Subordinate Legislation
Antisocial Behaviour Notices (Houses Used for Holiday Purposes) (Scotland) Order 2011 (Draft)
Agenda item 4 is to take evidence on the draft Antisocial Behaviour Notices (Houses Used for Holiday Purposes) (Scotland) Order 2011. I welcome the witnesses who are with us this morning. Alex Neil, the Minister for Housing and Communities, is accompanied by Peter Reid, senior policy officer in housing markets and supply in the Scottish Government, and Colin Brown, senior principal legal officer in the Scottish Government. Does the minister want to make opening remarks?
Yes please, convener. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to the committee about the draft order.
Through the work of Mr Stanley Player in lodging his public petition, and the work of others, the Government has been made well aware of concerns about persistent antisocial behaviour associated with party flats that are let out for events such as stag parties and hen parties. We therefore welcomed the suggestion from Sarah Boyack, Shirley-Anne Somerville, the City of Edinburgh Council and others to clarify and improve the application of antisocial behaviour notices in relation to short-term lets, thereby allowing local authorities to take action against landlords of holiday flats that have a series of antisocial tenants. Officials from the Scottish Government and the City of Edinburgh Council have worked together to improve the legislation so that it can better meet the needs of our communities.
The order creates an additional set of criteria under which a local authority can issue an antisocial behaviour notice. The property must have been used for holiday purposes on at least two occasions and antisocial behaviour must have been engaged in by a user or visitor during at least two of those occasions.
The antisocial behaviour notice can set out actions that the landlord must take to prevent future antisocial behaviour. Those actions could include: first, limits on the number of people who can be in the property at any one time; secondly, requiring some form of on-site supervision, or at least a person to whom complaints can be directed and who is able effectively to address them; and, thirdly, requiring improvements to the security of the premises.
If the landlord fails to comply with the antisocial behaviour notice, various remedies are available to the local authority. First, it may apply to a sheriff for an order so that no rent is payable. Secondly, it may apply to a sheriff for a management control order for the premises. Thirdly, it may take such steps as it considers necessary to deal with antisocial behaviour, with the landlord being liable for any expenses incurred. Finally, failure to comply is an offence, with a fine of up to level 5 on the current scale, which is £5,000. Although we expect that that will allow the local authority to tackle persistent antisocial behaviour from party flats, we do not expect it to impose a burden on the vast majority of reputable owners of tourist accommodation that is not associated with antisocial behaviour.
I welcome any questions from the committee and I will move the motion later.
My question may seem like a trivial one, but it still interests me. What is the likely timescale for having this series of actions carried out? The reason I ask is to establish whether such notices can be used to deal with a specific problem or whether we are talking about accommodation that has a record of being a problem, so we cannot deal with a specific case through the measures outlined in the order.
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If it was only a one-off case of antisocial behaviour, it would be dealt with under the normal antisocial behaviour laws. The order applies where there is a record of antisocial behaviour emanating from one—or more than one—flat.
The problem is that if the antisocial behaviour is committed by a visitor who is in Edinburgh only for a weekend stay, it is often difficult for the police to identify the culprit and take the necessary action to deal with them before they leave the city.
The pattern has been that a few flats in certain areas, particularly—although not exclusively—in Edinburgh, are consistently being reported to the police and the local authority because of on-going antisocial behaviour. It takes place almost every weekend in some cases, and sometimes for longer periods, but it is caused by different people who are visiting. Those flats are let out for the specific purpose of partying, which gets a bit excessive.
It sounds like an interesting and—one hopes—worthwhile change in the legislation, but I worry about how we deal with the potential consequences and the excuses that one will hear from some tenants as to why there has been antisocial behaviour.
I am thinking in particular of an instance in which an issue is raised with a tenant and they claim that a third party—what you or I, or any other party-goer, might call a gatecrasher—has caused the antisocial behaviour. How do we deal with situations like that, where it is difficult to find out who is responsible? Is it right that we charge the landlord in that case when they have had no control over the third party coming in to their property?
In a sense, the situation will be no different from the general application of antisocial behaviour legislation. The local authority and/or the police always have to investigate to establish who the culprit is, and take appropriate action.
Sometimes it is not always clear who the culprit is, and it can therefore be more difficult to take action. That is the case at present, and there will no doubt be instances under this order in which it might be difficult to pin-point exactly who the culprits are. The point is that if the landlord continually allows that to happen, he becomes the culprit under this legislation. He will be dealt with, as it is his responsibility to ensure that his flat is not consistently used for antisocial behaviour.
I thank the convener for letting me contribute to the discussion.
I am really pleased that we have got to this point. The current position means that my constituents’ lives are disrupted on a regular basis—as the minister said, such antisocial behaviour is a weekly occurrence for people who have the misfortune to live anywhere near one of these party flats.
The current system does not enable effective action to be taken. It has become a football that is passed between the antisocial behaviour team, the noise team and the police, none of whom have the powers to tackle the issue properly. I very strongly welcome the order.
The City of Edinburgh Council has made it clear to me that it does not have the power to act. From discussions with the council and the minister, it seems to me that the order potentially fills the gap in legislation. It is proportionate, as it should kick in only where there are demonstrable problems. The threshold of two reported instances is fair—they have to be reported, so action cannot be taken only on someone’s say-so.
There are several flats in my constituency alone to which the order could make a real difference for residents in those areas. The landlords rent out their flats and earn a huge amount of money. They spend some money putting a lot of beds in the flats, so we could be talking about 15 or 20 people, who are all drunk and there for three days.
That is massively disruptive not only within the flat, but in the vicinity, so I am pleased at the detail in the order in that regard. On-street disturbance is significant, and the vandalism that is caused to people’s cars and stairwells makes it a very expensive problem for local residents who have to clear up the mess afterwards.
I also welcome the fact that the powers that are given to the council will give it a choice about how to proceed. It can prevent the flat from being used or it can require supervision, and it can force the landlord to be liable for expenses.
The provisions will begin to concentrate the minds of landlords, because there will be a financial consequence. At present, their habit is to charge high deposits, but that only lines their pockets more, because the people who create problems go off and do not get their deposits back.
On the internet, you can find a large number of people who have reported unhappiness about the situation. Even this week, several constituents have got in touch with me about party-flat problems. The problem has been going on for several years and is on-going. I hope that, if the order is approved by Parliament, it will send out a strong message to managers of party flats that the days of irresponsible lets are over. That should provide some respite for constituents who have weekly experienced distress, costly repairs and disruption to their lives.
The order is proportionate and will target the right people, although I hope that the Scottish Government will keep the operation of the measure under review. The Government has done a good job, in consultation with the City of Edinburgh Council. If the committee agrees to recommend approval of the order, which I hope it will, the challenge will be in implementation.
I am sure that the minister welcomes those remarks, but I did not hear a question in there, so we may have pre-empted the debate. I hope that that will reduce the time that we spend on it.
As there are no further questions, we move to agenda item 5, which is consideration of motion S3M-7287.
Motion moved,
That the Local Government and Communities Committee recommends that the Antisocial Behaviour Notices (Houses Used for Holiday Purposes) (Scotland) Order 2011 be approved.—[Alex Neil.]
Motion agreed to.
Housing Support Grant (Scotland) Order 2011 (Draft)
Agenda item 6 is evidence on the draft Housing Support Grant (Scotland) Order 2011. We have a change in the witnesses. The minister has been joined by Jamie Hamilton, a policy officer on social housing with the Scottish Government, and Bruce Teubes, an assistant economist with the Scottish Government.
Minister, do you wish to make any opening remarks?
Yes, please.
The draft order sets out the amount of grant that is payable in the financial year 2011-12. In practical terms, the purpose of the order is to provide grant to any local authority that would not be able to balance its housing revenue account without substantially increasing rents. Only Shetland Islands Council, because of its very high housing debt, continues to qualify for grant. In 2011-12, it will receive just under £1 million, payable in 12 equal monthly instalments.
I stated to the committee last year that it was appropriate to look again at the role of the grant and the assumptions and considerations that underpin the methodology for its payment. I note that committee members have raised questions about the grant’s continued role in the context of the prudential borrowing regime that was introduced in 2004-05 and about the circumstances of Shetland Islands Council’s housing debt.
My aim has been to strike a balance between protecting the interests of tenants, those in housing need and the taxpayer. The proposed grant level should not cause rents to rise unsustainably. The changes to the calculation assumptions should protect taxpayers by minimising perverse incentives for housing revenue accounts not to be managed prudentially. The changes should also assist Shetland Islands Council to bring its HRA into balance so that the council can take full part in the opportunities that the Government has launched to build local authority housing.
My officials and I have had constructive discussions with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and Shetland Islands Council over the past year. The proposed grant level for 2011-12 reflects figures provided by the council. Moving beyond 2011-12, discussions are already under way at official level to examine appropriate levels of payment to enable Shetland Islands Council to bring its HRA into balance. We will also engage with the UK Government.
More widely, following initial soundings from councils via COSLA, it may be appropriate to consult in more detail regarding removing the provisions for housing support grant given the onus that is now on local authorities to balance their housing revenue accounts under the freedoms provided by the prudential borrowing regime.
On what basis are you consulting the UK Government on the order?
I am consulting it for several reasons. As I said to the committee last year and as my predecessor Stewart Maxwell said the previous year, it is clear that the remaining grant is a bit of an anachronism. I think that we all agree—Shetland Islands Council, the Scottish Government and the UK Treasury—that the grant needs to be addressed with a view, eventually, to bringing it to an end. However, that has to be done in a managed way. That is the first reason for talking to the UK Treasury. The second reason, of course, is that it is the Treasury’s money. It is not part of our consolidated block; it is part of annually managed expenditure from the Treasury, which therefore has a direct interest in it. Thirdly, because of the abolition of housing revenue accounts south of the border, the context within which we are operating, in terms of the overall Treasury approach to housing finance, changes.
For all those reasons, we are in simultaneous discussions with Shetland Islands Council, COSLA and the UK Government about the medium-term future of the grant.
Do you have a view on how long we could reasonably expect the grant to continue before Shetland can manage its housing revenue alone?
Over the past three years, the cabinet secretary and I have said that we would like the grant to be phased out by the end of the next parliamentary session—around the middle of this decade. I do not want to be more precise than that because it depends on the successful outcome of our discussions with the UK Treasury, Shetland Islands Council and COSLA. However, we are all aiming for that kind of timetable.
There being no further questions for the minister, we move to agenda item 7, which is consideration of a motion to approve the draft Housing Support Grant (Scotland) Order 2011. I invite Alex Neil, the Minister for Housing and Communities, to move motion S3M-7859.
Motion moved,
That the Local Government and Communities Committee recommends that the Housing Support Grant (Scotland) Order 2011 be approved.—[Alex Neil.]
Motion agreed to.
Non-Domestic Rates (Levying) (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2011 (SSI 2011/74)
Non-Domestic Rates (Valuation of Utilities) (Scotland) Amendment Order 2011 (SSI 2011/75)
Agenda item 8 is consideration of two Scottish statutory instruments that are subject to the negative procedure. Members have received electronic copies of the instruments. No concerns have been raised and no motions to annul have been lodged. Do members agree that we do not wish to make any recommendations to Parliament in relation to the instruments?
Members indicated agreement.