Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, December 5, 2023

Official Report 715KB pdf

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Housing (Cladding Remediation) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

The final item on our agenda is to discuss our experience of last week’s visit to a residential building in north Edinburgh that has external cladding, which was made to inform our consideration of the Housing (Cladding Remediation) (Scotland) Bill.

I will begin with a couple of comments and I will then invite others to give their views. I found it useful to go and see the building and meet people who are living in that context. It might not be relevant to the bill, but my takeaway was that, although it is cladding that we have been talking about all along, a great deal of what came across was people’s concern, to varying degrees, about having to live with the risk of fire, and their considerations around that.

We had some good conversations with the person who is producing single building assessments. It was striking that reports are being made but the challenge lies in getting the throughput of action on those reports. Some of that involves challenges around procurement processes and getting enough people to assess the buildings.

Another thing that was striking, which would not have come home to me had I not gone to see the building, is that cladding is of a particular weight and, when it is removed, it needs to be replaced with something different. I think that it is called Rockwool. That is heavier, which has the knock-on effect of requiring considerable structural changes to the building.

Those are just a few comments. There are many other things that I could say, but I would love to hear from members.

It was a very helpful and useful meeting. It told me, once again, that many of us in Scotland do not know what our houses are constructed from, be they old or new. That is probably a wider issue that goes beyond the scope of our consideration, but it is really important for people to know what their homes and buildings are constructed from, who holds the records of that, and who has legitimate access to them. That is an important issue for us all.

The only issue in your draft summary report that I would draw your attention to, convener, concerns the comment on the single building assessment process. I do not think that it is quite the case that those assessments are not being actioned by the Scottish Government. That may have been stated by one or two participants, but it is not actually the case. A slight modification of that wording would be welcome.

12:00  

Following on from what Willie Coffey said about what the buildings are constructed of, I note that we need to see not just what they are constructed of, but whether they are compatible with the new regulations on electric vehicle charging points, whether they are provided in an underground car park or one that is right next to the building. We need to consider the application of new technologies and whether the construction and materials of buildings are suitable.

I put on the record my thanks to constituents in north Edinburgh for hosting us. Those of us who have been working with home owners across Scotland know how stressful this period has been for them. It is important to put that on the record. I was struck by the fact that they feel that the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government have made limited progress on the matter compared with what has been done at the UK level. It is important that, through the cladding bill, we address the matter as urgently as possible and develop solutions.

As my colleague Pam Gosal said, there are specific issues that we need to investigate with regard to electric vehicles; e-bikes, which were specifically raised; and charging points in developments. I raised concerns with ministers a few months back about the regulations that we passed to make it easier to have charging points in properties for electric vehicles. We need to look at that in the context of cladding and the significant time that is needed to resolve the issue. We need to take that forward in our work on the bill.

I found the visit to north Edinburgh helpful. Due to the scale of the work that is required, it is estimated that the cost will be in the region of £40 million for that development alone. I am concerned about how the work will be funded. Is it likely that the developer will meet the costs? How much assistance will the UK Government and the Scottish Government provide? It would be interesting to look at that as well.

Something else that came up in our conversations was a concern that, in some situations, inspections show that the materials that were set out in building plans in the first place were not then used. We heard that in relation to a number of points across the building. That relates to Willie Coffey’s point about people not knowing what their homes and buildings are made of. Perhaps the Parliament can look at that in the longer term.

Thank you for your comments. We will hear from the Scottish Government bill team for the Housing (Cladding Remediation) (Scotland) Bill next week.

We agreed at the start of the meeting to take the next three items in private. As that was the last public item on our agenda, I close the public part of the meeting.

12:03 Meeting continued in private until 12:28.