Seòmar agus comataidhean

Still on the topic of the community right to buy process, I have a question that follows on from Mark Ruskell’s question. Are the pre-notification and registration provisions unnecessarily complex and difficult to navigate? Are they likely to act as a deterrent to communities?

I invite Linda Gillespie to kick off on that.

My next question ties back to Mark Ruskell’s previous question. Let us say, for example, that a landowner with a large estate has a cottage that he is looking to sell. Would that sale be delayed by the whole process? Would it be right to delay it? How do we get around that?

Thank you, Jon. Do Josh or Linda have anything to add briefly?

If the timescale of 40 plus another 30 days is too tight, I have to ask what you think the timescale should be or whether there is a different way of doing this altogether.

Does that not overcomplicate the issue if we are talking about just one cottage in an estate?

This is my last question. Is it helpful to add a further, complex right to buy process to the existing one, particularly while the latter is under review? Jon, do you want to have a go at that?

That ties in with my next question, which is about the tight timescales. Are the timescales enough—

I think that they would be okay for an established community group, but are they enough for one that needs to get going?

It is 40 and then 30 days.

The financial budget also includes the capital budget. How would that work with this? I imagine that a lot more work would have to be done to work out the carbon impact of a capital project or programme. That could mean budgets having to come back maybe months later because the carbon side of things does not match up. I am just trying to think of the practicalities of how it would or could work.