Seòmar agus comataidhean

Good morning, and welcome to the 11th meeting in 2023 of the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee. We have received apologies from Marie McNair. I remind all members and witnesses to ensure that their devices are on silent and all other notifications are turned off during the meeting.

The first item on our agenda is to invite Ivan McKee MSP to declare any interests.

Do members agree that we do not wish to make any recommendations in relation to the instruments?

Members indicated agreement.

The next item on our agenda is to take evidence on building safety. Last May, the committee took evidence from stakeholders and the Scottish Government. The committee agreed to return to the issue on an annual basis.

We are joined in the room by John-Paul Breslin, who is building standards team leader at Stirling Council and chair of Local Authority Building Standards Scotland; Calum McQueen, who is technical surveying manager for e.surv Limited chartered surveyors; and Alastair Ross, who is the assistant director and head of public policy for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland at the Association of British Insurers. We are joined online by Nigel Sellars, who is a senior specialist in valuation and property standards for the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. I welcome the witnesses to the meeting. We were also due to hear from Chris Ashurst from the High Rise Scotland Action Group, but, unfortunately, he has withdrawn due to ill health.

We will try to direct questions to a specific witness, where possible. If anyone would like to come in, please indicate that to the clerks, and Nigel Sellars, please type the letter R in the chat function. There is no need for you to manually turn on your microphones as we will do that for you.

I will start. I have two questions and I will direct them both to Nigel. If anyone else wants to come in, please do so. My questions might have been more appropriate for Chris Ashurst but, unfortunately, he is not here. Are home owners and buyers still experiencing problems in moving, or obtaining mortgages, due to the zero valuation of homes caused by concerns over fire safety? If so, what impact is that having on the people who are affected? Nigel, I am aware that you have some comments on the idea of zero valuation.

We will move on to a series of questions from Mark Griffin.

I would be interested if you could expand on the animal welfare concerns across the full life cycle of greyhounds, from breeding to kennel life to racing and beyond, that led to your conclusion that

“a dog bred for racing in Scotland currently has poorer welfare than the average of other dogs in the population.”

I will base my questions on one of the commission’s recommendations, which relates to the welfare of the dogs. Will you expand on the inherent risks of injury and death associated with licensed and unlicensed greyhound racing and the specific risks associated with greyhound racing at the unlicensed track in Thornton?

Thanks for that. You have spoken about welfare extensively. In your report, you mention that the GBGB welfare strategy does not give sufficient attention to behavioural issues and the mental states of dogs, even though those form two out of the five domains of animal welfare. Will you expand on the importance of those domains and how they relate to greyhound welfare?

There are a couple of things that I want to raise. I want to come back to the issue of centres—policy objective 1B—and add into the mix that we have our fantastic national planning framework 4, which is pointing us towards more town-centre regeneration. That is something to keep an eye on, because, as we try to retrofit houses and create more housing in town centres, we will be adding additional pressures; for example, Mark Griffin talked about issues with families living nearby. If that is the direction of travel for how we want our town centres to regenerate, it is worth keeping an eye on the fact that we will have a higher population and more activity in the streets. I take on board the mechanisms that you described for offering people a way to bring things to our attention.

I have some concerns about objective 1C in the paper, which deals with port development. Our paper mentions green ports specifically, but they are not in discretely defined areas. A number of the ports are Edinburgh ports. I want a little bit more detail about the order of what is happening. That comes from a concern about a potential loss of community voice, for communities of interest and communities of place. If a development starts to happen that is affecting them, what recourse or ability do they have to raise that concern? The paper states that the order

“provides for development to be undertaken by the statutory undertaker’s agent.”

Can you tell us a bit more about who those agents are?

You described something very specific there: bus stops. What else could be brought in under this?

Thank you, minister, for your patience. The committee has discussed various issues, and we want to seek reassurance from you on a couple of points of concern.

With regard to policy objective 1A, on electric vehicle charging points, 105 buildings are part of the cladding review process, and there are concerns about whether the wall-mounted EV charging points will interact with any of those buildings. Are you aware of that situation? How can we handle that?