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Enhanced Enforcement Areas Scheme (Scotland) Regulations 2015 [Draft]
Item 1 is consideration of the draft Enhanced Enforcement Areas Scheme (Scotland) Regulations 2015. The committee will take evidence from Margaret Burgess, the Minister for Housing and Welfare, and from Scottish Government officials Linda Leslie, housing strategy team leader, and Jacqueline Pantony, principal legal officer.
The draft regulations are laid under the affirmative procedure, which means that the Parliament must approve them before the provisions can come into force. Following the evidence session, the committee will be invited to consider a motion to recommend that the draft regulations be approved, under item 3.
I welcome our witnesses and I invite the minister to make an opening statement.
I welcome the opportunity to give evidence on the draft Enhanced Enforcement Areas Scheme (Scotland) Regulations 2015.
Drew Smith lodged an amendment at stage 3 of the Housing (Scotland) Bill introducing the provisions on enhanced enforcement areas and requiring draft regulations to be laid by 1 April 2015. He made it clear in his remarks supporting his amendment that the power to designate enhanced enforcement areas would be used only in exceptional circumstances. On that basis, I was happy to support his amendment to the bill.
The regulations, if approved, will enable local authorities to apply for new discretionary powers to assist them in tackling acute problems in a geographical area.
In order to make an application, the local authority must consider that the area has an overprovision or a concentration of private rented sector accommodation that is characterised as being of a poor environmental standard, being overcrowded, and having a prevalence of antisocial behaviour.
I was clear throughout Parliament’s scrutiny of the bill that I want to raise standards across the private rented sector. That is why the Housing (Scotland) Act 2014 includes a number of new measures that were supported by the Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee and by Parliament. The act introduces regulation of letting agents; enables disputes in the private rented sector to be transferred to the first-tier tribunal for Scotland; gives local authorities discretionary powers to report breaches of the repairing standard to the private rented housing panel, along with the power to enter a house to establish whether there is a breach; and places duties on landlords to provide carbon monoxide detectors and carry out electrical safety checks every five years.
I also want to see local authorities making effective use of their statutory powers for landlord registration. Work is under way to revise the landlord registration guidance to support them to do that.
We published our consultation on the policy approach to the regulations in autumn last year, following discussions with individual local authorities and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities. We received 33 responses, including from 13 local authorities, the Scottish Association of Landlords, Shelter Scotland and a number of registered tenant organisation networks. All were all broadly supportive of our approach.
Enhanced enforcement area designation is intended to be used to tackle only the most difficult and extreme circumstances where a local authority has not been able to improve conditions in an area by using its existing powers. That is why the draft regulations require a local authority, when applying for designation of an area, to set out its wider strategy for improving standards in the private rented sector.
I want to ensure that we take a proportionate approach to the process, so the draft regulations give local authorities the flexibility to bring forward the most relevant evidence of the three criteria specified in the 2014 act to support an application.
Local authorities have a wide range of existing powers to tackle poor standards in the private rented sector. When an area is designated as an EEA, the local authority will have a number of new discretionary powers that it can use in that area and which will give it a new set of tools to tackle an exceptional set of circumstances.
The powers will enable local authorities to require a landlord who is applying for registration or renewing their registration to provide an enhanced criminal record certificate to evidence that they are a fit and proper person; to require landlords to produce the documents that are specified in the draft regulations for inspection by local authority officers to evidence that they are complying with their related duties and responsibilities as landlords; and to authorise a person to enter a house or building to ensure that the accommodation is safe, well managed and of good quality.
As set out in the 2014 act, the draft regulations also set out the purposes for which local authorities can use those powers. They are: to enable the local authority to exercise its functions under landlord registration legislation; to ensure the safety and upkeep of the house; to ensure that information is available to tenants; and to enable the local authority to decide whether the house and the building that it is in are safe, well managed and of good quality.
In drafting the regulations, the Scottish Government has tried to give local authorities additional powers to respond flexibly and proportionately to exceptional circumstances. I am happy to answer any questions.
Thank you.
I have criticised some of your previous regulation of private landlords, minister, on the ground that often the good landlords engaged and the bad landlords did not and, as a result, we simply regulated the good landlords and not the bad ones. However, the draft regulations seem to go a step further and allow local authorities to take action against the bad landlords. Are they the step in the right direction that they appear to be?
I very much hope that they are a step in the right direction. They are about a local authority identifying, even within its existing powers of regulation, when landlords simply do not play ball and therefore have an impact on the whole area and community. The local authority is being given discretionary powers to take action against landlords that do not follow the rules and to bring the area up to standard.
Is there any danger that when the regulations are put into practice we might fall into the trap that we have fallen into previously by simply putting further pressure on the good landlords and failing to pursue the bad ones?
I do not imagine that happening with these regulations. They are targeted and concern instances in which a local authority and a community have identified a problem. They relate to exceptional circumstances and will affect only bad landlords. The Scottish Association of Landlords and the good landlord organisations are supportive of our action.
I believe that we might achieve that with the regulations, so I support them.
Good morning, minister. I very much support the thrust of the regulations and what they seek to do. However, I have often been aware in the past of local authorities using their existing enforcement powers disproportionately.
When I questioned council officers to try to discover whether there is any rhyme or reason to their actions, they suggested to me that they were often reluctant to use their powers to serve repair notices because they feel that if the council undertakes the repairs and then attempts to recover the costs, their chances of recovering those costs are pretty slender. Do the regulations deal with that concern? Some private sector landlords are, in effect, companies that are based outwith Scotland—indeed, some are based outwith the United Kingdom.
The powers are additional and discretionary. It is for the local authority to determine whether using them would improve a difficult situation in its area. We envisage that the powers will not be used in every local authority area in Scotland and that they will be used only when a local authority wants to tackle a problem in the private rented sector as part of its overall strategy for improving an area. In those circumstances, the local authority would gather evidence and request that ministers designate the specific area as an enhanced enforcement area in which it could take enhanced action. The local authority would apply to take the action.
You said that the powers are “additional and discretionary”, so it is likely that they would be used only in exceptional circumstances and that only a limited number of local authorities would seek to invoke the regulations. How will the Government keep the matter under review to find out what the practical impact of the regulations has been?
We keep all legislation under review. The powers are discretionary powers for local authorities. They are an additional tool in their toolbox. As I said, I do not expect them to be used often. I think that we are already working with Glasgow City Council, which, if the regulations are approved, is looking to have an enhanced enforcement area as part of its overall strategy for improving part of Glasgow. That will give us an indication of how the regulations work in practice. We will certainly examine that example. The committee will be kept informed of what is happening, and it can always review the situation too.
There are no further questions so we move on to item 3, which is formal consideration of motion S4M-13157.
Motion moved,
That the Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee recommends that the Enhanced Enforcement Areas Scheme (Scotland) Regulations 2015 [draft] be approved.—[Margaret Burgess.]
Motion agreed to.
That concludes consideration of the draft regulations. We will report the outcome of our consideration to the Parliament.
I will allow a short suspension for a changeover of witnesses.
10:13 Meeting suspended.