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We move to questions from Miles Briggs.

Do we have the resources and the innovation that we need? Is there innovation that could be happening here? Do landlords have somewhere to go where they can get a greater understanding of what they could be doing?

You have talked about raising stakeholder awareness of the housing standards and have said that you will have a meeting. What kind of things do you think it will be important to raise with stakeholders or make them more aware of?

Speed seems to be important, but it is good to be consulting everyone.

You brought up the issue of skills and workforce, which came up at our meeting two weeks ago. What do we need to do in that area? Do we have people who have sufficient expertise to handle damp and mould issues?

You have talked about the new housing standard, minister, but we already have a housing standard. How do we enforce it? If we bring in a new standard, how will we ensure that it is being met by, say, housing companies?

It is absolutely the case that we need that acceleration to improve our housing stock.

We will move to questions from Annie Wells.

Thank you for that.

Events over the past year have certainly been quite a wake-up call for everybody. Perhaps tenants have also been given the sense that they can raise the issue of damp and mould.

Shelter Scotland told the committee:

“There are ... structural issues that are ... important in trying to address”

problems of dampness; that, in particular,

“Not enough social homes are being offered”;

and that funding needs to be available

“for building social homes and upgrading current homes without one impacting on the other”.—[Official Report, Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee, 2 May 2023; c 3, 14.]

Do you agree that the structural issue of supply is a fundamental problem and that addressing it might help to tackle dampness and mould? Do social landlords need any further funding support to help them to deal with specific problems of dampness and mould in their homes?

Thanks. That systematic approach sounds like a good approach, because I have come across constituents for whom the challenge of the situation has such a strong impact on their mental health that they will not necessarily come forward about the issue. Rosemary Agnew, do you have a sense of the scale of the problem from people coming to you in your work?

If the resource was available to do enforcement, what would it look like? What would we see happening?