Seòmar agus comataidhean

Are you saying that you get the feeling that the Scottish Government does not want you at the table to discuss the issue?

Great. Thanks very much for bringing community shares and SNIB into the conversation. Perhaps we can come back to SNIB.

When you talk about the need for a flexible model, do you mean within the rural and islands housing fund specifically or in general?

We are almost coming up to 11.00, and I would like to extend this evidence session by 15 or 20 minutes, if that is okay with everybody. We have a few more questions, the witnesses certainly have plenty more to say and it is important for us to get it on the record.

Yes, communities are making a herculean effort.

Does anyone else want to come in on either the land issue or the additional dwelling supplement?

We are coming to the end. I will bring in Mark Griffin—although I think that we have touched quite a lot on the area that he is going to bring up—and then we will go back around and find out whether there is anything else that witnesses think we need to hear about. I am giving you all a little alert about that.

I am interested in how the housing needs and demands assessment works for rural areas. I am also interested in hearing about an upcoming asset transfer review. I spoke with one of Ailsa Raeburn’s colleagues, Carey Doyle, who mentioned the need for a coherent framework for all the tools for communities. It would be interesting to hear a little bit about that, and about the difficulties relating to the fact that communities need to be able to look at and read legislation to understand what they are supposed to be doing. I would like to know whether we can make that easier. Those are just a few areas, and witnesses might want to talk about other things that we have not gone into at all, but I want to give them an opportunity to talk about such things.

Does anyone have anything else that they think that we need to cover? I realise that there is a whole other topic that we could be talking about, which is the challenge of retrofitting. I will not open up that topic, but we have touched a little on areas such as the shortages of the supply of people who have traditional building skills. Is there anything else that you think needs to be highlighted before we close the meeting?

Could local authorities play more of that kind of supporting role?

Thanks. Does anybody else want to come in with a final point?

Thank you for your opening comments. They were very helpful and they form a useful starting point. I will now bring in Miles Briggs, who has a number of questions.