I welcome everybody to the Equal Opportunities Committee. It's the 20th meeting of 2015. Can I ask you to set any electronic devices into flight mode or switch off please? Apologies have been received from Drew Smith. At agenda item 1, we have an evidence session with the Scottish Housing Regulator on its new report, Gypsy Travellers in Scotland, a thematic inquiry. We'll start the meeting with some introductions at the table. We have our clerkin and research team, official reporters and broadcasting services, and around the room we are also supported by the security office. Welcome to the Observer in the Public Gallery. My name is Margaret McCullough, and I am the committee's convener. I now invite members and the witnesses to introduce themselves in turn, starting here on my right. Can I also ask the witnesses whether they would like to make a brief opening statement at the same time place? Thank you, convener. Good morning, everyone. This is Andrew Wight, MSP for Glasgow, Kelvin. Good morning. Christian Allard, MSP for the North East. Good morning. Annabelle Goldie, MSP for the West of Scotland. I'm back. Good morning, John Finnie, MSP Highlands and Islands. John Mason, MSP for Glasgow, Shetleston. Kathleen McInulty, assistant director, Scottish Housing Regulator. Christine McLeod, director of regulation, Scottish Housing Regulator. Good morning. John Jenkins, regulation manager. Thank you very much for coming along this morning to give us some information about your report. We'll start now with John Mason, who's got a few questions to ask. Oh sorry, do you want to give an update? Yes, yes. Thank you very much, convener, for the invitation to give evidence to the committee about our thematic inquiry into gypsy travellers in Scotland. Our sole objective as the Scottish Housing Regulator is to safeguard and promote the interests of tenants and others who use social landlord's housing services. This is the Scottish Housing Regulator's first thematic inquiry into gypsy travellers in Scotland. We published this major report earlier this month and presented our findings and recommendations at a meeting of the Traveller Site Managers Association at the official Gypsy Traveller Site at Bridgend in Stirling. Our report on Gypsy Travellers in Scotland looked at social landlords' management and maintenance at their official sites and how landlords are applying the Scottish Government's Scottish social housing charter. We assessed the performance of 20 social landlords in Scotland who provide 29 official sites for gypsy travellers. We spoke directly to gypsy travellers to hear about their experiences, as well as carrying out survey work with social landlords and analysing national performance information. We also considered evidence from other sources such as this committee's own inquiry into where gypsy travellers live. We recognised that gypsy travellers are hard to reach, so we were delighted that 49 gypsy travellers participated in our thematic inquiry across five official sites. That gave us important, really valuable access to the individual experiences of gypsy travellers using social landlord services. We found that social landlords didn't always apply relevant charter standards to their gypsy traveller services and sites. Gypsy travellers in Scotland are not always receiving the standard of service that they should from their social landlord. We also found that some landlords are listening to gypsy travellers and are considering their particular needs. Our report also gives examples of positive practice that landlords told us about. We included recommendations for social landlords that are aimed at improving the quality and consistency of services provided to gypsy traveller site residents across the country. Principally, we recommended that social landlords apply all relevant charter standards and outcomes to residents of official gypsy traveller sites. We recognised that Scottish Government has recently published helpful guidance setting out new minimum standards for official sites and setting out core rights and responsibilities. We think that those new site standards and responsibilities have the potential to make a real difference in improving services across Scotland. We call for all social landlords with official sites to act on our recommendations and to give an equal standard of service to gypsy travellers and social housing tenants. We will provide feedback about our findings and recommendations to the gypsy travellers who took part in our inquiry and we intend to publish a version of our findings and recommendations for gypsy travellers and expect landlords to promote that at their sites. We also want to ask gypsy travellers about how we can best promote that amongst their community. We will use the findings of our inquiry to determine whether there is a need for us to engage further with any individual social landlords specifically relating to the charter standards and services provided at their sites. We will also be keen to work with others and to contribute to their role in promoting implementation of the new standards. Having completed this thematic inquiry, we now have an evidence base against which to measure future performance. We are going to build on this next year through assessing landlords, annual returns on the charter and we will be looking for evidence of improvement. We look forward to hearing some of your answers for the questions that we will be asking just now, so we will pass on now again to John Mason. That was very interesting and I appreciated reading the report. I think that that is very encouraging. You said that that was the first time that the Scottish Housing Regulator has done such a report. Do you know if any of your predecessors, such as Scottish Homes, or any of those groups, have ever really studied this? The predecessor bodies did have a remit in relation to gypsy travellers and did do previously what were called thematic inspections at that time, based on the standards and the legislation that applied at that time. You said that you had engaged and gave us a bit of information about that. I would be interested to hear a little bit more about that. Did you try to get gypsy traveller representatives from across the spectrum or did you find some more willing to be involved in others? I think that it has been very encouraging that we have had people engaged in the committee. At the same time, we have sometimes felt people saying, well, we have spoken to you a lot before and nothing has happened, so what should we speak to you again? I would be interested in your experiences along those lines. Yes, our engagement with gypsy travellers in this inquiry was primarily through our national panel of tenants and service users, which is something that we established in 2013 as an important way for us to communicate with tenants and other service users. We used the national panel primarily to gauge priorities and individual experiences and, in this way, to shape our regulatory focus. We were delighted that 48 gypsy travellers took part in this particular inquiry, and that was across five official sites in Scotland. That gave us a good range of views and information about the direct experiences of the services that they are receiving from their landlords. Can you explain what you mean by the word panel? When I think panel, I think five people sitting there, but obviously it is not that. Is it a big pool that you select people out of? The national panel is independently run by Craigforth, a social research organisation. It has in total 430 members, some of which are gypsy travellers. It is a panel that is open to anyone who is a tenant of social housing or who uses the services of a social landlord in Scotland. It was specifically the gypsy traveller folk who were commenting on that. That is correct. Does the charter apply right across the board? I seem to be picking up that some of the housing associations might not have realised that it applies to gypsy travellers just as much or gypsy traveller sites, just as much as ordinary housing. Does it apply in fact just as much? It does. The purpose of the charter is to improve the quality of services that social landlords provide by setting out standards and outcomes that social landlords have to achieve and that tenants know what their social landlord is required to provide to them. There are 16 outcomes and standards. The 16th standard applies only to landlords who manage sites for gypsy travellers. That states that the sites should be well managed and maintained. However, there are a number of other charter standards and outcomes that apply to tenants and service users. They are explicit and say that there are some of the standards that only apply to tenants. Again, they will say specifically that they apply to tenants, others apply to tenants and service users. Those relate to equalities, communication, participation, value for money and rents. There are a range of charter standards that apply equally to service users and tenants. We think that the charter, as it is set out, is clear. It does specifically say that there are tenants and service users and there are tenants and customers with regard to various standards. We do not think that a landlord would not understand or be clear about where there is a requirement on them. It seems quite clear. What would happen if a landlord was a good landlord for the majority of their tenants but had forgotten about the gypsy travellers at the side? When you come to mark that or whatever you do to regulate housing associations, social landlords, would you pick that up? You would not just look at the majority and look at the whole thing? I mean, in terms of this thematic inquiry, the landlords that we looked at, we were looking specifically— Yes, I was thinking more on your annual assessments and things. Yes. The information that we collect every year that annual returns from former social landlords relate very specifically to the charter. It is the annual return on the charter. Our indicators, the statistical and performance information that we asked for, link directly and are drawn from the charter standards themselves. Yes, but my fear there was that a landlord appeared to be doing quite well because they were doing well for 95 per cent of their tenants, but they would get lost in the statistics, the fact that they were not doing very well for the bottom 5 per cent, the gypsy travellers. When we look at the annual returns on the charter, we are looking for where we are saying compliance with charter indicators and where there is not compliance, where some landlords are performing less well and are in a bottom quartile. There are 160 out of 190 landlords, so we do very specifically pick up on each indicator where each landlord sits in terms of comparison with other landlords. However, the thematic inquiry is one of the best tools that we have available to look at in depth at how a particular aspect of the charter is being addressed and has been implemented by social landlords. Last year, we carried out our first thematic inquiry into housing options. That was an incredibly important way for us to look at how that aspect of the charter has been delivered in practice. That is the approach that we took with the thematic inquiry.  Our feeling is that it is best that it is patchy across the country and that some could improve. There is absolutely room for improvement. I think that the extent of our recommendations makes it clear that there is considerable room for improvement. I mentioned that there were aspects of positive practice that we saw, so it is not a completely negative picture. In fact, in your report, it is all positive examples. There is no negative example. You can take from our findings and recommendations those are the areas where we are saying that practice needs to be considerably improved. Our recommendations are quite strong and directive around that. That is where we see that there is room for improvement. We think that the positive practice examples are useful because they provide some balance, but it is not a completely negative picture. They share approaches that particular landlords are taking, which others can consider and see whether they can apply that in terms of their own services and improve their practice through that. I think that the report is hugely encouraging and I was very struck with your 16 recommendations. The charter is advisory and persuasive.  Do you think that the authority of the housing regulator is enough to bring social landlords into line if there is no compliance in due course with your recommendations? We have statutory powers that we can use to compel action if that is required. Our favourite approach in the first instance is to work with landlords to understand where the gaps are between what we expect, what the charter expects and what is happening in practice, and to be assured by them that they understand and have plans in place to improve their performance. If a landlord is demonstrating to us that it is either unable or unwilling to take action to improve, we would feel that it is necessary to use our powers. What we have here is a powerful mechanism for achieving change because we have the charter, the standards and the Scottish Government's new minimum standards. We have the evidence from our thematic inquiry and the recommendations. We now have a strong evidence base to push for improvement and to require that. This is a system of muscle? It is a way of achieving. I have been a catalyst for change and improvement. Can I come in on that? The fact that you have gathered that information and identified action points that councils and social landlords have got to implement, is that you are aware of those action points that they have got to do? If you identify the certain things that they are not adhering to, they would then put that into an action point. They have to address that on communication with yourself, is that correct? They know where they are falling down and not meeting the standards. Is that correct? Yes, I will let you know. On that, if they are aware of that, do you follow that up at a later date to make sure that they are implementing those action points and bringing it up to the required standard? It is certainly one of the main mechanisms for us to achieve that improvement in standards by making the individual landlords aware of the shortcomings that we have found. The report deliberately does not do that. It does not attempt to name and chain, but certainly a key mechanism for improvement will be us speaking to the individual landlords and to have that conversation and point out where that gap exists. We will be phoning or contacting all of the 20 social landlords that are covered by the inquiry to give them individual, tailored, specific feedback around our findings. What we are hoping and what we will certainly be asking them to do is to ensure that, in fact, improvement action is then put in place to address the weaknesses that have been identified. We carry out an annual risk assessment across all of the regulated bodies that we have, and that will be something that will feature in the annual risk assessment as we go forward in future years. That is the mechanism to drive the improvement process. On one of the issues that I was going to raise, I have mentioned the fact that you have identified the social landlords who are not performing properly under the social charter, but there is a huge amount—in your report, I think that it is a paragraph 9—about how unaware some of the social landlords are of the charter. How do we get about to improve the fact—I see some issues that you have put in your report and thank you very much for that—but how do we make them make sure that they are aware and they pass that information on to their tenants? We are very keen—when we spoke to our board—to try and ensure that the findings of the report were disseminated down to service users themselves. We certainly see service users themselves, the Gypsy Traveller community, as being a driver for change here if they are given the right information. One of the things that we are very keen to do is to get that message and the recommendations contained in our report to make the community aware of those recommendations to give them the tools to hold their landlords to account. We intend to speak to the representatives of the Gypsy Traveller community to find out the best mechanisms, as opposed to us coming up with our own ideas, to speak directly to the community themselves and to find out what mechanisms would be best to disseminate the recommendations, to allow them to empower them to hold their landlords to account. Thank you. Is that the small report that you are talking about, which will be sent out rather than the full report? In terms of conversations with people, that is one of the things that has come forward. Its point was producing a major piece of work in expecting every Gypsy Traveller in Scotland to read the report. One of the things that we have talked about is producing a plain English one-page version that would hit the key points in terms of the recommendations and what we would expect to see happening in terms of processes there. Certainly that is one of the mechanisms that we are talking about. We are also speaking to the Association of Site Managers. The Gypsy Traveller community has highlighted to us the important role that local staff play in determining exactly their local circumstances. We feel that those are important players that we need to engage with. It is about that communication, about making sure that the site managers are also aware of the recommendations in our report. Just one small follow-up. I am pleased that you are going to the grassroots and the people who are living there rather than from the top down and bottom up. If they feel that they are not being said properly by their site managers or the owners of the site social landlords, would they complain straight to you? Obviously, if you are living on the sites, it is difficult to complain about somebody who is running the sites. How would that work that no-one gets a knockback in that respect? It is very interesting. Compliance was one of the areas that we specifically looked at the whole issue of complaints processes. It is certainly one of the areas where we found a significant variation in approach across the social landlords that we spoke to. Some landlords were very active in promoting their complaints processes and making sure that travellers were aware of the process to fall in terms of a corporate complaints process, but also made them aware of the role of the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman. That, I must admit, was actually in rare occasions that we see this happening. What we found at the other end of the spectrum was perhaps landlords just relying on their details on their website for a service user to go to their website to discover how to make a complaint. There was quite a wide variation. We have put in a number of recommendations about the need for that to be much more of a need in playing field in terms of people being made aware of their rights. Again, it is about empowering the community themselves to take action because they are the ones who are directly experiencing the services and the conditions on the sites. It was about trying to make sure that they were made aware of the routes available to them in the event that they were not happy with their response to a complaint. One thing I would say is that the Gypsy travellers themselves often saw the local site staff as the key point of contact for their landlord. What tended to happen was that an awful lot of complaints were directed to the site managers or to the local staff. That was the mechanism that tended to be used because that was the main focus in terms of their contact with their landlord and the landlord services. Again, it goes back to quite a key pivotal role if we can ensure that that particular mechanism is the first port of call and that complaints are dealt with satisfactorily. However, people need to be aware of the routes that they can follow in the event that they are dissatisfied with the response to the matter that they have raised. On the report, you are thinking about giving back to the community. Do you think that you have a little space for comments for feedback just to see how the Gypsy travellers may have some positive observation to make about your report? That is probably one of the benefits of having representatives of the Gypsy travel community within our national panel of tenants and service users. It means that we can go back to them or at any point in the future. Just now, we carried out an annual comprehensive survey with all members of the national panel, but we also supplemented that with specific areas that we might want to question representatives further about. In fact, we also use focus groups, I believe, to sit down with members from the national panel from across Scotland to pull them together, to have a conversation with them, to get more depth to our understanding rather than issuing a questionnaire or asking particular questions through a survey. It gives us the opportunity to sit down and do that with the Gypsy travellers. I am hoping that that is exactly what we will be doing in the future, using the mechanisms of the contacts through the national panel to speak directly to service users to ensure that we know what the views are of the people who are receiving the services. I was interested in a couple of the indicators that you identified. One was the pitch-rent variations, and one of my colleagues will deal with that, but the other was satisfaction with the landlord's management of the site. Encouragingly, that seems to improve between 2013-14 and 2014-15, but I was interested in what are the factors that affect site residents' perceptions in terms of satisfaction. I wonder if you could shed a little more light on that. Certainly when the charter was initially brought into being, we commissioned some research by independent consultants to actually go out and speak to Gypsy travellers and to actually get a better understanding of what the priorities were for that particular group of service users. We appreciated that the services and the needs of Gypsy travellers could not be seen as being the same services and needs of its homeless people as tenants of social landlords. We specifically commissioned a piece of work to look at that. Back in the summer of 2012, Gypsy travellers came back to us with a series of findings, and certainly some of those were not unsurprising and possibly predictable. Some of that was around things like being treated fairly and being treated with respect. Gypsy travellers were telling us that that was actually quite important in terms of their relationships with their landlords, but the main priority at the end of the day was around having a say in landlords' decision-making processes and having communication with their landlord whereby they could present their views and have those views taken on board. It is very similar to a normal tenancy, I would suggest. Most social tenants would give you something very similar, but when we have spoken to Gypsy travellers through the inquiry, what we have found is that very few of the Gypsy travellers could actually give us instances where their landlord had directly asked for their opinion. That is one of the areas that, again, we have put in a number of recommendations around that area simply because we realise just how key that area is in terms of the satisfaction of the site users. I think that there are another couple of areas that were also highlighted, things like speed of response, which again is very similar to a social tenant at the end of the day. If you report a repair, you want to know that, in fact, that is going to be dealt with in a speedy fashion. The other thing was just about value for money. That was actually very important to a specific group of Gypsy travellers, but it was a very high priority for them. It was around the value for money that their rent represented in terms of the services and the standards on the sites that they were occupying. We know that the Scottish Government's minimum standards for site residents will be in place by June 2018, and you have noted that 13 social landlords plan to make improvements over the next two years. You have covered this slightly already in evidence, but I just want to be clear. It seems to me that that is an area in which communication between landlord and site residents is very important. In our previous inquiry, which confirms what you found, we found that the natural point of contact was probably the site manager. That was the person on the spot, but that person may have limited authority or limited knowledge. Have you any ideas about how we can improve communication between the landlord and the site residents? The manager may be an essential conduit in that, but is there a need to broaden out that dialogue? Obviously, the methods that are being used for communication vary across the different landlords concerned. Some are more effective than others, certainly when we speak to Gypsy travellers. One of the things that we were keen to do was not to be prescriptive in the report to say that this is the silver bullet, this is how you communicate, or this is how you improve communications. What we chose to do at the end of the day was to say to, in the recommendations, to say to the landlords concerned, to speak to your Gypsy travellers and find out from them what form of communication would be the best form of communication in that circumstance. I think that that is probably the more effective solution to have a method of communication, which actually flows from that conversation between the landlord and the local representatives. Anything that is imposed as a standard or in some way a prescriptive approach, I do not think that that would work simply because of the variety of landlords and the variety of sizes of sites and the like that actually exist there. I think that that is very helpful. You also detailed that some social landlords were able to identify complaints relating to their sites but others were not. I was quite surprised to find that. I just wanted to have your comments on that. Is there something that can be done to encourage better complaints recording? Certainly, we were surprised as well. Possibly we were not surprised because we included that as a question in our survey was, can you tell us how many complaints you received from Gypsy travellers in the last 12 months? Some landlords were able to respond positively in terms of providing us with numbers. Others ticked a box saying that we could not supply that information. When we followed up the survey responses with telephone conversations with the landlords concerned to try to get a better understanding as to why that was happening, it would appear that Gypsy travellers in some landlords are not seen as a specific group of service users. The complaints from Gypsy travellers go into a pot of other complaints but there is no tagging or any systematic process to highlight those so that they can be extracted. What it means is, in effect, that those complaints cannot then be used as a form of evidence to drive forward change and improvement simply because they are not being separated and isolated and brought into an improvement process. That was one of the points that we have put in the recommendations that landlords need to do more, not simply with complaints from Gypsy travellers but with feedback to use feedback that they get from Gypsy travellers so that they can drive change and drive improvement in dialogue with their service users on the sites. Paragraph 68 of the report says that, although some landlords provide site residents with comprehensive site handbooks, including details of their main duties of local staff and others, others told us that they covered the agreement at the sign-up or posted information on to the site. In contrast, a number of landlords told us that they have decided not to make this information available to landlords. Gypsy travellers spoke to and said that they devalued a name contact for the landlord. Is this not a mandatory requirement when anybody, regardless of who you are, actually sign a lease, a tenancy that this information is actually provided? I do not think that it is a mandatory requirement. The site manager, the site staff, the site personnel whatever title they give the local site manager is a key to the success or the perception of the Gypsy travellers in terms of their satisfaction. They play a key role and it was certainly something that we were keen to explore was whether, in fact, landlords actually made tenants of the residents on the site aware of the duties of the managers. Where we found this previously was in relation to caretakers and multi-story blocks, for example. Some landlords actually have on the notice board as you walk in a picture of the caretaker for the block with a list of his main duties. Here is what he actually does and here is where you can contact him. That was the type of thing probably that we had in mind when we were actually pulling together the survey. Some landlords obviously did this and were quite happy to publicise to the service users what the local staff's responsibilities were. Others we found were more reticent to actually do that and came up with a number of reasons as to why they did not want to do that. From a service user perspective, putting myself in the shoes of the service users, I would probably prefer to see that. Certainly, we raised that with the association of site managers and spoke to them about it. They thought that it would be useful. They did not appreciate the different practices that existed until they raised it in the report. However, it was something that they thought would be useful in terms of making service users aware of what they did and what they did not do and what they were responsible for and what they were not responsible for. However, as far as I am aware, that is not normally covered in terms of the lease that they actually sign. There is not something in the air that specifically says, and here is what the local site manager's responsibility is for. So the reasons for not doing it, was it justified or has it been put into an action point for you to follow up at a later date? There were a variety of reasons, given some were less obvious than others, if I can put it that way. However, it is an action plan for them to follow up. Certainly, it is something that we have said is that Gypsy Travers have told us that the importance of that whole, of that local contact, the local named contact, is really very important to them and we have highlighted that in the report that this is what one word should be doing. Thank you very much. It is okay, John. John covered the point that we made it clear in the report that landlords and one of our recommendations is that landlords should provide a named contact and that is something that we can measure in the future. A small piece when you were giving your evidence earlier, John, to Annabelle, I think it was, in regard to complaints. You mentioned the various of complaints. It was a value for money for services that they were not receiving. That was one of the highest. Obviously, by the nature of the name of Gypsy Travers communities, is that because of travelling round sites, some sites have much better amenities than others? If you have put in your report, it is Lanarkshire Council, provides an amenity block where they can provide health services, dental services. How great is the difference between the various sites? Is that an issue that is raised obviously during the complaints procedure? It has not come through the complaints processes, but certainly we were very keen to investigate the services that were being provided, simply because we could see the variety of rents. The rents actually varied quite dramatically between £48 and £80. We were keen to explore whether, in fact, this was a reflection of additional services that were being provided by the landlords. That was the reason why there was such a variety in the rents. We did not find any correlation at all between high rents and lots of services. That did not exist. The variety of services varied across the piece. You were just as likely to receive an awful lot of services at a low rent, as opposed to a higher rent. There was not a direct correlation that we thought might exist there. However, as far as I am aware, that has not been raised through complaints, the complaints that were coming in most real related to the condition of the site itself, as opposed to the additional services that were being offered on site. In relation to additional services, there are real discrepancies in areas that provide mental health services such as children's playgroups, etc. Is that something that I know is guidelines, but as Christina Reddy said, it is statutory. Is it something that we would be looking at to make it statutory that it provides a community centre, a community where it can provide health services or whatever, bearing in mind your report? It is very good, but how would you work that? I think it's very difficult if you remember the variation in the sizes of the sites concerned. Some sites consist only of four pitches, six pitches, and I think a number of you have actually visited the sites. Those vary through to maybe up to 30 pitches, some of the bigger sites. The economics of actually delivering services under that kind of context is very difficult, and certainly I would be cautious about trying to impose a standard across the Gypsy Traveller sites, given the huge variation in size and also geographic spread as well. Thank you. So an element of personal preference by some of the Gypsy Travellers about site choice? Yes, absolutely. The consumers at the end of the day are sometimes worst. They are consumers, they are customers, so they do want to exercise choice like everybody else does. So really part of your role is to raise awareness to the social landlords that Gypsy Travellers are their customers and they have to provide a service? One of the recommendations, I think, talks about our wish to see them landlords identifying the needs and actually responding to the needs of this particular group in this community. Kathleen, do you want to come in? To add to that, the charter states the outcomes and the standards that landlords achieve. It does not tell them how to do that, and that is a clear message in there. One of our recommendations is that landlords should engage with Gypsy Travellers on their sites to find out what those needs are and to deliver the services that meet the needs of users of their sites. Yes, thank you convener. Good morning panel. Come this stage of our speaking, many of the questions that I plan to ask have been asked, so I will vary them slightly. First of all, thank you for your work and the format. I think that it is tremendously helpful in the scheme of things that we have been doing, addressing Gypsy Traveller issues over a number of years now. That is an extremely helpful contribution and the format that you have adopted is important to have name and shame at the end of an escalation of which you first and foremost deal with positive practice, so I like that approach. It is with regard to that that I would like to ask you, and it has been touched on earlier, but it is about how landlords would ask Gypsy Travellers specifically about their services. It gives me an opportunity to name-check an organisation in my area, which is the Ergyll community housing association ACAS, as it is more commonly known. Their approach is that they have, and you mentioned this in your report, their Gypsy Traveller strategy. Although we know that it does not constitute a Scottish secure tenancy, I think that they are to be commended for providing as your report describes it, the quality of service and that right to repair and rent consultations is a contractual right. It is important to say that that phrase probably means absolutely next to nothing to most of the residents who want to know that they have a right to repair and want to be spoken to. How do we encourage that best practice and how do you share with the other providers that there is nothing threatening about having that level of rights afforded, as you describe them with customers? Social landlords now have the clarity that the charter standards apply to Gypsy Traveller service users. Direction now from the Scottish Government around minimum site standards and responsibilities makes clear what they should be doing and what they should be talking to their residents about. We will expect landlords to have regard to our recommendations and consider how they apply them in their own organisations to improve services and to talk to Gypsy Traveller services about the best way for them to do that. That is twice what you have used in the term talk, and that is encouraging. It is not a sweeping generalisation that there are high levels of illiteracy among the older Gypsy Traveller population. It is to do with the education that is applied at their time, so sending a detailed document is a waste of time. Do you encourage that one-to-one engagement? Gypsy Travellers told us about the importance to them that they were asked for their views and that they got feedback on what happened and what the outcome of that process was. We heard through the inquiry from Gypsy Travellers about some things that worked for them. Those included some simple things such as a suggestion box on the site, even verbal feedback from local staff. One example given was the use of text messaging to ask questions or to pass on information to them. There are a number of ways in which good communication engagement can be achieved. As John Lennon has already highlighted, the important thing that we regard is that landlords ask Gypsy Travellers to use their sites what will work for them. Although a significant proportion of the residents on those sites are pretty stable there most of the time, the lifestyle is one of movement, how do people moving from one local authority area to another know and gain access to sites? I must admit that this was not something that we had addressed but it was something that actually came up when we were talking to the site managers. They themselves had identified the fact that although there were a travelling community each local authority tended to work in a silo in terms of, here is our site and this is where we are and here is our phone number and here is how we allocate pictures. It has never been pulled together in one document and the site managers association for the first time have pulled together a guide and published through their own resources a guide for Gypsy Travellers, which contains details of all the official sites in Scotland in one document along with all the contact details. It is not a huge piece of work but something to be applauded in terms of that they identified a need there and through their own limited means had actually responded to that need and produced a brochure that they can now circulate to Travellers which contains all this information in a useful succinct place as opposed to having to search through different websites and the like to get this information. They are to be commended for that and I am sure that we will gain possession of that because that is an important because you use the term customers, of course Gypsy Travellers are customers but what makes them unique is the lifestyle that many would choose and that is a recognition by the site providers of that so that is very helpful. Can I touch on the issue of rent again there please because there is great variation and I wonder if it is not entirely fair to make a comparison with bricks and mortar houses necessarily but is there any sort of formula that would apply to bricks and mortar that in any way would be applicable? I mean the basic things all be pitched to put your trailer on and then there might be additions on top of that. Is there a formula or is there anything that could this is? At present there isn't a formula in relation to rents for social houses. If you look at all the social landlords across Scotland there is no common test that is used just now or formula which actually arrives at an affordable rent for a particular house in a particular location. If it is not possible in terms of the bricks and mortar it is difficult to see a methodology that might work in relation to the Gypsy Traveller pitches. I think that what is clear from our conversations with service users is just how important contextually for their thoughts about value for money they immediately draw comparisons to the rents of social rented houses in that particular area and that was one of the things that we were keen to understand was value for money tends to be quite a term that can be used quite loosely and different definitions are put on it by different people but Gypsy Travellers were quite clear that that was one of the key things in terms of a judgment about value for money whether a pitch rent whether it be 40 pound or 80 pound what they drew comparisons with where the local social rented accommodation. And again was there any link that you found there between that wide variation would that apply to the housing in each of those respective areas? Certainly obviously there are variations in rent if you go to Glasgow there are 60 one-wars social rented one-wars they all have different rents for their properties it's the same bricks and mortar but the services and things are slightly different it's the same with Gypsy Traveller sites as I've said you have community facilities on some you have different arrangements for services being provided so it's very difficult to actually to say that these two sites you could compare and say it's equal in terms of comparing the rents simply because the services the locations of the sites and the like are totally different so it's the same with bricks and mortar and one-wars it's very difficult to be formulaic in terms of coming up with something which actually says here is what's important. Yeah that might be an expectation of a customer. Pitch rents with social housing is part of this inquiry but we did ask Gypsy Travellers what information they received from their landlord about their rents and what they were paying for essentially and we did ask landlords also how they approached setting their rents and a number of those policies made references to affordability however in some instances we didn't find any evidence of how landlords tested proposed pitch rents against that particular criteria and we also asked landlords how they consulted with Gypsy Travellers around proposed increases to pitch rents and while some landlords did a number of landlords confirmed that they didn't seek the views of Gypsy Travellers in relation to the rents that they were setting and that's a recommendation that we've made again in the report that it's really important that landlords have that dialogue with their residents on their sites and to understand what is affordable for them and to help them to understand what their money is being used for. Would you say there's a greater need for transparency around price setting? It's certainly a priority for Gypsy Travellers that they understand what their money is and in that respect it's important that landlords make that information available to them. I was just going to add just in terms of the question and answer there around a formula for rents although there isn't a formula for landlords setting the rents for their, you know, for the bricks mortar for their houses many landlords do have a methodology for structuring their rents you know whether it's based on size, location, you know the amenities that are provided, the type of heating and so on and what we're looking for and didn't find and we think is needed is a similar sort of structuring and building up of the elements of pitch rents so that there is that increased transparency for Gypsy Travellers moving from site to site knowing what they're paying, what it's for, how it's been constructed and put together and that would certainly help we think in understanding where, how a rent, a pitch rent is constructed. Okay, thank you very much, very helpful. Thank you. Thank you, John. Some landlords, you've probably answered some of this but I'd like to sort of get you to pull it together for me if you don't mind. Some landlords have published service standards for their Gypsy Traveller sites, although only a few develop these in consultation with local site residents and a small number of landlords routinely measure performance against their standards and report the results to site residents. So my question is what can be done to improve the way landlords measure performance against their standards and report the results to site residents? In terms of starting that process, it's important that the residents of Gypsy Traveller sites actually understand what service standards are actually about. What we found was in conversation with Gypsy Travellers, many of them didn't have a wide appreciation of the importance of site standards in terms of things like responsiveness times, for example, inspections, routine inspections of the sites. That type of thing didn't feature highly when we were actually speaking to Gypsy Travellers and it wasn't until we started to explore it with landlords that we found that, in fact, an awful lot of landlords didn't actually have these standards in place, which was probably why the service users weren't quite as aware of them as we thought they would be. The important thing with service standards is that they're actually developed in conjunction with the service users so that, in fact, there's that engagement process that goes back to our point about talking. We need the landlords and the local residents to actually talk, to come up with something in terms of a standard that is acceptable to both parties. Once that standard is in place, we would then expect to see that as a public standard that people are aware of, customers are aware of on the site, and that they can then see performance, the landlord can measure his performance, report his performance and the service users themselves can then hold that landlord to account in terms of what your performance is like. You said that you were going to do X, but you failed to do that. How are you going to improve the situation to actually raise that service, the standard of that service that's being delivered? The landlords that you spoke to that weren't aware of actually asking these questions and putting this in place, were they aware that those standards had to apply to people living in brick and mortar houses? Did they apply the waiting times for doing repairs, etc? Were they aware that, if you live in a house, the waiting time was for five days or 24 hours? What was their excuse then for not applying those standards if they implemented those standards to folk living in houses? What was their excuse for not doing it to gypsy travellers? To be quite honest, it's not something that we explored with them. The fact that they had said that they didn't have a repairs target, for example, we asked that question in the survey. We then contacted them and spoke to them to confirm that fact. They did have targets for their housing accommodation, but they didn't have targets in relation to repairs for their gypsy traveller site. We left it at that, to be quite honest with you. It wasn't something that we explored in terms of why, at the end of the day, they weren't having in place those targets that we expected to see. Would that not have made the report a lot more powerful, then, if you'd had chance to ask those questions and put it in the report? It's difficult to do that over a phone situation. This was done by phone, the follow-ups to the survey. It's much more easy to do that in a face-to-face situation, where you have the ability to speak to managers. Would the service agreements and information regarding that not be on their websites? In relation to the houses, you will find it on their website. In relation to the gypsy travellers, there is very little information contained on one-word websites in relation to gypsy travellers. That was what part of our evidence gathering was that we actually did a trawl of all 21-word websites, just using standard search titles of gypsies, gypsy travellers, whatever, to see what that actually pulled forward. In relation to websites, the one-word website is very little there around gypsy travellers, targets, repairs and all that. I think that Christine Cafflay wants to come in. Just to add in relation to this, we are quite clear that this is something that landlords should be doing. The reason that we didn't explore any further, the reasons why landlords weren't applying repairs targets or other targets when they should, is that whatever the reason is, it's not good enough. The recommendation is quite clear that you need to be doing this, you need to be providing information about when you will be delivering a repair or some other service, you need to set timescales and make it clear when you will be carrying out a repair. Understanding the reasons why they're not doing that wouldn't have been a useful exercise for us. I hope that we've achieved with this inquiry that we have now made it clear to landlord that those charter standards and outcomes apply to gypsy travellers as much as they do to tenants of social housing. Thank you very much for answering that question. Christine Cafflay, I want to go back and try to close that conversation down on the price of the pitches for travellers sites. I see on 40 you've got a charter there which bears social landlords on average weekly pitch rent. You told us already that it's a very complicated picture. It's a very diverse type of site. Is there any value of trying to find out more why it can be double the price, the average weekly pitch rent could be double the price from one area to another one? There was no apparent link between the rents that were being charged and the services that were being provided. We weren't able to get under the rents, the pitch rents that were being charged to find out how they were built up and what they represented in terms of quality or level of service that was being provided. Could it be simply that the site providers are just taking what they're causing them to run the site? That may be a factor, but if we go back to the charter provisions, the charter provision talks about an affordable rent. Where I've got difficulties in relation to £40 versus £80, is that the same affordability for the individual concerned? That's the bit that I'm finding difficult to look at. Our recommendation in the report is that one-wars need to have some form of systematic methodology of coming up with their rents that actually stands scrutiny and is transparent. That's really what we're trying to get to. When we tried to explore how people had arrived at some of those rents, we didn't find a great deal of evidence of any kind of systems there at all. In some cases, they were related to bricks and mortar properties, but it was very difficult to see how a Gypsy Trafford pitch could be seen as an equivalent of a three- or a four-bedroomed house. It's difficult to see how people used that judgment to come up with a rent to say, well, it should be the same rent as a house for a Gypsy Trafford pitch. What we've said in here is that whatever is produced that needs to stand the charter test and the charter provisions are quite clear about the expectations of the Scottish Government around affordability and the like. That's the bit that we're looking to see as much more of an examination in the by-land wars and their customers to come up with a system that stands scrutiny. I've got two points about that. First of all, I think that we didn't explore the supply and demand, which is how brick and mortar works the same way as supply and demand. As you have a point as well, we had a lot about talking more about conversation between the landlord and Gypsy Traffords to discuss about rent charges. If you are, you don't want really to talk to your landlord too much about the level of rent charges because most of the time, as a tenant, you know that the discussion is going to go only one way, which is very seldom higher, not lower. I'm a bit concerned about the direction that we are taking, especially that there is no statutory powers to make it apart from recommendations. Recommendations to talk more on the level of rent could have adverse consequences. Engaging them in that dialogue and finding out what is affordable for users of those sites. Landlords cannot factor that into those calculations, along with other important factors that they must consider, unless they get those views from the people who use their sites. That's a very good point. We talked about affability, but do we know what is the level of affability? Do we know? Have we tried to put a figure? No. It's really for landlords to explore that with their tenants in terms of their houses and with Gypsy Clava residents in terms of the pitches. Landlords need to understand what is affordable for both those groups of service users and tenants. We can all agree that it's a very big picture and it's very difficult to find out. A last question, if I may have. We talked about diversity, but there is not so much diversity of ownership of the sites. Have you got any feedback from the Gypsy Travis community, but there will likely be more diversity of ownership of the sites? We looked at it as part of inquiry. In your conversation, did you hear anything? I think that the message from Gypsy Travellers that we talked to in 2012 in terms of finding out what their priorities were and the specific aspects of the charter was that the most important thing for them was to be involved in decisions that the landlords make about how investment is made in the sites and if there are to be upgrades on what that might be. The theme here is about understanding what it is that people who are using the sites want and need from their landlords. That discussion should encompass aspects of diversity. Do you have a discussion about whether there is no discussion of part ownership or involving them from Gypsy Travellers? You have no feedback at all on that? Not as part of this particular inquiry, no. To follow up on the affordable question, for bricks and mortar houses, affordable is because there is grant and the landlord would have had a hag for the house, so that brings the rent down to an affordable level. Does the same happen for Traveller sites? Can social rented landlords get a hag for the sites? In the past, there has certainly been grants. I think that they received money from the Scottish Government a couple of years ago, two or three years ago. There certainly is availability of Scottish Government money. There certainly has been in the past anyhow, and I am just trying to remember when that was. Was it maybe three years ago? That is right. Do you then—can you tell us what happens to this report in the future? Do you revisit this report or is it just more that in your annual assessment you will be expecting each social rented landlord going forward to be reporting back to you? Well, when there are a number of follow-up actions that we do propose to take, some of them are outlined in the initial statement, so we will be taking forward actions with regard to gypsy travellers directly and with other stakeholders, with the Scottish Government, with Elacio, with the site managers association as well. So there is a range of follow-up actions that we intend to take immediately in relation to the report. However, in the coming year, we will be looking at the annual returns that landlords will provide to us. We will be looking to see if there has been any shift in satisfaction levels. We will be looking at greater consistency around pitch rents as well and we will be following up with individual landlords that were part of this thematic inquiry around some individual findings. So we will be looking to see progress and improvement there. That is great. Thanks so much. Where a social landlord has more than one site, is there a variation in the pitch charge for different sites? I realise that an average was extrapolated in your table 2 at Paragraph 40, but that might just have been to add them all up together and do a division. That information is an average figure. We would not know that from the arc itself. Basically, what happens is that there is an annual return from the Swan Ward. What happens there is that the total amount of rent is provided and the total number of pitches is given and the computer basically produces the number for the average rent. We would not be able to tell from the annual return on charter whether there was a different rent regime across, for example, Acos, three sites in Argyll. Would that information be helpful? It is probably something that we could ask for. I would not have thought that there would be a difference in rents, but it is certainly something that we can check. Do you just think that it might illustrate if there is an attitude in policy? Sandra, you are very, very quick. Just very quickly, something that struck me. If you are a socially rented tenant and feel that your rent is too expensive, you can go to the fair rents regulator. Does the same work here as well? People who have the pitches and feel that their rent is too high, do they have that recourse as well? Does anybody else have any very brief questions to us? Thank you for coming along and thank everyone for their contributions this morning. I will now briefly suspend the meeting to allow witnesses to leave the room. Right. Agendum item 2 is consideration of the Scottish Government's correspondence on a SPICE update paper on Gypsy Travellers, which is paper 4. You have just heard evidence from the Scottish Housing Regulator in respect of their Gypsy Travellers report, a thematic inquiry, and SPICE has prepared a background briefing and all action taken by the committee and the Scottish Government to date in respect of the committee's inquiry into Gypsy Travellers. You have also received a letter from the Cabinet Secretary in response to correspondence that we issued on 30 September 2015. You are now asked to consider what action you would like to take forward. I now ask members for comments, please, on what you would like to do. Annabelle? Can I just put in record my appreciation of the evidence that we have just heard from the Scottish Housing Regulator witnesses? It seems to me that their report has constructed a basis, which is now going to be the foundation for future comparisons, and I think that that is a very welcome contribution to the debate. It seems to me in the back of what we have heard from them and on the excellent SPICE briefing for which I thank SPICE. I think that that has been a very, very useful sort of compendium, consolidating all that we have heard. I think that we should have another evidence-taking session. Okay. Anybody else have any comments or do you agree on that? John Finnie? I agree on that. Okay, thank you. John Mason. Sorry, who are we having evidence-taking session with? I think that we can discuss that and what we'll do is we'll get the clerks to bring forward a paper for discussion at the next meeting. Are you okay with that, everybody? John Finnie? I just make one very brief point, and I absolutely concur with what Annabelle said about our previous witnesses there. On the various points there, 26 has got nothing in either of the—and it says, need clear leadership to ensure distinct needs of gypsie trailers are covered. The fact that we've got nothing in the columns relating to actions against that suggests that we have some way to go, so I would hope at some point perhaps to get a minister in to discuss progress. Okay. If the committee agrees to produce a statement, we'll get the clerks to bring forward a draft for consideration, and we'll discuss that at our next meeting. Are you okay with that? Thank you very much, everybody, for your contribution this morning. That concludes today's meeting, and our next meeting will take place on Thursday 10 December.