 Rwy'n cael ei wneud a chackfodd i'p yr oedden nhw i feithio i'r gwaith lleon dda Gŵr i'r youl, gwybodol Cymru mewn lliwyr i 2017. Rwy'r ffordd i'u cael ei gŵr ystod i lawr i'n lleon i'n lleol i'r leidio. Rydw i'n rhoi ddim yn ddau'r ffórfodol a'r ffordd eich iawn ydw i gydanodd y format paig. Rwy'n cael ei gŵr ysgol i'r ffordd i'u gŵr Whether we are accessing committee papers. We have one apology from a member of the morning in terms of air quality air qualityé. MSP cannot be with us today, because she is feeling even morekg poor than I've ever been do the morning. So our deputies unfortunately can't be with us this morning. So now we will move on to agenda item 1, which is the draft climate change plan RPK 3. At agenda item 1, the committee will take evidence in the Scottish government's Dr Rydw i'n gwirio atlun o blaenau rhyw persoeddu ar y cyflwm F hopeu a'r pernodyniadau yn chyflwydd. Ac mae'n ddifu iawn i'r sesio adethion hwnnw o'r pwysig ynghwyl o'r plan wedi'i mwythglwyd. Rydw i'n cael ei wedi'i adwisio, cael ei ddifeniadau neu'r byw eich bod yn cyfleoedd ar gyfer nhw. Ond mae'n cael y gallur i gyda ei sesio hefyd ni'n ei wneud. Rydw i'n cael ei ddifeniad, Ceres wedi ei Llywodraeth G Unedigbydd, Chris With G, Steering Group Chair, Sustainable Scotland Network, Philip Revill, Projects Coordinator, Sustainable Dunbar, Craig McLearn, RTPI. I thank you all of you gentlemen for coming along and giving you the opportunity to say a brief amount about your organisation just to inform MSPs and those that are watching. Chris, maybe I can go to you first. Sustainable Scotland Network works across the whole of the public sector in Scotland and it's looking to improve reporting amongst other things. We've been leading on the mandatory reporting development for climate change issues across Scotland, but it's sharing experience expertise across the whole of the Scottish public sector and particularly focusing on climate change and sustainability. Philip Revill, I'm here representing Sustainable Scotland, which is a community development trust which was founded in 2007 and 2008. It's also part of the global transition network, which is really trying to find ways that communities can get involved in making the transition away from dependence on fossil fuels into a positive opportunity to shape a better future and better stronger communities. Through Sustainable Scotland, I'm also part of the Scottish Communities Climate Action Network and through that I'm also involved with the Scottish Community Alliance and also on the border community in Scotland. Thank you very much and Craig McLearn. The Royal Town Planning Institute, we are the professional body for town planners across the UK island and across the world. We've got 23,000 members across the world in 82 different countries, 2,100 of which are in Scotland. We have members who work across different sectors, so it's public sector, it's private sector and the third sector, and our aim is to advance the art and science of town planning for the benefit of the public, so our key roles are to set standards for education in planning, for planners themselves and to make sure that we can promote the best planning system we can. Thank you, everyone. I think it's important to also put on the record that the plan was only published in the 19th of January. It's a rather sizeable document, so you've not long to digest it as well-informed as you are in your fields. I should say that Craig McLearn has also come in the last minute to assist the committee, so we appreciate that as well. I want to put that on the record before we move to questions, but we'll move to questions now, Ruth LeWire. Thank you, convener. Good morning, panel. I'd like to start off today by hearing your reflections on how the planning system can best deliver development that favours sustainable travel modes. I should walk you out before the table. Okay, well, thank you. Well, my feeling is that we really need to join up the community empowerment agenda and the climate change agenda and the crucial part of creating sustainable places where people are actively involved in local decisions which impact them. And really involving them in creatively finding solutions to moving away from fossil fuel dependences that we need to, you probably laugh at me for saying this, but I think we need to completely invert the planning system so that it starts from the bottom up and actually starts with local place plans which can connect people with a vision of what their community will actually or can actually look like and the possibilities from moving to a low carbon future and what that means in terms of local food supply and employment and energy and health and wellbeing and so on. And then start from the bottom up to collate those plans then at area level and local authority level and then bring those together at a strategic level to really deliberate on where the conflicts of interest are and consider those in a creative way. Planning is all about creating great places for people and that's what we do as a profession. So the key part of our work is to try and make sure that we put things and we place things in the best place which is possible to put things in the right place at the right time as soon as best we can. Planning is all about doing that and it's about trying to do that in a sustainable way so we think there's some things which the planning system has to have to try and make that work and as the committee will probably know there's a review of the planning system under way at the moment and we've been talking about how the system has to have some newish principles to try and make it more effective so it can deliver much more sustainable development. And there are things such as the planning system and the planning service within local government and within Scottish government has to be seen much more as a corporate function. We're slightly worried just now that it's sort of sidelined. It's not part of that sort of key mainstream approach to how we make decisions on what's built where and about what infrastructure is required. So there's a need for that corporate and influential, that collaborative working which planning can bring. We also feel that there's a need to try and front load the system a bit more. If I've been truthful the system just now is more reactive than I would like it to be. Planning best performs best when it's actually giving a vision for what a future of a place should be like and providing a route map to get to that future and to get to those outcomes. So we'd like to see much more discussion agreement and debate about the constraints, the opportunities, the possibilities of places at the start of the process so we can then develop that route map to get there and everybody knows what their responsibility is and what resources are required to do that. The other thing which we think is really important in the planning system and a new planning system is that it has to be seen to focus much more on delivering things. At the moment the slight problem we have is that planners plan and others deliver and we need to try and bridge that implementation gap and have a clear idea as to how we can resource the infrastructure and the development which we want in a sustainable way. The last thing we're saying is that there's an issue with planning and that it's under resource just now so we need a system which is more resource. I've quoted these figures liberally so you might have heard them before but we've done research which showed that between 2010 and 2015 there was a 20% drop in planning staff in local authorities across Scotland that the average amount of budget from a local authority that goes directly to the planning service is 0.63%. If you look at the processing of planning application the cost recovered from that generally only about 63%. The money recovered from a resource covered only about 63% of the actual total. So there's some principles about how we can do it. I think planning is well placed to do that and to be honest with you I think the climate change action plan can maybe think a bit more cleverly about how planning can make those changes as well. Specific mention of transport in that question, yes. I was waiting to see if one of you would address that, yes. I will try. No I think you know planning and transport it's about actually understanding how people get about because we are going to have to change. I'm from rural Dumfries and Galloway. We're struggling with electric cars because you know we have them within the work environment but we can't get from one end of the region to the other. We're not allowed to buy Teslas yet. So I think there is a need to think through and I know there are challenges in terms of local bus services. Another local service is very very difficult. I'm not quite sure how the planning system will address that but I think it's really important that it probably looks from the perspective of where are our facilities. So making sure that out of town shoppings handy certainly suits me on the way home. But we need to have a system that recognises where people live within planning that the transport and the movement around those areas probably a bigger presumption for cyclists and things. Edinburgh is great to see so many push bikes around but it is more of a challenge where we are. We've got certain roads where you really wouldn't want to go on a push bike because it's just not safe and we don't have footways and things and so getting that connectivity I think is really important and having the planning system to work with people like Swestrans in our area or rural transport partnerships so we can have that sort of joined up in us I think is really crucial. I don't know whether that answers it in full but I think it is making sure that our modes of transport are recognised right at the outset rather than thinking well we'll need a nice new road here but they come with their own challenges. I suppose it kind of just to explore what Philip Reville was saying there about involving communities. I mean I don't think anybody would argue with that and Craig and Claren mentioned that they want the planning system to be more front loading. What would that look like? How would we achieve that? I can commend. I think it's important to realise community engagement should be a part of the planning system since 1968. I think it was slightly before my time involved being involved in it. It's made progress and I've moved away from holding meetings in drafty church halls on a Wednesday night to doing a much more sophisticated approach to engaging with communities. One of those things which I think has been very powerful has been the charrettes which I think the charrettes has quit an all embracing term for lots of different types of workshops to be honest with you. I think that concept of having a debate and a discussion on the future of a place or a neighbourhood or a town or a city. Very early on, as I said earlier on, you can explore what the opportunities for that are. You can talk to one another about what your ambitions are for that place. You can then look at what the constraints are, what the resource constraints are, what things need to be there which aren't particularly pretty or particularly if you don't want to sit next to you but are required, but have that fairly open and honest debate and come up with a future vision for what that place could look like. As I said earlier on, there's a key role, and I think this is where the charrettes maybe have to improve a bit, is to try to set out almost that route map for delivering it. The charrettes bringing together communities, bringing together different parts of local government, as Chris said, bringing in all those different parts such as transport as well, and bringing together some of the other developers, the investors, the utility companies, so we've got a big role to play in all this as well, the government agencies, to try and agree things at the start of the process. It's a much more positive way of doing it, and I hope that there will be a much more fruitful way of delivering a better place for people. I don't always feel Philip Revill, I'll take your hand up, but I should point out as well when I say, does anyone want to answer that question if you don't feel pressurised by myself to answer it? That said, Philip Revill. Thank you. For me, it has to be tied into reform of local democracy and filling the void that there is at the moment at truly local level in any forum for representative of proper deliberative debate about local issues. So, for me, it would start perhaps with a sort of citizen's jury type setup where you were getting a truly representative sample of local opinion that could come up with a picture of what a truly resilient community could look like, needs to look like to face up to the challenges of climate change, and it would start from there. To answer the transport question, I mean that there needs to be much more focus on reducing the need to travel, which isn't mentioned at all, as far as I can see in the climate change plan at the moment. Can I just follow up just slightly on something Craig McLaren said? You mentioned the Shiret process. I started off with a huge supporter of the process, but then I wasn't sure that it was actually a process. I wasn't sure if it was a couple of days workshop that were great at getting a snapshot in time of the wider community wanted, and what I'm unclear after that is whether planners then go off and do what they do well, because they're the professionals, and then consult in the same way that they've all always consulted. I was minded at, I think, the Philip Revill submission used expression co-production, and consulting after a Shiret is better than we used to do before, but it's still not co-production. I've certainly went back to organisations that are developing, and when I've said to them, what about this community group who are looking at X, Y and Z, could you speak to them about it, though sometimes they'll go, but we've had a Shiret's? I'm just wondering if that's a theme that maybe others recognise, and have I just been unfortunate or would be picked one official at a bad time? I don't know. Is that ring true for anyone here this morning, Craig McLaren? I think the important thing about Shiret, I think, right, some Shiret's, particularly the Ellish Shiret's, not quite promised the moon, but they sit out of these ideas, and there wasn't a process done to check the rigor of actually being able to deliver those things, and it became a one-off set event, as you said. I think we're improving to an extent, and the Shiret scene is the start of a process, and the start of a dialogue, and that's the important thing for me, is once you have an idea of what you want to try and deliver, you have to have that continuous dialogue to see where things are going and make sure people are up to speed with things. The other thing that's important as part of that process is the planning consultation paper, which is out just now, is looking at the concept of local place plans, where communities themselves can put together a plan for their area, and that can become part of the development plan as well. There's quite a lot of detail to be worked out how exactly that will work, but I think the concept behind it is a good one, if it engages communities and think about how their place can work and helps them to work with different stakeholders to deliver that. I think the key thing is that, I guess, as planners and as local authorities, you just need the courage to believe that people have got sensible things to say, because I think sometimes you think, oh, well, if we do that, it might get in the way, it might slow the process down, you may have deadlines to make things happen because of spending or whatever reason, so I think you do need the courage that people actually have. Generally, I've been involved in community engagement most of my working life and it works well, but you do need to have the courage to work with people, and sometimes in the past I think we're getting much, much better. It's having process rather than being seen as a bit of a hindrance. OK, thank you. Mr, next question from Graham Samson. There was a debate in Parliament last week around the planning consultation. Parliament voted to say that there should be a greater emphasis on protecting green space, so that comes back to exactly what we're talking about, which is climate change. So how do you think we should better do that, and how do you think we should direct development into brownfield sites rather than precious green space? Yeah, my current role is energy and sustainability, but most of my working life has been on green space. I used to work around Glasgow with things like some of the early work on the Seven Oaks project that's now developing, so it's a challenge. I think it may be that one needs to resource the remediation of brown space land, perhaps to a greater degree we do at the moment, because obviously as a developer the easy thing to do is to go on a nice alluvial soil, you can put your drains in everything's perfect, it's very quick and easy and the profits are better, but we do have huge amounts of vacant land of one sort or another or poor quality land, and it does seem to make more sense that we do actually deal with that, but it will probably require, whether it's going to require some legislative emphasis to deliver that, but the green space is so crucial to quality of people's lives, whether it's urban woodlands and things, which as we see rising temperatures through climate change, it's more of an adaptation and a mitigation measure, but a lot of the work that was done years ago about urban heat problems in the future, putting urban woodland in as well as the sort of rural woodland we're talking about in the climate change plan can have a huge effect, but it also improves the quality of people's lives, and I think ultimately all of this debate is about having quality of life for people, so I think it's really crucial that we do make sure that we are not quite sure how we do protect the green space, but I think moving towards reusing old land, recycling, which is another core part of the climate change plan, has to be a critical part of what we deliver. I think the green space element is important. I think you'll find most local development plans have policies in to protect local green space. I think we've seen some interesting work, one of which springs to mind is an Edinburgh city council. They've got a green spaces plan that has done an audit to see where green space is across the city, how accessible it is, what condition it's in, and then used as a basis for policy making as to where new green space can actually be delivered, what should be protected, and whatever, so there's an audit thing there, which I think is incredibly important. You can also try and ensure that there's green space within new development as well, and planners will try and do that as much as possible in the appropriate circumstances, so you can do that through negotiation with the developer. You'd like to think that many developers would come to the table having some green space in their developments to start off with, but sometimes it's subject to negotiation. The other key part, as Chris said, is brownfield, and unfortunately, in the position where most of the easiest remediation is taking place in brownfield, we'll hand them again to the harder sites now, and that inevitably means there's a resource issue in trying to do it. From a climate change perspective, it's essential that we try our damnedest to try to remediate as many brownfield sites as possible, because those are generally the sites within the envelope of existing towns and settlements, where people don't need to drive to, or there's good public transport, and they're in much more sustainable locations, so there's a real need to try and tackle this issue in resource at the best we can. Graham Simpson, do you want to? Does Philip want to say anything? Sorry, Philip, you hadn't indicated, do you want to? Well, yeah, just very briefly, just to say, I mean, I would hope that the aspirations in the Land Reform Act and the Community Empowerment Act will open up new possibilities for community groups to find out who owns current derelict and brownfield sites, and what new opportunities to actually gain access to do what they want to do, which might help in some way to relieve pressure on green space, but also just generally, we need to really access the local knowledge of local people, I'd say. Going back to something you said earlier, Craig, Claren, about planners planning, rather than waiting for developers to come in and make their pitch. Is that a better way to protect what we have if you actually say in advance, well, this is where we say the green space should be. We're not going to wait for you to come in and say you want to build there, but that remains as green space. Yeah, the development plan is supposed to be a sort of primacy consideration when you're making decisions on planning applications, so having a plan which sets out those parameters is incredibly useful. The other thing, which I get told when I talk to developers and investors and communities as well, is that the one thing they want from the planning system is some certainty and some predictability. So, if you've got a plan which provides that predictability and that confidence for them to do things in a certain way, that's what I would imagine and I would hope would help. Eirel, I just want to add to that. Can I ask Chris supplementary? So Chris, you mentioned the issue of resources, which is, of course, a huge issue. Have you any thoughts on where those resources may come from? Well, the short answer is probably no. I mean, the thing for the whole of the sort of climate change issue, we are talking, in the energy plan, we're talking about £10 billion and I suspect that's a fairly conservative figure. I suppose what gives me comfort, we're just about to, or south of the border, just about to spend £40 billion on a railway, which doesn't go that far. So these sums of money aren't perhaps as scary as they could be and it will be, the whole of this thing's got to be about collaboration working together and a lot of, you know, whether it's straight climate change or whether it's development, it's for people to be able to recognise what the benefits will be of perhaps taking a smaller profit out of something to enable a project to go ahead rather than just having that sort of maximised profit at the end of it because I think that there is probably money out there, whether it's individuals like me, you know, go and put our eco bling on our houses or, you know, people recognising the benefits of undertaking work together, but, you know, where it comes from, you know, we know where local government is at the moment financially, it's, you know, it's very challenging without a doubt and the resource, whether it's loss of staff, which Craig referred to in the planning system before, is an ongoing problem and I don't think, well, to be honest, I suppose I've been in local government for however many years and I think we've had a spending cut every year, as far as I remember, but, you know, whether that's really the case or not, but that's always how you feel about it. So, I don't know where the money comes from, but there are pots of money, there's sovereign investment funds, there's all sorts of pots of money out there, but we need to be very clever about how we pull those things together to get things to work, but I'm sorry, that's probably not to answer the question very well, but it is a big, really difficult question, which challenges all of us. Clam's integrated, he'd like to add something. Just to point out a couple of things, I think we need to think a bit more creatively about this, I think we all know the resourcing in local government is very, very tight, but there's one big pot just now for placemaking and for infrastructure provision, which is city deals. There's a lot of money being invested in city deals and I don't know the details of every single one of them, but I'd be interested to see if many of them are putting money into remediating particularly important brownfield sites to bring that transformational change for the cities. I wonder if the city deal money can be maybe used that way a bit more creatively. Just now, there seem to be some key pet projects that have been taken forward, but don't bring that transformation. The other thing is to think about, land ownership is really, really important on all this, and if you've got ownership of land, you've got much more control over what you can do, but if you have got land ownership, if it lies in the public sector and there's a brownfield site, we need to look at ways in which we can, if we manage to remediate that land, that immediately increases the value of it, and if you are then allowed to build on it, that increases the value even further. It's also a bit about if the land is owned by a private sector developer, it's seen how, if there's some mechanism we can put in place where the state shares the value uplift, not just the developer themselves. So, there's a bit of work to be done on that, but the concept of trying to share the benefits from actually investing in that is something that I think should be explored. Do you want to come back with that? Yeah, I think I'd probably answer your question on city deals, and the answer is probably no. That is not going on, but we may well be looking at that as a committee, so we won't delve into that today, so I'll leave it there. That's the one thing that I was going to put on the record, which you've now done, so that's important to stress that I think that we'll be returning to city deals at some point. Can we move to Andy Wightman now? Thank you, convener. The planning consultation has some interesting things in it about, for example, extending permitted development rights to developments that help reduce emissions, such as microgeneration, renewable heat networks, etc. It's also proposing to repeal a section in the 2009 Climate Change Act that put in a section to the Town and Country Planning Act, which made it obligatory for local development plan to include policies requiring all developments to avoid a specified and rising portion of greenhouse gas emissions. I'm just wondering if you've got any insight as to why an earth would want to repeal a piece of legislation that places duties on the planning system to try and incorporate measures that reduce emissions. Okay, is that something you'd picked up on? Chris, would GSE nodding your head there? I've had a... We're in the process of redoing that work-wise, we're in the process of redoing our local development plan, and I think one of these policies was very much about getting renewables on buildings, but it takes the emphasis away from demand reduction, and I think, whilst I think it's great to have, you know, it depends where your house is orientated, whether you can go for your solar thermal, heat pumps or whatever, and that's something we... This climate change plan overall he's looking for in the next 10, 15 years, but I don't think the technologies are all quite there yet, so I think it's useful to have these sorts of things in there, but sometimes they're actually getting in the way of other measures that might happen that actually just reduce the need for putting the energy into the place in the first place. Passive house, I guess, is an example where you may not actually need any renewable energy going into the place because you've got your insulation, so insulation, heat, ventilation recovery systems are so effective that you don't actually need an awful lot of external heat, so you sort of, to some extent, you know, I've had a debate with our planners about how we get that balance right between the need to put renewables on and the demand reduction side where we go with technology to actually reduce the need for it and reduce the need for energy input in the first place, and I think that was where I would see we need a bit more flexibility in the system, and I think that might be why that change has been proposed, but you don't want to lose, but we do need to make sure that if we don't put renewables et cetera on there, then you are going for a very big demand reduction approach. I don't have any particular insights on that section, but except to say it seemed to me that I don't understand why we don't just move towards passive house standard for our new builders as quickly as possible. Okay, thank you very much, and Craig Carll, does you want to add anything? Yeah, I'll comment on it. I'm not totally all-fave with it, but my understanding is that the research that was done showed that the real impact came from building standards rather than actually the planning side of things, and that's why they felt it wasn't necessary. It was maybe a bit of a burden. I still think that there's a need to try and ensure that we ensure that planning and development plans in particular show the role that planning can play and be that around the location of housing, be it around the siting, the massing, the density, the design of housing as well. There's still a big role for planning and doing that, but the impression I got was much of this was about the internals, which was, as I say, a building control matter, which seemed to have more of an impact. There was a review conducted in March 2016 that concluded that they should keep that section, but I just want to move on to that wider point that you make, Craig, because the danger here is that we focus, as Chris indicated, on individual buildings and bits of technology and all the rest of it. To what extent do you think there is an argument for including climate change mitigation as a principal purpose of the new planning act? In other words, it would be an overriding consideration, which could then more easily be used by local authorities to say that they don't even get in the door on certain developments because of the carbon impacts. Good question. I think that, just now, planning is based upon the principle of sustainable development, which incorporates environmental sustainability. As ever, planning is about balancing and trying to pull together, if you can. It's something that maximises the environmental, the social and the economic circumstances. It's a difficult one to answer just now, but I think that what I would say is that planning and planners have environmental sustainability and climate change at their heart. I think that, as a profession, we see it as something that we are there to try to promote and push. We see the tools that we have, such as development plans, as a means of doing that. I always want to add to that. I have mentioned a previous question about transport. One of the issues with the climate change plan is that there are no carbon targets for each sector, but it is not clear how they have been arrived at. We are not told why agriculture is taking virtually no strain and services. Heat is taking a lot of strain. The question that has come up is that the model that has been used, the times model, to generate the plan contains exogenous demand drivers, so criteria have been put in and greed outside the plan and put into the plan. It is important to stress that we have not got this firmly from Government yet, but on transport, for example, my understanding is that 25 per cent growth in road travel was used and put into the plan. In other words, there is no capacity for the plan to be a dynamic model to say that we should be reducing different sectors. Is that your understanding or not? I do not know the science and the calculations behind it, but one thing that struck me when I read the plan was that much of the section on transport tended to deal with technological innovation, as a means of trying to drive down emissions. The one thing that it did not do was mention anywhere within it. As far as I could see, it needed to try to restrict the growth of carious and the role of planning has got a key role to play in that as well. I think that that is something that is missing from the plan, absolutely. Ian Irwin wants to make any comments in relation to that. OK. Eil Fyllt-Rebell? OK, yes. Well, sorry. I was very disappointed to see how the plan relies on very speculative technology of carbon capture and storage in order to meet the targets. I said before that the emphasis must be on designing our communities so that we actually reduce the need to travel, so that we should be able to drive down transport emissions. OK. Thanks for putting that in the record. Well, I think it's, you know, this whole issue about the transport is we do need to reduce the travel we do on, probably very bad for the amount of miles I do, but we need to do it in a way that doesn't necessarily to adversely affect rural communities because we don't have village shops anymore. So it's trying to get that infrastructure right, which is back to the planning system again to make sure we've got the right facilities in the right place to enable people to perhaps live closer to home. So I think it is a huge challenge and it is very fixed on tech effixes, you know, whether it's electrolysis for driving cars in the future, electric vehicles, all of which have incredible challenges longer term. I think the motor industry's done relatively well in reducing or increasing fuel consumption and reducing some emissions, but there's a whole issue about diesel particulates coming up, which we were less concerned about probably 10 years ago when the drive towards diesel came in because it was purely about fuel efficiency miles per gallon. So I think it's, you know, we do need to look at ways of not having to drive. You know, train service up from Lockabees great, you know, so I'd be in the past otherwise it's a two hour train journey and a two hour drive up here all and problem parking. So it's having the right facilities to mean you don't need to jump in the car every time. Okay, thank you. Thank you very much, Andy. Alexander Stewart. Thank you, convener, gentlemen. I'd like to ask how we can best equip the professional planner and the councillor with much of the skill base that's required for them to then deal with some of the policies, the plans and procedures that climate impact has within that process. When you're answering that question, you're talking about the skills for counsellors and MSPs. When Mr White was speaking, who's got the expertise in this area, I was listening to exogenous demand drivers and I thought, okay, I could do with a skillset here. So that's a good context of that question, I think. Anyone want to take that one? Chris Wood. Yeah, I mean, one of the measures that SSN have been trying to look at is things like the carbon management assessment tool. So we have a mechanism for members to within our council and senior officers to go through a process where they start to assess where they're up to in terms of climate and then through that, I hope, identify gaps in knowledge so we can actually get people on board and understanding what they do and don't know. For those of us who are sort of up-drivals in climate change all the time, we maybe assume that people know what they're talking about or understand what we're talking about, which is probably an even bigger challenge. I did have that note exogenous written down on my notebook from going to a seminar yesterday over at Victoria Key thinking, oh, look, I don't find out what it means. So we all sort of have the same problem with some of these words. But that's statisticians for you, I guess. So no, I think it's, we need to have a dialogue. We need to work together, talk together, and we need to make sure that there is an understanding, particularly developing leadership, because I work around in the middle of an organisation trying to push up through to make sure this is a bigger priority where we're delivering, saves us money, saves us emissions, and it hits our targets. But there needs to be that sort of dialogue so we can get the leadership because for MSPs and councillors, unless they understand what's happening, we won't get that level of leadership. We need to make sure that this issue, which is probably the most important thing facing humanity, is actually right up there where it needs to be. So it's education, I think. Okay, does Philip Rebbol take a break? Yeah, just to make the general point, I think that the future skills for anybody working in some public service in any way that's going to need are really around facilitative leadership and how we bring together conflicting opinions and ideas and use them creatively to design a sustainable future. Thank you. Can you create a plan? Yeah, a couple of points, if I may. One is we've got a role in that as a professional body who accredited planning schools and we are making sure that climate change is one of the key things that future planners have to learn about, so that's something that's happening. However, it's a lifelong learning issue, and it's a constantly changing field. There's changing technologies, there's changing context for things as well. So we've been doing work with the Improvement Service and the Scottish Government, and we're tasked to pull together an audit of skills needs across local authorities, for example. There's been some initial work done on that, and it's looking at both the technical needs, which includes some of the climate change things. We keep getting asked what's going to happen when driverless cars come in, and some people tell me it's going to change the future of the built environment totally, and people say it's going to make no difference whatsoever, so there's a need for some rigour, so we have a clearer understanding as to where we're going, for example. But the technical skills have been looked at, and they include skills on climate change, and you can measure climate change, but there's also the generic skills that should be mentioned—leadership, collaboration. It's interesting if you talk to heads of planning, they tend to think that their staff need more generic skills, and the other members of staff think that they need the more technical skills. I'm sure that it's some way in between, but that's just the way it is. The other thing that's part of that process is what we want to do as part of the planning review, is to look at how we can put in place a programme or a process or something that allows people to work out what skills they have and what they don't have and to fill the skills gaps that they have as well. My own feeling is that that's going to require some form of co-ordinating role, somewhere nationally, to look at good practice, to identify it and to share good practice, but also to share expertise as well and to look at where there are gaps in expertise, and local authorities can perhaps share that. We're looking at different models for that, and that's something that we should be reporting back on by the end of the financial year. The other question was about councillors, and it's mentioned in the planning review. As you know, local government erection is coming up in May. One of the things that we're looking towards is after that, when the new group of councillors come in, is trying to see how we can work with the improvement service and with individual local authorities to put in place training for councillors. Most local authorities do it already just now. One of the things that we're interested in, however, is not just telling them and sometimes scaring them about what the planning system is and what responsibilities they have. What we also need to do is to raise their sites a bit and make them realise what the opportunities are from the planning system, what the potential is of the planning system, how the planning system can help them corporately as well as just within the planning department. We're currently exploring ways in which we can put something in place to support that, and we're talking to COSLA about that as well. I think that you're right that there's a balance that needs to be struck, and some local authorities are quite sick to leading as to what they're doing with the professional employees and also what they're trying to do with the council and the councils that they have. However, as you rightly identify, a new intake is going to mean that there'll be quite a large number of individuals who require a lot of basic training initially to then, for those who become more expert in the field and sit on the committees and are involved in it, maybe more than others, that they become much more technically involved about what they are and it's the opportunities that they face as they move forward. However, all of that sometimes comes at a cost. As already has been identified, when you're sitting and looking at where you will put training funding into officials and into councillors, that has a part to play and it's how we can develop that, so I think that it'll be interesting to see where we are in three or four years' time with the new intake and how that progresses, but it's still a challenge for all authorities as we move forward. Both the fact that we shouldn't just be telling councillors who sit on the planning committee about planning, and that's where the focus goes, and you can understand why that's the case, but we need to try and broaden that. The issue that we often have with that is that a lot of councillors are told to keep away from planning, because as I did this show, it's really tough, you've got to make some tough decisions, you'll make some people happy, you might make some people unhappy, so there's a job to be done again to try and show the value, the benefit and the potential of planning. Having spent 18 years as a councillor, I'm well aware of the challenges that face you if you sit on planning. He's still spilling. Thank you very much, Mr Stewart. We'll move to the next question. Thank you very much. The first question relates to Philip Revill. He's saying your submission, Mr Revill, that you talk about communities having a sense of disempowerment, lack of control over decisions that have a local impact, and he talked throughout about the need to take decisions from the bottom up. How does this work in terms of being when one faces the situation, as we face in many communities, where they're in favour of new housing, they're in favour of new schools, they want a flood prevention plan, they support wind turbines, biomass, they might be in favour of a new harbour, but build it somewhere else. How do you ensure that we have strategic decisions that are made and not just pander to people who are well-housed but don't particularly want other people to be well-housed in their community? That's a real issue in many communities in my constituency, where in favour of all those things, we just don't want them near them, so to speak. How do you square that circle of community democracy with, at the same time, a need to provide on a more strategic level? Thank you. I totally acknowledge that there's a potential issue, but I think that if you can start with plans that are created from the bottom up and which local communities have a real sense of ownership of, and then you can bring those together and then create a forum where conflicts can be deliberated in a creative way, then I don't see why that is any more difficult than the current situation where at the moment it's decreed by the strategic plan that East London, for example, needs 10,000 new houses and local communities that are left totally powerless. Well, in fact, I mean the local authority itself is pretty powerless, actually. It's just obliged to find sites for these houses. Everybody is basically disempowered, so I'm not suggesting that it's going to be easy, but we just need to find ways to create properly facilitated forums where conflicts can be deliberated. I think that there are certainly proposals to involve communities at any other stage of all planning proposals, and I think that's something that is certainly welcome. Ultimately, are you suggesting that communities should take the final decision on these developments or should it be local authorities or where appropriate the Scottish Government or even the UK Government? I honestly don't have an opinion on who should have the final decision, that's not something that I've thought through. The crucial thing is that everybody feels that they've had their voice heard. Right, okay, thanks. Mr McLaren, you said that you talked about a vision and a route map and the focus on delivery, but again, who should decide on such things ultimately? For example, because there is an issue, as Mr Reville has talked about, about local democracy, about how to square that circle between what a specific community might want and what is required in terms of local authority or a Scottish strategic level. There is a climate change, because you know there's lots of issues in terms of turbines, biomats, whatever happens. Absolutely. There is a planning hierarchy in places where you have a national planning framework, and there are targets attached to that, which provide the context for what has to be delivered. From there, you move down to strategic level, a local level and a community level as well. For me, the decision making has to take place at the proper democratic level, and I think that the Scottish Government is trying to keep pushing that to local authorities and down to communities where they possibly can. I said earlier on about local place plans, and I think that they are interesting, because I think what they can do is allow communities to come up with a vision for their area, but within the context of the national targets which have to be achieved and the targets which have to be achieved within their own local authority area or their own neighbourhood, so that contextualises it for them, but it still means that they're working within, they're looking at the constraints as well as the opportunities. The one thing I would say is there's a need for some professional judgement on this as well, because it's very easy to make a bad planning decision, but it's much more difficult to make a good planning decision, and I think people forget that. There's a lot of work goes into deciding what can or what shouldn't be built. It's thinking about not just the specific settlement place or planning application, it's thinking about what happens beyond that and broader geographies as well, it's thinking about what happens not just in the short term but what should happen in the medium term and the long term as well, and we need to think about how we take that into consideration, so I need to make sure that when you're making those decisions and you're having those discussions about what should be happening in area, those criteria are taken into consideration, so it's not just done on a whim, essentially. I mean you made a really important point and I mean obviously I think the national planning framework is really important, it's how locality planning, the local authority planning and the national planning framework can tie in and obviously there's issues about who thinks what should happen where, how do we try and deal with that particular issue because that remains a bugbear in many parts of Scotland, obviously. I can understand that. There's two things in that for me, one is at the national planning framework level, trying to make sure that it's not just a total top-down document and I think Scottish Government to give them some credit for the third national planning framework which was published in 2014, they did try to do a lot of work beyond the planning profession, beyond the usual suspects and they went out to shopping centres the length and breadth of the country and asked people what they wanted Scotland to look like and what it looked like spatially, so that they have tried to do that, I think it's quite a difficult thing to ask someone what you want Scotland to look like, so there's work to be done on refining that I think, but I think credit goes to them for attempting that. The other point you make about locality planning and planning, we've been saying for some time there has to be a stronger link between spatial planning and community planning. We have a concern that what's tending to happen is they are working, well certainly in some circumstances, they're working in parallel streams with land use planning and spatial planning developing what the place should look like physically and community planning local outcome improvement plans and whatever, they're looking at what the service provision is for that area and we should be matching them together more, so we've been advocating more joined up engagement exercises because we're asking the same questions or communities here to be honest with you, it's just how we articulate them to difference, so we need to join that up and we think there's different ways and you can link together local improvement partnership plans with development plans, think about what's being delivered and see if you can match resources because community planning tends to focus on public sector and third sector resources as I've said earlier on, the delivery of the local development plan tends to come from the private sector, so if you can marry some of these approaches you might get some complementarity which actually could make things work a lot more effectively and efficiently. Thanks and just one point convener, I'd like to just ask again Mr McLaren and I know Mr Wood G isn't at a chance to grab if you would any of these points but just to Mr McLaren you said that from 2010, 2015 there's a 20% reduction in the number of planners but what's there been the impact to compare on the number of planning applications, for example in the private housing sector the number of houses getting built is about half where it was a decade ago so that must have had an impact on applications, how does a reduction in the number of planners compare to the number of applications that's coming in? There had been a drop, it's rising again so usually over a year there are around 30,000 planning applications to be assessed so the demand is still there, I think what we've found is there may have been the reduction in the major planning applications in that period but let's start them to kick in again as there's a probably a bit more confidence in the market to build new housing estates and the like. No figures though. I could get them for you if you wish. That would be helpful because there's 20% fewer planners, that's a problem if there's a 20% increase in applications but no there's a 40% decrease so it's just to be able to make a judgment there. Mr Wood, do you have any comments you made on any of the points? It's about communication letting people know and we have the local issue with the 400kv power line that's going to be about half a mile from home and as somebody who's involved in climate change that's a great idea, we really need the network upgrading but as somebody was a quarter of a mile from it I'm an inbie and it's really difficult to balance those different factors but I think the problem with that was it looked like it was completely fully thought through including the landscape architects who turned up at home one day hiding plans under the seat so because it's getting the communication right and we did and it's a Scottish power which we did take to task because they need to talk to people and I think if you can make the case for doing this work however difficult it is whether it's a hardware or a power line or whatever then people do understand but sort of going a bit more of a sort of imposed line doesn't work particularly well so I think it's about that engagement right from the outset and making the case for why these things need to happen and whether you know yes locally of course we don't want a new house you know housing or power lines or whatever right next to us but we also need to recognise that this is crucial for how Scotland works but it's getting that engagement right at the outset I think. Thanks it's very helpful. Time is almost upon us but just when I was listening to the exchange with with Kenneth Gibson I know we're here talking about our PP3 and speaking a bit more generally about planning but the connection being if we get that planning process right and the types of developments we want to see we meet our obligations in relation to climate change and carbon reduction but in terms of plans and the planning bill that will come before us I might be one of these nimby characters actually because in my constituency at Somerson in north of Maryhill the city council has decided to release all the game belt for housing. The issue for myself was that as someone of the stones throw away I wasn't notified the local community council wasn't notified two years earlier the main issues report said that it was a cornerstone of council policy to prioritise brownfield sites a point that Mr Simpson was making quite quickly earlier on and that this would undermine that and there wasn't a need to release it so the main issues report then didn't inform their final city plan or development plan so the nimby in me as well as the MSP in me was partly infuriated because the seeming secrecy of it all and the lack of transparency within it all so sometimes a lot of these things could be mitigated because why shouldn't there be houses across the stories from where I stay I don't have a right as Mr Gibson said to stop other folk getting a decent house I've got one need to see everyone as well it's a bit of balance it's a bit of proportion but it's also a bit community buying and if local authorities don't get it right you can get the balance and the proportion right because maybe when the development start close to where I am they'll get the balance the proportion very right perhaps there'll be cycle lanes perhaps there'll be community heating systems who knows what they'll do to try and mitigate and make a positive at all but if you don't get the buying you'll lose community some just wondering in relation to rpp3 and how we look at planning how we do that better because the example in my area was that you know this was where you have a five-year plan it's now moving to 10-year planned under scottish government plans and they don't want a main issues report so I've got issues around those two aspects of scottish government policy I have to say going forward how do we get the community buying Mr McLaren yeah we actually support getting rid of the main issues report because I think what we're seeing is it's a bit of a false stage in the process and you're having a more honest constructive and fruitful debate before all that happens and that we talked earlier on about surets for example and we talked about engaging communities early in the process in front of loading it how would I have known as the as a local MSP that the city councils or officials believed that releasing green belt land would undermine brownfield sites that would have been thought but not published and I would never have known that there wasn't a surets to decide what was happening in my area so could you be a little bit more of a buy less information is good for communities I would say it's less information I think what would happen is that suret would be something we should inform the local development plan which would then be a consultation on and that would be with all stakeholders communities included so there would be a process as I said earlier what I would like to see and the profession do more is have that initial debate and discussion with communities but maintain a dialogue with him throughout that so it is transparent as you say so that could be really helpful graduates check that the main issues report should only go if there's a suret process to replace it that's that's that we we want much more front loaded engagement and that would replace that test happened just now if you look at the processes many local authorities are doing a suret type thing at the start of the process to inform their main issues report and the main issues reports really just it's adding a stage which I don't think is required because you go straight to what you're thinking is for the plan then and then you can consult on the plan and so there's still a process of engagement that's part of that okay that's very helpful I don't know if Chris would gear Philip would ever want to add anything no I think we um you know we're going through the process at the moment as a council I'm not that directly involved other than throwing the other bit of climate change stuff into the plan but I know we do have that process of getting around with communities having open meetings so people can feed into the process right at the outset as far as we can whether it how effectively it works I don't know but I think you know that point about getting people engaged and having an open transparent engagement is probably the most crucial thing with all of this okay don't feel it to add anything well merely to reiterate what I tried to say earlier really is I think the process has to start at the bottom with community led plans around how they're going to create resilient communities those then cascade up and the sort of main issues report really comes in perhaps in trying to juggle the different priorities coming from the different neighbourhoods okay I wanted to ask that question because as mr gibson was asking this question I felt that one of these nimbies so I just wanted to kind of explore that a little bit further the little bit of time we've got left I just want to give the final word to all three witnesses because we have our lines of questions as we always do there'll be something that you want to put in the record here before you leave today so any final comments or reflections about rpp3 maybe something you think is shining is a really good thing that we should draw to our attention maybe something again that you just think the government could have done a little bit better on but this would be your opportunity to put a little bit that on the record before we move to our next session so we'll go from my right to left so we'll start with Craig okay I suppose just think I'd really like to say is what when we welcome the climate change plan is there and I like the way it's structured and it's trying to trying to give an evidential basis to what it's taking forward the one thing I think is disappointing about it is that again it's only got about three or four paragraphs directly talking about the planning system the role the planning system has to play and it's just something which we issues with in previous editions of the document so I'd like to see more of the the role that planning can play key part of that we've touched on already is the fact that there's assumptions on travel growth and there's a key role for planning and trying to design settlements and to try and create active travel arrangements which actually minimise that as well and I think we could that could be strengthened in the document okay that's helpful fellow rail the main point I think I would want to make is as well as much I'd welcome in the plan it really misses a trick as far as recognising the contribution that bottom-up community sector can make to addressing climate change and there really needs to be joining together of top-down and bottom-up and the role of the top-down should really to be put in place the supportive policy and physical infrastructure to enable bottom-up action and I don't think that's properly understood it doesn't come across that it's properly understood in the plan and that the community sector is desperate to contribute to basically and we would like to be enabled to do so okay thank you very much and Chris which um I think the key thing is it's great to see a document however it's going to be hugely challenging which we recognise financially in every other way resource wise but it's great to see something with real ambition um yeah whether the balance is absolutely perfect I don't know somebody plays at farming we probably could do with a bigger kick um and somebody in a public sector that's going to be a really serious challenge for us but I think it's really really good that we have got a document that's trying to actually do what we need to do um so you know I'm really keen to see that and I think we're really keen um from the SSM point of view uh I think the wider public sector is to engage in this whole process and make it work um because it's a huge skillspace whether it's historic environments Scotland have done a huge amount of work on how we deal with older buildings and effectively deal with you know machine's reduction from that point of view um SNH with green space work and you know so there's a massive amount of work going on and I think we've got a resource there that really needs to come into this plan and help to deliver it so I think it's great that we've got the ambition that we need to tackle climate change because it is the most important thing I think humanity is going to face um you know struggling with a million people coming across a med at the moment um if climate change kicks in that could be a 10 fold problem um so we really need to tackle it now because the wider implication from around the globe will have a massive effect on what we do locally. Okay thank you very much to all three witnesses this morning for your time and coming along and helping inform the committee so with that we will suspend briefly to move before we move to our next evidence session thank you gentlemen. Good morning and and welcome back we now move to agenda item two the Scotty social housing charter agenda item two we will take evidence on a draft Scottish social housing charter by a number of stakeholders followed by the minister for local government and housing so session one is housing stakeholders and can I welcome the human club regional network of registered tenants organizations Christine McLeod director of regulation the Scottish housing regulator Alan Stokes policy lead Scottish Federation of housing associations Gordon Campbell board member tenant participation advisory service Scotland and Tony Cain policy manager association of local authority chief housing officers. Good morning and thank you everyone for coming along this morning. I'm going to move straight to questions if that's okay with you and our first question will be from Andy Wightman. Thank you for coming along this morning. I'm a new member in this place obviously so this Scottish housing charter is a new thing to me obviously it doesn't seem to be that there's going to be a great deal of change which is we can reflect on that but first of all perhaps you could just tell us what the impact you think the charters had on the way that social landlords carry out their business in general terms. Okay and before I take you in for that give your time to think about your answer there I think that's such an important question I will ask all of you to to have a comment on that that would be really good but as we move through the questions there are five of you there's an area you don't feel you need to comment on don't feel obliged or compelled to do so but given that question's quite fundamental we'll maybe start and go right to left so Tony Cain could maybe start with yourself. It's provided a framework for all social landlords to focus on in terms of improvement it provides a consistent baseline in terms of statistics so we can compare performance across the sector in between the local authority sector and housing associations and I think it has helped focus landlords on on the improvement process and overall certainly the view in the local authority sector is the impact of the charter has been positive. Thank you Gordon Campbell. I'm just going on from T pass and TIS's involvement in reviewing the charter and we think that it's improved better communications with tenants and landlords improved information that tenants receive from their landlord better partnership working between tenants and landlords employment of more staff within the engagement services repairs improved tenants actually taking part in the decision process of the housing service. Okay thank you Alan Stokes. Yeah I think it has been a success there's always been reporting requirements to the regulator and things like that but I think what it's done is provided a focus and I think tenants know to expect the charter report every year now that they know to expect that they also have the ability to interrogate the regulator's website there are now search facilities there so I think it has been a success and I think it is that focus that is the particular part that I'd highlight. Christine McLeod. I have to echo the earlier comments there it certainly it has given a really clear set of standards that tenants and landlords know have to be achieved we've got a really good framework for reporting and then to us and then reporting back to tenants and landlords on on performance and we've seen strong performance from the start but that has been improving over the three years that we've been collecting and reporting back on on data and just the the ability that tenants now have to look at and scrutinise their own landlords performance and and to compare that with other landlords I think that's been really empowering for for tenants and has really shared that scrutiny between ourselves as the regulator and tenants as well. Okay thank you, Firmie Clun. This is on. Thank you very much for inviting me good morning. I'd like to say as the only tenant from amongst elite stakeholders here and representing the regional network of tenants organisations I'm really proud of the fact that tenants have had an input to this particular strategy and the particular legislative part because if we go back to 2010 we can see how the charter has developed from there when it came into force in 2012 and if you look at some of the statistics which have been gleaned over the last five six years you can see the gradual progress of where the charter has gone in terms of input from tenants in terms of participation from tenants and also discussion with their landlords to also improve the services. I think it's been a tremendous success and I'm really pleased to be here to tell you that because going back a decade ago perhaps it wouldn't have been the joyous news but now yes it's been a success. Thank you very much. Very helpful start to this morning's proceedings and to follow up on some of that. Thank you very much, that's very useful. Obviously I mean it's typically quite difficult to get a group like tenants to engage with something like this. I mean there is cynicism about power and hierarchies and landlords etc. I think Gordon you mentioned some specific examples of things so I wonder if you could just one or two of you maybe just tell me what the secret of the success of this was and the second thing which is not really in your remit but if this has been so successful is there an argument for rolling this out to the private sector? I think it has been really good coming from, although I'm here representing TIS and T-Pass today, I'm actually a tenant participation officer for South Ayrshire Council. With the introduction of the charter I've seen tenant participation embedded into the organisation. It was there before but it's really embedded now into the organisation. Going back to what Christine said from the regulator having that performance information available and being able to look at the performance information across all the landlords, see how your peer groups are performing really puts on the emphasis of each local authority or landlord to look at their performance and see how they're performing against other others and that really gives a good benchmark I would say for that. Okay thank you. Yes Hugh Macleon. Just call my hue please. Can I say that yes in years past it was extremely difficult to get a group of tenants together in order to assimilate what was being provided from the landlord and it was often the case that the knowledge from communities was what's the difference they'll make up their own mind and do what they like. That's no longer the case. The emphasis has been on communication from the local government sectors and the other RSL landlords who have to provide a measure as you'll see from for example the comparison tool which is available on the SHR website and this comparison tool has broadened if you'll put it that way the minds of tenants into seeing how well their landlord is performing against others and it's broadened the activity of those tenants to come to the fore and say well we'd like a part of this we want to discuss with this so you have it right in the sense but in another sense the charter has really developed the minds of tenants and landlords together so that more and more are becoming involved. Christine McLeod. Just possible just to add something to that. I mean we have the charter we have the indicators that we've developed to assess and report on on the charter and we were very clear that we wanted to involve tenants and service users as well as landlords in what those indicators were and then how we actually report that back to tenants and to service users has actually been developed jointly with tenants so the landlord report that we issue every year for every landlord based on the charter data that we get reflects what tenants told us was the most important things that they wanted to know about and similarly the comparison tool that has been mentioned was again developed with tenants so that it was really accessible really easy to use and again would highlight the things that are important to tenants so it's not just having the charter collecting the data it's making all of that accessible and easy to access easy to use for tenants who who can make a good use of it with with their own landlords. Yes, thank you. Any other comments? Oh yes, absolutely. I think just to add to that I think there is a sense of ownership from tenants of this charter I think what we had before when we had activity standards and performance standards that doesn't really capture the imagination in the same way as having a tenant's charter and I think that in itself has actually been really helpful. I would mirror what Alan was saying there but also it's given more opportunities for tenants to get involved through tenant scrutiny so they like a tenant led inspection so going along and checking how a repair is being done and coming back and reporting on that back to the local authority and and also looking at positive performance not always going on negative performance as well. Okay, thanks Tony Cain. I think the first one is that if there's a risk with the charter it's that what's measured is what's measured and as long as you're focusing on the charter you might be unsighted on other things up that are more important than probably the best example of that is the risks I think that are emerging around the heating and insulation programmes currently taking place across quite substantial programmes across the public sector where there is a risk of damage to internal air quality and also some suggestion of the emergence of or re-emergence of issues around dampness and condensation. The charter won't answer those questions so landlords have to be more sophisticated in the way they talk to their tenants and how they understand the impact of their investment the impact of those services is not the answer to everything and it requires generally to be alive to the nuances and the details that are going under that. Even if you only have 10% of your stock affected by dampness and condensation which is probably around about right you've still got 10% of your tenants with a significant problem that you need to be cited on and you need to be addressing and I know he may have a view because I know he's done some work locally amongst his own tenants group about that particular issue so it's not an answer to everything it gives us a platform and a consistent framework but it's not a substitute for a properly work through local framework for understanding the impact that service delivery and investments are having. On the private rented sector I think as much as it will be appropriate to say here is that we still have a long way to go to bring the private sector up to the standards and quality of service and the focus on tenants and value for money that is expected in most other areas of service provision whether or not the charter is a mechanism that could help achieve that is is another question. Okay can I just ask is this all sounds like a wonderful success now housing associations and local authorities just being like any other organisations some will do better than others so does this process flag up those who are weaker and need to improve have to be better engaging with tenants because I mean it's wonderful to hear all the good news stories and I'm delighted to hear that but how do we flag up where maybe we're we're not getting it quite right and how does the charter or maybe the regulator help move in to help make that happen? Absolutely while generally the picture overall is very positive and there's strong performance there are absolutely areas of dissatisfaction there are variations in performance where you've got you know say a 90 percent average good performance that's going to contain 100 percent and you know 50 percent we're able through a risk assessment process to identify those landlords that are performing poorly or less well than others where they have have to improve and we'll target and focus on those particular landlords to make sure that they are going to improve their performance so that's part of our of our work every year to assess the risk identify where there's pure performance and then focus and engage with landlords about how they're going to improve that. So do you make a call or a judgment or an assessment on the quality of each individual social housing charter? Do you look at something go doesn't look as if I've engaged with tenants very much in that one that seems a cut in pace job and that one like who would say real deep meaningful engagement co-production and it's published and you know it's not quite works and all but it's a very realistic of what the challenges are what it wants to improve within the housing stock do you see those differences and qualities in the in the charters that are received? I'll just say I mean in the in terms of the risk assessment process we're looking at data the statistics that are reported to us we would have to do another exercise to then engage with landlords about the quality of the work that they're doing but the first the first part of our risk assessment process which we carry every year based on the annual charter information that's reported to us is a review of all of the indicators for every landlord looking at them collectively. There's another stage to then engage around the quality of work that's sitting underneath the statistics. Yes thank you. I was going to save this to the end however sometimes you yourself have kindly brought this in. Not all is rosy in the garden as we are telling you now and it's not major but it does need a bit of tweaking. Now in that I mean by more development on the ground from the SHR point of view to look at RTOs in a local sense to see how well or not the charter is working and from a perspective of landlords it all differs from your area and we've recognised as tenants in the local area that it's best to sit down and if you don't agree then ask for more information if you do agree then fine let's set an agenda. The targets however are sometimes unachievable depending on how your landlord is performing and the comparison to that sometimes doesn't always go on a light for light basis if you look at the comparison site for example if I could use stilling where I live as an example of that. There are almost 6,000 houses in a local authority ownership. In Clipmaren there are four and a half thousand houses. In Falkirk there are almost 18,000 houses and if you go next to North Lanarkshire which is Cumbernauld area there's virtually almost 30 to 40,000 houses. Now there's no comparison to that so you're left looking at how well the comparison site develops and if you look from year to year then you can see better how well you're performing or not. Okay that's very interesting that Christine McLeod can you because the comparison site sits on the housing regulators website is that right? Is that something you're aware of or want to take away and think about? I mean we're always looking to improve that year on year and we have made improvements to the comparison tool. What we've been able to deliver for tenants looking at that are the trend, the trend in performance over the last three years of data and to allow them to compare with other selected landlords as well. There is a limit to how many landlords you can select and review but you can keep going back into the comparison site and selecting different landlords depending on what you're interested in looking at but we're always looking at refining that and making it more useful for tenants. And you've heard his comments and we're not trying to pick problems as a committee that are not there it's just when initially things seem to be working pretty well they do seem to be working pretty well you want to identify areas where you can improve it further which is why I'm glad you didn't wait until then until you made that point. We'll move on now. I'm glad that everyone's very positive but I noticed that I'm talking about the need for tweaking it. I'm just wondering how you envisage the charter evolving in the years ahead and see if there's anything else you would like to see added into the charter as we progress? I think as we progress over the years we'll see a lot of changes within landlord status both RSL and local government in the way that they manage their housing stock for example. There may well be introductions of new outcomes for example in the charter which might have to cover this. For example the other stakeholders aspect of the charter isn't always so successful although there has been a measured success in terms of contact with the travelling sight people sorry I should rephrase that with travelling persons and this is a long way to go because in Stirling it's not so successful from a local point of view so therefore we need to work on that and how best we can communicate with those particular stakeholders. The vast majority of stakeholders are happy with the current outcomes and achievements of the charter. It would be wrong for me to say that you know that not everybody is happy there will be certain ways that they could be utilised so that you can achieve the best service for example if I could offer just a small snapshot if you look at outcome five which deals with repairs maintenance and so on. Now a lot of us had said in the response to the survey and the consultation that we were quite happy the way that outcome was was was working. Some had said well look we need more involvement in maintenance strategies and maintenance programmes and repairs programmes that's down to local people dealing with localised issue. It's not for the charter to solve everything as Mr Cain had said. I think that you know that if you could get the basis of it right which I think we have done then it will work well better. Yeah I mean just in terms of the you know the outcomes actually as an MSP the ones I get no doubt local councillors it would be those five six and ten so repair maintenance as you've talked about access number ten but antisocial behaviour four are cases I've had this week alone on antisocial behaviour I mean how can we beef that up a wee bit to allow residents particularly older people who seem to be often the but not exclusively people you seem often long term tenants who seem to suffer when people move in and cause havoc and it appears to be that many months can elapsed for the situation can be positively resolved how can we take that issue forward so that these cases are addressed and dealt with and more expeditiously regardless of how the outcome is actually reached how can we deal with these because they do cause considerable distress as you'll be aware. This was how the charter can support that process? Well for anybody who wants to answer that but you're a tenant. We'd be delighted to take you back in again but we'll maybe allow others to buy them some time by filibustering here. Any reflections on how some of the difficult issues such as antisocial behaviour as Mr Gibson is saying can be tackled more effectively that's not what you're here to answer how the social housing charter can be a conduit to making that happen because it's part of you it's one of your outcomes maybe just offer it is certainly one of the outcomes that i think has been the most difficult for landlords and tenants to identify what's the best indicator of a successful handling of antisocial behaviour when it's when it's when it's been reported and it's it doesn't lend itself to the sort of reporting that we have for some of the other outcomes you know it's easy enough to count up you know 120 emergency repairs done within you know three hours etc antisocial behaviours often when it arises is quite quite complex quite quite difficult to deal with involves much more than just the landlord it'll probably also require the landlord to involve other agencies as well and therefore it can take some time so even having a you know a timescale isn't necessarily the best way of measuring success in a landlord's success in tackling antisocial behaviour for tenants for some of the the charter outcome areas we've certainly found that some of the best ways of of looking at performance is not in a quantitative basis not looking at the the figures and the statistics but looking at what's happening in practice and we've we've done that through thematic inquiries where we've looked at for instance the services provided to gypsy travellers and again that that's something which you know we're looking at at practice what's what the experience is of that particular service in this case and social behaviour what the experience is for people and how that's been delivered where landlords are being successful what are they doing in practice that's actually successful in working rather than you know looking at a particular timescale being you know being met and unticked so we would certainly see that in terms of our assessing and reporting on that particular aspect of the charter that lends itself more I think to a thematic approach rather than a quantitative reporting report to what Christine said I know that once the charter is in place that you'll be looking at reviewing the indicators that sit beneath and I know that antisocial behaviour is one of the indicators that will be prioritised as part of that so we'd certainly be keen to feed into that any other cut here I'm definitely taking in on this I promise you want to be do you want to double check that I'm not missing anyone else don't I'm not right you it's it's quite unfair to say that the charter has an answer to the antisocial behaviour problem primarily it differs from areas as you well know I think that your particular area might suffer worse than mine in terms of numbers and how we deal with it and all the evidence finding I'm good to say this and stick my neck out and I'm not going to get in at a dialogue about it but I think the legal system badly fails in this respect and often there's not as I've spoken with tenants across the country not just my own area they feel the same way that the legal system has a lot to say for this part and I think that once we get that right then we might just see a difference in handling antisocial behaviour that's an important point and I was a councillor for seven years as well and it was a it was a real concern of tenants then I mean and it's not just about tenants obviously on our occupiers are also culprits and victims there's a member these to be a particular idea the only tenants could be antisocial that people in their own houses aren't and of course that's not the case at all but I wouldn't say to to you know to Christine McLeod it's about time scales being ticked it's about people having this resolved as expeditiously as possible so they can live live in peace because it does cost severe upset I think for many many people and I do think this situation is is better than it was in previous years that seems to be in it have been an improvement but if you're affected by it it's still very very distressing and it was just as I said that the charter does say the outcome does not acknowledge inter alliance on different partners and the influences has on landlords achieving outcome which was touched on and I just think that's maybe that's something that we can we can work on as we go forward okay and I know Tony Cain had a word to come in I hadn't identified that sorry very briefly I mean that the charter is itself necessarily high level I mean antisocial behaviour is a very good example of one of those areas where there are tensions within it looking at the neighborhood community sit the number six I don't know you could express that in a million different ways and it wouldn't necessarily help you very much and it wouldn't be any better or help you any much any more in dealing with the practical issues and that are tensions in there so enforcing tenancy conditions there is only one sanction for a breach of tenancy condition the removal of the tenant but we have an objective which is about sustaining tenancies and we certainly don't want to be creating homelessness and it's not one person's antisocial behaviour is somebody else's I mean to take an example that I remember from the days when I worked in local government a very vociferous neighbour complaining very aggressively about the state of the next neighbor's garden one person's unkempt garden is another person's wilderness a wildlife wilderness and balancing those tensions it's not not the best example but it's an example of different views on the way people see things balancing those issues and how do you deploy the sanction you have in those circumstances do you always deploy a repossession action bear in mind that that's always discretionary in the courts and not necessarily neither is it always desirable nor is it or you're always going to get it from the court so I think you just need to acknowledge that that are always going to be tensions in the the round of managing the objectives you're trying to achieve here enforcing rigidly tenancy conditions is not consistent with tenancy sustainment because there's only one way to enforce tenancy condition but this is not a standalone document you have to see it in the context of the indicators that have been developed by the Scottish housing regulator which have been worked on and refined and developed through the last two or three years I think in a very positive way and recognise that it gives you a shape and a picture and as Christian has already said actually if you want the nuances and the detail then you need to get in and inspect you need to examine in detail the actual activities behind the performance okay thank you anyone else want to add anything to that before we move on check that any more bits or questions from msp colleagues there's not there's not normally this quiet I have to say but normally their teeth into something when we hear their significant problems and there appears not to be so we've got a tiny bit of time left if there's something you wanted to put on the record this morning we've now got the time to afford you to do that briefly I have to say there's five of you here we'll be hearing from the minister shortly would anyone like to put anything on the record in relation to the charter mr Stokes yeah I think the key point that we made in our submission was that the charter's very young it's only three years into its existence and so to make any sweeping changes at this point would probably be counterproductive and it would probably be too soon before you'd see any meaningful performance changes so I think the approach that's been suggested only making minor changes at this point I think is we would definitely support that okay thank you here I'd like to do a plug for the shr here if I might to be fair the shr's work in this respect to making sure that the charter outcomes are being maintained and landlord services are being reported upon and various other matters I think as I said earlier that there needs to be more work on the ground dealing with local RTOs unfortunately their budget doesn't currently allow them that so I'm going to make a plug if the Scottish Government could give them more budget then we might see more development on the ground with local RTOs to see how well the charters develop or not there you go and I've got the minister in on about 10 minutes time as well Christine McLeod do you want to add anything what can I say thank you no gifts were exchanged in advance of this no really actually just to echo again what Arlan was saying I think we were really pleased to see the very positive views expressed in the consultation about the the charter and about the value of the information that that we report about charter performance and we welcome the changes that are proposed are very minor and therefore will have minimal impact on the charter indicators as well I think it's really important that there is consistency over over some some years so that we can all tenants and landlords and ourselves can see performance information over a number of years and see the trend in performance over a number of years okay thank you there's Gordon Campbell or Tony Cain wants to add anything before we close this particular session from the review that we did into the review of the Scottish social housing charter there's overall support for the charter to remain as it is with some small changes to tweak it because I think as Alan had said going and making any drastic changes at this stage could have some effect on it so really just to support that that encompasses the diversity of tenants landlords and geographies without being prescriptive some groups identified amendments gaps and suggested additional outcomes which have been included within the report okay thank you very much Tony just very briefly I would echo huge concerns about the resourcing within the Scottish housing regulator I would go a bit further and say that we have some concerns about resourcing within the porcy divisions more generally but that notwithstanding I would also say that the consultation process that has been run around this has been engaged it's been proportionate it's been well managed and effective and the changes that we see are well judged and and appropriate without disappearing down any rabbit holes or into too much detail on balance we also argued that changes at this point would be inappropriate what we see is is the minimum necessary I think at this stage to keep the charter relevant and we're very pleased with the outcome thank you I know the evidence sessions been been brief but it's been been very helpful and don't take our lack of questions as a lack of interest sometimes it becomes self-evident that things are going as well as they can for a charter that is still relatively new is the point you've made and in Hugh McClung sorry Hugh has very specifically said where he thinks things could be improved so thank you everyone for coming along this morning we'll hear from the minister shortly that we'll suspend just now thank you good morning and welcome back and we're still on session two and we now welcome the minister for local government and housing so can I welcome Kevin Stewart minister for local government and housing accompanied by Michael Bowell social housing charter and regulation manager and William Fleming head of housing services policy in the Scottish Government can I invite the minister to make any opening remarks thank you very much convener the first social housing charter was an important departure for social housing policy in Scotland by stating in clear and plain language the outcomes and standards that all social landlords should be aiming to achieve when providing housing services it described what tenants and other customers could expect from their landlords and in doing so help them to hold their landlords to account last year to help us prepare this revised version of the charter we asked tenants social landlords the regulator and other stakeholders for their views on the charter and the impact that it has had on services for tenants and other customers we did this through face-to-face events which we met about a thousand tenants and landlords and of course through formal consultation the strong message from across the sector is that the charter is working well and encouraging landlords to deliver improved services for their tenants and other customers the regulator's reports on charter performance confirm this showing improvement year on year across most of the charter outcomes and standards independent analysis of responses to the formal consultation reinforced a strong message from both tenants and landlords which was not to make any fundamental changes to the charter at this very early stage of its existence as that would put at risk the positive impact that has been made so far in light of those strong and widely held views we have confined changes to those few that stakeholders suggested to us would help to improve the quality of services that social landlords deliver principal among these were adding the new requirement that landlords should meet the energy efficiency standard for social housing by December 2020 strengthening the gypsy traveler outcome and updating the brief narratives which describe the scope of the standard or outcome to reflect developments in best practice these modest revisions to the charter will encourage landlords to continue building on the improvements they have made so far delivering the high quality services that tenants and other customers want and expect I was very pleased to hear that the witnesses who gave evidence to you earlier today were broadly supportive of what the charters achieve so far and are largely satisfied with the revisions we have made to it I look forward to hearing your views and answering questions that the committee may have on the charter subject to that I hope that the committee is content with the revised charter and that it will recommend to parliament that they should approve it okay thank you very much minister and I will move to opening question from wrthlay wire thank you convener good morning minister I think we've had really quite positive feedback so I guess it's just to probe a bit deeper and hear the government's views on the impact the charters had on the way social landlords do business and just a bit more about the the evidence that it is improving services for tenants and other customers well I think in terms of the evidence that you've heard this morning we can certainly see improvements to service and there is the ability for tenants to check through the scotch housing regulator how well their landlord is performing convener I think the key thing for me is the fact that the charter itself has not only been recognised as being good practice here in terms of improving standards but it's been recognised by people from other countries too. In October I think it was I attended the international union of tenants congress in Glasgow and I was quite amazed at the amount of folks from overseas who commented on how well they thought the charter was working here and their hopes that something similar could be introduced in their own erts and perts that in itself I think shows how advanced we are here in Scotland in terms of what we are doing and while I'm not complacent in any way shape or form I think that the feedback that we've had and the suggestion that we shouldn't radically change the charter shows that this is is working well obviously as I say there's always room for improvement and we will continue to listen to tenants organisations and other stakeholders to continue to get their views on what they think is right and what they think is maybe not working quite so well and I think you've probably heard convener this morning from Mr McClung now his organisation is never going to let me off the hook if they want to see change they are not going to be backward in coming forward to tell me that that's required absolutely I suspect that there was more to be said that wasn't working Mr McClung would have told us pretty straight forward but he was very positive that this morning Ruth you want to follow up on any of that thanks convener yes it was just a quick follow-up would be to hear how the evidence of the landlord's progress and the against meeting the charter feeds into the development of future housing policy well I think it's very important that we continue to analyse all that is going on obviously the Scottish housing regulator has a duty in terms of monitoring and assessing and reporting on how social landlords are meeting their responsibilities we will continue to work in partnership with the Scottish housing regulator in that regard and we will continue to monitor their findings that is part and parcel of the job that my officials do on a day and daily basis but as it stands at the moment and I think you've heard quite clearly this morning apart from these small changes that we are proposing the charter seems to be working very well at this moment in time we'll continue to monitor we'll continue to listen to partners and we'll continue to look at the data that is provided to the Scottish housing regulator to make sure that we keep in top of all of this okay alexander strokes thank you again we know thank you minister we have identified very much and you have also in your opening statement about how successful this has been and for something that's only been on the go for three years I think that is in itself shows that the commitment that we've had across the piece from the organisations and the individuals who have supported and have been consulted and I think that that has been very welcome to hear today and for me I think that it shows that when you get consultation right it can be quite rewarding but moving on from that it's where we take it to the next stage yes there have been some small tweaks that have been put forward as an opportunity to develop it but it's where it takes it forward for the next stage and following on from Ms Maguire's question about the policy that happens in housing and how we can develop that and and see where we can move from this I mean we've got aspirations in housing and you have that as as a minister and as a government and we have that as a as a parliament but it's how we can manage that to ensure that we can achieve where we where we see ourselves going and the charter has been a good start in moving that forward but there has to be a next phase to that I think convener that maybe Mr Stuart has given me the opportunity to talk about the government's housing programme rather than the charter there and while I could wax lyrical for hours about our ambition to deliver 50,000 affordable homes during the course of this parliament 35,000 of them for social rent I'll try not to do so to any huge degree but maybe where he wants me to go is to to say that in terms of where we are going in terms of housing delivery will all of this be covered by the charter in terms of all of the social housing yes that will continue I'm glad that at the very beginning he outlined the cooperation and collaboration that has gone on in terms of the development of the charter through organisations such as Alacho and Tiz and TeePass and the Scottish Housing Regulator but I think the key thing for me and all of this is listening to what tenants have to say now Mr McClung and his high-level national group obviously are there to to help keep us all in our toes in terms of where we go with this policy but beyond that the input from tenants right across the country who are involved in numerous tenants groups has been extremely helpful in the formulation of this charter and I'm quite sure that they will continue to scrutinise what is going on here and if they are not happy then I'm quite sure that they will let us know in terms of where we are at in in terms of that constant consultation I mentioned the fact that there were 12 meetings across the country to make sure that we had the views of tenants from right across the country that will continue I know that Mr Boll and his team continue on a day and daily basis to talk to tenants groups to ensure that we are getting this absolutely right and if you get the opportunity to meet some of the other folk within Mr Boll's team you know that the job is being particularly well done and I don't want to mention folk by name because I will miss somebody out without a doubt but I've been highly impressed by the level of engagement and cooperation between Scottish Government officials and groups right across the country to ensure that they get this and other matters that they're dealing with absolutely right. It's with the minister's permission I suppose Mr Boll but you have a name check there do you want to add anything to that? Part of the reason why I think the charter has been so successful is when it was first developed we spent a lot of time going out consulting with tenants and stakeholders we actually spent quite a lot of time doing that and over a quite lengthy period of time so I think that really built up relations with tenants and landlords effectively and we've continued that and this current consultation that we've done on the review of the charter we found that tenants and landlords are very keen to participate in that and also the minister mentioned about the various events that we had around the country I mean landlords were actually quite keen to host those events for us so I think that showed the interest that they have on the charter and the commitment that they have to the charter as well so certainly the range of sort of consultation activities that were involved in during the review have helped to get a broad range of views as well I mean as Gordon Campbell from T-Pass mentioned Tis and T-Pass did an involving all piece of work because we realised we needed to reach as many people as possible so they engaged specifically with specific groups that maybe don't normally get involved in consultations quite so much like maybe younger people homeless people black and minority ethnic community as well and also sheltered housing tenants and tenants with disabilities so we were able to use that to really get a good view from the tenants of social landlords and landlords generally about the charter so I think doing all those activities has helped us ensure that we were able to to find out you know what impact the charter has had and also that the fact that you know most stakeholders are fairly satisfied with it okay thank you very much it's also given the tenants and the customers the opportunity to use the charter to hold the landlords to account in some respect and and that probably was what the charter was put there to initially deliver so it has delivered on message at the stage and as I say I look forward to seeing how it continues as we move forward and the challenge is an opportunity that it raises okay thank you and give it a great something thanks convener morning minister so given the success of the charter do you see any merit in rolling out to the private sector well we're on a journey in terms of the private rented sector it is a work in progress I would pay tribute convener to the efforts of my predecessor Margaret Burgess and putting forward regulations and legislation which will do more to protect tenants and landlords in the private rented sector and of course some of the regulation from that legislation is still yet to come into force for example a year ago well a year from yesterday the various regulations about letting agents will come into play there is work to be done in terms of ensuring that we get data right in terms of the private rented sector I'm sure Mr Simpson is aware that one of the works that's in progress at this moment is a new database to ensure that all landlords are registered in one place which will make life a lot easier so I think that we are on a journey when it comes to the private rented sector would it be easy at this moment in time to put in place a charter and be able to monitor the way that is currently done with social landlords I think that would be extremely difficult but what I can assure the committee is that I have a determination to improve the law of tenants in the private rented sector to work in co-operation and collaboration with the good landlords out there to make sure that we get absolutely right I think that Mr Fleming's team are probably a little bit sick fed up of me at times in terms of trying to push forward with some of the things that we need to do but to answer your question I think we've got a way to go before we could even consider this kind of charter for the private rented sector because you could put something in place but you wouldn't be able to monitor it the way that we are currently doing and I'm not a person who believes in putting something in place if you cannot actually see if it's working and that's the beauty of the charter as is and the work of the Scottish housing regulator in terms of doing that monitoring that I think would not be possible at this moment in terms of the data that we have or the amount of folk that are involved in the private rented sector but it's certainly something that I wouldn't rule out in the future if we could get all of that right yeah I think that's fair enough I think it would be it would be difficult at the moment I think you're right on that you mentioned one of the changes that you've made is around energy efficiency that the target has to be met by 2020 is there any extra resources going into the sector to help people meet that and what happens if they don't meet it well as the committee is aware convener we have a commitment as a government to spend half a billion pounds over the next four years on energy efficiency much of the energy efficiency program will be delivered at a local level and there's no reason why local authorities should not be using the ability to bid in to make sure that the reach the standards in all of their houses however I would also expect whether it be local authorities or housing associations to make sure that when they are putting together their capital programs for improvement the energy efficiency is the forefront of all of that and to be fair it has to be said that many local authorities and housing associations are ahead of the game in this regard the wise ones have already made major efforts in improving the energy efficiency in the homes that they manage and long may that continue so you know we will look at what comes out of the the HEAPS program in terms of what local authorities are delivering look at where they propose to deliver you know for some local authorities and housing associations for that matter we recognise that some stock is much more difficult to deal with than others however again it has to be said that many authorities including in Aberdeen are getting beyond that now and dealing with some of the the ones that were more difficult including multi-story blocks in my own city but yeah we'll keep an eye on that and and see what can be done there. Andy Wightman, thank you convener thank you minister I think the last time you were in front of the committee you were looking forward to reading all the ships strategic housing investment plans no doubt we'll talk about them at a later meeting. I was just wondering the legislation requires you to review the Scottish social housing charter quotes from time to time can you just say something about the criteria that you used to judge when is time? I don't have an answer to that a definite to that but what I would say convener is as I've stated earlier that tenants organisations themselves including the group that Mr McClung belongs to have the ability to speak to me at any time if they think there's something that is not right then you know I will go and ask officials to look at that. I think you know we could lay down a timescale to look at this again as was done previously to find only that we put in a lot of work for not a huge amount of change but if there was something that crops up if there are changes which take place you know I'm not going to ignore the tenants if they think that that needs to be looked at. Can I just ask a brief question Mr Stewart as you said earlier minister gave you the opportunity to mention the 50,000 affordable homes 35,000 social rent I'm going to give you that opportunity as well however I'm just in relation to the housing charter I'm just wondering whether local authorities or housing associations are encouraged within the charter to to have those discussions with tenants about whether they should get back in the business of building houses again given the investment that's coming forward and I would link that to the likes of allocation policies because just because a housing association builds another 200 units doesn't mean that they will all go to existing tenants there's obligations over homelessness and a variety of other criteria medical need and allocations policies there so I'm just wondering actually in sincerity now whether the housing charter's actually got a role to play in terms of the ambitions of registered social landlords in terms of getting back in the business of new build properties. I think that the communication that the charter has instigated means that tenants have the ability to talk to their landlords about a huge amount of issues which includes the delivery of new homes by that organisation. Now you know I think it's difficult for me to say what was happening in every place right across the country but a good landlord is going to have the discussions with its tenants about how it intends to expand, to deliver new housing, also to deal with things like how they are going to spend capital monies on improvements. Now you know I think that that is happening in a lot of places and I've got a huge amount of quotes from various organisations about how well they think all of this works and I think the key thing is the communication aspect which this has opened up. I'll give you an example from Mr Gibson's constituency where our Drossan Tenants Association has said it has given tenants better awareness of what opportunities there are to influence their landlords decisions and it has given landlords new impetus to do more for improved services across all areas of their business. Now you know that that is not much different from a number of other quotes which I have and in order for tenants to continue to be able to say that that is the case it is the duty I think of landlords to listen to them on every single issue including the delivery of new housing. Okay thank you very much minister. Now I didn't see any bids for further questions but even Mr Gibson despite the fact your constituency was mentioned. I'm absolutely happy with that mention but no I don't see the point. To see the point and ask a question just for the sake of asking a question I've been very satisfied with the responses I've received so far and indeed from the previous panel. Thank you very much for your for bairms there. Well thank you very much minister and for your team enjoying us so whilst that I should ask you if you want to add minister before we'll hear from you again very shortly but is there anything you want to add before we close this particular session? No I think I'm quite satisfied convener and I expect to be at the committee very soon I think within the next couple of weeks. The top climate change I think. The next couple of seconds. The next couple of seconds yes. I think you'll find I'm just following protocol there minister. Okay so that concludes agenda item two and I'm going to agenda item three which is still in the Scottish social housing charter. The charter is subject to the affirmative procedure and has to be approved by Parliament before it comes into operation. At agenda item three the committee will formally consider motion S5M-03695 calling the local government communities committee to recommend that the parliament approve the revised Scottish social housing charter. Only the minister and members may speak within this debate and can invite the minister to speak to and move motion S5M-03695. I'll formally move the motion. Okay thank you very much. Can I ask any members whether they wish to contribute to a debate? There's a provision for that if you so wish. Okay no one wishes to do so. Again just following protocol minister it obviously is a bit artificial for folk watching and outside but we do have to do it. I can invite the minister to sum up and respond to that lengthy debate that we've just had. I don't need to sum up thank you very much Okay okay I'm just one moment minister. Can I just check? Are you checking what I'm about to say next or did I say something wrong previously? Oh that's fine I've done nothing wrong minister. Okay so the question is that motion S5M-03695 in the name of the minister for local government housing be approved? Is it approved? Okay thank you very much. Okay and we now move on to private session thank you