Seòmar agus comataidhean

Thank you.

Survey and remediation guidance is in place for non-domestic properties. Would you welcome that for domestic properties? If so, what would you like to see in that guidance from Government?

When RAAC has been a critical issue that has led to decants, what has been the wider knock-on effect on council temporary accommodation provision and homelessness services?

I want to go back to Euan McCallum. I am interested in how landlords and local authorities are dealing with terraced blocks where RAAC is present. Some RAAC panels will straddle multiple properties, so it is effectively impossible to remediate a council property without doing a neighbouring owner-occupied or privately let property. Does the current legal framework prevent you from doing what you need to do? I do not want to say that it is almost easier to do the work in flats, but at least there is a legal framework for tenements and flatted developments, where there are legal obligations on shared roof spaces. Is there a legal impediment to remediating an entire terraced row that needs to be done because of the crossover of RAAC panels between properties?

Susie Fitton, is this an issue that you are aware of among your members? From what has been said, there seems to be a trend of a move to in-house provision of surveying and remedying. Is that picture replicated across your member associations?

Do any other landlords have experience of panels that go across terraced rows?

The committee has heard representatives of tenants groups talk about a lack of trust and faith in landlords when it comes to identifying issues with damp and mould, and there are issues of trust with the contractors who remedy that damp and mould. Are you aware of that level of mistrust? How prevalent do you feel it is? Is it an issue when it comes to interacting with tenants? I will start with Murray Sharp.

The Scottish Government has lodged stage 2 amendments to the Housing (Scotland) Bill to make it easier for social housing tenants with damp and mould to get their home fixed within a set timescale. What is the SFHA’s position on that proposed change to the bill? Do you have a view on whether legislation is necessary?

Will Mr Balfour take an intervention?

I have a number of amendments in this group, all of which relate to the rights of the child when it comes to their being threatened with homelessness or being placed in temporary accommodation.

It might seem strange that I have lodged a number of amendments that amend my own amendments, but that was done purely on the advice of the legislation team. I had planned to lodge duplicate amendments stipulating that a child is a person under the age of 16 and that a child is a person under the age of 18, to give the committee the opportunity to make a decision on where it felt that that distinction lay.

My preference is for all the amendments to my amendments to be agreed to, as that would stipulate that a child was someone under the age of 18, an approach that is supported by the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland. Therefore I hope that the amendments with an A after the number are agreed to, too, if the committee agrees to the substantive amendments.

On the detail, amendments 1053 and 1054 present alternative options—they are very similar. Amendment 1053 uses the wording

“best interests and rights of children”,

whereas amendment 1054, which is the alternative amendment, simply refers to the “rights of children” to make things slightly tidier, given that article 3 of the UNCRC requires that the best interests of a child be considered anyway. Indeed, it might be tidier just to agree to amendment 1054, but I thought that it would be good to give the committee the option to make it absolutely clear that we should consider children’s “best interests and rights”. It was good to hear the minister comment on the amendments in yesterday’s debate in the chamber. If I caught his meaning correctly, he indicated support for them.

Amendments 1053 and 1054 refer to the rights of the child threatened with homelessness and state that children should have their rights under the UNCRC and their best interests considered when relevant bodies make decisions about them. We covered some of that ground in the chamber yesterday, but the motivation behind the amendments is Shelter’s report, “In Their Own Words: Children’s Experiences in Temporary Accommodation”, which tells stories of children forced to live in completely unsuitable temporary accommodation, and how their lived experience of homelessness, of being threatened with homelessness or of being placed in temporary accommodation was, essentially, life limiting. Decisions that were being made for them were disrupting their education, their health and their social life, and limiting their future life chances.

With record numbers of children in temporary accommodation and more than 16,000 children part of households that are applying to be homeless, we should take urgent action to ensure that, in the relevant policies and laws that we hope to pass through the legislation, we capture the requirement for their rights under the UNCRC to be considered.

Amendments 1055, 1056 and 1059 relate to decisions to place children in temporary accommodation, and ensure that children who are homeless or threatened with homelessness have their rights and best interests taken into account and that local authorities allocate them to either temporary or permanent accommodation. The amendments are a response to the conditions that Shelter described children as living in when they are allocated to unsuitable temporary accommodation. That report, which I think most of us will have read, argues that local authorities must take a rights-based approach when dealing with children who are facing homelessness so that they are protected from unsafe and unsanitary conditions.

I ask members to support the amendments and I look forward to the Government’s response to them.