach to fire prevention should be taken and that building standards only forms part of this picture, albeit an important part of this picture. In terms of today's evidence session, I hope that I can provide a helpful insight into some of the national conversations that have been happening and on local authorities' broad view on fire safety and domestic properties. Will colleagues from labs and the lab shall be able to provide a more comprehensive level of technical detail than I can? I hope that my contributions can be of value to the committee. Thank you very much, Mr Wood. That is helpful. We are now moved to David Akin, please. My name is David Akin. I am the current chair of local authority building standards Scotland and on behalf of labs, as we are commonly known, we welcome the opportunity to attend a meeting with specific regard to the topic of building regulations and fire safety. Having attended a previous meeting on the wider building standards system, the committee may be aware that labs represents the interests of all the 32 local authority building standards services in Scotland. We hope that the specific skills, qualifications and experiences of those representing labs today will assist the committee in undertaking its scrutiny of building regulations and fire safety. Acting solely in the public interests, we work closely with the Scottish Government's building standards division on procedural and technical matters related to the building standards system in Scotland. The primary aim is to ensure that the verification and enforcement are undertaken as effectively as possible. I am a day job, I am a team leader of building standards within Dundee City Council, I am a chartered building standards surveyor and I am accompanied today with Alan Macaulay, who is also a team leader of building standards services at South Lanarkshire Council, Alan is a chartered surveyor past chair of labs and also has a fire engineering degree. Raymond Barlow, have you got a contribution for the committee as well? Yes, thank you, just a short statement. I did not obviously provide a written submission to the committee, I was aware of the lab submission. I am also a past chair of labs in 2014-15, so I simply welcome the ability to contribute today. I am the assistant head of planning and building standards at Glasgow City Council for over 30 years experience in the building standards field. I am a chartered surveyor, I have a degree in fire risk engineering. We obviously see much of that type of approach in the city of Glasgow with the nature of the developments that we see. I welcome the opportunity to contribute to anything that I can to today's committee. Thank you for those opening statements. If I could perhaps kick up for a move to fellow members. The good news, I suppose, is that there is any good news from the tragedy of Grenfell because it would appear—I stress it—that no high rise in Scotland has the combustible material or the systems that were discovered at Grenfell that led to that dreadful tragedy. I know that confirmation has been given by housing associations and local authorities to the Scottish Government. That is indeed the case, but can I just get a little bit more information? How do you know that? Constituents of mine will say that that is brilliant. We have got those reassurances, but how can this be stated with certainty? A little bit more information on how this can be stated with such certainty that those materials do not exist in the housing stock in your areas. Who would like to start with that? Raymond, do you want to take this, given the amount of high rise in Glasgow? We have just recently completed our submission back to the ministers and we are waiting some further feedback, so I am not sure whether the information that you have is fully up-to-date. I do not necessarily want to go into the detail of what I have given over. Glasgow responded previously with regards to the social landlords in the city. You know that Glasgow does not carry its own council housing any more, so our housing associations and our links with the housing associations in the weekly group in particular, we went to them and asked them to report back to us and we responded on that initially, and there were no properties reported on that throng. That would have been very much based on the records of how they had reclared their buildings. Most of which would have had building warrants, so we went to them on that. What we have been doing is completing the exercise for private flat developments. It has been a very difficult exercise to try and ascertain which buildings fell into, first of all, the category in the height criteria. Secondly, once we establish that to go to whatever records were available to us, which initially is building warrants, we had some feedback from factors that followed on from the request of the ministers. We have only recently completed that exercise and we have notified some properties back to the ministers and we are waiting further feedback. Before I go to myself, Mr Barlow, I think we have to explore that a little bit further. Can we break it into two parts in terms of social landlords within the city of Glasgow? Are you content that none of the combustible material or cladding models such as in Grenfell exist? Yes, from the information that we obtained from the social landlords themselves, because, as I said, the difficulty in getting the information in the first place was to firstly establish which properties fell into this category that were flated buildings above a certain height, because local authorities do not carry records of buildings simply related to height. We have many buildings in the city that are over 18 metres in height. A lot of them are commercial premises, offices, et cetera. We had to start from there. Initially, when we went to the social landlords, our colleagues in our housing investment team had very good relationships with social landlords. We said, okay, you know your buildings better than us. Could you look at what you have done to your buildings, building warrant records, et cetera? From that feedback, that information, that was relayed back to the ministers very quickly. I was actually in leave at the time when the initial request came in, so I know that was fed back quite quickly. That took care of that part. They fed the information back on their properties as the building's owners about what alterations or improvements they had done to their building by, for instance, recladding the building, whether that is by insulation with render over it or whether it is some other form of cladding, but they reported back and we passed that information on to the ministers. That is the social housing case. Obviously, there are hospitals, commercial office blocks, a variety of others. Can you take through a little bit more of that? I will bring the other witnesses in in a second. I sense from your initial answer, Mr Barlow, that some of the information given back to the Scottish Government would appear to highlight that there is perhaps more of this form of cladding on commercial property than we initially thought? No, no, sorry, if possibly we have missed your answer. We never reported back on commercial properties because we weren't asked to do so. We only reported back on domestic buildings above 18 metres. Did I detect a slight nervousness in just giving us that assurance? Where do you feel this type of cladding or cladding system may exist within Glasgow? The properties which we have reported back on in the last couple of weeks are private flats, not social landlords. I apologise if it wasn't clear. The initial reporting that went back was in the social landlord side of things and that confirmed from their information that there weren't the type of cladding that didn't exist on any of the social landlord side of things. Our troll and our research from then on was very much on private flat of developments and that information we only managed to complete in the last couple of weeks and I've passed that information over to the ministers via the building standards division. So combustible cladding has been found in some private properties now? Yes. It's just not public information yet. Right, so it's now public information that exists because you're telling us? Oh, absolutely because I'm simply responding to the question but I would prefer not to go into the details of the properties if you understand. Okay, so we won't push on the details, can we push you on the scale of the issue then, the detail? I'm wary of that as well simply because we haven't released any figures to anyone about that and I've really been waiting because we are getting the request from the ministerial working group, we are providing the information to them and we have obviously, we are as a council responding to press inquiries in matters like that too and what we are simply saying is we are supplying the information to the Scottish ministers and then we wish to see what they wish to do with the information before we then take it further. Okay, let's pretend that I'm a journalist, tell me, is it 30 properties, more, less in Glasgow that I've got this type of cladding? At the moment I would prefer not to say, I genuinely would not, simply because we have not answered that question to others at the moment because we are trying to be respectful of the fact that the Scottish ministers are asking us for the information and we wish to see what they wish to then do with that information. Again, I apologise to other witnesses but I think that we have to explore this a little bit further. Has the Scottish Fire Service been in to see each individual property as a matter of priority? No, because the process we've been asked to go through is to notify the ministers about that and that's what we've done. Have you notified this Scottish Fire and Rescue Service? No, because again, because we are simply waiting to see what the Scottish ministers wish to do with that, because I know that the ministerial working group and the measures that the meetings they will have will include the Scottish Fire Service within that. I do want to move on to other witnesses to comment and at some point I will just leave this, but the relationship with Glasgow City Council isn't just with the Scottish Government, there's direct lines of responsibility that Glasgow City has in relation to building standards in a variety of areas irrespective of whether there's a ministerial working group or not. Given that you've established this, do you think it would be sensible to go to Scottish Fire Service to ask them to, for example, do intrusive fire safety assessments of these properties? I think that's what I'm referring to, that the fire service are involved in the ministerial working group. They go to the meetings as part of that and therefore the fire service at the highest national level in Scotland will be party to that information at source, given from us to the ministers, so that they can then decide at that point working in junction with the ministerial working group, whatever matters that they wish to take forward. We will happily work with the ministerial working group once they have decided what they wish to do with that information. My only reason for not pushing us any further is that there will be families that stay in these properties. It might be that these properties are absolutely safe, because I forget the other building standards, but it's not just non-combustible, but there's another technical standard, which means that the system when put together becomes non-combustible. BR-135, so are these properties BR-135 compliant? The properties predate, all the properties that we've notified currently predate the current regulations. Right, only because of the sensitivity of people who live in these properties just now, I'm not going to pursue that further for the moment, but I think we may wish to come back to it. Yeah, absolutely. There's lots more questions I would like to ask. I'm just very, very conscious of taking a measured approach, but I have to allow other MSPs in to ask further questions on this, Elaine Smith. Thanks very much, convener. I would just like to ask Mr Barlow if there wasn't a ministerial working group on this at the moment, and you found out this information. What would you do then? We would be speaking to the property factors to notify them of the matter. Legislatively, there is probably not much that local authorities can do other than notify, and that's why we are being obviously cognisant of, as you say, the risks of whether it's families or anything else. We wish to make sure that this information is controlled as well as possible, and so that people understand the context of the information that they're given. It would be through the factors. The ministerial working group had asked for assistance from the factoring agents in Scotland to assist us in the information that we were trying to research, and we got some assistance from factoring groups, but at the same time, their information is limited. As building owners, we would be putting that information back through someone like the factors if we were made aware of it, but that's why we respectfully say that we wish to then see what the ministerial working group wishes to do with it, because they are the persons who are asking us the questions. Therefore, as a national issue, I feel that it's best that they actually decide what should we then do, because they are in contact with people like the factoring agents and everyone else. I suppose that our concern—well, I'll speak for myself, but maybe other colleagues—would be what, you know, if some tragedy in the meantime occurs while the red tape admin line is being followed? That's a concern, obviously. I don't see it as red tape. I've simply been respectful of the circumstance of what it means. As I said, the properties do predate the current standards. We have to interrogate this a little bit further, Mr Simpson. Where does this information come from? It was from research through our records, the building work records. Yes, and as necessary, trying to speak to developers of the time or their agents, architects, some of whom they are no longer in existence. So you've not actually been out to see any of these prior flats? Some of the facts have been looked at externally. Looking at them outside wouldn't really tell you much information. You could look at them in Street View and get the same information. It doesn't tell you the nature. If it was a cladding product, looking at it from outside wouldn't really give you much information. When you say predated current regulations, what kind of age of buildings are we looking at? They were built under consents that were applied for prior to the first of May 2005. So some of them could be fairly modern then? Some of them were completed after 2005 in a consent that was applied for pre-2005. Having discovered that some private flats in Glasgow have cladding that's combustible. Have you informed the owners of those flats? No, as I say, I've provided the information back to the ministerial working group as requested because it is a national issue. It would have been no different from any other council that was asked and had discovered that information. Don't you think that Glasgow council has responsibilities as citizens of Glasgow rather than a ministerial working group if you have discovered that information? Nationally we do, and that's why I'm feeding it back through the ministerial working group through the Government because it is a national issue. I really apologise for ending the line of questions. We'll ask the question, then I'm going to make a suggestion directly to Mr Barrow, which then allows to move on to the rest of the witnesses to answer some questions. If anyone has discovered this elsewhere in Scotland, in private flats. I don't know, but the ministerial working group collated all that information. I'm going to take in Mr Thane's been very patient as well, but Mr Barrow, first of all, rather than saying that we're content with ending this line of questioning here, I don't think that we are content. We'd like to pursue this further, so I think that we'll be seeking information from the Scottish Government as soon as possible. We'd ask Glasgow City Council for as much of a detailed briefing as soon as possible, as soon as humanly possible, in relation to this matter, and we maybe request Glasgow City Council to come back to this committee in short order to answer further questions in relation to this matter, if that would be able to Mr Barrow as well. I will speak to our chief executive on the matter. I could see why, yes, I can come back, but I will bear in mind the sensitivity of the information. I am fully cognisant of why you are asking these types of questions. I would not disagree with any of the opinions that you expressed about the concerns that it raises. I wouldn't detract from that. Therefore, I would simply say that, yes, I have provided information to the Scottish Government at the moment. That's why we wish to allow them to advise us quickly what they want to do with information because it's a national issue. It is a national issue, but there's a direct local responsibility irrespective of whether this national working place exists or not. People listening to this or reading about this tomorrow in the newspapers will want to know, is it my flat that's affected, is my flat dangerous, what is the risk to my family, and they want those questions addressed speedily and effectively with the view to reassuring them as quickly as humanly possible. I am ending the line of questioning here because we don't want to create an alarm that's not required because reassurances might be able to be given speedily, but we simply don't know that yet, and I am also conscious that there are 32 local authorities in Scotland and it's not just Glasgow. I'm actually looking to my fellow committee members at this point. I'm going to move on with further lines of questioning, but I think that we do have to return to this. Absolutely. Mr Thang, you've been waiting very patiently to come in. I was referring back to the earlier point that was being discussed about social housing. My role here is as a chief housing officer representing the association of local authority chief housing officers. I just thought it would be helpful to give a wee bit of context about essentially the response of local authorities, and certainly because we're close relationship with housing associations of what I did from an organisational landlord point of view. I think that even on the morning of the fire, when my colleagues switched on the news, we knew what sort of effect it may have on our tenants and residents. I think that there was a very reasonably quick response to have housing officers deployed in those tower blocks to reassure tenants and to hear their concerns because of the huge media coverage that there was. The second response or again organisationally was to review the landlord records, so the local authority housing records, and I know and speak to my colleagues who are directors, chief executives of housing associations exactly the same process was being done almost prior to any request for information from the Scottish Government to check what we knew as details emerged over the hours following the start of the fire of what materials were used. Within probably the week, certainly the feedback given to Scottish Government colleagues by local authority housing services and by housing associations was very much to the checking of the records, which are probably as the developer and the builder of those houses and the maintainer of those houses more complete than you would have through a sort of regulatory system in terms of building warrants. I think that that showed through comprehensively in that conclusion that no social housing blocks or blocks owned by councils or housing associations had the same materials that were used in Grenfell Tower, and that was done fairly quickly from very much a management and, if anything, a customer reassurance response and taking the responsibility as landlords that we have to ensure that our tenants are safe and that they also feel safe as well. I think that that was to give a bit of context on that and the response of social housing landlords to this in the immediate days, hours and days after the tragedy. I'm conscious that I cut Mr Macaulay off. Do you want to come out at this point, Mr Macaulay? Yes, thank you very much, convener, but with just a general point to your initial question around how local authority to verifiers establish whether the CCM panel has been in place and very much it's a case of we work with our local housing and technical departments, those that are responsible for the maintenance, the upkeep and the overseeing of the buildings. We do that through research to our historical archives, as Mr Thane alluded to there, and Mr Ballow touched on that as well. We make archive records related to building warrants, completion certificates and material specifications that are available in our own council housing and technical resources that were initially responsible for responding back to ministerial demands. I think that that is the general approach throughout the country, just to clarify the original point that we are involved, local authority to verifiers are involved in assisting the collision of that information, however the responsibility for the maintenance and the upkeep of those buildings are out with the verifier role when we provide information to allow those responsible within each council to submit the information required by Scottish ministers. Okay, thanks Mr Wood, I'm just wondering just to mop up some of this line of questioning, you're confident that all 31 local authorities in the social housing sector anyway they're content that this combustible cladding or cladding type wasn't used, or have the other 31 local authorities been interrogating the private sector and how many of them have said that this cladding doesn't exist? So I was just going to speak to that national picture that's been built up by the ministerial working group and through officials as well within the Scottish Government. So immediately after the fire, I think the next sort of 10 days to two weeks, there was a number of requests that went to local authorities, I think directed to chief executives and to chief housing officers as well, seeking information on the type of construction and the number of high rise properties above 18 metres within the area, the type of cladding that had been used and I think there was also a separate questionnaire that went out about cladding that had been installed using heaps abs funding that the Scottish Government issues and the collation of that information was done by the Scottish Government, but our understanding from what they've fed back to COSLA and what's been put on the ministerial working group's webpage is that it came back with confirmation that there was no cladding of the sort suspected to being at fault at Gyrenfil Tower within any of the houses that were surveyed. In terms of that building up that national picture, it seemed like quite a lot of bureaucracy I suppose when within that short period of time, but I think that it's been useful in allowing ministers and COSLA and locally elected members to be able to give the reassurance that might be required of them. Final question, I want to come in and explore lines of evidence. It's our understanding that the Scottish Government will create a national database of every high-rise property right across the country on that database, whether it's social rented or whether it's private or whatever, including the types of cladding. Assuming given what we've just heard from Mr Barlow, that this would be a pretty positive step and a fairly essential step to better understand the state of Scotland's housing stock, be it social rented or otherwise in Scotland today, would you all support that and the obligations and local authorities to help keep that fresh and updated and accurate? Mr Wood, that's why I'm asking you. I think that that would be certainly useful. I can't speak necessarily to the challenges that there would be in getting the relevant information about private rented properties, but I think that the information is there within council records with regard to social housing at the moment, so it shouldn't be an onerous task to do that. I think that it would serve a purpose. Any other information should be on that national database, because I'm conscious that, in a few years' time, something else would happen in relation to building standards, and we'll have to scurry about and check building warrants and historical archives and work out what material was or wasn't using a building and what the construction type was, and that's a laborious, long-drawn-out process. Is there a compelling case being built up for a much more accurate, detailed national database of high-rise properties in Scotland? The only thing that I would add to that is that absolutely local authorities have a role in supporting maintenance and providing information for that database. It's worth reflecting on the responsibilities of owners of private properties, of owners and property managers, of factors of private properties, to know their buildings and to share that responsibility or to have quite specific responsibilities for making that information public on such a database. I don't have the solution or the mechanism to that, but I think that it's worth reflecting, given the earlier discussion about the challenges that there are. Some of those buildings will go back into the 90s or the 80s or whatever that we have, particularly in urban areas, for buildings of that size, many of which are in private ownership or managed by private property agents. I think that it's worth reflecting on what responsibilities owners or their agents have to update such a database as well. Is it currently an offence for owners not to provide relevant information as requested by local authorities? You can contact the private sector as much as you like and get a good quality response back, maybe in another matter. Do they have to respond to you? In the context of the debate about the safety of those buildings, I think that there is a requirement whether a database is set up or whether it is through a national agency or administered through local authorities. However, the requirement for owners to provide information or for property agents to provide information should be looked at as well. At this stage, in this context and setting up a database of such properties for the purpose of making them safe, I would doubt that we would have necessarily direct… There are two things here. One is that who owns those buildings and then who requires which statutory bodies then administer that database, whether it's a central agency, a Scottish Government agency or local authorities themselves. I think that somewhere in this discussion is the requirement for those owners and the property managers of those buildings to have a requirement to provide information by whoever is administering that database. I don't think that I want to add anything to that. I think that you've summed up what my thoughts would be. Before I move on to other MSPs to interrogate other lines of questioning, anything else that any witness wants to add on this section of questioning? Convener, and something did spring to my mind when the convener was asking that, which is that there was reports last week about fake fibre-resistant glass being sold across the UK and Ireland, which is something else that might need to be addressed, I suppose. However, I did want to turn specifically to the challenges that were mentioned in response. In the written submissions, COSLA and LABS have said that building standards should remain a local authority function, so I want to explore that slightly more. Do you have any comment to make on the suggestion that local authority building standards departments might be under-resourced? If so, how could that be tackled? In tying in with that, do you have a view at all on the ring fencing of the building standards fees income, which would then exclusively be used for the provision of building standards services? I suppose that the question might be, first of all, to COSLA, who has specifically said that building standards should remain within local authorities. That is correct. The COSLA's response contained that line, and it is our view that there is a benefit to be sought from 32 building standards authorities, that there is no geographical overlap between those and that there is a line of accountability directly to the local communities that those councils serve. I am no expert in that, but I have heard reports about building standards changes south of the border that have led to a bit of confusion. We would stick to that line in terms of the ring fencing of building standards fees that COSLA had responded separately to the previous call for evidence before the summer. Our view as a point of principle is always that ring fencing of funding is not something that we support. We think that when funds are gathered, the local authority should have discretion to use them as it sees fit. Finally, on your point about the resourcing of building standards departments, if I am very honest, I would not have a view on that, but I think that it is certainly the case that we always need to be mindful of the sort of capacity that exists within councils and other public bodies to apply regulations. I think that rightly a lot of the focus after Grenfell within Scotland and by the ministerial working group has been on the regulatory framework that exists. I cannot speak to exactly what it looks like on the ground at the moment. I think that there is no point in having a regulatory framework if there are not people there to enforce it, so that would be my answer to that. Standard's point of view, we have made the case for the reappointment of local authorities as sole verifiers back in 2011, and more recently, based on what we feel is a very strong case of our independence, the fact that local authority verifiers are experienced, skilled, qualified and provide services local to the needs of their own geographical area. We, as local authority building standards, still stand by that. It is fair to say, though, that the local authority building standard services have not been immune to the cuts faced by local authorities across the country, but that is not to say that that has affected the quality of the verification service delivered by local authorities. It simply means that we need to prioritise better, use our resources where the risks are the highest, and that is something that is on-going within local authorities, and each local authority is different. With regard to the issue of ring-fencing the fees, I think that anybody in the local authority environment is always hopeful of that, and what we have welcomed in the back of the recent fees increase is more explicit expectation from the Scottish Government that those fees should be directly invested in the delivery of local authority services, in bringing on trainees and younger people into the industry, into the service, and that is very much our aim and our drive within our own authorities, although that is still a challenge within each authority. However, it is also fair to say that some authorities are moving out of the challenges of previous years. Each authority is at different stages, but there is significant recruitment in Glasgow, Edinburgh and authorities around the central belt in other situations in the country. You are seeing more people coming in, new people coming in, which is turning the corner, as it were, from the challenges that we had before with local authority cuts. We are moving in a positive direction, and from the local authority building standar Scotland's point of view, one of our key aims is to ensure that anybody coming into the verification service is provided with the skills and support to allow them to be an effective verifier, to allow them to have a good career, if you like, and to support the delivery of verification within a local authority environment. Anyone else who wants to come on that? I will lean on what to follow up on some of that. Mr McColley, we know each other because I used to be a councillor in South Lanarkshire, but you made the comment that you thought that everyone was providing a good service, but that is not quite the case, is it? Some councils have only been given permission to verify for another year. I think Edinburgh was one of them, so they are all performing at different levels. I think we can accept that. My question is, back to this desktop exercise of fire safety. Has that been what all councils have done, or has anyone gone further than that and actually gone out and tested stuff on the ground? The housing department, they have led on this, so I really cannot speak on behalf of the housing department. We have assisted where we can through the desktop exercise and looking at archive records. In addition to checking and verifying records, my own local authority and no other local authority environments are doing some processes. In my case, we have something like 50 tower blocks, so maintenance is going on all the time. We took the opportunity of those blocks where maintenance is going on at that time to go and check that what was on our records was what was on the buildings. We also commissioned some work, which is under way just now, to do that check across all the blocks, just to give us the further peace of mind that we have already. The checks that we have done verify what is on our records. My colleague mentioned the balancing risks with priorities. Unless you took off every panel of every block and checked the installation, you would never have 100 per cent certainty. The quality of the records, the processes by which projects are managed, particularly in the local authority and housing association sector with clerks of works and project managers and a lot of checking and verifying the quality records and the opportunities that landlords have taken to check the material that is on. As I said in my own authority, we checked where we were undertaking maintenance and I verified that on those blocks our records were absolutely accurate. There is some of that follow-up invasive checking that has been going on as well. Mr Rood, did you want to add anything? I will take Mr Barlow in after that, Mr Rood first. It was not to add very much to that other than that that is what we have heard as well. From speaking to COSLA members, it has mostly been desktop-focused research that has sometimes been a demand for intrusive inspections to be undertaken. I think that granting those requests has been few and far between. Partly that is because, when you open that door, when do you stop, but there is also in keeping with the need for local authorities in particular and social landlords to continue to reassure the communities that live in the tower blocks. I think that immediate aftermath to see scaffolding going up in it and a drill going into a wall when it is not necessary has been something that we have tried to avoid. Mr Barlow, do you want to add anything? It is really just to add in support. I think that they have summarised it fairly well. It has been predominantly desktop exercise from a Glasgow point of view. I suppose that any of us would have difficulty for speaking on behalf of all the authorities because they have such a varying amount of high-rise properties. Probably Glasgow is the most, maybe Edinburgh is close behind, but I think that most of it has been desktop exercises. Mr McAulid, did you want to come in? Sorry. No, thank you. Mr Sims, you are pursuing a line of question. I am just noting that General Gore has got a supplementary. Graham, do you want to continue with this for the minute? Just as a supplementary, sorry, good morning to the panel. Thank you, convener. Mr Wood, just to go back to your point, you say that you think most of your members carried out desktop exercises in terms of how they surveyed what was going on. You do not have a central point of contact then at COSLA, who has that evidence. You did not survey your members as a matter of course then as an organisation. We considered that, but we work so closely with the relevant department of the Scottish Government that they were asking the right questions, they did it very quickly and we did not see that it would be useful to add another identical survey to that. We sort of let them get on with their work, they have the contacts, I think that in some cases we would have provided contacts where the Scottish Government did not hold them and the Scottish Government has, and we have really appreciated that, kept a really open line of communication with us in terms of what the responses to those surveys have been. I am just trying to establish that you did not act as a central point of contact for your members to feed into and then you fed that into the ministerial working group, for example. You allowed your members to do that themselves? Yes, we did not do that on this occasion. We sometimes provide that function, but given the swiftness of the Scottish Government response, it was not necessary for us to do that. Mr Samson, did you want to follow up on that? Yes, just really for any one who wants to jump in. Cozler's evidence said that building standards systems and regulations for high-rise domestic properties in Scotland mean that the type of product used on Grenfell Tower should not be used in their cladding systems. However, such cladding is being found in new-build properties such as large development of student housing in Edinburgh. So your evidence is not entirely correct if we have found it in certain types of properties. I am just wondering how far this desktop exercise extends across Scotland. Obviously, we have looked at student housing, but have we looked at commercial premises, hotels, for example, which are over 18 metres? How far has it gone? Mr Barlow? Happy answer from a Glasgow perspective, but the request that we have all responded to was on purely domestic buildings for, say, the verifier side of things for flats. Now, I know that there were separate requests to the mental local authorities on their education premises, and I think that a separate request went to the health boards. But what, for instance, we did not get was a request for, say, hotels as an example. We were not asked to look at those matters. Just to pick up on the student housing point of view, quite often something is described as student housing, but for the purpose of the building regulations it might not be classed as a house, it might not be a dwelling. If you imagine it, excuse me, the traditional halls of residence, the classifications and the building regulations are dependent on how the architect wishes to approach the design. So some may be designed purely as a mainstream dwelling that they opt to rent out to students, but other ones are not designed like that, even though they are commonly called student housing? They are clearly dwelling. No, for the purposes of the building regulations they may not be. For the purposes of the building regulations, if a property is designated as a dwelling, if someone wishes to design it as a dwelling, then it must be various criteria from thermal performance to fire, precautions, et cetera, but you can have a person sleeping in a hotel and you will know, obviously, clearly know it's a hotel that is not a dwelling. Student residences over the, certainly, but the past 10 years have come in in various formats and the designers when they put to us in the building warrant consents have used a variation of approaches, some of which have followed a mainstream dwelling design, others which have been a sort of hybrid is the best way I could put it, that may reflect the layout of, let's say, a hotel, something that is more akin to you would simply have a whole load of bedrooms one after the other, maybe no different from a hotel, but people commonly call it student residences, but it's not a dwelling for the purposes of the building regulations, and so therefore different regulations apply. So different regulations can apply? We'll let you pursue this further, but Mr McCullough wanted to add something, then I'll let you back in immediately. Yeah, hopefully, thanks for being there, it seeks to clarify. In that context, there is additional significant fire safety features that are required in a hall of residence or a hotel, et cetera, which mitigate the risks of that particular building use, whether it be extensive alarm and detection, depending on the height of the building suppression systems, but limited travel distance, compartmentation. So there's other features in there that work along with the suppression system if it is required to make sure those buildings are safe for those that are occupying them. So whether it's a dwelling or whether it's used effectively as a dwelling, there are additional regulations in the building regulations that seek to make sure that those buildings are safe. So that's the reason that I think they are considered non-domestic because the regulations then allow you to ask for these additional fire safety features, which you wouldn't necessarily perhaps need to the same extent in a true dwelling, as we know it. Can I add one further thing to that? Sorry, one of the things about that would be if it was a student residence in the type that's not a domestic building, not a domestic flat, it's a managed building and it doesn't have the same place, the defending place scenario that you have with domestic high-rise. You have actually a managed building there with the different types of precautions that Alan was highlighting. It's a different type of precaution that you put in there, but it's essentially a managed building, so not typically the single stair high-rise domestic defending place that you may have with something like Grenfell. Mr Simpson, any less confused now? I think it's a bit clearer, but a bit concerning, I think, because you've clearly got people living there most of the time. I would regard these as dwellings, and I would expect that halls of residence are built to the highest standards and have cladding that is non-combustible. That's what I would expect. Certainly if my son or daughter was in in these places, that's what I would want. So if we've got different regulations applying that, that is a concern. I think we as a committee would want more information on that. The fact that we've found student accommodation in Edinburgh that doesn't meet the standards that we would expect is a worry, so I'll just leave it there. It's not really a question, it's a point. Just before we move on to the next question, I know that we're indicating that this session may finish at 11 o'clock. I think that we'll go to at least 11.20 anyway, because the members have taken the chance to come in and ask questions, so I'm just giving a note on that. Can we just take cladding out the equation for a second? I know that it seems almost impossible to do that, but in relation to, say, managed student accommodation such as has been outlined there, are some of the fire safety standards higher in those buildings putting the cladding to one side completely for a moment compared to, say, dwellings? I don't want to get caught up in the semantics of it, I just want to know about the fire safety standards. Is there a higher fire safety risk for large student accommodation where you have 100 students in halls but it's not a dwelling, it's a managed accommodation, therefore it might be able to have that cladding as we're now finding out in Edinburgh, but are there other fire safety standards that are higher than those required for domestic dwellings? I just want a bit of clarity around that, Mr Barlow. What the question you've asked there highlights the fundamental difference in the building regulations throughout the UK, not just in Scotland, domestic high-rise buildings and other ones where you may have sleeping accommodation in it address fire safety from a different approach where one has a defending place, which is the domestic side, and other ones are managed buildings where you have different features, different precautions, so for instance one of the things you would have would be a full building alarm system, a full early warning system that links into every bedroom, every common area, which you wouldn't have in domestic buildings, and therefore on top of that you have the building management, you have other aspects about the escape widths, travel distances and matters, which we deal with on a daily basis and a technical level, but the precautions still try to achieve the same end and they achieve a safe building, but it's a different way of approaching the same thing. Okay, so our committee has a wrestle with whether that form of cladding is ever acceptable in any building above a certain height irrespective of whether there's a dwelling or not, and that's something we're obviously looking at. I just wanted a bit of clarity on that. Mr Wightman, thank you for your patience. We'll move to yourself now. A couple of questions on two sort of separate topics. First of all, we've had evidence in general on the shortage of skills in building standards. Elaine Smith was talking about lack of resources. RICS have told us about a chronic skill shortage, very few higher education institutions offering a building control option. Could you just say something about what you consider to be the state of play with the building control industry and profession, particularly in light of the fact that we've heard concerns about the need for greater degree of inspection of new build property and yet the resources and the skills appear to be both lacking and perhaps declining? Mr Wightman, if I take this, I think it's important. I've mentioned this to the committee previously during another session that we look at building standards helistically. I think that it's vital that we do that. I don't think that we should just look at building standards, services and isolation. When you talk about RICS statistics there, that's industry-wide, construction industry-wide. There's a shortage of skills, so we shouldn't lose sight of that. If we don't have the skilled tradespersons on the ground, if we don't have the numbers going through the colleges, the pipeline is affected, we need the project manager skilled up. Everyone needs to have an input to achieve compliance with building standards and have an awareness of building standards. Labs has worked closely with the construction sector just recently. We had an event in Dundee where we had 150 delegates from across industry and we tried to scope out what were the perceived gaps in the compliance agenda. We were producing a paper to come from that event and we're more than happy to share that with the committee because I think that was what was mentioned previously, that you want to be more proactive if you like in terms of building regulations. Labs is engaging with Glasgow Caledonian University. We've had several meetings looking at what can be done in terms of encouraging greater numbers to go through the colleges and the universities to fill those gaps. Workforce planning is a big issue, but that goes right across all public sector. There's an ageing profession and we need to be sure that we're on top of that and we have proactive approaches in place to address any shortfalls. In general, building standards services are well-placed. I don't think that the shortages that you're explaining are a critical stage. I'm not saying that there aren't gaps, but I don't think that it's a critical stage. I think that Labs, as a body, are taking the lead from Government in terms of where we can share services and skills across the board. That's the type of thing that Labs, as an organisation, is currently working on, because we know that it's there and we're trying to deal with it. That's very helpful. I think that Mr Wood might have wanted to come in and add something there. It was just to endorse that. Rather than focusing purely on building standards, I think that, as my colleague indicated, across the public sector, there is a concern that a reducing workforce means that trainees coming into various professions have an impact on the capacity of those services and the skills that lie within them. I think that, specifically with regard to fire safety, the anecdotal evidence is that there is less resource available for general staff training, and that might be for housing officers. It might be for building standards professionals, but at some stage, the public sector has to recognise that and be able to invest in a skilled-up workforce that can last into the future. I, on behalf of Labs, attended a meeting organised by the Scottish Government a bit was chaired by Homes for Scotland. It brought together representatives across the industry from planning and building standards. Some of the universities were there and representatives from various industry bodies. It was about trainees and bringing people through across the industry. The recognition was that, if we were to deliver the social housing targets that we all have over the next number of years, it was their capacity industry to do that. They were therefore trying to look at all areas, not just local authorities for bringing people through. We as a local authority have brought some through ourselves. We have brought in some graduates over the past few years. We have been a bit more fortunate than others, but I think that the recognition is there across the industry that we need to staff up all the way through and bring through the next generation. I will leave that there on conscious of time. The other question that I wanted to ask was, you know, a number of witnesses have stressed to us, of course, that building standards and building warrants are for new build. Once they have complied with that, then it is over to the owner to maintain the building. The properties that Mr Barlow was highlighting to us earlier in this session, of course, apparently meet building standards, because they were built prior to the upgrading of the fire standards in 2005. I am just wondering whether there is any merit to look at the detail here about having a better system of recording the upgrades and refurbishments that have taken place to older buildings. I remember that I was in Edinburgh City Council recently, and I was taking into a little room that showed me banks and banks and banks of index cards. They showed inspections that Edinburgh City Council did of all the tenements in Edinburgh, for example, up to about the mid-80s, and they were looking at everything from common, you know, the roofs and the closes, picking up any problems that might arise in relation to access, presumably fire safety was part of that as well. But there isn't any kind of regime like that, and there's no obligation on building owners to have any kind of logbooks that record maintenance. Given that a lot of buildings are very, very old, it means that consumers should buy them. I'm having to clue what's in these buildings or when the roof was last inspected, for example. I'm just taking a broad indication of that. Do you think that there's any merit in exploring that for the future? Thank you, Mr Macaulay, because everyone was trying to avoid eye contact with me to answer that question, Mr Macaulay. Thank you for your response to Mr Wightman's point. I think that I would, from the building standards perspective, from the verification rule, the records that we keep and we are required to keep through legislation with regards building work, which, you know, only go back a number of years, I mean robustly, maybe back to the late 60s, et cetera, are very, very detailed. Obviously, going forward with electronic recording, et cetera, they will continue to be very, very detailed. With regard to construction work that's been done in the relatively recent past, there are robust records there, and we are custodians of that, and they are available for inspection to anybody. Where we draw the line is at the point of completion, and it may be for others on the panel to provide advice about the level of information that is provided and available after the verification rule ends. Now, that's not to say that if there is refurbishment work, obviously, that may be warrantable, then we have the building work process to record the information, the level of work that is done, the materials that were used, inspection processes that were undertaken, the certification that was given to us, to all the completion certificates to be issued, so that will all be there and recorded and held by the verifier. However, as I say, I can't answer for anything more routine in terms of fire risk assessment or on-going maintenance schedules that would be applicable to those buildings, and perhaps there are others that may be able to fill in that gap. Mr Thane? I think that the example that you refer to in terms of Edinburgh Council and index cards from 1982, we just need to reflect to carry out that level of, say, public sector-led inspection would be a very expensive task and quite resource intensive. It also probably raises the question of what do you then do with that information, everything broadly about the condition of buildings. I go back to my earlier point about, I think, we need to reflect on the responsibilities of individual property owners. If you look at the social housing stock, the stock owned by local authorities and housing associations is subject to a regulatory regime that requires certain standards to be met in terms of the Scottish housing quality standard, the environmental standards and things that are part of its maintenance upkeep and investment in existing stock. In private sector-owned buildings, and there's a further complication with properties in common ownership, the responsibilities for owners are less onerous. If we look more broadly at how we inspect, how we look after the condition and safety of buildings that are already built, there is probably some reflection on what the responsibility of individual owners is to that. You referred to, for example, that there is no requirement to keep logbooks. Are there measures that can be put in place that will raise the awareness of the condition of property among building owners and some level of requirement on them to meet minimum standards as they move forward in terms of looking after those buildings? It is worth exploring those options as well as recognising some of the discussions that we have just heard about challenges in resourcing local authorities in terms of the skills and the financial cost of taking on that responsibility for knowledge and ownership. The 1980s would have been a different fiscal period for local government than when we are now, for example. I just want to add to that, Mr Wightman. Thank you very much. That was very useful. I mean, just to confirm that my question was targeted at seeing us to whether there's any merit in exploring the obligations that are placed on owners to maintain records, obviously, within some kind of perhaps light-touch regulatory regime, but I'll leave that. Thank you. I'd like to consider the role of COSLA in terms of what he did in the wake of Grenfell. In your written submission, you speak about housing officer managers going out to reassure tenants and an additional 900 fire safety visits by a Scottish fire and rescue service. Last week, in evidence from the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations, its evidence said that housing associations made tenants aware that fire safety, fire service rather, they offered free advisory home visits, so those visits were not compulsory. Do you know if your members did likewise? Yes, they will have. I couldn't speak for absolutely every one of them, but I do know that in every local authority area, there's been ghost work between the housing department and the Scottish Fire and Rescue Services LSO, their local senior officer, who's the single point of contact in that area. In most places at a community planning level, there has been that communication and housing departments within councils have made their tenants aware of that service that can be provided by the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. It's probably safe to say that that isn't going to cover absolutely everybody in every single apartment. Something that has come from conversations at a national level and also has been endorsed by the Ministerial Working Group is that there would be a national fire safety campaign led by the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and supported by councils that would provide that very basic but important information to tenants of high-rise apartments about how they should behave in the case of a fire and also advising them of the service that's available from the fire and rescue service. In the response that we heard last week from David Stewart, he said that those visits focused on vulnerable people. Do you know again if your members targeted certain groups of individuals who might be more vulnerable than others? Yes, absolutely. Using the existing relationships that there are between housing officers, health and social care workers where possible, we are making sure that we engage with the most vulnerable and the people who might not be able to find that information themselves. Similarly, just to go back to that campaign that will be run by the Fire and Rescue Service, I was at a meeting earlier this week among officers to discuss the campaign brief for that. There is a very clear focus on that on inequalities and making sure that any messaging that is delivered by public services is targeted to the most vulnerable people who do not have English as a first language, elderly people, disabled people, etc. In evidence that we heard last week, again, some housing associations require a safety visit as a condition of their tenancy. Are you aware of any local authorities doing likewise? I'm not aware of that. No, but I would imagine that that would be the case. I think that housing manager would probably be able to answer that better than any, but I would say that that's the case. In the final page of your evidence, you said that there are issues in terms of a common problem being residents removing a self-closer from fire doors or leaving fire doors open. We heard similar evidence again from SFHA last week. How widespread is that problem? Do you know? Have you surveyed your members in terms of how that's going on nationally? We don't have any quantitative evidence of that, but it comes up a lot. I think that we can't deny that it comes up a lot, and it speaks to the fact that, at the end of the day, you can have whatever system you want in place that's tried and tested, but human behaviour will quite often get in the way of that. People holding doors open and people replacing doors without permission and objects being left in places and that sort of thing. Those are the tasks that con-serges or housing managers often have to deal with, and human behaviour, human error, is something that always has to be accounted for. No quantitative evidence on that. We could get it to you if you desired, I suppose, but it's certainly something that we're all aware of enough that we know that it needs to be addressed. Mr Thane, do you want to add something to that? Just briefly to add to the point about the relationship between local authorities, landlords and the fire service. In addition to promoting individual visits to individual tenants, the regime in most tower blocks would be certainly my own authority. There is a daily inspection by con-serges services or housing officers of tower blocks to identify immediate risks, so issues such as the door closers broken, rubbish on a landing or furniture, blocked binshoots, wherever, is checked on a daily basis. On a quarterly basis, the fire service will come in and do an inspection block and a familiarisation visit for their teams just to check fire risers to ensure that their fire crews are familiar with the blocks. Following Grenfell and the work that we've done with the fire service, because we immediately did a joint inspection of all our tower blocks, that, I think, over the four to six weeks after Grenfell, we've agreed to do a joint inspection as one of the fire service's quarterly inspectors, so our property teams, housing managers and the fire service out once a year to do a third inspection of the joint areas. We've also worked closely with individual vulnerable tenants to ensure that we're prioritising visits to those most vulnerable in the need of that advice, but the information and advice is provided to all tenants. For some tenants, they can make those arrangements themselves, they can improve fire safety themselves, like any other resident, but we try to make sure that the most vulnerable and those who would have the most difficulty with that would be supported to do it. Also, just as a wee bit of context, shortly after Grenfell, we did a review with the fire service of how often there are fires in our tower blocks. My own authority area is about 40 blocks, and there's on average a fire each month. If you go back to the period that we've had those blocks, that's probably 400 or 500 fires in those tower blocks, which is broadly the same incidence of fires in the non-tower block stock. The fire safety measures, the construction, and again I'm talking about local authority housing, has certainly my own authority area meant that that fire risk and the fire measures and things have been put in place have contained and protected against the spread of that fire. We have just context there that some of those arrangements that are in place on the management site are recognised the risk of fire and there's pretty good strong relationships in most areas between the fire service in terms of prioritising those blocks, recognising the risks of working with the owners and local authorities, and working with the tenants as well. One question for Mr Wood and then a more general question on materials. Mr Wood, Cossin notes that there is no national standard fire risk assessment and it's been suggested that a group of that nature should be developed and progressed, especially for domestic high-rise buildings. How is that going to be progressed? I mean, you've noticed there's a gap in the back in that process, but how can that be progressed? Yes, so that's something that we had previously been raised, I think, by the fire and rescue service and by the FBU as well. In terms of how that could be progressed, I guess the ministerial working group might be a catalyst for that, but I think that if there was an agreement across agencies that such a standard assessment was required, then agencies could come together at a national level and discuss how we would take that forward. You fundamentally believe that that would be a real benefit if that took place? I think that it would certainly help. It's something that had been identified over the summer. It's something that agencies would welcome. I think that that clearly wouldn't be a one-size-fits-all approach to every separate property, but I think that if there were general principles upon which fire safety assessments were undertaken and that there was consistency in how they were dealt with, then it would help professionals to be able to undertake them properly and for the next steps following the fire safety assessment, which is, I suppose, the most important aspect for people to be clear on that. Are the members of the panel any views on that? Can I touch on some of our evidence that relates to the consistency of understanding of the design principles from construction and the warrant assessment process and how that building is managed in practice? We are routinely asked about the design philosophy of a building, where the key areas are, but that relationship tends to drift as the buildings become established and people move in, people move out, etc. There are improvements to be made in a national standard for fire risk assessment. That would be a benefit. Knowledge of the design process and where the fire safety features in the building are and why they are there would be an essential part of that. Even simplistically highlighting where the protected walls are, where the protected floors are, where the fire safety features are, where they are contained, how often they should be maintained, etc. Some of that will be in there anyway. However, to join up the verification process and the fire risk assessment process in general would be of advantage to the on-going fire level of safety in a building as it is used. My second question is that we have touched on materials, especially those that are combustible with reference to the tragedy. However, when we have had some concerns from this committee in recent time, where materials have been tested and were thought to be non-combustible in the past, and when they have been retesting, they have had limited or changed the dimension because they did ignite after a certain situation or circumstance. How widespread is that issue, do we believe? If there is that, how can we allay any fears within the community about that? That has certainly been an area that we thought we had ticked the box, and that has not been the case because now, after retesting by the fire service and others, there has been further evidence to suggest that it has limited, and that is a problem. Mr Barlow, I suppose that the simple answer to your question, we do not know how widespread it is until we actually identify buildings that supposedly had a compliant material, and then find it is, and we do not know. I suspect the difficulty from what I understand at the moment may arise from materials that were supposedly met the criteria of BR-135 through what you call a desktop exercise. Where you had, therefore, a fire safety expert saying, well, I have a test of this product here built up in a certain way. It passed the tests from the BSs as part of BR-135, and then examining this product over here, I think it is very similar. I have seen many tests before. That process, I think, has built up over the years. There are aspects of BR-135 that appear to allow that in terms of its wording, and it has certainly grown up that way. I think that is possibly where you will find the failures. I am not currently aware personally of any product that was tested to BR-135 and is now failed. That may well come out, but I am not aware of any. There have been tests that the fire service has done, and when they have taken block, they normally tape it round and put it in the centre. That would appear what the test normally does, but when they have actually tested the perimeter, it has found in some locations that that then became combustible. It is the type of testing that has taken place in the past, and when the product has managed it. I and Dave were at a conference last week in Birmingham, organised by our counterparts in England and Wales, and we had various industry professionals, some of whom are involved in the testing side of things. Talking about the robustness of the British standard test as part of BR-135, those professionals think that as a test, it is just as robust a test you can get. The difficulty with any testing regime, and this goes to all manner of tests across building standards in various British standards, is that you are testing a product in a laboratory type situation, in a factory situation, you are using a standardised fuel load and whatever, and does it cover all of the exact detailing as to maybe how that will be built on site? So, while the test clearly is a very robust test, it is quite a large fire that you put under in the crib for the side of things, it compares well with international tests, if not more robust than international tests. Will it be 100 per cent guarantee? I do not know. Thank you, convener. Okay, thanks. I will pick up a couple of things on what Mr Gibson is asking about. I will go to Mr Gibson if he does not want to ask why. I will go to Elaine Smith in a second, then just to give Elaine a wee warning on that. Mr Stewart was exploring the idea about fire risk assessments and safety assessments in the standard of four-year and high-rise properties. I have to say before I then ask this question that I have a very good relationship with my social analysts in North Glasgow, and they seem to be incredibly proactive, so I am not saying that they would do any of this. However, if I knew that the fire service was coming on a week and Tuesday, that matter has not been on the fire escape on floor five for the last three weeks. I would be getting my con-shares to get that sorted. That fire bill that does not quite fit properly would be getting that sorted as quickly as possible ahead of that fire service visit, so the expectation and the planning and the coordination of when the fire service will be there gives it all of us, if we know we are about to be assessed, to step up to the mark to make it as smooth and compliant as possible. Now, the FBU who wanted intrusive inspections did not call for on-the-spot random assessments. They were happy with pre-notification, but is there not a case maybe just occasionally for the fire service to pitch up, be it private sector or social landlord, be it councillor housing association say, look at the Scottish Fire Service, shows your paperwork, we are doing the assessment now. Would that not be a reasonable way to keep everyone on their toes? Any thoughts on that? Mr Thane? My understanding is that that is how we have done it in my own authority area where the fire service turn up. They do their familiarisation visit, they do their inspection, they let us know what they think needs to be fixed and we pick up on that. If anything, after Grenfell, the discussion has been more about co-ordinating those visits, but I absolutely take your point that the fire service snap inspection of things is also a way to keep yourself on your toes 24 hours a day. I am happy to make it an ill-informed question. If that is already what happens, I apologise. Is that everyone's understanding of that? What happens? I think from the verification point of view, we are a stage removed from that part of the process. I mean, if I can maybe align it to the inspections that are undertaken by building standards, you know there is a degree of notification around that, maybe not to the exact day, et cetera, but there are similarities from what you are saying to the building standards inspection. When they know that we are arriving, there is a degree of preparedness, but you have to then make sure that those undertaking the work, those undertaking the management of the properties for the life of that building are appropriately skilled, trained to undertake their core duties. Never mind who is going to be watching at any particular time. That is right, and I am not saying that every inspection should be random and you just turn up. The example that I gave to the FBU was that the care inspectorate had planned inspections of care establishments. It is not talking about fire safety, it is talking about social care, but every care establishment should know that there is just that outside chance at some point that there might just be a nice inspection, and it really does focus on the mind. That said, in my area, I am very fortunate in the relationship that our housing associations have with the fire service, so I would not explore that any further. Elaine Smith Thank you very much, convener. Throughout our inquiry, we have heard some evidence that clerks of works are not something that are employed as much as they used to be on building sites. If you have a view on the role of clerks of works, ensuring compliance with building standards in both the public and the private sector developments and relating to that, do you think that the public sector procurement could play a role in ensuring that new building refurbished council and that SL housing meets the building standards requirements? If I said previously that the holistic approach has to be welcomed, and all stakeholders involved in the construction process have an input in clerks of works, obviously, as one of them. There is no silver bullet to this solution in any perceived compliance gap, but, for sure, a clerks of works would have a role to play, as would others. I suppose that I could just push you further on that. Do you think that if there is no clerks of works, rather than the clerks of works having a role to play, can that cause problems, particularly if there are a lot of small subcontractors? Once a building is being procured and in a big housing development, can no clerks of works cause problems? As the convener pointed out, even the threat of having a clerks of works on-site would be enough to keep workmen on their toes. The absence of one would clearly, I think, have the chances of short cuts being taken. Mr McCollards went to that? Yes. The role of a clerks of works on-site is welcomed by the verifier in general, because it tends to lead to a better regime of inspection in checks on-site. I would say that the role of clerks of works is very much for those who are procuring the building. It supports their duty as a relevant person to ensure compliance with the bill and regulations. It is there to help them to discharge their responsibility, but, in turn, it assists us when we undertake reasonable inquiry. If we know that there are three or four clerks of works inspecting various parts of the building in conjunction with our visits, then there is a higher chance of compliance. We, as a verifier, very much welcome clerks of works. On the opposite side of things, if we undertake an initial inspection, once notified that commencement of work will happen, we have concerns about even such things as the setup of the site, the attention to health and safety legislation, alarm bells start ringing, the absence of clerks of works, the absence of a site forming, perhaps concern around the quality of work of the subcontractors, then our risk assessment through reasonable inquiry is upped and we pay more attention to that particular project. On the opposite side of things, when we have confidence that a development is progressing well, we can step back to step and that allows us to use our resources in the most appropriate way. Can I just push you, convener, if I might, a bit further on the public procurement that I mentioned initially and you also mentioned there? For example, if a council is going to procure a company to build skills or a health board is procuring for the building of a hospital, would it be possible as part of that procurement process to insist on a clerk of works presence? I cannot comment on that. It is something that from the verification point of view and where in our role and responsibility it would be for others to see whether the role of a clerk of works would allow them to get value for money during the procurement process, but from a verification point of view that would not have a further comment to make to what I said previously. I do not know whether they can assist on it through the procurement process. I am no contractual expert in any way, but I could relate some experience that Glasgow City Council did that on a lot of their school projects. We put our own council clerk of works on there, even though the school is being built by other bodies. It certainly proved very effective for us because, when the council went back to look at aspects of the school's construction in relation to the Edinburgh schools issues, we did not find the same issues. There were some areas where no building is perfect, but we certainly did not find the areas of concern that were found in Edinburgh schools. As a council, we were confident that that was because of the regime that we had put in place for our own council clerk of works. I had one final question that was not on that. I know that Mr Wightman might have a supplementary clerk of works. I will come back to you in a second, Mr Wightman. Can I just double check in relation to procurement? You do not know the answer to that, but as local authority building standards issuing warrants during the verification process, could the local authority insist that they will only give a relevant building warrant and compliance to the verification process unless, irrespective of whether it is public or private sector or whether it is procurement involved or not, unless there is a clerk of works given the risk of the site? Would that be a desirable power to have? Seeks to assist us in our role in achieving compliance should be explored. I know that it is a little bit plucked out there, but if someone is building an extension to their property and they know the architect and so on and so forth, you might think that there is lower risk that we will go out and do one site visitor. I do not know, but if someone is building a 250 unit development and they do not have a clerk of works on site, they may have an insurance indemnifier on site doing various other things, but that is not necessarily a clerk of works. It is reasonable to have the power to say that we expect for risk management that there should be a clerk of works. Sorry, Mr Barlow. Sorry. What I would highlight on that firstly is that there is a good bit of guidance out there currently from the Scottish Government trying to say to developers etc what their responsibilities are before they sign the completion certificate for the project and making it clear that they have to have appropriate contractual arrangements in place to ensure that when they sign that certificate that says the building complies with the building warrant and the building regulations that they have done so on the basis of that someone has given them enough information to do that. What we have found, I think, is lab, is that that aspect has never been able to get firmed up in legislation. It tells people about their responsibilities, but there is no legislative way to actually enforce that from ourselves and to say that if the relevant person, as they are known, signs that certificate, we have no mechanism for questioning what processes they carried out before they signed that certificate to allow us to then give occupation of the building. Okay, that is helpful. I know that Mr White would have supplementary. I will come back to Lane Smith again for the final question of the session. Oh, you do not. I will have to supplementary with another question. Oh, well I will take you to Lane Smith and we will let you finish off Mr Whiteman. Thanks very much because actually it ties in with what Mr Barlow has just said. So, in terms of building standard enforcement powers, we did hear calls for new powers, but it would be interesting to just ask you if you would support that and what powers you would like to see introduced. It is a very, very good question. I asked her to do what she introduced. I genuinely do not know, but I do personally think that we have to see something that says what is the system that the developer has gone through and the checks and balances that they have put in place so that they know that the contractor they have employed has employed the right subcontractors, the right qualified persons. I can give it as a joiner on site just now and be a joiner without any qualifications. It starts at that level in the industry, unfortunately. That has always been the case in the UK. It is not an unknown matter for us all and that is not to say that contractors out there do not have to try and have quality systems in place, but other those that do not. It is a very large issue, but for us it is a matter of if there was legislation it would be a case of what points in that legislation would you say that they have to give us information, whether it is certification that I have qualified staff, whether it is a case of the steel erectors put up the correct size and weight of steel down to the fire stopping in the fire matters. Do you get certification for each stage of the process for the particular building that then goes together as a collective and is then given to us to at least demonstrate that they have signed something off for each relevant part of the process without it being self-certification at the end of the day, but simply an assurance that they have got contractual measures in place that are relating back to compliance with the building regulations, not just a contractual matter for them. Mr Heiman. That is a brief point. It has been raised in evidence to us that private owners, particularly in mixed tenure blocks, have been removing and replacing what were fire doors with doors that do not comply with fire regulations. Can you confirm, first of all, that they are perfectly within their legal rights to do that? Secondly, do you think that that is potentially a concern given the number of mixed tenure blocks? Mr Wood, do you seem to make eye contact there, Mr Wood? Do you want to answer that question? I think that that is the case and certainly there is an issue with regard to fire safety and more widely about enforcement of standards among owner occupiers within mixed tenure properties. We have seen that come to the fore in conversations, for example, about energy efficiency at the moment. There are a number of areas in which the lack of means for enforcement for private lay-owned apartments in a mixed tenure block can be an obstacle to enforcement of standards, whether it be fire safety or with regard to energy efficiency. Mr Macaulay, did you want to add? Thank you. I am just in response to Mr Macaulay's question. Specifically, you can do a number of alterations to high-rise building without building work. Generally, those are repairs, and generally, they are required to be like for like. If you were to replace a fire door with a non-rated fire door, then that is not a like for like situation, so there is an issue there. I would suggest that it is not an uncommon occurrence, and not through any maliciousness attempt, and it is just somebody trying to upgrade their own property to make it look better, without knowing the attendant consequences of that. Within my own authority, and I am sure that it is an approach that is shared nationally, is that when we are aware of that situation, we tend to work with the owners, the occupiers, those who are responsible for the upkeep of the building, to make them aware of the performance that that fire door should comply with. In our own council, we provide financial support to do the replacement work in the form of a grant, and we provide the labour to do that as well. It is very much working with the owner to remove the door that may or may not be complied, and to ensure that the door that is replaced is a compliant fire door that meets all the relevant regulations. It is something that we tend to use our knowledge and our education, as opposed to using strict enforcement powers. We have had a good success rate with that, and the numbers in South Lancer are very low because of that engagement. We also work closely with the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, and we also know—again, the graze of the area a little—that UPDC fire doors are available on the market now. It is not as easy as going up to a door and saying, oh, that is easily identifiable as a compliant door or a non-compliant door. It then gets into the area of giving us manufacturers information test data results, which we have the knowledge to establish that, and we work with that owner-occupier to make sure that that door is to the level of fire safety that it should be. Just to be clear, is the owner under a legal obligation, once the building has been completed and it has met all the legal requirements, are they under a continuing obligation to maintain a fire door where a fire door was specified? Yes. You say that it is an issue? Yes. It touches on some of the challenges around the enforcement powers that are there. You are allowed to make repairs and alter aspects of the building, like for like, without a building work, fire door being one. So, if someone uses those permissive powers outwith the circumstance in which they are allowed to be used, that would be a breach? Yes, because it is not an exempt alteration. The legislation is challenging for us because the unauthorised legislation is a 627 notice, but that requires us to ask for the submission of a building work, which we do not need in this situation, so that it is a catch-22 situation in that respect. It means that we have to use our knowledge, skills, communication, engagement with that person to ensure that that door is replaced. However, it can be tricky because, while there is dangerous building legislation, which is one of our most powerful aspects of the Bill in Scotland Act, a door is not the appropriate law of affairs. It does not necessarily make that building an immediate danger, so that the immediate danger is building legislation to come in. That is a very helpful line of questioning at the end. Mr Wight was a thank you for that. I am about to close this evidence session. Just before I do, Mr Barlow, thank you for the information that you gave us at the start of the meeting. You will appreciate that the committee was a bit concerned to hear in relation to private properties in Glasgow that would appear to have combustible cladding or Grenfell-type cladding on it. Obviously, you did not feel that you were able to give additional information at this point. I think that the committee would appreciate Glasgow City Council giving the committee the maximum amount of additional information that you would be able to give, because we would want to robustly scrutinise the situation in Glasgow, but also, as a committee, to help to provide reassurances to those who are living in those particular high flats. We would be keen to do that in a measured way, so the maximum amount of information that you could possibly give on behalf of Glasgow City Council would be welcome. That said, a very informative session. I thank everyone for taking the time to come along to committee today and we will now move to agenda item 2. The committee will consider negative instrument 273 as listed on the agenda. The instrument is laid under the negative procedure, which means that its provision will come into force unless the Parliament votes on a motion to annul the instrument. The Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee consider this instrument at its meeting on 12 September 2017 and determined that it did not need to draw the attention of the Parliament on any grounds within its remit. I can inform the committee that no motion to annul has been laid and I can invite members to make any comments on the instrument that they wish to make at this stage. We have a number of members wishing to comment, Mr Gibson. Thank you very much, convener. I think that this is very positive. I know that it is a negative instrument but it is a very positive to get an instrument. I think that it is a step forward. One issue in section 2 of the policy objective is that this would reduce the time to a maximum of seven days unless there are exceptional circumstances. I am just wondering what the exceptional circumstances might be. I do not really see any kind of examples of that. I think that sometimes the word exceptional circumstances can be used in reality to effectively nullify an instrument such as this, because unless there are parameters on that, then I do have concerns that a coach and horse can be driven through it. Thank you for putting that on the record, Elaine Smith. I share those concerns as well, because my worry would be that the exceptional circumstances might be nowhere else to move the family to. I also think that we should mention the fact that our committee is looking into the whole issue of homelessness and that this would be something that we might also want to consider as part of that. The minister mentioned this moving from 14 days down to 7 yesterday in his statement to Parliament. I think that we just need to make the point that no one should be in unsuitable accommodation for any length of time, whether it be 14 days or 7 days, if a family is in unsuitable accommodation, which is not wind or water type, is not suitable for occupation by children or there may be no cooking facilities. Those are some of the issues that are mentioned in the policy note. Seven days is seven days too many, as well. We have a decision to make as a committee. We can obviously write to the Scottish Government raising those particular points. The question that we have to ask is whether we can agree that we do not wish to make any recommendations in relation to this instrument, with the exception of the caveats of writing to the minister in relation to the theme's outline. On that basis, can we check with our clerks that that is the competent way to deal with this? Is that reasonable? Are we agreed in that approach? Thank you very much. We now move to agenda item 3, consideration of evidence, which is our private session. Welcome back to this meeting of the committee. I am Elaine Smith and I am chairing this session. The committee has been looking into the causes and possible solutions to homelessness since February 2017. Today, we will hear from some people who have got direct experience of homelessness. I welcome everyone here today. We can see that we are in a round-table format for this session. What I am going to propose to do at the start is to go round the table and just quickly introduce ourselves. I am going to start on my left for this purpose. Hi there, I am Jason Nair and I am one of the clerks of the committee. Hi, I am Jane Williams and I am also one of the clerks of the committee. On my left, I have my two colleagues from the official report who write down what is being said. I am Kenneth Gibson, a member of the committee. My name is Saffron Rohan. I am a Care Experience member of the Life Changes Trust's advisory group. Alexander Stewart MSP. I am Thomas Lyon, service user for Shelter Scotland. Andy Wightman MSP. I am Julie McCalloch and I am a volunteer for Shelter Scotland. Jenny Gilruth MSP. I am Emma Pearce, volunteer for Shelter Scotland. Graham Simpson MSP. Rich Campbell, homeless person. Simone Smith. I am a Care Experience person who is part of the Life Changes Trust's advisory group. Thank you very much. As I said earlier, I am Elaine Smith MSP for Central Scotland and Deputy convener of the committee. The committee is really pleased that you have come to join us in this round table format so that we can share information and the committee members may have some questions as well as we go along. Can I start with asking each of you if you would not mind sharing your story and a bit about your background just to open up our proceedings? I am looking for a volunteer that might want to start. That is great. Emma Pearce, thank you very much. I am actually a Care Experience myself as well, but I am actually talking about my homeless experience. I currently stay in the Salvation Army. This is the second time I have been there and I am here today to share a bit about what I feel could be changed and what could be a bit better and what could be improved. That is great. Emma, maybe if we just come this way, we will go round. Rhys Campbell, would you like to tell us a bit about yourself please? I have been in the homeless section for two years now. I have probably been through around nearly every hostel in Dundee. I spent a lot of time in a flat, like a next-step flat, if you will. I cannot remember what you would call it. Just before you would get a flat, if you know what I mean. I was in there for nearly a year, something happened there. I have been put back to another hostel where I have got to just ride out where I am near the top of the list for the council apparently, so I am just waiting on word at this precise point. Thank you very much. Simone Smith, please. As I said before, I was Care Experience, so after I left First Worker, I became homeless numerous times. I went to a hostel in temporary accommodation. It was not a safe environment for me and my daughters, so that is why I am here today, because I believe that we can make a difference for homelessness. I moved into my first tenancy when I was 17 and it was a supported accommodation unit. We felt that it would be better than going through the homeless route and trying to get a council flat on my own. It was not very supported. There were quite a lot of negative influences. It was quite a bad environment to be in at that age. I think that you are quite easily influenced as well. I am just here to talk a little bit about my experience and the experience of other Care Experience young people and how we can help to prevent homelessness within this group. I spent six and a half years on the street in Glasgow. I had done every hostel three, four, five times each. I never got offered any temporary accommodation. I had to go to the legal service agency to get to any temporary furnished flat. I ended up getting involved in a lot of violence in that flat. I went into an institution and then I was told that I had to return to that flat. I went to the MSP, Bill Kidd. He sent a letter to the head of the Self and Social Care, David Williams. That is the kind to get me moved into proper accommodation because we were getting sent back to a violent place. I am here to just, hopefully, give my experience where Shelter helped me with that. Great. Thanks very much. I brought my four daughters up through homelessness. Through me being homeless, my daughters had to go to 11 different primary schools in 11 different areas that affected their education. I just think that something there should be done, especially when there are kids involved. Thank you all very much for sharing that with us and, again, as I say for joining us today, I look to my committee colleagues to see if anyone wants to kick off here at Graham. Yeah. Thanks everyone for coming. You've obviously all had different experiences and you all want something individually out of this session. I wonder if, just going around the table, what you think we should be doing as a committee, what asks would you have maybe of the Government? What do you think should change and what would help you in your individual circumstances? You'll all say something different. Okay. Thanks very much. I should have said Graham Simpson. I should have used your full name. I wonder if we could maybe start that one with Saffron, because I think you mentioned that supported accommodation wasn't supported. Maybe that's something you could tell us a bit more about on the back of Graham's question. Yeah, so I got moved into a two-bedroom flat because it was the only flat that they had available at the time. I didn't really have any qualifications, I'd left school at 15. I didn't have a job, so I was obviously on full benefits at that time, but that also meant that going back into further education wasn't an option because I would lose those benefits, so that was one of the effects. One of the biggest things for me at that point, I think, was the change with the bedroom tax, which meant that I lost my discretionary housing benefit. By this point, I'd got a job as a modern apprenticeship, but it was very low wages, so maybe like £600 or £700 a month, and that was to manage a tenancy as well. However, the criteria for discretionary housing benefit changed, so I lost that, so my rent doubled, and then I also started getting charged £70 a week for the extra bedroom for which there was no appeal process. On top of that, because I just turned 18, I started having to pay council tax as well, so I'm still paying off the debts five years later that I got into in a supported temporary accommodation unit. That's one of the biggest things for me, but I think that there are quite a lot of challenges for care-experienced young people in particular because they come from more deprived backgrounds. They also tend to leave care around the age of 17 as well, which as many of you will know is not old enough to know really what you're supposed to be doing. I think that there is a massive lack in terms of options. I ended up stuck in an area where I did not feel safe. I never went out of the house because there was no other supported accommodation units. I'd stayed in a nicer area when I was younger and had some friends and stuff there, but there were absolutely no council flat options in that area because it was very desirable, and I was 17. I found the housing association quite cold and unhelpful as well. Benefits are very difficult to get at that age and they are very quick to remove them for any reason they can. I'm trying to think what to go into next, there's so many things. I think there needs to be a lot more in terms of options for care-experienced young people and young people that are presenting as homeless. Obviously local authorities now have a duty as corporate parents to be a parent of these young people that are in care, so why are they presenting as homeless? Also they should get support with things like living costs. My situation only improved because of the new legislation that meant if I went to college that the local authority had an obligation to support me, so they started paying for student halls and I was able to move out of that area eventually, but it took three and a bit years. Like I said, I still have a lot of the debt and things. I have met other young people that are often put into temporary accommodation as well, where there's virtually nothing in the flat and they're expected if they want to watch TV to purchase an aerial themselves for a flat they're going to be in for maybe six weeks, and if you're on £55 a week that's not an option, so I think even the ones that are lucky enough to get a tenancy even if it's not in the area they want, they don't have any money to make that a home or any support, so they don't end up with sort of negative peer influences or letting people in their house all the time and then they end up losing the tenancy and just go through the same sort of cycle. Does any of my colleagues want to ask Saffron anything about that before we move on and put Graham's question to the other folk? Kenny Gibson. Yes, Saffron, I thank you very much for that Saffron. The paper that's been presented is an excellent one. In your paper and also just now you've talked about more housing options and support services in all local 30s areas. I'm just wondering if you can expand a bit more and tell us what housing options you feel should be considered. I think there needs to be supported accommodation that isn't run by housing for a start because they certainly don't have any idea of the sort of, they have a, they had a complete lack of understanding of sort of the challenges and the adversity that care experience young people face. They also don't understand the vulnerable nature of this particular group. I think there needs to be, there's obviously a lot of council housing out there but none of it is allocated specifically for care leavers. I do think due to the more vulnerable nature of this group they should have, they should be placed in better safer areas as well so they don't get sort of dragged into local trouble which happens all the time. I know one boy just now who won't even leave his house in the area that he's in because he has been placed there, he doesn't have any other options but he has issues for money, he was younger with other local boys that live in that area so now he's stuck there when, like, and he won't, he literally won't even go to the shop so. So if I can just follow up, if it's not housing that run it in perhaps or possibly even a housing association, would it be somewhat a charity like Who Cares Scotland or something of that for example you would be, you think would be more appropriate as a kind of. Yeah I think or like sort of youth intensive support services. I know that social work had extremely stretched but maybe something similar that worked alongside them or even just people with experience of working with care experienced young people. There's not enough sort of permanent options as well, a lot of it is just temporary accommodation and things like B and Bs where you're put with like drug usage and it's 16 or 17 to be with like 30 or 40-year-old people that have drug and alcohol problems you're very sort of susceptible to that as well and it's certainly for young mothers like Simone it's not a safe environment to have a small child at all. Thanks Kenneth. I know we'll come back to some more questions because we do want to move on to everyone else but Jenny Gilruth had to follow up for Saffron. Yeah it was just in terms of the debt you talked about, in terms of owning that debt then Saffron, was that to the Government or was that debt either could yourself? It was for authority, for council tax but I did manage to get some of the rent or years, I paid some of them and the rest got written off eventually but that was after several months of having a through care worker sort of hounding them and debating with them and it took a very long time. The council tax, there's no appeal process for that so I'm still paying off that debt. I didn't pay it at all because I was struggling so much just for food and stuff like that and travelled to get to work. I do think council tax exemption for care leavers would be very beneficial because the corporate paying law states that they should be supported up to the age of 26 and if someone was living with their parents up to the age of 26 they wouldn't have to pay council tax. Okay thanks. I'm going to come to Simone Smith next because Saffron mentioned the question from Graham originally was around what do you think could change to make a difference? For me being care experienced the main thing that always pops in my head is that there should be an allocated worker for care experience and people that should be a priority in all local authorities because they have faced so many challenges and when I remember when I presented homelessness they weren't really supportive, they didn't really understand that I don't know areas, I don't know people and they just go here and deal with it so I think we should have somebody allocated to every local authority so they have somebody that can kind of understand what they've been going through and understand there might be challenges and support them like every step of the way instead of just quickly writing you off I would say. Okay thanks very much. Rhys, would you like to tell us what you think could change and what might make a difference? I just think that it'd be very beneficial to people who are in a homeless situation I mean the time I've been in there from the time I went into homeless situation there was I mean the drug use was main reasons why I was in there. It took me a lot of time to get myself back on my feet so to speak. Temporary accommodation was what I was looking for earlier after spending a year in temporary accommodation and getting myself back to normal shall we say and I was told I would not be put out of there and put into direct access again until I was found a flat because I'd been on the housing list for so long but before they told me this company called positive steps were apparently meant to be sorting this out and this didn't happen the 28 days had come up they said it was going to be happening they then stopped me back into direct access which was probably the worst of situations for me to be put straight into them right I then had to practically beg on my knees to ask the girl to move me from the dorms to long to the flats just to get away from certain things and certain people that were surrounding me to keep myself safe in these situations so now I'm in a hostel where everything is rife and right on your doorstep right even though I'm feeling better and feeling safe it's still a constant thing I have to deal with for the rest of my life you know what I mean so I think it would be I know when you're homeless at the end of the day you need some place to stay but I see people coming in and out of these some of these hostels that I do not think should be in these certain hostels and I see them coming in there and I see them leaving their worst and they come in right. How long have you been in the hostel? Sorry Graham which one? How long have you been in the hostel you're in now? The one I'm in now. Three weeks. I was only told I'd been there two days. Did you have problems in the first place getting accommodation at all and secondly if you had been dealt with on a house and first basis is something that we're looking into? Basically what had happened was I'd had my own I mean I used to work abroad I'd had my own business everyone was fine for a while I mean I'd have everything going well you know houses cars whatever and lost everything lost my family lost my son lost a lot couldn't keep it together from that point there feeling depression and then two wars drugs I had no problem getting private lets at that point because at the time I had money etc and then I was put on the council list I had a council house previous to this I then left that council house to move to Birmingham for a period of time. I worked with Jagger, Land Rover, Aston Martin etc I spent a year down there everyone was going great. Moved to Oxford for a year I come back up to Dundee after spending a bit of time in Dundee it gave me access to my son twice a week which was good certain things happened with the girl I was with at the time which got that stopped and then before I knew it that relationship went a wee bit sour so I was now back in my own city I didn't want to be back to my mum and dad's so I chose to go and say that I was so much represent as homeless and get myself down on the list now from there it's just took an awful long time to get anywhere and basically after spending that nine months well nine months near enough in Burnside Mill it was which was the temporary accommodation which was where I pulled myself together I was promised to be relocated in a house whatever house flat whatever away from hostile environments is hostile living not hostile hostile you know what I mean environments but basically I just feel that I was fed a lot of nonsense to put it bluntly and I'm just back to square one almost and I feel like I've been told by many sort of well respected like Salvation Army that they weren't supposed to have done this work they've not done it and here I am stuck in hostels just now with I mean with all sorts surrounding me with all sorts you know the probably the worst hostile end on the thanks race to colleagues have any follow-up questions for Simone Orrace at this point before I move on Alexander Stewart thank you you've both explained some of the harrowing experiences you've had and we hear a lot about joint working about partnership about co-operation between agencies do you really feel that that is the case all sorts of engagement all sorts of engagement I engage with everything possible I've expressed every bit of that I'll engage with anything that I needed to get out the situation I've went to recovery grips I went to all sorts this has not been plain sailing you know and even throughout the time of in these hostels these temporary accommodations they are aware a recovery process isn't plain sailing you know so and I've done as best I could I'm queen I'm giving queen sail on folks whatever I mean yeah I'm doing everything as I should engaging with everyone as I should now don't get me wrong I mean I'm not in this situation because my life's perfect right you know but it's getting there back to where it used to be but in my opinion I mean if I'm in certain hostels in that I mean it's to be aware that certain issues are going to arise at certain times when times in my life if I'm having difficulty with families etc have used all sorts of tools etc that have been given in like recovery groups to get me through situations but sometimes it's not that easy when you're in a hostel where it's on your doorstep it's five minute throw away you know usually from what I'm taught it's like you get a 20 minute urge if you could beat 20 minute urge you've got eight percent chance of beating that it's not much work when you've got a five minute work Can I ask Simone on Alexander's behalf do you think there was enough partnership working I think was the question so like between health between housing between social work I don't think like so I live in the same place as Safran in support accommodation and I get moved from own safety so for example my social worker in place organised a meeting with the support accommodation to like what exactly like what happened and like they don't even turn up for the meeting and we were sitting there for like 30 minutes like why they're not hearing us like like well I don't know the same way so I get moved out then get put in another overly housed in Clarkston like a hostel in that I get diagnosed with depression and anxiety and they were trying the doctors were trying to get me counselling for my mental health but I wasn't allowed on the waiting list because I had no permanent address and to me like homelessness people are probably the most vulnerable with high statistics of mental health but you're not allowed to be on the waiting list because you don't have like a permanent address like I don't think that's right so I personally don't think they all have good partnership but I suppose everyone has different opinions. I think Jenny Goodruth was catching my eye there. Thank you convener. Just on that partnership point I've met previously with Who Care Scotland and some care experienced young people with other MSPs and there seems to be a disconnect between school going forward as care experienced young people now obviously I used to be a teacher before I was elected and it seems to me that it would be a good opportunity for schools to signpost folk to the right places especially care experienced young people and if you're vulnerable and you are as a care experienced young person then the school could perhaps be more I don't know forthcoming in terms of looking after you and making sure that you know you are provided accommodation was that anyone's experience here who's care experience did the school help in terms of homelessness did they support you what was their role? I'm going to ask Simone to answer that and then I'll move on with the original question but also bearing that question in mind. Not when I was homeless because the new legislation turned young people's Scotland out but right now because of the acts came out like all local authorities have signed up to be corporate no all skills have signed up to be corporate parents so in now in every school there's a care experience like professional that will link in with all care experienced people in the school to help them in other situations I think which is quite good but at that time that wasn't for me personally. Thanks Simone and I'm conscious Julie McCall I had mentioned the problems with your children in different schools but so could you maybe tell us a bit more about that but also bearing in mind the original question which was what could change to make a difference to perhaps the situation that you were in? Well I just feel when kids are at a school and their family breaks down it's hard enough for them never mind getting moved away out of the other side of the city put in temporary accommodation to be left there for a wee while and get settled in a school again just to get moved and eleven times is just too much for the brains to put up with my seventeen year old daughter she's in the homeless now and her skills took nothing to debut they've just said she's seventeen she's of that age because she never came through care because I kept her she came through homeless by me so I was never taught when I was with my partner he ran everything in the house he paid bills he don't know that so I didn't know when we split up he kept the house and I had to leave for my four daughters and I didn't know how to run a house and I'm 44 now and I've still not had any support in that area I've just come out homeless I've just come out to support accommodation broke my own flat and I've supposed to get support workers coming in I've never seen anybody and I've been there a year and a half and was there any option of you staying in the house with your children was that explored at all or did you feel you had to leave? Well my children no I couldn't stay in the home my partner's home no I've played violence for him and that's how I ended up going through homeless and what I mean I don't want anybody to answer questions obviously they're not comfortable with I should say that at the beginning so if anybody isn't comfortable with any lines of question and please make that clear and don't feel you have to answer what what would have been the solution then for you would have been into house straight away they ask if you've got a local connection but they don't take into consideration the kids school and where they're settled right like you need a local connection to get a house there but doesn't matter if your wing goes to school there you still aren't going to get a house they'll put you wherever they've got a flat so they don't count children's schooling as a local connection? No they don't count education and I think that's a big thing because it's affected my daughters off through their life was none of them have got an education they're all grown women now with their own kids and they never got any education they've had to go back to college and university after school okay Emdell Swish to follow up on that just now before I move on to ask Thomas Lyon the original question no so I wondered the original question as you know is what from from my colleague Graham Simpson was what could change what changes would you like to see that would make a difference to what you went through? The reason that big game homeless was because I had a private letter at the time the council were paying for it my landlord went bankrupt and I didn't know anything about the homeless situation then this was like nearly 10 years ago nothing and so I didn't know anything about Hamish Hall and I didn't know about Shelter I don't know I think probably starting at me personally I think you should start at DWP because I'd say 95% of people that are homeless are on benefits I think that they should have some there should be some sort of information in there no for people I'll wait a bit to the brew and then the next minute I know I'm sleeping under a bridge with a jacket I didn't know anything about the street team you can go and get a sleeping bag I didn't know anything about Shelter for my rights I didn't know anything about that and I spent I was in every hostel in Glasgow four or five times each and it's like silly reasons you get put at them I was not for violence or anything like that it was like the curfews 12 o'clock at night I was turning up at 20 past 12 and getting put back in the street I think that's a joke then I was I was same as Rhys I was in my son's life right up to his 10 and I never seen him through that six and a half years to his 17 and during all that hostel time I needed up with a drug and alcohol addiction both of them and I ended up that's where I was there I was in a rehab centre that was an institution I was talking about and but when I got put in that flat where I was I got in about a lot of islands and things like that so I went into the rehab to can escape it I told my care manager I told my housing officer I told the case work team and they all just said to me too bad you caused it you're going back home to there and I went to MSP bull kid for night's wood and that's where I was and he sent a letter to David Williams head of health and social care he sent a letter back to the case work team but I get put in that from relieving that rehab I get put in a hostel where everybody was using I've just spent six months cleaning my actor I'm working stepping over people in the hostel and I had to spend three weeks in there and I was actually going to spend a lot but if it wasn't for MSP bull kid send a letter up to David Williams and him sending a letter back to the case work team and then I went into the shelter and they told me that I went to the case work team and they were supposed to do an investigation because I was fleeing violence and they never done it and shelter basically gave me my rights I contacted them back through shelter and they basically said they'll sit down with me but then they get the letter off David Williams and through shelter and David Williams I got put into an abstinence based support accommodation where I'm the new but I think I really do think that there should be more information out there because I was just in a flat and then just suddenly I got the high court officers at the door were at you have to be out seven days and that was me out in the street and I didn't know enough my mother stays in London my brother stays in Ireland so that's my family connection and I wasn't going to phone them and say I'm on the street so I ended up under bridges and this and that and then I got I think I went to the legal service advisory the legal service agency in Glasgow because I was getting nowhere I wasn't even getting a hostel after a while I was getting two bus tokens at the Hamish Allen Centre and I'll see you later and that's it for years I went to legal service agency sorry I'm just hearing everything and I'm getting really agitated because I'm like really wanting to say something but I just don't know when the right time is yeah I was going to just bring you in actually sorry just now so can I ask Thomas if he wants to just finish off at that I went to the legal service agency and they told me what the Hamish Allen were doing with me was illegal they had me barbed from hostels I've never even been in and called a DNA do not accommodate and I don't know why some of my colleagues might want to come back and have some questions about that but I'll bring them in at this point the original question just to remind you could you could you ask it again the original question was from Graham who's sitting next to you was what sort what changes would you like to see that might have made a difference to your situation or anything else you want to add before I go into the changes I would need to kind of go into detail about my homeless experience so my homeless experience probably starts way back from when I was a little girl when I moved up to Dundee from London with my mum I left my dad's care obviously my family broke down I moved up to Dundee with my mum we were in the homeless hostels for I would say if her mum went to the homeless hostel she went through the women's aid so I remember it all I remember all the experiences that I've had in the hostels I remember what they were like and now I'm older I've been through the I've been through care I've been through foster care where I was in three different foster placements I've left all my foster placements and now even the case of it all ties in about being homeless because at the end of the day although I've been in all these places I've stayed with all these families that have had all these things in their houses they've had the perfect family and they've had these perfect family settings you come away from it at a certain age and yet you don't get to speak to them you don't see them at all do you know what I mean you don't see any of them so then you're left there like well at the end of the day I've been left with no home from the age of seven years old technically I left my home at seven years old and I've been pushing and pushing and pushing through doing all that I can I worked for Who Care Scotland and my next worker for Who Care Scotland I've done the champions board but yet still there's still no I feel like there's still no change I left Who Care Scotland last year things started to go really wrong for me my life was starting to spiral out of control because I had blocked things up for so many years that I've not been able to get out because of the amount because of the care that hasn't been provided to me because of discrimination that I have but that I have realised that I haven't been able to understand as I grew up and now today is the chance where I've just managed to gather it all in my head and today has just been the point where I'm like I need to get all this out because it's going to end up coming to breaking point and I'm going to end up maybe being in Thomas situation where I'm going to get aggressive but I'm going to end up taking drugs I've been I've seen it I've seen drugs I've been through it no I've not been through it personally I've seen it within my family I know how much effect it has and I just think that there's so much things that need to be brought together to change the homeless experience that you can't even talk about you can't even talk about changing the homeless experience without thinking about everything else that's involved around it like care plans that don't get sought that don't get followed for the continuing for the people growing up they don't get they don't they don't they don't get looked at properly they just get left you know what I mean then you've got people that are just left to just think like well where does that leave me where's my place in the world everybody's got everybody's got a point in the world you know I mean and you think where's where's where's where's where's the sorry I'm losing track of what I'm saying I'm really sorry Graham sorry can act Graham Simpson what would you change I probably change the fact that there needs to be more support within an actual family with rather than being family split up left right and centre fair enough maybe the parents are doing something wrong but they need to be kept together families need to be kept together because at the end of the day you're going through these homeless hostels you don't know the next you don't know the you don't know this person from the next person but you still speak to them because you think well what else is it to do what else is it to do in these hostels what else can you do what is it possible to do when you're in a state in your mind when you're homeless you think I've got so much potential but there's no support you want to access the support but you're like I don't you don't know how to do it you don't know how to get there's just something blocking you when you're in these hostels and you just feel like you just can't do anything you can't do anything and it doesn't help that the staff and the hostels they meant to help you but they don't they don't help you and that's the sad reality of it they don't they help you to an extent that they can but they've helped it that you actually need to get through your homeless experience it's not there that's all of course thanks very much Emma and you know for us as a committee this is what we obviously want to hear because we're taking forward this inquiry and these are exactly the experiences from you all that we need to know about because it's all very well as sitting taking evidence from local authorities etc but it's very very very important that we hear what the reality is on the ground certainly Race you could right I know Emma and I know the situation she's in and where she's at right now but she's in in the Salvation Army I feel that her in general right is in a very wrong environment right because of the way she is like the person she is what she's involved in and everyone is not nowhere near the level what these people are involved in I don't think that the seriousness of the Salvation Army has hit quite home to where how bad this is you know what I mean how wrong this could go for you how quickly it could go wrong for you I've seen it happen so many times but then that's just the thing it's just that it's just lucky that I'm strong enough to know where my body is at and where where where where my loyalty is large you know I mean I would never ever turn to the side where I want to just ruin my life or do anything like that that's not the case because I'm strong enough to do that I've managed to hold so much together over the years and I've got to this point now and I'm not just talking for myself to be selfish but yeah it comes with it comes with that care experience background and owning your identity and understanding the person that you are and not feeling ashamed or not feeling bad about the fact that yeah you have had a terrible upbringing or you have had to go through these things at the end of the day you're still standing there you're still there still want to make a change so much better for you if you had a secure tendency with the support you need around about that yeah I've had two houses before myself but they've packed in because it's just never been the right time for me and I have had support in the past but everything that I've done that I've realised that I've done in the past recently or whatever it's all just been total jumbled about like a left school at 15 I went away to college I got a couple of got a couple of qualifications I went into a job I left that I went into another job left that another job I was just just doing anything that I could just to take my mind off of the fact that I've not I've got no place in this world do you know what I mean well that's what I think I've got no place I was born in London do you know what I mean so at the end of the day I've still got a part of me that's missing that I don't know who that part is because there's been things that have happened to me throughout my life that I've had to I've had to I've had to be put under the looked after the looked after branch I've had to come away from the care of my mum I've had to I've had to come away from the fact that my mum has went through years of being given a terrible service from however many people I've had to come to the fact that I lost contact with my dad for 15 years and yet I'm living with all these other people that comes under the bracket of being homeless do you know what I mean it doesn't matter just whether you're living on the streets or whether you're living in a hostel if you're not in your family placement with your primary carers from a point until you feel like you can have them then that's it that's you being homeless yeah thanks very much Emma naturally that takes us back to maybe something tom has said that I think you know there are people on benefits that become homeless and that can maybe be difficult but there are lots of other reasons for people to become homeless there are lots of situations where people are homeless and people might be so for surfing living with friends they might have lost jobs there for lose mortgages even so you know it's a different circumstances for people to become homeless I'm going to bring Thomas back in I was I was in my flat my flat was fine it was my landlord that went bankrupt that's how I get made homeless it wasn't through any reason my rent was getting paid out it was all fine but when I got made homeless I couldn't I went to contact my mother in London and gave her the worries if it meant being hot on my brother on the island they're they're happy in their life so I was left in the street like what the hell do you know I mean I go down to the broon and he just say well I'm I see I'm homeless they tell me I've got to change my doctor the hunter street because I'm a homeless doctor I've got to I've got to give my my my effidone at the time once I end up going or that you have to go to your homeless but my once you've got to go from hostel to hostel then you're having to try and change your address and then get flung out of hostels for just coming in at 20 past 12 at the poor and down rain I think that's a joke no just no door shut too bad do you know the car for you do you know what I mean I need to just if you're not in for one o'clock and then you come in you've got CCTV cameras hunding you everywhere and you're like I meant to be living here I meant to pay rent to live here but you've got cameras following me about like we're in big brother no I don't think so do you know what I mean I think we want to hear from everybody and it's important that we're doing it's good that you'll feel that you can come in but our official report has to be able to I need to take people one at a time because the housing situation and I think there should be people in there we lived experience because see personally I wouldn't be in the place I'm in without Julie being there with lived experience she took me to the case work team she fought for my rights for me through shelter but she's going to live the experience so I took to her if you know what I mean right away we kind of clicked and I listened to her and I just feel that people are more understanding that I lived experience I mean somebody's lived experience she's the volunteer that helped me for shelter that took me to the case work team that told them about my rights and then I ended up getting where I am through shelter and obviously the MSP build kid but I think there should be people in the housing we lived experience no just rather than just they've been through college and textbook whatever no they should be lived experience I think that takes us back to maybe Alexander Stewart's point about trying to get everybody working together in partnerships et cetera can I ask my colleagues if there's any additional questions because we had Graham Simpson's original question and we have you know we have explored that quite thoroughly I think Andy Wightman please thanks thanks everyone for coming and giving your experience this morning I just want to put on the record that I think your experience Thomas I don't think anyone should be a victor just because their landlord goes bankrupt I mean that's the inadequacy of our rental laws sure I just want to ask a question about the role of charities and voluntary organisations working in homelessness on the one hand and councils and their legal obligations and duties on the other could you tell us a little bit about what your experience is of those two different very different sectors and you know if you believe that one sector is doing particularly well or particularly badly you know how that might be changed in other words is it have in particular have voluntary organisations been critical in helping you with the issues you faced or has it been more the council and their statutory obligations that have helped you Emma you're staying in a understand you're with the voluntary organisation that's what your accommodation is just now and you've been in tenancies before did you say was that local authority tenancies that was local authority that was with support with through care after care do you want to maybe think about Andy's question then and what you think the differences are well I would have to say that obviously I've started to access support with sheller for what the past couple of months they said but past couple of months but I asked first access to support last year but sheller have been like really good with me like I've been I've been doing stuff with them and they are now helping me look for a flat just now whilst I'm in the salvation army but before I did have my two tenancies with the council but at that point I was leaving I had left care and I was starting to rebel like really bad like when I was in my supported lodging placement and I was like I want my own house I want to get away I just want my own space because obviously I didn't I didn't feel like I didn't feel like I belonged in any of these families that I've stayed with that I've mentioned before so I just wanted to be on my own and I felt being on my own was a bit the only the best option I got my first flat accumulated rentories because it was at college and was working but with the council like that flat was great but the only thing that I would have to say that I was unhappy about was the fact that I got given an antisocial behaviour order for four years through noise and like partying and things which I understand I made that mistake myself like I shouldn't have had that but I felt that it wasn't dealt with in the right way that it should have been like I was offering to do remediation for the neighbour Dymnister the women that worked with the ASBO team within the council I don't mean to be rude but she was a complete BITCH and I'm sorry I'm sorry but she was and I could have said it but I didn't want to say it in here because obviously we're what are but she was right and I know you's are laughing and I shouldn't be saying that but like she totally it's like she totally had had like a vendetta for me and she just she was she no matter what I said it was not you're getting your four year ASBO and that's it so I would have to say that getting my houses through the council haven't been good my experience with the council hasn't been good even with previous experience with my mum and now that's talking like two decades ago even still so I've got all this from the council so what was the question again? I think it's just and I don't think we're laughing at such Emma it's just that we do need to be careful because we're sort of on camera and so the question was really about whether we're not if there was different experiences between the voluntary sector the local authority but it seems from what you're saying I'm still kind of just getting a mix of it all to not only the council but with the access and shelter like I've been doing well with shelter like the support that I've had from shelter has probably been more support than I got by who cares Scotland working with them for three years and I've only just accessed support from shelter. I think the point maybe we would get as well from what you said is it was it was good to get a house but then there was the support that came with that was and it was also conflicting so on the one hand the council was appearing because Emma was giving you a house and I was doing well at that point and I was at college and I was working that everything behind that wasn't looked at so more support within the house or the support from the house sort of keeping on top of budgeting or this or that so now I've accumulated I'm like yourself Saffron I've accumulated renter years you've managed to pay yours off I'm still in renter years okay maybe we could ask Saffron on the question that Andy Wightman asked about the differences between local authority provision and voluntary sector provision I think that would be sort of dependent on who you asked and where they came from and my experience working with young people from at least 10 or 11 different local authorities across Scotland it is very much a postcode lottery the care provision that you get and the aftercare support you get myself and Simone have been really lucky in terms of sort of through care and aftercare support my experience with social services was terrible if anything they made my life significantly worse they didn't improve it and I think in terms of like the volunteering the local authorities I think the local authority was was good to give me a flat and supported accommodation but that wasn't supportive I almost went bankrupt at the age of 18 and still have an awful credit rating which I don't know how I'm ever going to get out of I think there are pockets of good practice though within different local authorities and different teams different agencies like I've met young people that have worked with us at the Hamish Island Centre but had a really really awful experience of that and then other people that have gone through sort of charities and stuff and had a positive experience but I think because especially in terms of local authorities there's no accountability there's no one that investigates all the bad practice or the third set like in the third sector or it within the local authority so no one's held accountable so we've got this care experience bracket but then you're like well yeah I'm a care experience but let's just throw it out to the world without any other support underlined it do you know what I mean it's just like well here's me and here's my life here's my story I think that's you know it's something important for us to hear um Andy Wightman did you want to specifically ask that question to anyone else if anyone else wishes to come back I'm fine otherwise we can move on come back yeah local authority my opinion local authority is really really poor my housing officer has sort of more holidays than Santa Claus and honestly every time I phone for her she there works two days a week and she finishes at 12 so I try to get her on certain days and I can't get her if I had housing applications that have been suspended because I've asked for this right at the time and then when I'm getting told I've got like maybe a 28 days notice thing to move from this support of accommodation because something had happened there but I was promised to her something put in place because I'd been homeless for two years and I'm top of their list to get housed all right so they're telling me basically when they've been misleading you for a while for a long time yeah from the list for here the phones and he's third on the list they're telling me the girl says to me out these it's been over a year since I've seen you you look a hundred things better you're a lot better than what I expected to see I would put you forward for a tenancy or a supported tenancy I'm telling you I'd be happy to take either right so she's like what we'll do then is at the time before I knew I had a 28 days notice thing I said to her what I would rather do is investigate all possible opportunities because you're only giving me one offer because I'm homeless only got one offer you're aware of that yes yes right so it's not like whatever I get chosen that's what I've got to take unlike anyone off the street that gets a choice yeah up to three offers so anyway I said to her right I want to investigate all available opportunities to make sure I'm making the right decision so that I keep myself safe and put myself in a safe environment so that wherever I go I'm giving myself the best advantage to keep myself safe can I just check something with you so if you only had the one that was only the one housing officer if that person wasn't there there was no one else you could go to I asked and asked and asked right but because the housing officer eventually come out to see me in my in my support of accommodation right because they were sort of usher me they were saying to me I've been here a year I'd progressed so far and I've almost stagnant is what they said you could come to that point you get so much better you could fall backwards which I could agree right so I pulled the housing officer up she came up eventually we went through my housing application which at the time when I took it out I was just made homeless so at the time when I took that housing application I ticked every box under the sun yeah I did because I was in a position where I was just made homeless and I thought I'll just take it out I need a house you know so I ticked everything anyway so it looked like it was time to get this sort of that I said so bring her down we'll go through my housing application I'll go through all the areas to where I would be happy to go and where it'd be safe to go we agreed on like maybe certain sec certain areas taking certain streaks off certain areas happy with that now she said we will also investigate for the likes positive steps new pathways all these other organisations quite happy to do that I says well we'll do that before we put my housing application live because once my housing application is live she told me the following day she could contact me and tell me exactly where I'd be on the list all right anyway I think I need to hurry up a wee bit because we're actually running out of time believe it or not you're asking me questions so I'm trying to give you an answer I just need to try and keep it moving slightly because actually we're over time basically I mean there wouldn't have helped because I'd asked for support of the because I said I was interested in support of the accommodation and she'd went off on our jollies of our time off whatever her manager right of Dundee council was not willing to put my housing application live because I had said I was wanting to look at support of the accommodation first but because she hadn't put on the notes that she was willing to give me a tenancy straight away I was stuck practically by a nucer in my neck waiting on 28 days to fall to come out into nothing into support of the accommodation right and then when I get given when I'm told my housing application started live from number one for a house in Mineshell I was told me two days before you get a house undoubtedly I could tell you that's what she was saying that's because the turnaround's 24 houses per month right that's what she was telling me be top of the list for a house still not no no so I do have to apologise because we are very limited for time and I think what we now know is that we could have had longer much longer for this session maybe it's something that we need to revisit I'm going we are though going to have a more informal session afterwards but I'm going to bring Thomas Lyon in and then ask committee members if they have final questions that I could put to everyone Thomas as I said when I was homeless and I don't know the hostels eventually I got barred they just kept saying there was no place for me in the hostels and as Rhys was saying in my casework team I used to go in there at quarter to nine in the morning for opening and just go in there and lie across the chairs for a heat with a sleeping bag and I'd lie there in my house and officer would come and see me and then she would come back to make quarter to five that night because that's the only time you can present to the Hamish island so she'd say quarter to five when they were closing there's nowhere for you and this went on for years and then eventually as I said I had to go to the legal service while I gave their card and I went to see them and they said he was sending an email and I said what you're doing and they're a lawyer and he went I'm sending an email threatening to the district council lawyers in your name because it's illegal what they're doing to you and then I would do the him I should have told me presented the Hamish island then I went down and presented I went I went I know you Thomas I know it took me into your room put me up in a hotel for three nights and then put me in a sorry put me in a hotel for five nights three nights and one hotel to the Ibis hotel and two nights in the Clifton hotel and then six day I got a flat and I says to that lawyer for the legal service could I have done this six month ago he says he could have done it six years ago he says it's illegal what they're doing to you and then that's why I've ended up through all my homelessness I've been through a shelter I've been through a legal service adviser I've been through MPs I've had to really really fight to get any supported accommodation so just to get any supported accommodation I've had to fight or that this is the kind of thing that we do need to hear do any of the committee members have a further specific question before I ask our guests to just say a final thing that they might want to add on the record before we maybe have a more private chat after Andy Wightman. I just want to follow up my question on Saffron's response there about identifying the fact that of course local authorities can be held accountable for what they do whereas sometimes the voluntary sector can't and I think we should return to that perhaps later because I think there's issues there given the extent to which voluntary sector is being expected actually to fill in a lot of gaps and actually also to provide services. Thanks just check with other committee members Ken Gibson, you okay? Do you want to go to Ruth? Alexander? Bob Doris? Thanks convener, I surely shouldn't excuse to apologise for being late as much as anything but I do a comment and if you know if the witnesses want to make a mark on this when hopefully you get the last word then it would just be that one of the things we're looking at as a committee is the whole stepping stone process to giving somebody a tenancy so maybe you're rough sleeping and then maybe you're in a hostel and then maybe you're in temporary accommodation and then maybe you're in some kind of conditional tenancy and then maybe you get a full tenancy and that's your flat, that's your home what you were saying Rhys and we're looking at would it be a lot more straightforward to say to someone at that really early stage this is your tenancy and here's the four or five people that will give you the support you require to keep that tenancy because we're not trying to pretend that you surely get a tenancy and everything in life is a rosy that's know how it works we know that's not how it works but I suppose what I'm asking on each of you were to be given a mainstream tenancy so housing association council that's your flat what kind of supports would you need when you got that flat to help you keep that tenancy because there's no point in giving you it and then two three ones down the line you find yourself been evicted or you give it up because there's some kind of crisis moment in your life or whatever so what we're trying to look at is not just getting you the house although that would be really really nice it's making sure that once you get it what supports we can provide to give you a fighting chance of keeping it as well and if you could answer that it's the time it comes down to the time and resources for the staff for the staff to get for the to give support to this same person that's got this tenancy it always comes down to the time that's the excuse thanks Emma I'm going to start on the right here and if you bear Bob's question if you want to add anything else if you bear Bob Dorr's question in mind could you just say some final words that you want to put on the record today because we do need to draw this formal bit of the meeting to a close so Simone could we start with you like for Bob's question I think like we should get support in life skills like I remember moving into my first tenancy and like I didn't know how to like boil an egg or something like stupidly the iron like or tax like I knew nothing about tax of budget and so like the smallest things can make a difference and stuff I would think. Can you say anything else you want to say to the committee on the record? No I don't think so. Thank you. I know how to cook, I know how to cook, I know how to cook, I know how to pay my rent, I've been to people on my hands and knees begging for support of the accommodations and I'll follow any rules, I'll stick to any and you want to offer and put enough work as it is to get where I'm at here, I'm asking you on my hands and knees for support of the accommodation and I'm still in the same situation and I'm willing to follow any rules any implement three hours a week three times week whatever you want I'll go with that and I cannot say any clearer than that that I'll go whatever rules people are one I'll stick by. You said do you want to say a final word about anything else for the committee for on the record? I just want to make it short and I'll say no. Thanks very much Emma. I would probably just like to probably add like for somebody like having a tendency like giving them support for stuff that you might not see like as in mental health do you know what I mean so just making sure or maybe like at least letting that person access extra support and it comes to maybe like phoning somebody like at any time of the day or night like oh my god there's someone that's going on in my house or I'm feeling a bit lower someone just somebody there that's just that like one stop shop person that's kind of Mr Notall but not Mr Notall but like there if you know what I mean like for any hand just make it simple. Thanks very much Julie. Thank you for coming Julie. I think when people come out to support the accommodation when I come out to support the accommodation I had nothing to keep the start of hoose up. I was giving my white goods and just put it into a flat, bare flares, bare windies and because I had a fridge and a cooker I was supposed to live in it and I know a lot of people that come through the same support accommodation with me and they've just been right right back around the circle because I've not done any support with any of that stuff and they're back in the same accommodation again had to go back through treatment another six months and a couple of them were even died because they've been left in a flat when they're life skills told that they're going to get support and maybe even a pair that you're doing so you're just left take really as an adult still feeling like a teenager no knowing how to live you're just left to go on with it. Thanks Julie is there anything else on any other issue that you feel you wanted to put on the record and you haven't had the chance to? I just think when the council say they're going to support you in a tenancy they should stick with it there should be something there to say when you sign a tenancy that they should be signing something and all saying that they're going to get through what they've promised. Thanks very much Thomas. As it says when I come through the homelessness and I get went to legal services agency what happened was I get put up in the hotel the Hamish island gave me a thing to take to a hotel I got put up in that hotel for five nights never spoke to another person could told me six days from a case work team to go to a flat went to the flat there was a guy there we went to sheet of paper that was my tenancy agreement sign there see you later and I had a drug and alcohol problem I had problems in that area and everything I just took it because it was off the street and I just left on that flat there you go temp furnish flat see you there was in there for 18 months and I just couldn't get it together and I really think that there should be like the follow-up care and I think I should be people I really do have some stronger about this should be people with lived experience to follow-up care because you're going to take to somebody see be honest homelessness is homelessness drug addiction is drug addiction no let's kind of write a quote it knows it has to be a specific person I could probably relate to Reese Reese could probably relate to me relate to it I mean the homelessness is homelessness I mean we all got lived experience but it's all similar when it goes right round to the thing me and I think personally people with lived experience split Julie helping me that really really worked for me and I think that will personally it would work for me it would work for me if I could get it for others okay thanks Thomas and Xavre obviously being representative of care experience young people today I think that there needs to be more specific resources and accommodation allocated to that group more support in terms of mental health services and addiction issues and things like that um it's like some of the people have been saying it's like if you have a drug and alcohol problem but they want you to fix that before they give you a tendency how would you be able to sort out your mental health and drug and alcohol and addiction issues when you don't even have a safe or secure home or environment to be in to do that so it's what about moving into the the tendency that Bob Doris mentioned you think then I think that's a really really good idea I think as long as there were people in place even on a voluntary basis people like us that would go and support them with life skills with managing money I think access to mental health services is a really really big thing I think I went through quite a difficult stage when I was maybe about 17 and I almost like sort of ended up ruining my flat because of that but I didn't have access to any support because it wasn't so fair enough um for me to qualify for it much um I think we could have been here for another another hour but sadly um in parliament we just can't aren't able to do that in the formal session so can I thank everybody for coming along sharing your experiences with us I'm sure there are more things you'd like to see to us and we can maybe do that after the meeting but right now can I close this meeting of the committee thank you all very much