Seòmar agus comataidhean

The next item on our agenda is to take evidence as part of our scrutiny of the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman. We are joined for this item by the ombudsman, Rosemary Agnew. Ms Agnew is joined by Andrew Crawford, head of improvement, standards and engagement, and Judy Saddler, head of investigations, public service complaints, both of whom are from the SPSO. I welcome you all to our meeting, and I invite Ms Agnew to make a short opening statement.

Many thanks for joining us this morning.

I briefly suspend the meeting.

While you are looking for that information—Judy Saddler can perhaps pull it out—I can ask another question. You have talked about improvements at the local level. For clarity, is that to do with the model complaints handling approach?

Great. I have a number of questions about the number of complaints. As we have been discussing, the ombudsman has an important role in helping public services to improve their service provision, but a near record number of public service complaints was received in the past year. Is the ombudsman therefore helping to improve public services, given the number of complaints?

Mark Griffin, who joins us online, has a couple of questions.

Thanks, Mark Griffin, for asking that bit of detail about SME developers, which was very helpful. I will now bring in Alexander Stewart.

I have a couple of questions that are about comparing what we have been doing in Scotland with what is going on south of the border. In England, cladding remediation has been completed on 1,412 buildings over 11m high that were known to have potentially flammable cladding. The Scottish cladding remediation programme has seen work begin on five buildings and completed on one. The committee is interested in understanding why Scotland is lagging so far behind England on remediation.

Thank you, minister, for being willing to be proactive on that. I now bring in Megan Gallacher.

It is good to get that detail on communication and the concerted efforts that you are making there. So that we remain on the theme of cladding, I have reshuffled the order of members’ questions. Meghan Gallacher will be next.

Thanks. I will continue on my theme of frustration around why it has taken so long for things to happen. The cladding remediation act received royal assent on 21 June 2024, following expedited consideration by this committee, yet the standard for a single building assessment will not take effect until January 2025. Can you explain why that took six months, particularly given that the standards run to only three pages?