Good morning and welcome to the third meeting of the, in 2024, the local government housing and planning committee. Apologies have been received from Mark Griffin for today's meeting. I remind all members and witnesses to ensure that their devices are on silent during the meetings, she says, turning off her device. The first item on our agenda today is to take evidence from two panels of witnesses in the form of the round table sessions on the housing cladding remediation Scotland bill and on our first panel today we're joined in the room by David Jones, who's a senior associate at Taylor and Martin and representative of Queensborough Owners and Residents Association, Chris Assert, who's the group coordinator of the High Rise Scotland Action Group, Sean Clarkin, who's a representative from the Scottish Tenants Organization, Alan Miller, who is an owner of effective property, Paul Turnbull, who is a representative of the cladding working group, sorry, we had a little bit of a switch of who's in the room and who's not in the room. So, Stefano Pesina, who's a representative of MISO Tenants Committee, Jodie Terrace, who's an owner of effective property and Perry Jenkins, who's an owner of effective property and we are joined online by Paul Turnbull, who's a representative of the cladding working group and I welcome everybody to the meeting this morning and I'm going to begin our conversation by inviting everyone to very briefly introduce themselves and I'll begin. I'm Ariane Burgess, MSP for the Highlands and Islands and the convener of local government housing and planning committee and we'll go this way. My name is Perry Jenkins, I'm an owner of a rather beautiful property in the north of Edinburgh as part of £100 million or so development, so a sizeable development of 278 dwellings, but I'm now an accidental landlord having moved from that development some two and a half years ago and actually now staying Perthshire. My name is Stefano Pesina, I'm representing the MISO committee. The MISO development is made up of 44 properties in Ternistin and Glasgow. Marie Mcmere, I represent Clive Angamogai constituency. Sean Clarkin from the Scottish tenants organisation representing tenants who live in local authority tenants and who live in tower blocks and housing association tenants who live in tower blocks. Jodie Terrace, I'm an owner of a property in Glasgow that's affected by it and I live in Kilmarnock. I've been trying to sell since the summer of 2019 and met probably every kind of state code you want to know in this process. Miles Briggs MSP for Lothian region, Alla Miller, homeowner in Glasgow who can't sell or move on. David Jones, I'm a senior associate tailor in property vouchers and I'm also here representing the Queensborough Homeowners Association. Chris Asherst, I lead the High Rise Scotland action group which is made up of various people owners across Scotland. Thanks very much. Yes, now we need to go online. Willie, would you like to start? Hi folks, I'm Willie Coffey, I'm a member of the Scottish Parliament for Kilmarnock. I'm David Valley. Paul. I'm Paul Turnbull, I'm a member of the Cladding Working Group, a small group of owners, three or four of us have been working on this for four years, but we have the support of the majority of owners in our building. Thank you and good morning. I'm Stephanie Callaghan MSP for Attingston and Baleshill constituency in Wannockshire. We're now going to turn to questions from members, but please indicate to me if you'd like to come in to respond to the question or to respond to something else that someone else has said. Paul, as you're participating virtually, can you do that by typing an R in the chat function? I also, to my colleague Stephanie and Willie, if you could do that as well. The intention is that there should be a free flowing conversation rather than a question answer session. We'll see how we do with that. We do have quite a few prompts, questions and prompts. Also to say technically, there's no need for you to manually turn on your microphones, we'll do that for you. I'll begin. I've got a few questions. One of them is a big question about the bill. I'll direct it to you initially just so that you're paying attention when I ask. The Scottish Government's not publicly consulted on the proposal in the bill. Given this, I'd be interested to hear if you think the bill addresses the concerns that owners and residents have been raising with the Scottish Government over the last few years. I think it's a really good attempt at seeking to address those. Whether or not it actually does address them all is a moot point. Certainly having read some of the responses that you've had from owners, some quite reasoned and helpful, they pick up on quite a few points that are of concern to them, which perhaps just need, I say just, they need clarification because they simply, in a sense, are causing more confusion than clarity at the moment, particularly for example with regard to what should be included. I know that comes down to working out the SBA guidelines in the end to be agreed with banks and so on, but it really is. We've been up and down, and so both builders and owners have commented to me that this project has grown legs. It started off as just looking at the external cladding, but particularly the December 2021 Scottish advice note introduced the whole concept of the holistic approach in a quite bold way, and so now owners are really facing, well hold on, we've got a car park, we've got this, we've got that. I thought we were talking about that, so I think that just needs real clarification. I think it's causing frustration to people and anger, as it certainly is causing concern to the builders as well, but that would be one of the big issues that just really needs to be absolutely nailed. You say that the scope has grown arms and legs and you've identified a couple there, and I think we'll get into more of that as we go through our time together, but I just wonder also if you think speedy progress on cladding remediation is dependent on this bill, or are there things that could be done now to get on with the job? Yeah, I mean, I think that that's difficult because the builders are caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, as to what to agree, and it does need builders, also needs resource of people, in my view, to actually do the work. We could have the very best plan, we could sit here today and say, this bill is absolutely, it absolutely nails it, but if we don't have the people to do it, or the resources to do it, then it's not going to happen, and my concern really is that the number of assessors who are making themselves available or are even qualified to do the work simply given the number of buildings across Scotland is just insufficient, that really needs to be addressed, you know, very quickly because otherwise we're not going anywhere. So, yeah, I mean, I think, too, the emphasis has been on remediation, that's the word you see everywhere. I think it's even in the title of the bill, isn't it? I think remediation, which is understandable, but there are some issues that could be dealt with by mitigation rather than remediation, not involving huge costs and so on. I think there needs to be more clarity on that, and yeah, what are we actually trying to do? People have lived in buildings for thousands of years with risk. Okay, thank you. Yes, that's a very good point. Sean, you want to come in? Yeah, it's about, I disagree there with Chris on that latter aspect. People may have been loving buildings for thousands of years, but we're essentially, the precautionary principle should be the thing that's guiding all of us, and essentially it should be about life safety of tenants and homeowners. The fact of the matter is the bill itself is very narrow in its focus. It's focusing on only on buildings between tower blocks between 1992 and the present day. It doesn't go back beyond 1992, and in Glasgow, where I live near Glasgow, tower blocks go back to the 1960s, 1970s that need looked at. Also the tenants, social tenants have been largely ignored in the whole exercise. The bill is, I mean, basically the Scottish Government's focus all the way through has always been on homeowners, but there's been very little focus on the safety of tenants, social tenants, and they live in the west of Scotland especially. They live in loads of tower blocks that have got fire safety issues and cladding issues. Lastly, but not leastly, the concentration in the bill is only on ACM cladding. It's not on non-ACM cladding, like high pressure laminate cladding. That is dangerous as ACM. The scope has to be far wider and far bigger. The fact of the matter is that the Scottish Government has now got £400 million from the Treasury to look at this. I mean, what have they spent £4.5 million over the last seven years? You mentioned the speed of things. Well, the remediation of Scotland is absolutely hopeless because one tower block has been remediated and others are mitigated. In England, Gove and the Government down there have helped to remediate 634 tower blocks over 18 metres high and that's 212 non-ACM as well as 422 ACM. Non-ACM has been tackled south of the border and there's been very little progress up here. We're very poor indeed. Thanks very much for that. On the non-ACM buildings, I thought you brought an interesting point there about the fact that the bill's scope is 1992 to today and that there are buildings that are older than that go back to the 1960s. Are those non-ACM or is non-ACM a contemporary, is used today as well? Well, I mean, for example, I think it's North Lanarkshire has 33 high pressure laminate tower blocks and there are 95 high pressure laminate tower blocks in Scotland, 95. And how it was described by the Journal of Hazardous Materials, it was described as HPL cladding materials released heat 25 times faster and released 115 times more heat than non-combustible products. And Rockwell, who are a company that does a lot of the non-combustible cladding and insulation, don't want any of their products associated with HPL cladding. And said so to the committee of the House of Commons, they said to the committee there that they turned around and said that all of these materials are combustible by nature. This is HPL cladding and have a poor reaction to fire performs. And essentially, their recommendation towards the committee of the House of Commons was that the government should urgently restrict building owners to remove all HPL cladding from high-rise and high-risk buildings, and that was in 2020 to the House of Commons committee, the equivalent of this committee, in 2020.  But the fact of the matter is that the fire test that was based on the BS8414 test is now largely, you know, has been rubbish by many experts. And essentially, even the fire protection association said they couldn't give an end-use performance based on that passing of that test. And the test itself, Dr Barbara Lane says, this is so different. I'm an architect. We work with real-life buildings, not the over-protected fire test, where would they do everything to mitigate, you know, to try and get the manufacturers past. In fact, the HPL cladding is highly dangerous. And as I say, it's a 95-turb locs in Scotland, and it's highly dangerous, highly toxic. Thanks very much for that. So anyone else want to come in on the points that I've initiated around? Does the bill address the concerns and the piece around speedy progress? I'd give my pieces an honour in what's been called an orphan building. We've never actually been officially told and engaged with the terminology. Through Chris, I was organised with the head of the cladding unit back in December 2020 or 2021, sometime in lockdown, and at that time I was spelled out what this legislation would be, but the effect would be that this was like the fifth and final step for the unit. There was all that much more immediate work needed done as part of the pilot to prove the concept of the pilot, the process which ultimately to spend that money that's mentioned is on orphan buildings. In that time, we've never had any official engagement with the unit. Through Cabinet Secretary inquiries, I got a response last December to say that we're engaged with our factor to appoint an inspection. We then found out in the summer of 2023, in the annual reports by the factor, that an inspection was done in spring 2022. We don't have an owner's group constituted with an orphan building, so the crux of the legislation was meant to tick all those boxes, but they've done what was meant to be a sweep-up exercise after the pilot was concluded. I'm not really seeing much of what can do anything for us in the immediate term. I would probably also qualify my input as a work for Glasgow City Council on housing strategy and housing-led regeneration. In my day job, I have to engage with every area of public service from health and social care to planning education. That's what I said to the guy back in December whenever, that legislation doesn't really matter. Engagement with the people involved in the pilot was the immediate action needed. Name the area of public service and you've got it, team around the child, getting it right for every child, community-based regeneration. Hats off to Chris is a kind of grass roots with an action group, but to pose that is any meaningful engagement for me. I just want to come to the table on my line of work. Thanks very much for sharing your perspective. It's really helpful to hear the issue of the orphan buildings and the lack of engagement. Perry, you wanted to come in. Thank you for the invite to attend today. I don't doubt how having been following in real detail for the first couple of years how complex and multifaceted this challenge is for everybody that's working on it. It's a toughie for sure. As far as the bills concerned, which you, Ariane, want to focus predominantly on today and building on Jody's comments there, unfortunately for me, when I look at it, I don't get a sense of it. Again, just to position, I established and run as an administrator, if you will, various community groups for our development. I mentioned earlier 278 dwellings and that community group has around about now 215 members, which talks to both tenants and owners. My sense is this bill does not deliver a sigh of relief or a fist bump. It's legalese, it's welcome because it talks to a tangible step forward to hopefully move towards addressing this highly complex issue. Obviously each development is unique in its own right, but I think does it talk to the key concerns of owners, not really, until it's proven. I guess there was an expectation on owners that were following the cladding piece through, for example, Scott Gove, and again talking to Jody's point about the pilot. The pilot scheme was heralded as fantastic, it all works, we're now ready to scale. I think that was the comment used in questions in Parliament. Well, quite clearly it isn't. When we look to Sean's comments about the number of buildings and how many have actually been tangibly remediated for all the time that this has been worked on, clearly there are gaps in the pilot. Jody talked to the lack of engagement and it is welcome that there is now more widespread public engagement by the good folks in this room. However, the organisations for no doubt good intent that were established on the premise of representing owners across Scotland and maintaining a line of sight into Scottish Government with those communications. Unfortunately, where we're at today seems to me that a lot of the feedback and a lot of it was quite challenging and direct simply has been ignored or whether that's been filtered in translation. I don't know. The communication, the feedback loop with citizens impacted needs to be significantly broadened to ensure that you good folk are getting the right messages about what's important to owners and indeed residents. Those kind of things talk to EWS1 and the thousands that it can cost to obtain, if you can obtain an EWS1, which talks to the point about somebody being here because they are trapped and can't move on. That is a real challenge and there was a dearth of guidance at the time in terms of how one could go about getting that document, a piece of paper which could cost up to £3,000. There's the topic of then obviously moving, mortgaging, buying and selling and now certainly for the development in which I'm an owner. Insurance, £100 million development which for two years has not been insured and the reasons given for not being insured simply don't cut muster. When two adjacent sizeable developments are insured they've continued to enjoy insurance which points to something went badly wrong. I think citizens rightly would feel aggrieved that these things just haven't been looked into forensically to help solve those of the real issues. What is contained in the bill is fantastic in terms of real significant steps forward from a legal standpoint but would citizens be flying the flag for this and saying thank you very much? I'm just not sure at the moment. Can I just clarify that you said the two adjacent buildings have insurance so they're of a similar size and design? Similar size and what we're told, what owners are told and some are answered, some are rebuffed and you know all the rest of it but while it's down to a different construction, well you know the custodians of this development have been changing tack in terms of the reasons the development is now no longer insured which pose a significant risk to this day. Owners do not know how many of those units have been insured individually and that is after a period of two to three months where there was no insurance whatsoever. So if you can imagine obviously we've had Aisha and we know you know there's another storm hot on the heels, if a roof was to be ripped off it is really debatable in terms of how that is then going to be paid for you know whereas the two other buildings and developments and Arianna indeed you visited the area you know I'm not entirely convinced that they are of a significantly different construction because I went round three years ago with a fire expert Paul Nellis who pulled out the kind of expandable foam from an adjacent development which is one of the reasons supposedly the insurer Aviva that was lined up to ensure my development if you will decided to withdraw their their offer. Okay thanks for that I'm going to bring in Paul and Paul so I've got a number of questions going and I'm going to roll another one in because I think it would be good given that you're from the clouding working group. So in addition to the bill addressing concerns what actions could be being taken now I'd also be interested to hear if you so Chris was saying earlier that the bill is kind of growing arms and legs but I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on should the bill be solely on clouding remediation or should it extend to cover all fire safety issues or range even wider to cover all significant building safety matters. Well thank you for inviting me to this meeting. We of course do welcome the bill. There are number steps in there that are quite useful so for example it stops individuals disrupting the progress for the benefit of the majority and also including the benefit of those that are potentially disruptive. So it will include speed but I don't think it's the critical thing to increasing speed. It also removes the ability of any one individual to veto any activity so because some people argue that this is an improvement to a building the deeds in such a situation quite often require that it needs the unanimous agreement to a change so that ability to apply a veto effectively is removed by this bill which is great. I'm really pleased that developers have been forced to accept their responsibility. In our case it's very clear to us exactly what's happened and we can't see how to sort of get any legal redress so the way in which this bill actually brings developers in is a practical way when the legal route has failed and I guess that just emphasises to me that the enforcement regime that we have really doesn't cut mustard at all. Why are we in this situation? Why can't we get these developers to sort this out without having to go through all this activity? The list of buildings I quite like I think it gives lenders a single source of reference for determining the status of a building which should maintain conformity of process. In terms of positives, what we need more, faster, we would like all of this to go a lot faster. It looks to us like it's going to take years to resolve. We had one of the first SBAs if not the first SBA completed and that was completed September 2022. We have had absolutely no progress since then, nothing at all. I hear another building has been remediated. It's interesting that somebody's actually progressed from an SBA to completion and we've seen nothing. Lenders, I'm struggling to understand what lender's position is now. The Scottish Government are going to remediate these buildings either through forcing developers to step up or to pay using the funding that they've got from Westminster. What are the issues for lenders? Why are they not lending? Their security is fine now. I know they're private companies but they are regulated. Paul, I'm going to just pause there because you're opening up more questions and I think we're going to go into those things in more detail. I appreciate what you've said so far and it's good to hear that you welcome the bill. I'd be interested to hear what you think in terms of the bill. Should it be solely focused on cladding remediation or do you think it needs to cover all fire safety issues? I think there are other buildings around which multi-occupancy and they have their own issues. I do agree with Chris that we do live in situations where the status of buildings changes over time, the safety of them. I think the more obvious things do need to be sorted but do you actually have to fix all of them because I think if you investigated any building you would find some problems. I think it may be a difficult one for the government because if you say actually it's okay not to do this what does that mean for your regulations? I can see the conundrum. If you say it's okay not to do something then everybody doesn't do that. Thanks very much for that. I'm going to bring in Stefano and then David and then Perry and then Sean. Just in regards to some general feedback on the bill so I do agree with one of our witnesses in terms of the idea of the list, the single single bills assessment. I think it has the right sentiment so I welcome that. I think parts of the bill are quite logical and detailed so that's good to see. It's good that those residents are owners who are perhaps blocking progress at the moment. There are steps to stop that so I welcome that as well. What I think is still missing from the bill or whether there's not detail is around the Chrissie's point about resources to undertake all these SBA assessments, there's going to be a lot of work to do who's going to do it all. It doesn't really give any reflection on when all this work is really going to commence so it seems to lay the foundations which is good but after then still 99% of the work has still got to be done so it's a good first step but it doesn't feel like it's going to remediate issues for owners quickly. I wouldn't say so and then in terms of another point I would make around the orphan buildings. There's a couple of witnesses here mentioning the orphan buildings, the MISU development is also an orphan building. The bill is obviously outlining the strategy of the Scottish Government as to make developers where they're still functioning pay to remediate the issues but for those developments which are orphans and have no developers we are just waiting for help. There's no one else that can help us and there's actually no one in our development or probably plenty of our developments who's blocking progress. We would welcome them with open arms to be on an SBA scheme so it doesn't really seem to go quicker far enough for orphan buildings. Final point I would make is in regards to insurers and lenders our building has been lucky enough to continue with getting buildings insurance however we are paying each owner's paying £2,000 per annum which is a very high amount it's went up by 10% this year it may go up by another 10% next year but by the least we have buildings insurance other buildings don't. Finally on the list in the SBA with the insurers and lenders I would be very interested to learn how the Scottish Government is going to hold insurers and lenders to account to make sure they will recognise the value or the legal standing of this SBA and this list is going to be compiled because if those two groups of organisations don't do that then it's not going to help people to buy properties sell properties or get insurance. Thanks very much for that I'm going to bring in David and not Alan before I bring other people then I want to see yes you do okay so David and then Alan. Just moving on from one of Stefano's points about insurers and lenders recognising the single building assessment is there actually a structured format to it because one of the issues that we've had with EdoS1 forms previously is that it doesn't always necessarily state exactly what the cladding is or the infill system so that's more directed at lenders so insurers don't always recognise that. So is there a structure in place with that all this is going to be mentioned in the single building assessment so insurers can also utilise that information which then would hopefully help with buildings such as the MISU building. Then moving on to the point whether the bill should respond to broader fire safety issues in buildings again what Sean was saying it can grow arms and legs sorry not Sean sorry Paul was saying it can grow arms and legs looking at other elements of the building but I do think that there are other aspects that should be looked at one of them such as any buildings that have gas coming to the building a communal gas supply essentially there's a utility asset manager that they have to do surveys of these and make sure that the building is compliant does the funding that's being offered by the Scottish Government extend to remediation works for that as well because that has quite a big knock on effect the fire safety of the building now understand you can't look at every small point about it but I think that's quite a large item that should be addressed if it's not already in the future okay that's actually very helpful because it's kind of like that is it's where where do you draw the line and if you draw the line too tight you might miss something that actually as you say it has that pretty critical knock on effect yeah allen you wanted to come in I must have emailed the cladding team about 100 times my msp both constituency and area have all emailed at no point as any of the responses been we need the legislation to do x or y it's not it's always just we are trying to procure a survey or we don't know so if this legislation is to address the issues that's I don't think what the cladding team in the ground are actually seeing because otherwise they would simply say we need the power to do x or y and now that just might be our building as an orphan but that's my experience of it the second point is when you say growing arms and legs england have managed to remediate x I think someone said 600 or so using the ews one system i'm slightly at a loss as to why we've tried to complicate it and make it more far reaching and more various things if you simply took that ews got a fire safety assessor to look at it make a proposal I imagine you could get work being done in some of these buildings within a bit of fortnight because people obviously know how to fix the issues that were raised we just have created a monster here where where do you stop and it sounds about like people have bitten off more they can chew because there is a way to do it a way to fix it that we've simply looks like we've just ignored and tried to be a bit smarter one of the things I wonder there which I don't know enough about is different legal context so the ews one my understanding is in scotland it's done as an individual owner in england it's done on the building because it's leased hold versus freehold but the actual premise of the ews one form is it does not meet this standard and therefore you must do x to fix it essentially now if you just applied that to scotland notwithstanding the leased hold freehold thing you could simply have a solution to make the building compliant to unlock the market to fix things so if i'm wrong so i'm directly but that's my understanding anybody else want to come in on that or david and then chris and then i'm going to so i also um and if so a lot of hands went up there so if we get the answer that you were going to say i won't come to you um but i'm also going to just pan i'm going to give you the heads up that um i'm going to weave you in to the next round of pulling people in so um with your question yeah do you still have a question no that's fine i'm going to go into four now because my question's been answered from two from yourself thank you right yeah no yes exactly so the question on the assurance register but so i'm going to go with david and then chris and i'll bring pan in with the question and then if you can kick off with peri these are the top of my stack so you're going to when pan asks your question you can weave that into whatever everyone wants and then we're going to go to you okay david a number of the concerns that have been raised out in regards to the speed and kind of progress being made and service being on taking our buildings now understand the scotland government they're outsourcing these surveys to external contractors now the problem is the pool of contractors is very small because they struggle to get indemnity insurance for it and a number of your kind of large surveying firms i've just basically felt that this is not worth the risk to to undertake these surveys so how is it the scotland government is sourcing these contractors is our vetting process how many contractors are you utilizing the services of to do that in order to speed up the process is there being some sort of mapping done by how many surveys can be done and what the kind of timeframe is that they can can be completed by how do you also ensure that there's not any errors now for example one of the developments that is under our management we've had from two well established surveyors that you'd know the names of conflicting reports now that left them in a very difficult situation where one report says it's fine one report says it's not and lenders insurers will just go what we're going to go with a safe option and say it's not what how is it you avoid that situation of again you're just going to the same contractors thanks for that it's from very practical ideas there in terms of the mapping process chris just pick up on some points just for clarification i think the point shawme made about acm actually in the scottish advice note issued in december last year the only bit in the text rather than the headings that is actually in capital letters actually says that this is um wrote it down it's it's a lot of safety to life issue it's that's that's what it's about and it develops into and in the regime that they wish to impose on people undertaking the assessments and there is a procedure laid down it actually refers to other other materials so for example actually the building that i'm in and the one that per is in we don't have acm it's just now our cladding is absolutely fine but it does have eps and so the instruction to the people undertaking the surveys at the moment based on that scottish advice note of december 2021 22 22 is that if it's got eps in it and there are other materials that are listed that is definitely a fail so having spoken with the surveyor he says i haven't got anywhere to go that is that's what's written down at the moment that's what i have to do so actually it does extend beyond acm um into other areas as well um the insurance point i was speaking to anona yesterday and this morning and one of the builders you may be interested to know one of the substantial builders has actually made a contribution to the insurance um costs at that building where they are undertaking remediation i can give you details of that later should you want it but i think i found that helpful to know and i think it's something that should be pursued so that might help unlock some of the insurance things the thing about um as mentioned earlier that the packet reports piece of a golden thread so that when work is done now there ought to be a trace back to see this is what is in the building and we've talked here about mot's for a building so that you actually know what is in the building and that's been a huge problem in scotland but the work that is being undertaken now needs to be incorporated into that golden thread for each building so actually you know what has happened what has changed and indeed what the roots of that were the ews one form in england and it was designed by our ics and it's clear on the face of the form that it was to be done on the basis of a what we would call a stair or a set of a building not individual flats because you cannot actually assess the risk to a build to a property a flat without taking into account the surrounding buildings because it they affect it so the it was a fix it was a pragmatic response in scotland okay well we'll get one done for each flat but nevertheless the underlying survey should have included the whole building and the way in which work is being placed that they are the Government I understand has a procurement agency or organisation and that is being done through them I understand at the moment that's been a fairly recent development so there is a process through that organisation all right great thanks for for um bringing in those clarifying points i'm going to bring in Pam with your question and if you can direct it to perry and then we'll see where we go and then i'm going to come to shawn thank you convener and good morning panel one of my constituents owns a buy to let property in a building that was included in the post Grenfell pilot programme run by the scotish government to reclad buildings while the factor has been proactive and engaging with residents the developer has not been cooperative the impact of this means that numerous flats within the block have been repossessed pushing the insurance cover for the building sky high due to all this residents and landlords are unable to sell their property as a new as new mortgages are unable to get issued to potential buyers due to the ongoing cladding issue so my question is around do you believe that the establishment of cladding assurance register will assist in resolving issues with acquiring building insurance or a mortgage for structures that are affected without the endorsement the agreement and endorsement of those key stakeholders the question on reflection should really be why should they and i think a lot of this over the years of some fantastic work no doubt it seems to me there have been the very welcome soundings and platitudes from these key stakeholders uk fi abi ricks and so on but i've never seen a real public endorsement to say deliver this scotgov and we will we will follow through and you know fulfill our obligations it's a dangerous place to be for many many years i was working in project management and product management and you can have a stakeholder group and they will round the table nod and agree and you know make all the noises and then when it comes that document being circulated say here is do you approve war and that that is a real challenge it's it's distressing to hear of these instances where people feel trapped after all this time to hear of repossessions to hear of developers not getting on board will anything change by the existence of a register you know when you hear an anecdote like that for me personally the answer would be no and could ask him perry what is it that needs to be done you talked about stakeholders coming together does it have to be some kind of public announcement like you've just said yeah to agree on this i think it's really important that scottish government looks at some really robust and different ways of engaging citizens that are impacted and create some really good effective feedback loops that's been desperately missing i'm concerned that some of the challenges that have been talked to today have been highlighted in the past two plus years ago these messages have been ignored maybe or lost in translation not filtered through so for example when citizens with related experience in the corporate world are talking to we have real concerns here about the scope and scope creep of what's happening and almost have a cap on it that talks to you know taxpayer money and how that's going to be well used here we are today where we're talking about something that i think the term was has grown arms and legs i think at a pragmatic level a scottish government the civil servants working really hard on this really need to knuckle down and spend a bit of time looking at the scope and what needs to be delivered arianna i think you posed the question in terms of well what should it be i think to paul either or what's the prior well what's the priority should it be the life critical or should it be the other stuff which poses a fire risk well my answer to that would be why does it need to be an either or why can't it be both but over different periods of time deal with the absolute critical first ensure that the key stakeholders uk fi abi and the likes are on board with that and then if there's other stuff to go after park it another practical observation would be it seems to me the outcomes of the sba talk to a red and a green this is a really dangerous place to be because if you have a fundamentally sound building and for whatever reason for example the scottish advice note talks to if there's 13 percent of the construction in it has eps and actually the regulations previously were no more than 20 percent we're going to slap a label on your beautiful building which has stood for 15 18 years without issue and that is going to be you know like a black mark which is going to be incredibly difficult to remove so there's an argument there to say well why isn't a traffic light system being introduced red amber green so amber quite reasonably could talk to some issues that have been identified by fire experts but actually there's no need for stakeholders to take fries these are perfectly mortgageable properties they're perfectly uh the risk hasn't changed really they've been ensured for 15 20 years previously nothing's changed with the building okay by extension you could say well if if we take this holistic approach which is incredibly reasonable to do but you can see the difficulties well why should that only apply to buildings with ACM or cladding surely that by extension should apply to all properties across scotland so if i happen to be living i don't but if i happen to be living in a thatch cottage in perthshire why is somebody from scotish government not knocking my door and saying we're not comfortable with your roof it's highly flammable but it's you know it's it's kind of a nuance to the debate i think but i think just to make the point again i think this territory of red or green as an outcome of your sba is is quite it's quite a dangerous territory to be in i think it should be phased in terms of risk and as i say crucially for me we really need to sorry scotish government really need to um get tough on the stakeholders and saying we need public endorsements here we need very rapidly to get to a place where everybody agrees can publicly agree and stand behind a solution to move this forward okay thanks very much for that so i'm going to bring in shawn then jody then paul and stephanie i'm going to bring you in to open up the next bit the conversation but also folks can pick up on um you may have other points that you want to make from before but if you could anyone who wants to make a comment on the cladding assurance register should bottom that out a little bit more but shawn cladding assurance register will help obviously it's going to be a help but you need you need you need hard regulation you need it being enforced that's what you need with regard to arianne what you said earlier on is it just cladding remediation is just cladding that we should be looking at in buildings well the bottom line is the grenfell killed 72 people that's what happened in the world tenants that died and a lot were injured and you know the precautionary principle has to be taken seriously and all types of cladding have to be looked at seriously eps a hp hpl the whole lot now just what scotland's biggest building is the queen elizabeth university of hospital in glasgo now king span the irish company built k put in k 15 highly flammable insulation in grenfell that was in grenfell well that that insulation is currently on the queen of queen elizabeth hospital in glasgo in guveton in in in the constituency there in guveton now that k 15 the health board for years have been fighting on this the health board for years have been saying oh it's safe and it's this and it's that and then gradually they're moving slightly away from that they're not so sure anymore well k 15 highly flammable combustible insulation built by king span which has been condemned in the in the grenfell inquiry is up on the biggest building in scotland our newest hospital one of our newest hospitals and the health board doesn't want to take it down neither does the scotland's government because money is always the is always put over human life and what i'm saying is the precautionary principle life safety is the is the is the be all and end all and should be the primary focus now just to put in picture 393 buildings in scotland were identified by the scottish government in a survey of having hpl claring that included hospitals that included schools that included student accommodation now that the bottom line is when past the 2022 bill which was about no regulations about saying the the certain claring could not be put in new buildings well hpl was one of them it was not to be put in any new buildings over 11 meters high or 18 meters high whichever it was now if hpl is dangerous for new buildings is not to be included in new buildings it should be taken out of existing buildings because it's unsafe and people could die in a scottish grenfell situation and that's why i'm here today because i think people's lives matter more than money thank you very much for that jody don't know how to follow that just to pan's question yes certainly in the long term good potential for the the the last i think it will act like a kind of road road tax check thing but certainly bleeding into the previous two questions i think what what are the broader requirements that the bill wants to meet with the scope creep that's what confuses me i keep trying to pose myself as a guinea pig for this process owner trying to sell on a orphan development taking that step back looking at the hackett report there was a plethora of documents post grenfell both uk and scott's government that everyone seemed to agree on but in terms of when it comes to that stakeholder engagement like perry said factors insurers and lenders are all in this working group but you can see from the responses they're not really posing any commitment to it i feel as though they're taking the opportunity to just lump in what they would factor into their own commercial risk factor in process certainly in my instance i'm trying to complete conclude a gifted sale to my brother it's not an open market sale it's below value the the risk factors my outstanding mortgage is 65 grand he needs to borrow 95 they've reduced that from his eligibility of 120 just because it's a pilot related property the property's valued at 200 grand that's flatline since 2019 you can look at the market economics of it all it doesn't make sense to me that a lender can't accept that proposal particularly if they've meant to be an actively engaged stakeholder in this process agreeing to the parameters of this sba i don't know what needs to go into the mot but i think we need to be careful what public money is going into monitoring what commercial businesses would be doing inspections on themselves thanks very much for that paul right right so on the hpl point i would add that we actually have hpl on our building and so far as i'm aware that the the scottish government have committed to paying for the remediation of that building so i i suspect that the hpl is within scope so that's that point on the register the i think it should be helpful to have this register but clearly it needs the banks and the insurers to agree that whatever remediation is done to get a building on this register as being fire safe then the bank the banks and the insurers need to be comfortable with that now i'm not entirely sure i haven't been involved in discussions with bank with the banks and insurers but as far as i'm aware a bank it looks for security so when it lends 200 000 it would like the building to be worth 250 000 so that if the the mortgage or defaults then the bank is likely to be able to sell the building and get its money bank with cladding you're no longer confident because you don't know how much it's going to cost to remediate and so the bank could end up with foreclosing on a building only worth 100 000 and it doesn't get its money back so i think that's the the main issue for a bank and if the scottish government has said that it's going to pay for this or get the developers to pay for it suddenly the the the cost of the cladding as an issue just disappears so i can't understand why the banks would be over cautious if if they know they're going to get their money back um they provide a social service i know they're private companies but they provide a social service they're regulated by the uk so they should only be able to do their lending if they make sure that they comply with enabling the country to run and that individuals can manage their lives as they wish to it's completely unreasonable i mean i suspect they would like buildings to be remediated before they actually start lending so that they are forcing the governments to get on with the job i don't want to be used as the person that they using the stick to get the government to get on with the job so i would like to understand where the banks are coming from they are famously shy of saying what their concerns are they will not reveal their lending criteria and they need to be told by the regulator to get on and explain what the issues are and why they're concerned so far as the insurers are concerned i understand they they price the cost of the insurance by looking at the loss of one flat the idea of these buildings the fire regulation to the if there's a fire in one flat then the fire stays in that flat the cladding destroys that concept and so the insurers are now worried that if one flat catches fire multiple flats catch fire and the cost skyrockets so i mean basically um once that risk has gone the insurers should be comfortable so they should also be explaining exactly what they need to be comfortable with insuring it you know they sit there and just wait for people to say what they're going to do and they'll a pine on it they need to turn around and say what they want to happen it's completely unacceptable they just sit there and wait as i say they're regulated they should get on with it okay thanks very much for that and we've got UK finance coming in um in one of the future sessions so we thanks for raising those issues jody you indicated you wanted to come back in on this point just in a point paul mentioned the other third give more context and speaking to the banks like i said i've been engaged with the banks in summer 2019 their requirements haven't changed sure you submit they make a request for additional information but they hold the line of it's up to their brokers to decide or whatever um but in that time i have spoke to now you've meant to have the college of lenders as part of the working group i've went to every bank i ended up with santan derbyn the most um hospitable if you say if you like um they were quite willing to lend they just wanted to see the technical documentation that scottish government have undertaken on the building i think it's to perry's point they are more willing to look at that amber space rather than the red and green um they ended up pulling out um i think it was in the autumn just purely because of the length of time that had elapsed in the request for additional information my current lender is nationwide so they've already got my property and their body of insured properties again they're just still sitting waiting for this additional information that scottish government hold and that's the roadblock and all when i mentioned earlier this it was our factor that made us aware that an inspection had been done in his report he said our property was on hold i don't even know what that means in terms of the pilot i don't think i don't want to spouse a conspiracy that our properties in danger i think it's probably the opposite they've seen it as low low risk and they've moved on to more high risk but again prove the concept to the that's what a pilot's meant to do it'd be a quick one to prove it front to back and ultimately well once it goes back to your point about speeding up the process you need to look at the live market that's going on some dimension the cost of the inspections we had a pawn aeolus quoted 800 back in early 2020 just a couple of early 2023 i got quotes from the guy that the committee went around with before christmas that was just shy of two grand another person involved with supporting properties in the pilot same quote as soon as i pose a full building inspection i know multiple owners that are willing to put money in a pot they step back i feel as though there's exploitation of individual owners you can make a lot more money charging 100 people two grand than 10 grand for one building so yeah there's much more immediate exploitation need than addressed here thanks very much for for that but for stefanie before i bring you in a couple of people have indicated they want to come back on very brief supplementaries and then i'm going to bring in stefanie so it was christ and then peri then i'll bring stefanie and i've seen that david wants to come in as well but if i can get stefanie in with her question and then we can pull it into mix because time is really marching on but this is very important conversation that we're having so christ and then peri on the insurance point absolutely right the understanding was that buildings were or insurance was being offered on a flat by flat basis but following gremful and all of that and and the knowledge that certainly in scotland i don't know what the position is in england that the records as to what was in buildings maintained at local authorities were 40 and and reflected an untrue position as to what was in the buildings that was discovered by actually inspecting the the insurers took fright basically because they thought they could rely upon building warrants et cetera building plans and then find that actually some of those records were false and so they weren't lending on what they thought they were lending on and they have now developed and the word that's been used to me by people that in the insurance world several times is that they are now looking at a what happens if there is a what they call a catastrophic loss so it's shifted away from this is my flat please would you ensure it when they they quote for a flat they're looking at what would be the effect of a catastrophic loss and how that would impact them whatever you think of that the other thing it's simply i think needs clarity in the papers that we have at the moment and i think the insurers are pressing for that it isn't clear as we sit here today whether they would be entitled to look at the register i'm sure that must be the intent but it's still vague and questions have been asked and not answered on that so that needs absolute clarity very briefly parent so 25 years working for some pretty big banks in the uk i guess without wanting to speak for the banks because i'm not in that position to do so but what i would offer is and it really talks to paul's points there banks look to professional value as to set a valuation on on a security so ultimately their lending policy will be driven out of the findings of that professional valuation so that talks to ricks so as long as ricks are comfortable with the risk and the both open market valuation also the lending valuation it's it's in the interests of banks in wanting to make a profit to lend easy said and obviously there are lots and lots of different nuances in terms of the type of building and the collateral and all of that good stuff so again talking to the banks and part of the problem i sense in terms of what we're talking to here in scotland is banks ultimately being covering the uk want simple they just want to take simple regulation that is consistent across the uk and apply it to their customers thereby driving out cost in terms of needing to adopt models and policies that talk to different regulations in different parts of the uk and i imagine there are some that are scratching their heads in terms of just how far this has gone in scotland which will not be making for what ultimately is a very very much smaller part of the business than than england will have a lot of people in in those rooms discussing policy you know scratching their heads insurance and catastrophic loss i think this is then an emergent situation i guess if i had a query it would be well exactly how many buildings across scotland actually aren't insured and does scott gov aware of that and again in terms of talking to solutions it would not be in the interests of any stakeholder to have a building uninsured just to clarify the building for me in north edinburgh whilst it isn't uninsured with comprehensive development wide buildings and landlord insurance individual owners by and large we hope have been able to obtain cost effective insurance however if the industry does start moving to a catastrophic loss model particularly in ensuring individual large buildings rather than on a portfolio basis where the risk is very much shared maybe scott gov need to be thinking about insurer of last resort point one point two we've all been disgusted frankly about the situation with regard to the post office now the insurers have taken the money out of these developments for decades maybe there's a case to be made to say look if you're not prepared to step up and ensure buildings that you have been quite happy to profit from for an awful long time maybe we need to be thinking about a bit of a return on that on that revenue to help subsidize and support owners okay that's an interesting point okay so what i'm going to do now is i'm going to have to keep bringing in members with the next bit to move the conversation on so i'm going to bring stefanie in but stefanie if you could direct your question to david who wants to come in next and then stefanie know you can come in after that and that's what had indications so far so stefanie come on in thank you convener it was just waiting on being unmuted there happy for david tan so the same as a point that both Paul and Savannah have picked up on and just pointed to ready to so i don't know if they might be interested in coming in as well about the bill actually preventing owners being obstructive and stopping things moving forward so i'm just interested in any history or evidence there is that things have been held up by owners and residents who are being obstructive thank you so i'd say one of the things that this bill does address is previously i think it's been mentioned in this meeting today is that title deeds restrict you to maintenance by a majority vote in most cases when something's considered an improvement to the building you require a unanimous agreement so i think that's been one of the issues that's caused delays previously now this bill obviously will basically go around that i think what might have taken so long for the the first building to go through is the fact that when you can't obtain unanimous agreement what you then have to have is a minimum of 25% of homeowners to then go to the land register to then essentially put an appeal to change the title deeds so previously when trying to change that you had to go through that whole process to change the title deeds to then be able to do it in a majority vote so i think that is what essentially has been the issues previously but again should be essentially resolved with this new bill that's gone through now moving on to what my my follow-up was going to be was actually it was on jody's point about the edos one service i'll keep this very brief and this is one of the reasons why i'm here on behalf of the queensborough hominist association the trouble that we're having there is that building is completely safe but because the surveyors only they say that their indemnity insurance will only extend to as far as the single property that they're evaluating means that they will not give it for say a postcode or for a core so essentially for one property they're charging say 3 000 pounds to undertake a survey then if anyone else wants to sell within that stair as well it's another 3000 or might be a slightly discounted rate and the argument is well surely that's not fair should it's just a licensed almost print money but again it comes back to that indemnity insurance point of view where if they then say well here's a survey for the whole block then they are far more liable for if their report is incorrect now i don't really know what the answer is to that apart from the single building assessment but again how long is that going to be until that can be undertaken at a development specifically a non-risk development where essentially it is passed already so that's quite a long time that home resistance you're going to have to pay through the notes or surveys but again i don't really know what the answer is for that okay thanks very much for that and thanks for your comments on the also the recalcitrant owner stefano you wanted to come in yep just two points on response to stefanie's question around owners who might be obstructing progress it's not something that personally i've seen within the development i'm representing today because our owners are seeing insurance premiums going up and up and up every year and they know the reason for that therefore there's no reason for them to obstruct progress to getting clad in remediated i understand it might be different for different developments but i don't i don't see the the obstruction point and perhaps a little bit too much emphasis has been made on owners obstructing when i'm sure in the majority of cases most owners would not be obstructing to getting clad in remediation work done so i think maybe too much emphasis has been made on that in the bill it's good that there's protection but i don't really see that as a very common thread just a final point regarding insurance insurance last resort or underwriting risk the scottish government could be more proactive and come forward to say for properties that either can't get insurance or that have very high insurance premiums are either on the pilot or due to go on the pilot they could be stepping up and saying to ensure that they would underwrite the risk that that would help massively that's something that the government maybe could do quickly in relative terms and would would help thousands of owners in regards to paying insurance and obtain insurance thanks very much for that constructive point so i'm going to bring in jody and then parry and then willy i'm going to bring you in for your questions jody just quite on david's point i agree that that's what i heard about the insurance for inspections but again this might vary from deeds to deeds i was clearly has the external walls as being part of the shared area so i don't really understand how these inspectors can try in charge individual owners for inspections when it's clearly the kind of fabric of the shared areas in terms of the reluctant owners potentially that maybe is an act of last resort i see it almost like a kind of cpo process you have to prove that continuous engagement before raising the action of scottish government to take action on behalf of the owner speaking to estate agents in glasgo our building has a high proportion of by to rent by to let properties so there is that difficulty it goes back to this issue around communication being able to access the owners i've reached i tried in 2021 to reach out to owners we need the majority which would be just about 70 i got 60 odd owners wanting to hold a meeting elected members were keen to support the coordination of those meetings but it falls short because there's pointless having a meeting if it's not properly constituted action out of the back of it i would know that local and national government have the pills to find out and reach out to owners so i don't know if it feels or this would be like at a root of last resort there's there's means already available to address any situation around reluctant owners okay thanks very much peri i think in terms of restrictive owners or reluctant owners i think there's a piece here which talks to those owners being uncertain there's a piece about education still there are a number of owners a proportion of owners who don't fully understand cladding don't fully understand fire risk and all of that good stuff and then there's a piece i think about trust that the information over the last many years from various different parties and stakeholders uh simply hasn't you know those stakeholders that have been sharing that information it is felt can no longer be trusted because the information that was shared previously your listen guys the development is 99.9 percent safe no problem here no no this isn't a problem north of the border people people are taking this stuff on and taking it as a given you know through for example owner committees without any real evidence you know and and and here we are i think in terms of the reluctant owner piece again just a quick build if ultimately you are moving to an improved future state for a development at no cost to the owners fully enough any reluctance will drop away the difficulty is it's when improvements or changes are being introduced and there is uncertainty about who is going to pay for that and it is absolutely right then and i'm glad that there is a veto clause in the bill to help owners that as indeed with my development have been flagging very real concerns about some of the decisions that were being taken debatable as to whether these things were required in terms of changing the deeds for the development to almost shoehorn and and retrospectively tackle some of the issues that have impacted the development it's got to be right that owners can have a voice to say whoa whoa foot on the ball you know i'm i'm not sure this is a good idea and these are the reasons why that has to be available i think it's important but i come back to ultimately if a demonstration with trust can be made that in moving to an improved future state for the benefit of owners and residents at no cost to owners because why should they i think i think the reluctancy piece falls away yeah i mean i think there is an element i think we've heard maybe in our visits sessions the it's not just about the being paid for but i think there is maybe an element of reluctance in terms of the upheaval the unknown level of upheaval that comes into your life in this case willy i'm going to bring you in with your question and at the moment i've not had any indication well actually chris has just indicated that he wants to come in but on stuff that's already in the mix but if you could come in with your question the first question and then we'll see where we go okay thank you and good morning to everybody in the panel and thank you for for coming to do this particular piece of work for us i wanted to just ask for views particularly on the impacts in the social rented sector that's been mentioned a couple of times already but firstly i wonder if i could ask about the 1992 starting point for the legislation i think that's mirrored in the UK legislation i wouldn't want to ask the panel if they could offer any views about why that should be that 30 year time frame for this is it because is it fairly arbitrary to people think or do we think that the problem that we have with the planning materials really only is involved in buildings constructed in the last 30 years do we have that sense of intelligence or knowledge to be to be sure about that and really would the panel's views be that there shouldn't be an arbitrary starting point for example for 1992 within both legislations that apply in the UK okay thanks for that willy so shawn if i can bring you in first on that because you mentioned the 1992 piece and then i've had indications from chris and paul that you both want to come in shawn i want to clarify on the high pressure laminate cladding in the advice notes on in all the Scottish Government documents it's quite clear the only real focus is on acm cladding and see hpl cladding can be split into two there's what we would call a hpl cladding it's class of cnd with no fire returns and yeah that they're out there for taking them down but any any hpl cladding that's cladded with non non combustible insulation that was why i was saying the bs8 414 test passed and therefore they want to keep hpl cladding up with the bs8 414 test passed but everybody's said it's in disrepute and yet hpl cladding that's with non non what we call non combustible insulation is being championed by various panels in the Scottish Government that can stay up no it can't hpl cladding has to come out of all social rented houses social rented homes and as i say there's 95 tower blocks in scotland with that and it has to be brought out completely scot to be non combustible cladding and that's what has to be put in for the 10 it's precautionary principle another thing is that you know going back to what you said earlier on arian about insulation about wider aspects of safety in in homes and elsewhere the the king span stuff at the queen elisabeth hospital i was k15 insulation which was on grenfellon is now in the queen elisabeth hospital they've been back to social rented housing the other thing is there's nine tower blocks in glasgo alone that have the large what we call the large panel system and the large panel system is basically prefabricated concrete panels which could collapse at any time but they've been in glasgo for about the last 30 years ronin point was the 1968 large panel system which collapsed and killed people and the bottom line is i think grenfell has to go you have to go back to it the bottom line is safety safety safety and life safety above all and the scottish government has got to get its finger out and has got to start tackling social rented tower blocks and get the these are people in low incomes they need they need the the local authorities and the scottish government to step up there's 400 million pounds there that money should be getting used not just for homeowners but for tenants as well to take out the to take out the hpl cladding which was highly combustible and highly dangerous thanks for that and i'll just say so i really appreciate all the kind of technical detail that you're bringing in and i think what we'll do is we'll take that away and just look more look more into that with the with our research team in terms of yeah actually so i just want to bring in chris and then paul and then jody i don't wish to have a spat with anyone but um the quotation that the building was 99.9% safe was not made since i wrote the document it said that there was a 99 99.9% understanding or assurance that it would be safe but on the same slide that was presented to all of the owners at that time and actually said on it however other issues have been identified when this work has been undertaken such as missing firebreaks etc and so we couldn't say it never was said that the building was 99.9% safe that has been corrected many times but never acknowledged okay thanks for that clarification and paul you wanted to come in yes thank you right so on the maintenance issue that that's been raised one of the suggestions that i've repeatedly made in feedback to the government is that it'd be really helpful if the government clarified that any health and safety issue on a building should be regarded as a maintenance issue this would enable all buildings to treat things like cladding or or any other safety issue that's identified in the building that they could be sorted out with the majority vote of the owners and i think that would enable groups that represent a majority to push this sort of stuff through and make sure buildings are safe without the objections of a few people who i'm in some i'm not sure the motivations of some people but it may be that they just don't want to pay for anything unless they absolutely have to but it's probably more important that the majority feel safe so the government confirming that all health and safety issues should be regarded as maintenance in title deeds i think would be helpful on the obstructive point i mean that that we have experienced something of this uh and it's it's like um when the SBO is being done the um the fire engineer selected uh sample points to test the building one person made it very clear that their their part of the building should not be touched so i offered my flat for that inspection instead of his flat so uh you know i don't know why i needed to do that it shouldn't have been an issue but it was uh and i think um you know one of two people have suggested that we can't represent them which is fine i don't need to represent anybody i just want to work as positively as possible with people but um following um i'm not really sure what's happened but we we had good relations with discussions with the Scottish Government and suddenly the Scottish Government withdrew the opportunity to talk to them i suspect there was a complaint of some sort and i'm not sure what the nature of that was but that meant that we were unable to tell all other evidence what was going on because we weren't getting communications okay thanks very much for that willy do you want to come in with your next question okay sorry and it was timescale say colleagues do we think that the bill should be clearer about introducing timescales for completion mean it wouldn't be normal to put deadlines and so on within a bill but would it would have colleagues feel around the table about putting some real hard and fast deadlines for completion and this type of work from you know when we get the single building assessments completed to actually getting the work done should we be firmer about including guidance on that within the bill okay thanks for that willy allen you indicated you want to come in on this yeah i think the obvious answer to that is yes as i said earlier i've emailed many many times the cladding team and i'm regularly just told we cannot give you a timescale if it was any other project be it public or private sector the idea that you could do fix one building in 100 and that amount of time or survey 16 out of 100 in that time it would be classed as a fail by all accounts so while i get the complexity of it the uncertainty that owners and residents have is largely driven by this open ended almost will get to it when we get to it and i just can't believe that it's being allowed to basically happen um from where i'm sitting thanks very much definitely you wanted to come in on this yes i would agree with willy there has to be deadlines in place everything's taken far too long um years have been lost so we have to try to get that time back so yeah deadlines should be in place thanks anyone got anything different to say other than yes on this one okay perry i guess trying to uh we'll eat a good great question uh an observation and and you know absolutely there'll be frustration to get stuff done i guess it's one thing putting in timelines whether those are achievable in terms of people being on the ground to do work or not question mark i think given the discussion that we've had around you know people generally all staker holders not being comfortable with a fully defined scope of what needs to be done makes it then very challenging to say well that's the thing that we need to go after and and let's then work back and say how long is that going to take um so i think there are a couple of different elements to that would be fantastic to see certainly sla's service level agreements built in um and i come back to feedback loops with scottish government good communication um around sbas and so on uh an example here on the desk for me is i wrote to scott gov independently in april uh last year it took a full month for a response that response as welcome as it was was very high level completely devoid of any form of timescale and actually here we are almost a year on and i'm not entirely sure a great deal has moved on since you know my expectation per the letter would have certainly been a completed single building assessment or certainly a draft that could be shared as a heads up visibility for owners uh they they kind of deserve that at least but but we're at where we're at so on the one hand i get i get the aspiration on the other hand at a practical level i'm just not sure that that that would be doable okay thanks very much for that before i bring in marie macnair with her questions i just want to come back to jody you'd indicated you want to come in is there something you want to add just on the timescales i always assumed it came from the the lenders who were advising that they'd expect to see remediation undertaken within 12 months i'm hearing they're now wanting to see commitments that the work would be undertaken within or started within three months but they wouldn't actually go out and investigate if there's bits in the ground going back to willy's question about the social rented properties you've got sean here i couldn't represent the views of tenants but i did see you've got the glasgo west of scotland forum responded they've got 63 community-based housing associations that represent i'm wondering if there's maybe a kind of crossover in responsibility if maybe the social sector is part of more homes discussions professionally i would just i would see community based housing associations in particular are very active in making sure that the properties are up to scratch i'm wondering if it's just out of scope for this study and also the funding i don't know i just wanted to quickly talk on the wider affordable housing industry given the wider remit of this committee this has a problem in the wider housing ecosystem these are predominantly two bed city centre properties these are ideal first time buyer properties you've got edinburgh and glasgo council of both announced housing crisis values and sales in these properties of flat lined like i said since 2018 2019 the only sales are cash and that's again it's these discounted purchases at 60 percent of the value so you're seeing equity being drawn out of the local communities i think if there was better collaboration on this there could have been an acquisition strategy developed by the Scottish government potentially to encourage rsls to look at shared equity in mmr but in again the pressures that we've seen with the rehousing refugee support in homelessness crisis is part of the wider problem so again on the limitations of the age that's a question i've got wider housing issues we've got the retrofit programme that needs to be delivered as part of housing to 2040 i would see these as being priority in front of all those properties and that's basically everything in scotland needs improved for energy efficiency so there's a wider economic study and impact that needs to be understood here before any kind of legalese discussions okay thanks very much for adding those perspectives okay i'm going to bring in marie thank you convener good morning panel my question is i can around what role the developers should play in carrying out and funding the single building assessment and cladding remediation process and obviously there have been a few suggestions but i'm just going to pop it back out there also in the back of that do you have a a view on the likelist of the proposed responsible developer scheme that likely effectiveness of that so pop it to chris first you got that um yeah he's a difficult one isn't it i understand you'll be taking evidence later from homes of scotland can you just get the heart of that question again because obviously what role the developers what role should they play in terms of carrying out and funding single you could bring all sorts of judgments to this as to whether it's morally right and all that sort of stuff but amongst the responses from building companies in the survey there was one which set out the difficulty that SME building companies would have in financing such a thing so we might sit here and say that's absolutely right of course the builders should pay absolutely speaking as a fellow of the insolvency practitioners association let me wound up a few companies you know if the money isn't in the pot it isn't there to pay so you could you could have a commitment that's paid but if it ain't there it's not going to happen and unfortunately stewart milne was one of the companies that submitted a response and in their response they actually said you know if this happens there is a very real prospect that the companies will have to file for administration and within a month of having submitted that they did so we could talk about what is right and so on but there's some realities that need to be brought into well how how can we possibly deal with that and who should deal with it which i was going to say it's beyond me to resolve but it's something that doesn't need government it says it they're sudo all from buildings aren't they the builder is still there but hasn't the resource all there with all to meet any huge claims i think that's one of the points is obviously one of them is resource can they actually afford to do it but then the second point is was it built within all current legislation at that time that was constructed and did it go through planning and in most of the cases the problem the answer is yes so from a builder perspective they've done everything right at the time of construction now is that setting a dangerous presence where then you're back dating everything that's been constructed i mean a new fire safety legislation went through that said that you've got to have smoke alarms in private properties so that means that we should have actually gone to developer and said right this new bill's coming we should actually back date that as well i think it's it's quite a hard one to deal with okay thanks that i'm going to go jody paul online alan and then perry just to the point about effectiveness i would assume they've probably already seen all the developers come on board just from a reputational point of view rather than any technical or financial issue with it all but it probably doesn't address this issue around the liability of the parent child incorporation that is created the orphan developments and again from speaking to other owners where the developers have been on board i haven't really heard it as being completely smooth sailing there's been issues around potential double invoicing to owners as well as i don't know enough about it christmas might correct me on visits by factors or developers as part of the programme scottish government would fund that time but then it's also been invoiced back to the owners as well linked back to my points about the scope creeping market economics i'm starting to see a real reluctance from developers to even forward look to building the developments of these scales i'm thinking of glasgow alone i can't think of any private ownership developments of a scale we're needing a city centre renewal policy the only buildings that you see going up are the leithhold model of byterent or student accommodation again it goes back to the wider housing ecosystem there's a real risk that we need to unlock development not just the mortgages as well okay thanks i'm going to go online to paul yes thank you i mean i get chris's point entirely if the money's not there then nobody's that's not a very effective route however i do feel that developers should feel the pain to some extent because without feeling pain then they just keep on doing the things that they've been doing in the past as i said in other industries there are better ways of making sure that if the company fails then there are resources there to sort out the problem i don't think that exists in the in the developer community in my own situation i'm pretty clear that we have an SME and our building is orphaned because i understand that government doesn't believe there are resources to pay however i'm pretty sure that a big part of the problem was caused by the architect and we wonder if professional indemnity insurance wouldn't pay for a large part of our building and i don't see i'm not sure where discussion is on that but i would have thought that would have been an excellent source of resource going to professional indemnity insurance wherever that might be helpful so i do think the developers should pay to the extent that it doesn't bankrupt them i get the issue that it's there's no point in sort of bankrupting companies who can then go on to do good economic activity providing it's regulated of course so but and i think that's where the government funding needs to come in and step up where the developer can't actually afford it but of course you do need to challenge the developers properly make sure that when they say they can't then that's actually the case thanks very much for that before i bring in Alan and then Perry Murray if you could just ask your last and final question and then people can add that but yeah we're kind of over now so we need succinct answers as well Murray this is a the last question is there anything else you'd like to see in the bill any action that should be taken by the Scottish Government that's not already been highlighted by the committee and again there's been a number of sessions already but this is kind of the last chance to put your comments in cheers thanks very much so once again we are over time so succinct responses i'm going to go to Alan and then Perry and then if anyone else has got anything new and different that we haven't heard that you can drop into the conversation that would be great Alan so two small points i don't know in the bill or anywhere if there is a distinction between what is a historic issue that was wrong to begin with and what has changed in the legislation since i don't know if that's drawn out but it feels like two separate issues to be dealt with the stuff that was not complied with initially it feels like the council who signed it off have got off somewhat lightly given that they said yes that building is compliant and the process behind that i don't believe has changed but someone can correct me so if it was flawed back then it's probably flawed now secondly every business in the world will say oh no we can't afford that we'll go bust stop them selling properties and then suddenly i'm sure they'll all fall into line if it's a good business and it's been ran accordingly and responsibly over time it should have the money to do so and if it doesn't i would suggest a maybe right or wrongly stupid mill and ironically said oh no we wouldn't be able to do it and yet weeks later completely independently his went bust so decoupling of sorry decoupling all those issues and holding my feet to the fire is definitely a bit to go on that okay great thanks very much for that very briefly but brand new in uh should owners pay no and in fact you know there is movement in the market and owners are now stepping and buying into uh these properties and developments and it would be borderline criminal i think to then turn around add a point in the future and say you now need to find 10 15 20 000 pounds principle i think no you know people are buying these properties with with good intent based on the information they have and valuations and so on uh and and presumably mortgages as well um sorry gentlemen at the back if if you are the developer fraternity i can't defend uh your your pockets from a corporate standpoint because the realities with with my developments um at the north of Edinburgh great developer but errors have been made in construction and it is important and i think they are i will be needing further clarity in terms of exactly what scottish government are wanting and the other stakeholders to approve to go after and to put right it comes back to that scope thing it comes back to any changes in terms of resolution being proportionate not a full retrofit for 100 million pound development there's a peace then in terms of for the developers they can speak to themselves or certainly their finance people that can speak for them and it goes back to my point earlier arian in terms of a phased approach you know why is there the need necessarily to say well he's he's a a five ten million pound bill to remediate and we need that paid in this financial year there's got to be a sustainability lens put on this um yeah i think those those are my my observations on that point thank you anybody else want to come in jory i mentioned it before wider things your new deal for local government i've heard in the background that there's a role for local government to have in this i've made professional inquiries to the head of the cladron remediation team when we were developing the new housing strategy for Glasgow and never got a response so that's why it's lacking detail there i'm sure we'd be keen speaking a hit on behalf of colleagues to have that discussion so if that was to be in the bill i don't know okay great thanks i'm going to go to shawn and then paul's indicated you must get married sorry mary said you know is there anything else that can be done we need to speed the whole process up and it has to be comprehensive that has to be high standards there has to be timescales to tight timescales we need all combustible cladding whatever it is taken out and non combustible cladding non flammable cladding put in and i think insulation has to be looked at and also the the fact is the gentlemen's you know from Glasgow regeneration what i'd also say is we should be retrofitting you talked about the housing ecosystem two things number one the winefords in glasgo should be instead of demolishing four tower blocks we should be getting retrofitted and that would house lots of homeless people that otherwise are on the streets currently the second thing is developers should pay all developers should pay because at the end of the day they messed up and that's that's a fact so developers should pay but whether there's offered buildings and whether there's financial gaps there's 400 million pounds there only only four only less than two percent of that money has been spent and that 97 million was given two years ago and there's another 300 million cents so there's 400 there's 400 million pounds and less than two percent of the money has been spent so speed it up Scottish Government get on and make make these buildings safer for everybody okay thanks very much for that and paul i think maybe you have got the last word okay so then i think the government could usefully think about its project management approach maybe it needs to be more creative to speed it up because this isn't a standard project that the Scottish government can take time over it needs to be done quickly my assets have been frozen for four years so far and i can't see any prospects of them brewing released anytime soon not even Vladimir Putin's oligarchs have suffered that level of asset freeze 10% of our households have suffered a death in the last four years how many more likely to die or have life changing events before this is sorted out i cannot emphasise enough the sense of utter frustration with this whole event yeah thank you very much for that i think that's kind of quite pointing closing words there so i wanted to say thank you very much for all of you coming and i think we could have taken a bit more time but i think we've got i think you managed to get all the points that we really need to hear and i think there's some more looking into some of the detail that you've raised that we can go away and look at so i just want to say thank you so much for making the effort to come in between the storms isha and joshlyn and i now briefly suspend the meeting to allow for change over witnesses on our second panel today we're joined in the room by steven andrew who's the group technical director at taylor wimpy Fiona cal who's a director of policy for homes for scotland john low who's the chief executive at roberson home limited and kieran walker who is a senior technical director at barrett development plc and we're joined online by julie jackson who's a general counsel and company director at miller homes as we did for the first panel i'm going to begin our conversation this morning by inviting everyone to briefly introduce themselves and i'll begin i'm arian burges highlands and islands msp and the community of the committee good morning i'm steven andrew the group technical director for taylor wimpy part of my remit is cladding remediation across the uk mery mclair msp representing the claibank mwgai constituency good morning kieran walker senior technical director barrett developments plc good morning i'm ffairna cal the director of policy at homes for scotland and i've been leading on the cladding remediation work for the last two years morning everyone i'm miles breaks msp for low the in region good morning pam gosall a member of the scottish parliament for the west region and good morning john low chief executive at robertson homes thanks for and online julie if you want to start hi everyone i'm julie jackson i'm general counsel and company secretary for miller homes thanks and then stephanie and then willy good morning i'm steven a call in msp for adinston and bills hill constituency hi folks i'm willy coffey msp for come on i can isn't valley thanks very much for for that we're going to turn to questions from members please indicate to me or my clerk if you'd like to come in to respond to a question or to respond to something else that a panel member has said julie as you're participating virtually if you type in r in the chat function then we can pick up that you want to come in as mentioned in the first panel the intention is that this should be as much as we can get a free flowing conversation rather than a question and answer session it's quite tricky in the time frame that we've got to to really get there but let's see what we we can do there and as we've learned from going around the table you don't don't need to manually operate your microphones we will do that so i'll begin so be interested to hear your views on the fact that the Scottish government hasn't publicly consulted on the proposals on the bill and given this do you think it addresses the concerns that house builders have been raising with the Scottish government regarding cladding remediation over the last few years and seeing as you're closest to me steven and you said you had that remit i'll start with you sorry so the question specifically sorry the question is do you think that the bill addresses the concerns that house builders have been raising with the Scottish government regarding cladding remediation over the past few years yes so i think in in large parts it does you know we caught the the end of the earlier session today and there's a lot of comments made today that we there's a lot of synergy with certainly to our view as a responsible developer you know Taylor Bimpey we take our responsibility very seriously we're one of the very first developers to set aside a provision to to remediate buildings for our customers we have remediated in the region of about 39 buildings in england and we are you know very keen to progress in scotland so some of the key the key parts of the bill i think that that need to be addressed is around scope we need to understand what that scope is and also what the sign-off of these buildings will ultimately be and that's essentially what's holding up i think from my point of view the developers being able to progress as i say we're taking it very responsibly we acted immediately after Grimfell essentially moved into tackling some of the challenges where we identified a high-risk building in Glasgow a high-risk development rather Glasgow harbour so we we've been on there for about four years and i think part of that challenge is we didn't really understand the scope at that time but we took the decision to remediate the high-risk cladding at that point so one of the key parts for me out of the bill to to aid the residents and aid the whole project is scope and understanding that scope making that very clear of what is the expectations are what the sign-off is and what that assessment protocol looks like okay thanks very much that's very clear scope and sign-off anybody else got anything to add to that i'm not being a wave one developer our organization and other SMEs alike we're kind of brought to the to the table a bit later so there's been a fair bit of catch-up in there and my own view is that so there's broad principles are there but a lot of the detail that we would need to understand is not existing at the moment so at the minute it's I find it difficult to to get to the nub of precisely where responsibility and the how in the process and I think once we continue to engage and work through that we'll manage to find a way through it but it's it's come into the party if you like late it's proven a bit of a challenge is it something that you think needs to be in the bill or is it something that sometimes bills are the enabling powers to then do something and it's so is it something that can be worked out to I'm hopeful that we can work out and again from from my organization and I think from other SMEs and the others the whole series of things I think we need to bottom out to try and understand and then tackle tackle the issues okay I've got a question thoughts right okay well we'll see how yes hopefully they'll come out as we as we go on Fiona yeah I think it's fair to say that once we recognise that a number of elements of policy development can be covered by secondary legislation or future regulation I think given the scale and the importance of what we're talking about here and the impact of the primary legislation is that it should have a lot more of this set out at the primary legislation stage rather than waiting for future regulation or secondary legislation I think clarity is set around scope clarity on the treatment of the SMEs clarity on the register the obligations of ministers I mean I think all of those things could be set out much more clearly and in detail at this stage okay so maybe as we go through our questions we can get some of that dig down to some of that as well that would be great okay I'm going to bring in my my next question but and then well you can mix them together if you haven't already spoken so be interested here so so we're aware that House builders raised concerns in written evidence about the lack of detail which we've been talking about in general of the scope but of the single building assessment I'd be interested to hear if you could explain briefly those concerns and outline how they could be addressed anybody want to pick that up Kiran thank you I think principally um as my my my colleagues and my other fellow House builders have mentioned the the fundamental issue is the lack of clarity for us and around the SBA process you know we've we've proactively engaged with with Scottish Government over the last 18 plus months and in that time we've we've repeatedly asked questions relating to proportionality relating to you know how is a building assessed and how is the the SBA undertaken and what is sort of the end product of the SBA as well and it's only really in in recent weeks through the the cladding and remediation directorate's task and finished working groups that we've really started to get some clarity around this point and that's been welcomed by the way that that really has been welcomed I think you know we're we're moving towards a point where the adoption or potential harmonisation of PAS 980 as a as a standard to be utilised in in Scotland is one that's very much welcomed by by developers but it's also understanding that actually if we're going to potentially harmonise or adopt the PAS 980 standard we also then need to understand other elements of the SBA around things like the expert panel and you know what its role is what its constitution is why it exists really because in England and Wales obviously we've we've we're a number of months if not years down the line since signing up to pledges and pacts and we've sort of seen where there are benefits to to public sector intervention in this process and where actually through professional indemnity and professional services in in the marketplace actually we see that you know accredited fire engineers fire assessors can actually undertake the role of of an expert panel in itself so there's that and then there's also really the output the the cladding insurance register which the bill obviously addresses to a certain extent we need to understand really what what the full scope of roles and responsibilities in relation to having a building sign off are because sitting in a round table meeting last week with with Paul MacLennan it it seemed quite clear from from the Scottish government's perspective that the cladding and remediation directorate is purely dealing with cladding and are not the wider holistic building which there are there are varying views on that and there are also concerns around that as well because if you are dealing purely with cladding then at some point in the future you are potentially going to need to come back and deal with potential internal fire stopping, compartmentation etc as well so I don't think it can be dealt with in isolation. Julie you indicated you wanted to come in. Yes thanks. I think first of all I'd like to say that along with my peers in the room in the house building fraternity we're all very keen to get on with and fix any remediation carry out any remediation that needs to be carried out to make buildings safe we've been very clear about that for 18 months two years and that we like the gentlemen who finished up the last session are incredibly frustrated that we can't because of this lack of clarity norio scope of what we are expected to do norio understanding and we would have been on doing work on the buildings that we are aware of have problems two or three years ago but we can't because we have been completely frustrated by the SBA process and Miller is a joint venture with Callaholms which is being run as a pilot SBA process it's a large development at Lansfield Key and we are two years on from the SBA process starting there and we're still no further on no clearer as to what we need to do in order to remediate this building there are these buildings and I'd echo what Karen has just said you cannot divorce replacement cladding with other fire safety issues in the building it's it's I'm not a technical person I don't have a technical background but because of that we have been unable to get on with and remediate what is a building with high-risk combustible cladding on it and it's almost as if we've tackled this backwards by coming up with an SBA process which isn't clear but we've brought forward there's a bill to in effect provide penalties I suppose about developers not proceeding with remediation and yet at this stage we don't know what that even looks like and we are unable to commence never mind complete the rectification of buildings and we'll come back to the same point again and again without clarity and scope this is just not even going to get off the ground okay thanks very much for that I'm going to bring in Stephanie Callahan she's got a couple of questions she's joining us online thank you very much convener I'm sorry thank you very much convener it would be really helpful and maybe this is a question initially for Fiona if you could talk about any concerns that you have about the operation of the proposed cladding assurance register if you could outline any concerns and explain how you think these could be addressed okay thanks yeah I think in principle we understand the desire to have a record of buildings that have had their remediation complete so there's no problem with the principle of it what we are concerned about is that the way that the SBA runs at the minute and the overall programme and it comes back to this issue about high and low risk right and if all buildings in scotland can only be high or low the default position is that everything is going to go high until such time as it's further investigated and subsequently remediated which means you're probably going to end up with a register and the absence of being on that register is implying that your building is at high risk when in fact you could be ending up with buildings that aren't high risk but because you haven't been through that process yet and you're not on that register then you're effectively putting those buildings in limbo and you're potentially increasing the chance the issues that we heard some of the residents talking about about inability to sell and getting insurance you could potentially be increasing the volume of properties that that impacts on by the sheer scale of it so I think that that's the concern that so there's no problem with the principle of it but the the scale and nature of the process that leads up to it means that you'll end up with it with a larger a larger register and I think that's the main concern the other issue remains around and it's this issue about cladding and non-cladding related issues there will be issues in a building that will not be the responsibility of the home builder to remediate so for example if the building has a faulty alarm system that hasn't been maintained by residents then that very clearly sits with residents to to remediate so what happens if the developer has completed the cladding remediation part of that works but is unable to get that building put on the register because the homeowners haven't completed their part of the works so again you're left with buildings that are sitting you know sterilised in effect because while some of the works have been completed not all of them have been so it may be that we need to separate the register into two parts a cladding register and another issues register as it were so again these are details that I think really need to be teased out of this stage in the legislation rather than leaving it for for subsequent legislation and regulation because it's so fundamental okay thanks very much for that that's kind of interesting idea of separating out the issues uh steven you want to come in yes thank you just to build on that point on the register i think what's also important to to recognise is that's a point in time so at that point in time when the building is remediated assuming it's remediated the residents issues that's a point in time so what happens after that you know how do we ensure that that building remains safe you know the we differ from england where we don't have the the audits are required annually or whichever frequencies applied so how do we maintain the register after the register set and that's a question that point needs to be explored okay i think that's a really good point i mean something that we've heard i'm just gonna sorry steven i'm gonna just pop this and we've we've heard this idea i think going forward anyway of the mot that all buildings need some kind of mot that we have a register so that anyone understands what the building's made of that kind of thing do you think that that's that would be a useful thing going forward to have that kind of approach in scotland yeah i think so i think what what we see elsewhere is the requirement for the fire safety audit so that that that is carried out and i see the frequency does vary a bit at least it's it's at worst annually and that's picking up any deficiencies in the sprinklers fire doors operating systems and things if that featured as part of that mot chair i think that would work quite well and it's essentially trying to identify someone responsible for ensuring acts at the moment the factors who would be our management companies don't tend to take the responsibility they're appointed by the residents so they push it back to the residents so i think that that conversation needs opened up and better understood i think to make a success of that great thanks so if you do you want to ask your next question and then we'll see what people want to come in on thanks yeah that would be great so um on for scotland's response to call for views for the bill um brought in the concept of tolerable risk which fuel it was just about touching on earlier there as well um so i'm just wondering could you outline that in a little bit just outline that briefly and tell us how it might actually apply to the building and what it would mean for the quadrant remediation in practice okay i'm going to pass the buck on this one and pass it to one of my technical colleagues who will be able to give you probably a more technically proficient dancer but the the basic and in a lay person's term as i understand it you cannot eliminate risk from from any building so there will always be something that will have a tolerable level of risk so long as that is managed adequately and you've dealt with some of the other more fundamental problematic issues so that way you're a you leave a tolerable level in something and that standard and in all risk assessment you've always got a high medium and low risk you can't eliminate that completely so that's our our issue is that the way things stand at the minute the the legislation and and the um the standard seem to imply that you can only have high or low and that that's just not practical but probably some of my technical colleagues might be able to give a more a more technical answer to that okay caren thank you yeah i think Fiona you you put that in very good low terms to be honest and the scottish advice note published in december 22 is quite binary to you the high or low risk and as Fiona rightly said and you are dealing with proportionate risk you are dealing with a level of risk but it's also about how you manage that risk in a proportionate manner as well because you are as as Fiona quite rightly said always going to be dealing with risks when you've got multiple multiple occupancy buildings with different entrances exits etc as well so i think the the point on proportionate risk to date has has obviously been missed out of the scottish advice note um the sba approach um and the the direction of of the sba has always been right or wrong yes or no black or white red or green we are seeing a a system in england and wales that you know we are some months down the line now um you know working alongside accredited international fire engineers and assessors where the the concept of proportional risk is one that is taken forward to allow us to undertake assessment and ultimately remediation on these buildings as well and ensure that people can can be safe in their buildings okay thanks very much so caren if i could just ask very briefly there sorry so kind of going back to risk assessments um and health is a demon past there is that about balancing then probabilities and the severity of if something does go wrong i think it is um i think it is i think it's understanding the risk i think it's understanding the the likelihood or the significance of the risk as well i think it's also about understanding the roles and responsibilities involved because as you know the point that um if you're in a minute earlier about um you know lack of maintenance to elements such as fire doors etc you know that that's a major risk if fire doors are not maintained by either the factor or indeed residents and a fire breaks out in a communal area that's that's a that's a significant risk whereas if we're talking about something that's you know less proportional we're talking about perhaps a an internal um issue within you know a demise of a property for example a um a light on a main egress route from an apartment that's probably less of an issue or indeed you know signage not being maintained on the way to point out the you know the the egress to the building you can see that both of those examples are two very different levels of risk if that makes sense no no it absolutely does and i'm just wondering as well then if you're talking about bringing in tolerable risk are you able to say anything more about how it might actually apply to the bill and what that would mean for cladden remediation i think i think by integrating the points that i think the developer fraternity have raised about the sba about the harmonisation potentially of pasnau naniakzi within the bill and i think by resolving the sba before we sort of go ahead long towards trying to get a bill through parliament and royal ascent i think we need to resolve those fundamentals first in terms of that proportionate risk you know that red amber green categorisation of risk before we do try to almost do it in reverse order and try to amend the bill according to if again if that makes sense yes that does banks actually were helpful okay john i agree with the other contributors in terms of this this point i think another thing we need to consider is if we're going back over a 30-year period the likelihood is that there's been adaptations carried out in the number of buildings and again coming back to the mbt point about potential future adaptations that none of these would have been designed contemplated by the developer going back over those span of years so i think it's also to understand about where that responsibility proportionality sits because there's likely to be things that a single building assessment would pick up that's happened well after the event that the developer has completed the building that's a very good point thanks i mean it almost seems to me like going forward certainly we need some kind of operating and maintenance manual that gets handed over you know what you to address that issue you're talking about kiran around who's responsible for what and where does that what's the what's the line there i'm going to bring in pams because pams got a couple of questions thank you convener good morning panel my questions for fewer from home scotland and please feel free after a few and if you think you would like to contribute to the question and your submission you warn the failure to mention that proportional treatment of SMEs within the cladding remediation bill could force many out of business and result in very real losses of their social and economic contribution at both local and national level can you expand on the effect of this legislation could have on SMEs SMEs and what sort of impact would you have on house building in many of these SMEs are forced to close okay thanks and so the the bill introduces a concept of a responsible developers scheme and at the minute as it stands every home builder in scotland is potentially covered by that by that responsible developer scheme the equivalent in england has a very clear threshold which has identified that those building those SMEs with their profit of less than less than 10 million are excluded and that decision was made on the basis of understanding the impact that this could potentially have on on SMEs so there was a threshold introduced under which the SMEs were excluded there is no such threshold in in scotland and the bill doesn't make any reference to any any thresholds in in there so the bill as it stands at the minute directly put scottish SMEs at a much higher risk of failure than than their equivalents in england and i just don't think that that's a proportionate a proportionate response we we already know that the number of SMEs in scotland has fallen significantly in decline since first of all since 20 27 sorry 2007 2008 recession and back then the number of home builders never recovered after that and whilst there was then a little bit of recovery and towards of the you know 2015 or sorry 2017-18 post Covid that number has fallen again so we know there's an increased level of of impact on SMEs when we combine that with all the additional regulatory changes that are coming such as the requirements for the ban on gas boilers potential for introduction of housing for variable needs you know all of which are our important policy decisions we need to recognise that they all have a cumulative impact on home builders and on SMEs in particular and i think the the absence of that threshold in in this bill is an additional burden on the SMEs if you know is that something you've brought up already with the scottish government about a threshold yes we've raised that on on day one the very first question we asked was who's who's within scope of this and and the answer is still unresolved i'm resolved right john just thinking on the the broader point on that question from the SME cohort of developers if i think about the process that we've been explained to us and trying to get our heads round it would appear that the expectation is to sign up to a long form contract to agree to go and remediate and let's assume that the sba and all the other technical bits and pieces are all aligned and agreed in terms of the process an SME is unlikely to be able to sign the contract at the time of being requested because the the extent of buildings what's required to be conducted and addressed in buildings is going to be unknown and the SME may well find itself in a position in the directors of that business in a position whereby it can't sign up to an unquantifiable level of remediation because most SMEs are debt funded they may inadvertently have an impact that the business is no longer solvent so therefore they can't sign up in advance of knowing and quantifying what the challenges are because that's beyond their capability of doing it and i think in terms of technicality of that process i think that needs to be understood and i think that's unique to the SME wave of developers versus the larger PLC organisations okay that that's an interesting distinction that you bring in there very useful i'll just add a little supplementary before you come in with your next question if you want to in scotland how many SMEs are in that that 10 million threshold do it do you have that number i'm afraid i don't i mean i know in terms of the the numbers of potentially homes for scotland members but that's not all SME home builders in scotland and but i think the the absence of having that that threshold is a really significant risk okay thanks prime do you want to continue thank you convener my next question is back to Fiona again yeah but like i said happy to take any other questions from anybody else in your submission you note that cladding remediation bill as drafted fails to recognise that many of the buildings in scope of the bill were built according to building standards set out by the scotish government at the time and that were approved prior to and on completion by local authorities do you have a view on the appropriate balance of responsibility for funding cladding remediation work and how this could be achieved in practice well i think that you know the principle is as as we've set out that you know and i'll revert back to to SMEs you know so far SME developer built up building in good faith with materials that were specified that were signed off and it's now required to remediate as a result of retrospective changes to legislation they're quite rightly saying well but you know what else what else are you going to change in a few years time on some other legislation and expect us to go back and and do all of that again so i don't have a mechanism in front of me for dealing with that proportionality but i think again the introduction certainly the threshold for the for the smaller SMEs would be cognisance of the fact that it was not just the responsibility of the SME to do that i know john this is an issue that you feel particularly strongly about so yes yes thank you um it's just an example um unlike down in england where the whole assessment verification and approval before you start doing anything but it's solely uh if you like the responsibility for that so it's for the government through license to all of the local authorities in scotland to approve whatever it was going back to 1992 it was going to be fitted to buildings um and in my mind i couldn't see a developer proposing to put materials on the building that wasn't believed to be compatible and compliant with the regulations and i've equally no doubt that those approving it would have thought similar to it we then come through the whole process to sign off and then the building meets all the standards at that time so the retrospective bit does present a real challenge for me on a personal viewpoint i would add my business we haven't found any buildings that would be subject to the cladding but moving on from that it seems odd that we look back retrospectively and within the bill there's also further provision that well we might decide to change that again to some other requirement which again i struggle with because i don't know if i'm asked to sign up to something or i'm being physically asked to sign up to agree to okay thanks i'm going to bring in julie and then stevens indicated as well thanks um the question of funding um remediation for for miller um and no down the prc colleagues we've already thought about that we've already made provision for it we we have a rough idea of what that might cost to us um but i come back to the the point that we made earlier around if you're making a building safe there will be similar elements of that the fire alarm system the fire doors that have been mentioned that are the residents responsibility and it is an uncomfortable position that we're in not from the developer perspective but i mean from a whole industry perspective but that these costs will need to be funded by someone and effectively it's a residents responsibility and so i understand why that might be a difficult subject to tackle that actually whilst the buildings need to be remediated at no cost to the residents the fact is that there are costs that are the residents responsibility and i think that is something that needs to be addressed somewhere um probably more holistically around this whole point that goes back to the sba the sba covers all fire risks in a building not just cladding and so if we're starting with the sba is a funding principle of the bill and the whole remediation programme that need that piece around liability and indeed the cost of of the that may be attributed to the residents it needs to be tackled head on because otherwise it's it's it's a glaring you know whole in in the legislation do you think uh so not not to do with this bill but going forward do we need to be clearer in scotland about that line of responsibility that that kind of hand over moment i think it's wider than just that hand over moment i think it's it's a gap in Scottish legislation generally that we don't have any liability on residents for maintaining their buildings in a safe way i think somebody said it earlier about it's it's a health and safety matter um and there is a gap in in Scottish legislation okay that needs to be addressed all right thanks for that steven thank you just building on the liability and cost piece one part in the bill just now that's fairly silent which i think is quite an important point particularly for the sms and orphan buildings funded through the Scottish Government but equally so for the PLCs is the other actors so you know we've got contractors we've got professional consultants architects engineers these these organizations and particularly you know material manufacturers where something might not have been certified properly or designed properly or constructed properly we all should have the ability to go and and seek recompense and contributions from those parties you know the orphan buildings and sms particularly the plcs we are already doing something similar in england where it's appropriate that that isn't particularly addressed i don't think in the bill and it's something that that should be okay do you think it has to be addressed in this bill or is it a piece of legislation that needs to happen i think i think what we what we probably need to try and do here is inject pace into the conversation so that the more we can build into the bill that doesn't require other legislation or secondary legislation to to enable progress i think that would be the best outcome okay thanks very much i'm going to bring uh willy coffee in who's joining us online winner in good morning to everyone um just listening to the conversation so far and i'm trying to place myself in the position of someone who's perhaps bought a house of property from you and lives in that property with this continuing risk um i just get the feeling that the lack of progress has been pinned on complexities in the legislation rather than the focus being on making houses that they live in safe so i wanted to ask you around the table have you assessed your own stock over the past period the 30 year period that the legislation covers and do you know which properties that you built would fall within the remit of the bill to have the cladding remediated and suppose the big question is is there anything you could have done or could do reasonably to address that given that you know the condition of buildings in the cladding that you may have is there anything you could be doing outwith the complexity that you described in this morning to get on with it as some of the previous people in the previous panel i think we're asking is all to do thanks willy i'm going to bring in Fiona I'll take that i mean certainly i understand that a number of the developers have progressed with it with undertaking those initial assessments themselves and it has been said a number of them have already commenced with the mediation works and in scotland and in the rest of the UK i think the frustration really lies with and we keep coming back at the same point not fully having that clarity as to what is what is required and to what standard because what nobody wants to do is to go back in to remediate a building and then in 10 you know 12 months time be told oh by the way we now want you to do this and could you just go back in again and do that it's a very very disruptive process and so so it's not a question of a hesitancy or a pushing back against the principle of doing it it's just wanting to do it once and right you know and that that's the that's the principle that people want to be getting to be getting on with and without without that initial part of that that sba you can't put all the rest of the the process in place so the whole thing hinges back on getting that right at the outset until that we can't do anything because you don't know what's being required how it's to be done to what standard so until you can answer those questions you can't remediate the buildings willy can i just pop in with a quick suck there so when you describe that or when you kind of like yeah describe that concern what's in your mind in terms of what are you what are you imagining might you might a developer might be asked to go back in to do if i do something address that issue and then several months later do you have anything just so we kind of understand i don't have a specific in mind i'm i'm not the technical person but you know what when you is it cladding is it a building safety issue that you that we've been asked to do you're going to go in and just fix cladding and just just do cladding and that's it and then in six months times oh and hang on actually it's not just the cladding you need to fix it it's all the rest of it as well so we're just getting that that right at the outset because it is disruptive it's disruptive to residents and we don't want to be going in now and having to do that on a number of occasions yeah and i think the other thing that's come up this morning i think here and also in the earlier panel is that there are other things in the air that need to be addressed and if you're already going in to do something do you do you need to then be addressing that other things retrofit you look puzzled but retrofitting was talked about in the net zero agenda that kind of thing it's just having that clarity clarity something specified what's interesting is that i've seen in recent communication where Scottish Government has been procuring a team to actually write the specification for an SBA and what what government has said and that is it recognizes the fact that they had 17 SBAs undertaken to date in various stages and they've had 17 different approaches in terms of each each SBA so now they're saying so now we need this standard specification we've been asking for two years for that because we said on day one if you don't have that specification if you do 17 SBAs you're going to get 17 answers so that's that's how it all hinges so now we're moving towards that but it really is fundamental to get it nailed down at this at this point okay thanks i can see that that wouldn't that wouldn't really work if you got even more different SBAs beyond 17 willy do you want to come back in yes thanks i'd quite like to hear from the builders around the table but can i ask the question in another way supposing some of your stock had the same cladding on that that Grenfell had the same stuff are you telling me that you still need clarity and clear clarifying the processes and so on to act immediately to remove that i mean surely surely not surely if you know that material