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The building and fire safety group has specific discussions on those points to ensure that the regimes and building control system that are in place are monitored. It is really important that those issues are picked up. We will obviously continue to have discussions with the UK Government on what it is doing; there are on-going discussions on a number of issues. However, as I said, the ministerial group on building and fire safety picks up those issues.

Obviously, we have learned lessons from what the building safety regime looked like for RAAC, which, in a way, came out of the blue. We must make sure that nothing comes as a surprise, so there are regular discussions about that.

Another important point, which we have not touched on so far, is about the building safety levy and how it develops over time.

That is not my area of responsibility, but I work closely with the minister who is responsible for that and I have been involved in but not led discussions on the building safety levy. Developers are aware of the levy being introduced and what it will look like. We are working closely with UK Government colleagues on that.

It is important to set this in the context of the broader, longer-term outlook. We are working closely with UK Government colleagues on how to introduce that legislation. Discussions are already under way with developers, who might have slightly different people at the meetings—perhaps more on the finance side. Those discussions are taking place in parallel with what we are doing already as we look towards introducing the building safety levy.

I will let Kate Hall respond first and then come back on that myself.

As we have discussed previously at the committee, there are currently 105 buildings on the list. The anonymised list by region was published on 30 January this year. Twenty-seven single building assessments have been formally commissioned. Obviously, a significant amount of work is going on, and 14 single building assessments are at a substantive reporting stage. Remediation is under way in one building, and mitigation work is under way in a second building.

A general point is that the tenure system in Scotland is different from the system in England and Wales—it is more complex. Homes for Scotland talked about that earlier with the committee. There were lots of technical discussions on that, and it has been heartening to see the progress in the past weeks to get to the agreement. A lot of technical questions needed to be answered. As Fionna Kell said, the more you start to get into buildings, the more you start to see issues that you were not aware of that require a technical response. A lot of the discussions have moved towards that.

It has always been the position that everyone wants to get an agreement, but the technical discussions have been on-going over a number of months. As I said, the more we get into buildings, the more we find that there are technical questions that need to be answered. It was heartening to hear Fionna say this morning that all the developers are moving towards that, although there are a few outstanding technical issues that officials are working on. Officials meet Homes for Scotland and developers regularly to discuss those issues.

The published number for high-rise domestic buildings in 2021 was 780. That is not to say that that is the number of buildings that are at risk. I think that that number was published in 2021, and, obviously, the 105 buildings in the pilot phase of the programme were identified. We expect the vast majority of those to be safe, but that is the number of buildings that were identified in 2021. We are going through the buildings that we think are at higher risk. The initial estimate in 2021 was 780.

If I return to a question that was asked previously, with buildings that we are already remediating, there have been issues to do with our not having the powers to move things on. For example, if there are fire safety risks, do we have the necessary powers on that? You mentioned holding developers to account through legislation. We have reached agreement, but, if we identify more buildings and developers that are not part of that agreement, we will need to move on that.

The key part—the important message—is that safety is, obviously, of the utmost importance. We need to be able to move on buildings and do things as quickly as we can. Legislation could be brought in to deal with that. It is about how quickly we can move things on in relation to where the barriers are at the moment.

We would look to legislate as soon as we could, if that is how we proceed, and that is still being examined. If we decide to do that, we would need to work closely with the committee on it. We would probably be looking at an expedited process, because safety is the most important part of this.

One of the main reasons for trying to meet the UK Government and the Welsh Government regularly is that the cladding remediation programme in the UK is evolving and will continue to evolve over months and years. It is important that we are tied in as much as we possibly can be to what they are doing and how closely we can work together. Obviously, we have our own priorities and things that we need to do, but working closely with them as the remediation programme across the UK evolves is really important.

I will bring in Stephen to talk about the other discussions that we have had.

That was identified and picked up this morning in relation to, for example, fire safety inspectors. I will bring in Stephen to talk about the technical details. That is an issue. Whether there are enough qualified fire assessment professionals has also been an issue down south and in Wales.

The work that is required in relation to the broader remediation situation is less of a problem. However, some of that requires specific cladding work, which is an issue that we are looking at and one of the issues that I will take up with UK Government officials. As I said, the problem affects the whole of the UK, so we must ensure that we are training more fire safety inspectors. We identified the issue pretty early on.

I will bring in Stephen to talk about where we are with the numbers.

On the general principles, we are at the start of the process. As I have said, every building is different, but the key skills that need to come through are generally the same.

The key for us is knowing what the process is, who we need to involve, what is involved and what skills are required. We are undertaking that process, but it is very much at an early stage. We at Scottish Government level need to ensure that we are resourcing that properly—and we are; there has been a big increase in numbers.

However, we also need to look at what is required within the sectors. That is getting picked up and we are starting to get into the remediation programme. We are talking to UK and Welsh Government officials, to see whether there are lessons that we can learn from them. However, they are involved in that piece of work, because it is a UK-wide training programme.

I will bring in Rachel to provide a little more detail.