Seòmar agus comataidhean

The third item on our agenda is to take evidence on building safety and maintenance and the housing to 2040 strategy from the Minister for Housing. The minister is joined by Joe Brown, who is deputy director of more homes in the Scottish Government, and Laura Dougan, who is unit head of housing strategy and delivery in the better homes division of the Scottish Government. I welcome our witnesses to the meeting and invite the minister to make a short opening statement.

Thank you for that update. Our first session will be on building safety and maintenance; after that, we will take a short break and then focus on the housing to 2040 strategy.

Something that has come up time and again in committee evidence sessions and round tables is a need for some kind of central database that would hold information on the design, construction and maintenance of Scotland’s buildings. I think that you are aware of that from the time that you were on the committee. Is the Scottish Government considering that—perhaps starting with new-build properties, for which that information could be easily obtainable? Obviously, that has come up because of things such as RAAC and the cladding issue, but also because of a sense that we could respond more readily to issues such as damp and mould if we understood what buildings were made of.

Thank you for that. Your example was about people in a community space who got together, and who pulled together to catalyse an event with Changeworks. We can see very much that that collective action needs to happen.

Great; thank you very much. All communities should be on alert and should get together.

Stephanie Callaghan has a brief supplementary question.

Thank you. I recall that you and I attended the online event about healthy homes in the Lochaber, Skye and Lochalsh area. The people there did their own survey, and their results were quite different from those of the Scottish house condition survey. It is important to think about how we get a local nuanced and deeper understanding of what is going on, so I appreciate the fact that you have said that you will look into that further.

We have come to the end of our questions on building safety and maintenance, so I will briefly suspend the meeting to allow for a short comfort break before we return for our questions on the housing to 2040 policy.

I welcome our witnesses back to the meeting.

We turn to questions on the housing to 2040 strategy and I will begin with a broad question about the vision. We heard at our round-table sessions that, broadly speaking, people really appreciate the vision, but I would be interested to hear what you think needs to be put in place to deliver it. After all, concerns were raised about the lack of a delivery plan and the lack of indicators to measure the strategy’s success. Moreover, what is the role for the national performance framework in delivering on the strategy? At the moment, housing is not even mentioned in the national planning framework.

And what about the national performance framework?

Great—thanks for that.

I just want to go into a bit of detail. Among the key measures that the housing to 2040 strategy intends to cover are decarbonising heat in homes, which we touched on in the previous evidence session, and tackling the high rents in the private sector, which your colleague Patrick Harvie is working on. Another key measure is

“a single set of standards”

for housing quality and accessibility. Where is that work at this time?

It has been interesting to hear about the work of the housing investment task force and its potential. You also mentioned a number of times the work of Professor Ken Gibb. One of the things that he brought up in the round-table discussion that he attended was a concern about the ambition of the housing to 2040 policy to de-speculate the housing market. How do you keep that in mind? To what extent has the housing to 2040 strategy group discussed that? At the heart of everything that we are talking about is the speculative aspect that has entered the market. How do we move away from that and get to a position in which Scotland is providing homes for people?