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As I have said, discussions are on-going. There is existing legislation on fire safety, but the question is how that fits with the cladding issue. There are always discussions to be had, and when we speak to residents and developers, this is an issue that comes up.

As I mentioned to the convener, there is also an issue around fire safety maintenance in buildings; there is a difference between that and fire safety in buildings. After all, the question whether things are being maintained is slightly different from issues of fire safety, which have been picked up by existing legislation.

As Rachel Sunderland has said, we are just following the outlook of the Governments in England and Wales. The Northern Irish Government is just starting its process, and it has already been in touch with us to discuss where ours fits in. We are very much following the scope that was chosen by the UK and Welsh Governments.

I will come back to the broader discussions. You made a point about underground car parks. There have been specific cases in which action has been required. I spoke earlier about our discussions with other stakeholders; we had to get their agreement before we could do anything about that issue. If a building is at immediate risk, the legislation gives us the ability to take action. There will be consultation, but we will have the power to go and do something, whereas, previously, we did not have that power. We looked at a previous case where things had happened quickly but a period of consultation with other stakeholders was still needed to move things forward. The part of the bill that deals with that is important, because it gives us the ability to act on buildings at immediate risk. We have discussed that regarding individual buildings.

The factors play a really important role. There have been some mixed experiences, which is part of a broader issue with factors. Some residents have been very supportive of factors, whereas some have not. There is a raised awareness of the role of factors and of the broader issue of building safety, particularly fire safety in underground car parks.

The discussion is about not only cladding but overall fire safety. The issue of fire safety needs to be picked up in regulation. If we remediate the cladding issue but there is still a fire risk, there is still an issue. There is existing legislation about that. There are lessons to be learned and we have had experience of having to take almost immediate action to make buildings safe. We have learned from that, and that was also helpful for other stakeholders such as local authorities and the fire service. We work closely with those key stakeholders.

Rachel Sunderland or Kate Hall may want to add more.

The pilot was set up to look at high-risk buildings, and ownership was one issue initially. I am aware that you have raised this issue before. Some building safety regimes are already in place and we have learned the process. When we discussed this in May, we did not have to deal with the RAAC issue, which was just coming into view. We were looking at how safe our schools are. I am not saying that there is no on-going building maintenance at schools, colleges or universities; there are regimes in place and we know what those look like.

There is a broader building safety group that looks at those issues. Kate Hall or Rachel Sunderland may want to talk about that. There is already an established building safety regime. Rachel or Kate may want to touch on the other things you mentioned.

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.