Gwelin. welcome to the sixth meeting in 2024 of the Local Government Housing and Planning Committee. I remind all members and witnesses to ensure that their devices are on silent. We have received apologies from Miles Briggs and are joined by Brian Whittle, who is attending as the substitute member. żeffredeaf lleva-lif, and Stephanie Callahan is joining us online. As this is Brian's first time attending a meeting of this committee, ystafell ièr y gweithio. Rydym yn gweld Brian Whittle ac Osbyn o ran Llywodraeth i ddau gweithio agosafion. Ieithaf. Diolch, Alex Neil. Mynd i ddau wneud i'r gweithio. Rydym yn gweithio i'r gweithio gweithio gwneud i ddau gwnaeth trofyn 4, 5 o bryd yndyn nhw'n gwylwyr. Gweithio. Ieithio. Preumau mae'r gweithio i'r gweithio i gweithio i ddedech chi'n gwybod, as part of our housing to 2040 inquiry in a round-table format. We are joined in the room by John Blackwood, who is the chief executive of the Scottish Association of Landlords. Michael Cameron, who is the chief executive at the Scottish Housing Register. Maureen Chalmers, who is the community wellbeing spokesperson from COSLA. Callum Chomchuk, who is the national director at the Chartered Institute of Housing Scotland. Sally Thomas, who is the chief executive of the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations. John Mills, who is the co-chair at the Association of Local Authority Chief Housing Officers, who is otherwise known as Alacho. Jane Wood, who is the chief executive of Homes for Scotland. I welcome our witnesses to the meeting. I am going to begin our conversation this morning by inviting everyone to very briefly introduce themselves and I'll begin. I'm Ariane Burgess, convener of the committee and also MSP for the Hounds and Islands and I'll go this way. Sally Thomas, chief executive of the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations. Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland and member of the committee. John Mills, co-chair of Alacho and head of housing at Fife Council. Pam Gossel, member of the Scottish Parliament for the Waste Region. Councilor Maureen Chalmers, I'm a councillor in South Lanarkshire and I cause the community well-being spokesperson. Brian Whittle, south of Scotland MSP. John Blackwood, chief executive of the Scottish Association of Landlords. Callum Homchuk, national director at Chartered Institute of Housing Scotland. Marie McNeill, MSP, represent the Clydebank and Mogai constituency. Michael Cameron, chief executive with the Scottish Housing Regulator. Jane Wood, chief executive of Homes for Scotland. I'm Willie Coffey, MSP for Kilmarnock and Errin Valley. Okay, thanks very much for that. We're going to turn to questions and please indicate to me if you want to come in or respond to a member's question or to another comment that somebody else has made. The intention as much as possible for this session is to be as free-flowing a conversation as we can manage, although we do have questions that we want to kind of lead the conversation through. So sometimes it might be that you don't get to come in on a question, but you can tuck your response in when you come in at another time. Also don't feel you have to respond to every single question. There might be things that are really pertinent to some of you more so than others, but I tend to ask a municipal question, which is kind of quite overarching, getting a kind of big picture. So probably we're good to hear from you all on that one. And that really is. So I mean, I guess it's great that we're all here talking about housing to 2040 and doing a bit of a review and a bit of a check up on where we think we're at. And I think it's great to have all of you in the room because you've been involved or your organisations have been involved in setting that housing to 2040 direction. Obviously housing has been a long-term intractable problem. It's not just a problem now. It's been a problem for decades. Getting affordable housing into the mix has been something that we've been trying to tackle across the United Kingdom since the First and Second World War at that time. So it's a long-term problem. And it'll be interesting to hear from you where you think we're at now. So in that regard, I'd be interested to hear from you what your view of the high-level vision for housing set out in housing to 2040. I'd like to hear your view of it. Is it still relevant or does it need amended in any way in light of the changed economic context since 2021? I invite someone to come on in. Housing in 2040 was a fantastic vision document for the sector. It was really appropriate that it set out a long-term vision for what we want to see in Scotland's housing system. I think looking at trying to address the cost of housing, build better quality homes, more homes. I think that there's nothing in that detail and that vision that anybody would disagree with. The challenge is the delivery. The challenge of housing in 2040 was a vision document. We didn't have an implementation plan, didn't have funding behind it, didn't set out timescales. Not even looking across 20 years, but looking across the five years of this Parliament that we're in. That's where we fall down. I don't think that we need to go back and unpick housing in 2040, but what we need to do is actually focus on what we can deliver in this Parliament. I think that fundamentally the biggest problem that we're facing in this Parliament is a lack of supply and a lack of social supply. We're already facing challenges since 2021. The most recent budget cuts that I know we'll get into have exacerbated a pretty devastating situation. We all want to see higher quality homes. We all want to see more supply housing in 2040 sets out of that vision, but what we really need to see now is actually delivery and fundamentally money behind it. That's very helpful. I'm going to add to my initial question for other people coming in because you've already started to touch on it and I think it's great. You've progressed the conversation already into the delivery. In your anyone else's responses, it would be good to hear your thoughts around strategic challenges, such as the ones that Callum has indicated, including for councils and just anything around that in terms of implementing the vision. Absolutely, the sector welcomed the 2040 vision because it actually said, our Government and political parties at that time said, we will keep to the commitments no matter what. That was the welcome. It was the first long-term vision over a 20-year horizon if you want to certainly increase housing supply and eradicate homelessness in Scotland, so I think that's still true. I think that what we've suffered in the last few years is strong headwinds through the pandemic and obviously now through the financial situation. For councils, I agree with Callum that it is very much about surviving the next two or three years of really intensive housing pressures and homelessness pressures from a variety of sources, not just people in temporary accommodation just now, which is at record level, but from resettlement exercises such as Ukrainians' Welcome Home and also the asylum seeker dispersal. If you take all that together, and in the recent rag analysis that Alasio carried out on behalf of the sector, around about 14 to 15 local authorities were moving towards a housing emergency. That tells you that the focus needs to be over the next two to three years while keeping faith with the long-term vision. I think that one of the challenges that we face with the delivery and implementation of housing 2040 ambitions is that it has very little flex. It doesn't respond to the context that we're operating in and I think that the context has to be looked at as it's been in a long time coming. We've seen the housing supply numbers fall since 2008. We have different economic conditions. We have different regulations and policies coming through. I don't think that we are understanding the unintended consequences ultimately on the housing supply for the Scottish population, so we're not reactive at pace. I think that for us, we would welcome and we welcome working closely with Government, but we would welcome more if we can look and understand the barriers and break them down. Housing is a very complex issue. Now, whether that's around investing in the planning system, whether it's around identifying the policies that are maybe stopping housing supply, whether it's about understanding where rural build, what we need to do economically, so we need to do a short-term and mid-term plan in light of where we are with the housing crisis and the fall in trajectory because it doesn't feel that we have anything on the table at the moment that's increasing housing supply and I think that's got to be a priority of housing 2040. In terms of housing 2040 itself, it would be good to understand a little more about the resource that's put into it because it's a big plan, it's complex. We are obviously sitting there as advisers and we want to support, but I think that we'd like to understand the resource that Government puts in to support that because it needs a lot of chunky work being done at this point. Thank you very much. Just to say you don't need to operate your mic, we'll do that for you. One last thing to think about, not having to deal with technology.  I'm going to start off by saying that housing 2040 was a hugely admirable piece of work and set Scotland ahead of the rest of the UK in terms of housing policy and vision and it was groundbreaking in that sense. It is unfortunately unravelling and that unravelling really started with Covid and has was continued through the cost of living crisis, the inflationary pressures coming out of Covid, Brexit didn't help. There's been an increase, an ongoing increase in expectation in terms of standards and quality of homes, therefore cost. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but there is a cost implication. The hammer came down, if you like, with the budget cut that we've just seen in the budget before Christmas of 26% on the housing programme, on the affordable housing supply programme and that exacerbated the previous year's cut. We're looking at an overall cut over those two years of around about 50% if we look at the figures in real time. We've gone from a point of Scotland being leading edge, being in the vanguard, with a vision that still stands for the most part, despite the challenges that we know are there, to a point where we're really struggling to make it work in terms of the housing that people of Scotland need and deserve. Thanks very much, Nat. John, and then Maureen. Can I just say first of all, of course, on behalf of the private rented sector, we very much support and welcome the vision of 2014 and indeed we've incorporated that within our own strategy as an organisation. In supporting private landlords and letting agents, one thing that we're really concerned about is future investment in the sector and how the private rented sector can not just survive but can thrive in the future to provide the many homes that we're going to need here in Scotland. We've estimated from our research that in the last year alone we could have lost 22,000 properties to rent in the private rented sector and that's quite catastrophic and with a further 56% of our members saying that over the next five years they intend to disinvest in the sector and exit. So we need to look at who's going to be providing private rented accommodation in the future, how can we support them and what can we do within the strategy to encourage new investment and encourage those who are providing good homes for people to live in at the moment to continue to do so. So that's one of the main challenges that we think 2040 faces. Many people already have made the points that I can make too. One of what would be helpful to us is, first of all, there's a housing emergency across many local authorities in Scotland and it's the supply of housing and the affordable housing supply programme cuts in budget that are proposed in budget really will mean there's less homes when we've got 250,000 people waiting for a home. So that's one of the big challenges that local governments are dealing with right now. I think there's a kind of misalignment or can you need to realign Scottish Government's policy on housing homelessness with that budget decision and also the ethos of the programme. The disconnect between Scottish Government's housing policy and the current economic climate and local government finances and the ever-increasing level of demand for local authority social housing means that there could be further homelessness emergencies declared by local authorities. I think Harriet White University have predicted that homelessness will rise within a third in the next couple of years and we've also got homelessness statistics due at the end of this month that we fear will have seriously increased. So we're concerned about all of that and concerned for that need to bring policies together to make sure that we can achieve what we need to achieve. The last point that I'd make would be the human protection schemes and the need for some kind of coherence across both the protection schemes that are led at a UK level but also between what the UK Government is doing and what the Scottish Government is doing across all the human protection schemes to make it a wee bit easier for us to work at local government level and making sure that all our guests who arrive in Scotland have the opportunity for good housing. I take away from that round that in general the vision you're all tremendously supportive of the vision is just what comes in behind that to support that actually happening and some of the things have come up against that in terms of Covid in the previous years that have prevented us from really rolling that out. So that's good to hear that your the vision is the vision still stands it's just really how we actually make it happen and the potential for needing to give it a bit of a review. I'd like to bring in Pam Gosall now with a couple of questions. Thank you convener and good morning to everybody attending today than the panel. Jane you spoke about understanding the barriers and breaking them down and you mentioned that area around planning so obviously we all know that Scotland is facing a housing shortage at this moment and therefore critical action needs to be taken especially in our planning system despite a drop in applications for major housing developments and for local housing developments. Application process times are both far exceeding the statutory timeframe on top of this the Scottish Government announced a 43% reduction in the planning budget. What actions can be taken to implement meaningful change as quickly as possible so that Scotland's people have the homes that they need and deserve and Jane because you spoke about obviously the planning side I'll go to yourself first. Thank you for that question and thank you for giving me an opportunity to talk about one of what is considered by our members one of the key issues which is planning. I think there are multiple areas within planning there is local and there's a planning regime and I think we need a systemic approach to planning I think that planning has been decades of under investment so I think this is not a short you know an immediate problem I think it's been a long time coming I think what we need to look at we have just conducted a Scotland-wide housing needs survey that many of you may have seen that identifies that we are not bringing forward in local development plans the housing needs we're not understanding what the true housing needs are across our country our survey showed it was one of the it was 13 000 representative people we spoke to shows that we're looking at 28% deficit in housing need that we're accounting for through local development plans so one of the things that I would say is a solution which I think is what you're asking Pam is is first for we need to make sure we're collecting contextual data and evidence about what is a solution we're trying to solve and I think that's very important and we created this research to try and support local authorities and government with giving them data that we felt was very contextual and relevant I think the second thing is that there can be some short-term solutions I think and it's going to you know the budget that I understand when I ask the planning minister about the 43% drop that you discussed I understand that's coming from the digital the digitisation of the planning system that's a concern at a time when I think there has been much evidence given that the planning system is under resourced we have very few planners coming through as graduates so we don't even have the profession you know having been able to fulfil the capacity that's required so I think local authority struggle I think that at a local level the planning applications you referred to that is having an immediate impact on housing numbers because they're taking too long I think we need to be very clear on the broader impact of the delay in planning applications so if you've got a small and medium-sized builder who are critical and we see that in the rural action plan to delivering the houses we need across rural conurbations especially if you've got a 54 week planning you know weight when you were anticipating 12 week the upfront capital that small and medium builders have to put out that's not sustainable for their business model so we've got a lot of people you know it's becoming more and more difficult to put the applications in because of the managing the the cost implications the time that that's meaning back to the statement that mr blackwood said was that this is becoming an industry sector that's becoming more difficult to operate within the planning system and our businesses are saying to us if we don't sort the planning system the investment you know is going to be more difficult why would we invest in Scotland because it just doesn't work so I think the solutions are immediate short-term investment and maybe some exemptions I think there's vacant and derelict land that needs to be looked at as well so we can find and identify ways to bring forward more brownfield land to build on so there are a number and we have actually put these to government in terms of some of the solutions that we think would create a surge capacity in planning thank you can I have move the question on to morning when you talked about the disconnect between budgets and demand and homelessness so do you have anything to say around my question on planning because obviously is there a disconnect with budgets here or the disconnect with delivery or understanding who you know the customer is here I think plan budgets within council budgets over the last few years because what happens locally is that people try to protect education social work and other key services it's areas like planning where if savings can be found that's where people go so then on top of that we had the pandemic and now we've got all the challenges we've got just now I think it's recognised at local level that that's an issue so we have just set up a special interest group within cosla a housing special interest group and that was in recognition two things one that within local government we need to bring together all the key players not just housing folk that are around the table or the elected members who lead in housing but we've also got the planning the so apart from a lateral where our professional advisors we've now got planners on that and we'll bring in health and social care to our key player so we've just had our first meeting of that group but that is senior councillors coming together with a wider set of advisors to bring those all those issues around the table and look for those solutions from our perspective but also because I co-chair the house in 2042 with the minister the minister set up a ministerial oversight group and we're going to make sure that those two groups connect and try and work through some of those big chunky issues together so we're we're trying to find the way forward because we recognize there is an issue want to pick up the question no do you want to go on to your next one yeah thank you convener just going on callum spoke a little bit about lack of supply and lack of social housing and lack of quality housing as well I've been fortunate i've to speak to 31 local authorities out of 32 and I know they are growing demand for accessible housing especially when we look at how the demographic is set to change and our aging especially with our aging population freedom of information request from the Scottish Conservatives also revealed that there are around 40 000 disabled people on the social housing waiting list to what extent is the Scottish Government's adequately balanced the need to address short-term housing problems against the long-term housing priorities and do any priorities there need to change and I'll put my question Pam I think it's an excellent question we have this perpetual conflict around actually supply and inequality for other homes that we want to build Sally talks about it mentioned earlier we want to see higher standards at home there's no we're ambitious for tenants ambitious for themselves landlords want to live the highest possible quality homes that they can that's why we're focused so we're focused on eggs more accessible homes kind of net zero homes but fundamentally we need more homes we need to be able to do everything we need to be able to do more than one thing at the same time our crisis right now is on supply we can see it in the homeless figures that we've mentioned already we'll probably mention it continually we can see the kind of the trends are coming home with us we see the length of the waiting list we know the impact the budget cuts are going to have on future supply chains we need to invest in that but you're absolutely right we also need to be mindful about the standards of the home we're building so we need to have that priority prioritisation from the government within this parliamentary term as we talked to earlier housing in 2040 it's a hugely ambitious document so it's a number of things we all want to see in the housing system they're all not possible at the same time and I think that's fundamentally where we are and I think as a from the certain charter institute and I think probably across sector what we need to see is the sense of prioritisation what is it we want to achieve as a sector within the next few years we need to have high standards of the home we need to have more wheelchair accessible homes to ensure people with disabilities can live in a home that's suitable to their needs because it's quite frankly it's a failure of government failure of public policy if people are in inappropriate housing but we also need to build more homes that will make other choices not just when the housing sphere if there are other parts of the public policy that need to public sector decision making need to be compromised deliver on housing then that's a political decision but what we will say is we need to build more homes but we need to build more accessible homes and we need to build more affordable homes so it's going to zero carbon homes the purpose I think of housing 24 is ensure we see the priorities set out and a pathway to deliver on them thank you John do you want to mention her because I know that you mentioned around the fact that councils are going to obviously have a lot to deal with in the next two to three years so obviously these are councils that we're speaking to so yes I mean I think as part of the local housing need and demand assessments that we've carried out across my part of Scotland which is Fife, Tayside and South East Scotland we carried out wheelchair needs assessment in both Fife and Edinburgh city and there was a significant shortfall in terms of express need and available supply so what we've done in Fife just through the local housing strategy in the last year is doubled our quota for wheelchair housing now it's only local authorities and housing associations that are building bungalows which are the typical house type you would think about and we need to see that across all tenures so that people have a choice to buy as well as rent but we're not building enough of those properties and I think that the proposed cuts in the affordable housing programme will probably slow down that build even further so we're very aware of the need and we need to keep building probably about 10% of our programme over the next 10 to 20 years to try and meet some of that need thank you sally is there anything you want to add to this yes I was going to just add some a couple of facts and figures housing to 2040 set out that 61,000 people needed adaptations to their homes for the reasons that you've that you've that you've raised and that figure was based on 2018 report by the equality and human rights commission which is self references Scottish government work from 2015 so I mean that all makes it obvious that we're we're out of date on this and the figures will now be much higher we know this 40,000 people on the 250,000 waiting list who have got disabilities at the very least and what we I think what we conclude from all of that is that a the need will have increased and b that we need a single national cross 10 year framework for dealing with adaptations and accessible housing and the final point I'd make is is to say that all that means that we need much more social housing to deal with the numbers of people who need housing and the numbers of people who need accessible housing thank you convener unless anybody else wants to come in I'm just going to follow up on that with a couple of questions just a broad one be interested to hear people's reflection on kind of picking back up on the balancing piece to hear your reflections on what you think or to what extent you think the Scottish government are adequately balancing the need to address the short term housing problems that we've heard against the longer term housing policy and aims and do any priorities need to change anybody want to come in on that John certainly what we believe in a lecture needs to happen is you need to focus absolutely on the next one to three years and to do that instead of you know proposing a cut to the affordable housing programme you need to boost the programme so I know money's tight across the country across the UK but you know developing social housing actually tackles a number of priorities for the government poverty child poverty and homelessness and obviously the resettlement schemes that we are running just now on behalf of UK and Scottish government all of that demands that you actually front load the programme over the next three years rather than reduce it so fundamentally that's what needs to shift that that thinking around trying to get as many homes about or bought as possible because acquisitions has a big role to play in the next three years plan one of the issues that we've heard quite a lot in the committee has been around in terms of getting a housing bill is around workforce so do you think if there if there's the money there do we have the people to actually build the houses certainly Callum will come in on this as well but we have had a shortage since pandemic for a number of reasons aging workforce leaving workforce retiring early or flexible retire or moving on to other types of work and so that that has gradually improved over the last two or three years but in terms of the housing bill the government asked us to do a resource assessment across the all the local authorities and certainly we do not have enough staff to actually invest in significance scaling up a prevention of homelessness so that's the part that we need to have further discussions through COSLA and through Scottish government so there is a shortage of staff to actually implement that major provision in the new bill. Okay thanks I'm going to bring in Brian Whittle with I think a supplementary question I've got another one and then I'll bring in Jane to respond to my question Brian. Thank you thank you. Thank you for your as I actually look at the entries Callum you brought up next year housing now the new and and the ambitions around you know reducing a carbon output through housing and of course that's across new builds there's there was the retrofitting of a million homes which which which have had to drop there's you know we're 22 and a half thousand trades people short to hit those sort of 2030 targets and it seems to me that one of the things and a reducing budget as well so one of the things you know should we be considering taking that capital and looking at addressing you know homelessness addressing the lack of housing by building new affordable green housing and incentivising builders to do that because it seems to me that the budget's been spread very thin which means that no targets are being hit are we are we are we are we are we two scatter gun on the approach to I think that's a really fair question I think we are trying to do a lot of things at the same time the way I've gone and the right for an understandable focus on trying to make our housing stock as energy efficient as possible that's incredibly positive you know the information that the social sector is kind of first in class you know where it's already the most energy efficient housing stock that exists in Scotland and it continues to do so but unless we're realistic about timelines and funding we are going to we're going to fail to meet the targets we need to set a kind of plan as it jumped in we need to be realistic about what we want to what we can deliver we're all ambitious for a housing stock we all want to have the best possible housing but unless unless the government's able to provide adequate funding the only source for that will be from tenants and it'll be tenants that will pay for it through higher and higher rents so I think it is a fair question if we if we are wanting to deliver on the homelessness and housing crisis we need to reflect on what other priorities need to be paced differently and that that and everything has to be on the table at that point the question is then should we be focusing on the new build affordable homes developing a green energy efficient new affordable homes rather than the widespread so we we obviously we want to build to new greener homes but what my point is round the kind of what the standards we're going to hit over a piece of time is a realist our current standards for delivering energy efficient homes in the social housing sector realistic given the kind of capital that's available I think it's a question about how we are best to time the delivery of housing and every increasing standard particularly when we look at the retrofit in the existing homes because you know in 10 years most of the homes we have will be the homes that currently exist actually I think it's a useful question to consider do we need to just reconsider the timeframes around delivery of the green homes so that we can actually put investment into building more homes that actually meet the needs of people today to get out of this emergency. Jane and then Michael and then I'm going to come back in with a question yes so I think I think importantly somebody talked about prioritising one to three years I think we need to stand back and I think when we talk about housing we need to look at it first of all through the optics of all tenure we need to recognise the interdependencies across social affordable and private and that economy that market that it sits in that's really important I think secondly we need to recognise the social economic social and economic impact of housing and sometimes we forget that we forget the economy the 3.4 billion it provides to the Scottish economy circa 80 000 jobs housing the other thing I really think we need to look at as we go forward into the next three years is this has to sit across directorates I think one of the issues that we have with housing because it's so complex that government every directorate in the government needs to have housing as some kind of a KPI or an inhibitor or a contributor to that national outcome it feeds into all our national outcomes across net zero mental wellbeing educational attainment and I think if we can look at that and make it a policy and political priority across how we deliver Scotland's national outcomes I think the thinking will change and I think we'll get more joined up thinking which we have urged government to do for a long time can I just talk very briefly about capacity I've heard this I've heard this before I think it might be good to to remember that back in 2007 the Scottish government itself stated that we needed to build 35 000 or 10 year homes a year between 2008 and 2023 we've only been building between 17 000 and 22 000 homes a year there is the problem thank you convener it's just to follow up in the point around in particular investment in existing homes and the point that calm has made around the reality that almost all housing need is met through the homes that are already there there are around 600 000 social homes that's where the bulk of the need that we see in front of us right now and in the coming years will be met from so I think there is there is absolutely a critical need to increase the level of supply absolutely but I think it would be it would compromise our ability to meet need if we didn't also focus on existing stock and in particular to ensure that that existing stock is at the standards that are both expected by Government but also expected by tenants so that investment I think has to be considered in terms of both new build and the existing homes there now the Scottish government is currently consulting on its proposed net zero standard I think there's a lot of uncertainty for landlords around that landlords haven't necessarily been planning and projecting the financial requirements around investment to meet that standard and I think that we will see over the coming year as the standard is defined and landlords start to do that work that we are we're facing a very significant capital investment requirement we've we've estimated for RSLs alone for registered social landlords alone so not for local authorities that that cost will be somewhere between about £4 and £9 billion to bring those homes up to that proposed standard that that's money that has to either come from public subsidy or through rent that's paid by tenants so I think it's critical that we keep both of those in our focus thanks very much for that contribution actually going to bring brings the conversation back to the question I'd wanted to ask a while ago which is around is around retrofitting and also around the Scottish government has a declared town centre first approach and some of you may be aware that Scotland's town centre partnership and another of Scotland's futures forum and others are doing a road show around town centre living at the moment and looking at bringing more people in living into town centres and looking at the fact that there's a lot above commercial properties you have quite a lot of empty potential for housing so we've got a obviously we've got an empty homes register I think it has acknowledged is about 40,000 empty homes but we've also got these commercial properties that don't acknowledge those potential empty homes above commercial properties so I just wonder what your thoughts are around that and I would maybe go to a lecture on this initially and then Calum maybe you could come in up to that that's perhaps a low hanging fruit what I understand is that actually it'd be about a third less to actually get in even with retrofitting to get in and actually retrofit and renovate those properties and obviously we'd have to think quite cleverly about how we make them relevant for modern living there's probably quite a few of them out of smaller rooms but how do we bring in the designers and architects to think well about how do we make those spaces work and I've seen some tremendous case studies through this road show of what people are doing renovating transforming church spaces and that kind of thing so I think there's an opportunity there I'd be interested to hear what you think about that and does that fit into this housing to 2040 vision? Yes I mean we certainly would be very much in favour of a town centre first approach as part of a local housing strategy and it indeed is in many of the local housing strategies across Scotland. I think the low hanging fruit part is probably where you have gap sites available and certainly we've just developed one in five where we've built on a gap site. Costs tend to be higher in my view than a Greenfield new build development but that's part of the cost of bringing people back into town and city centres. I think part of the difficulties in looking at you know shops sorry flats above shops is that we need to consider the ownership arrangements and they tend to be complex. The only tool that local authorities have if it wants to adopt a scheme in a particular part of a town centre is a compulsory purchase order approach or work with the owners collaboratively to try and bring investment into those properties. So I think we need to think about particular focus on town centres as a strategic approach supported by planning but also looking at the economics of doing this and I agree we can do it at scale but I think we need to have a particular focus on that. So I would argue a blended approach between brownfield town centres buying properties as part of this but also looking at Greenfield development where we can. Thanks very much for that response. I just highly recommend that you look into Mid-Steple quarter in Dumfries. They're doing incredible work as community led but really supported by Dumfries and Galloway and certainly a tremendous example in terms of communities bringing that town centre living and that is using and identifying and doing the detective work to find the people who own the properties and buying them off them and actually at a very interestingly low and usefully low for community price. Maureen, do you want to come in on this? Not to what John's just said but can you replace based approach as a community led work? Absolutely fully support that and know that many local authorities include Maureen. We've got plans coming to our committee meeting tomorrow in South Lanarkshire about Hamilton town centre and a long-term development that much of which is bringing town centre living right to the centre of that. So I think that that is approach that local authorities are already taking but the complexity there is John C's roundabout ownership of properties too. The complexity of ownership be peace. Is there something that we need to do, the Scottish Government could do to help to understand who owns property better? More quickly to find that out. The registration of ownership is not really the main major issue. We often deal with out of UK owners and that does take time but I referred to compulsory purchase orders earlier. Certainly in the last parliament there was a commitment to compulsory sales orders and I think in England they have compulsory renting orders so there is an opportunity there to bring together all of that pan of play of of interventions by local authorities through through legal means to try and stimulate people to if they have empty properties to bring them back into residential use with the help of RSAs certainly local authorities and local charities. Great thanks for that. Callum, I invited you to speak on this if you want to come. Thank you convener. Anyone else who wants to? I think the discussion here reflects the fact that there's a number of tools we have to address supply so what John and Lauren have talked about, there's around empty homes and transformation of existence stock, there's new supply, new build what we've talked about and there's also the buying back from the open market. I think we need to be able to kind of lean on all those tools as appropriate for landlords and for areas but fundamentally we do need new supply and that requires building. We absolutely need to utilise the transformation bringing city centres and town centres back to life is really important. Bi-back local authorities RSAs will do bi-backs particularly if it exists for our right to buy stock. That happens tactically, I have them strategically all over Scotland, it will continue to do so and they are really really important and I don't want to minimise that but it will still come back to fundamentally the housing crisis will be solved by not just changing homes from one tenure to another but by building more homes that are in the same set of all tenures. Yes, all those, I mean I have to call them marginal activities at the moment that is not to underestimate their importance. Community-led homes, community-based housing, town centre first, acquisitions from the private sector are all really really important but at the moment they are marginal to the overall supply of new homes. One of the big problems at the moment is in terms of that supply our housing associations are having to reconsider their development programmes because of the risks involved, because of the reduction of government money, because of the uncertainty around all that and that means that not only have we got housing crisis and we've got opportunities that we've just talked about but we have a sector which is becoming more cautious and more uncertain and therefore having to reduce their risk in terms of their financial exposure. The place-making aspect of housing associations is absolutely critical, housing associations develop at scale in places and therefore they are anchor organisations and really critical organisations in terms of those overall places, wherever that may be, whether that's rural, urban, suburban etc. The place-making role needs scale, you can't make a place without scale, you know a place can't be one or two homes so that scale is really important which brings us back to the need to deliver more homes to achieve that scale and the final point I'd make is that is the one that Callum's just made that all these aspects of the system, the housing system are really important and we'd like to see more of all those activities in terms of town centre first acquiring existing vacant housing, place-making and community-led approaches and more but we can't do any of that unless we've got the scale of supply and the certainty of supply to support it. I just as a rural and island MSP I do want to say that two houses does in some places actually make a place so it's all right that's part of the challenge isn't it where it's quite nuanced depending on where the need is and what we're looking to accomplish in terms of making place. Stephanie, you want to come in? Thanks very much convener and if I can just start by putting on the record that I was a councillor at South Lancer Council up until 2021. So we've heard quite a bit around the challenges so far and I would be really interested to hear about any areas where the panel feel that there has been good progress towards plans set out in housing 2040 and any good practice lessons that can be learned from that. In addition I'd been interested in any areas where there have been challenges where the panel may be able to reflect on how further progress could be achieved in those areas. Thanks. Anybody want to come in on that? There must be some good progress. Tally and then Jane. Yes of course of course there's been good progress I mean it was as I said at the outset hugely great progress to have it in the first place and to still have it and to have a commitment to it and that in itself is is good practice and worthy of worthy of support and worthy of complimenting. What we had initially with housing to 2040 was that vision was that purpose and discussion about the resources and capacity to go with it that never amounted to exactly what we wanted to see in terms of the detail and the amount and that's still outstanding and has been kind of further antagonised by the cut that we've seen but what we did have at the outset and for a few years was certainty and confidence that there was a vision there that everyone could gather around because everyone had been involved in producing it and that everyone could develop, could retrofit, could acquire new homes, do what was needed to do to deliver a healthy housing market on the back of it and what we've got now is a situation where that certainty and confidence has largely evaporated I have to say things are much more fragile and that again has been exacerbated by the the cut that we've seen so yes I would not want to devalue housing to 2040 at the expense of the argument that a lot of us have here which is the the recent the recent budget cut it's still a great thing to have it's much better to have it than not but we're at risk of devaluing it by the actions that are being taken Jane I concur with that I mean there are there are 20 actions as part of the housing 2040 we've done an exercise to monitor the delivery against some of those and and there are small areas where there has been work carried out but I think the progress and I think this is an exercise that probably needs to be done urgently is to look at where where the progress is and where the priorities are to unlock the barriers to housing supply to deal with the immediate issue that we've got for Scotland's population and I agree all of the all of the 20 actions remain relevant and they're important and as advisers to the house 2040 we're committed to them I think that there is a lack of urgency in understanding where are the blockers as I've said earlier through policy where are the blockers through the resource and where are the where are the blockers through cross-director at working and I think if we can look into those fairly quickly I think that would help the the national strategy for economic transformation their their strategy we are now looking at where housing sits as a contributor and inhibitor and we welcome the work carried out through the Scottish government and the economic directorate on that as well because that's all about getting the understanding of housing across other areas in government that can influence it so yeah let's not let's not lose the ambition of the plan but let's get practical on why it isn't delivering in the timescales that were originally set down and why isn't it acting in the context of where we are with the economy and the housing and those things that we haven't got an agile the thing is that we don't look at housing we don't create an agile and inclusive housing ambition I think we we don't flex it we've just got this on paper I think it was five it was before my time but I think it was five years ago this has to be a moving thing this has to be a live a live ambition that is contextual okay I want to go there a little bit more just when you talk about and it has to be alive what what would we see that would be happening differently I think we when we because because for example we when we look at housing and we if we look at housing and all of the different elements that impact it which are very complex both from the development cycle to the regulatory environment to the economic environment where we where we create a housing policy or a housing ambition we are sitting here it feels sometimes we sit to a little bit surprised to go and gosh we've got we've got 100 000 deficit in houses we shouldn't really be because because housing is a science it relies on data and Scottish Government creates you know good data but what we what we don't what we are unable to do is to go where is the flex if there is international conflict and we need to we need to support refugees what happens if the interest rates go up you know what happens when first time buyers haven't got the products to get on the housing market so we end up having you know an impact on on on on on on first time buyers you know all of these things we always seem somewhat surprised by them but we shouldn't because always the economy has worked like that always environment has worked like that always we've needed housing it's a basic human rights so I think you know if we could get some flex and intellect and and more evidence and and maybe horizon scan a little bit more on housing and plan out what we might be looking at and create flex there's no flex in budgets in fact budgets are reducing so we have no capacity to flex in budgets if we do need to deal with refugees and I think that's part of the problem the other thing is we don't understand who's building the houses in scotland where and where are those resilience points and where are the the points where economically it's challenging labour our industry sector are saying to us that labour is getting better you know I don't think labour is going to be a big problem cost of materials is slightly better but the problem is being able to build the houses that are needed thanks for going into that details actually helpful to to kind of understand a bit more on that I'm going to bring in mark griffin somebody mentioned budgets well here we go yeah thanks for being out just before my questions just remind everyone of my declaration of interest as a previous owner of a private entity property up to july last year lots of speakers have talked about budget and I just wanted to ask what month's views are on the impact of the 2040 vision on this year's housing supply programme budget cuts how is that budget going to affect supply overall how is it going to affect affordable supply and finally whether the ambition to deliver 110,000 affordable homes is realistic anymore jane just on that can I just can I just state that on on the budget we have asked and formally written to to be told what is the Scottish government's view on where that budget is going to impact and how we are concerned at the moment with the housing bill coming down the line that we are creating a bill we don't actually know what the problem is what's the solution we're trying to solve what we kind of do but we don't know the detail because we don't understand where that budget is going to impact so we need I think it's very important that we get that understanding I appreciate it's in draft and we maybe need to wait till it goes through its full parliamentary process but we need to understand where that is going to impact I think this is the core of the current kind of discussion and we certainly at the last 2040 board had this discussion with the minister um what what you need and the level and the word confidence has been used earlier what you need in new bill programmes is a level of certainty that you've got pipeline projects that you've got momentum you've got the key talent in place to actually do that within a local authority context that includes planning but also you've got key partnerships with rsls and key partnerships with developers who will provide section 75 contributions so as soon as there's uncertainty around a budget and this was the hope of housing 2040 it would transcend five-year cycles of budget deliberations and make that commitment to keep building houses over 20 years so that's the the issue here is that once you propose that kind of level of cut to unafford of the housing supply budget you're at risk of losing momentum and it probably takes one to three years to get a project on the ground and built so once you have that uncertainty around budget commitment you then take that confidence away from the sector you take momentum away and I can only reflect on our own situation and five which we're currently analysing and seeking a response from from the government on we are now holding up new bill projects because we don't have certainty we'll have new subsidy budget in 24 25 because of the level of committed projects we already have in the strategic housing investment plan and that's the case for all local authorities and many rsls so you will have that pause slow down take you through off the accelerator and at a time when we need the reverse to happen so one could argue that instead of coming down a gear you need to actually go up two gears to try and tackle this housing emergency that we face you want to come in demonstrate that that further we were building at the rate of about seven and a half thousand social homes a year two or three years ago even through covid that was that was holding up we're building about five thousand now so there's two and a half thousand gap at the very least to keep up with the um 2020 40 ambitions and that two and a half thousand um does now represent the budget cut in number of homes per year so the 26 percent budget cut um in the budget before christ college government budget for christmas equates to about two and a half thousand homes a year so that's the kind of gap that we're that we're the ongoing gap that we're looking at the other point I'd make is that um to come back to my point about certainty and confidence rsls register social landlords housing associations depend on the private investment market the private financial market for half roughly half um the money that they use to build a new home so the government grant supplies about 50 percent and then organizations go to the private lending market for the other 50 percent and that can be pension funds that could be banks and building societies and so what what's happening is that in a 3.4 billion pound program which is the government program for the life of this parliament housing associations probably bringing in an extra four billion uh so we'd estimate there was over seven billion pounds worth of housing supply money there and that money coming into Scotland uh from all over the UK from abroad um wherever from wherever else it comes that money is now at risk because lenders can see this there's less confidence there's less certainty in the Scottish system there's less confidence uncertainty from government and so we're we're at risk not only well we're not at risk because we are building far fewer homes than we need and that's not due to change anytime soon uh we're also at risk of losing the private sector money and the confidence uncertainty behind that that the financial markets bring into Scotland okay gallem um to answer your question mark um we are absolutely at risk of not meeting the 2032 target i think the fact that the Scottish Government the minister has announced that he's bringing forward a review of that um target suggests that there isn't that confidence that it can be met under the existing budgets and again talking about confidence in the sector you know we're we're talking about a budget cup for 24 25 our expectation is this will be repeated deeper in the next parliament in the next budget we all know what the um the kind of mid-year fiscal review i think is the right title if it looked at the kind of projections over the kind of the medium term so we would expect this to be compounded in the following um in the following year's budget um just building on what sallys um mentioned as well we know that build costs are higher for the social affordable housing increase every year we're all aware that the government accepts that itself and there's a freedom information request that put that the build costs on average at 190 000 i know in a lateral installs report in the summer last year said there could be costs between between 200 and 300 but even accepting a build cost of 190 000 pounds and the government roughly funding was 55 percent you know that would be um we're losing 1700 um and 66 homes this year from that 196 minus that's gone and that's compounding what john blackwood's talks about about the 22 000 homes leaving the private rented sector so we're losing 20 for building we're losing 22 000 homes in prs and just shy 2000 in the social rented sector from this budget cut i think for me what's really interesting king is here's actually how we can scale up we can look at the total cost even if we were to keep at 190 000 pounds of unit and say we delivered 20 of the 110 000 homes it would cost us 17 billion 17 billion pounds to deliver the 110 000 homes to build them that's nine just over nine billion pound costs to the government and we don't really talk about that we don't talk about the realism actually is the government prepared to invest nine billion pounds in social affordable housing that absolutely should but we don't talk about that within this parliamentary term next parliamentary term and onward and what that means because if as alias just mentioned if the government isn't willing to do that but still wants to reach that target that means higher cost for tenants because that's the only other way we can square the circle so we need to be kind of realistic about actually what is the cost of delivery and even accepting 190 000 pounds per unit it would cost 17 billion more to reach 110 000 homes by 2032 well i think we started talking about it now thanks so much for for bringing that up in terms of we've been we've been talking about the sector i think it's important to recognise that the the the the draft budget which is now a three-year consecutive reduction i understand about 40 of the last two two financial years i think i think that announcement notwithstanding it's in draft and i think all of the other regulatory pressures economic pressures the planning system which has been well discussed today i think representing the house building industry it's fair to say that their vision of scotland as a place to invest is now being impacted we are seeing many house builders you know pulling out of sites not interested investing down south instead of in scotland that's a real problem for us as a country and i think that it there is a rebuild needed between kind of the relationships you know and the understanding of the value of the house building sector because it's about social and economic contributions that it's making thanks very much for that do you the the concerns it raised there in terms of house builders pulling out and investing elsewhere do you have evidence of that there is there there is ever if i can share it so i'm very happy to share that separately some of it is through obviously the you know the rent control there are other sites that we can give you there are others where we've had struggles with just financing through planning applications as well so we can provide data to the committee separately if that's acceptable no more about that okay mark do you want to come back in i mean if we make the assumption that the draft budget is passed in its in its current format and there is a cut the million dollar question is then how do we build the homes that we've all talked about are absolutely desperately needed with less money are there any other innovative innovative finance models other than you know hard cash from government are there guarantees that government can provide to loan funding you know is there anything else government can be doing in the absence of hard cash to stimulate the house building that we know is required nothing can replace a grant okay in terms of building a house i mean most of it is loan funded based on tenants rents i think in local authorities is about 53 per cent funded through tenants rents and borrowing to repay the interest and 43 percent from from from 47 percent from the government grant so if you replace grant if you just grant and you replace it with other means it's still alone you're going to have to pay that back so that means higher tenant rents over the short medium longer term and i think in terms of affordability of rents that's a critical consideration for every local authority leader in housing spokespersons so it's going to be very difficult in an environment of cost of living pressures to justify to tenants why we need to actually borrow more on the hre business plan and more rents or higher rents would result the answer is you simply cut back on your program and the argument just now is do you blend it with more acquisitions in the private sector rather than building new homes and i think many local authorities will look to do that now to reduce costs because there's less grant available for acquisitions in any case so i think that's going to be the result as you know strategic housing investment plans are reviewed every year than keeping building at the same pace that we are which is falling already so it's going to fall even further so that's the the assessed outcome that we've made certainly through a large one and i'm going to i'm going to refer back to the small and medium market in terms of house builders i'll reiterate again how critical these are to the building of of all tenure homes across scotland since 2020 the economic environment has steadily become more difficult for the sme home builders a combination of government budget cuts covid brexit conflict in ukraine it's unprecedented uncertainty across the housing industry but this has been most acutely felt by sme's they worked tighter margins with less available resources and are often able to plan ahead dealing with the here and now when we look at other things like inflationary pressures costs of remediation of sites planning costs they will lack the resource also to research suitable options and they rely on familiar funding sources in scotland we are not supporting sme's across these funding sources to be able to deliver the homes that we need we are creating at the moment a piece of research that we have committed to share with the government and with we will share it with committee on identifying who these sme builders are where they're building what rural and urban communities they're building on the differentiation between brownfield and greenfield this will give us a sense of where we where we can support where we need to help we'll also look at the demise of the sme's we know that there's probably in the last five to ten years at least a 40 percent reduction in the sme builders across scotland that's a problem for us as well so i think it's really important and we have spoken to the government and minister to look at how we can invest and support sme's through innovative finance just to come in and the point around innovative finance and and to echo the points that john has has made i think we are innovative finance can deliver cheaper borrowing and that replaces existing higher cost borrowing then that's obviously going to be a benefit and that's going to drive some cost savings but the the point that john was making that if that is seen as a replacement for public subsidy then the direct impact of that is higher rents now we already know that that there is a significant upward pressure on rents this year we're anticipating rent increases by social landlords of somewhere between five to ten percent and that's because of the costs that are already in those businesses so anything that introduces a new additional cost will have that very direct impact on the level of the level of rent and sally you know just to continue that point we haven't talked about tenants very much and clearly the reason we're all here the reason housing 2040 exists is for people who need homes whether they're tenants whether they're homeowners whether they're in the private rented sector and um we housing 2040 is about looking across the housing system and that is really really important because it is all interconnected in terms of financing we've spent the housing sector spends the registered social landlord part of the housing sector sector spends or has spent considerable amounts of time looking at other funding sources and it always comes back to are there funding sources that we haven't got at the moment that are cheaper in other words that charge less interest because the point has been made already housing associations have a very very simple business model their sources of income are rent and private sector lending and that's it and they use that money the rent and the private sector lending to build homes but critically to reinvest in the homes of existing tenants and those communities and the more expensive the private lending is then the less money there is to invest in those homes and those communities at a time when those people in those homes and those communities are experiencing probably their worst ever financial situation and that doesn't look to be ending anytime soon so housing associations as charities as not for profit organisations have to look primarily at the the lives the successes of the homes the the well-being of the people in their homes and communities and they will always look to that first before looking for money that they might be able to get but is more expensive and is going to have a deleterious effect on those homes and communities okay thanks very much for raising that point Pam you want to come in this brief supplementary yeah briefly um convener just on the innovative solutions obviously John Rogers featured in the Scottish housing news looked at a few of the ideas around reform of the planning process a reduction in land business and transaction tax targeted support for first time buyers measures to help all their homeowners downsize and tax breaks for building low cost energy efficient homes so is there any thoughts around these ideas more impact more um sorry more impact more detail around planning if that would be helpful in terms of if we're looking at immediate and short term kind of creating surge capacity as part of the solution i mean i think first of all i'd say that under the Scottish government transforming places together the digital strategy for planning we've already discussed today that the the 43 cut in planning was across the digital but we would advocate strongly the use of technology to free up planners time an example is the self certifying system for whether or not an extension is permitted development allowing councils to maybe focus more on on other things i think the reinstatement of the budget cut to planning would assist in quickly roll out projects if we could invest in that technology i think another solution that we would be keen to explore is temporarily increasing the pool of self-employed planners or reporters there's a lot of skills and talent out there to deal with the increase in the number of deemed refusals and major applications and running the major applications i think they could do in clear local developments allowing councils to focus on housing applications in addition these people this this new resource could undertake site assessments following the receipt of the call for site submissions and they may insist in delivering local plans as well i think there may be some scope in looking at how councils could maybe collaborate they may be doing this already so forgive me i'm not aware of everything that's going on but if councils may be collaborated and at a fundamental level sharing of staff resources and expertise at more detailed level for example using a template site assessment methodology to accelerate considerations i think that that could help i think we're always going to flag this but you know we we want to put on the table that we ring fence planning fees um because the fees that are played by developers are not going back into the planning regime so then that's that's something that's very high on our agenda and i think the last one that i'll put in the table is the introduction of a simplified development management approach to assist SMEs on sites um on less than say 12 homes to your point arianio these sites are very very critical across communities as well we have put these ideas to government for discussion we see them as something that is something that could be delivered quite quickly that we think would have some immediate impact on the planning system thank you thanks very much for that did you want to come in and then i'm going to move to willy coffee just going to come in come in briefly um and it's important to talk about opportunities and positive things that can be done in this context the um we've been co-chairing a cost pressures working group with government uh which many people in this this committee have participated in and that's about to report on uh solutions to potential solutions to the cost pressures that we have in the uh in the home building industry overall and there will be um some recommendations around uh collaboration and risk sharing across the industry uh land cost mitigation and approaches to funding so i think it's important to make the point that yes we are looking trying to look at a positive and creative and constructive way solutions as well as being really concerned about uh the challenges that we've got thanks very much for that we'll keep an eye out for that report willy coffee all right thanks very much convener um despite some of the challenging messages being given um today around the table i think it's important to remember that scotland has consistently built more social and affordable homes since since 2007 and any other part of the uk and continues to do so and as an elected member for more years than i i would care to remember i can't help forgetting but we've lost 500 000 social rented homes in scotland since 1979 and you can argue whether that has a legacy impact in the discussion we're having today i certainly think it has had a substantial impact on that so we reap what we saw from those years to this day i think but convener i wanted to ask colleagues about the impact in homelessness services and it was raised a couple of times so i'd like to ask perhaps michael and maybe councillor chalmers about this what more do we need to do to a bigger part of councillor chalmers i'll get closer to the microphone i just wanted to ask your views on the impact of homelessness and the potential rise in this i think you mentioned a report from harry what it's perhaps due that suggested that there could be an increase of a third i think he said more in but i wanted to first ask michael his views because the regulator was given his stark warnings about the impact of homelessness in the the years to come and how we should build that or try to build some further protections into the housing to 24 strategy i think it certainly we've highlighted just before christmas in an update to our earlier homelessness thematic that we are now seeing systemic failure impacting on a number of of local authorities and we await the publication of the scottish government figures at the end of this month that will update the position on homelessness up until the end of september last year and we anticipate those numbers deteriorating significantly when we see that and that would simply reflect what we've seen as we engage with councils through the course of the last year and the real challenge here is is back to supply where there are not adequate numbers of homes becoming available to be able to meet the demands that are placed on many local authorities through people becoming homeless and it's now the position where we are starting to see a real risk of statutory failures to provide temporary accommodation or statutory failures around the unsuitable accommodation order becoming endemic in some areas and i think that's where there needs to be this immediate focus on how to resolve that challenge and john has spoken about one to three years as a time horizon and i think that that that seems a reasonable time horizon to see how do we turn around the position that we're in where we have you know over 15 000 households in temporary accommodation for longer periods of time than we have had before and i think it is about prioritising prioritising available homes and available resources to deal with that it will be very difficult for local authorities to move to realising the ambitions of rapid rehousing while we have that kind of very significant backlog of households in temporary accommodation. Councillor Chalmers, could you offer that perspective? Much as michael was saying, our numbers are increasing all the time and certainly where some local authorities are making really good progress on rapid rehousing and beginning to turn that round in the last year, that has slowed right down and we're seeing 15, 16, 18, 20 percent homelessness within local authorities and as michael said i think we've got around a bit half of our local authorities who are at risk of breaching their statutory obligations and that's not where local authorities want to be. The research that i referred to was Heriot Walk University, they published a study indicating that core homelessness will increase by a third over the next two years and therefore you know the announcement around affordable housing supply programme just cuts right across that you know in terms of how can we you know how can we we're not dealing with what we've got right now our mind what's coming up ahead of us at the end of the month and in the slightly longer term. I think it's one of the reasons by some local authorities have declared a house in emergency, it's also why we at Coaslaw have brought together the special interest group to try and find some of those solutions. I know Stephanie asked earlier on round about what's working well, there are things that are working well and there was good practice round about this as well but it's about all the challenges the complexity of the challenges that are coming at local government at the moment. I really you know we've got for example our Ukrainian guests who I think we've got around about 20 or 1000 people who are waiting to be permanently housed and you know every local authority is trying to do that alongside our core homelessness figures. John mentioned earlier on about private landlords, we're seeing an increase in the number of people who are opting out of being a private sector landlord and that pressure all comes in to local government so it's that multitude of pressures and we don't see, we just see the figures going up and the only real solution to that is to have more homes and I think we've been saying that over the last few months we really do need more homes for people. Maureen, just to come back on that. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm just having a struggle to get as close to this as I can and shout. You also mentioned in your initial remarks about human protection schemes being important, do you see there being an increasing reliance on that to try to help that problem at that level? The difficulty we've got with human protection schemes is I mean I think there is not a I mean if I go if there's leaders meetings or there community wellbeing board meeting no one has said anything we want to welcome people here and they want to support them and support them well that's a given I think it's the lack of planning and the lack of a planned approach so if you take for example the Syrian resettlement scheme there was lots of planning there was lots of discussion when people arrived there was a team right around about them the school was ready to receive the children all of that work was done in preparation now the numbers were quite different obviously I think what's happened in the last couple of years as you all know is the numbers of people arriving quite quickly and you will be aware that the welcome accommodation for our Ukrainian guests is coming to an end and the move on will finish at the end of this financial year but we've still got people who are looking for housing so those schemes and the complexity of them both the UK schemes and the Scottish Government schemes are putting that pressure on us together and there's no coherence across all of that we really desperately need everybody and we've made those that case to both the Scottish UK Government and the Scottish UK Government together to say let's get together and work something out because it would help local government prepare for plan and properly support people who come to live here as new scots okay thanks very much Maureen Joann I think you indicated you wanted to contribute and I think I'm not using that word likely I think it's going to be really difficult to meet all the homelessness demands that are coming on local authorities I mean I'm currently getting lots of letters from MSPs about hotels in Fife to say what's going to happen to these people and I said well they're going to be homeless you know because there's no other accommodation resources available for me to try and get a planned approach to resettlement I think the other issue is there are a number of solutions to this over the next one to three years and we've been in real deep conversation with several servants around short-term housing supply and there was a short-term housing supply group set up which I think has yet to fully finally report but it mirrors a lot of the report that Solace and Elacio produced last July in terms of recommendations so there are solutions out there but it needs investment so keep building keep buying bring down empty homes both in the public and private sector that's what it's about to increase capacity over the next one to three years so the solutions are there it's just well how do we actually implement them and that's the resource issue it's both human resources money and accommodation and that has to come together at the right pace in each local area across Scotland because it's not all the same so every local authority has a rapid rehousing transition plan that's the vehicle for doing it so we just need to be able to actually resource it properly and actually allow local authorities with local partners to implement those solutions at pace. Thank you John. Just to ask perhaps a broader question to the panel about overall quality standards in our new builds, are they fit for purpose? Do they meet the demands and the needs of the 21st century? Brian was talking earlier about the green impact in designing their homes to be greener. There's digital requirements too that homes should be digitally enabled and in this committee you've probably heard us discussing about materials that are used to build our houses and we're talking about cladding principally for higher buildings but should we be thinking about adequacy of good materials in our build standards? So do they fit for purpose really for the modern home? Jane, would you care to offer a view on broad quality standards and new build quality? I think we need to recognise that the home building sector is already a heavily regulated industry that goes through vigorous verification, sign of procedures through building control. In addition, new build, I think it's important to recognise, come with strong consumer protection in place through the provision of the consumer codes and oversight by the new homes quality board. You'll maybe be aware of that. I think that it's fair to say that home builders are facing significant change in building standards as Scotland strives to meet, quite rightly, an ambitious net zero target. We're looking at 32 per cent reduction in operational carbon emissions. A ban on gas boilers from April 2024 and the development of the Scottish Equivalent Passive House standard as well. All of our industry members recognise and support the need to do more on this and are committed to achieving what is practical at the earliest opportunity but we must be recognised as being in the context of new build homes representing a tiny part of the housing stock. We've talked about that earlier in committee and the existing housing stock must be tackled as well to create the meaningful impact of reducing carbon emissions as well. Without going into detail, we are happy to go into detail on another session, but as a regulated industry sector and a commitment from the sector to create the highest standards, I think that that is the answer. Just to add to Pam's question earlier, we talked about the accessible homes and people with disabilities. We're currently undergoing a consultation for housing for varying needs in Scotland, so that's been a long time we've been waiting on that consultation, looking at how we improve accessibility in new build homes in Scotland. That's really welcomed by the whole sector. However, it comes back to the fundamental point about the cost of delivery. We're all ambitious to have more accessible homes. We'll think that the housing for varying needs guidance is dated and needs to reflect the needs of people in their homes in Scotland today. The housing sector and the Government working together could continually review all housing standards and could stress them and push them to where there's an energy efficiency, space-size, digital connectivity. That's the job that we all do, but the thing that we are missing is a full appraisal of the costs of doing that, because if we are conscious about the actual costs of doing that, then we can make choices around the pacing of that when we implement that. Not that we don't want to implement that, but we have to be just conscious if that's going to cost so much money, then is that the priority for this time, or do we focus our time somewhere else? I think the sector is well versed and is used to that constant change and that constant change. We're always working to new standards. It's never settled, but we just—what we need to have is a clarity around the costs of delivering that, and a prioritisation. Does that come first, or do we focus on, for example, as we've talked today on the housing emergency in front of us? Social homes have to meet incredibly rigorous and high-standard qualities, which the regulator oversees. Again, that's one of the reasons why lenders are so attracted to the sector, because the quality is so high and in perpetuity is so high. Nine out of ten tenants under regulatory survey are satisfied with their homes and services. There is a broad understanding and broad picture where standards are very high and tenants and communities are happy with what they get. The contradiction in all of this is that standards and quality is not finite and it continues to grow to develop, because there are always new issues and new requirements, not just for retrofit, which is huge, but also for modern standards around digital connection, and then things that come out of the left field, if you like—dampen mould, rack, fire safety—all of which are absolutely vital. They might come at you from left field, but they're absolutely vital. They might not be planned, but we have to do them. The contradiction is that all that costs, and so the costs of doing that have a direct impact on the money available to build homes and to do what's needed to maintain existing homes. There have been some conversations under the radar, if you like, about whether the Scottish quality standard could be amended for acquiring homes, so not building new homes and not retrofitting necessarily, but to acquire homes on the open market to become social housing, to meet the housing needs that we've talked about, can we reduce the expectation of the Scottish quality standard? That raises all kinds of questions that we won't go into here, but there are ways of looking at this, which might be helpful and positive. Overall, I would say that we don't want to lose the quality of homes that we've got, but there is a cost to that. Thank you, Sally. All right. Thanks very much. I'm now going to go back online and bring in Stephanie Callaghan with another question. Thank you very much, convener. I'm prepared already that I'm coming in housing to 2040 vision includes linkages with a range of other policy areas such as energy efficiency in the planning system. We've also heard comments around health and social care, mental health education as well there and addressing depopulation within the deserved UK policy, so I'm wondering if anyone's able to say any more on how the Scottish Government can look at joining up its policy actions to achieve the housing to 2040 vision and any opportunities to build and good practice or improve us. Thank you. Anybody got any thoughts about joining? Jane, in a way, you've touched on it quite a bit already to some degree. I can't stress strongly enough having worked and collaborated with Government and welcomed those conversations, the importance of getting, if you like, smart working across Scottish Government. We're aware of the depopulation action plan that was released, I think it was, on Friday. Just to say that that document mentions housing, I think, multiple 300 times, but there was no consultation with us or were we aware of it even as housing 2040 advisers. I'm not criticising the report or the importance or undermining the importance of the report. The point I'm making is we're not going to get this right if we don't collaborate. If we're creating action plans over there that are tackling depopulation, which is a big issue, and we're not consulting and using evidence and data to inform that action plan from the sectors that impact depopulation, we're not going to get this right. Joined up approach, okay? I'm going to now bring in Murray McNair, who's got... Maureen, do you want to come in? All right, great. It was really just around health and social care, I think, in the same way. We know that, for example, I've had meetings with some of the long-term care organisations where end-of-life and kind of palliative care needs are not necessarily being met within a housing context. We know that that's about joining all of that up to make sure that we hear from those kinds of specialist organisations around the needs of people they're working with. Some of the local authority projects that are coming forward just now that are housing-led solutions to long-term care are perhaps some of the solutions around that. So it's again about bringing together where there's good practice and listening to those organisations that can inform the way forward. You can say the same round about care experience young people and about veterans too. It's about listening to those groups and making sure that that's built into planning. Thank you very much for that. I'm now going to bring in Murray McNair, and then we've got questions. I'm going to go to a rural direction with Brian Whittle. Then we do have a series of questions on the cost of living, tenant protections. I hope you bear with us. We're going to go over a bit more. We need your good attention and thoughts. It's really helpful for a bit longer. Before I start that, I've just gone to my registered interest. Up until 2022, I was a local authority councillor in Westland-Barnshire. John, how well are the Scottish Government and those partners responsible for working to achieve the aims, 24 aims involving communities, tenants and residents in the delivery plans? There certainly is a commitment in 2020 to work with all residents and tenants within communities to inform a number of issues about different housing mixes, infrastructure, making sure we don't build houses without access to shops. Health centres are very important, obviously. I think that commitment underpins the 2040 strategy. There's certainly a tenant representative on the housing 2040 boat from one of the networks in Scotland, so that commitment is actually around a table and is voiced. I think when we come to local working with communities around some of the housing pressures, I think there's a lot that we can do to actually get public messaging about that and to get tenants and applicants and residents to understand some of the issues and consequences of not having enough homes in the area. I was at a meeting of community council just a few months ago where the question was around the falling school role in the primary school, and the obvious thing from a housing professional is we'll build more houses. We don't want that because of that. So there's a lack of appreciation about some of the issues that affect the community by actually building new homes in that local community and the benefits that that can bring. So yeah, there is that commitment, but I think there's a lot more that can be done particularly at the very local level about informing people about how the housing system works and what benefits it can bring to local communities. Do you feel outcomes have improved for residents, tenants and the community? I think if you just look at homelessness and people getting housed, although we've talked about a huge backlog, people are being housed through the housing system and housing associations and local authorities. So for those people the outcomes are very much improved. Less empty homes in the area is another key issue for local authorities and housing associations and I think you can see evidence of local authorities and ourselves reducing the number of voids that they are managing. So getting your own house in order is a benefit to the community because there's less empty homes and more residents paying council tax in those areas. So there's a whole load of benefits, a whole host of benefits to taking the short-term actions that I talked about earlier because it's not just local authority politicians and officers that are saying this, it's actually a local community representative as well, so you need to hear that voice. Anyone else want to come in? Yeah, I mean housing associations, it's built into their kind of DNA that they have to, they do consult with and involve tenants. Most housing associations were set up by local people who were looking for housing at that time, roughly most of them 50 years ago and the majority of them are still there, they're very resilient organisations and as charities and not-for-profit organisations their sole purpose is to provide good homes, decent homes for people who need them and help those people stay in them and you can only do that by involving the people who need those homes and helping them stay in them. So the housing association model is such that not only do they provide great homes but they are organisations which will help you stay in your home, whatever that might take up to a point, for as long as you need it and then to help you move on to other homes. So that all requires very, very close involvement and engagement and it's absolutely part of their fabric. Anyone else, before I hand back? I'm actually very encouraged by the kind of return that we always see to the Scottish housing regular on this. We see the high levels of satisfaction in the social housing sector are demonstrable year after year. We see people that are really satisfied with the service that they receive, the quality of the home and equal, I think, from the service that we see in the private sector, we do see real satisfaction in the rented accommodation across Scotland and I think that's something to be applauded as we're reflecting on successes. I do think that we are at a tipping point, I think that there's risk around that declining over future years. I think that the regular themselves are reported on the increase in number of deficits that we see among STARs themselves. I think that when any organisation gets into financial challenges, then there's an understanding that we need to focus more inwards and manage that rather than focusing outward. I think that that is a risk that the sector will likely face over the next few years. Fundamentally, the social rented sector and the private sector are delivering a quality of home that tenants and customers are actually really happy with something that is borne by the data. Thank you very much for that. I'm now going to bring in Brian Whittle. Thank you, convener. I'll be as brief and concise as I can here. We've touched on migration from an inward migration perspective and how the housing market has to deal with that. There's also the issue of migration within country. We have a significant issue of migration from rural to urban. We also have a surprise to me at the extent of the migration from west to east. Obviously, that has an impact on putting pressures on housing. I'm going to come to you in a minute, Jane, because I know that you talked about SMEs who are predominantly those who build houses in rural communities. However, that migration is leading to reduction in services or the reduction in ability to deliver services, which means that there are fewer people there. It seems to be an ever-decreasing circle. In the 2040 paper, does it take into account the migration and one of the key issues that has been mentioned a lot is the lack of housing? I'm going to come to you in the morning, because we'll come to use the lack of housing, appropriate housing within the rural community, to keep people in those communities. Back to that place-based approach, isn't it? There's a rural housing plan 2, and I'll be John O'Connor and maybe a bit more detail on that, but that was looking at trying to maintain that place-based approach and making sure that there's housing there. As you say, if there's a local school and people are moving away, then it puts all the services at risk, so trying to maintain that place is a priority, but maybe John O'Connor will come in and have a bit more detail on that. I'm going into a 5,000-parts meeting this afternoon to talk about a specific rural housing forum to be set up in Fife, because we've got that mix of city, urban and rural. So, if you look at our last phase of new-build programme that we are, just what we call the phase 3, most of the houses were built in rural northeast Fife, because we recognise there was a deficit there, and that helps people access or keep jobs locally, also helps families keep children at a local primary school to keep it viable. So, although we tend to focus, if you look at the homeless population, it's mainly city and urban, but we have to make a look at solutions across all of the geography of Scotland, not just in the bigger conurbations. You may have mentioned, I mean I'm part of the Edinburgh South East Scotland City Deal Housing Partners group, and we've recognised that this region is the fastest growing region in Scotland. Why? Why are people being attracted to this region? It's mainly economic opportunity, I would argue, so there is a need to look at housing in the rural context, but also stimulating local business and also social enterprise in these areas. But it's also about keeping the infrastructure viable for local authorities and others to invest in, so absolutely rural housing has to be one of our priorities going forward. As I mentioned in general, I think it's SMEs that are the predominantly the builders within rural communities, and I mean it's all connected. The connectivity is hugely important, but there's also a cost associated with building in rural areas. Do we need to look at how we incentivise builders, because at the end of the day builders need to turn a coin? Do we need to be incentivising to build a rural? I welcome the question and just to your earlier point you asked about the housing 2040 action 6 is very much focused on how we support and deliver housing in rural economies, so yes it is in housing 2040 clearly, but I think first of all I'd start off saying that we have the rural and islands housing action plan. I think whilst that covers a lot of different areas it doesn't really acknowledge or support the private sector role in that, and ultimately I think fails to take an all-tenure approach to rural housing delivery and the interdependencies between private and public delivery. I think that we also need to be cognisant that rural housing delivery is historically low. I think that we probably know that and it's about 27 per cent below the 2007 home building levels. Build costs to your point are higher, as you'd expect in rural areas, 10 to 25 per cent due to the scarcity of labour, skill trades and delivery costs, and for remote, really remote rural and island developments that can go up to 50 to 75 per cent higher for developing than what would be in urban areas. The other problem you've got is in what we've seen from the report that we're creating, average processing time for rural housing developments across rural planning authorities was 42.9 weeks in 2223 and 14.1 week for minor developments, so that's interesting. I think that we've got to look at that in the mix when we're looking at barriers. I think that the permitted development rights as well for conversion of agricultural properties consulted on and adopted into increasing housing, there's potential opportunities there for SMEs, so to answer the question, yes, there's a huge opportunity here to look at subsidising, but I think that the other thing that we are, and I'm going to revert back to our housing needs research that just came out, one of the things you've got to look at is are we understanding the housing needs in terms of the economic opportunity in supporting the economic development, I think probably a current one to refer the committee to is the Highlands, is the Greenport, which was looking to create 10,000 jobs in that economy, yet the local development plan doesn't acknowledge the housing that's going to be needed to support staffing. Let me be very clear, this is not just the housing industry on this across rural, this is other industry sectors, the tourism sector, a lot of industry voices are saying the economy isn't working because there isn't the houses, and I think the rural, how we look at our rural and supporting our SMEs to build that is going to be critical to kickstarting housing supply. That's a very comprehensive response. I just want to bring in Stephanie Callan, who has a brief supplementary on this. Thanks very much, convener, and it's kind of moving back from rural to urban to degree, and picking up on a couple of things that were said yesterday, and I'm sorry, my legs has gone off in the background, hopefully it's not very large for other people. At Northmanshire Council, they've taken a decision to deal with the high-rise tower blocks because they have residents that are really not going to be living there, so despite them actually building 5,000 affordable homes, it looks like they might actually end up with 1,000 fewer homes in the area, and I'm not sure whether this is a wider issue that impacts other local authorities too, but what I'm really interested in is do we need to be thinking much more about creative ways to give new life into housing that's not currently attracting residents? Thanks. I'm aware of that specific decision within the context of the HRA Business Plan in North Lanarkshire. I think that most other local authorities have said that tower blocks are sustainable. They need investment, and there's a lot of investment going on over the years in cladding and other improvements, but they are very popular with tenants and residents, and there's high ownership in many of them through right to buy. In terms of other types of housing where local authorities are looking at the economic viability to bring them up to the SHQS Scottish housing quality standard, we're always very cautious about proposing demolition to elected members and local communities, but sometimes that's the only solution because they're just not viable over 30 years, but there are types of housing where, if you improve them, particularly older housing, older shared housing, you can actually make them viable. We've got to look at the existing stock and look at the investment requirements and look at the opportunities for extending their lifespan, so that's part of the solution to housing shortages in Scotland. Anybody else on that one? No? All right. Good. Okay, so thanks so much for that. So that concludes our questions on the housing to 2040, but before we finish, as I mentioned, we do have a few questions, and I know they're not necessarily relevant to all of you, on the cost of living, tenant protection Scotland Act 2020 regulations, so hopefully we can get through those quite quickly. Let's see how we get on. So I'll start. I'd be interested to hear, obviously, for those of you who this is relevant to, if you agree in the principle that the Scottish Government needs to use its powers to amend the rent adjudication system to smooth the transition away from the rent cap. Thank you, convener. At Shard Institute housing, we understand the case for introducing the amendments after an 18-month freeze for rent in the private rented sector, and there's also a risk that tenants could be subject to significant rent increases when they come in time. So we understand the principles. I think there's still a lot of concerns around the approach, though, while understanding the concern to look after tenants and even the process to get to this point is an incredibly short consultation period set out by the Scottish Government as I respond to the consultation. We had a matter of days, weeks, over the Christmas period, to respond to the proposal. Given the scale of the impact, it doesn't seem sufficient enough, given that we're in mid-Febru and the proposals will be enacted in April. It doesn't give us sufficient time to communicate to landlords and tenants on what the impact will be. The calculations are probably much more confusing than existing arrangements, understandably, but there's a band with a rent of 6 per cent that seems to be acceptable and then tapered off up that up to a cap. There's this complexity and that is confusing. I think that, for a minute, looking at the Scottish Government's business plan analysis of this, it seems like a very modest impact that they expect from the proposals. Only at a high level, only 600 cases are coming to rent service Scotland, which I would suggest that it seems incredibly modest, given the scale of the private rented sector in Scotland. Understandable intentions, but I think that there's a lot of questions around that, and I appreciate that we're only weeks away from this being enacted. We do have questions that we'll build on this, so John Blackwood. You can imagine we've got some comments on this particular issue, so hopefully we can contribute. I think that what's been really interesting about the discussion so far is that there's two key messages. One is that we need more housing in Scotland, but also landlords and investors need confidence, and that is more so true in the private rented sector. We've got landlords saying that we need confidence to be able to continue to operate our lettings businesses and provide valuable homes for people here in Scotland. The concern that they've had, and we have as an organisation, is that, once we welcome the measures in the sense of a transition away from the emergency measures, we were promised that emergency measures would only be short-term, that we would come out of that. That doesn't look likely now with the transitionary measures being proposed and put in place. Our concern largely is that the measures are so confusing. They're incredibly confusing for tenants and landlords. I don't know how either party is going to be able to understand what they need to do when it comes to increasing rents. From the research that we've been doing with our members, they are saying that already one in 10 properties are no longer financially viable in the private rented sector. That's dramatic. They are saying that the outgoings are far in way of any income that's actually coming in through rental income. They're really concerned about the viability of those businesses going forward. At the moment, we've got over 50 per cent of landlords saying that, within the next five years, they would expect to get out of the sector. That consumer confidence from landlords' perspective in the private rented sector has gone. We need to try to rebuild that and sustain that so that we've got a sustainable private rented sector for the future. Affordability is key. One thing that I want to emphasise is that we don't want rents to be unaffordable to tenants. Landlords don't want that either, because it means that, ultimately, they won't be able to pay their rent if that rent goes up out of control. We need to look at bespoke measures to be able to stabilise rents for the future and, at the same time, give that all-important confidence to those landlords and investors. We were reading earlier how the rent cap has already damaged investment prospects here in Scotland from institutional investors wanting to come into Scotland. The same applies for private individuals who, quite frankly, cannot afford to continue to be landlords in Scotland. We need to urgently look at that so that we are providing valuable housing for those who are in need. I have a concern that, really, nobody understands the measures. It's so complicated, and I think that we've got chaos coming the first of April. Thanks very much for that. Pam, you ought to come in with a very brief supplementary, please. No, convener, it's actually my question that fits in nicely in this one. Thank you very much, John, for, obviously, that response. You spoke about landlords needing confidence to keep letting in. Obviously, we spoke about today that there is a big issue right now with supply of housing, but, Maureen, you also mentioned earlier that people are opting out of being private landlords, so my question is about that, kind of private landlords, but also the rent cap. The Scottish Property Federation warned that the Scottish Government's rent cap has created affordability crisis, which we are obviously speaking about today. Rents in Scotland have reportedly increased more than 14 per cent despite the cap, and Scotland is the only part of the United Kingdom in which the number of properties sold by landlords has gone up. Last year, a report published by the Scottish Property Federation showed that rent controls and political uncertainty were impacting investors, which today, John, you have spoken a little bit about. Appetite to fund and deliver to build homes in Scotland, and the regulations are increasing uncertainty. My question is around. Is increasing invested appetite a more sustainable way to drive rents downwards in the long run, or do we have to, like you have said, re-look at what is coming out of the measures that are uncertain and the fact that, basically, looking at the measures, they are very unclear as well? As I said, the measures are very unclear, but, importantly, we need to look at the bigger picture. How can we get more housing? How can we increase housing-rented accommodation in Scotland? The private rented sector has a role to play in that, and I am keen for it to deliver on that, so how can we expand on that? We have to understand that the private rented sector is made up of a wide range of different investors. You are talking about institutional investors. The majority of private landlords in Scotland just own one or two properties. They are not business people, they are not investors, they are not banks or financial institutions, they are ordinary people like you or I who are finding that, through the cost of living crisis, their costs have gone up as well. They are saying that this is so unfair that other businesses in Scotland are able to increase their costs accordingly, but we are not. We cannot pass on our increase in costs to our customers, who are ultimately the tenants here. That is a real concern for landlords to say that it is not a level playing field, but equally they feel that the Government is not interested in them. They are saying that we think that the Government wants to get rid of us. That is fine, we can go and invest elsewhere, but where are tenants going to find that valuable housing? We already know that there is a lack of accommodation in the social housing sector, so where else are they going to go to find a rented home? That is the concern longer term. We all can sit back and say that the figures are showing us, we can see from our research probably last year in the region of 22,000 properties were lost to the private rented sector, one in ten are no longer financially viable. What does all of that mean? It means that over the next few years more and more landlords are going to sell, which is going to put more and more pressure on local authorities to be able to try and deliver through their homelessness services. John, you spoke about earlier on that in the next five years we see this sector really suffering, that we really need to do something. Obviously, Government wants to put these rent caps in, but with private landlords, like you said, there are people that own one or two properties, their mortgages have gone up. They are in a crisis as well in their own way, so we have to have that happy medium. What do you see the solution being here that, with the rent cap coming in? Where do you see the reform or solution? There is probably a form of solutions. Even going back to discussion earlier about bringing empty homes back into use, we have landlords who are saying actively that we would still invest in the private rented sector, but those are the fiscal issues that we have. It is from a taxation point of view that it is very difficult to continue to invest in the private rented sector. Additional dwelling supplements and all those different costs add on to what the landlord needs to pay out in order to deliver or invest in new accommodation. They are saying that it is no longer financially viable and that even new investment is not viable. Could we do something with those landlords who are prepared to provide affordable accommodation? Yes, I think that we could. I think that the Government could look at innovative solutions to be able to fix what we need as a short-term need of finding new accommodation within the next one to three to five years. That is part of the solution, but there is overall feeling from private landlords that the Government wants to get rid of them, that it does not want them to be operating in the sector at all, and that is evident in the legislation that is coming out from the Scottish Parliament as well as being led through policy by the Scottish Government. We need to address that and look at that. I have said for a long time to ministers what we need as the Scottish Government to say that this is our vision for the private rented sector in Scotland. This is how it should look. This is who should be operating within it and this is who it should serve. Those are the discussions that we need to have. For many, there will be difficult conversations to have. Equally for those individual landlords that have been invested, as I say, they might just have one or two properties in the sector, many of them will be looking to exit the sector for a number of reasons. How can we stop that property leaving the rented sector? That is what we should be looking at. We were talking earlier about local authorities having power to buy back some of those properties. That has been a problem for many landlords to sell to local authorities. They have been coming to us saying, I have a sitting tenant and I cannot afford to keep them any more because my outgoings are much in excess of the rental income. Therefore, I want to get rid of this investment. I want to no longer be a private landlord. They are thinking, I do not want to effect a tenant. I have a good tenant paying the rent. They are trying to go to the local authority and the local authority is saying that they will only buy it if the property is empty. That does not make sense. I am pleased with Scottish Labour and the Scottish Government that they are looking at ways to buy those properties with tenants in situ from private landlords. There are all the issues that we need to be looking at to be able to sustain a private rented sector for the future. We are not having those conversations. We need to be having them. You mentioned that more people are opting out of being private landlords. Do you have any insight into that? First of all, the private sector is vital to the function of local housing provision, local housing system. When people come forward, they need their housing options. That might look different for different people. A good, vibrant private rented sector is important. If some local authorities are taking steps—for example, I know that one local authority took steps to change that approach—to look at whether a private sector landlord really wanted to do that approach to the council. There are sticky bits around that. It is about working some of that through, but that was an open offer if people wanted to do that. That increased the approaches from people locally. Different local authorities are taking different approaches, but those are the good practice bits that we want to bring into our special interest group. I am aware that rent increases have caused a lot of pressures for people, and we need to get the right solution for that. I think that just going back to what Callum was saying, I am not sure where that particular proposal came from and the thinking behind it. It seems quite complex, so I am keen to understand more and look at how that can be explained a bit more. I also think that an automatic right to education is critical for tenants and whatever system we bring forward. However, we need a good system. We need to try and protect rents for people in a cost-11 crisis, but we also need to think about that whole process for folk and make it simpler for people. Before I bring in the next people, please succinct answers, because we really have gone over time considerably. We were hoping that that was going to be quick. Colleagues might have a look at the questions that you have before you that you want to ask and see if they have already been answered sufficiently. Jane, you wanted to come in. Just a point on this. This needs to be looked at in the bigger picture of where we are on housing supply. Ultimately, a piece of regulation like this is very confusing. It is obviously looking at the forthcoming housing bill to deliver its next iteration. With the draft budget and the forthcoming UK budget, housing bill needs to be revisited as I have said earlier. We can evidence that the regulation on the emergency regulation and the proposed rent cap will ultimately affect housing supply and Scotland being seen as a place to invest. I think that there are data points to evidence there. Thanks very much, convener. The issue about the numbers of landlord registrations was asked and answered in the chamber recently in the last few weeks. The figures that we had today suggest that the numbers actually had increased between August 2022 and November 2023. I know that contradicts what John was saying a moment ago, but once we see that the figures will know the full picture, that question was asked and answered in the chamber. Let's not forget, convener, that the reason for this is to try to prevent falling over the cliff edge into this unaffordability issue and to create more homelessness. The simple question is the 6 per cent and the 12 per cent figures that are being proposed. Are they fair and unreasonable to colleagues who have a view of the lower limit of 6 per cent and the upper limit of 12 per cent to colleagues who have a view on whether they are fair and inadequate? You know what I'm going to say. Regardless, we need to look out for many landlords that haven't increased their rents for a considerable number of years. That's the norm within the sector. Rightfully or wrongfully, that's the way they've been operating. When the cost of living crisis came along, of course, everybody was affected by that and they suddenly realised, actually, I don't have enough money coming in and rent anymore to pay these outgoings. Therefore, the option to increase rent wasn't an option anymore, they had to do it and of course it was frozen, then it was restricted to 3 per cent. Our research remembers when we asked them, well, what do you need it to be in today's money as a rent increase on your tenant's rent? They were saying that it's around about 18 per cent, in excess of 18 per cent, is what they feel they would need to get to break even. Of course, that includes regulation costs, tradesperson's costs and of course mortgage costs as well, too. Being able to go up to around about 12 per cent, if that is possible, of course, is welcome. It's far better than 3 per cent, but many landlords are saying that it's not enough and it's just, as I said earlier, the property is no longer financially viable, so therefore they will need to get rid of the property. For some people, that is too late. Any other views on the 6 per cent and 12 per cent lower-limit, upper-limit proposed to deliver all the taper mechanisms? I'm going to bring in Stephanie Hughes online. Thanks again, convener. We know rent service Scotland and the tribunal will consider comparable open market data before making decisions on the rent increases that can be made. My question is, how reliable is this data and allowing rent officers in the tribunal to make those informed decisions? Anybody got thoughts on that? I'm beginning to wonder if this is the right group of people to be asking these questions to. John Lennon. I made a comment and a point as well to that I hold a public appointment as a member of the housing and property chamber of the First Theatre Tribunal, so I don't think it would be appropriate for me to comment on findings of the tribunal. Certainly from the perspective of the Scottish Association of Landlords and Private Landlords, we believe that the rent service Scotland in the past has been able to assess the market. Indeed, it has even approached us to give you some additional information to go to our members and ask them for details of passing rents. That has helped, of course, to be able to give a good foundation for what rents are actually being charged in Scotland and, of course, what the market might well be to. We have worked in partnership with rent service Scotland in the past and hope to continue to do so in the future to make sure that that data and the intelligence that it has is as good as it possibly can be. We were expecting to have another person on today's round table who would have had another perspective on this as well, so, unfortunately, we are missing a bit of input on those questions, but I want to bring in Brian Whittle. I think that it is really just to follow on from my concern around the 6 to 12 per cent and the fact that it has already been mentioned that the proposed system is difficult, it is going to be problematic for understanding for tenants and landlords. It is my understanding that, although there was a rent cap of 3 per cent, when a tenant moved in, that caused a huge hike in rents. Therefore, if you go into adjudication and we are looking at comparable properties and we find that there has been a huge hike in rents—we know that that is an average of 14 per cent, even though it is not supposed to be 3 per cent—that would suggest to me that those who have changed hands have gone up 30, 40, something, 50 per cent. So, if that particular way in which we adjudicate our rent increase takes into account comparable properties, are we really setting a scene here that could be causing ourselves huge problems? Well, if I may come back on that, that has certainly always been the case. So, effectively, any rent assessment would look at what is the market rent less any deductions. They would look at scarcity and they would have done inspections of the property to see if this property is comparable with property B. I think that there are robust measures there to be able to assess that. However, you are right that, at the end of the day, that rent could go up quite considerably, because we know the norm is that landlords on an annual basis do not put up the rent. When it comes to the market, that is when they will look at what should be charging and then they would mark that rent up accordingly. That is when you would see the hikes and rents. That is not paid, of course, by existing tenants. That would be new tenants who would be choosing to opt to rent that property. So, yes, there is an issue there, but we also need to understand that the Scottish Government is looking at controls between rent levels as well, between tenancies, how that could work through and that would be up to our future housing bill to consider. Ultimately, we need to be thinking about, while landlords need to invest in properties too, so it is in those void periods that we would be expecting them to invest and upgrade those properties. If they do not see that the money is there through rent increases, we are going to see a further deterioration of the quality of accommodation, which is in nobody's interests. Unless there is anybody else who can be there, I am happy to look at that. Okay. Thanks very much, Brian. I am going to bring in Marie McNair. Thanks, convener. Cam, just following on from a previous comment of a picture upright, do you think that rent Scotland and the tribunal will have the capacity to deal with the challenge that's possibly going to come? I think that when we've found changes to the tribunal in the past, actually we've always underestimated the demand that's been placed on the tribunal and we can only look at his serrated project in the future, but you could anticipate. I think that looking at the Scottish Government's assessment, suggesting only 600 applications in total through the rent of Scotland and it seems modest, I would suggest, and the resourcing that will be required to have the inspections of the property and look at the marketplace to give that confidence around it will be considerable. I would imagine that there will be more. However, this is all conditional on tenants and landlords understanding the changes. I think that there's not that clarity, because we're running so close to April 1, there's not that clarity around the changes that are coming down the line, but I would anticipate that just intuitively that 600 seems incredibly modest and we will see more pressure on rent served Scotland. Finally, Mark Griffin. Thanks, convener. I've wrapped two questions up into one. The regulations only continue the rent control element and not the evictions element, so I'll just ask broadly around the table if there will be any impact on the level of evictions and homelessness as a result of that. Secondly, more substantive, just to ask about people's expectations and ambitions for the housing bill when it comes to rent controls, what do people hope to see when the Government proposes a long-term approach to rent controls going forward? In the first part, I have not answered the second part. In terms of most local authorities are making contingency arrangements for increased homeless applications from the private rented sector, as well as approaches from landlords wanting to sell property, so that's happening just now. We are anticipating an additional pressure after April from tenants leaving either voluntary or involuntary from the private rented sector and that will put extra strain on homelessness services. On the second point, we have fundamental concerns around the rent controls, but I'll put a partner on one side for a minute. If we have a system that comes in place in Scotland, the heart of it, we need data, we need evidence around what genuine rents are and we don't have that, and that will require some time to build up. We need local flexibility and local control. We need decision makers at local authority level to determine what that appropriate rent level is rather than a national determination. That's what we're going to have through this system. We're going to have a national up to 6 per cent okay and flexibility potentially up to 12 per cent. That doesn't reflect the nuances of the housing market across Scotland where we have spikes and bits that are a little bit calmer. If we get to a point that we have permanent rent controls through the normal legislative process, then local determination is absolutely crucial. I think that rent data is crucial for us to make any determination on what we do with future policy with regards to rent control. I feel that it's very strange that we're trying to find a solution here without fully understanding the problem. Let's understand what rents are being charged, where there are issues and let's look at implementing local measures to be able to deal with those issues before we think of national legislation, which might not be warranted at the end of the day. Let's look at the problem, let's look at what rents are being charged first before making decisions that will have long-term implications for the housing sector in general in Scotland. Thank you very much. I think that this has been a really constructive morning and thanks for for letting us ask those questions on the regulations there. Thanks for joining us, it's been really helpful to get your sense of the housing to 2040 and a kind of understanding of what's needed to deliver it. We previously agreed to take the next three items in private so that was the last public item on our agenda for today and now close the public part of the meeting.