Local Government and Communities Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, February 1, 2017

Official Report 572KB pdf

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Draft Scottish Social Housing Charter

Item 2 is evidence on the draft Scottish social housing charter from a number of stakeholders and then from the Minister for Local Government and Housing.

The first evidence-taking session is with housing stakeholders. I welcome Hugh McClung from the regional networks of registered tenants organisations; Christine MacLeod, director of regulation at the Scottish Housing Regulator; Alan Stokes, policy lead at the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations; Gordon Campbell, a board member of the Tenant Participation Advisory Service Scotland; and Tony Cain, policy manager at the Association of Local Authority Chief Housing Officers. I thank them all for coming. We will move straight to questions.

I thank the witnesses for coming this morning. I am a new member of the Scottish Parliament, so the Scottish housing charter is new to me. It does not seem that there will be a great deal of change, and we can reflect on that, but first could you tell us what impact you think the charter has had in general on the way in which social landlords carry out their business?

Before we take answers—this will give you a chance to think about your answers, in fact—I point out that, as there are five of you, if there is an area on which you do not feel that you need to comment as we move through the questions, you should not feel obliged or compelled to do so. Given that Andy Wightman’s question is so fundamental, however, it would be good if you all answered it. We will go from right to left, and Tony Cain can start.

The charter has provided a framework to enable all social landlords to focus on improvement, and a consistent baseline for statistics so that we can compare performance across the sector and between the local authority sector and housing associations. It has helped to focus landlords on the improvement process. Overall, the view—certainly in the local authority sector—is that the charter has had a positive impact.

Based on the involvement of TPASS and the Tenants Information Service in reviewing the charter, we think that it has led to better communication and partnership working between tenants and landlords; improvements in the information that tenants receive from their landlords; the employment of more staff in the engagement services; improvements in repair services; and an increase in the number of tenants who take part in the decision-making process of the housing service.

I think that the charter has been a success. There have always been reporting requirements on the regulator and things like that, but the charter has provided a focus, and tenants now know to expect the charter report every year. They also have the ability to interrogate the regulator’s website, as there are now search facilities in place. I would highlight the provision of that focus as an important part of the charter’s success.

I echo the earlier comments. The charter has provided a clear set of standards that tenants and landlords know must be achieved. We have a really good framework for landlords to report to us and for us to report back to tenants and landlords on performance. We have seen strong performance from the start, and it has improved over the three years during which we have been collecting data and reporting back on it. Tenants are now able to look at and scrutinise their landlord’s performance and to compare it with that of other landlords, which has been empowering for them. The scrutiny function has been shared between tenants and us as the regulator.

Good morning—thank you for inviting me. As the only tenant among the elite stakeholders here today—

That makes you the most elite stakeholder of them all, Mr McClung. [Laughter.]

Well, whatever. I represent the regional networks of registered tenants organisations, and I am proud of the fact that tenants have had an input to this strategy and to the legislation behind it. We can look and see how the charter has developed since the legislation was passed in 2010 and came into force in 2012. If we look at some of the statistics that have been gleaned over the past five or six years, we can see that the charter has made gradual progress in gaining input and participation from tenants and in enabling discussion with landlords to improve services. It has been a tremendous success, and I am pleased to be here today to tell you that. A decade ago, the news would perhaps not have been so joyous, but now I can say that, yes, it has been a success.

That is a helpful start to the proceedings. Andy Wightman will follow up on some of those points.

That is very useful. It is typically quite difficult to get a group such as tenants to engage with something like the charter. There is often cynicism about power and hierarchies, landlords and so on. Gordon Campbell has already mentioned a number of examples, but I wonder whether one or two of you can tell me what the secret of the success has been. Secondly—and I realise that this is not really within your remit—if the charter has been so successful, is there an argument for rolling it out to the private sector?

10:45  

Do you want to take that, Mr Campbell? I do not know whether it was a good thing or not, but I believe that you were namechecked.

I think that the charter has been really good. Although I am representing TIS and TPASS this morning, I am actually a tenant participation officer for South Ayrshire Council. With the introduction of the charter, I have seen tenant participation embedded in the organisation. It was there before, but now it is really embedded.

Going back to what Christine MacLeod from the Scottish Housing Regulator has said, I think that, with the ability to look at performance information across all landlords and to see how your peer groups are performing, there is an emphasis on each local authority or landlord looking at its performance and seeing how it is performing against others. It gives a good benchmark in that respect.

I call Hugh McClung.

Please call me Hugh, convener.

In years past, it was extremely difficult to get a group of tenants together to assimilate what their landlord was providing. Often communities said, “What’s the difference? They’ll just make up their own mind and do what they like.” However, that is no longer the case. The emphasis has been on communication from local government and other RSLs, which now have to provide a measure of information. The comparison tool on the SHR website has not only broadened tenants’ minds—if I can put it that way—in that they now look at their landlord’s performance but increased their activity in that they now come to the fore and say, “We want to be part of this and discuss the matter.” You are right, in a sense, but in another sense, I think that the charter has developed the minds of both tenants and landlords to ensure that more and more are becoming involved.

There is not only the charter but the indicators that we developed to assess and report on it, and we made it very clear that we wanted to involve tenants and service users as well as landlords in putting those indicators together. Moreover, the way in which we report that back to tenants and service users has been developed jointly with tenants. In other words, the landlord report that we issue every year for every landlord, which is based on the charter data that we get, reflects what tenants have told us are the most important things that they want to know about. Similarly, the comparison tool that has been mentioned was developed with tenants to ensure that it was accessible and easy to use and that it highlighted the things that were important to them. It is therefore not just a matter of having the charter and collecting the data; this is also about making everything easy to access and use for tenants, who can make good use of it with their own landlords.

Tenants feel a sense of ownership with regard to the charter. The activity and performance standards that we had before did not capture the imagination in the same way that a tenants charter does, and that, in itself, has been really helpful.

I would mirror Alan Stokes’s comments, but I also point out that the charter gives tenants more opportunity to get involved in tenant scrutiny through the likes of tenant-led inspections, where tenants check on how a repair is being done and then report back to the local authority. It also allows us to look at positive performance, not always negative performance.

I have two comments. First, a risk with the charter is that what is measured is what is measured, and if you focus on the charter, you might be unsighted on other, more important things. Probably the best example of that is the risks that I think are emerging in the current quite substantial heating and insulation programmes across the public sector. There is a risk of damage to internal air quality and some suggestion of the emergence—or, I should say, re-emergence—of dampness and condensation issues.

The charter will not answer those questions, so landlords have to be more sophisticated in the way they talk to their tenants and the way they understand the impact of that investment and those services. The charter is not the answer to everything and it needs to be alive to the nuances and details that go on underneath. Even if only 10 per cent of a landlord’s stock is affected by dampness and condensation—that is probably about right—10 per cent of its tenants have a significant problem that it needs to have sight of and to be addressing. Hugh McClung may have a view on that, because his tenants group has done some work on that issue.

The charter is not the answer to everything. It gives us a platform and a consistent framework, but it is not a substitute for a properly worked-through local framework for understanding the impact of investment and service delivery on the private rented sector. As much as it would be appropriate to say, “Here is everything,” we still have a long way to go to bring the private sector up to the standards, quality of service and focus on tenants and value for money that are expected in most other areas of service provision. Whether the charter is a mechanism that could help to achieve that is another question.

That all sounds like a wonderful success. However, being like any other organisations, some housing associations and local authorities will do better than others. Does the process flag up those that are weaker, need to improve and have to become better at engaging with tenants? I am delighted to hear all the good-news stories, but how do we flag up where we are not getting it quite right? How does the charter or regulator help that to happen?

Overall, the picture is very positive and there is strong performance, but it is true that there are areas of dissatisfaction and variations in performance—where there is an average good performance of 90 per cent, that will include some at 100 per cent and others at, say, 50 per cent.

Through our risk assessment process we are able to identify those landlords that are performing poorly or less well than others and the areas where they have to improve. We can target those landlords to ensure that they improve their performance. Part of our work every year is to assess the risk, identify where there is poor performance and then focus and engage with landlords about how they are going to improve.

Do you make a judgment call or assessment of the quality of each individual social housing charter? Do you look at some charters and think that one does not seem to engage very much with tenants and the charter looks like a cut-and-paste job, whereas another landlord is having meaningful engagement—as Hugh McClung would say—and has a charter that is a co-production and is published, so that it is, if not quite warts and all, very realistic about the challenges and what it wants to improve in the housing stock? Do you see such differences in quality in the charters that you receive?

In the risk assessment process we look at data—the statistics that are reported to us. We would have to do another exercise to engage with landlords about the quality of the work that they are doing. The first part of our risk assessment process, which we carry out every year, based on the annual charter information that is reported to us, is a review of all of the indicators for every landlord, looking at them collectively. Engaging about the quality of work that sits underneath the statistics would be another stage.

I was going to save this point for the end, but I will address it now as you have brought it up, convener. As we are telling you, not all is rosy in the garden—it is not major, but it does need a bit of tweaking. By that I mean that there needs to be more development on the ground, so that the SHR can consider registered tenants organisations in a local sense, to see how well—or not—the charter is working.

For the landlords, the situation differs from area to area. As local tenants, we recognise that it is best to sit down and if you do not agree, you can ask for more information, and if you do agree, you can set an agenda. The targets are sometimes unachievable, depending on how your landlord is performing and the comparisons on the comparison site are not always like for like. For example, in Stirling, where I live, there are almost 6,000 houses in local authority ownership and in Clackmannanshire there are 4,500. However, in Falkirk there are almost 18,000 houses, and in Cumbernauld and North Lanarkshire there are 30,000 to 40,000. There is no basis for comparisons to be made. You are left looking at how the data on the comparison site develops. If you compare year to year, you can better see how well a landlord is performing.

That is very interesting. Christine MacLeod, am I right that the comparison site sits on the Scottish Housing Regulator’s website? Is the issue that Mr McClung raises something that you are aware of or want to take away and think about?

We are always looking to improve the site year on year, and we have made improvements to the comparison tool. What we have been able to deliver for the tenants who are looking at it is the trend and performance data over the last years. It allows them to compare selected landlords as well. There is a limit to how many landlords can be selected and reviewed, but they can keep going back into the comparison site and selecting different landlords, depending on what they are interested in looking at. We are always looking at refining the site to make it more useful for tenants.

You have heard Hugh McClung’s comments. We as a committee are not trying to find problems that are not there, but when things seem to be working pretty well initially—and they do seem to be working pretty well—we want to identify areas where things can be improved further. That is why I am glad that Hugh McClung did not wait until the end to make that point.

We will move on now.

I am glad that everyone is very positive about the charter, but I notice, Mr McClung, that you were talking about the need to tweak it. How do you envisage the charter evolving in the years ahead, and is there anything else that you would like to see added to it as we progress?

I think that, as we progress over the years, we will see a lot of changes in the way in which those with landlord status—both RSLs and local authorities—manage their housing stock, for example. New outcomes might well be introduced in the charter to cover that. The other stakeholders aspect of the charter is not always so successful, although there has been measured success in terms of contact with Travelling people. There is a long way to go; in Stirling, it is not so successful from the local point of view. We need to work on that and on how we can best communicate with those stakeholders.

The vast majority of stakeholders are happy with the current outcomes and achievements of the charter. It would be wrong for me to say that not everybody is happy. They could be utilised in certain ways so that the best service could be achieved.

For example, to offer a small snapshot, look at outcome 5, which deals with repairs and maintenance. A lot of us said in response to the survey and the consultation that we were quite happy that the outcome was working. Some said, “Well, we need more involvement in maintenance strategies and programmes and repair programmes.” That is down to local people who are dealing with localised issues. It is not for the charter to solve everything, as Mr Cain said.

If you get the basis of it right—which I think we have done—it will work better.

The outcomes that I hear about as an MSP—no doubt councils hear about them too—are 5, 6 and 10. Outcome 5 is on repair and maintenance, which you just talked about, and 10 is on access. Outcome 6 is on anti-social behaviour; I have had four cases on that this week alone. How can we beef it up a wee bit for those residents—particularly older people and long-term tenants—who suffer when people move in and cause havoc? It appears that many months can elapse before a situation can be positively resolved. How can we take the issue forward so that those cases—which, as you are aware, cause considerable distress—are addressed more expeditiously, regardless of how the outcome is reached?

How can the charter support that process?

Me?

It is for anybody who wants to answer, but you are a tenant, Mr McClung.

I do not want to hog the session.

11:00  

I will be delighted to bring you back in again, but I will allow others to come in. I am trying to buy them some time by filibustering. [Laughter.]

I know that it is not what the witnesses are here to answer on, but do you have any reflections on how some of the difficult issues, such as antisocial behaviour, can be tackled more effectively? That is what Mr Gibson is asking. How can the social housing charter be a conduit in making that happen?

It is one of the outcomes of the charter.

It is the most difficult outcome for landlords and tenants to identify. What is the best indicator of success in handling antisocial behaviour, when an incident has been reported? It does not lend itself to the sort of reporting that we have for some of the other outcomes. It is easy enough to count 120 emergency repairs that have been done within three hours, but antisocial behaviour is often quite complex and difficult to deal with. It involves much more than just the landlord; it often requires the landlord to involve other agencies. It can take some time to deal with, so for tenants even a timescale for action is not necessarily the best measure of a landlord’s success in tackling antisocial behaviour.

For some of the charter outcomes, we have found that looking at performance is best done not on a quantitative basis—the figures and the statistics—but on the basis of what is happening in practice. We have done that through thematic inquiries; for example, we have looked at the services that are provided to Gypsy Travellers. We look at practice, at people’s experience of particular services—in this case, in relation to antisocial behaviour—and at how services are delivered. We look at the ways in which landlords are successful—what they do in practice that is successful and working—rather than looking at particular timescales being met and ticked off. Assessing and reporting on the antisocial behaviour aspect of the charter lends itself more to a thematic approach than to a quantitative reporting approach.

To add to what Christine MacLeod said, I know that, once the charter is in place, you will review the indicators that sit beneath it, and I know that antisocial behaviour will be prioritised as part of that. We will be keen to feed into that process.

Are there any other comments? I will definitely bring in Hugh McClung on this issue, but I want to double-check that I have not missed anyone else.

It is quite unfair to say that the charter has an answer to the antisocial behaviour problem. It differs from area to area, as Kenneth Gibson well knows, and his area might suffer more than mine.

In terms of numbers, how we deal with antisocial behaviour and all the finding of evidence, I am going to stick my neck out—I am not going to get into a dialogue about it—and say that the legal system fails badly. As often as not, when I speak to tenants around the country—not just in my area—they feel the same way. The legal system has a lot to answer for in that regard. Once we get that right, we might see a difference in the handling of antisocial behaviour.

That is an important point. I was a councillor for seven years and antisocial behaviour was a concern for tenants then. It is not just about tenants; owner-occupiers are also culprits and victims. The idea used to be that only tenants could be antisocial and that people who live in their own houses were not, but that is not the case.

On Christine MacLeod’s point, it is not about timescales being ticked off; it is about people having such issues resolved as expeditiously as possible so that they can live in peace. Antisocial behaviour causes many people severe upset. The situation is better—there has been an improvement on previous years—but the problem is very distressing for those who are affected by it.

The analysis of the consultation responses says:

“the outcome does not acknowledge the inter-reliance on different partners and the influence this has on landlords achieving the outcome.”

That issue has been touched on; maybe it is something that we can work on.

The charter is, necessarily, high level. Antisocial behaviour is a good example of an area where there are tensions in the charter. For example, the sixth charter outcome and standard on neighbourhood and community could be expressed in a number of different ways, but that would not necessarily help you to deal with the practical issues better.

There is only one sanction for a breach of tenancy conditions: the removal of the tenant. However, the objective is to sustain tenancies, and we certainly do not want to be creating homelessness. Take the example of a vociferous neighbour who complains aggressively about the state of the next-door neighbour’s garden—yet one person’s unkempt garden is another person’s wildlife wilderness. That might not be the best example, but it is an example from my time in local government of people’s views and how they see things differently and of the need to balance out any tensions. How would you deploy the sanction that you have in those circumstances? Should you always deploy a repossession action, bearing in mind that repossession is always at the discretion of the court? Taking that action is not always desirable, nor will the court always allow it. You need to acknowledge that there will always be tensions in managing the objective that you are trying to achieve. Rigidly enforcing tenancy conditions is not consistent with sustaining tenancies, because there is only one way to enforce tenancy conditions.

The charter is not a stand-alone document. You have to see it in the context of the indicators that the Scottish Housing Regulator has developed, which have been worked on and refined over the past two or three years in a positive way, and recognise that it gives a shape and a picture. Furthermore, as Christine MacLeod said, if you want the nuances and the detail, you need to get in and inspect and examine in detail the activities behind the performance.

Members have no more bids for questions. They are not usually this quiet—they usually get their teeth into something and then we hear about significant problems, but that appears not to be the case here.

We will hear from the minister shortly. First, as we have a tiny bit of time left, we can allow the panellists to put on the record any final comments on the charter. There are five of you, so please be brief.

Our submission’s key point was that the charter is young—it is only three years into its existence—so it would probably be counterproductive to make any sweeping changes at this point. It is also probably too soon for you to see any meaningful performance changes. We support the suggested approach to make only minor changes at this point.

I want to plug the SHR. The SHR’s work is to ensure that the charter outcomes are being met and that landlord services and various other matters are reported on. As I have said, there needs to be more work on the ground dealing with local RTOs. Unfortunately, the SHR’s budget does not allow it to do that work, so I make a plea to the Scottish Government to increase the SHR’s budget. If that were to happen, more development might be done on the ground with local RTOs, and we could see how well the charter has—or has not—developed.

There you go—and the minister is coming here in about 10 minutes’ time, too. Does Christine MacLeod want to add anything?

What can I say to Mr McClung other than thank you? No gifts were exchanged in advance of the meeting.

I echo Alan Stokes’s comments. We were pleased to see expressed in the consultation responses the positive views on the charter and the value of the information on performance that we report. In addition, we welcome the fact that the proposed changes are minor and will therefore have minimal impact on the charter indicators. It is important that we have consistency over a number of years, so that all of us—tenants, landlords and the SHR—can see the performance information and any trends.

Our review has shown overall support for the Scottish social housing charter remaining as it is, with only small tweaks. As Alan Stokes has said, making drastic changes at this stage could affect things.

The charter encompasses the diversity of tenants, landlords and geographies without being prescriptive. Some groups identified amendments that could be made and gaps, and additional outcomes have been suggested. Those have been included in the report.

Although I echo Hugh McClung’s concerns about the SHR’s resources, I would go a bit further and express concern about resourcing in the policy divisions more generally. However, the consultation process has been engaged, proportionate, well managed and effective, and the changes are well judged and appropriate, without disappearing down any rabbit holes or going into too much detail. On balance, we also argue that changes at this point would be inappropriate. What we have at this stage is the minimum necessary to keep the charter relevant, and we are pleased with the outcome.

I know that it has been a brief evidence session, but it has been helpful. Do not take our lack of questions as a lack of interest. Sometimes, it becomes self-evident that things are going as well as they can—and you have made the point that the charter is relatively new. Hugh McClung has said where he thinks things could be improved. Thank you, everyone, for coming along this morning.

11:11 Meeting suspended.  

11:15 On resuming—  

Continuing with agenda item 2, I welcome Kevin Stewart, who is the Minister for Local Government and Housing. He is accompanied by Michael Boal, who is social housing charter and regulation manager, and William Fleming, who is head of housing services policy, at the Scottish Government.

I invite the minister to make some opening remarks.

The first social housing charter was an important departure for social housing policy in Scotland. By stating in clear and plain language the outcomes and standards that all social landlords should aim to achieve in providing housing services, it described what tenants and other customers could expect from their landlords and, in doing so, helped them to hold their landlords to account.

Last year, in order to help us prepare this revised version of the charter, we asked tenants, social landlords, the regulator and other stakeholders for their views on it and its impact on services for tenants and other customers. We did this through face-to-face events, at which we met about 1,000 tenants and landlords, and through a formal consultation.

The strong message from across the sector is that the charter is working well and is encouraging landlords to deliver improved services for their tenants and other customers. That is confirmed by the regulator’s reports on charter performance, which show year-on-year improvement across most of the charter outcomes and standards. Meanwhile, independent analysis of responses to the formal consultation reinforced a strong message from both tenants and landlords that we should not make any fundamental changes to the charter at this early stage of its existence, as doing so would put at risk the positive impact that it has had so far.

In light of those strong and widely held views, we have confined any changes to those few that stakeholders suggested to us would help improve the quality of services delivered by social landlords. Principal among those were the new requirement that landlords meet the energy efficiency standard for social housing by December 2020, the strengthening of the Gypsy Traveller outcome and an update of the brief narratives describing the scope of the standard or outcome to reflect developments in best practice. Those modest revisions to the charter will encourage landlords to continue to build on the improvements they have made so far in delivering the high-quality services that tenants and other customers want and expect.

I was very pleased to hear that the witnesses who gave evidence to you earlier today were broadly supportive of what the charter has achieved so far and are largely satisfied with our revisions. I look forward to hearing the committee’s views and answering any questions that members might have. Subject to that, I hope that the committee is content with the revised charter and that it will recommend to Parliament that it be approved.

In light of the positive feedback, I want to probe a bit deeper and hear the Government’s views on the charter’s impact on the way in which social landlords do business and a bit more about the evidence that the charter is improving services for tenants and other customers.

The evidence that the committee has heard this morning shows the improvements that have been made to the service. For example, through the Scottish Housing Regulator, tenants can check how well their landlord is performing.

For me, the key issue is that the charter has been recognised not only here but in other countries as representing good practice and improving standards. In October, I attended the International Union of Tenants congress in Glasgow and was amazed by the amount of folks from overseas who commented on how well they thought that the charter was working here and who hoped that something similar could be introduced in their own airts and pairts. That in itself shows how advanced Scotland is in what it is doing. I am not in any way complacent, but the feedback that we have had and the suggestion that we should not radically change the charter show that it is working well.

There is always room for improvement, though, and we will continue to get the views of tenants organisations and other stakeholders on what is working well and what is not working so well. The committee heard this morning from Mr McClung, whose organisation will never let me off the hook. If it wants to see change, it will not be backward in coming forward to tell me that that change is required.

Absolutely. I suspect that if more things were not working, Mr McClung would have told us as much fairly straightforwardly. However, he was very positive this morning. Do you want to follow up on any of that, Ruth?

I suppose that as a quick follow-up we could hear more about how the evidence on landlords’ progress towards meeting the charter is feeding into the development of future housing policy.

It is important that we continue to analyse all that is going on. Obviously, the Scottish Housing Regulator has a duty to monitor, assess and report on whether social landlords are meeting their responsibilities. We will continue to work in partnership with the regulator in that regard, and we will continue to monitor its findings. Indeed, that is part and parcel of the job that my officials do daily.

Although we propose some small changes to the charter, I think that the committee has heard quite clearly this morning that the charter seems to be working very well. We will continue to monitor the charter, listen to partners and look at the data that is provided to the Scottish Housing Regulator to ensure that we keep on top of all of this.

We have heard about how successful the charter has been; indeed, minister, you said as much in your opening statement. That success and the fact that the charter has been on the go for only three years show the commitment and support across the piece from the organisations and individuals who have been consulted. That news is welcome today, because it shows that when we get consultation right, it can be quite rewarding.

Some small tweaks have been suggested for the charter’s development, but there is also the issue of the next stage. Ms Maguire asked how we can develop housing policy. We have aspirations in housing; you have them as a minister, and as a Government, and we have them as a Parliament. However, the question is how we manage those aspirations to ensure that we get to where we see ourselves going. The charter has been a good start in moving that forward, but there must be a next phase to it.

Mr Stewart seems to have given me the opportunity to talk about the Government’s housing programme rather than the charter. I could wax lyrically for hours about our ambition to deliver over the course of the Parliament 50,000 affordable homes, 35,000 of them for social rent, but I will try not to do so to any huge degree. Perhaps Mr Stewart wants me to say where we are going in terms of housing delivery and whether all social housing will be covered by the charter, and my response to that is: yes, that will continue.

I am glad that at the beginning of his question, Mr Stewart highlighted the co-operation and collaboration to develop the charter that has gone on between organisations such as ALACHO, TIS, TPASS and the Scottish Housing Regulator. For me, however, the key thing in all of this is to listen to what tenants have to say. Mr McClung and his high-level national group obviously keep us on our toes with regard to where we go with the policy but I should say that, beyond that, the input from tenants right across the country who are involved in the numerous tenants’ groups has been extremely helpful in formulating the charter. I am quite sure that they will continue to scrutinise what is going on and that, if they are not happy, they will let us know.

As for where we are with the constant consultation that I mentioned, there were 12 meetings across the country to ensure that we had the views of tenants, and that process will continue. I know that Mr Boal and his team talk to tenants’ groups daily to ensure that we get things right. If you get the opportunity to meet some of the other folk in Mr Boal’s team, you will realise that the job is being particularly well done. I do not want to mention folk by name, because undoubtedly I will miss somebody out, but I have been highly impressed by the level of engagement and co-operation between Scottish Government officials and groups right across the country to ensure that they get the charter and other matters that they are dealing with absolutely right.

Given that you have just been namechecked, Mr Boal, do you, with the minister’s permission, want to add anything?

Yes. Part of the reason why the charter has been so successful is that when it was first developed, we spent a lot of time—quite a lengthy period—going out to consult with tenants and stakeholders, and I think that that work built up effective relations with tenants and landlords. We have continued to do that, and in the current consultation on the charter’s review, we found that tenants and landlords were keen to participate in it. The minister mentioned the various events that we had around the country, and the fact that landlords were keen to host those for us showed their interest in and commitment to the charter.

The range of consultation activities in the review helped us to get a broad range of views. As Gordon Campbell from TPASS mentioned, TIS and TPASS did an involve-all piece of work after we realised that we needed to reach as many people as possible. They engaged specifically with particular groups that might not normally get so involved in consultations, such as younger people, homeless people, black and minority ethnic communities, sheltered housing tenants and tenants with disabilities, and we were able to use that engagement to get a good sense of how tenants of social landlords and landlords generally viewed the charter. All those activities helped us to find out the charter’s impact and to see that most stakeholders were fairly satisfied with it.

Tenants and customers also have the opportunity to use the charter to hold landlords to account in some respects. That is probably what it was produced to deliver initially, and it has delivered at this stage. As I have said, I look forward to seeing how it continues and the challenges and opportunities that it raises.

11:30  

Good morning, minister. Given the charter’s success, do you see any merit in rolling it out to the private sector?

We are on a journey in respect of the private rented sector, and work is in progress. I pay tribute to the efforts of my predecessor, Margaret Burgess, in introducing regulations and legislation that will do more to protect tenants and landlords in the private rented sector. Of course, some regulations stemming from that legislation have yet to come into force; for example, a year from yesterday, various regulations on letting agents will come into play.

There is work to be done to ensure that we get data on the private rented sector right. I am sure that Mr Simpson is aware that one of the works in progress is a new database to ensure that all landlords are registered in one place, which will make life a lot easier. As I have said, we are on a journey in respect of the private rented sector.

Would it be easy to put in place such a charter at this time and monitor what happens as is done with social landlords? That would be extremely difficult, but I assure the committee that I am determined to improve the law of tenants in the private rented sector and to work in co-operation and collaboration with the good landlords out there to ensure that we get that absolutely right. I have to say, though, that Mr Fleming’s team is probably a little bit sick fed up of my trying to push forward with some of the things that we need to do.

In answer to Mr Simpson, I think that we have a way to go before we can even consider such a charter for the private rented sector. Something could be put in place, but we would not be able to monitor it in the way that we currently monitor such things, and I do not believe in putting something in place if we are not able to see whether it is working. That is the beauty of the Scottish social housing charter as is and the monitoring work of the Scottish Housing Regulator. Such monitoring would not be possible at this time with the data that we have on the private rented sector or the number of folk who are involved in it, but I certainly would not rule that out in the future if we could get all of that right.

That is fair enough. I think that you are right that it would be difficult at the moment.

You have mentioned that one of the changes that you have made relates to energy efficiency. The energy efficiency standard has to be met by 2020. Are any extra resources going into the sector to help people meet that target? What happens if they do not meet it?

As the committee is aware, the Government has a commitment to spend half a billion pounds on energy efficiency over the next four years. Much of the energy efficiency programme will be delivered at local level, and there is no reason why local authorities should not use the ability to bid in to that funding to ensure that they reach the standards in all of their houses. However, I also expect local authorities and housing associations to ensure that, when they put together their capital programmes for improvement, energy efficiency is at the forefront. To be fair, many local authorities and housing associations are ahead of the game in that regard. The wise ones have already made major efforts to improve energy efficiency in the homes that they manage, and long may that continue.

We will look at what comes out of the home energy efficiency programmes for Scotland in terms of what local authorities are delivering and where they propose to deliver. We recognise that, for some local authorities—and some housing associations, for that matter—some stock is much more difficult to deal with than other stock. However, many local authorities, including in Aberdeen, are getting beyond that and are dealing with the more difficult stock, including multistorey blocks in my own city. We will keep an eye on the situation and see what can be done.

Minister, the last time you were in front of the committee you said that you were looking forward to reading all the strategic housing investment plans. No doubt we will talk about those at a later meeting.

The legislation requires you to review the Scottish social housing charter “from time to time”. Can you say something about the criteria that you use to judge when the time is right?

I do not have a definitive answer to that question. As I stated earlier, tenants organisations, including the group to which Mr McClung belongs, are able to speak to me at any time. If they think that something is not right, I will ask officials to look at it.

We could lay down a timescale in which to look at the charter again, as was done previously, only to find ourselves putting in a lot of work for not a huge amount of change. However, if something crops up—if changes take place—I will not ignore the tenants if they think that it needs to be looked at.

Okay.

Minister, Alexander Stewart gave you the opportunity to mention the 50,000 affordable homes and 35,000 homes for social rent that the Government aims to deliver, and I will give you the same opportunity. Given the investment that is being made, does the housing charter encourage local authorities and housing associations to have discussions with tenants about whether they should get back in the business of building houses again?

I would link that to the likes of allocation policies. The fact that a housing association builds another 200 units does not mean that they will go to existing tenants, because there are obligations to meet in respect of homelessness and a variety of other criteria such as medical need and allocation policies. I sincerely wonder whether the housing charter has a role to play in relation to the ambitions of registered social landlords to get back into the business of new-build properties.

The communication that the charter has instigated means that tenants are able to talk to their landlords about a huge number of issues including the delivery of new homes by those organisations. It is difficult for me to say what is happening in every place right across the country, but a good landlord will have discussions with its tenants about how it intends to expand and deliver new housing, and those discussions will also deal with things such as how it is going to spend capital moneys on improvements. That is happening in a lot of places.

I have a huge number of quotes from various organisations about how well they think all of this works, and the key aspect is the communication that the housing charter has opened up. I will give you an example from Mr Gibson’s constituency. Ardrossan Tenants Association has said:

“It has given tenants better awareness of what opportunities there are to influence their landlords decisions and it has given landlords new impetus to do more for improved services across all areas of their business.”

That is not much different from a number of other quotes that I have. For tenants to be able to continue to say that that is the case, landlords need to meet their duty of listening to them on every issue, including the delivery of new housing.

Thank you, minister. I see that there are no bids for further questions even from Mr Gibson, despite the fact that his constituency has been mentioned.

I am absolutely happy with the mention, and I see no point in asking a question for the sake of it. I am very satisfied with the responses that I have received from the minister and, indeed, from the previous panel.

I thank the minister and his team for joining us. We will hear from you again very shortly, but is there anything that you want to add before we close this evidence session?

No, convener. I am quite satisfied. I expect to be back at the committee very soon—within the next couple of weeks, I think—to talk about climate change.

I think that you will be back in the next couple of seconds, minister—I am just following protocol.

Agenda item 3 is further consideration of the Scottish social housing charter. Because the charter is subject to the affirmative procedure, it must be approved by the Parliament before it can come into operation. The committee will now formally consider motion S5M-03695, which is that the committee recommends that the Parliament approve the revised Scottish social housing charter. Only the minister and committee members may speak in the debate, and I invite the minister to speak to and move the motion.

Motion moved,

That the Local Government and Communities Committee recommends that the revised Scottish Social Housing Charter be approved.—[Kevin Stewart]

Although there is provision for members to debate the motion, if they so wish, it appears that no one wishes to do so. We are just following protocol. This must all seem a bit artificial for folk who are watching on the outside, but we have to do it.

I invite the minister to sum up and respond to the lengthy debate that we have just had.

I do not need to sum up, convener. Thank you.

Motion agreed to.

Thank you very much, minister.

Thank you very much, convener.

We now move into private session.

11:42 Meeting continued in private until 12:48.