 Rwy'n Facebook o'r ffordd hyfodol i chi am gael i ddweud â'r ffordding o'r cyfle, i ddraenidau gynghoriadau a gynghoriadau. Rwy'n cais i'n ddiwylliant daith yfun y ddod, i ddigonion ei fod mwy o'r ffordd o'i ddraenu gweniol o'r prifoedd yng Nghymru? Rwy'n cais i'n dduwi. Rwy'n cais i'n dduwi i ddweud hyfrifoedd, i ddweud â'r ffordding o'r cymwyntau. Fy anchoredd ar y cyfrifon, felly byddai i'w ddefnyddio feddyddiaeth a ddeunydd, chawwch ar gyfer, iedwch ar gyfer i'w ddefnyddio, yn Siarla Davidsson, Neil Geist, Joghest, Hugh Gydersson, Alistair McKee, Potfner, Anderson Strath Fern, and, Shirley Davidson, Sillys Tremacash ac Hunter. Os ystyried yr oposrwydd cyfitoheddau ar y cyfrifon ac ers hyndydd y ddeunydd, dros'r cyfrifon, byddai i'w ddefnyddio'r ddydd wedi defnyddio ar y cyfrifon, will have the view of the committee that the bill is required, and we believe that this would improve upon the 1846 act. However, the committee is of the view that the bill has introduced requires amendment in a number of areas to essentially to deliver and improve transparency, accessibility and safeguards for the benefit of all concerned. The amendments are for consideration stage should the bill reach that stage, can only be brought forward by members of the committee. However, it is a view of the committee that this process would be most constructive and effective if it was the result of a co-operative and collaborative process among all involved. If the process in general is one where all parties can work together. We have a viewable to get a more favorable outcome and achieve all our shared goals. I would like to begin by making reference to the visit that we had to the pow. I was struck on the visit that we covered quite a significant bit of a territory across the length of the pow, and it struck me, and I am sure that it struck my colleagues in the committee how sparsely populated much of the pow was, until, of course, we reached the Balgown estate. What I am struck by is that the Balgown estate, as the bill currently stands, proposes one commissioner. Is that correct, which is for the record? As I understand it, 73 per cent of heritors live within the Balgown estate. That means that 73 per cent of heritors are represented by one commissioner, whereas the remaining 27 per cent of heritors are represented by six commissioners. I would like to invite all the commissioners or the representatives to comment on that, if they believe that that is equitable and fair. If I could take that question. The matter has been considered in detail by the commissioners, and the commissioners will offer an amendment to allow up to two commissioners to represent the Balgown section of benefited land. Due to this increase, which will be from seven to eight commissioners, it is important in the commissioners' view to consequently increase the quorum for meetings of the commission from three, which is set out in schedule three per four, to four commissioners. This would ensure that 50 per cent of the commissioners will form a quorum four out of the eight. So we are content with that. One of the other aspects that came up was the role of dismissing a commissioner and the role that heritors would play within that. Having had the opportunity to reflect over the summer, I wonder if the commissioners or the representatives would wish to indicate what their current views are and whether the bill should include a mechanism to allow the heritors to be involved in dismissing a commissioner. I'll take that question also, sir. Under the bill, there is no right for the heritors to directly dismiss commissioners. Under section 132C, the commission may terminate a commissioner's appointment if that commissioner is unable to perform the functions of a commissioner or is unsuitable to continue as a commissioner. That's the commissioner's right. It's felt that, in practice, if heritors were extremely dissatisfied with a commissioner and the other commissioners did not take prompt action, the heritors could convene a meeting under section 71B of the bill and make a motion at that meeting to request that the commissioners use their powers to dismiss another commissioner under section 132C. We do accept that such a motion would not be binding on the commission, but such a motion would be very difficult to ignore. I think that's the position under the bill as it stands, but, again, we have considered this point in more detail. If members don't consider that this goes far enough, the commission would offer an amendment to the bill to give a simple majority of heritors in a particular section of benefited land, be it lower, middle, upper or Balgaon, the right to dismiss a commissioner, but only in relation to their particular section. For example, the heritors for the Balgaon section, which includes the Balgaon properties, could, under this proposed amendment, dismiss commissioners for the Balgaon section, but not the commissioners for the lower, middle or upper sections. The reason that the majority of heritors overall of all the sections should not be able to dismiss the commissioners for any section is because each commissioner represents an identified section of benefit land. They are appointed by that section, therefore it should be that section if the commissioner does not fulfil his obligations properly that he should be able to dismiss them. That is an amendment that the commissioners would be prepared to offer. It was just another area that I wish to clear up, and it was a discrepancy between section 8 and paragraph 13.2 of schedule 2. In this, it was regarding a commissioner being able to continue in post if there were no longer to become a heritor. Are you willing to consider an amendment so that should a commissioner cease to be a heritor, we can no longer continue to be a commissioner? We have read my mind slightly, sir. We are happy. I think that at the moment it is May, and the commissioner's position is one that they are quite content for a commissioner to be dismissed if he ceases to become a heritor. I want to find a point that I wanted to make at this stage. It is an issue raised in one of the objections as well. For the situation where a residential property is of a size of a plot, you could have a small residential property in quite a significant plot of land, which perhaps would incur a greater liability because of the acreage qualification than a larger property in a smaller plot of land. I wonder if any consideration has been given to an amendment that would allow the bill to take a better account of the position of heritors with small houses built on relatively large plots of land. That question will be answered by Joe Guest. In order to assist his answer, it would be helpful to circulate some papers that will give a representation of the relative size of the buildings to the land area, the garden area and possibly to look at some of the schedules. The names are sort of anonymised, but it will be really helpful when it comes to explaining what the commissioner's position is on that. The plan has been handed first. The plans show the whole length of the power and the side ditches. The coloured plots are the individual assessments of the benefited land for the full length of the power and the side ditches. If you turn to maps 8, 9 and 10, they show all the residential properties except for one. There is one outline one that is out in Chaffrey Abbey, but all the rest are on those plans. On 9 and 10, it shows all the residential properties. The schedule that we have circulated is the schedule of all the residential and commercial properties. What has been circulated before has been a heavily redacted version of this, where most of these columns were missing. This is the full schedule. The only thing that is missing is the name of the heritor. The plans and schedules were prepared right at the very beginning, but the advice that I had was that the plans and schedules that should be presented to you should be in a simplified redacted version. It is very difficult to explain the whole thing without you seeing the whole thing. In the right-hand column of the schedule, you see the amount of the new assessment net of VAT. This is based on a budget of £20,000. There is another schedule of all the agricultural properties. This is just the residential and commercial properties. You can see on a £20,000 budget what the assessments would be for each property. Most of them are really fairly small sums of money. There are only, I think, six, seven, which are more than £200. If you look down the schedule there, you will see number 57. It says additional on the ROS, and that is £339. That is actually a commercial property. It is the limestore at Balgaon, where there are large sheds and an open yard. There is a very small residential property, but it basically is a large commercial property. Number 75 in Chaffrey Abbey is a large house in the country, which is not on this plan. It is on plan number four. You will see a purple plot there. It is a large, attacked country house, situated next to the rural area. The other ones are number 87 and number 89, 90, 92 and 106. You will see that they are all, well, 91. If you look on sheet nine, you will see 91 is that large red property. Then you go to sheet 10 and you will see the other properties. They are basically the larger properties on the western side of the developed area. To put it into context, there really are not very many of these properties, and they are all substantial houses and valuable properties. I think to separate out to have some formula for adjusting the valuation of these properties, because they sit on large areas of large plots, would be complicated. When you look at the very small numbers of them in the context of the whole thing, I thought it was an unnecessary complication. But if you feel strongly about it, we could come up with a formula. I do not think that it is a very big problem when you look at the scale of this. You look at the schedule of properties. We are only talking about a handful of properties, and they are all large properties on large sites. I thank you for the plans and I appreciate the willingness to consider the spoke formula potentially for rows. Admittedly, a small number of homes are affected. Our concern will be for every individual home affected. It might be small on the grand scheme of things for the commission and the charging scheme, but for that individual homeowner it could be quite significant. We always have to take cognisance of people who can be asset rich but income poor. If you did feel it was something that has to be addressed, I would suggest that, spring to mind, you would say that, for instance, if two or three times the footprint of the house would be regarded as residential land, then any extra would be regarded as amenity land, because the amenity land in effect has a nil value. Because in the currents, the values which are in the schedule at the moment, we've got amenity land in at £500 an acre, and we've assumed that's the base value, so it works out as nothing. It's neutral, so that would mean that, in the valuation, it's the current value of the land less the unimprud value, and we've assumed that the unimprud value is £500 an acre. So if you put £500 on amenity land, it means that amenity land has no assessment. Do you see what I mean? Is to actually realise that the thing, the bill, is that something you'd be willing to consider bringing forward an amendment on? Yes, it would not be overly complicated to say that the assessed value of a residential plot would be a multiplier of the footprint of the building on it, and any surplus would be treated as amenity land, would not be overly difficult to devise. Can I just ask the formula that you use to calculate the charges? Is that the formula that has always been used, and have you, with the housing developments, had you had an open conversation with the owners to explain to them how that formula was calculated and how you came to the cause? The present assessments worked was that the first new house that was assessed was the one in Chaffrey, number 75, and when that was being built, I spoke with the person who was building it, and we agreed that it should be linked to what the water charges would be on council tax. We're not providing water, we're providing drainage. So, in discussion with them, we came up with a fee of £150 for the property, and that's what that one actually still pays. Then, when the manor kingdom development came along, and I was discussing with the manor kingdom developers what the assessment should be, I just referred to this one, and we just applied that. So, there's never been any kind of independent assessment done of how the charges should be levied? No, it was based on the example of the house at Chaffrey Abbey. And did all of the commissioners agree to the way that was done? Was it discussed with all of the commissioners? I'm sure we're all aware of it and happy with it, yes. Well, if you're sure you were all aware of it, isn't the same as it was discussed with you, and I need to understand whether it was one individual that made the decision on how those charges would be levied, or collectively, if it was the group of commissioners. As I conducted the negotiation as a surveyor for the commissioners, and then I would report back to the commissioners, and they would say, yeah, we agree with that. Yeah, okay, that's helpful, thank you. I would just like to ask for the benefit of the record, can you outline the promoters' current position on whether there should be an appeal mechanism relating to both disputes about individual bills and disputes about proposed amendments to the land categories? It would be helpful for the committee if you could explain the reasoning behind your current position. Thank you, I'll answer that question. The heritors' theoretical grounds for objection, sort of appeal mechanism, would be that either the budget, which is being set in the annual budget, includes matters which the commissioners have no power to include, or the estimates are too high, and that's why they wish to oppose that. That being so, we consider that a right to object to that in practice is unnecessary because of the new measures which the proposed act brings in. And it's different from the old act, because under the old act what the right of appeal of objection would be would be the increase in value of the property as a result of improvements to the power under the old 1846 act. That's not really what we're doing under the new way in which this bill works, the way in which the annual assessments are set, and the calculation is therefore made, which is a very mechanical process. The moving parts are in the bill itself, there's not judgment being exercised. The bill itself sets out what the commissioners can include in the budget, so including anything that they can't do would be ultra-virus and would be challengeable by way of judicial review. The budget is set by the commissioners, including, as we now know, if we include it to representatives from Balgauin, so we'll have two commissioners for there. In practice, the view of the commission is that they are really unlikely to overestimate the budget as they are going to be the most affected by it. The budget itself is an estimate of the expenditure for the coming assessment year, and we've specifically provided, anticipated for surpluses or shortfalls to be taken into account. If a budget one year is an overestimate, the surplus will be reduced to the next year's budget. We're very clear that this is a matter that has vexed the committee, and the commissioners have considered this very carefully to see whether they could include some form of additional measure or protection within the bill. It's not felt that such an amendment could be a formal right of objection as such, because we need to ensure that whatever third party mechanism is going to be given to the heritors in regard to the annual assessments would have to be fairly straightforward and cost proportionate, bearing in mind that any expenses incurred by the commissioners would actually have the effect of increasing the annual assessment. For that reason, the commissioners, while reluctant to provide an objection procedure as such, would involve reference to a third party such as the courts. They would be prepared to offer an amendment for consideration for a procedure, which is really along the following lines. I think that what we have in mind is that the commissioners would notify the draft budget to all heritors, which would include an individual assessment, so it would actually let them know exactly how much it is anticipated that they would have to pay for the annual charge. The heritors would then have 21 days in which to comment on that to the commissioners, and the commissioners would, in terms of any amendment, be bound to have regard to those comments when finalising the budget, but they would not be bound to follow them. It is giving them a right of having their say before the commissioners, before that budget is finally set. It does go a bit further, but it is not a formal right of appeal, because we just think that that would be disproportionate in the circumstances and it would hike up costs. The amendment that you are suggesting would enable heritors to raise an objection but for the commissioners to disregard it? Well, they would have to take it into account. Can you define what that means? Well, I think that they would have to have regard to it, but they would not be bound by it. It would be, I suppose, an analogous people entitled to it. How would a commissioner demonstrate that they had had regard to an objection? Well, I think they would have to meet and they would have to consider them carefully and they would have to offer reasons why they were choosing to disregard the will of the heritors who were making the particular comments, so they would have to have a good reason for it. I think the point is that in a budget of £20,000, if you have got one vexatious heritor who raises an objection, because that is what they want to do. I mean, an objection process costs thousands of pounds. That is going to get paid for by all the other heritors. That is the point, really, isn't it? That is one of my points, but the reason that the committee raises this is that the existing act has been in place now for over a century and a half, and we have to have consideration to potentially not just any potential vexatious heritor, but the commissioners in the future. I think that there is a concern that ultimately this amendment has been proposed. It does not seem to be addressing the concerns that have been raised by the committee, because consideration has been given to any other potential amendments, or perhaps you can discuss and unpack a bit more how you came to this decision to offer this amendment. Obviously, there is a spectrum as to how the bill could be amended. It could either give them a formal right of appeal to the courts or to some formal arbitration. It was just picking up on Joe's point that it was considered that that was really disproportionate, given the sums that we are dealing with here. Obviously, any cost of that process would then be wrapped up in the overall assessment, which would increase it for everyone. Say, for example, on a £20,000 budget, if one particular appeal process cost £5,000—we would have to get lawyers involved and what have you—that would increase everyone's overall payment by 25 per cent just for one person. You have to be quite careful about it. I understand the ideological principle that you are bringing. I fully understand it, but we felt that we could offer something that would give them the right to put their comments in writing. They would have to be taken into account. The commissioners would have to look at those comments. They would have to consider them carefully. If they are making a good point, they may well persuade the commissioners that they have set too high a budget. If the commissioners simply disregard them or dismiss them without taking them into account, then again, we have the mechanism of judicial review where they have failed to take into account important material information before making a decision. It exposes to the commissioners if they flippantly disregard it to a potential claim for judicial review. It strengthens and focuses on a judicial review point better. Do you think that judicial review is a realistic course of action for a heritable living instead of a vulgar instead? It can be an expensive process, I grant you. It is not readily available. An expensive and dwarfly expense is incurred by the commission for its own review process? Is that fair to say? I do accept what you are saying. I understand where you are coming from, but I also understand where we are coming from. I am just wondering if there is some form of consideration that could be given to my mind. If you wish to complain and put in your objection to the commissioners, I understand that they have got to have reasons and make them valid. Is there no way that if no resolution could be achieved that it could be put out to a third party, say another surveyor or somebody else, without having to go down the court route? Very similar to what I am really thinking about here is if you have a rental property and the landlord comes along increases the rent too high and makes it further than inflation far too high, then the tenant doesn't go back to the landlord to say, sorry, but they have the right to put it out to a third party who is slightly more independent. Would an independent expert be a viable option? I understand your point. That was my next question that I was coming to. My initial reaction is that it is not a landlord-tenant relationship. The commissioners have an equal interest and they also have some expertise in what they are talking about. I feel they appreciate that too, as do landlords, sometimes and tenants. I was just giving you a comparison that sprang to my mind. That is not a direct analogy, so there is a hint. Let's go back to where we were originally standing and from what I am listening to what you are telling me is that I am a heritor. If I wish to complain, I am going back into the same commissioners who have made their original decisions. Albeit there is a requirement for them to give me reasons, but if their reasons are very similar to their first reasoning, then my complaint is dismissed. That is why I was just trying to make it easier by giving you the comparison and saying, is there a way forward from here? I am a heritor, as an elected representative, sitting on the commission. I still come back to where I stand. You are going back into the commissioners to say that I am not happy, etc. I do not think that it is a... You may just have a wee confidence about that. Thank you for indulging us with the discussion there. We have reached agreement that we are prepared to consider some form of referral to an independent expert, which would probably be a severe, which is similar to what we have in clauses 11 and 12 of the bill for the revaluation process. I think the issues for the commissioners is not just the cost, it is the speed with which that decision can be reached, because if that decision is not reached, it holds up the whole annual assessment and we cannot move on. We have got this kind of right of representation, which has this 21-day turnaround period for having made it. I think we need to have an equally fast turnaround for our referral to an independent surveyor. I appreciate the argument that commissioners themselves have a clear interest, and I... The committee does not doubt the dedication and diligence with which the existing commissioners carry out their duty. However, it is promoters of a bill that you are asking for, a bill to become an act that confers significant powers. That is why we are prosecuting this line of questioning as we are. I do welcome the consideration of an amendment. I appreciate that this is perhaps just an idea that you have presented to the committee just now. I would appreciate if you would write to the committee, setting out in more detail what these proposers would actually entail. I think perhaps we will get that ahead of the next 25th of October, if I'm not mistaken. If it will be possible within the next two weeks... Of course. Of course, yes. The other point, which I think had been asked and has been quite a lengthy answer on that, was about, as was clause 11 and clause 12, the revaluation of the 10-year revaluation and the movement between land categories and what are the mechanisms for that, because that's another area in which heritors may have clearly an issue. Under the bill at the moment, although it might appear slightly less beneficial than under the 1846 act, the process is really controlled through the use of an independent severe, which is very similar to where we were in answering part A of this two-part question, because in terms of clause 11 and 12, the severe, like the 1846 evaluator, acts independently from the commission. The severe must be a member of the RICS professional body rather than simply a skillful and impartial person under the 1846 act. In practice, similar to the 1846 act, the heritors can make representations directly to the severe in that regard. In practice, we think that the valuation issues are not particularly complicated, because they relate to the category of land that is being looked at. Is it going to be amenity, agricultural, commercial or residential or agricultural? If there were a right to appeal to the courts beyond that severe, what the court would do when faced with a valuation question is to refer the matter to a severe, so we would really be going from the shortest route to that. The promoter believes that the use of the independent severe is a cost-effective system for all involved, having regard to the relatively low level of assessments, but I do appreciate your point about people having the rights. Is that all right, Jess? Property factors are currently regulated under the Property Factors Scotland Act 2011. My law society suggested in their written submission to us that consideration should be given to whether the commission should be regulated under the 2011 act. What would be your view on that proposal? The commissioners do not consider that they fall within the definition of a property factor. Section 2A of the 2011 act defines a property factor as someone who, in the course of that person's business, manages the common parts of land owned by two or more persons, but the power does not fall within the definition of a common part. Good morning. Can I explore in a bit more detail the issue of future statutory charges and also the beaver barrier that we discussed the last time you were here? The commissioners have a licence from SEPA for dredging the pound and its tributaries. There are also additional statutory charges under regulation from construction design, health and safety and wildlife legislation. You have already given us some indication of those charges. Are you able to give us any more detail about what the future statutory charges might look like? Can I just come in there? I think that we have got a further quote on the cost of the beaver barrier, which I think my colleague Mr Blair will circulate, which is relevant to this discussion, because we have actually had the matter formally costed per barrier, which is relevant to this question. As you say, the statutory charges paid are the SEPA licence, which was a one-off payment of £700 and a payment of £35, which is in connection with the Data Protection Act. It is very difficult to predict what other charges might appear. The main one, as you have mentioned, which has appeared on us, is the issue of beavers. Beavers were released illegally in the alith area about 10 years ago, and, from there, they have spread throughout Tayside. They have caused significant problems in arterial water causes, such as the power of enchafery. I first of all went to see Rosanna Cunningham at the end of last year, and she put me in touch with the SNH's beaver consultant, who is Royson Campbell Palmer. I met her and went round the whole power with her. Her proposal is that the power should become a trial beaver exclusion area, because she recognises that beavers are incompatible with what we are trying to do there. She spoke about having a barrier at the lower end of the power and that, in-between the two barriers, the beavers would be managed. At a subsequent meeting with the SNH, there is a dedicated officer who deals with beavers, and there is also a land manager who deals with the negotiations, the land rights that they need for this. They ask that I get a quotation for forming these beaver barriers. I have discussed this with Ian Walston, who is the contractor who does most of the drainage work and ground works in the area, and he and his father have done the work on the power over the last 30 years. He is very experienced and very capable. He has produced this quotation, which you have got before you, which is basically £21,000 per barrier. Basically, it is a heavy-duty gate which would go across the power and then side fences which would go out at a distance of 150 metres on either side to stop the beavers coming up and walking around the barrier. Potentially a cost of over £40,000. The SNH land agent was suggesting that there should be legal agreements with all the people on whose land these barriers would sit, which, of course, would cost more. I think that there are potentially five people involved. If you have five agents and five solicitors, you can see the cost racking up further. He thinks now, from my last conversation with him, that some more informal letter of agreement would suffice, which would be a lot cheaper. Initial indications from SNH is that Government funding for this would be £10,000. It would leave a shortfall of over £30,000. I am hoping that they will increase that grant funding. At the end of the day, the beaver problem is one that has come on the power. It has been released illegally and has now been given protected status. There is nothing that we can do about it. We just have to deal with the problem. I take it that you are in communication with the Scottish National Heritage at the moment. I have sent them a copy of this quote. That is the next step, really, is to go and see if we can persuade them to give more grant funding. Will they just report back to the Scottish Government and the Scottish Government? Are you aware if there is a formula for providing grant funding? I do not know where the figure of £10,000 came from. I do not know how it was calculated. I think that was probably a figure from the sky before they had seen these costs. I do not think they thought it was going to cost anything like this. When do you anticipate that you will have more information on the funding for the beaver barriers? I do not know. I need to go back to SNH and ask them. They will have to report back to the Scottish Government. Obviously, it has a significant impact on our discussions apart from anything else. If £10,000 is all the Scottish National Heritage that you are prepared to give you, you go ahead and put up the beaver barriers. You will need to raise £30,000, which will have a massive cost on the heritors. Have you considered how you will do that? I suspect that you will have to be phased over a couple of years to make it palatable. We will not enjoy paying for it either. I think it is inevitable that it will affect our ability to start cleaning the power again. The maintenance we would like to get to on the power will be put on delay until we can pay for this over a few years, I think, is the most likely way forward. What impact would that have on the power? Obviously, we have seen first-hand what the power does to delay any maintenance. The bottom of the power is beginning to silt up, and the sides that are not stable are beginning to slip in. The more that happens, the less water can escape from the valley and the higher the chance of flooding in the valley. I suspect that it will take some time to sort out the discussions with SNH who are in turn discussing with the Scottish Government. If next year we can get back to cleaning the power, that will probably be the priority to catch up on the maintenance, and then deal with this issue. If it is £30,000, it has to be raised, then that will have probably spread over a couple of years. The potential cost implication for the heritors is pretty substantial. We know. Obviously, the committee would appreciate any further information that you can give us on our discussions with the Scottish Government. I think that the intention will be, after this meeting, to be writing formally to SNH to ask for progress to see what it is doing in terms of grant funding, because this clearly is a big issue for the commission. Can I ask you now about debt recovery? On 24 May, when you came to the committee, you gave us some information on historical debt and your approach to collecting or not collecting historical debt. For the benefit of the record, could you confirm your understanding of the relevant provisions in the bill and the likely approach to debt recovery and practice, and how will you determine what that will be? I can report that the commissioners met at a formal meeting on 15 August, when that matter was considered. The commissioners recognised that those householders who had been making payments may feel aggrieved, but it was agreed and minited that the historic unpaid will be written off. That was felt to be a pragmatic approach in all the circumstances, including the fact that the individual amounts in question are relatively small and it's possible it wouldn't be economical to incur the potential costs that would be involved in pursuing those sums. I understand that you have taken that approach in this instance, but how will you be sure that, in the future, if there are a different set of commissioners, they may take a different approach? You need to have consistency in how you manage the moneys that are collected. Is that historic unpaid or new assessments? You need to future proof that as well. You need to have an understanding from the commissioners how they will pursue any future debt, because I understand the decisions that you've made in relation to historic debt. I understand why you've done that. You've agreed that that's the way you're going to handle this, but in the future if people don't pay... In the future if people don't pay, I believe that commissioners would take court action for recovery. You believe or you believe it to be a fact? I believe it to be a fact. Sorry, I put my pages out of order here. One of the policy issues covered in our previous evidence session was the need for good information for prospective purchasers about financial obligations associated with the PAU. You have stated support for a requirement for the land plans and amendments to them to be made publicly available and we look forward to the bill being amended in that regard should it pass through the consideration stage. Likewise, would you support an amendment to the bill so that the register of heritors is publicly searchable? If this could be done in a way which is compatible with data protection legislation. That's a good one. I can give you some thinking there. Where are we? Sorry about this. We looked at the data protection issues. The commissioners are willing to make the register of heritors publicly available. You'll recall that actually on the Parliament's own website the Parliament redacted certain details which the commissioners had provided presumably because it itself had concerns about data protection issues. The commission has already registered as a data controller with the information commissioner. The Data Protection Act 1998 requires that personal data is to be processed fairly and lawfully and is not to be processed unless at least one of the conditions in section 2 of the Act is met. One of these conditions is that the processing is necessary for compliance with any legal obligation to which the data controller is subject. If the new Act requires the publication of the register of heritors then we assume that this condition that is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation would be met. That's the answer. Thank you. Can you just explain to committee how you will ensure that prospective purchasers are aware of their obligations under the power? There are, in the commissioners' view, satisfactory methods by which future purchasers will have the matter flagged up to them. In rural and semi-rural areas it's recognised that it's not unusual for their not being connected to the public sewage system. In the case of the benefited properties here the question is the property connected to the public drainage system or does it lie ex-adversal of the public drainage system? That question is covered in the home report, the survey report, standard missives and in property inquiry certificates. The answer to that question will or certainly should always produce the answer, no. That alone, I would submit, puts the solicitor acting for the purchaser on notice that that solicitor should make the appropriate inquiries and advise the client accordingly. All the houses in the Balgau in housing development their land certificates make reference and set out in full recommendations. That makes reference to the requirement to pay a share of the annual drainage levy to the Power of Inchafry Drainage Commission. In relation to the property inquiries certificates which are produced in the general course of our sale and purchase transaction I've spoken personally to the local private sector which most solicitors in Perthshire area use and also to Miller and Bryce which is I think the largest sector and they have confirmed in principle they've got to be more than happy to make specific reference to the power act if we provide the land plans, the addresses, the post goals or whatever of the properties and the land in question. So again, that would assist. So I would say it's absolutely the normal practice for solicitors to ascertain what the drainage position is and if they fail to do so or they fail to adequately advise the client of the position then there exists a complaints procedure free to clients of solicitors the availability of which has to be brought to the client's attention in terms of law society rules. Given that each section of the power has commissioners that represent it would it be unreasonable to ask the commissioners to speak to any owners that are moving in to explain to them? I fully understand what you're saying but there's a lot involved when you buy a house, not everyone checks every single bit of fine print a solicitor potentially could miss something. So it would be unreasonable to ask the commissioners for each area to have almost an obligation to explain to purchasers that under the power this is their obligation and they are required to pay. Isn't there something in the bill that a heritor remains responsible for the assessment until he gives formal notice to the incomer? So he's going to be incentivised to tell the people otherwise he carries on being legally allowed to pay the bills. That's another good point now. I think we certainly can provide information to those who come to seek it. The really hard part is getting out to the people who are coming in and don't know to come and speak to us. We can certainly provide information to those who contact us. It's the responsibility for getting in touch. To be fair we're not talking about a town-sized housing development. The number of houses that are on the power are fairly small and commissioners represent different areas on the power. If another 10 houses were built the commissioners that live in that area would know 10 houses were getting built and 10 people were going to move in. Or am I wrong? If there were new houses I don't think that's much of a problem because we're going to get notified if there's new development but if you're talking about keeping tabs on purchases and sales of flats I don't know how the commission is going to move on. Again, I go back to my point that we're not talking of massive numbers of houses. It's a fairly small number of houses we're talking about. Even with the existing housing stock that's there, if it's moving on to new owners it's fairly small. There is a Balgaon community residence association, isn't there? So that might be a means by which they would be informed and we met the chairman of it, isn't it? Can I suggest perhaps that it's something you might be worried and think about and come back to us with some suggestions on how you can make the communication a bit clearer? It's quite clear at the moment. I'm not sure whether somebody has to keep an eye on for sale notices going up or removal vans moving in. Given the as I said already the fairly small number of houses if there are community council organisations or there are community groups I don't think it's too onerous a responsibility to ask people to perhaps share information and knowledge. It's quite likely that the Balgaon commissioners will be on that residence association and they would know what's going on. Thank you. I'm just picking up the questions of my colleagues. I just wonder if commissioners would want to comment more generally on what actions you undertake to communicate with heritors to keep them informed of the work that the commission is doing. There was obviously some discussion at the previous evidence session. References made to potentially a website etc. I would be grateful if commissioners or representatives would like to update the committee on what action they will be taking to make sure that heritors are fully informed of all the work that the commission is undertaking. That would have the information about the land plans and the list of heritors and the assessments and the minutes of meetings that would be a much more efficient way for us to communicate with them than sending out letters. The website is a firm intention of the commissioners. I think if the committee are to make an amendment to the bill if it proceeds which requires the full publication of the register of heritors and that can be linked to that website that will be an extremely good way of raising the public profile of what this is all about and what it achieves it seems so I think that would be a real benefit. Finally, can we look forward to power of insurance for your drainage commission, Facebook, Patreon, Twitter account? Very possibly. Do you have any other questions? Okay. Thank you very much. I have a few short additional comments to make if that would be possible. They won't take long. The commissioners have some additional comments to make in regard to today's questions and points made generally in objection to the bill. The function of the power is to drain approximately an area of 1,930 acres of land. That drainage function directly benefits agriculture, commercial and residential land within the benefited area through flood alleviation, surface drainage and file drainage. It's important to observe that the commissioners act on a voluntary profit basis, and their proposed function under the bill is to repair, maintain, renew and improve the power for the benefit of all affected proprietors across the four sections of the power. Approaches have been made by the commissioners to Perthunkin Ross Council, Scottish Water and SIPA, none of whom are prepared to take over responsibility for the power. The arrangements under the 1846 act require to be updated to take account of changing circumstances, including the construction of residential properties on part of the benefited land at Bell Gowan. The bill, which has been subject to significant public consultation, updates a number of arrangements, particularly in regard to the calculation of the annual assessment payable by all heritors. The bill has clearly raised a number of issues, particularly with regard to residential properties in terms of the actual benefit that they consider they receive from the power, but also concerns in regard to the benefits and level of annual assessments. First, I would like to say that all residential properties do directly benefit in terms of enabling those properties to have surface water drainage and foul drainage, some have flood alleviation. The residential properties would not have been granted permission without the opportunity for surface and foul water drainage, which ultimately goes into the power. In addition to the individual septic tanks that drain into the power, the committee I believe saw it at site the waste water treatment plant for the new development at Bell Gowan, which drains into the power. As indicated in evidence, the commissioners do not consider that the annual assessment should be subject to a cap or limit. Whilst no capital expenditure, other than the provision of two beaver gates as foreseen, the imposition of a cap would really place in practice an unworkable and unacceptable limitation on the work of the commissions in their repair, maintenance, renewal and improvement of the power. Such a cap would mean that the bill is not future-proofed in circumstances where it must be. In regard to the matter of anticipated costs, we have heard in evidence today that these beaver gates will cost in the range of £42,000 to install, including the costs of any arrangement informal or formal with the landowners. I think that the provision of the beaver gates is a matter of concern for the committee and is an item of extraordinary expenditure, which, although necessary to protect the power, has not been on the commissioners' making. There is a consequence of policies and legislation that requires the reintroduction and now protection of beavers, and indeed now the first in Scotland an exclusion area for believers. It is considered important that SNH should consider making sufficient grants available to pay these works, and we will be writing shortly after the meeting today to SNH to follow up upon their deliberations on grant funding and their meeting with the Scottish Government. I wish to concentrate on the amendments to the bill that the commissioners are prepared to offer for the committee's consideration to address your concerns. Those proposed amendments, I believe, would provide heritors, particularly the Balgaon heritors, with additional statutory protections. The first of those is to allow up to two commissioners to represent the Balgaon commission of the benefited land. As the number will increase from 7 to 8, this would mean that we would need to increase the quorum of meetings of the commission from 3 to 4, which would ensure that 50% of the commissioners would form a quorum. That would be 4 of the 8. The commissioners are minded to offer an amendment to allow a simple majority of heritors of a particular section to dismiss a commissioner, but only in relation to their particular section. The commissioners will be prepared to offer an amendment, which will be a formal right for objectors to the annual assessment to comment upon that. That 21-day period that we talked about will be backed up, I think, by our reference to an independent surveyor as we discussed. I think that we're offering an amendment to make it clear that when heritors cease to be heritors, they cannot be commissioners or commissioners cease to be heritors, they cannot be commissioners. The further change, I think that an amendment is an amendment to require this is our offering of an amendment for your consideration to amend the bill to require that the full register of heritors will be publicly available, which I think will match nicely with the website when that comes forward and that will enable the requirements of the Data Protection Act 1998 to be met. The commissioners have also carefully considered the position on historic debt and have agreed that the historic unpaid assessments should be written off. That was considered to be a pragmatic approach as the individual assessments are relatively small and it would be possible that it would not be cost-effective to recover those in any event. In conclusion, the purpose of the bill is to update the arrangements in the 1846 act by having fair, straightforward and future-few proofed procedures which will allow the maintenance repair, improvement of the power for generations to come. Thank you. Have any further comments? It just remains for me to thank the panel and the witnesses for attending today and we will now suspend briefly to allow witnesses to leave. The next item on the agenda is for the committee to give preliminary consideration to the three admissible objections to the bill which were lodged. We will consider each of the three objections in turn and come to a view on whether the committee believes whether each objection clearly demonstrates that the interests of the objector are adversely affected by the bill. If we do not believe that to be the case then the objection will be rejected. Any objections not rejected will be given consideration in full at consideration stage should the bill reach that stage. All objectors will be informed of the outcome of the process after the meeting. Unless any questions from members ask to the process, we will begin. First, to consider the objection of Gareth Bruce. Are we content to let this progress to consideration stage? Agreed. Next, we will consider the objection of Mr and Mrs Beesham. Are we content to let that progress to consideration stage? Finally, we will consider the objection of Tom Davis. Are we content to let that progress to consideration stage? As the next item is in private the public business of the committee is now concluded. The meeting of the committee will be on Wednesday 25 October at 11am and will be in private to consider our draft preliminary stage before. I suspend the meeting to allow the gallery to be clear as we move into private session.