 Good morning and welcome to the 30th meeting in 2023 of the local government housing and planning committee. I remind all members and witnesses to ensure that their devices are on silent. Mark Griffin is unable to be here for the start of the meeting but expects to join us slightly later, and I've just heard that Steffi Calhan will also join us slightly later. Pam Gosol and Marie McNair are joining us online. On our agenda today, we decide whether to take items five and six in private. Are members agreed? We're all agreed, thank you. We now turn to agenda item two, which is to take evidence on the annual report of the Standards Commission for Scotland 2022-23 from Lorna Johnson, who is the executive director, and Richard Wilson, who is the case manager. I'd like to invite Lorna to make an opening statement. As the committee will be aware, the Standards Commission is responsible for encouraging high standards of conduct in public life in Scotland. Our remit is to promote high ethical standards and codes of conduct for councillors and members of devolved public bodies and to issue guidance on how the code should be interpreted. The Standards Commission is also responsible for adjudicating on alleged breaches of the codes and where a breach is found to apply a sanction. Following the conclusion of any investigation that is undertaken into an alleged breach of the applicable code by a councillor or member, the Ethical Standards Commissioner will send a report to the Standards Commission outlining his findings and conclusions. In terms of the governing legislation, the Standards Commission must then decide whether to hold a hearing, direct the commissioner to carry out further investigation, or do neither, which essentially means that no further action will be taken on the complaint. The Standards Commission will decide to take no action if it does not consider it's in the public interest or proportionate to hold a hearing. Hearings conducted by a hearing panel comprising of three Standards Commission members are held, usually in public, to determine whether the councillor or member concerned has breached their respective code. If a breach is found, the panel is obliged to impose a sanction, which can be either a censure, suspension or a disqualification. The Standards Commission has five part-time members appointed by the parliamentary corporation with the agreement of the Parliament. One of those, the convener, is contracted to work the equivalent of three days a month while the remaining members work two days. Members are also set in hearing panels as and when required. The Standards Commission has one full-time member staff, which is me. As executive director, I'm the accountable officer. I'm assisted by case manager Richard Wilson, who's here with me today, an office manager and an admin assistant, all of whom are part-time, with the overall staffing complement being the equivalent of 3.1 full-time members of staff. As the committee noted from our annual report for last year, the Standards Commission's strategic aims are to have a positive impact on ethical standards in public life, to pursue continuous improvement in the ethical standards framework and the way we do our work, to pursue and develop strong relationships with our stakeholders and to ensure that all stakeholders have easy access to high-quality information about the organisation, its work and any initiatives. The work undertaken last year to meet those aims included continuing to help councillors and members to comply with the requirements of the codes by holding training events for elected members of two councils and for board members of nine public bodies, by publishing and issuing standard training videos on the codes and monthly blogs on ethics and governance issues, by producing further advice notes on specific topics and scenarios that can lead to breaches of the code, such as conduct during online meetings, and by publishing interactive training modules on a new e-learning page of our website. We've also worked to increase public awareness of the standards that are expected by publishing animated videos on our website, on the codes on social media and on billing and harassment. We've produced a card for councillors that aims to help them to manage expectations by explaining what they can and can't do under the code when attending community council meetings. We continue to work with the commissioner to identify trends, resolve any inconsistencies in how the codes are interpreted and to improve the processes for the investigation and adjudication of complaints. We engaged with him on proposed changes to our hearing rules and provided feedback on his publicly available investigations manual. We made timely decisions on the 44 cases referred with decisions being made, issued and published on all no-action cases within an average of four days, and all hearings being held within an average of 12 weeks from date of receipt of a report from the commissioner. In this year to date, the standards commission has continued to undertake outreach work to promote the codes. That is including presenting with the commissioner at the solar annual conference and providing tailored training sessions to the boards of several public bodies and to elected members of Clackmannasher council. The standards commission has continued to update its educational material in light of feedback and inquiries received in decisions made. We have produced with the improvement service an advice note for councillors on access to information that we will issue shortly, and we are currently working with them on two webinars to be held early next year on engaging with constituents and on good practice and social media. Of the 33 cases referred by the commissioner to date this year, we have made and published 19 no-action decisions. We have also held 12 hearings to date with the further five scheduled for early next year. I hope that this has been a helpful introduction and a summary of our remit and work, and I am happy to answer any questions that the committee may have. Thanks very much, Lorna. That was very helpful to get an overview of your work. The last time that you were here, I think that was in January, so bookending the year with you, you spoke to the committee and we heard the responses from the commission's surveys on whether people felt that standards had improved or a bit mixed. That would be interesting to hear what further work you have done this year on trying to understand public trust in councillors. We have not done any further surveys this year, but what we know from the inquiries that we receive from hearings from our annual workshop with monitoring officers is that standards conduct have been mixed. We are seeing an improvement in terms of the number of complaints received by the commissioner, and the case has referred to us. We are seeing less cases that are more about the technical aspects of the code, less inadvertent breaches and less about what I would describe as ones where there is some element of personal benefit, but we are still seeing quite a lot of the respect cases. The standard behaviour in those respect cases is hard to know whether it is definitely standards that are decreasing deteriorating, or whether it is just that there is more awareness among members of the public of the fact that they can make a complaint and of the standards that are expected of councillors. It is hard to know, really, and that is something that the commissioner certainly wants to do research on in the next kind of year or so, and that we would be interested in helping him with. Sounds great. I did go and explore the page that you have with the advice notices for councillors and the card for attending community councils, and I think that that is really helpful, because it is also something about what councillors are expected to do, but also what people can expect from them and where those boundaries are, and to be clear about that. Yeah, definitely. We produced a card, I think, that I said to the committee last time, on assisting constituents that they could take along to their surgeries and manage expectations about, you know, that they can't overturn a council decision, for example. You know, that they can help to find out what is happening with a case before council or, you know, something to do with the service that the council is providing, but they can't overturn a decision, for example, and it is the same with community councillors. I think that sometimes there is an expectation that councillors can do, elected members of councils can do, things that they actually can't in terms of the code, you know, they can't prejudge a planning application, for example. So we are hoping that that, by having that card that they can take along and, you know, and sort of say, look, this is what I can and can't do. You know, I can listen to your views, but I can't prejudge, for example, the planning application, that hopefully that will kind of manage, make it easier for them at community council meetings. That certainly will help. I would also be interested to hear, in the service that you did in the past, the issues that crop top most related to respect bullying and harassment. You were saying just now, in your opening statements, that most of them still seem to be about respect, but could you give us a bit more detail? We're particularly interested in hearing how the use of social media may be impacting on people considering or leaving elected office and any trends you're noticing in that way. Yeah, I would say that our respect cases we receive are a bit of a mix between social media and then maybe conduct meetings, conduct towards officers, sometimes conduct towards constituents, you know, when they're out and about. So we are still seeing social media cases and we are, let's say, we're going to be doing a webinar with the Improvement Service. We've done an advice note for councillors on social media as well. I think that the difficulty is that there can be complaints made about behaviour on social media that, you know, that the commissioner will say is inadmissible or will not uphold because it's actually, they're not disrespectful, but the advice that we're kind of giving to councillors is try not to be personal, you know, we're not trying to inhibit your freedom of expression and we're not trying to inhibit the way, you know, you make your political points, but try and concentrate on the policy or the political issue rather than making it personal, but we do understand it's difficult, you know, for councillors if, because a lot of them are targeted for, I'm sure as politicians you all know that, but you know, they are targeted for a lot of abuse on social media and, but our view as well is that, and I know this is the view of the commissioner is, you know, you kind of lead by example, though, you know, and it, you know, we don't want anyone to be targeted, but on the other hand, if you lead by example and make sure that the standards of debate are at a certain level, then hopefully that will stop the public or it won't stop them, but it might encourage them to also keep it at a certain level. Leading by example, where possible, yeah. Okay, that's very helpful. I'm now going to bring in Marie McNair. Marie, if you wanted to take a moment to declare your interests, that would be great. Thank you, convener. I just did a committee that up until 2022, I was a local government councillor in Westerbarnshire from 2003 to 22. Okay, I'll move on into my questions, obviously. You're open in speech. You're just going to kind of talk about the kind of revised code of conduct issued by the Scottish ministers and you've spoken quite a bit about that, but are there any areas where the current code may, can I need strengthened? Identified so far is the provision on accepting hospitality. The code says that councillors should never ask for gifts or hospitality and they shouldn't accept hospitality except in really limited circumstances. The feedback that we've had is that that can be sometimes quite difficult to interpret. Either when it's been approved in advance by the council but there's no kind of guidance on who would approve that in advance. That's something that we're going to work with monitoring officers and with COSLA to see whether there's anything that we can do to either amend the code potentially or if not to strengthen our guidance to try and make it sure that it's consistent amongst councils in the way that's interpreted as consistent. A new report states that the commission had decided to renew all three directions to the ethical standards commissioner for further two years. Can you tell the committee why you felt need to do this and what procedures was followed in making that decision? We did renew all three directions but we only renewed the eligibility direction for a little while and that was to allow the commissioner time to include eligibility criteria in his publicly available investigations manual, which he's now done. That direction is no longer in place because he's got that eligibility criteria in his manual. With the other two directions, which were the one that requires him to update us on the progressive investigations and to update the parties on the progressive investigations, we renewed that after consultation with stakeholders, including the commissioner. Basically it was renewed because we felt that it just gave everybody confidence that people were being kept up to date and it gave us confidence that investigations were moving along and that there's always going to be some delays with investigations while they're waiting for responses from parties or if they can't get in contact with witnesses, for example. I'm sure that the commissioner will be able to say more about that but it's just making sure that investigations are progressing. The other direction, the outcome one, which requires the commissioner to report to the standards commission on the outcome of all his investigations, regardless of whether he considers there's been a breach of the code or not. We renewed that. I think I gave reasons to the committee last year for why we had that in place and we renewed that essentially for the same reasons, which is because we think it helps ensure that there's consistency in the interpretation of the codes by being able to, by having one organisation doing the investigation and one doing the adjudication. If there are difficulties in how the code should be interpreted, it's two organisations that are looking at that. There's no right of appeal from one of the commissioner's decisions not to uphold a complaint, so it gives people some kind of comfort that a second organisation is looking at that. The other reasons were that because we can hold public hearings and we put people on oath or affirmation at hearings, it allows evidence to be tested fully in any of those interpretive discrepancies to be aired fully at a hearing. We consulted with various stakeholders, including the commissioner, and decided that it was appropriate to keep that direction in place. Thank you for that. That's me, back to yourself. Thanks, Murray. I'm now going to bring in Pam Gosall, who's also joining us online. Thank you, chair. Good morning, panel. What level of interest exists in the commission's activity on a local and national level? In what way does the commission make sure that the public is informed about decisions that affect their council members? We publish all our decisions on our website, whether those are new action decisions or decisions that we make at hearings. If we're holding a hearing, we publish information about the hearing where it's being held, the date, the time and all that kind of information. If we're holding it online, we livestream it on our website. To try and make sure that the public are aware, we issue media releases before a hearing to tell local media that we're holding it, and we always issue a press release after the hearing as well. We had a meeting with local journalists last year to just advise them with the work of the Standards Commission to try to get that interest. That was quite effective, because now we've got contact names for various local journalists that will automatically email to tell them about the hearing and automatically send the press release to them. That really helps to increase awareness. We track what media coverage we've had, and we tend to always have at least some local coverage in respect of hearings, if not national. We'll try to hold another meeting with local journalists again next year, next calendar year. That sounds very proactive. The development of getting the press on board so that you've got another avenue for communicating your works is a good approach. I'm now going to bring in Willie Coffey. Thank you very much, convener, and good morning to you both. Lorna, I wonder if I could ask Kate a couple of questions on the business plan. There's a part in there that talks about section 31 of the local government act and your intention to raise an issue with that. It's to do with disqualification and sanctions and so on and so forth. I wonder if you could just flesh that out a little bit for the benefit of the committee. Please, what you're thinking is there. As you said, section 31 of the local government act outlines the circumstances in which somebody would automatically be disqualified from being a councillor. At the moment, it's a sequestration. There's a couple of other technical things, but the main one that we have a slight difficulty with is if someone's been convicted of a crime and receives a custodial sentence of three months or more. In 2021, we identified that that meant that there was a slight gap in what we would think would be the public's expectations about when someone couldn't be a councillor, because they're only covered by the code if their behaviour occurs when they're acting as a councillor or when they could reasonably be perceived as acting as a councillor. For example, in a case where someone's been convicted of a sexual related crime but they had nothing to do with their role as a councillor, they would still, if they didn't receive a custodial sentence or it was less than three months, they wouldn't be automatically disqualified and we wouldn't be able to take any action. As we felt that there was a bit of a discrepancy with that act, especially because sentences and guidelines, there's now a presumption against, excuse me, short custodial sentences. We wrote to the local government minister at the time and asked for that to be reviewed. I think that similar changes have taken place in England and Wales to their similar legislation in England and Wales. The government consulted on making that change to section 31 earlier this year so that somebody would be automatically disqualified if they were convicted of a crime and put on the sex offender's register, regardless of the length of any sentence. That consultation closed in August at the end of August and we're waiting to see what happens with that. I think that the government's assuming that they're just analysing the outcome of that consultation at the moment. With regard to sentences that are not related to those matters that you described of under 12 months, are you similarly asking for a revision in that area? No, we're not asking for it whether anybody else has suggested it. I don't know. Our view is that if you received a sentence for, say, a two-month sentence for maybe a driving some kind of driving incident, it wouldn't necessarily affect how the public might perceive your ability to be a councillor. It's not something that we're seeking. That was the only part of that, the disqualification provisions that we were seeking to be changed. Last week, we heard from the SPSO and we were talking about powers of only initiative and so on, whether that's a good idea or not, whether we should pursue them or not. Have you a view on that in terms of the standards commission's approach to that? Should you have powers of only initiative? Do you mean to ask for something to be investigated? It's not something that we would feel we needed. I think that if a breach of a code is so egregious or whatever, because anybody can make a complaint to the commissioner, I think that it would be picked up on in somebody, especially with a councillor, I think that a member of the public or an opposition councillor would pick up on it. I think that I would have concerns if we initiated a complaint and were then adjudicating on it that there could potentially be a perception of unfairness, but because anyone can make a complaint, I don't think that there would be anything in the legislation that would preclude us from doing so if we really felt that it was necessary. I can't really envisage a situation where we would think that it's necessary. If we thought that there had been a low-level breach of the code, we would be quite happy if that was resolved informally, if somebody apologised and it was resolved at a local level, we wouldn't have any difficulty with that. I know that the commissioner, when he's investigating, if, for example, he was investigating a complaint about a failure to declare an interest and he was looking at someone's register of interest and discovered that they hadn't also registered an interest, he would be able to include that in his investigation. So, no, I don't think that it's something that we would necessarily feel that we needed. That's very clear. I'll probably ask the ethical team when the joiners after that will review that. Thanks very much for those answers, Lorna, thank you. Great, thanks Willie. It sounds like the difference is what the ombudsman is, the scope of work really, that gives rise to that desire for initiatives, powers, from what you're saying. Yeah, like I said, if it's a conduct that's so serious that we would want to see it, I can't imagine a situation where somebody wouldn't pick up on it, for sure. Miles, would you like to come in? Thank you, convener. Yes, I wanted to ask a question with regards to councillors and officials within councils as well, because over the last year I've spoken to councillors from all parties who've expressed concern over what they feel is the code of conduct being used against them in many cases by officials. They often cannot name officials when they're talking about incidents, but they are concerned that just discussing an issue now is being used against them and complaints raised, so I just wondered what research, what conversations you've had, because I've been acutely aware over the last year that this is a real concern for councillors and I think leading them to feel that they can't do their job properly. It's not something we've not had any referrals to us where that's been an issue. The code says that councillors can't criticise in public the conduct capability of performance of an identifiable officer, but I don't think that that in any way precludes them from doing their scrutiny role and scrutinising the service. They just need to do so in a way that's obviously respectful and that they're not making it really personal about one specific officer. I think that that's something that we could do a bit more training on, because I think that it sounds like that's more of a misconception rather than an actual issue. I'm pleased to hear that they're aware of the code and that they're potentially worried about breaching it, but I think that it's all about how you would word that. In our current standard training presentation, we sort of say, for example, if you had a report before you and you were concerned that the officer hadn't done a proper risk analysis, you would say, I don't think that risk has been considered properly, could you go back and do further information? That would be absolutely fine, that wouldn't be a breach of the code. If you said so and so you named them off their report, you're incompetent at your job because you've not done this properly, then potentially, yes, that could be a breach of the code. I think that it's really just about how they go about it rather than stopping them from. I think that if officers are maybe weaponising that against them, if there's that feeling, then it may be the case that they maybe need to go and speak to the officers in private, maybe speak to the chief executive, speak to the monitoring officer and say, no, that's not our understanding of the code. Come and have a conversation with us as well and see if we can get that resolved. I think that one of the concerns has been the fact that, I would hope in very few cases, individuals need to be held to account, council officials, but this has given them additional protection for counsellors to feel they cannot raise concerns around them. I think that it has maybe taken it to a space where it needs to be reviewed to look at that and certainly I think that it's maybe useful for yourselves and the ethical standard commissioner to speak to counsellors who are raising these concerns to see why they're now feeling this is holding them back in their scrutiny role. We'll make a note of that and we can certainly, we have an annual workshop with monitoring officers so we can raise that with them. They can still raise issues about an officer's conduct or capability. They just need to do it in private through the right channels, speak to a line manager, speak to the chief executive or whatever it is. That concludes our questions. Is there anything else that you want to highlight to us or pretty much covered it? Thank you very much for coming to give us evidence today and I now briefly suspend the meeting to allow for a change of our witnesses. We now turn to agenda item 3, which is to take evidence on the annual report of the ethical standards commissioner 2022-23 from Ian Bruce, who's the ethical standards commissioner and Sarah Pollock, who's the hearings and investigations officer. I'd like to begin by inviting Ian to make a brief opening statement. Thank you, convener and members of the committee for the invitation and the opportunity to talk to you about the work of our office. I'm joined by Sarah Pollock, our relatively new hearings and investigations officer, who'll be happy to provide more detail on our work on complaint handling. My focus will largely be on our governance. We are keen to ensure that the committee is fully informed about our performance and I'll keep my opening statement brief to allow as much time as possible for questions. I trust that you've reviewed our last annual report and that this will give a new indication of the significant progress that we've made in the last year and that's in implementing the recommendations made by the Auditor General for Scotland following his section 22 report into the work of our office. I last gave evidence to the committee in January of this year, and as the annual report testifies, the intervening period has been extremely busy for us, but we are content and indeed have assurance from our auditors that we are operating effectively as an organisation. I'm pleased to be able to report to the committee that we've now implemented all of the auditor's recommendations that we were able to and we've also implemented the majority of the additional recommendations that our internal auditors had for us. We've successfully recruited and inducted the new staff that I spoke to the committee about in January and they've completed their probationary periods just in the last month and they are already adding value across the work of the office and in particular that's in reducing the number of complaints requiring initial assessment. Waiting times have now reduced to four months and when I last spoke to you they were at nine and that wasn't easy to achieve in the face of rising complaint and investigation numbers this year and we can give you more detail on that during the course of this session. On the progress made, we've included all of the details on our website and in summary in our annual report and again we can provide more detail to you. In terms of my plans for the future, I've published a new draft strategic plan for 2024 to 28, which is currently subject to extensive consultation including with this committee. It sets out an ambitious pathway for our office in the next four-year period and your views on the plan and my priorities would be very welcome. I trust that's of interest to the committee and I'm now very happy alongside my colleague to answer any questions you may have. You've given us a broad brushstroke overview of things that have improved, which is great and it's good to hear that the newly recruited staff are really helping you tackle all the things that you need to be doing. I'd be interested to hear if you wanted to give us a highlight of what has improved but also maybe to hear a bit more around the challenges that still remain. Very few challenges, I would say, so we've restored our governance. We are now a well-functioning organisation. We now have the staff on board that we need to get through. Not only the much shorter backlog, not only to do that but to improve as an organisation in future. You'll be aware from the last evidence session that the investigations team overall is still relatively new and so there's quite a lot in our strategic plan about development and it's getting all of the staff up to speed to become very efficient and very very o-fave with what can be quite a complex area of civil law. Just by way of example, we've run training on article 10, we've had external trainers providing training on licensing matters and planning matters. These are complex areas that councillors have to deal with and clearly we need to be across them. We're due to repeat training on investigating cases of sexual harassment in the new year and playing English drafting as well in order to make other reports more accessible to the Standards Commission, which is a key stakeholder and customer for us. Very little in the way of challenges I think we have a clear path forward and it really is just about us improving and being the best that we possibly can be as an organisation. Great, it's good to hear the level of confidence that you have in the direction of travel. I'd be interested to hear if you have a sense of satisfaction that your office has the staff and resources required to carry out your functions effectively and efficiently? Very definitely. The committee will be aware that I conducted a workforce planning exercise and that was in May of last year and on the back of that made a bid to the SPCB for additional resources. It was a very comprehensive workforce planning exercise and the bid was entirely evidence based. I'm sure you'll understand that the SPCB would not possibly have agreed to provide those additional resources unless the case was very compelling. It did agree that we required those additional resources in order to perform a role as effectively as possible to provide you with some additional assurance because it's not always great to have a commissioner marking their own homework in front of the committee, but we have an internal audit function now and they reviewed our workforce planning exercise this year. That was one of the internal audits that they ran this year and they gave us the highest possible rating. They said very strong assurance in terms of your workforce planning. A great many good practice points identified. We were benchmarked above equivalent organisations so I'm very happy that we do have what we require and it may be helpful just to point out that some of the things that we'd based our assumptions on were that complaint volumes would remain relatively stable but also that the directions would remain in place. We heard Ms Johnston say that those are there in order to provide a level of public assurance even though one is being lifted, it's on the face of a manual. So basically everything we investigate to a conclusion is now adjudicated on by an independent body. That sounds very positive and good to hear that you've got the highest possible rating on your internal audit. That's tremendous. I'm going to bring in Marie McNair who's joining us online. Thank you convener. I want to ask what kind of factors have contributed to enabling you to reduce the backlog of cases so significantly? Any number of factors. So we revised our approach to it and we have an extensive triage system in place which I may ask Sarah to provide a bit more detail on. So one of the first elements is we got a lot of complaints that simply aren't admissible and they may be service complaints. So a councillor isn't responding to me as quickly as I would like them to or perhaps they're not dealing with an issue in the way in which I would like them to but the code isn't actually engaged so it might be around a housing issue for example. So what we do is we identify those quite quickly after they come in and we get back to those individuals as quickly as possible just to let them know we can help you but we also have a database of other organisations who are in a position to assist them. So that clears out a lot of the complaints that might have been sitting there previously and it clearly brings the numbers down. We have weekly meetings with the entire investigator team and every second week of those we go through all of the complaints that are sitting at admissibility and we have a look at those ones which potentially represent an issue in as much as someone might be subject to harm if we don't put it to the front of the queue so those ones are taken out as well and prioritised for investigation so you know they may relate to on-going bullying and harassment that type of conduct. Over and above that clearly we've got the additional staff now and we have basically a spreadsheet of all pending complaints and in order to ensure that they are spread across the team in a fair way. They are colour coded depending on the level of complexity, the number of witnesses etc that would need to be contacted and in that way the team is able to allocate themselves to a mix of different types of complaints for investigation and we monitor that situation on a fortnightly basis. The senior management team as well meets monthly and it also monitors all of the complaint numbers so those are some of the things that we're doing. I don't know if you have anything to add to that. Thank you, good morning. Just a couple of things to add. We are staff, our new staff came to us in May this year and actually we worked very hard to put in place really quite a comprehensive induction programme for them and that actually involved them shadowing the more experienced members of the team as well and undertaking really quite a wide range of training that the commissioners alluded to. Triageing is a very important part of the process but also in that triage what we do is we check if all relevant material that we need has been submitted with the complaint and if it hasn't that's the point we can go back and seek out some additional information so really we're doing a lot of work at the kind of once the complaint comes into us to make sure that we're dealing with it really as efficiently and effectively as possible. Thank you. My final question why do you think the number of complaints about councillors is so much lower than last reporting year and this has a strain continued into this reporting year? Looking at the figures it looks like it's half from the year before. It's hard to say and again as Johnston alluded to this but I do plan to conduct research and again that's set out in the strategic plan. I would like to know what drives these trends I'm sure the committee would as well because it will assist not only ourselves but also the standards commission in terms of its own planning. The trend hasn't continued is the short answer so already within seven months because we thought the committee may be interested to know where we are this year. We've had more complaints and cases than we did in the entirety of the previous financial year. Anecdotally we feel it may be attributable to what happens pre-election and then post-election because that was post-election. Pre-election we tend to see our eyes in complaints particularly councillor complaints and it may be about an endeavour to undermine a prospective opposition candidate but yes we definitely plan to do some research and see what's driving these numbers. No, I'll certainly be interested in the findings. That's me, can you go back to yourself? Thanks very much Marie and I'm now going to bring in Pam Gossel who's also joining us online. Thank you chair and good morning panel. Considering the highly divisive and frequently personal discussions that are currently taking place when does a disagreement turn into disrespect and does the code of conduct explicitly state what conduct on social media isn't acceptable and last what kind of training on this subject has the commissioner and his office given the council members? So it's it can be quite subjective you know of what point in time does a disagreement turn into disrespect and again I'll refer back to the evidence that Ms Johnston gave but she and her team have provided a considerable amount of guidance on this so you know there are specific bits of guidance on conduct on social media specific bits of guidance on disrespect and that's what I and my team follow when we're assessing conduct against the provisions of the code so it's not just the code itself but we also refer to the guidance. We also know what the commission's views are and every case clearly turns on its individual facts and circumstances but but from hearings held and the decision on whether or not a breach has occurred you know we always take cognizance of those prior decisions when when reaching our own decisions about whether or not something has been disrespectful. I did some research you may recall disaggregating social media complaints for the committee and provided that as I recall in April in social media it does it's still sitting at around 20% of all complaints so it continues to be a driver for poor conduct. I mentioned some other research that had been done when I was last in front of the committee and that was by the local government association and it was about the impact that these behaviours are having on people's willingness to put themselves forward for positions in public life and it is problematic and it's not a new thing the committee on standards in public life published its own report six years ago now and that was about the way in which the standards of conduct from its perspective were deteriorating the local government association prior to the report that I've mentioned debate not hate published another report called civility in public life and and they are all telling us the same thing which is that standards are dropping and and it is around discourtesy and disrespect and you know a very high proportion this year we also did some research in order to disaggregate the proportion of complaints in this year in comparison with prior years that related to disrespect and discourtesy prior years the average has been sitting around 40% this year at 60 this year at 60 so again you know it would be very helpful for us to know what's driving those numbers yeah no thank you thank you chair thanks very much i'm going to bring in 70 calahan with a supplementary thanks very much convener and thanks for coming along today i'm reading as well that problematic behaviour online anecdotally we hear that women councils in particular sometimes face billion harassment much more so and i'm wondering if there's anything specific that you're actually looking at to address that or any specific research you're doing around it so the research is going to be very very broad in nature so we're going to look at all the different types of complaint that we get and try to identify what's actually driven that so it probably won't surprise the committee to learn relatively recent geopolitical events have led to our eyes and complaints because there you know you have a debate and there are two sides of a debate but where conduct becomes problematic is where it becomes personal really so you know that's that's one of the things that we're planning to look at and sometimes single events can drive a great number of complaints up but we count those as a single case so it's really case trends that we're interested in because those are the ones that where you've got different types of conduct so for example conduct in chamber in a council where people are saying things about each other as opposed to about each other's policies that you know that that could be an issue and i don't know whether or not there's an underlying trend there and if it relates to election cycles i was also asked about what training we provide so we don't just to be clear there's separation in terms of the two the functions of the two different organisations so we work hand in glove with the standards commission and respect of the training and guidance that they provide but the statutory our role is to investigate complaints so can i just follow that up there of course if you're looking at the statistics then and you are finding that billion harassment and social media from colleagues for women is much greater is that something that you would look at putting in some training around or you would work with the internet services yes so what's going to assist us with that so i know exactly where you're coming from now and apologies i hadn't picked this up but we're rolling out us well we've already now rolled out a survey so it's for all complainers and respondents and it gives them an opportunity to provide their views on their having come into contact with their office whether or not we've adhered to the values that we've set out so did we treat you respectfully kindly did we act empathetically so we're doing that and they provide us with these anonymous responses but over and above that we're collecting their demographic data and we've explained why we're doing it and the research there is to help us to understand whether or not a disproportionate number of complaints are made against people who share certain protected characteristics so that could be women people from the lgbtq plus community people from an ethnic visible minority and or whether or not individuals who share those characteristics feel the need to complain more frequently about others so so we'll drill down into those numbers and that will you know help us to understand what's driving it again anecdotally i know these are issues myself because people come to me and complain and they tell me look you know i'm a woman i'm a visible minority i feel i'm being targeted because of that and that's you know it's not just in council activity but also online and the other phenomenon that that's very very worrying and disturbing is so someone might be subject to behaviour that's incompatible with the provisions of the code but then you also get a pile on where members of the public who see this exchange decides you know i want a piece of that for one of a better expression and you know that they add their own opprobrium on to what's already up there so it is definitely an issue yeah thank you thank you very much for that and i'm going to bring in willy coffee thank you very much canina good morning ian seara just carrying on that we discussion there about the report that you mentioned the local government association report debate not eight that's primarily conducted in england and wales though isn't it do you see any need for us to do something similar to pick up whether the same trends are happening in scotland or not it would be a matter for the committee it's certainly of interest to me you know as i've said you know i i do propose to conduct some research myself the issue is given the role that i fulfil i'm already seeing people who are unhappy you know i'm the one who's seeing complainers and respondents and that's that's my data set what may be of wider interest i think is the view of the public in this area so you know once councillors are in they're in and you can find out you know would you be willing to stand again you know what sort of abuse have you suffered so you know that's all helpful but what about the people who don't put themselves forward why don't they put themselves forward what's what's precluding them from doing so and and does that affect certain groups in society you know i heard me in january i have a real commitment to diversity because of my background in public appointments and i think it's you know it's clearly it's a valuable thing in and of itself but i think at council level as well it would be good for local communities to see themselves reflected at council level um and and i think diversity does contribute to better decision making is cosla actively considered and doing such a piece of work not that i'm aware of but i could certainly be in touch with them and see whether or not that's something that they intend to do would it be something presumably you would support to get the picture oh yes i i would certainly very much support that um yeah but maybe that's a personal thing for me maybe i shouldn't express in it but you'd like that as a commissioner but but yes personally i would certainly support something like that okay thank you um i'd like to ask you a question or two relating back to the auditor generals previous reports that you probably remember asked about the audit committee yes in several occasions where he identified the serious failings that occurred in the organization before you joined it and stress that it was really to ask about the number of complaints that were you know closed without proper consideration that we know about and it was to get a sense from me about what are the complaints the views of the outcome to that process have we tried to gala that or have we just said we can't revisit complaints we're very sorry so i sense i've tried to connect with those people to find out what their views about that experience have been so people have been in touch with me including in one case even with their constituency msp and just to be clear i am very very open uh as a commissioner and and the office you know i mean i've spoken about the values of the office but transparencies one of those as well um so and part and parcel of that is if people are unhappy about how the office operates i will meet with them uh one-to-one and that can be online or it can be in person so there were a number of complainers who came to me to say you know i'm not entirely happy with how that went and you know i'll sit down with them discuss their concerns with them and what i can't do is just reverse that prior commissioner's decision so my hands are kind of tired and respect of what i'm able to do but it doesn't mean that i don't empathize with individuals who've found themselves in that position um and i'm fairly sure i gave the same analogy when i spoke to the public audit committee but it's it's kind of like double jeopardy as well and as much as there were councillors who were being complained of there and for right or for wrong you know they felt exonerated so you know this complaint about me has not been upheld the law really precludes in two years time a different commissioner coming in you're being able to make that same complaint again and then that prior decision being reversed and that that just is the reality um i'm a parliamentary office holder i got legal advice in this area um i know that if i were to pursue those courses of action you know if i tried to overturn those decisions um there is no way you know i'd be legally challenged there's no way i would win i'd be ending up spending public money trying to defend the indefensible um so it's i understand it's difficult i really do yeah thank you for for that i mean many of the complaints just weren't investigated at all that was one of the major feelings of the process in that sense Ian people felt really hard done by by the the legal system in scotland which i would have thought was was there to deliver justice rather than to thwart it when do you have a view on that yes i agree wholeheartedly yes absolutely who should we turn as a government to remedy that we can't have the law thwarting the delivery of justice i mean these were honest people who came with genuine honest complaints that were never dealt with not even considered dismissed never touched by the predecessor organization never touched at all so not investigated i agree they were deemed inadmissible by that commissioner and so we need to change to reverse that that i can't assist with i'm afraid so you know that the remedy for those individuals at the time would have been judicial review in order to overturn a commissioner's decision it's a functus officio determination functus officio is the is the yeah is a Latin term and for what it's worth so there are very narrow circumstances in which a public authority can return to something and so there were some complaints in that position so one of them was for example if the public authority hadn't completed its investigation that's one of the narrow circumstances in which a complaint can be revisited so where i was able to revisit complaints i did i did burn but where i knew i wasn't i simply couldn't ask you this question then and i'll have to ask you it again if a person whose complaint was not dealt with at all makes the complaint again are you able to take that as a new complaint or would have to be some material difference it would need to be new information that comes to life even though it was never dealt with yes yeah so it was the commissioner's position to take those decisions in law that you know a parliamentary office holder it was her prerogative to decide whether or not a complaint was it admissible or inadmissible so having made that judgment i cannot revisit that judgment however if a complaint comes in and there are additional allegations about you know so let's say for example a continuing course of conduct that could change the nature of a complaint and that would give me a pathway to potentially you know conduct an investigation in that case but it would need if the facts and circumstances on which that prior decision were made were precisely the same i'd have no scope really to go and revisit it for the very reason i've pointed out which is you know i'm exonerated because that doesn't represent a breach of the code so i would need to see something new okay that's really clear thanks very much for those responses you thank you very much thank you for exploring that area i'd like to bring in myles breaks thank you community good morning thanks for joining us today last week the Scottish public service ombudsman discussed with us the demographics of people who escalate complaints to them and i just wondered if you had carried out any work yourself to look at those who do complain and maybe why so that's the resource that i just mentioned earlier so and it's something that we've just recently rolled out but you know come next year's annual report is the sort of thing potentially we're going to be reporting on which is how our office is viewed our office has never gathered the demographic data of individuals who contact it but that's what we're doing now and that will be for complainers and respondents and that will give us a much clearer picture about whether or not there are differences depending on people's protected characteristics that's helpful and to return to what the coffees at a line of questioning the public service ombudsman also last week stated that legislation to change to grant them own initiative investigative investigative powers and just wondered if you were content with your powers as they currently sit and what opportunity you have to potentially strengthen them but also some of the conversation we've had today about unfounded complaints of spurious complaints about elected members whether or not there's an opportunity to state earlier on in an investigation whether or not you can investigate these especially with regards to social media okay so i'll start with one powers that the act actually does give me a bit of discretion so it says to the extent possible or wanting to that effect that i'll investigate to the extent possible based on a complaint that's been submitted to me but you know i think there's sufficient leeway there for me to investigate something but that's not in response to a complaint and as ms johnson pointed out i've already got leeway during the course of an investigation you know if i see additional poor conduct or conduct that feels incompatible with the code that wasn't complained about but it arises as part of the investigation i can certainly look at that and that's made clear to everyone in our letters in terms of unfounded complaints and spurious complaints so i don't look at people's motivation for making complaints all i do is i assess the facts against the code but you know an awful lot of the complaints that are made to me you know that they can be unfounded they can be spurious and you know those those buying lars do tend to be inadmissible for those where i'm not clear then i will conduct an investigation and then it ends up being reported on to the standards commission and and adjudicated upon there and that can either be a take no further action decision or it can be a decision to to go to hearing so an awful lot of this snash does get dismissed if i'm being honest with you and that includes online so and it's important for me to and i do and all the letters that i provide to complainers and respondents give very clear reasons for my decisions and if it's apparent to me that what's going on is just a political debate and the fact that a member of the public or members of the public disagree with someone's political views you know that that doesn't constitute a breach of the code's provisions and i don't know if that answers your question that's helpful and i think my line of questioning was kind of also around similar bodies in the UK and in Europe and whether or not there's a different model or better set of powers which other countries are using to to govern some of this and whether or not any work's been done to consider that it hasn't but uh i'll certainly add that to my list of things to look into um for what it's worth so we do engage with with other bodies who work in this area um Angela Glen her senior investigating officer during the course of this year um was one of uh a few people who gave a talk for the global government forum and that was online and it was about you know sort of conducting public life um so it's not as though we don't have contacts there um because it was you know uh people attended from all over the world about that particular event and it was uh it was very good for us to be invited to speak um that's great thank you thanks camina thanks very much i think that concludes our questions for this morning i just wanted to um thank you for the report thanks for all of the uh uh information about the improvements and the kind of positives around there being very few challenges and i noted also um the training that you've been given so for the selection panels for chairs um selection panel chairs uh to achieve effective boards um and i just thought that was tremendous that that you've done that piece of work that you know so that we're ensuring that our public body boards are reflective of the communities that they're representing so thanks very much for that work too thank you so much uh it's been a very it was a very positive year on yeah it has been it seems like and it isn't really a full year is it it's uh we saw you in january indeed um so thanks very much for that um and just before we close this section i'm going to ask stefanie uh callahan to declare interest yes can we know just to declare that i was a previously councillor at south londonshire council thank you very much thank you and i now um briefly suspend the meeting to allow for a change of witnesses we now turn to agenda item four which is to take evidence on the housing cladding remediation scotland bill from kate hall who's the director of the cladding remediation division rachel sutherland sunderland who's the deputy director of the cladding remediation division and mikaela west who's the solicitor at the housing branch of the scottish government and i welcome our witnesses to the meeting and i'd like to begin by inviting kate to make an opening statement thank you very much good morning cabina and thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to speak to you today about the important topic of the housing cladding remediation scotland build the minister of housing stated in his evidence about the cladding remediation programme to the committee on the 30th of may 2023 that the safety of homeowners and residents was the government's absolute priority the driver for the establishment of the programme was of course the tragic fire at grant for tower and the tragedy clearly sets out why we need to take action to identify assess and remediate the risk from unsafe cladding as the committee will be aware the ministerial working group on building and fire safety was established following the grant for fire tragedy and this developed the recommendation for single building assessments the cladding remediation programme was established to deliver that recommendation and to seek to deliver the scottish government's commitment to protect lives by supporting and facilitating the assessment and remediation of unsafe cladding on residential buildings 11 metres and above as the programme has progressed a number of issues have been identified which have been impacting on the delivery of the overall programme and therefore the policy objective these issues have emerged both from the scottish government's direct experience but also from discussions with developers and the legislation has been designed to seek to address those barriers to delivery particularly the consent of homeowners provision of clarity and assurance as to standards and the status of remediation and to provide a legal framework for developers to be able to participate in remediation if I may quickly just outline the key elements of the bill it will allow for the establishment of a cladding remediation register and this will provide information on buildings which have undergone a single building assessment and remediation this will take forward a direct recommendation from the ministerial working group that better information should be made publicly available for example through a database or through a portal on the safety profile of domestic buildings with cladding it will allow for the assessment of buildings through a single building assessment even in cases where it is not possible to achieve the consent of owners the bill will allow ministers to specify the standard for a building assessment and the assessment itself was a recommendation from the ministerial working group the bill will also provide ministers with the power to arrange remediation work where that work has been identified in a single building assessment as being needed to eliminate or mitigate risks to human life that are directly or indirectly created or exacerbated by the building's external wall cladding system even in cases where it's not been possible to secure consent and this provision reflects experience from the programme and also from engagement with developers and finally the bill also includes provisions to establish a developer of remediation scheme the programme arises out of the work of the ministerial working group on mortgage lending and cladding which included representatives from the finance sector from home owners homes for Scotland and the Scottish fire and rescue service amongst others and the programme is continuing to be built on regular stakeholder engagement and developers have been very closely involved in discussions on the topic over the last 18 months or so and that has supported policy development within the bounds of convention and confidence our engagement of course continues with stakeholders and there will be further opportunity for them to be involved in consultation in the context of secondary legislation so focus on cladding is sitting alongside work by our colleagues in building standards housing standards and fire safety and of course the building safety levy announced in the programme for government will once establish support the financing of the remediation work i would also add that the work continues in collaboration and we are collaborating with local authorities in the spirit of the verity house agreement the commitment of developers is a valuable asset here and we are extremely grateful for their contribution and collaboration in the public interest nine developers of publicly consigned the developer commitment letters as part of the Scottish safer buildings process thank you very much i should add i'm joined by my colleagues Rachel Sutherland and Mikaela West thank you thanks very much Kate um that's that's are helpful to hear that overview i've interested to hear why there's been no public consultation on the bill and what changes to the bill if any were made following conversations with stakeholders thank you um obviously the priority in relation to the bill has been to ensure that we can quickly make progress in relation to some of the issues which i've i've outlined in my opening statement and of course that also reflects a period of some time in which we've been engaging with stakeholders and therefore we consider that the bill seeks to achieve the balance between the initial consultation that we've had and then the subsequent progress and ongoing engagement that we will have during the passage of the bill and obviously elements in secondary legislation will allow time for further consultation with stakeholders as we move forward thanks very much for that and as part of the work that you're under part of what you're doing you're undertaking a stock survey of all the medium high-rise buildings within the scope of the programme and it'd be good to know how advanced the stock survey is so we obviously have undertaken some preliminary estimates and we've set those out in the initial memorandum with the bill we're working through a process of procuring the next stage of work on the stock survey and we would hope to in line with the commitment in the mandate letter have information available with the outcome of that during the early part of 2024 okay thanks very much on that we've been hearing that owners and residents of properties in buildings with potentially unsafe cladding have consistently reported challenges in the remortgaging buying selling and ensuring of their properties and i'd be interested to hear what conversations you've had with lenders and insurers in the development of this bill and are you confident that the cladding assurance register will provide them with sufficient assurance yes of course i'll provide some initial details and then i'll perhaps hand over to Rachel to pick up some of those further points of detail but i can show you that a bi have been closely involved in our stakeholder group as have UK finance but Rachel maybe you'd like to pick up some of those points yeah happy to i mean it's worth noting that as you'll probably be aware that the recommendation for a register of some type was a recommendation from the ministerial working group which as Kate has mentioned included representation from UK finance and the association of British insurers they're also represented on our cladding stakeholder group so we have been talking to them about it we're working quite closely with them and as we kind of work through and operationalize what a register will look like we'll be doing that working closely with them and with other stakeholders as well thanks very much for that i'm now going to bring in Marie McNair who's joining us online thank you can do you know just want to kind of cover on the single building assessment we touched on it slightly but obviously the bill provides that single building assessment can be received without consent of the owner provided that a notice period is lapsed in any appeal which may have been lodged has been determined or withdrawn how prevalent has the problem been of securing consent for assessments and how significant a factor has this been in holding up the remediation process so as a consequence of the the work that we've been undertaking so far through the pilot programme it has come to our attention that there can be instances where consent can cause a delay in moving through to the next stage and those are the reasons why we have considered that it would be appropriate to try and include these provisions within the bill in order that we can move through right from actually carrying out a building assessment all the way then through to ensuring a fair pace in relation to subsequent remediation work and therefore ensure the safety of all homeowners in a block of flats frozen the house is a factor has this been in holding up the remediation process so i think our reflection would be that there has evidence has come to light that it can delay the process and therefore as a consequence of that in the interests of all homeowners we have considered it therefore significant enough to feel that there needs to be some legislative provisions to sit around it to ensure that as the programme moves forward all homeowners in a single block are equally supported through having remediation work done and that therefore one or two individuals are therefore not able to then block progress where that's reasonable and obviously you will see provisions in the bill this is intended to be a proportionate response in in relation to consent and obviously is built on precedent from previous acts in order that we are taking action which is in the wider interests of everybody in the individual blocks concerned thanks for that confirmation um convener that's new back to yourself very and now i'm going to bring in willy coffee thanks very much convener Kate just on the pilot programme we understand there's 105 buildings in that programme at the moment could you give us an indication of where we are in terms of assessment and in terms of remediation within that set of buildings that have been identified yes happy to do that in terms of the programme as a whole you're correct we've got 27 building assessments have have been formally commissioned we now have 16 of those at substantive reporting stage we have remediation under way in one building and mitigation under way in a second building obviously we have a commitment to ensure that all of those 105 are on a pathway to a single building assessment by next summer that's set out in the mandate letter from the first minister to the cabinet secretary and we are taking sets to ensure that that mandate is of course met we've also been undertaking some work recently with developers on a task and finish group to look at the process around an SBA and ensure that we're taking learning as this is a pilot from the work that we've experienced so far on those that have been undertaken ensure a smooth process as we move forward into the substantive SBA process which would then fall from the provisions in the bill that's quite low in terms of progress i would suggest to the 105 buildings there's only 27 assessments that are in commission in one building has had any remediation so far is that something you would accept and there's the provisions in the bill likely to help you accelerate that so i think we the bill obviously we hope is will schedule through its passage by next summer and obviously whilst that is still going on we wish to make progress on the remainder of the 105 buildings so the passage of the bill we see that happening in parallel and obviously wish to make ongoing progress with the ones that will have been identified as part of that pilot programme so you know i think as as the minister has previously acknowledged we're seeking to speed up the process in relation to those SBAs and obviously then speed buildings through into a remediation programme because ultimately this is a programme about which is intended to ensure the protection of life and the safety of individuals within those within those blocks so we're very mindful of the need to make that progress one of the issues that keeps coming up is do you have enough fire engineers and surveyors to help us to carry out these assessments has that been a barrier in the pilot phase of the programme do you think and do we need to do more to recruit higher train fire safety engineers and surveyors to carry out the work at greater pace so we are mindful of the importance of the supply chain in terms of being able to make progress on on the SBAs and as part of the task and finish group we've been looking at the specification of that SBA in order to make sure that we're also assured that there will be a wider supply chain obviously there are other parts of the UK which are also undertaking building assessments and we would hope that the the work that we're doing will help stimulate a wider market across the UK so that we in Scotland can also access the fire engineers and the others that are needed in order to to carry out the SBAs that we require on the programme and I think we are hopeful that we will make progress on that and therefore that there shouldn't be a barrier to ensuring that the SBAs can move through as quickly as possible and therefore obviously move individual buildings through into a process of remediation which is obviously the first and foremost priority of the work here but do you think we've got enough at the moment to carry out the work or do we need to accelerate the recruitment we haven't had it as a specific barrier to completing SBAs at this point and I would hope that our approach to SBAs will ensure that the market follows and that we will send market signals out so that those that are in a provision to provide the services are then able to do so and obviously we are seeking to move from a grant-based process to a procurement process so we hope that that competition will also help stimulate the market and bring additional fire engineers and others in the supply chain that can then help support delivery of the programme as a whole okay thank you for that thanks thank you thanks for the I'm not going to bring in Pam Gossel who's joining us online thank you chair and good morning panel the UK government has so far provided the Scottish government with 97 million pounds to identify and remove dangerous cladding from buildings however so far less than five million has been spent through the single building assessment programme so I want to ask what actions is the Scottish government undertaking to speed up this process okay over to you thank you very much yes we are mindful of the need to make progress on the programme we've published data just last month which sets out that in the current financial year we've spent almost five million pounds on the programme as a whole and that's a sort of increase and pick up from from previous years for example in 22 23 we spent just over 1.5 million and in 21 22 it was 242 000 so we feel that we're on an increasing trajectory the establishment of my directorate and the uptick in the programme overall is also intended to increase the speed of the programme and the expansion of the programme and indeed the bill itself should help us make progress and continue to sort of build out in terms of moving through a programme of remediation and obviously given that much of the the spend will be demand led as a consequence of the SBAs then I think we have a good opportunity there to start moving forward in terms of the expenditure which would follow on in terms of the buildings themselves. Rachel is there anything else that you would want to add in relation to that? No I mean I think that when the minister gave evidence previously he talked about the fact that things had probably started more slowly that was acknowledged in the cabinet secretary's statement last year and the move from the grant model towards the direct procurement and that as Kate has said has seen this significant increase in spend from the kind of the 241 000 in 21 22 to just over 3.1 million this year and the kind of the just under 5 million total. Thank you panel just asking that do you envisage any problems ahead I know that you've said that you're on a trajectory that basically things are getting better but do you foresee any problems going forward in spending more money? I think the key priority here is for us to be able to make further progress in relation to the SBAs to identify the buildings that may then require remediation and then move them through into that remediation carried out. Obviously the work that we're also doing with developers to seek to agree a legally binding contract with them in order to fulfil on their commitment to remediate buildings will also help us move forward on that trajectory. Obviously the Scottish Government was committed to pick up spend in relation to buildings which we define as orphan buildings obviously those are ones where there is no identified developer that would be in a position to remediate those and obviously that would then also fall to Scottish Government to cover the costs in relation to those so I think you know total spend by Scottish Government is not the only indicator of progress on the programme because obviously if developers themselves are remediating programme remediating buildings and that doesn't necessarily mean that that Scottish Government funding that needs to be spent in order for homeowners to be protected so I would I would sort of also flag that it's not just Scottish Government spend which is an indicator of moving forward with remediation and protecting homeowners thank you that's me chair thank you thanks Pam and thanks for that clarity Kate we heard on a recent visit that part of the problem may be that it's not this that the single building assessments are not being undertaken but the remediation work is not subsequently being pursued and I'm just if you if you recognise that as a concern and if so how will the bill contribute to overcoming the problem well obviously we've talked already about being able to resolve issues in relation to consent and obviously progress through to remediation also requires the support of developers as well in order that they will then move their buildings that they're responsible for through into a full programme of remediation I think the priority is to get more building assessments done once we've had building assessments done then buildings can then more swiftly move through into a process of remediation and I think providing clarity about the scope and content of the single building assessment and the one that will ultimately fall from the provisions in the bill will also support a continued forward trajectory in relation to the programme as a whole again I'll offer Rachel the opportunity to add anything she wishes yeah I think just to reinforce what Kate had said the focus in the initial pilot phase has been on the single building assessment process and putting the 105 buildings getting those on the pathway where we've identified immediate risks we've sometimes had to step in and take urgent action in order to address those risks and also we then need to get into a process around engaging with the homeowners or residents seeking to secure their consent to move on to the next phase that the bill will help with that process okay so just to clarify because what we heard is as kind of a pile described as a pile of single building assessments they're just piling up and they're not moving through to the remediation phase but is it to do in part with the lack of the not having a consent from everybody in the building for example and that bringing in this bit of legislation will allow for that moving moving forward to the remediation process yes that that will certainly help us move through the process I think the bill is intended to help us tackle some of the barriers and the issues that we've started to identify through the pilot phase of the work and obviously consent is one element within that to help us move through from assessment through to remediation I think even during the pilot stage the knowledge of those provisions moving through we help will also provide a stimulus to move buildings through from that initial assessment all the way through to a remediation programme okay and is there anything else that is preventing that movement from the single building assessment to remediation that you've identified I don't think there's any specific blockers that we haven't previously identified from within the programme but Rachel would you like to describe them necessarily as blockers but there is ongoing work obviously in relation to working with the developers in order to secure an agreement in relation to buildings which have a link developer which will allow those to be progressed there is obviously ongoing work as Kate has mentioned in relation to the task and finish group so there are a number of different strands and the bill is part of that it's not the sole kind of thing that we are looking at but it's an important issue that we need to address the issue around consent great thanks very much that was helpful I'm not going to bring in Mark Griffin thanks community the bill has powers for Scottish ministers to establish a responsible developer scheme and I just wondered if you're able to set out how you feel that scheme would speed up the remediation of potentially unsafe buildings yes I mean I think as we've just been saying this is one part of a start finish process all the way through to ensuring that we've got engagement from developers who are responsible for individual buildings and Rachel's been very heavily involved in the work on this so I'm going to hand over to her to ask answer your question yes so the responsible developers scheme is an important part of our wider engagement with developers so we are also talking to developers in terms of developer contract discussions at the moment which will confirm and set out clearly what developers responsibilities will be in relation to remediating their buildings and we've also got the responsible developers scheme it is important that developers who step forward and voluntarily remediate their buildings are not disadvantaged if others do not do the same so the responsible developers scheme will really clearly set out the membership criteria the expectations and also the consequences for developers in terms of stepping forward remediating buildings can ask why that's been left to regulations to establish and why there isn't kind of more upfront detail for developers to be aware of what's coming down the track so it is probably worth noting that we're proposing to put the detail into affirmative regulations so we will be kind of coming back and you will be seeing the kind of the detail of that we've tried to put in the bill some of the detail in terms of the areas that we'll be looking at in regulation but we are also mindful that we have a process that is ongoing in terms of the developer remediation contract that we are in kind of live and active negotiations with developers about in refining and defining exactly what the developer remediation scheme the parameters of that we will be mindful of the discussions that we are having currently with developers so that those two should speak to each other okay and the policy memorandum talks about a proportionate response and I just wondered when considering that what will be the government's attitude towards varying levels of size of house builders you know SMEs have been treated very differently in the scheme down south and I wonder what the government's approach will be to that in Scotland so yes we recognise the fact that there will be a difference between developers in terms of their ability to pay to immediate their buildings and that it is important that we reflect that in any agreement that we reach with them and that's something that we're actively discussing with developers at the moment through the developer remediation contract discussions so I can't give you the detail of exactly what we're going to do because we're still kind of discussing it but the principle is one that we are absolutely bearing in mind as we are engaging in those discussions okay I think it'd be helpful if you could let committee know as soon as you have any detail on that and that'd be very worthwhile and just finally I wanted to ask about the the power to introduce a levy and ask if there has been any difficulty in development of this bill or the programme entirely as we wait for the devolution of the power to introduce that levy? Yes, so the levy is being taken forward by colleagues in tax policy but we're working very closely with them so it is not an impediment to the bill or to the work that we are doing at the moment but it is obviously going to be an important factor in the future in terms of the wider funding of the programme given the fact that the UK Government is planning to put in place a building safety levy in order to fund the programme in England so being able to put the levy in will be important in the future but it's not an impediment at the moment. Do you have a timeline for the expected devolution and ability to introduce that levy? My understanding is that there are ongoing discussions at the moment between Treasury and Scottish Government and that we don't have a precise timeline yet but possibly we may have to come back to you if there's any further detail on that because that is lead responsibility for that rest with colleagues elsewhere but that's my understanding but I'll confirm with them and we can come back to you if there's any further information. Some of the meetings that we've had with affected residents and experts as well have been critical of the limited progress today that we've made in Scotland so just wondered with regards to the schemes that have been progressed now both in England and Wales what learning has taken place to try to align at the bill with those given that many of the companies operate across the UK. We meet regularly with counterparts in the UK Government and the Wales Government and obviously learning that they have got both from their initial assessment process and also from running and taking their programme forward is helpful and to us as we move through our next stages and obviously we are mindful of the fact that developers do operate across a UK basis but obviously there are arrangements in Scotland which are different from other parts of the UK particularly in relation to the tenure system for example so it's important that the arrangements in Scotland do reflect and do mirror the arrangements in which developers are operating themselves within a Scottish environment and obviously there are different regulations in relation to building standards for example which operate in Scotland so we're mindful of that but it's very helpful to be able to understand learning from other parts of the UK as we take our programme forward. That's helpful and I think as the bill progresses there might be quite a few amendments to try to make sure that the bill is aligned in that way so it would be helpful to to see how they're taken forward. One area which I have raised consistently and quite concerned around is the bill only relates to residential buildings in Scotland. Now there are many other buildings which are potentially will include flammable cladding and these will be buildings where people sleep, care homes, student accommodation, hospital settings as well. I just wondered why the bill hasn't included these and why there's no provisions made for non-residential buildings which could potentially have unsafe cladding. Obviously the programme is focused on residential buildings so obviously they may include a commercial premises. The ministerial working group obviously had a wider remit and covered non-residential buildings but the barriers that were identified that we've talked about and are being reflected in the bill are focused on matters which are not replicated in the same way in non-residential buildings is what was found. So obviously building safety is the responsibility of a building owner where there is a clear owner. For example in NHS boards through local authorities and commercial owners then obviously we would expect them to understand and assess risks of cladding on those buildings and then take action to remediate as necessary. So the focus on this has therefore been primarily on residential buildings although the bill itself is tenure neutral. And in terms of the register which you outlined would you expect other buildings then to be included in that which are non-residential? So the register focuses on those buildings which have been through a single building assessment under this programme so it would therefore be confined to those buildings which start and finish with this programme. Okay I think for quite a lot of organisations who have been influencing our work there is still a lot of question marks over these buildings not being included and what that looks like as the bill moves forward. One of the aspects of undertaking remedial work though is in relation to economies of scale and I wondered what additional work would be co-ordinated around retrofitting of buildings to try to make sure that those economies of scale can be realised? So I think that that's obviously a really helpful point and we're mindful of wider work that's going on more generally and that's something that we will take into account as we transition from pilot into full programme although no decisions have been made yet in relation to that. Okay thank you and just finally one of the concerns which have been raised and I've raised with the previous minister Tom Arthur was with regard to charging points being attached to buildings and some specific concerns which have been raised with us with regard to EV bikes and electric cars. Now that's not currently within the bill but are you mindful to look at that and include that going forward given some of the incidents we've seen? Obviously any decisions in relation to that would ultimately be a matter for ministers obviously but the scope of the bill as it stands is solely related to cladding at this point and therefore that does provide a constraint in relation to what is within scope of the provisions of the bill. Thanks Miles, I'm going to bring in Willie Coffey with another question. Thanks very much again convener. Okay one of the issues that came up several times in discussion with residents is that no one actually knows what their building is actually made of and that came as a surprise to many of us but particularly with modern homes that who is in possession of what a building is actually constructed from and where is that record held and how can people get access to that. Nobody seemed to know, I know it's out with the scope of this bill but it's a really important issue particularly for people that are buying new flats or homes or residences. Someone I think made a comment that the inspection process during construction is perhaps not where it used to be and that in some cases buildings can be constructed not entirely consistent with specification drones and so on and so forth. Where's the protection for the public in that kind of aspect and where should we look perhaps as a committee to pursue that if not in this bill? So you're correct, it's not within direct scope of this bill but Rachel, did you want to come in with some background on that? I can say a little bit, I can say something about some of those things, some of those things fall out with our responsibility and it's, it would probably not be appropriate for us to talk about other people's responsibilities but what I can say is that the point that you have raised is something that has been identified in the Grenfell inquiry as being a key issue, this kind of golden thread of information in terms of buildings that has been identified as a really important point. The register will help to address some of that in terms of buildings that have gone through a process because it will be able to kind of hold information about what has been done to a building up to a fixed point in time. There is a broader piece of work that colleagues in building standards are looking at in terms of their commitments and a number of the points that you've raised do rest quite closely with building standards colleagues so I think we would be happy to take those points away and feed them back to building standards colleagues and maybe ask if they wanted to respond to the committee. Absolutely, thank you for that. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you very much Willie. That concludes our question so thank you very much for coming today and giving us clarity around the bill and its purpose and we previously agreed to take the next four items in private so that was the last public item on our agenda for today. I now close the public part of the meeting.