Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Official Report 458KB pdf

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Scottish Social Housing Charter

We now move to agenda item 3. We will hear evidence from representatives of Scottish housing associations. It will be helpful if questions and answers are succinct. The witnesses should not feel that they have to contribute on every question; if they agree with a point, it will be fine just to say so.

I welcome the witnesses, who are: Jim Harvey, director of the Glasgow and West of Scotland Forum of Housing Associations; David Bookbinder, head of policy and public affairs with the Chartered Institute of Housing in Scotland; Euan McDougall, policy, information and parliamentary officer from the Scottish Disability Equality Forum; Danny Mullen from the regional networks of registered tenant organisations; Alan Stokes, policy and strategy manager from the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations; and last but by no means least, Ilene Campbell, director of the Tenants Information Service.

Can you explain why the Scottish social housing charter is important to your particular organisation?

The charter is very important to tenants because for the first time the standards to which the Scottish Housing Regulator operates will be governed by charter. Tenants have never previously been involved in contributing to the regulatory process and it is important that tenants are involved at the beginning as we embark on the new process.

What difference do you hope that the charter will make?

I hope that the charter will provide opportunities for landlords to engage more openly and transparently with tenants and that it will ensure that they deliver value for money and accept accountability for the actions that they take in running their businesses. Tenants are important elements of the business structure of housing. Many have no choice but to live in the houses that are designated for them, so it is time that tenants were able to express their thoughts on the services that they receive, the value for money that they hope to get and whether their tenancies are properly regulated. If there has to be self-assessment, tenants must also be involved in that process.

The organisation that I work for is made up of community-controlled housing associations that have high levels of tenant membership of their management committees, so we are fully on board with the idea of a charter that promotes good standards for tenants.

It is important to say that this is not entirely a newfangled concept, though. There have previously been standards that set out what landlords should try to achieve and that has been the case in the housing association sector since the 1980s, but Danny Mullen alluded to what makes the charter different, which is that there has been more tenant input to the process of developing it. I will not go into that lengthy process, but we have ended up with a set of national, high-level outcomes. To me, that makes more sense than trying to prescribe in detail what every landlord in every part of Scotland should try to achieve. That may be well-intentioned, but the risk is that it would become too heavy-handed.

The charter is about encouraging dialogue between tenants and landlords. As we said in our written evidence, we regard the issue of reporting to the regulator as important, but secondary. Earlier discussions on the process concentrated on what would be reported to the regulator and what the regulator would do about it. However, our view is that the process should be as much about what is locally important.

The committee will probably find that there is consensus about the charter among all the organisations that are here. There was extensive consultation on the charter, which involved tenants, too. Given all the current housing issues, the charter is pretty high up on the tenants’ agenda.

We are a support and training organisation that works with tenant groups all over Scotland. We regard the charter as a platform to improve the dialogue between landlords and tenants. We carried out quite a lot of consultation on the charter with tenants, who said that they hope that it will improve tenant participation and how tenants are involved.

We have had a legal framework for tenant participation in Scotland for over 10 years, but the participation and involvement of tenants still varies greatly across the country. Some tenants will be very actively involved, but some tenants reported through the consultation that they still feel that their views are not being heard. There is therefore quite a lot at stake for tenants in the charter.

It is essential that support and training is provided for tenants. If they are to be at the heart of working with landlords on self-assessment, our priority over the next year will be to work with tenants organisations across Scotland to ensure that tenants are supported and able to take part fully in the process.

Jim Harvey is right that standards have been around for a long time, but there is no doubt that the advent of the charter will make the standards that social landlords have to comply with much more explicit for tenants. The charter will be much more of an out-there document.

The CIH thinks that it is good that there will be a renewed focus on the standards that social landlords must have for their services. I do not think that there will be any real difficulties or barriers for landlords who are currently providing good services, but there is no doubt that there will be a renewed focus on how the regulator regulates services according to the charter and on how landlords can find the right ways of measuring their own performance, with meaningful tenant input, as other witnesses have said.

11:15

For disabled tenants, the idea of greater and better-quality participation is extremely important. Like others, we hope that the charter will provide a platform that will deliver that.

Quite simply, the charter will shape the way in which the regulator regulates our sector. We are pleased that the charter has been greatly reduced in size, from 71 to 16 outcomes, which is much closer to what we suggested on behalf of our members in our alternative charter.

The amendments that we suggested in our written evidence were intended to resolve points of ambiguity that might leave landlords and tenants with unclear expectations.

The key point that we would like to make is that the charter can work in practice only if the performance measures and reporting requirements under the charter, which the Scottish Housing Regulator is due to formally consult on next month, are clear and realistic and do not greatly increase the regulatory burden on our sector. I would also like to add to that that we welcome the fact that tenants have had a great degree of involvement in the process up to this point.

Does the revised charter answer the key concerns that arose during the consultation? If not, are there still main areas that need to be improved?

I will be cheeky and get my point in early, as the CIH really only has one comment in that regard. Most of the outstanding concerns can be addressed with some tinkering to the commentary that goes with the outcomes. As has already been said, the charter is much improved. It has been through a long journey.

The CIH is particularly concerned about the outcome that refers to “continually improving value” for money. I think that that outcome is trying to encourage a spirit of landlords always being on the alert for better ways of doing things, which is what we all want. However, making a landlord guarantee that, year on year, they will continually improve value for money could make them a hostage to fortune. We would like that wording to be amended but, otherwise, we can live with the charter as drafted.

Where are we at with finding another adverb to replace “continually”? Other organisations, such as utilities groups, are always being asked to up their game every year. We should all be thinking about that. What alternative wording might you be able to rally around?

We have offered an alternative in our submission, which talks about tenants and others receiving services

“that provide good value for the rent and other charges they pay.”

We would expect the regulator to look behind that and consider what landlords are doing to consider continually how to ensure that they provide value for money. We simply have an anxiety about making a promise to tenants that value for money will improve year on year. If you are starting from a point of high quality, that is a pretty dangerous thing to say. However, we are not against the spirit of continuous improvement.

It is also important to recognise that the regulation of social housing is different from the regulation of utilities, where there is a direct relationship between the cost to the consumer and what is on offer. Of course, the way in which energy prices rise makes me not so sure of how effective that regulation is.

What makes social housing different is that it is about communities and tenants’ priorities. For example, if tenants say to their landlord that they want them to improve in a particular area, whether it is estate management or local environmental issues, does the landlord say no, because that will cost more money, or does the landlord have a dialogue with the tenants in order to establish what both sides regard as the right way forward?

Without suggesting that social housing is an overly complex thing, I point out that it is about people and communities. The need to be responsive to those factors makes the approach to regulating social housing a wee bit different from the standard regulatory way of looking at things.

I will be the odd man out and support the outcome of continually improving services for the money that tenants pay. That is crucial for tenants. We have seen rent hikes to cover the Scottish housing quality standard, this improvement project and the next one and so on. There has been very little involvement from tenants in those processes. The landlords say that they need the money to improve the standard of housing or to maintain houses but, in many cases, such works are carried out by landlords without any due regard for the impact on their tenants in relation to how the work is done, what process is used, whether tenants are involved, whether tenants get decanted and so on. It is therefore crucial that tenants see a continuous improvement in the services that they receive year on year and in relation to landlords’ attitudes towards them.

It is all very well saying that tenants should be on the board and their voices listened to. I am a council tenant and I sit on the board of an RSL as an independent member. My experience is that the tenants on the board do not always represent the interests of the tenants in their communities. They represent the board and the decision-making process that it uses. That is where their responsibility lies. Landlords must get out of their offices and go into the communities and talk to tenants.

Let us put this into context. For example, say that a housing association says that it needs to renew all its kitchens and there has been a fairly short time between the first refurbishment and the second. Danny Mullen, are you and the others saying that the approach needs to be more individualised? A lady might not want her kitchen to be renewed, but she might need her bathroom to be adapted because of her increasing frailty. Are you asking for landlords to take a more individualised approach?

We would like to see an individualised approach where that can happen. It is not always feasible. Choices should be built in so that tenants can at least claim ownership of that particular part of the process. That would improve the value that tenants get for their money. That is what I am saying. We have to turn it on its head. It is not all about finance, but about how services are delivered and where tenants perceive they can be actively empowered to make a contribution and keep themselves and their communities better managed.

It is important to note that housing associations and co-operatives have always embraced the concept of continuous improvement. The social housing charter will replace the performance standards, under which guidance standard 1.3 is entitled “Commitment to Continuous Improvement”. Every housing association and co-operative is committed to continually reviewing and looking for ways to improve services. However, the outcome talks about “continually improving value”, which is quite different and next to impossible to achieve or measure. We therefore suggested that the phrase “continually improving” was removed from the outcome to leave landlords committed to providing high-quality services that represent value for the money that their customers pay.

Who will be the judge of that?

I said earlier that there is a lot of consensus, but not on all the proposals. I support Danny Mullen on this one. If we had an audience of tenant representatives from around Scotland and we asked for their view on that outcome, they would say that it is a positive thing from their perspective. I know that “value” is just one word, but when I read that outcome, I was thinking about continuous improvement. Value for money does not always mean lowering costs; it can be about getting value for the money that we pay for something.

When we meet tenants groups, one of their key questions is about value for money. Danny Mullen summed up the problem very well from an activist’s point of view; in discussions about rents, there is very often no full consultation between landlords and tenants. Given the various challenges, including the proposed welfare reforms, value for money is at the top of tenants’ lists.

I realise that the landlord sector, which is represented this morning, is not comfortable with the challenge of continually ensuring that there is value for money, but why is that the case? It does not mean having to lower costs year after year; it simply means ensuring that, each year, there is value for money. I am not saying that tenants are always happy to take a rent increase, but they will be if they see more improvements or capital investment being made. As the panel’s evidence suggests, there is a strong case for such an approach to continue.

I agree with Ilene Campbell’s comments about continuous improvement. More generally, from a disability point of view, we are very pleased that the need for a specific equalities outcome has been recognised and the outcome included in the charter. After all, many equalities organisations had looked for that.

Danny Mullen’s point about tenants having choice and control over their own homes is particularly important with regard to disabled people and we would like the charter to recognise disabled people’s right to independent living, which would mean that they would have the same freedom, choice, dignity and control as any other person. That is crucial with regard to where a person lives, which in turn is related to the adaptations they can get, the people they can socialise with and their access to employment and social activities. We suggest that the right be added into the charter as a separate outcome or that the phrase “independent living” be inserted into a number of the existing outcomes.

Given that, with the way services are going, people are able to stay in their houses for longer instead of having to go into residential care or supported accommodation, such a move seems only sensible.

Absolutely. It chimes completely with the concepts of personalisation and preventative spend.

No one would disagree with Euan McDougall’s point. Every organisation in the housing support and care field is keen to promote independent living.

However, given that the charter is aimed at social landlords and, predominantly, their tenants, we have to be careful that we do not put responsibilities on landlords or make promises to tenants that go beyond landlords’ areas of responsibility. Landlords are not in sole control of getting adaptations carried out, disabled people’s social activities or their quality of life. In spirit, we all agree with Euan McDougall but we must be careful that the charter does not take landlords beyond their actual remit.

I do not think that anyone is saying that landlords are in sole control of such things, but surely they play a major role in delivering for their tenants and ensuring that they can stay at home for as long as possible. Of course, they will work with others in health and social work in that respect.

That is the key point. If the charter referred to working with others and things were regulated on that level, that would be absolutely the right approach. We should not be putting the onus on landlords to do things by themselves without reference to other organisations.

This is, in fact, one of the substantive issues that the committee needs to consider when examining the charter. What we have arrived at is very much focused on landlord responsibilities and I agree with the convener that, in a whole range of public policy areas, be it reshaping care for older people, community regeneration, preventative spending or whatever, we are probably beginning to head in different directions. The charter does not really tap into any of those things. I share David Bookbinder’s nervousness at the prospect of the charter being used to measure what landlords are doing on certain matters because, in most cases, this is all about partnerships and shared responsibilities.

From a personal point of view, I would like the charter to be a bit more ambitious or at least to recognise in the commentary that social housing takes place within a broader framework. It is not necessarily, for example, a matter of asking the regulator to measure the contribution to community regeneration, but it is perhaps a question of the charter recognising that local housing associations are hugely important in their communities in how they engage with community organisations, public service providers and the third sector. We will need much more of that engagement in the future, as spending cuts continue, to make our neighbourhoods the sustainable places that we all want.

11:30

Is the charter missing a trick? Are those things not discussed with the various bodies in drawing up the charter?

It depends on what the vision is for the charter. If it is to focus primarily on the bread-and-butter aspects of being a landlord, that is fine—that is what we have ended up with in the charter. However, we have made the point throughout the process, although we have probably lost the argument, that for the communities that our members work in, which tend to be poorer and more disadvantaged, there should be a recognition of the broader context.

The factors of prevention, community empowerment and so on will become more rather than less important as part of the context in which social landlords work. The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities has made the same point in its written evidence when it talks about the changing shape of public services in future.

We must move on. Margaret, I am sorry if I have strayed into your questions a bit.

That is okay—I have been furiously writing some more.

The number and scope of the proposed standards has been reduced from 71 to 16. Do you feel that any of the 16 are unnecessary and could be removed?

I do not think that any standard is unnecessary; rather, I would say that some of them are missing some main elements. In the homelessness outcome, there is no mention of measures that housing bodies should take to prevent homelessness. I worry because the charter is also missing the fact that homeless people have the right to settled accommodation. The outcome refers only to temporary accommodation but, especially in 2012, homeless people are entitled to settled accommodation.

I also worry about local authority landlords who use out-of-town placements and bed-and-breakfast accommodation in emergency situations. Such accommodation is used too often; authorities should have housing capability within their areas.

There is also no mention of an environmental standard. The charter talks about sustainable communities, but how can we have sustainable communities without having standards that we have to live up to? Those are my concerns.

It would be really challenging to reduce the outcomes further. I cannot remember the exact number of previous outcomes, but the charter has come down to 16. Obviously, because they have been reduced from 70-odd, the 16 outcomes cover very broad areas. As we have said in our submission, we are focusing on the next stage: the role that the regulator will have, the performance measures and, significantly, how tenants will engage.

We have not recommended many tweaks to the charter, but I agree with Danny Mullen’s view. Outcome 4 focuses on quality of housing based on the Scottish housing quality standard. Although people are pleased that there is a standard, it is a minimum standard that people aspire to improve on. There is not a lot of reference, even in the narrative, to wider environmental issues. For most tenants, housing is part of the issue, but the wider environment is also important. There are regeneration proposals, and we advocate adding—to the narrative, if not to the outcome—something in relation to that. It would be quite easy to do.

The transparency outcome is not mentioned in our submission, but I know that it has been raised by another witness. Perhaps we missed this the first time round, but there was a clear outcome in the original draft that said straightforward things, such as that tenants and customers would have the right to information. They already have the legal right to find out how decisions are made and how landlords govern their organisations. I note that that has not been translated into the final charter, although the charter is about transparency and accountability. Tenants ask us basic things; they need to know how decisions are taken and how they can try to influence what their landlord is doing. As I said, the transparency outcome has been raised, and Euan McDougall might raise it, and we would probably welcome another look at the issue. Even if it was not a separate outcome, it could be included under “Communication” in the current charter.

I might slightly diverge from some of Ilene Campbell’s and Danny Mullen’s comments. Danny Mullen commented on prevention and helping to ensure that people do not become homeless in the first place. A current outcome is that

“Social landlords ensure that ... people at risk of losing their homes get advice on preventing homelessness.”

That point therefore looks to be covered.

The homelessness issue is interesting. The charter cannot replicate everything that is in the legislation and the accompanying code of guidance on homelessness that local authorities must follow. In some ways, the charter is an abbreviated and complementary version. It adds to the range of local authorities’ statutory duties.

Perhaps there is a feeling that the charter is not explicit enough on transparency. From CIHS’s point of view, it seems to be clear that social landlords must ensure that it is easy for people to

“get the information they need about their landlord”.

Those are the words that one of the outcomes uses. I think that most of that is covered by the charter.

I have not read the charter. On prevention and the other side of things—communities, tower blocks and housing schemes—is there anything in it that gives new tenants a probationary period of, say, six months to ensure that there is no antisocial behaviour?

No, there is not, but I presume that the coming Scottish Government consultation on things such as allocations will contain something about that. Are you talking about probationary tenancies?

I am talking about new tenants when they move in and am thinking about constituents in my ward in East Kilbride who have problems. Those constituents live in a tower block; the residents are mainly elderly. A new tenant has moved in, has totally disrupted the whole community and has caused all sorts of problems. If all new tenants had a six-month probationary period, they could be monitored and action could be taken quite quickly to prevent the community and the area in which they live from falling apart.

Yes. An alternative to that would be to change the allocation policy to allow there to be homes for specific groups of people. I do not mean that we should ghettoise homeless people or anything like that; I am talking about older people who have to live in big multistoreys. It would possibly be better to have multistoreys that are tenanted only by elderly people, although there can still be antisocial behaviour by elderly people.

Should anything be included in the charter to ensure that action is taken more quickly to deal with antisocial tenants? I speak from experience in that regard: I know a young couple who got married and bought a house in a community where there is some social housing, but who had to move out six months ago because of a problem with antisocial tenants, which we have still not resolved.

The charter can only reflect the law as it is. As Danny Mullen said, there will be a consultation in the next few weeks about changing the position on tenancy allocations. That will provide an opportunity to discuss whether it is possible within the law to address antisocial behaviour more quickly.

I think that the charter deals with Margaret McCulloch’s point. The original draft was even more succinct on the issue. Dealing with antisocial behaviour often involves the legal process and can depend on sheriffs’ decisions, gathering evidence and so on. I envisage good landlords having mediation services, for example, to try to resolve problems before they escalate.

To my mind, in every community, town, city and village there will always be an element who will not play by the rules. We must try to educate, but where that does not work we must be more robust in dealing with problems.

Euan McDougall highlighted that the initial draft charter had no specific equalities outcome and that the consultation sought views on whether one should be included. A number of respondents—mainly equalities organisations—felt that the charter should be more explicit about requirements in relation to equality and diversity. Do you agree that there needed to be an equalities outcome? If so, what are your views on the proposed wording of the outcome?

First, we completely agree that there should be an equalities outcome. On the wording, it is in the same style as the rest of the charter, which is a positive point. However, it can be argued that it lacks specificity; it is a bit vague on what it wants to do. It pretty much simply focuses the landlord’s mind on the fact that they have equalities duties and responsibilities towards their tenants; in that respect, it is good.

As I said before, we would like to see specific mention of independent living being an important part of a disabled person’s human rights. However, the proposed equalities outcome as written is in keeping with the rest of the charter and so, in that respect, it should achieve its aim.

We have been comfortable from the outset with the idea of including a specific equalities outcome. I take the point that what is in the charter is quite high level, but we should not forget what the charter is for and that statutory codes of practice that are published by the Equality and Human Rights Commission sit behind it. The charter is not in itself an exhaustive description of every single thing a landlord should do—nor should it be, in my opinion.

When we were asked, we said that we supported a separate equalities outcome. The challenge for such an outcome is always in the level of detail. I know that there was much discussion and debate about what should and should not be included. As Euan McDougall said, all the outcomes are very broad, so the next stage is to see how effective the charter will be and how that will be measured. It is important that there is not a one-size-fits-all approach to how self-assessment is done, because there will be differences between landlords in different parts of Scotland.

We are therefore comfortable with the equalities outcome as it is, but we take on board Euan McDougall’s points about it. However, I hope that they will be worked through in discussion of how the outcome will be measured.

11:45

Are the outcomes and standards drafted in a way that will allow the Scottish Housing Regulator to develop performance measures for each?

I cannot comment for the regulator but the next stage will be to ensure that there are clear and realistic performance measures. Given the variations across the country, local standards will also be a critical issue for tenants and we recommend to the regulator that in any discussions about this next stage and the development of performance measures there be tenant representatives at the table.

We certainly welcome the inclusion of an equalities outcome. I have to say that we did not mind when we saw the original 71 draft outcomes, because we could see that equalities went through all of them. With regard to the vastly reduced list of outcomes in this draft, the only suggestion that I would make to ensure that equalities is enshrined is that the communication outcome refer to landlords recognising and understanding their tenants’ needs and providing services to meet them. All the same, given that it comes down to the regulator’s interpretation of the charter, it is as well that the equalities outcome has been included and is at the front. I agree with Euan McDougall that it seems like a stock outcome that is starting to appear in, for example, single outcome agreements, but I hope that people focus on it.

As several witnesses have indicated, the performance measurements are going to be crucial in all of this. However, that will involve landlords collecting performance data and submitting it to the regulator, and some respondents to the consultation have expressed concern about putting a new burden on landlords. Indeed, the Glasgow and West of Scotland Forum of Housing Associations has said:

“there is a risk that Charter reporting requirements will result in social housing providers facing a far greater burden than other providers of public services.”

In its revised impact assessment, the Scottish Government deals with that issue, suggesting that the

“Charter does not place any additional burden on landlords who have effective performance systems in place and are performing well.”

Do you agree with that or do you still have concerns? Is there any way of reducing the regulatory burden? I do not know whether Jim Harvey wants to start off, but I was quoting his submission.

The business and regulatory impact assessment is a standard requirement; indeed, such an assessment was carried out when the last housing bill was under consideration. Until we actually know what the regulator is proposing, it is simply speculation to say that there will be no “additional burden on landlords”. The analogy that I make—and which perhaps also relates to the committee’s consideration of the charter—is with a scene from a Tom and Jerry cartoon in which you can see Jerry but only the shadow of Tom, who has yet to reveal himself in his full glory. The regulator is only at the very start of the process of developing the performance measurement proposals; in fact, some of us are meeting the regulator this afternoon to discuss those matters and obviously we will contribute ideas to the process.

We welcome the fact that the regulator echoed many people’s concerns about there being too many outcomes in the charter. However, we are concerned, as we say in our submission, that the regulator’s consultation document talks about social landlords having to provide not only the type of statistical returns that various local authority services, such as roads, lighting and protective services, make to Audit Scotland, which are pretty focused and concise, but a self-assessment report, every year, for everything that is in the charter, and that that will set the agenda for what landlords and tenants talk about. In our experience, tenants often have particular concerns about their neighbourhood and services; they do not necessarily want to sit down and work their way through a long checklist.

Also—especially for smaller organisations—that requirement could add to costs and administrative burdens. As I have pointed out in our submission, I think that Parliament recognised that when it approved section 4 of the Housing (Scotland) Act 2010, which includes the idea of varying the approach for various types and sizes of landlords. However, that does not feature in anything that the regulator has said so far. I do not know whether you plan to take evidence from the regulator but, even though it does not have the detail of its proposals, I would have thought that it would be able to give you an indication of principles and broad intentions.

You have already dealt with tenant participation to a certain extent, but it is a central issue, and one of the outcomes relates directly to it. Reference has been made to the lack of progress on tenant participation over the past 10 years since the Housing (Scotland) Act 2001 was passed, and I am interested in ways in which that can improve. The regional network referred to tenants’ low expectation that their involvement could bring about positive change, and the Tenants Information Service commented on the lack of development support, which impacts on that. How can outcome 3 be realised? What can social landlords, in particular, do to improve their tenant participation arrangements?

They can do a great deal. They should be engaging with tenants, even on an individual basis during a house call or whatever—that is still tenant participation.

Engagement involves gathering information about the community, knowing what is going on in the community, talking to people who are active in the community and so on. First and foremost, however, it is about knowing what tenants want and knowing how to deliver a service to, say, a disabled person. It is about the landlord knowing the customer and always listening to and doing the best that it can to meet the needs of individual tenants and tenants generally.

However, we have not seen a lot of that. In fact, in some areas, there have been barriers to that happening. People have been knocked back, and their first experience of tenant participation has been a disaster. They have come away from the experience with low expectations ingrained in their hearts. They say, “Why should I bother? They don’t want to listen. They don’t want to engage.”

My plea is for the sector to take tenant participation seriously and build on it. From small acorns, large oak trees grow.

With regard to participation, there needs to be a duty on landlords to engage proactively with their tenants. Many techniques can be used to help with community engagement, and a huge number of organisations in the third sector in Scotland have direct experience of that. It would be useful if social landlords looked for that sort of partnership working with organisations that have experience of things such as co-production—not that I am saying that that is necessarily the most appropriate way for tenants to participate.

Landlords should have a mindset of working together with their tenants and not simply consulting them. For participation to be genuine, people need simple things. Information should be provided in advance of meetings, communication support needs should be respected and information should be provided in accessible formats—not just in formats that are accessible to people with impairments, but in easy read format and so on.

There should be a duty on social landlords to be proactive in seeking participation.

The question is about what we do every day, so I could say a lot in response, but I will try to keep it short.

There is already a legal framework for tenant participation and there are key principles that outline all the things that Euan McDougall and Danny Mullen mentioned. The 2001 act introduced a legal framework for participation in Scotland for the first time, so all the stuff is there.

When we went out to work and do consultation with what we call hard-to-reach groups such as homeless people and supported tenants, their requests were for basic things such as a respectful relationship between tenants and landlords and opportunities to access information. Those are basic civil rights issues.

We work with tenants and landlords, and I believe that the issue is about the culture of organisations. Jim Harvey touched on the fact that, if the focus of the charter and self-assessment is a tick-box exercise and landlords feel duty-bound to spend a long time on it every year, that will be against the ethos of participation. Participation is about working with local people in their areas.

We are a support and resource agency. I have to flag up the reality across Scotland, which is that, although the charter has been introduced and the Scottish Housing Regulator is saying that tenants are at the heart of regulation, with the housing budget cuts that everyone is discussing, it is often tenant participation budgets and posts that are cut. In days of old, there were support workers in local areas to try to support people in East Kilbride or wherever, but we now find that the resources are just not there.

The Government is pursuing a policy of accountability and transparency, but tenants told us in our consultation that they do not feel that the resources or support will be there for them to take part. A whole range of issues needs to be taken on board in taking the charter forward.

I will slightly come to the defence of people who work in housing. No social landlord in Scotland could say that it has tried, tested and exhausted every possible means of engaging with tenants. There are always other ways.

The CIHS is keen to work with bodies such as TIS to help landlords to look at what has worked out there, but many landlords tell us that tenants are not queueing round the block to get involved. Where the level of services is generally good, the repairs are done on time and people get good responses to their complaints, it can be difficult to generate a mass of activity among tenants. However, landlords can never be complacent about that. They need to try everything and look at the matter with organisations that work closely with tenants.

It is important, too, that we do not see participation purely in terms of discussions about performance or policy. That picks up on Ilene Campbell’s point about the need to engage on the things that are important. In our experience, the number of tenants in community-based housing associations who want to be part of an organised tenants group might not be great, but if we look throughout the community, we find a network of relationships with people who would not come forward to engage in formal participation structures but are really interested in play facilities for kids in the area or other issues.

There are lots of ways for people to get involved. The issue is partly about how landlords, especially where they have a local presence in the area, tap into that full range of interests; they should not just regard a registered tenants organisation as the be-all and end-all. There are many ways in which to engage and participate.

You indicated earlier that some of you will meet the Scottish Housing Regulator this afternoon. How will the charter fit in with the rest of the regulator’s proposed regulatory regime? You have covered some of that, but do you have any broader points to make?

12:00

The regulator has undertaken to be proportionate in its approach to regulation, and it is important that that applies to how it regulates the charter, which should not be overly burdensome and should genuinely do what it has been said that it will do—get to the heart of what is most important to tenants. As Jim Harvey said, to a degree, the jury is out on that, but at the moment we are confident that the charter will be regulated in a sensible and proportionate way.

The objective that the Parliament set for the regulator was to look after the interests of tenants and service users. To my mind, that is the regulator’s prime responsibility. I would be looking for the regulator to have a regulation model that has an element of prescription and says what landlords should do. The other side of that is that the regulator must try to make it proportionate.

My worry is that the regulator will not have the resources to take any more than just a cursory glance across a range of performance indicators and will miss out an awful lot of the qualitative issues that tenants are more concerned about when it comes to service delivery. As my eminent colleagues are all meeting the regulator this afternoon but tenants are not, we are off to a bad start.

Another issue that I hope you might be able to reflect on is the charter’s relevance to the private rented sector. As you know, the Government is taking a number of initiatives in relation to that sector. The housing options approach is being adopted through the homelessness hubs. How is the charter relevant to the private rented sector and other tenures?

We commented on that in our submission. We pointed out that, in a number of important respects, Government housing policy is promoting a bigger role for the private rented sector, whether through funding with grants or through guarantees. Equally, local authorities may use private rented accommodation because we do not have enough social rented accommodation to provide settled accommodation for homeless households. We suggested that it seems obvious that, even though the charter is not described in the legislation as applying statutorily in such circumstances, there is no reason why it should not be part of the deal through grant agreements or whatever.

There is a much bigger question about standards in the private rented sector. One of the reasons why, in its earlier manifestations, the charter provoked a degree of irritation among some social landlords is that, although we are far from perfect, in the greater scheme of things, in many parts of Scotland the really poor-quality housing and the really poor management services are provided not by housing associations or local authorities but in the private rented sector. What are we, collectively, doing about that? We have strengthened things such as the enforcement framework for private landlords but, in some of the communities that we work in, many people are concerned about whether local authorities are resourced to enforce those measures.

The Scottish Housing Regulator has no locus whatever in relation to the private rented sector. It seems that there is still a bit of thinking to be done, especially with the way in which the policy is evolving.

I back up what Jim Harvey has said: it is a matter of walking before we run on the charter and the private rented sector. If the charter is to have relevance or if we are to have something like it for the private rented sector at some point in the future, we need to find a way of regulating the private rented sector through the Scottish Housing Regulator or whatever.

At the moment, largely, we do not have regulation of the private rented sector in Scotland; we have registration of landlords, which is obviously a long way short of proper regulation. There is a long journey ahead on that, but the CIH would be delighted to work closely with the Scottish Government and Parliament—as we already do—to find ways of strengthening regulation.

The charter has relevance for the private rented sector in as much as local authorities place homeless people in private rented accommodation. As part of being regulated, they should ensure that the properties in which they place homeless people are fit for purpose and in the same condition as whatever other temporary or settled accommodation is available in their areas. There should also be a contract with the private rented sector that minimises the rents to a level that tenants can afford to pay.

Do our witnesses have any comments on anything that has not been covered but which they wanted to address? If not, I thank you all very much for your attendance. The session has been very helpful. I suspend the meeting briefly to allow the witnesses to leave the room.

12:07 Meeting suspended.

12:09 On resuming—