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Good morning, Professor Maclennan. I am really enjoying you sharing your perspective, especially on the historical context.

I invite you to cast your eye back to late 1970s and early 1980s, when the process of selling off huge numbers of council houses started. Do you think that we should have seen today’s emergency situation coming? Between then and 2014, nearly half a million council houses in Scotland were sold. Has that played a role in where we are now? As I understand it, there was no policy alternative at the back end of that to do anything to replace that stock. It could be argued that we find ourselves in the position that we are in largely because of that.

Thank you for that perspective. I invite you to cast your eye forward into the future. What will the end of the housing emergency in Scotland look like? A number of authorities have declared a housing emergency but many others have not. What will the end of that set of circumstances look like, in your view?

First, I hone in on the current tools that might be at the disposal of councils to try to do something about the situation, particularly the homelessness situation.

Last week, we heard from the City of Edinburgh Council that, commendably, it has managed to recover 500 houses from its void stock to make a contribution to help with the problem. We know that councils have powers over acquisitions, and that some are perhaps deploying those more than others. Can we get a little flavour from the witnesses about how they see these tools being deployed at a local authority level? Sharon Egan’s hand was up first.

Any there any other views on how we can develop the acquisition programme and others to tackle the problem?

Is the void tally in Edinburgh and other authorities a major component of the story? Edinburgh’s submission is pretty good. We can see how it is tackling voids and getting the numbers down significantly. Does that make a good contribution to trying to address some of the issues that we hear about?

Thank you very much, convener. I love it when colleagues say that they do not want to step on another member’s toes by asking a question that another member is asking and then proceed to do it anyway.

I was interested to hear that the local authorities that have not yet declared an emergency are taking action in response to the emergency that has been declared by others. That is encouraging.

I want to ask about the voids situation across the board. We have representatives from five local authorities in front of us. We have heard extensively from Derek McGowan about the good work that they are doing in Edinburgh; you said that you have already brought back 500 voids this year.

I just want to get a flavour from the other authorities of what part the recovery of voids back into the letting pool plays in tackling the housing emergency. If you could share with the committee some numbers from your local authority, that would be helpful. I will start with Donna Bogdanovic.

Thank you. That was an extensive answer, so I ask for briefer responses from your colleagues on the panel.

What has the Scottish Government done for you so far, and, more importantly, what do you expect it to do for you? We are aware of consequentials coming from the UK budget. Do you have any suggestions for how they could be used to take things forward?

I was going to turn to that. Your report talks about some of the key messages and ideas that might be deployed to change things for the better. Is that social investment idea a new tool that could be deployed? I invite you to expand a bit more on that, along with Chris, of course.

Chris, do you have any views on why there should be an emergency in one place and not in another?

Thank you for that. How are the local authorities trying to deal with the emergencies that they have declared? Ken Gibb, you were telling us about the good work that Edinburgh has been doing. It has had a significant number of void properties that it has been trying to manage over recent years. That information has been circulated to the committee in recent months and you described some of that work. Could you amplify that a bit more and perhaps share some views about how you see the authorities responding and what new things they are doing to address the emergency that they have declared?