 Good morning, and welcome everyone to the 23rd meeting of the local government community's committee in 2018. Can I remind everyone present the turn of mobile phones? As meeting papers are provided in a digital format, tablets may be used by members during the meeting. We've got one apology this morning, unfortunately, where Deputy convener Monica Lennon can't make it, so she passes on her apologies, and we move to agenda item one, which is a decision on taking business in private. At agenda item one, the committee is invited to consider whether to take consideration of its work programme at agenda item six in private. Are we agreed? Yes. Okay, thank you. We now move to agenda item two, building regulations in fire safety in Scotland. Today, the committee will take evidence on building regulations in fire safety in Scotland, and the session follows up on an inquiry into the issue carried out by our committee in 2017. I welcome quite a lot of witnesses this morning. I welcome Kevin Stewart, Minister for Local Government Housing and Planning, and a member of the ministerial working group on building in fire safety. The ministers are accompanied by Dr Stephen Garvin, head of building standards, and Jessica McPherson, programme manager of building standards division Scottish Government. Thank you for coming along. I welcome Dame Judith Hackett, chair of the UK independent review of building regulations in fire safety. I thank Dame Judith for taking the time to speak to me over the summer ahead of today's meeting. That was very welcome. Thank you for giving your time. I also welcome Professor John Cole, CBE, chair of the building standards compliance and enforcement review panel, and Dr Paul Stollard, chair of the building standards fire safety review panel. Lot of witnesses here this morning. We are going to hear a couple of opening statements before we go to questions. The minister is going to start us off and then Dame Judith, minister. Thank you very much, convener, and thank you to the committee for the invitation to attend today and the opportunity to update you on the progress of the Scottish Government's ministerial working group on building in fire safety. We have made significant progress since I appeared before you last September. I would like to thank the committee for your work on building standards. The report that you published in October last year clearly sets out and in many ways aligns with the broad range of issues that the Scottish Government is seeking to address. It has been beneficial to have an oversight of your investigations as we progress. I welcome Dame Judith Hackett being part of this morning's panel. Dame Judith has undertaken an important review of the English building standards system. Although the system in Scotland is very different, her work has highlighted key areas for improvement where our interests are aligned, such as skills and competence, and we have kept a very close eye on Dame Judith's work. I am pleased to see Professor John Cole and Dr Paul Stollard, the chair of the review panel, on enforcement and compliance of fire safety and building standards. On 13 June, they presented the recommendations of their respective panels to the working group. Those were accepted and on 4 July, we launched a 12-week public consultation on the proposals. After it closes, we will review the findings and move to implement improvement measures. The third review of our work programme, the review of the fire regime and regulatory framework for high-rise domestic buildings, is on-going and is expected to report its recommendations to the working group by November. The Scottish Government confirmed on 20 June that it will initiate legislation within the current session of the Parliament to require a new-build Scottish social housing to be fitted with automatic fire suppression systems following our decision to take over David Stewart's private member's bill. The legislation will give full effect to it and I want to thank David Stewart for his campaigning and his stalwart work in this area and the Government will continue to work with him. The sprinkler bill is in addition to our intention to bring forward regulations this autumn to extend the current high standard for fire and smoke alarms in private rented homes to all other homes. Additionally, establishing an inventory of high-rise residential buildings is near and completion and once complete, the ministerial working group will consider its on-going maintenance and purpose. As well as identifying appropriate action to improve the safety of buildings in Scotland, the group has continued to provide reassurance to residents and to the wider public. Between October and December, the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service ran a targeted fire safety campaign for residents of high-rise buildings. Analysis of the feedback on the campaign showed that it had been successful in sharing information and in helping residents to feel safer in their homes. I have provided a written update to the committee on 6 August regarding the fire door testing programme being taken forward by the UK Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. Fire door performance came to light as a result of the police investigation into the Grenfalf Tower fire. As the testing programme progresses, the Scottish and UK Governments remain in regular communication with information being shared more widely where appropriate. However, the advice from the independent expert panel for building safety and the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service is that the risk to public safety remains low. I hope that the brief update will reassure the committee that the ministerial working group is maintaining priority and focus to improve the safety of buildings that people live in and use in their daily lives. I would be happy to take any of your questions. We are inviting me to come to Edinburgh and talk to you about my report. I would like just to be clear about the scope of my work because I think it is important to understand that I was working from a somewhat different remit and a broader remit than the reviews of my two colleagues on my left to whom I am very grateful for the support and input we had into our review but recognising that they were slightly different. The scope of my review, as you are aware, was to look at fire safety and building regulations in relation to specifically high-rise buildings. It was a remit that had both a time limit on it and that I was asked to produce the final report in less than a year from the outset. Also, to do that in advance of the public inquiry into the Grenfell disaster itself. I was working in that somewhat challenging space where we were trying to make recommendations around how we could change the system without in any way compromising the process of pursuing the detail of what actually happened in the disaster at Grenfell Tower. I think that has led, as you will be aware, to some of the confusion around expectations as to what I was going to do and what I wasn't and some of the specific areas of recommendations that people had hoped to see cover which didn't come out in my review because it was outside of scope. Having said all of that, we published the review in May of this year. It has received strong support from industry and from many of the stakeholders around industry. A real recognition which came throughout the process to me where people were saying consistently this system is broken and needs to be changed. We were able to put forward our proposals for a major change to the way in which high-rise, higher-risk buildings are managed throughout their life cycle. I think that it is important to recognise that part of the challenge of the task that I had was not just to look at how we build new and better but also how we address the issue of the many existing high-rise buildings that we have that may not be to the level that we want them to be and need them to be for the future for people to feel safe in their homes. You have seen the report. I know that I was pleased to have access to a lot of information about what is happening here in Scotland. We had some very useful discussions. We also had access to some meetings with stakeholders, which was particularly valuable in helping us to see how residents within social housing here in Scotland are much better engaged in the process than has been the case thus far in England. We will also learn more about the way in which building control works here. You will know that we have built some of those recommendations into our recommendations for the future, for the system in England, along with a number of others, not least of which is the Golden Thread safety case approach to high-rise buildings. I know that there will be a lot of questions from members. In relation to the Golden Thread that you spoke about, we heard the minister talk about the inventory of high-rises. Having all the essential information that is needed to make sure that you know what is on a building or how it is constructed at your fingertips could be part of that Golden Thread of information. We had a slightly unfortunate or unedifying situation in Scotland where post Grenfell, when we were trying to ascertain what types of clarding were on high-rises, that we had individual officers and local authorities going through antiquated files and bits of paper to see what was written down. It was quite a time-consuming and onerous job, but it has to be said. I think that the Scottish Government, to be fair to them, offered additional support to local authorities that were struggling in the time constraints to do that. In terms of that Golden Thread of information, I would be interested to know whether something similar has been suggested in England in terms of that inventory and whether that should be a living inventory and what kind of things should be on it. I am rolling to other a number of questions, but to get a flavour of what I began to know, new builds should be on it. If significant adaptions take place, what should be on it? How can you have an effective inventory but go to the level of granular detail that we might need to have that Golden Thread? Let us hope that we never have a situation again where we have to interrogate what is on a building because there has been a disaster, but if we do, I certainly do not want that situation where local authorities are going through individual bits of paper trying to work out what is going on because that simply was not good enough. That Golden Thread, what is it to take from England in relation to that, Dame Judith? I am really interested to know, obviously, an update on where that inventory is in Scotland as well, Minister. There is work already going on looking at what should that pack of information contain. My report did not go into that level of detail. We said that information pack needs to exist. Yes, it does need to exist for all new high-rise buildings. This is where the fact that I was looking at high-rise buildings comes sharply into focus because we have said first and foremost our priority in England is to address this issue for high-rise, higher-risk buildings that are both new, about to be built and those that are already existing. Yes, we do need to have that Golden Thread, which includes an information pack. I think what you have identified in terms of the fact that currently we have to go back into old files and bits of paper and so on is symptomatic of an industry that has failed to keep up with the state-of-the-art technology that is commonplace in the food industry, the automotive industry and everything else that is already in a state of having that information in digital form. Part of what we are trying to drive in England is to get people not just to think about putting this together as a large file of paper, but to think about how this can be done digitally. Minister, do you want to add anything? You asked specifically around where we are with the inventory convener. The data gathering for the inventory is being led by Capita and is still under way, but it is expected to be complete within the next few weeks. Furthermore, my officials are preparing an options paper for consideration by the ministerial working group at our next meeting on 27 September, on how the inventory can be maintained and updated going forward. The inventory itself will give the current national picture of high-rise housing accommodation, and it will be invaluable as a starting point, and I reiterate that as a starting point to understanding the make-up of our high-rise housing stock. Discussion at the next meeting of the ministerial working group will include consideration of the purposes for which the inventory could be used, the time and associated costs involved, and ownership accessibility, including how new updates or amendments could be made. As well as that, there needs to be a focus on accuracy and the quality assurance of the data that is supplied. This is not an easy job, but it is one that we committed to do and needed to do, but we must ensure, as you stated, that it remains a living tool that can be updated as we move forward. That is where we are at with the inventory. As we move forward, as per normal, I will continue to keep the committee updated on that. That is appreciated, minister. I am just wondering, Professor Cole or Dr Stollard, if there are certain key elements that you believe are absolutely no-brainers and fundamental to being included in that inventory that you would like to put on record just now. One of the problems that has just been described that we find on the Inbury schools inquiry and on the DG1 inquiry is that there were totally inaccurate records of what had been built. It was very difficult and much more expensive to carry out the work because of the absence of that information. It also reflected the fact that significant design changes had happened during the construction process, which had not been controlled by the original designers of the project, so the golden thread was already broken before you even got the building finished. It meant that the people who had the building and operating that building didn't have the information that they needed to properly operate that building. Part of the recommendations that I have made in the compliance aspect relate to the need to have a standardised protocol for the collection and delivery of information in advance of a project to building control and or building regulations here. After the completion of the building, they have to submit fully documented and certified as built drawings and specifications to show what has been built, marking up all divergences from the original approved warrants. That is not happening at the moment because the process is too complicated and people do not slow up and people want to get away from a building quickly. The whole concept of recording what has been built and then what happens during the life of that building are fundamental to the safety of it. We need to have a standardised protocol template format in a digital record that is available to building control. That will also help if it is recorded during the construction of the building to demonstrate that aspects of the construction have been built compliant with what was in the original design. It is not just a record but an indication of compliance to the process because we just do not have enough people out inspecting buildings to check that they are actually been built to the quality required. Dr Stollard, I might just explore that a little bit further and come back to you if that is okay. My apologies in relation to that. You are quite right, Professor Cole, that we could have the best system in the world but we rely on the faith that what is actually documented is accurate and up-to-date and reflects what has actually been built. You do not seem to have faith that that particularly happens at present because of the desire to get off-site and get payment for the contract. It is an extra piece of work and the procurement process complicates a slightly if I could just digress slightly on that. If the original designers generally in design and build are not necessarily deeply involved in the inspection of the construction process, largely because contractors do not want to pay them extra fees for coming on site to find fault with the work that the contractor has done because the contractor is now the employer of the design team rather than the client, which I feel is a problem. Because of that, those designers don't actually know what has happened on site quite often and because so much design is done by subcontractors who come on late in the process in value engineering processes, et cetera, whereby there's changes made, the design team themselves who produced the original drawings quite often are unwilling to say, well, we can actually certify that this is what was built because we weren't there, we weren't on site frequently enough to confirm that and we weren't advised of all the changes in a structured and appropriate way. What we're actually finding is that the information at the end of a project isn't being recorded by anyone to any great degree and to do so costs money. Again, the quality aspects of how we manage our buildings are the things that have suffered in all of the squeezing at the lowest cost or maximum profit. As a result, nobody is really aware as to what has actually been built in many cases. We had great difficulty both in the schools issue and in the Dumfries issue of actually getting accurate details which reflected what we could actually see on site and we could actually see that what was built did not reflect what had been passed by building control and subsequently was the subject of a completion certificate. There is that lack of continuity and a break in the golden thread, which means that nobody really knows whether it's compliant or not and we find huge cases of non-compliance in all of those examples. It would appear, Professor Cole, that whose responsibility it is appears a bit murky at the best. If there's no real responsibility of an individual or of a company, then how can there be a sanction even after the event? How can we address some of that? Well, the contract is a basic way in which it defines responsibility. The contract does say that contractors will complete accurate as-built drawings and hand them over to a client, but the client isn't in a position to check whether that process has been done in a thorough and conscientious fashion because generally they don't have people watching what the contractor is doing. The contractor is responsible in most cases for making those amendments, but he's going to have to pay designers or others to amend drawings, and if that's an expensive item and if they're unwilling to do it. In the evidence given to our inquiries, we find that many architects and many engineers said that we were unhappy to complete a certification to say that those are as-built because we weren't there when it was built and we were not able to say that it was built that way. As we know, it wasn't built that way, unfortunately, in those instances to a large degree. The client ultimately is a person who should carry the responsibility for delivering the building. He owns the building, and we have to make that a responsibility, but we have to have sufficient checks and balances in the system to ensure that that is happening. One of our requirements, which isn't a requirement now, is that building control gets a full set of documented and certified as accurate by the contractor and by an independent design team member. I have recommended to say that that has been built in this way and is compliant with the regulations. Building inspectors can ensure that that is what has happened by checking that that has happened, but the number of visits carried out by building inspectors is totally insufficient and will never be sufficient to allow them to be reliant on that solely. We have to put more focus and more responsibility onto the client for buildings and on to the designers for buildings and on to the contractors for buildings and make sure that that is integrated in a fashion that gives you a set of documentation that can be relied upon for the completion of the building to make sure that it has been built properly and for the future operational use of that building through its lifetime. Faisiol, there clearly has to be a degree of trust, because even with 1,000 additional inspectors out on building sites across the country, you are not always going to a second pair of eyes for every piece of work that is done on a site. That is just not practical nor would it be required. I get that it is risk-based, but it seems far too light touch at the moment. The liability that you would suggest sits with whoever has commissioned the school or the high rise, so it can sit with the local authority or the housing association, but the poor workmanship would be with the contractor or the developer. It is getting that liability and that accountability over to the boots on site that are actually building and delivering the product. Any take-home messages on how we do that before I let Mr Simpson in to pursue this line of questioning further? A very simple one is the restoration of the clock of works. When I started as a young architect, we had clock of works on every site who were there on a continuous basis once it was a major job and they were walking around constantly checking the work of all the people on site. The architect and everyone else relied upon that information so that they could sign such a certificate to confirm that it was compliant. Still doing their higher-level check and then building control would be a higher-level check again, but that hands-on check, which unfortunately has to happen because despite the so-called quality assurance systems that all contractors now sell when they go and give the job and say we are fully qualified, those quality assurance systems that we saw files signed in and ticked as having been fully compliant and we go on site and see that that has not been the case. Many of those forms are actually filled out in offices where people never even go out on site and look at it. We need an independent scrutiny of contractors. What we have done is to rely on self-regulation and self-certification by contractors far, far too much and local authorities have lost the skills that they used to have. Many of them do not employ clocker works anymore, they do not have that resource to get out inside. That needs to be built. To do that, we have to develop courses again to encourage people to take that up as a profession and a career because it has largely died out. Another example is the resident engineer. When I started as a young architect many years ago, we had resident engineers inside checking that the structural aspects of the building were being built—the reinforcement was in the right size, the right place and so on. I interviewed numerous consultants who said that we have never been asked for a resident engineer to go on a job now for the last 10, 15 years because that is another cut on the fees to cut the cost of the project. What we are doing is to sacrifice some quality for short-term cost again, but if you look at the ultimate cost of that over the life of the building, it is immense. That is very helpful, Professor Cole. The reason that I am trying to restrain myself from making suggestions is that I know that Mr Simpson will want to pursue some of that further. It is worth putting on record that our committee's rather short inquiry in relation to that. One of the take-home messages that we made was that there should be more clerks of works more consistently on-site, doing more robust inspections and we were contrasting that between a lot of the on-site work that takes place, which is basically warranty providers on-site, doing key-states checks, which is a different beast in relation to protecting the developer from future claims than it is about the overall quality of the build and protecting the client. A clerk of works was certainly one of the things that we said, but I know that Mr Simpson will want to come in and explore this a little bit further. Thank you, convener. Unfortunately, none of what any of you have said is news to us because, as you know, we did our own inquiry. It did not just focus on public buildings and high-rises. The way that we started was looking at domestic buildings, not normal houses, and issues that people had had with those new-build houses. However, it showed up exactly the same problems that you have described. I would go as far as to say that the system is broken. I do not think that that is too strong. There are certainly failings in the system. Professor Cole, you have outlined them in Scotland. It is too easy to build anything and just issue a completion certificate. All that is a certificate to say that the building is complete. It does not prove anything, it does not prove quality, it does not prove standard. You have said it all, Professor Cole. We made a series of recommendations that were designed to improve that system, designed to protect people who are buying properties. One of those was the clock of works. I may have missed it in your recommendations. You will correct me, Professor Cole, but I did not see it there, but I think that is an important thing. Dame Judith, you said something that may be similar. Perhaps you can tell us this. You called for a duty holder and I wonder if that is the same sort of thing. There is no doubt in my mind at all that I agree with all that has been said. We have to make responsibility at every stage of a building's life cycle clear and explicit. Someone has to be that responsible person. That responsibility as the duty holder can be delegated to someone like a clock of works and in many cases, in my view, should be. I am very much a supporter of the reinstatement of that sort of role in complex building projects, but putting back in place some explicit responsibilities, but at the same time also making the penalties for failing to do these things serious enough that people will accept and deliver on those responsibilities. Part of the problem that we have with the system at the moment is that even if you do get caught and we all know that the risk of getting caught is low, but even if you do, the penalties are risible and it makes it worth taking the risk. We have to change the balance of that argument and make it not worth taking the chance for those who would otherwise do so. That requires whole system change in many different aspects. If I could just come back to that. The recent review of the compliance aspect, I did not particularly mention clock of works in that exercise because this was looking at it from the compliance and enforcement of building regulations perspective. What I have said is that the client must employ sufficient independent scrutiny to ensure that he can deliver the evidence to building control officers that they can then rely on it to a sufficient degree, still checking it at the right level of checking. That would be a series of combinations of different processes, including independent experts, residents and engineers, clock of works, architects, structure engineers and how those resources are managed. In relation to the Edinburgh School's Inquiry and the Dumfries Inquiry, the first reference in each of those was the restoration of the clock of works. In terms of what the industry does and what clients do, the recommendation is very much what you have said. The clock of works is a fundamental element that, independent from the contractor, somebody is checking at a level of sufficient granularity that they can actually see what has been built is to the quality. Clock of works and other names associated with that in terms of the process used does not have to be a clock of works. There is a whole range of different people who can do that activity, but it needs to be done at the level of scrutiny that will allow somebody to have the assurance. Those were the two recommendations. To be fair to the Government, I think that an indication went out very shortly after the Edinburgh School's report, requiring all public sector authorities to look at the independent use of scrutiny on site, and particularly the employment of clock of works. I believe that changes have already happened significantly in that regard among public authorities. What about if it is not a public building that has been built, it is a private building, it could be in a state of houses? Absolutely. First of all, the recommendations in the Edinburgh School's report were not solely for the public sector. It referred to the industry as a whole. We asked industry to make these changes and we asked clients to make these changes. The best practice is to use the clock of works for those projects that require hands-on involvement of inspection. In relation to housing, the National House Billing Council has quite rigorous systems in place. Now, whether they are strong enough is something that you really need to look at, but the report— Is all voluntary, Professor Cole? Well, I am not sure—sorry, it is voluntary, yes. It is voluntary. It needs to be tougher. It shouldn't be voluntary. Builders should be required to do certain things that they are not doing right now. Yes, but that is a builder. There is no question that a builder is responsible for building to the standard that is specified. He is required to comply with the building regulations. That is a fundamental requirement. The problem is who is checking that he is doing it. The checking has to be outside the builder, so it is not the builder. There is independence of scrutiny. I think that that has to apply to any good client. For example, if you get your house painted before you paint the guy at the end, you go out and walk around to make sure that he is done behind the gutters or wherever it is that you ask him to do. You always check before you pay. Unfortunately, we have got the position where an awful lot of the building industry work is not checked by those who are paying it, whether they be public sector or private sector. That is what is missing. That is the missing ingredient. That comes down to you, minister, to put something in place. We are very grateful to Professor Coe and his recommendations. I think that the compliance plan approach that is being put forward is the way that we should pursue that. I do think that, as has been highlighted by Professor Coe and the Edinburgh Schools report and DG1, the emphasis often was not on the substantive thing with that building. If I remember rightly in the Edinburgh Schools report, Professor Coe said that there was more emphasis on drains than there was anything else in that regard, and we have got to change that around. As Professor Coe rightly highlighted in his report, 80 per cent of building warrants are for low value and non-complex building work, 20 per cent of that much more complex in terms of design and construction, and we need to put an emphasis on all of that. On what the committee has said about clerks of works, for example, I have said exactly the same thing. Those local authorities that were using clerks of works on site find themselves in a much better position in terms of what they were delivering. What I am saying as I go around the country in terms of the housing programme is that those housing associations and local authorities that put clerks of works at the forefront of what they are doing are building quality and buildings that are going to require a lot less maintenance in the future. A discussion that we had before we came in here was that the clerks of works in certain places are also the folks who are responsible for the future maintenance of properties. They are going to do everything possible that they can to make sure that that building is top notch so that they do not have to go back and fix whatever part it is in a few years time. In terms of the industry across the board, whether that be public or private, we need to rethink and go back to some of the old ways of doing things, as some folk would see and bring back those folks who were there on a regular basis inspecting as they went along. I am sure that Professor Cole would not forgive me if I did not add to that by saying that we have a job of work to do in terms of training up people to garner some of those skills that have been lost. I think that there is an onus in all of us, whether we be in government, local government or industry itself, to look back, see what worked and reinstigate that, but there will never be any argument from me around about bringing back clerks of works. I want to double check something on the onus. I do not want to take up a line of questioning, which is to get clarity around that minister. I apologise, Mr Simpson, for this. Is the Scottish Government, therefore, keeping alive, actively considering having the power or the insistence for local authorities when they give planning approval to certain developments of a certain risk of a certain scale for insisting to have that independent, skilled, professional, individual on-site to do the work of a clerk of works or similar? Could that be made mandatory in guidance before you get your building warrants or approvals? Is that something that the Scottish Government is looking at in partnership with COSLA because they are all the independent verifiers at the moment in relation to that? Is that the work that is on-going? I do not think—I would have to check this out. I do not think that it is necessarily something that could be done through the planning system per se, but in terms of where we are and how we move forward on all of this, I will continue to emphasise that this is the way forward. We are looking across Government at this moment in time in terms of procurement as well—how we lay out procurement policy for the future. I would certainly be encouraging of local authorities and others to have clerk of works. I would have to get back to you, because I am not sure off the top of my head whether that could be done through the planning system. We are certainly looking at those issues through the procurement system, but I will get back to you in more depth about what could or could not be done in that regard. I appreciate that. Could I ask a much more straightforward question in a different way? Is the Scottish Government giving life consideration to bringing back a clerk of works or equivalent for large-scale and complex projects on a mandatory basis irrespective of what the legislative or delivery mechanism of that would be? As I say, we are looking at what we are doing in terms of procurement. I think that it would be the wise move to look at the procurement situation to have clerk of works back in, but we will get back to you in that front. In terms of planning off the top of my head, convener, I do not think that it could be done through planning, but I will get back to you in the specifics. I am really sorry for the clarity on that one. I am quite right, convener. I just want to ask about one other thing for now. A couple of our recommendations were about protecting people once they have bought a property and things go wrong, which, as you know, they do go wrong. We had a couple of recommendations there. One was to introduce standardised missives and, for Dame Judith's benefit, that is the contract that you sign when you buy a property in Scotland. Standardised missives, which we could build in protections. When I asked the Law Society of Scotland about that at this committee, they said that that would be a very good idea. When I asked them what was required to bring that in, they said that it was a change in the law. In your response to us, minister, you said that it was down to the law society. It appears to be down to a change in the law, so we need to change the law to bring that in. The other recommendation that we had was to introduce a home's ombudsman to protect people. I know that this has been looked at down south, but that would apply only down south. We need a separate thing here. I wonder what your thoughts are on those things. I have not forgotten about you, Dr Stollard. I apologise for the conversations that have moved on. I will be absolutely coming back to your area of expertise. You are welcome to comment on this just now or let some of your colleagues come in. Thank you. Who would like to go first on that? Professor Cole. On the issue of a home ombudsman, I have not looked into any great depth. It certainly sounds like something that would be a positive indication. I think that you are thinking about that in England. We certainly are. What was clear to me as part of my review is that we in England are further back than you are here in Scotland, I think in this respect. Certainly what I found here was that people living in multiple occupancy buildings that are local authority owned, social housing, have a much better route for raising concerns, but when the properties are owned and it is in the private sector, I do not think that things are as far advanced. What we all need is to ensure that people who have genuine concerns have a clear and effective route for them to raise those concerns and get a response. Minister, I do not know if you want to comment on those suggestions. On all those suggestions, I will continue to consider what is the best way forward. I do not have anything at hand about the missives. I will look at what the Law Society has said on that issue. I do not know if that was in response to the committee or whether that was evidence given, but I will look at what they have to say and I will get back to the committee on about my consideration of that. Thank you for coming along. I thank you three for the work that you have done, I think that it is useful. I have a few specific questions, but to begin with, with a rather general question, Dame Judith Ewing said that in England the system is not for purpose. It is broke. In Scotland, the system is not broke, but it needs attention. I wonder whether you can give us some sense of the magnitude and timescale of fixing it in both jurisdictions, in broad terms, and to what extent we are talking about legislative, fiscal, cultural standards and practice kinds of changes. It sounds like the challenge is obviously greatest in England, but if you give us some sense, I mean, I know the minister is consulting on all this, I would not expect the minister perhaps to have fully formed thoughts on this at the moment quite appropriately, but from the point of view of the chairs I have been interested to some sense of the kind of magnitude and timescale you think we need to fix this. Can I break it into two parts? I think that we have had parallel reviews, which is quite important. On the terms of the format of the regulations that we have and the standards that we set for buildings, the review panel concluded that it was essentially working, and the principle that we have of functional standards supported by guidance needs to be improved, and we have some recommendations about how that can be done, but fundamentally that is a sound system. That system relies on the fact that the verifiers in Scotland are quite tightly controlled and are regulated to an extent because they are just done by the local authorities, although we come on and make a suggestion about a national hub for complex buildings. In that sense, that can be fixed relatively quickly, and there could be amendments to the guidance documents, certainly within a relatively short time, talking about six months, 12 months maximum. The only slight caveat on that is, as Dame Judith herself said, we are working slightly in advance of the Grenfell inquiry. Although we had a lot of crossover and two members of my panel are expert witnesses to the Grenfell inquiry, I would just like to be conscious that we keep a record and check of what is going on there. I think that we know 99% of what happened at Grenfell, but we do not know the final bits. On the technical side, on the regulations, six to twelve months. I think that the issue is both cultural and practice. I think that the regulations, as they said, and the system, as they said, will cover an awful lot of what we need to do, but it is what has happened over years. I have been advised and I never saw the final numbers on this, but the number of building inspectors has dramatically reduced over the last number of years, and yet the demand for them has probably increased with the increase in technology of buildings. The number of visits carried out to sites are very, very few. As the minister mentioned, we find those preponderance of visits looking at issues that are draining to be joined into the local authority system. Rarely was there much time spent, for example, and one really difficult example was, I think, where 31 visits to site 29 were to do with visits to the drainage, and two were looking at the building after completion. During that whole stage, when all the hidden work was been done, where a lot of the faults were hidden away, nobody was really visiting the site for those purposes. I think that that has to do with habit and practice. I have said this comment many times that nobody ever was injured by a set of drawings falling on them, so they might have been, but I am not to my knowledge. What we are doing is spending huge resources on making sure that drawings are absolutely correct, but nobody is going to see that the building behind it is built according to those drawings. The focus of what we are doing is about building safe buildings, not about producing safe drawings, and yet that is where the huge amount of effort is going into offices and building regalaces, departments all around the land. The focus has not been sufficiently on making sure that what is built, we need to turn it round. We need to say that that is a compliant building, not a compliant set of drawings, because the connection between the two disappears as soon as those drawings go out of the office on to site. There is an issue about capacity, about capability within the building inspectors' teams and local authorities, the difficulty of recruiting them, the fact that there are no longer training programmes for building inspectors at any of the universities, and I know that there is some work on the way, which has been encouraged by labs and others to try and develop such courses at local universities, but we are not training them or recruiting them. The age profile of those people is getting older, the level of skill required to recruit them has dropped because the salaries do not make it attractive enough to attract in people. The further you are away from the central belt, the more difficult it is to recruit those people. There is a problem in terms of how we apply the system. The rules are all probably there, the capacity to extend what we ask for in terms of information and requirements from contractors, but we do not apply it in sufficient rigour. While the system is not broken, the application of the system is insufficient. I think that one of the main reasons why our system is better than that size of the border is because of the flexibility that was put into legislation here to allow for changes quite quickly. I think that that is important to point out. That is why, as Dr Stallard has said, some of the changes that we will make can be done quite quickly compared to some of the changes that will be required south of the border, where primary legislation will be required. We built in in the past a level of flexibility that has allowed us to update and maintain standards, and that is why we are in that better position. However, we will not be complacent about that. A lot of that harks back to compliance issues. I think that that is one of the key findings from Professor Cole's recommendations, and that is something that I take very seriously, ministerial working group takes seriously. That is one of the areas where we need to move forward. Culture and skills are the other things that Mr Whiteman mentioned. I think that there needs to be cultural change across the board, and we are going to have to ensure that industry itself recognises that it needs to change. I think that, again, in a discussion that we had outside where all of us have come into contact with industry on numerous occasions of late, people are in agreement that things need to change, but when you ask the question about what you are going to do, that is where you hit a wee bit of a stumbling block. That is one of the things that we need to get over. Of course, the compliance regime as envisaged by Professor Cole will push people into that position of having to change culture anyway if we adopt all of that, which I think we are likely to do. That in itself will help us in some regards with culture. The skillset scenario, whether that be in building standards or within the industry itself, I certainly recognise that we need to create a situation where we are attracting folk to building standards in local authorities. That is one of the reasons why I agreed to raise fees recently so that local authorities have the ability to invest in building standards. As Professor Cole has said, we are working closely with labs to see what can be done, not only in terms of ensuring that we have the right courses, but trying to get the right people to join an industry that, shall we say, the demographic is quite high. We have the challenge of ensuring that we have the right folks. I think that we are up for that challenge. Labs have been extremely supportive in terms of what they have been doing to help us in that regard. We need to move forward together to make sure that building standards have seen us being an attractive career for the future. One of the most striking differences that I encountered early on in my review between the systems south of the border and here in Scotland was the very fact that you are not allowed to break ground on a building up here until you have demonstrated and put in front of building control a design for what you are going to build. That is different from what we have currently in England. I think that that is a powerful and very effective gateway in the process. In the discussions that I had with people subsequent to that, what became apparent was that when you put a simple gateway like that in process, lots of other things change as a result of that. What changes is that because that exists, people put more effort upfront into getting the design right so that they can get through that gateway easily rather than coming with some sketchy design that then has to be filled out during the course of the construction process. That is a really powerful gateway in the process. That is the basis on which I have proposed that the system in England needs to know not just have that gateway in place but a similar gateway at the completion stage. Rather than talking about sending people out to look and see whether people have complied, the owner shifts. It goes back to what Professor Cole was saying earlier, that the owner is with the client to come to the regulator and say, I can demonstrate to you that I have built a building that is in compliance and I now need you to give me permission for that building to be occupied. Thank you. Do you want to follow up on that, Mr Reitman? Yes, please. Thank you very much. That is extremely useful. I have just got a few quick questions. I hope that time is pressing and other members want to speak. I was very struck by this flowchart that you produced in your report to Dame Judith. I was wondering briefly, from a Scottish point of view, that this is broadly the same. I mean that there will be a few details but it is broadly the same or is it very different? When I respond to that, chair, I think that it is quite different because we have different origins of the systems and totally different ways. As Dame Judith has said, we have a very strict rule of you do not start on the side until you have got your warrant and we have another strict rule in law but it may not be properly being enforced which you do not occupy a building until your completion certificate has been accepted by the verifier. There is an issue which John explores very carefully in his report about the problems of temporary occupation certificates which sometimes get round that. I would actually suggest that the flowchart in Scotland is really quite measurably different. It does have some degree of complexity, yes, but we also have a separate Fire Scotland Act which means the relationship of the fire and rescue service into the system is different in Scotland from in England and we do not have a private sector of approved verifiers in Scotland which, coming from this system, seems to complicate the English system enormously because we only have the 32 verifiers at the moment. So I think that there is a significant difference. Okay, that is very helpful, thanks very much. It strikes me in reading the reports that you have produced that a lot of this is about culture and about how we have changed the way we do buildings. Professor Cole, you talked about historically a university would want to build a building, employ an architect, they engaged a contractor, competitive tenders, a clerk of works would be accountable to the client seeking the client's interest and yet now we have, for example, a speculative building. In your introduction, Dame Judith, you talked about the primary motivation is to do things as quickly and cheaply as possible. For example, the high school that my daughter went to has got a 40-year design life. She came from a primary school that is 125 years old and will last for another 125 years. So it seems to me that some of the cultural issues are not just about how we do things but it is in the actual commissioning, how long the thing is designed to last for and also is the client actually going to be around after occupation, which on a speculative build they are not going to be with a university or a hospital board or a local authority, obviously they are going to be around and therefore etc. I was struck in Professor Cole's report by paragraph 64 where you say that it must be made clear that it is the legal responsibility of clients for all buildings that will be occupied, used, worked in or visited by members of the public to ensure that those buildings are compliant with the regulations. But yet in paragraph 24 you draw attention to the fact that the design and build regime means that such appointments of design teams frequently contain confidentiality clauses whereby the professional design team are prevented from conveying concerns to the actual client for the project as to defective construction quality or changes from improved design. So how can a client uphold their legal responsibilities when in fact things are being hidden from them? The way they do it is by employing independent scrutiny either in the form of their own architect, representatives, employers, agents, clock or works etc. If you go down the design and build rate you are standing back and saying that the contractor is not responsible for the design. As you just said in fact I was meeting yesterday in London but this was discussed. The difference between somebody who is building a building and moving on to the next one and getting rid of that building immediately, they are not really worried about the 20, 30 or 40 year life of that building. They are worried about building it as cheaply as possible and they get the biggest profit when they sell it. Whereas the public sector client building a building should be thinking about the lifespan of that building and what it is going to contribute to the local society and community. Whereas if we pass it to a contractor and say that you design and build it then you are standing back from that. I do not think that we can delegate that responsibility. Clients have to be intelligent customers. They have to know what they are building for and they have to set down a strategy for a building for a lifetime. The first thing that we should do before even an architect lifts up a pencil is to sit down and describe what are the objectives of the building. Buildings are means to an end, not ends in themselves. Quite often they are treated as ends in themselves just like other commodities. Things are going to live and shape and affect society over centuries. When we look around and we treasure so many parts of the built infrastructure around us that makes Edinburgh what it is in other cities, we are very casual in terms of how we prescribe what it is that we are seeking to achieve in our buildings. We need stronger clients, we need clearer clients, we need more strategic clients, we need a long-term view of the future and we need to procure our buildings in a way that protects that and ensures that those objectives that we set at the start are being delivered. Both in relation to the function of the building and what it does to society as a whole and how it works in terms of individual bits and in terms of safety and functionality. Can I add just one thing? Into the Scottish system that stands at the moment, the moment you buy a building or take it over or become the owner, you accept those obligations. One of the problems I think which is lacking at the moment in the system is the awareness of clients when they take over a building, whether it is design and build, they are accepting those obligations. There needs to be some sort of buyer-beware. You talked about the misses before, the awareness that you are accepting that. If there are faults, that is who society is going to act against, the owner. There is that particular thing when the transfer from the design and build company to the operating company. You will see it in some organisations and some commercial businesses, but in many there is a level of ignorance that they are taking on those responsibilities. I think the problem is that the objectives are not necessarily aligned. The issue that you raised about preventing the design team from speaking to the real client, what I call the real client at the end of the building. The number of people who came to us said that we are signing a confidential agreement. We are not even allowed to go on site to check how they change the design and have the downgraded specification and we are not allowed to tell that to the actual client. That was the case in Dumfries, for example. There was no discussion between the architects and designers of that building and the client. Everything was done through a contractor. The contractor determined what that architect or designer would do, how often they would come to the site, if they came to the site at all, and whether they did snagging or reviews or quality assurance during that process. However, the client is naïvetly thinking that once there is an architect involved that somehow or rather he is working for the wider good, whereas he is in a contract which is saying that this is what you will do and you will only do this bit. We only want to get your design to win the job and get it through the next stage, but we do not want you to come and tell us how to build. We will do that because we will take shortcuts and we will value engineer now. That is a word that we need to redefine value engineering. It is essentially cost cutting and quite often quality cutting. We need to look at value in the proper senses to the long life of the building and what it offers to the people who want to use it. We have to align those objectives and get contractors from procurement in a place where they are aiming in the same long-term direction for buildings as the rest of society are. At the moment, that is not necessarily the case, and part of government procurement is driven it that way. I have a few more questions on the conscience of time. We will be back at the end, Alexander Stewart. This morning, we have identified and your reports have identified some very worrying indications when you talk about the system not being fit for purpose, when you talk about the difficulties and the flaws and the checks and balances. That has to ensure that we cannot then guarantee the safety and safety may be compromised in some of those buildings and in some of those locations. That is a very worrying situation for all to find in a professional capacity that you are having to deal with. How can we ensure that that is not the case, that safety is not being compromised, if we do not see the checks and balances, if we do not have the enforcement, if procurement is poor and there is not the real enforcement that is required to give the confidence to visitors and people living in buildings that their safety is not being compromised? I think that it is fundamental that you have that check and balance in the system. That is again why one of my recommendations in my report is that for buildings above that risk threshold that we have set, and I will say a little bit more about why we set it where we did in a moment, for those buildings that sit above that threshold, not only must they go through a gatekeeping review process during construction, but that needs to continue through the life cycle of the building, and that for existing buildings above that threshold, we will apply that regime retrospectively, and the new competent authority that we will set up, combining the skills of three different regulators, will actually conduct safety reviews of all of those buildings above the threshold. The threshold itself, at the level that we set in the report, is based upon taking those of highest risk, as demonstrated by the evidence of where most fires and multiple fatalities have occurred, and doing that first, and that sets a bar at somewhere in the region of 3,000 to 5,000 buildings that we will have to look at retrospectively in England. In my view, there is every reason to lower that threshold with time, and this goes back in part to the answer to your question of how quickly can we do this. If we try and do everything at once, we will never get there. We have to prioritise this, we have to go for those buildings that we have the most concern about first, and then extend the regime once we have demonstrated its effectiveness. That is my view on how we have to do this. Just exactly what Dame Duthers said, we have no alternative but to have the enforcement. Have people on-site inspecting until we have confidence that the industry is delivering it right first time, and we need to change the culture of the industry. That is a long-term process. That is not going to happen overnight. That is going to take years to change the culture of the industry. In the meantime, when we cannot rely on them to do what has been asked of and what has been specified and drawn, we have to have independent scrutiny. That means that people have to invest in putting the right resources. Clients have to invest in putting the right resources in, be that clerker works, architects, independent consultants who will do a proper check to ensure that they are getting right. That can be easily added and helped by digital information, time and date recorded certified information being required as a standard part of the building control process. I do not think that that is something that needs extra legislation. I think that that could be part of the process now. I bow to others to check that aspect about legislation. By insisting on that information and ensuring that we look at the high-risk issues, you will see in my recommendations that I have asked for a compliance certificate of evidence to be documented, identified in advance of the project by building control, so that they can say in advance that we are going to require evidence of the various aspects of the building to be shown digitally recorded and certified by independent experts before we will accept the building. Those extra requirements are what we need to put in place. That means that we have to put money back in that has been stripped out of the process. We have stripped out a lot of the money that was there to protect quality in a false economy, unfortunately. I think that we have in Scotland through the Building Scotland Act and the Far Scotland Act two pieces of primary legislation that give us the groundwork that we need, and we can, through the procedural regulations under there, cover most of those issues in a relatively short time and significantly faster than I suspect England could do if they need primary legislation. In terms of the idea of taking off a group of buildings, that takes us back to where the minister was starting at the meeting with the inventory, where we are identifying those high-rise residential buildings. Because of the decisions taken back in 2005 as to what we admit is cladding on those buildings, the number that actually has particularly dangerous cladding—I do not want to go into technical details—is significantly lower, because England and Wales did not choose that time to adopt the same standard that we did for buildings with floors over 18 metres. One of the recommendations of my own review panel was that we bring that down for the future from 18 metres to 11. We have the process in place. The other thing to say on the inventory in particular is that it is essential that that includes changes to those buildings. The inventory is a live thing. It is no use if it is, as of today, only of value, and that requires an investment for the long term. The classic example in Grenfell was not that the building itself was a problem, but it was the refurbishment of the building. I will follow on briefly from Dr Stollard. I do not think that we can emphasise enough the difference that the 2005 act made here compared to south the border, because it has allowed us to move on and to ensure that standards have continued to be improved upon. That is one of the reasons why we have not got the same difficulties that have arisen south the border with ACM because of the changes that were put in place because of the act. Again, as was pointed out to Mr Wightman in answer to his question, because we have that act, we are still in a position where we can be flexible and make changes without too much bother, which primary legislation often takes a long time. There has to be a huge amount of consultation. We are in a better position in that regard without a doubt. I would like to go back to the point of the verifiers. We have the local authorities as verifiers here still, whereas south the border there is a hodgepodge. I know that the committee came under some pressure from folks to try and get me to extend verification to private bodies. I have not done so. Again, we are not complacent about the 32 local authorities, as the committee is well aware. There are three local authorities that I was not quite so happy with, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stirling. We are seeing improvement in Glasgow. We are seeing improvement in Edinburgh because we have put in a team of experts to help them on their way. Things are holding steady in Stirling, but I am getting regular updates and will continue to keep a close eye on those authorities. One of the things that has been recommended, which is extremely important as far as I am concerned, is ensuring that we have a sharing of expertise, which sometimes has not happened to the extent that we would all like. Beyond that, there is expertise that is not available in certain authorities. That is why the central hub that we are consulting on is a very important recommendation in terms of pooling of resources. That central hub itself could not only verify design but play a part in looking at construction. It was touched upon by you earlier on, convener, and others just now, around about records and record keeping. Some of the record keeping in the past was largely in a paper format, as you pointed out. We have moved on from that. We now have e-building standards. That allows us a degree of flexibility in moving forward with some of the recommendations that have been made. Those are the issues that we need to look at. That is the place where we are at. While Mr Stewart talks about risk and is right to do so, I think that we are in a much better place than we are south of the border. We are not being complacent about any of that. We will look very closely at the consultation and the recommendations. I think that the recommendations are pretty good, and we will move forward in that front. Convener, as per usual, as we move forward, we will continue to keep the committee informed of where we are at. That would be welcome, Minister Alexander Stewart. I think that you have all answered the question, and the ministers hit the nub on the head that we find ourselves in a stronger position in Scotland because of the quality and the checks and balances that we now have. However, all of that, as you have all identified, comes at a cost and the cost of maintaining and ensuring that that will continue in a difficult situation. You have identified, minister, a number of councils that are doing extremely well, and you have also identified a number that give you costs for concern, and those that are giving you costs for concern are now being addressed. However, at the same time, that still gives us the anxiety within some of those communities that some of the local authorities are not giving the priority to other authorities to see the need of giving that priority. Unless it is supported financially and given the right manner of business and attitude, we will not succeed. There may well be more require to do in some of those local authorities to ensure that they comply and progress and go forward. At the end of the day, what is important is that we have the checks and balances in place, but we also have the financial resources that can support and maintain that going forward. I apologise, minister. That is an important question to ask. I am sitting here as a member of the Scottish Parliament for Glasgow Maryhill and Springwell, with many, many, many high rises there, and many, many of my constituents and families staying there. The housing associations, which there are several, and the fire service have been absolutely proactive to go out of their way to give communities and residents absolute confidence, as much as they can, that where they are staying is safe and secure and looked after and well maintained. I always like to put that on the record from time to time, because I will absolutely tear air like pursue to make sure that there is absolute safety. However, what we do not want to do is worry families that, by and large, are staying safe, secure and well maintained properties. I am sorry if that feels a little bit indulgent, but I have got many, many, many constituents and families staying in those properties. It is important to put that on the record. Minister, my apologies. I think that it is right to put that on the record. The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, after the tragedy at Grenfell, was immediately carrying out inspections to ensure that people knew that they were safe in their homes. I pay tribute to the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service for their efforts. Off the top of my head, convener, there were hundreds of visits carried out. I think that it was over 800, if I remember rightly. 890 springs to mind. I am getting nods there, which were carried out by the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. That gave people confidence. Like yourself, convener, I have a large amount of high-rise residential buildings in my constituency. There are 59 in Aberdeen and Toto, the vast bulk of them within my constituency. I know that the meetings that took place also gave folks confidence in the places that they lived. I will go back to Mr Stewart's point about investment. One of the reasons why I agreed to raise building standards fees, which had not been raised for a number of years, was to ensure that the income was there. It is good to see a number of local authorities in their budgets this year investing in planning and building standards. I would like to see many more of them doing so. It may come to a point, convener, where we have to look at whether there should be a ring fencing of that. We as a Government really do not like ring fencing. I, as a councillor, never liked ring fencing, but it is an area of business that has been left neglected by some for too long. I hope that we do not have to do that. I hope that there is recognition by local authorities that they need to invest in those areas, but there is always the possibility of taking those actions if others do not. The scenario of providing additional support, we have said right along that my building standards officials will help in whatever way they can if an authority is not performing well. We have seen just after Grenfell a number of authorities taking that offer. One did not, which was not very wise in my opinion. Edinburgh has got the expert team in at this moment in time. I am glad that they accepted that. It may well be in the future that we have to do similar things in other authorities. However, in saying that, looking at figures that I have seen the other day, in 20 of the local authorities, the standards are rising. Others are on a par with what they were previously. Some, in terms of customer service, have gone down. That is something that I feel is very important for me to keep looking at. As we move forward in terms of future decisions that I will make about verifiers, I will take all of that into account, but you can be assured that I am not afraid to move others in to help if that is what is required. The final thing is that I could remove the verification powers from a local authority and give it to another local authority to deal with if we find that things are not satisfactory. A couple of questions at the end are on Mr Simpson once back, and I suspect on a similar line. I have spoken a lot about the building standards and verification in the process. Of course, the media spotlight on Grenfell was the type of cladding that was used on the building. One of the things that happens when you sit on this committee is that you are sometimes approached by different stakeholders in the field, sometimes commercial stakeholders, very appropriately I have to say, who will say that our installation product is the best. Here is a video of a test, so I will show you that it performs really well under lab conditions. Another company will show you a different installation product and will show you their test, and they will tell you why there is the best under lab conditions, and then they will question other lab conditions. The reason for going into that level of detail is that it leaves MSPs going well. How can we be assured that the testing regime in the lab is robust, appropriate and replicates the actual real-life situation once you put a product on a building? It is easy to artificially, under a controlled environment, produce a result that is safe. It may not be easy, but you can do it, but when you construct the cladding on to the side of a building or whatever, it is a very different experience. If I have another MSP with similar experiences, I have people contacting them saying, look at this, this shows that our product is the safest, it should be non-combustible or it should be limited combustible or whatever, how do we know that there is a robustness in itself in relation to the lab tests on products that are put together? Dr Stollard, you pose a very, very good question. Fire testing has a long history going back to the Second World War. In about 2000, we established, with other countries in the European Union, a series of European harmonised tests. They are testing for specific purposes in specific contexts, and those tests, the review panel I am doing, we are suggesting should now from now on to be the only tests that we use. We have run two sets in parallel since 2005, which are British standard tests or the European harmonised tests, but really having such a long run-off has been sufficient. We should now just go to European harmonised tests. They cannot replicate the situation in every building, because every building is slightly different. You are looking for certain characteristics of materials and extrapolating from that in a reasonable manner. For that reason, we suggest that there should be a degree of caution, and you choose, therefore, fairly high standards. Hence, we are suggesting in the review panel that we are recommending only A1 or A2 and not BCDE. That is a conservative approach. You cannot guarantee that in every situation, and you do not want to remove the flexibility occasionally. They are also recommending that we should allow a large-scale test, which involves building basically a three-storey section of the building and testing that on a large-scale rig. You cannot guarantee any of this. You are looking at what is the best the industry can do and the best quality control. You want to have test houses that are testing properly and are under a regime of checking. We have a building research establishment down in England, which serves not only the UK but wider than that. The head of testing there, Dr Debbie Smith, was one of the members of my review panel giving advice on how we should do this. It is not perfect, but it is the best that we probably have, and we are being deliberately cautious in the standards that we are setting to ensure that we have a margin of safety there. Is that under current standards or improved standards? That is under our current standards. We are going to improve that by reducing the A1, A2 from floors over 18m down to every 11m. That is related to fire brigade jet throws. We are also extending it slightly in the number of building types to which that will apply. That is what we are consulting on at the moment. That is actually different from what the English approved document said. Again, just for clarity, does A1 or A2 include non-combustible—although everything burns if you put it to higher off temperature—non-combustible and limited combustible products? In England, they have used the terms non-combustible for A1 and limited combustible for A2. The question is whether those are demarkers but are not terribly useful phrases and they get taken by the media out of context. I prefer to use just A1 and A2 because then you have a scientific test that you can check against. As you say, it depends on the test furnace and the test fire, but A1 and A2 are the two lowest categories. I apologise to anyone who is trying to follow this. I am trying to keep it simple. I understand it, but I apologise that I am having to get you to mirror back to what I think the understanding is, because it is not straightforward and written down in basic, obvious common sense language anywhere is the issue. If you pass your A1 or A2 test, does that get your BR-135 certificate? No, it is more complicated than that. Oh dear, I thought it might be. That sets some certain extra conditions about how it is fixed and assembled and things like that. I thought that it was worth asking those questions because I think that the underlying question is how are people supposed to have absolute confidence in a system that you cannot just pick up and read and understand at first glance, which is something that we really need. Dr Stodd, I will let you back in, I promise, but Dame Judith was wanting to get in during that line of questioning. I think that what is also important is that we must recognise the limitations of the test, because all that the test tells you is that if you use those materials and you install them properly and you do not substitute anything else at any time in the future for any of those elements, you will have a system that meets that standard. Part of the problem that we know exists is that you can start with the right materials, and if you do not install them correctly on the building or the building is not suitable for those materials to be applied, then the assurance that is offered by the test becomes meaningless because other factors are compromising the performance of the materials, and that is, I think, really important for us all to understand that the test says if you install this right and all other things are equal, this will be okay. It is those other things that we need to worry about being able to assure just as much as it is about the materials that you start with. That is helpful. That is absolutely where hopefully the next couple of questions will lead us to some of that information. Dr Stollard or then Professor Koch? I need to say that I am not at all suggesting to the committee that these tests are perfect. They are the best we have, they have a track record, and they are widely accepted in other jurisdictions. Therefore, we use the best that we have, but Dane Judith is absolutely correct. You have got to use them in the way they are meant to be used and without trying to circumvent it. We have had examples in Scotland of where there has been an innocent substitution because contractors did not realise that this product, which looks physically the same as this product, is not the same. Because it is on a shorter delivery time, they use it. You have got to be absolutely sure that what you have specified is being put up there. Professor Koch? I just wanted to add an issue coming back to the whole inspection issue. A test condition will have the thing fitted absolutely perfectly and installed perfectly with the fire stopping in exactly the right place. When you go on site and you are working with staff, because there is no requirement in terms of a trained fire stopping installer, our labourers generally come on site and do things after maybe a couple of hours of training somewhere off site. That is where the inspection bit comes in. No matter what installation materials you use, whether they are combustible or non-combustible or limited combustibility, if you have got chimneys of air fleas through them, letting air move up and create chimneys, that is going to be a problem. What we find, unfortunately in many of the examples that I have done in the inquiries, is that the compartmentation between which is supposed to stop the spread of fire to protect life and protect the buildings was very badly done if they are at all. That is back to unless you inspect what has been built, no matter what fire tests show and what they have been shown. As installers are complete, unless it is followed to the detail. Building on anything, story, block or whatever height it is, up in the wind and some guy climbing up and going off for lunch, somebody has to be inspecting those things. That is where the faults will really happen. That is where the bigger risk will be in the installation, maybe rather than necessarily in the specification material. I have actually helped to tie together both ends of that process, but there is a bit in the middle that I think Dame Judith was alluding to. You have your product tested under, fitted as beautifully as it possibly can be, as competent as it can be by professionals under lab conditions, and then you go out there to the real world and it is making sure that that is done competently. The bit in the middle, and the point that is put to me, is that you change a widget on your product. You have the same installation but you vary slightly. The panels are a bit of material that is used and it dramatically can change how it performs under conditions, but it is still having that same certificate signed off somewhere down the line to say that it is compliant. It is about the traceability of the overall product that eventually goes on to the building to make sure that it is competent and appropriate. My understanding is that desktop exercises take place where a relevant individual will look at the variation and sign it off as being appropriate, without particularly knowing whether it is or isn't. I will come back to the situation. Because the A192 is basically dealing with materials, it is more about what the material is and how the panel is assembled rather than how the assembly of components on site goes. It is harder to misuse that. If you are doing the full rig test, it is harder than you are concerned about how the different layers are assembled. There is a little bit of comfort that I can offer you on the A192 because the product will be to that standard. You are quite right that, as John and Dane Judith have said, you need to have it built as it was intended to be built. The product itself is fairly sound on A1 or A2. The difficulty is when you put in other products around it that aren't. The A192 has to apply not only to the one product but to certain other products that are going around it. On the issue of the extrapolation on desktop exercises, we allow in Scotland verifiers to choose to depart from the basic guidance and to take variations if the verifier is competent to do that. That is rarer than what was happening in England. On the complex fire engineering buildings, we would like to have a national hub, so the verifiers that are making those decisions are people who are at least as competent as the designers. One of the difficulties is if you get someone who is checking the design, who is not actually even as knowledgeable as the designer. We need to have in Scotland for the complex buildings, in my opinion, a hub of people who are of equals in fire safety engineering. That certainly gives me more reassurance to know that those who are signing those things off at a desktop level have that level of competence and experience and professionalism, Dane Judith. I would agree with that. I would agree with that. You have to have people who are involved in this process who are competent to make the decisions that they are making. Dr Stullard is right that it was the misuse of desktop studies that was identified very early on in my review, and even in my interim report, I recommended that there were some severe restrictions placed on the way in which desktop studies were being used in England. It is not always patient, I should say, to witnesses, but I am very patient. Good evening, Samson. Good evening. Do you want to come? Well, patient convener, because you were covering the subject in admirable detail. Can I just ask about this test? I think it's the BS8414 test that has been concerns expressed by the UK Government over that test, but Dr Stullard, you've suggested retaining that. The English building control authority is actually recommending in their consultation that they wouldn't permit it, at least as a defined one, but they still won't actually ban it. They're just saying they're not going to give it as much credence as it had. That's for England. Sorry to be complex, but they have functional standards like we do. What we have said is at this stage, and we're consulting on retaining it. Frankly, they're not used very often, they're incredibly expensive, and anyone who's going to build a three-storey section of a building and then burn it down, because these tests are specific to a building, they're not sort of generality tests that you can then do 20 different buildings on it. We've kept it in as an option simply on the advice of BRE, as I said, Dr Debbie Smith, because it is the best test available. And if we say we won't even permit that one, then we're really closing down the doors and we don't have even a benchmark against it. So the moment we're consulting on keeping it, and I'll be interested to see what the responses to the consultation are. So why would they not want to keep it in England? I think you'd have to ask them that. Okay. The Prime Minister in May suggested that in England they would look to ban the use of combustible materials for cladding on high-rise buildings. We don't appear to be going down that route here. I might be wrong. With the exception of that one test, which may be possible, it depends on what she's using the term combustibility. I suspect that she's meaning A1 and A2, and I said earlier that I'm a little uneasy about using the sort of the layman's term of combustibility, because I'd rather stick with the name A1, A2 test, and that is what the English Department of Housing, Local Government and Communities, I think, are consulting on. So they're now consulting on the same as us, as A1 and A2. The only difference is, I think, the heights under which they're going to use it. So we'll end up here as safe as England, or England as safe as Scotland? I'll argue that we are safer than England. We will end up in a very similar place in terms of what cladding is allowed to be used. Yes, there was a consultation announced on the same day that my final report was published to look at cladding. My interpretation of the current regulations and guidance in England already banned anything that would be classed as combustible, but again I agree absolutely with Dr Stollard that we've got to get away from these qualitative terms and refer back to real standards like A1 and A2, and I think that we will end up in a very similar place. I should point out that it's no bad thing if we have competition in making our building standards and fire safety as robust as possible. That's a good thing. I quite like that exchange in relation to how we're taking things forward. I think that that's a very useful thing. Andy Wightman, do you want to come in to finish us off with a line of questioning? Thank you so much. I had a few questions that I had to hang over. I mean, I was intrigued. Judith, you were chair of the health and safety directive and you pointed out in your report that when HSE was introduced in the 1970s that residential buildings were considered should be part of that regime but were not. Do you think that's got any relevance to the debate going forward? Do you think that there is any case for making buildings subject to the HSE? Just to clarify what happened in the 1970s was that when the health and safety at work act was entered into force, section 3 of the act that gives the health and safety executive jurisdiction over work that affects those who are affected by work as opposed to employers, for clarity of roles and responsibilities, a letter was issued by a minister back then which said this takes a backseat behind building regulations as far as assuring the safety of buildings for the public are concerned. That was what the letter did in the 1970s. Does it have a relevance? I think it does because I think as a result of that the implementation of the construction design and management regulations in subsequent years have not gone as far in England as they have in some other parts of Europe and that boundary between building control in local authorities and health and safety not just of employees but of the public as well. The regulator has held back on some of that. The whole purpose of setting up this joint competent authority now for high rise buildings in my report is to remove that barrier and to actually get them to work together so that they get the right answer for everyone and we don't have that delineation of responsibilities between one another. It's always a problem with health and safety where you draw those barriers between one regulator's responsibility and someone else's. There are numerous examples of where that boundary exists but this is one where I think the solution is fairly straightforward. Dr Stollard, in paragraph 36 of your report, you said that on the need for additional stairways there was no consensus among the review panels but, in the view of yourself, endorsed by all members of the international subgroup, you believe that there is a need to require at least two stairways in buildings of 18 metres. Can you explain a little bit about why there was no consensus? What were the issues at play there? We have a policy of stay put initially and the key word there is initially. You should stay put initially but you have the situation where if the stay put fails then you've got to evacuate. That has stood us in good stead for a very long time and I'm not saying that policy is wrong. What I'm saying is that in building new for the future on high rise we should ensure that if that stay put initially doesn't work and you have to evacuate we have the choice of two staircases. That gives a level of redundancy. It permits fire fighting on one staircase while fire evacuation is occurring on the other staircase. When I discussed this with the checking group I had from Australia, the Netherlands, Austria and the US they were all in agreement that we should be doing this. Why was there not a consensus among the review panel members? It hasn't failed in Scotland and therefore they've taken the conservative view that it hasn't failed in Scotland and therefore will leave it as it is. Having seen the failure at Grenfell and the fact that the fire brigade had not trained for that after the stay put the initial doesn't work then you've got to evacuate. They hadn't trained and they hadn't prepared. I think that we should have just had a common sense to be preparing for that. Consulting on the two stair issue thus far, the engagement shows that folk are in favour of two stairs in principle just to give you a flavour of what's coming back. Just to want to be worthy of saying it at a level above which high-reach appliances from the fire brigade can't be used to lift people off. Dame Judith, you talk about a more effective testing regime for construction products and labelling and product traceability. We've talked quite a bit about the testing regime. What are issues involved? I recollect some of the conversation around Grenfell was in relation to the fact that a lot of the material comes from all over the world. There is a very complex supply chain. Sometimes something that is certified, as Dr Stollart was saying earlier, looks the same as something else. This seems quite ambitious. I mean, sure, this would be good, but when you're dealing with international supply chains and even stuff from outwith the EU, we're not going to be part of the EU. So how do you see that working? Is that really achievable, do you think? Yes, I think it is. What I was referring to was something we've already talked about, which is that one test at one point in time of a given set of materials is then used extensively by the industry to market that product for many years to come. It seems to me that in any other industry sector, we would not simply rely on a test that was done at one point in time. We would look to verify that those materials are still performing, as was the case at the time of the test. Because, as you say, the more complex the supply chains, the materials coming in from other parts of the world, it's not just substitution which takes place on-site that we have to worry about. It's whether or not substitution that has not been declared has happened elsewhere in the supply chain, and the only way ultimately to do that is to instigate the system of periodic random testing of products. But that has to be coupled with traceability, because if you then discover a failure, you then have to be able to trace where that product has gone, just in the same way that you do in the auto industry if a failure is discovered and they instigate a product recall to fix the problem. Just to add to that, one of the models of practice that is increasingly happening and procurement is the design by subcontractors, so that portions of a building are not designed at the initial stage when the billing warrant is granted, but subsequently subcontractors take on and design an element of the billing. It could be the cladding system, it could be the window system. The problem with that is that if at that point you don't have somebody who has designed the whole lot, i.e. the conductor of the orchestra, who knows how all of these pieces work together, that you can find pieces that don't work together and the problems are generally in the boundaries for two different elements of the building meet. Again, that is just a phenomenon that is developed where risk is pushed down the line where people go out and seek tighter and tighter tenders from different subcontractors, allowing them quite often to substitute materials without proper approval and without an overall holistic view of how the integrated system works. The elements themselves might all be fine, but it's how they go together and meet one another and impact on one another. As I said, particularly the compartmentation issue is absolutely key in that. There is an issue about how procurement can create extra risks by separating the elements down into individual design packages and you'll lose the total overall package. That used to be what the architect was responsible for in the older model of procurement for ensuring that all of those elements work together. That would be part of the original design intent that was produced in the Warrant drawings, but that can often be lost by subcontractor design for little elements and he ignores the elements next door to him if he does his own bit. Are there any more questions from committee members? Before I thank you, I will thank you. Of course, if there is any additional bit of information that you feel when you came here today and you wanted to get on the public record, please feel free to do it. Are there any additional comments that any witness would like to make? I would just like to raise one small item and not make too much of it, but the system currently is that the person who signs a completion certificate in Scotland is not required to have any competence whatsoever. It can be anybody, and unfortunately that means that the process of a completion certificate, which is supposed to confirm to building control that the building is fully compliant, can be signed by somebody who would not know a nail from a screw. That is the current situation. I feel that we have to reprofessionalise that process to give you the checks and balances that you need, and that has been lost in the system to some degree. I think that the system is currently allowing somebody to sign who has no qualifications or knowledge that the building actually is compliant. It probably has not been on the site, but the signs that certificate provides the building control, I think that is just a way of looking at it. Okay. Do you see any other indications for additional comments? Nope. Can I thank everyone for coming along this morning? I have said this on several occasions now, our committee has never intended to second-guess the scrutiny that has been taken place by the ministerial working group or Dame Judith's review group down south, or Professor Cole, or Dr Stollard's work. It is a proactive, constructive, additional layer of scrutiny just to keep a watching eye on it. I think that this morning again has been a pretty useful discussion of the issues that underpin the challenges that faces. Thank you to everyone for coming along this morning. We will now move to agenda item 3, which is subordinate legislation, but I have got a note here saying that we will suspend briefly until we change the witness panel. Thank you, everyone. Okay. We now move to agenda item 3, which is subordinate legislation. In the committee, we will now take evidence on the draft affirmative statute instrument entitled the registered social landlords repayment charges Scotland regulations 2018. I welcome back Marathon session for you this morning, minister. We welcome back Kevin Stewart, Minister for Local Government Housing and Planning, and Simon Roberts, policy manager, housing standards and quality Scottish Government. This instrument is laid under the affirmative procedure, which means that the Parliament must approve the instrument before the provisions can come into force. Following that evidence session, the committee will be invited at the next agenda item to consider a motion to approve the instrument. The Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee has reported on this instrument and did not draw it to the Parliament's attention on any of its reporting grounds. I invite the minister to make a short opening statement. Thank you for the opportunity to appear today to speak to the motion to approve the registered social landlords repayment charges Scotland regulations 2018. When we introduced missing share powers for local authorities in the Housing Scotland Act 2014, we also introduced a power subject to consultation to extend those powers to registered social landlords. There are situations where a social landlord is the owner of some but not all of the flats in a tenement and requires the co-operation of other owners to carry out essential work to repair and maintain the common parts of the tenement. We know that owners are not always able or willing to co-operate in common works and that this problem can lead to deterioration in the condition of the building, with a direct impact on the living conditions of the social landlord's tenants who live there. Under the existing provisions of the Tenement Scotland Act 2004, a social landlord has the right, as do other owners, to participate in the majority decision making process set out in the tenant management scheme. If the landlord owns a majority of the flats or can form a majority with some of the other owners, work to repair or maintain common parts can go ahead, but if an owner can't or won't pay their share of the costs, the landlord is in the difficult position of using tenants' money to pay for owner's shares if their constitution or covenant allow them to do that. Or, of course, they can leave those repairs and maintenance undone. Those regulations should help in some cases by providing a more effective route to get owners to pay for their share of common works. Those regulations allow a registered social landlord to enforce a majority decision by creating a repayment charge. A repayment charge is a form of security that is recorded in the land register against title deeds. The landlord can seek to recover the charge and installments from the owner over a period of five to 30 years, and the security means that the owner will be obliged to pay their share of the costs before they can sell their home to another person. That is not a solution for every case convener. It won't help if the landlord cannot get a majority in favour of works or if the value of the owner's flat is so low that their equity doesn't cover a charge. However, it will be a useful additional tool for landlords looking to repair and maintain buildings in which they have a share. I am happy to take any questions, convener, that any members may have. Thank you. I wonder why you have introduced us against the background of social landlords wanting it. What is the scale of the problem that could be addressed by introducing the instrument? It would be fair to say, convener, that there are mixed opinions among registered social landlords about this. Some say that they would make use of this power and others say that they would never make use of this power. What this is intending to do is to give folks the flexibility if they want to use it to let them do so. I said previously when we were discussing missing shares, when it came to local authorities, that I would extend this power to registered social landlords. That is what I am doing. I am not in the position of forcing folk to use a power, but I want folks who want to have this power to be able to use it. There is practical evidence of where this would be useful. I think that we can see from what local authorities have done. There are a number of local authorities who are making use of missing share power. There are a number who are not, as I pointed out previously. So far, eight local authorities currently have a policy in place for missing shares. Seven have used the powers—South Ayrshire, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, Aberdeen, East Lothian and East Renfrewshire. Inverclyde has the policy in place but has not used the missing share power. I want to give registered social landlords in other places, maybe where missing share has not been used, the ability to use that power if they wish to do so. Gavino has just made a comment, really, if that is okay. You can make a comment just now. The agenda item 4 allows us to debate on it, which has been another opportunity, but why not just make it just now? Okay. I think that this is a really important regulation to bring in, because, as the minister says, it gives social landlords the power. They do not have to use it, but at least they will have the power. As everyone in this room should know, there is an issue with the maintenance of tenements. That is why we have a tenement maintenance working group in this Parliament, which is working closely with the minister. This is just part of the picture, but it is an important part. IFOI local authorities actually came up with ten who have used the missing shares powers rather than seven, but it is still a minority. At least they have the power. I think that it is important that registered social landlords have it, because it is vital that we bring our buildings up to scratch, rather than allow them to deteriorate. I am certainly in favour of that. If you say that you agree, minister, it becomes a question. I welcome Mr Simpson's comments. This is another tool in the box for folks to choose to use or not. I wish that more local authorities were using the missing shares powers than they are. We will continue to try and persuade folk. I think that, as some local authorities have used it, they have seen the advantage. Quite often, convener, it is not even the use of the power. It is the threat of using the power that often can change attitudes. I have seen that happen. I am sure that others have. That will be the same scenario. I am sure that giving RSLs that power may move folk into some different thinking, as we move forward. It may not necessarily be the use of the power but the threat of the use that makes a difference. As Mr Simpson has said, there is the cross-party working group at this moment. I will work closely with that working group, as I have said previously, in Parliament. I think that we all recognise that there is work to be done when it comes to repairs and tenement buildings. I do not think that that is the panacea to everything, but I think that it is another tool in the box. Thank you, minister. Are there any other questions? There have been other questions. We will now move to agenda item 4, still subordinate legislation. For this item, the committee will formally consider motion S5M-12 9 05, calling for the committee to recommend approval of the draft registered social landlords repayment charges of Scotland regulations 2018. Only the minister and members may speak in this debate and I invite the minister to speak to and move motion S5M-12 9 05. I will formally move. Thank you minister. There are no requirements to have a debate on this, but the opportunity is here to raise any additional comments that we wish to make at this point. Would any member like to participate in the debate? I am just correcting some of my notes there. Minister, would you like to sum up and respond to the wealth of points that were made in that dynamic debate there? No, thank you, convener. The question is that motion S5M-12 9 05, in the name of the minister, be approved. Are we all agreed? We are. Thank you, Mr Roberts. The committee will report on the outcome of this incident shortly, and we now move to agenda item 5, which was previously agreed to take in private. We will now move into private session.