Official Report 235KB pdf
We now move to consideration of petition PE14 from the Carbeth Hutters Association, on land reform legislation. We have asked certain individuals to present evidence to the committee: the first is Mr Chris Ballance, who represents the Carbeth Hutters Association. Could Mr Ballance and those he has brought with him please come to the table and the microphones?
I would like to introduce Heather Martin, who will be giving the presentation.
Can we establish who the other person is?
The other person is Mr Bill McQueen. We are all members of the hutters association.
You are all members of Carbeth Hutters Association?
Yes, and of the Carbeth Hutters Association committee.
Members have received your booklet. It was sent to us some time ago. Another document has been passed around today, just before the meeting. You will appreciate that people have therefore not really had a chance to look at what you have submitted this morning. Committee members will have seen the booklet, but it is perhaps a bit much to expect them to have got through all the rest of the documentation including, I note, pages from the Sheriff Courts (Scotland) Act 1907 and various other exciting tomes. Thank you.
Certainly—
Please try to speak up, so that everybody can hear you clearly.
I will give a brief background to the dispute at Carbeth. The huts began over 70 years ago, under the proprietorship of the present landlord's grandfather. When the current landlord took over in 1990, he embarked on rent rises that went out of control. In 1997, most hutters decided that it had gone too far, and intimated to the estate their intention to withhold part of the site charges.
Thank you. I should say that, before we proceed with any question session, we are aware that there is an active court case involving an eviction dispute between one of the hutters, a Mr Rigby, and the landlord, Mr Barns-Graham. Because of the sub judice rule, members should avoid making direct reference to that particular case.
You comment on excessive rent levels and increases from 1990. The landlord has suggested that that is linked to improving facilities at the site, following no investment over many years. What are the current levels of rent? By how much has rent risen, and what would you consider to be a fair rent?
I can tell you exactly. The rent was 10 shillings before the war. After the war, in 1948, it was £1. It was £5 in 1958, after the grandfather of the present landlord died. The rents have risen by over 13 per cent yearly until 1996, when we received a newsletter about the rents. The huts used to be of the same standards. Some were put up on premium sites. In the spring 1997 newsletter, it was stated that the rents would be based at £888 from 17 May 1997. The rent was £529 in 1996; they were to go up to £888 in 1997. Does that answer your question?
They went up even further. I have a couple of brochures, headed "Chalets at Carbeth Estate – How to Buy" from 24 November 1997 and 27 February 1998. They show that the monthly rent was to be £90 a month—just over £1,000 per annum. I have a spare copy of those brochures that I can deposit with the clerk if members wish to refer to them.
That is helpful as a base.
The increase represents a doubling in two years.
Is that purely rent? I take it that no local taxation or council tax is included?
We pay taxation. We pay a non-domestic taxation rate of approximately £140 or £150.
On top of the rent?
Yes, on top of the rent. I need to point out that there are hundreds of huts all over Scotland—and England. We have visited eight hut sites. The rents there ranged from £55 a year to £200. The hutters are complaining about the rise to £200, having heard of the rents being asked at Carbeth.
What about investment in the site? What facilities do you have? In recent times, has there been any increase in investment on the site?
We have had nothing back from the site. On my site, the landlords have not spent a penny for 60 years. I am a retired clerk of works and maintenance officer. As far as repairs go, the site has to be seen to appreciate how much disrepair it is in at present. The site is a disgrace. I do not know why the council hasnae stepped in and done something about it.
We actually have some boards with—
We cannot hear you.
We have brought some photographs displayed on boards, if members would like to see photographs of the huts and the estate, to get a clearer idea of the site.
Shall I pass them round?
Yes, please hand them to the nearest members. Do the two boards display the same photographs?
No.
One has pictures of the huts that are well maintained. They show how we would prefer to see the site. The other board shows how things have become run down over the past few years.
Both show pictures of huts on the site?
Exactly.
Some are well maintained and some are not?
That is right.
How has that difference come about?
Just by virtue of the fact that so little has been spent on upgrading the site and looking after it.
Are the huts on the photos that I have in front of me ones that have been abandoned?
They are huts that have reverted to the ownership of the estate.
Members should understand that—
Can we hold it there. You are going to have to be more clear about the questions and answers. The official reporters must try to get this down in a clear manner for the Official Report. When there are questions and answers, please try not to cross-talk. There is somebody here desperately trying to take down your every word, and that is difficult if two people are trying to speak at the same time.
It would be helpful to refer to the little booklet, "The Carbeth Clearances"—the reporters could look at it—from which you have quoted rent figures and some of the history of what has happened to some of the huts.
As far as I am aware, but I have not researched that in any detail.
Are you seeking the kind of protection—I am perhaps treading in difficult waters here—of agricultural tenancies? It is on that sort of principle. Must the huts be used for a certain purpose and be already established? Is it the case that new ones cannot be established? Is it correct that new hutters' space cannot be set up without the landlord's consent? Would protection be for the existing ones? Would it also give the landlord rights with regard to what the hutters would be doing on the site?
Yes.
So it is a bit like an agricultural holding?
At the moment there are folk on the site who have been there for 50 years and who have put in 50 years' worth of repairs on the huts. They are still governed by a lease that allows the landlord, first, to put up the rents in any way that he pleases and, secondly, to throw anyone off at 40 days' notice without having to give any reason whatsoever. If the hutter is not able to sell their hut to someone, who has to be approved by the landlord in those 40 days, the landlord takes possession of the hut without paying compensation.
I am familiar with that—I have read your material. I am trying to get to the principle of how it would operate. Should we consider the matter with the Executive or this committee—more likely the Executive—moving towards a separate piece of legislation, or do we incorporate measures in a land reform bill? That is ahead of us anyway, and we could set up a special type of tenancy.
We are campaigning for a bill on rent control for residential huts and chalets that are fixtures to the ground, which was defined in a House of Lords ruling on the Welsh hutters' case two years ago. We think that that could be done in Scotland and that it is the only way in which this situation can be resolved. The Rent Registration Service, a body that is already in existence, could adjudicate on rent disputes.
I have read all the material that we have been sent so far, except that which we received today, as I have not had a chance to read it. I want to establish for the record the chronology of the situation, as it is important that we clarify the steps that led to it.
That was the general idea.
Was that the trust's original intention?
That is right.
I would like the witnesses' view on whether the trust's intentions—in terms of the new landowner—have changed.
They have changed entirely.
How have they changed?
The original trust appears to have been wound up at some point around 1990—I am not sure of the date—and a new trust was set up. The terms of the new trust are geared to allow the landlord to do whatever he likes. We have it on record from the landlord's evidence in court that it was set up for tax reasons. A clause in the landlord's grandfather's will stipulated that the estate of Carbeth should not be feued or leased in such a way as to interfere with the rights of possession of the traditional hutters. Linked to that, there may have been other reasons why the original trust was wound up—it may have been too restrictive. Now, the estate appears to be considering the land solely in terms of a product from which to maximise income.
Therefore, is it your evidence to the committee that the current trust has changed in nature from the original trust?
I have not seen the deeds of the original trust. However, I would infer that from the wording of the will of the grandfather who set up the place.
What is the position on the increase in rent for services? Can you give us more detail on the services that are being provided by the landlord?
There is a tap for every 16 or so huts and there has been some construction of new tracks. A cliff was pulled to pieces by a JCB and the pebbles and rocks from that were partly distributed around the estate. I have a third document that I can lodge with the clerk, which is a report by Robert Balfour, who is, I believe, soon to become the new convener of the Scottish Landowners Federation. He is also a land surveyor. He toured Carbeth estate and, after examining the surfaces, he estimated that their value was around £50 per annum.
I wish to make it clear that no services are provided to the individual huts. They have no running water, electricity, gas or sewerage—all services that would be associated with caravan sites, for example. Such services are not provided at all. Stirling Council provides water and rubbish collection, which are paid for by rates.
So, is it your position that there is no correlation between the rent increases that are being sought and the services provided by the landlord?
Absolutely.
It is important that members understand the terms of the lease. Is it your position that the terms of the lease are unreasonable and unfair? What are the terms of the lease?
We think that the terms are entirely unreasonable. There is a copy of a lease in the folders that Heather gave out. I should advise that the folders contain background information, should members need to look up anything after the meeting.
Therefore, your position is that the power balance in the lease massively favours the landlord.
It favours the landlord entirely. There are around 56 stipulations in the lease on what hutters must or must not do. The sole obligation on the landlord is to let land—of, I think, 20 ft by 30 ft—for a year.
You said that you wish the Justice and Home Affairs Committee to consider some form of protection legislation. You also mentioned rent controls. Have you taken guidance on the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1997, which may cover the lease?
We have considered that. Sixteen or a dozen cases are on-going—
Please do not mention any of them.
I think that one of them is in court today.
One of the most important documents that members should consider is Peter Scott's briefing note. He is an expert in property law and has closely examined the situation. He is more able than we are—as lay people—to examine the legal arguments.
It would have been helpful if that had been circulated in advance of the meeting. When papers are handed around at the start of the meeting, it is very difficult for committee members to take them on board during an evidence-taking session.
I want to be absolutely clear about the lease. When did the new lease commence?
We signed the new lease in 1993. We received two letters, one in the morning post and the other in the afternoon post, before we signed the new lease. I have the letters here if members wish to see them. The first letter said that great changes would be made to the Carbeth estate but that we had to sign the new lease for those changes to be made. The letter received in the afternoon post said that our tenancies were terminated, so if we did not sign the new lease we would be evicted. We had no option—we either walked away from our huts or signed the lease.
Can you give a brief summary of what the previous leases had been like?
They were very similar. There were a few points, but they were almost the same.
They had the 40 days clause.
Was that always present from the very beginning?
Yes—from memory.
I have seen it written somewhere that the huts are considered to be holiday homes as opposed to permanent dwellings. How do you see them and how do you justify that view?
They were brought in as holiday homes, although people stayed in them during the Clydebank blitz during the war and stayed on for a couple of years. Other people also lived in them, as they were able to get on to the local housing list. People bought huts for that sole purpose. The council wanted to stop that practice and classified them as holiday huts. However, they are not holiday huts at all. Many people stay in them permanently, including many of the estate workers. Some people have stayed in them, full time, for 40 years—I could give members the names of a dozen people who still live in them, including me.
Thank you. Can you tell us a little more about the situation in England and Wales? You spoke about visiting huts down south and said that there were similarities. What are those similarities? Can you draw out the differences with leases of comparable huts down south?
I have not visited those huts, although some of our members have visited huts in Wales.
I have visited them.
The huts that I referred to were those on the eight sites in Scotland. They were built in exactly the same way as our huts were built. They were built a wee bit at a time—a foundation was laid and they were built bit by bit, stick by stick. Nearly all huts were built like that. Some new chalets are being built differently, but huts are built in the same way across the country. They are not prefabricated—people bring wee bits at a time. They have been built that way in England.
The crucial point under debate in the case of the Welsh huts, which lasted more than eight years and which ended with the hutters winning in the House of Lords, was whether the huts were part of the ground—whether they could be moved without being destroyed. That may be the definition of a hut—it cannot be moved without being destroyed because of the way in which it is built. It is a legal fiction, as the estate would have it, that one can just pick up one's hut and transport it to the back garden or whatever. Quite apart from planning laws, that is not physically possible. Perhaps the committee could consider how to frame legislation so that it covers only huts such as those in Carbeth.
How do the leases operate in the Welsh example that you described?
As far as I know, it is a bit confused because the Welsh hutters did not have leases. They had licence agreements that were weaker than a lease. Different hutters have had different licences at different times. At the moment, the owner of the site—who acquired it for development purposes—is caught between the bank to which he owes a lot of money and the hutters whose huts he must now maintain and look after. He is, as far as I know, still not accepting rents and so there are no leases.
This is a point that the witnesses may not be able to answer. The grandfather of the current owner set up a trust, the terms of which regulated the estate. When his son—the father of the current owner—died, did that trust lapse, and is some other trust functioning?
That seems to be case. I cannot speak about the history of the case with any certainty.
I would like to recap some of the points that have been made. The hutters want regulated tenancies of some kind with regulated rents, and would, in due course, like to be able to buy their leases, although that is not on the agenda just now. The regulated tenancies would apply only to existing sites on which huts are established.
Yes.
The hutters would like rights regarding management of the site. Would it follow that you would have obligations regarding the management of the site? Should those rights of management be subject to independent scrutiny? You have talked about this in terms of the environment, so how would that be achieved?
I am not sure what the mechanism to achieve that would be.
Surely the landlord also has rights. Are you saying that such places as the site of the Carbeth huts are special places? Do they require special treatment because they are not like holiday homes or caravan sites, but have been there for a long time and have a function that is, perhaps, more important now than in the past?
We would like the Rent Registration Service to take that arbitration role. The service deals with housing rents and we do not see any problems in its dealing with ground rents or site rents for huts and chalets.
Rent is not the only issue in this. The nature of the huts, the area itself and the regulation of that must all be considered.
The nature of the huts is well-enough defined in the case of those huts or chalets that are classified as fixtures to the ground.
I am not talking about a definition—legislation would have to include a definition. I am talking about regulation. If there is legislation regarding this issue and if there will be designated hutters' sites such as Carbeth, there must be regulation of how the sites are managed as well. There must be a mechanism for resolving or even avoiding disputes.
We think that that is very important.
First, I would like to clarify what appears to be a discrepancy. In the oral evidence that was given at the start of this part of the meeting, it was said that the rent in 1996 was £529 per year. Is that correct?
That is correct.
You then said that you had heard, or had been sent communication—I am not quite sure which—indicating that the rent would be going up to £888. Is that right?
The rents were meant to be £808 from 17 May 1997, but that was not to be implemented until 1999. Premium rents were increased by 42 per cent in that year.
Does that mean that had you been paying your rent—obviously you are on a rent strike—you would be paying £808?
In 1997 it would have been £888. The landlord could have added any increases he wanted up to the present moment.
The rent figures that have been given by the estate have gone up and down considerably in the past couple of years. At the moment the estate is advertising huts at £68 a month, which, at a quick guess is just over £800 a year. The figure in our book comes from documents that were issued by the estate at the end of 1997 and the beginning of 1998. Those documents quote a rent of £90 a month, or £906 per annum. The cost of paying £90 a month would be £1,080 per annum.
I ask because the evidence that has been submitted by the estate owner suggests that the rent currently stands at £785, not £808. I am trying to see why there is a difference.
If you read the estate owner's newsletters you get a wee bit bamboozled because they are, among other things, contradictory. The rent has gone up from £529 in 1996. Standard rent went up, I think, to £672. Rent on premium sites went up to £750.
Perhaps the detail is not as important as the fact that the lease allows the landlord to do whatever he likes. He can add any charges he wants whenever he wants to add them.
There is a lot of paperwork and a lot of figures.
That is correct.
Is it correct that you purchased a hut for £10?
I purchased the remains of a hut—some pieces of wood and a few bits of broken glass.
Did you then demolish that and invest in creating a new hut?
Yes, I did.
I understand that some access was provided by the estate owner. Is that correct?
The track was covered with rubble from quarrying that the estate owner had been doing.
Was that cleared so that there was access for you?
No—the rubble was piled on top of the original track.
Was that to provide hard core? It was not, presumably, put there to provide an obstruction.
I think that the estate would say that it was meant as an improvement, but whether it was meant to be for the benefit of the hutters is open to question. Most people would say that it is an eyesore that adds nothing to the estate.
Have you been on strike more or less since you gained entry?
I joined the campaign with the other hutters at Carbeth at the same time as everyone else.
The proprietor claims that the cost to him of improving the access was around £3,000. He would argue that your contribution to date has been around £97.50.
The amount of money that I have paid to the estate is relevant to the court case that is going on between me and Mr Barns-Graham, so I should not comment on that.
You are in litigation at the moment.
I would like to point out that the roads are just rubble. It is not hard core. The landlord has talked about the cost of putting that stuff on the road. He wanted planning permission to build a house and had to remove 2.5 m of cliff and cut it back at an angle. That resulted in thousands of tonnes of rubble being scattered all over the place. You could not walk on a lot of the roads, nor could you take a car on them. We are not really talking about roads here—we are talking about rubble that has been put on top of the original paths.
I would like to quote from a report by Mr Robert Balfour. He said:
What are you reading from?
I am quoting from a report by Robert Balfour of the Scottish Landowners' Federation. He came to the estate as a surveyor.
Could you make it clear when you are quoting from a document and could you leave that document with the clerks at the end of the meeting so that it can be circulated? I think members would find it interesting.
Yes.
It appears from your submission and from your petition that you are particularly concerned about management and the relationship you have as tenants with the landlord. The landlord is currently seeking to raise the rent, but has he evicted people who have not paid rents?
He has served eviction notices on 90 people. Of those 90, four or five of us have gone to the courts and lost our cases.
Are those who have not gone through that legal process or who have paid their rent still on the site?
Two have settled up and come to an agreement with the landlord and the other three have mysteriously lost their huts in arson attacks which have been put down to vandals.
Does it not seem then, that rather than aiming to remove the hutters, he is seeking to increase revenue?
That is exactly what he is doing. I have a letter here that was issued after I had received an eviction notice in the court. It says that the landlord's reason for going to court was to ensure that everyone knew his rights as a landowner. He stated in court that his right as a landowner was to charge any rent he wanted to charge. He said that, if he wished, he could legally charge £20,000 million.
So it is not so much a clearance as a rent strike and a dispute about the rental payment. The proprietor is not seeking to clear you from the land.
There are various documents in Stirling planning department. I have a couple here, which I will leave with the clerk. There is a letter from David Egerton, development control manager in planning services. It states:
Do you accept that if this committee—or the Parliament—introduced legislation of the type that you might want, the current proprietor could immediately issue eviction notices for everyone, including those who are paying, and do something else with his land? For all that you might feel that you have a just campaign, everybody might lose in the end because he might feel that any new regulations would be onerous.
We hope that any legislation would stop this whole affair, which has been messy and unnecessary.
So it would have to be retrospective legislation?
We hope that it would prevent this from happening anywhere else. We believe that there are 600 hutters across Scotland and hope that legislation would prevent a repeat of this fiasco anywhere else.
I do not want to cut people short, but we are pressed for time. People representing the estate and individuals from the Scottish Executive are here and we must begin the debate on the statutory instrument at half-past 11. Gordon Jackson and Euan Robson wish to ask questions. Could your questions equally be asked of other witnesses?
Yes.
I would like to ask a question. The difficulty is that part of me thinks that the rent issue does not take us anywhere. You signed a lease in 1993, which gives the landlord the right to charge whatever he wants. Why you signed it is neither here nor there, but you did. We could do something about rents by introducing rent control. We could fix a method of ensuring that there must be independent rent reviews, even though it is just land that is being leased. Once that has been done—Brian has hinted at this—you have no security of tenure. You have never had any security of tenure, in that a lease has always been in existence that either party can terminate in 40 days. The rent could be controlled but the landlord may not like it and say, "I no longer wish to have those people here at a rent, that is not enough for me. I will evict everybody straight away." I believe that he can terminate those leases on a 40-day notice.
We are not lawyers, and there is vastly more experience on the committee than we have. Part of our problem is that we have always been refused legal aid, which is why a lot of us are fighting our own cases. We have been examining the possibility of a change to the Sheriff Courts (Scotland) Act 1907, under clause 37 of which we are being evicted. An addition to that clause might be a simple way to enable us to have some form of security of tenure.
Leaving aside the Sheriff Courts (Scotland) Act 1907, I take it that there has never been security of tenure. This is a lease signed willingly by two parties to a tenancy agreement, which says that either party can terminate it within 40 days. How would we prevent that from happening?
It has always been signed on trust. The fact that there are people on the site who have been there for 50 years shows that trust had been maintained until two or three years ago.
So, the lease has been signed on the basis that neither party would use it?
That is right. I should speak carefully here, but people have agreed to say under oath that that has been said to them.
You have emphasised that you want legislative change and that you want it to be separate from residential caravan and static holiday caravan legislation. Holiday homes have developed over a long period of time. There is not too much in the way of planning development control over the site. Do you fear that legislation would lead to a proliferation of such sites across the country?
We are all for legislation that will improve the huts. We have had discussions with Stirling Council about making the estate a conservation area. We would like the council to ensure that the huts are properly kept and that the place is nice and tidy. We would welcome that.
Thank you for attending the meeting today. It may be that we will be in communication with you again. Please leave the documents that you brought with you with the clerks so that members can see them. I now ask the representatives of the estate and Mr Thomas Hanratty, on behalf of hutters not in dispute with the estate, to come forward.
Yes, I have. I did not want to interrupt.
Rather than have the estate representative give a presentation, we will go straight to the question and answer session.
I will ask about money that has been spent on the site—upgrading of tracks and pathways was mentioned. Is that the major expense on improvements in recent years?
In terms of the amount of money, the upgrading of tracks is the principal expenditure. To put that into perspective, the estate had some rock that could be used to put the base of a road down. I am not an engineer, but I know that you must put a base down for a road. To get at the rock, a crusher had to be hired and the best deal available was to bring one up from England. That had to be brought up on a loader and was on the estate for quite a long time. Some of the roads have natural small streams running by them or underneath them. In one place, quite a big concrete culvert had to be built before the road could be put on top. With roads, it is also necessary to do ditching work at the side.
The other submission says that the cliff had to be removed. Was that the case?
That is not my understanding, although I do not know for sure. I could not say definitely. I know that the estate management always tries to get two jobs for one, so it may well be the case that the removal of the cliff assisted with other work. Refuse is removed by the council but the vehicles have to get up there to take it away. If we had not used the material from the cliff for road bases and hard standings for rubbish bins, we would have had to bring other material to the site, which would obviously have cost even more money.
But if you had not used that material for the roads, you would probably have used it as landfill.
In order to maximise the income to the estate, we would probably have sold the material as base for other people who are building roads.
I refer to the submission that we have received from the proprietors, in particular to paragraph 7 on page 2, about the rent strike, and to the key points in paragraph 8 on page 8. They refer to the number of huts. How many huts are there? It is not at all clear to me.
We refer to 169 hut owners. Tony Meehan will have the actual figures. There is a difference between the number of hut owners and the number of sites. There are many sites for huts on the estate, some of which are not occupied by huts. It is a bit of a movable feast, but in terms of the rent strike, there are 169 hut owners.
There are 169 huts. Of those, 93 are paying rent. There are 20 unoccupied huts—huts that are either unoccupied or have no leases attached to them. There are 18 derelict huts, which are just wood sitting on a piece of land. We believe that, therefore, the number of striking hutters—
I am sorry, I was going to come to some of those matters in a minute. I need to establish exactly how many owners there are. You say 169.
Yes, there are 169 hut sites with property on them, 20 of which are unoccupied.
So, of the 169, 20 are—
Yes, 20 are unoccupied, and 18 are derelict. So if you take 38 from 169, you will have the number of leases that are currently in force or the number of people in residence.
So 131 of the huts have leases in operation.
Correct.
Of those, how many are on strike?
A total of 93 are paying rent.
So 38 are on strike.
You are saying to the committee, as you say in your submission, that 93 hutters are up to date with their payments.
Which is Mr Barns-Graham's terminology for paying rent.
And that there are 38 with whom you might be said to have a dispute.
Correct.
A dispute about rent, yes.
About rent? So you might have a dispute of another nature with some of the other 93?
Not as far as I am aware, but a lot of issues other than rent seem to be being discussed this morning.
In one of its submissions, the hutters association says that it represents 120 huts, yet in your documents you suggest that the association represents a smaller number—presumably the 38?
Yes. That is right.
If 93 hutters are up to date with their payments, is it the case—as we have heard in evidence this morning—that you have served eviction notices on 90 people?
No. Eviction notices were served on 80 people at the start of the dispute. Since that time, some of the people who received eviction notices have decided to pay their rent. Hence the change in the figures.
Of those who have paid, how many decided to pay after the eviction notices were served?
I cannot do the arithmetic, but there are 38 non-payers left, so roughly half of them came back and said that they would pay the rent.
Is the estate saying that the problems that have been drawn to our attention this morning are the problems of a minority, not a majority?
We think that the Carbeth Hutters Association represents the minority. We also think that the increase in rent was the original cause of the difficulty. Since that time other issues have come to light that have proved problematical. We are happy to try to address those but, essentially, we think that this is a rent dispute with a few vociferous people who do not represent the majority of the hutters.
I have three questions. The first is about the original trust. I understand that the grandfather set up the trust to help working people so that they could have a hut in the beautiful scenery of the Carbeth estate. Do you disagree with that?
Yes. There has been a lot of talk about trusts which, at the end of the day, are just legal entities. The grandfather's will contained a general statement that he hoped that the hutters would continue to be part of the estate and would continue to be looked after. However, as far as I know, he did not set up a trust to look after the land. His estate would have been wound up—as would anybody's—when he passed on.
I understand that his will states that a trust should be set up for working people from Clydebank.
No.
Are you saying that that is not the case?
That is correct. I do not have the will in front of me, but if he said in his will that a trust had to be set up, one would have been set up.
Was that the nature of the trust originally—for working people to have a hut? I want to be clear about that.
I understand that. There was not a trust set up to look after the Carbeth hutters under the will of the late Mr Barns-Graham—the grandfather.
But that was his wish.
No. He did not ask that a trust be set up. He said in his will words to the effect that he hoped that the hutters would continue to be looked after by the estate and that the estate would not be sold off or dealt with in such a way as to affect adversely the hutters who were on the estate at that time. We are talking about 1950 or something like that.
I realise that it was a long time ago. As far as the present landowner is concerned, have the purposes of the estate changed? Do you now see it as a commercial issue?
In today's terms, the estate is really just a small farm of around 280 to 300 acres. It has always been a working farm, or working estate. Different generations of the family, who have all lived on the estate, have run it in their own ways, as people do with businesses, but it is fair to say that when Allan Barns-Graham—the current proprietor of most of the estate—inherited, he inherited a situation that he thought was dangerous in terms of the estate's ability to continue to support the huts. Reference is made to that in our submission, and there was evidence to back that opinion up. The number of huts had declined over the years and they had fallen into some degree of dilapidation. In Allan's view, one of the reasons for that was the impossibility of getting material to them to repair them. Therefore, in 1990, some six years before the raising of the rents that kick-started this problem, he embarked on a programme to try to improve the way the estate was run—the whole estate, not just the part the huts occupy, which is substantial. So there was a change in attitude that came with a new proprietor.
I would like to ask you about the lease. Do you think the lease is fair?
Yes, I do.
It seems to give an inordinate amount of power to evict people. Do you not think that it would be fairer to lengthen the duration of the lease, to give people a wee bit of security of tenure?
Again, you need to consider this with some regard to the history of the estate. It is important to say that the principal terms and conditions of the lease—and certainly the ones that are causing concern, such as the 40-day notice condition—have been in place since around 1962, to my knowledge. That particular provision was not introduced in 1993.
That is why I am asking you about the nature of the trust. If people believed that there was a general wish to help or protect people, they were not so worried about a 40-day notice. If you are now changing the nature of the original trust to put it on a much more commercial basis, the lease has more meaning—but you believe that the lease is entirely fair.
There was no original trust—that is the confusion. You have been told that there was an original trust that was set up by the grandfather. It does not exist.
You used the phrase—
No, there was a clause in the will that indicated that the grandfather's wish was that the estate would look after the hutters.
There is a confusion here that needs to be cleared up, Pauline. You will find the direct quotation from the will—ironically—in the Carbeth Hutters Association pamphlet. It does not mention a trust; it simply mentions a wish.
I accept that, but the phrase "look after" is the key one that I picked up from what Mr Smith and Mr Meehan said.
The 40-day lease is binding on both parties. The tenants therefore have the opportunity to give notice and move. They can sell their huts, or do what they choose with them, because they are their property, as they are on the estate. One of the important things that I ask the committee to take on board is that nobody has actually been evicted. Nobody has been thrown off the estate, and—to the best of our knowledge—nobody has had their property usurped. The claims that you are being confronted with are nothing more than hypothetical claims.
I will ask my final question. The hutters association suggested that you have lodged some plans with Stirling Council. Do you have any intention of submitting plans, or have plans been submitted?
Thank you for asking that. First, plans were not lodged at Stirling—they were proposal documents that were presented for discussion with Stirling Council. They were confidential. One of the things that we would like to know—although this may not be the forum for it—is how confidential papers that were not in the public domain were made available to the public.
I do not wish to take up too much time, but I would add that I have been involved personally, on behalf of the estate, in nearly all the discussions that have taken place between the estate and the council. Lots of things have been explored, but at no time did any of them involve the clearance of the huts from Carbeth. I feel strongly about this: phrases have been used well and successfully by the hutters about clearances, but that never formed any part of any ideas that we have for the future.
I would like to go back to item 8 on page 8 of your submission. You make a statement that surprises me and gives me cause for some anxiety.
I am sure that Tom will be able to answer that in more detail than I can, but one of the other services that the estate provides is a system of wardens. They are on the estate almost all the time, can be contacted all the time and talk to the hutters all the time. The wardens form a link between the estate management and the hutters; inevitably, they chat about things. Our information comes to us via that route.
Perhaps Mr Hanratty would like to comment.
At the beginning of this rent dispute, I was part of it. At that time, I thought that the landlord needed to be taught a lesson and that the rent hikes had to stop. I went along with the dispute for 18 months, but after reading some newsletters—which are now being passed around to members of the committee—I started to see flaws in it and to feel that we were moving away from the original issue. Mr Barns-Graham has since reduced the rent and issued circulars offering olive branches. He has asked people to come back in and said that there will be no reprisals.
Thank you, Mr Hanratty. I have one final question for Mr Smith, regarding controls on the site. The site seems to have been built up over time. What controls the conditions and the number of huts that you have on the site now and might have in the future?
That would be a planning issue for the local council, which has placed a restriction on the occupancy of the huts. I do not have the exact wording of the regulation in front of me, but the gist of it is that the huts are not to be used as a principal or main residence. That is what is laid down by Stirling Council's planning department. If we sought to increase the number of huts beyond the number for which there are sites—as I have already said, at present there are more sites than huts—we would need permission from Stirling Council, because it has to provide certain services. Rubbish clearance is the obvious example.
We are getting very close to the time that I designated as the cut-off point for this part of the meeting, but I have one or two questions that I want to ask.
That is correct.
Does the lease allow the landlord to raise the rents whenever and by however much he chooses?
That is correct.
Notwithstanding the fact that the lease allows for that, do you consider it to be fair? Effectively, you could impose rent rises five times a year, if you wanted to.
Effectively, as opposed to legally, we cannot do that. If we do, we will end up here, in front of the Justice and Home Affairs Committee.
This is a new—
Excuse me, I think that this is quite important. Legally speaking, there is nothing in the lease to stop us increasing the rents. When I say that we can raise the rents, I mean that the lease permits it, not that it says so explicitly. The lease allows us to do that because it is annual in nature—every year, we can renegotiate the terms with the tenant. When we introduced the rent increases, we thought that what we were doing was quite reasonable—if we had not, we would not have done it. We still ended up before this committee and with some very expensive court actions.
Is it your argument that if there were an independent rent review procedure, you would not be able to manage the estate viably?
That would be one of the issues that we would need to consider if there were an independent procedure, but there are others. What would such a procedure take as its terms of reference? If a person rents out a flat in Glasgow, there are 50 or 100 other flats with which to compare it. There are other hut sites in Scotland—and indeed in other parts of the United Kingdom—but Carbeth is unique. We do not think that there is anywhere that an independent group could compare to it. We also worry about the costs. To whom will the costs for running the body fall? Will it be a Government body and will people be happy to pay for it? Finally, we feel that it is our job to manage the estate and if the ability to fix one of the principal sources of income is taken out of our control, the ability to manage the estate is taken out of our control.
In my experience, the Scottish Landowners Federation is not generally seen as a radical body, full of reforming individuals—
That depends on the angle from which you are looking.
—but it has been quite scathing about the situation at Carbeth, using language that appears to have become endemic to the dispute. How do you explain its response to the situation, which seems very unusual?
I can explain it very simply. The Scottish Landowners Federation has a very difficult job on its hands, trying to convince a sceptical public that it has a role to play. The public perception is that the SLF represents fat-cat absentee landlords who rent out their land for lots of money, for hunting, shooting and fishing and who own huge tracts of Scotland and do not attend to it. What could be more perfect when trying to redress that opinion than to take on a landlord and pillory him in the press? That is exactly what the Scottish Landowners Federation has done.
Perhaps the committee should hear from the Scottish Landowners Federation. Gordon has one brief question and then we will allow the witnesses to leave.
You say that the lease is fair and you have talked about negotiation, but there is no negotiation in the lease, which makes it clear that you can fix the rent at any time. That is perhaps rather unusual. It is more common for a commercial lease—that is what this is—to say that there will be rent reviews, a figure will be fixed by the landlord and if agreement is not reached the rent will be fixed independently. If you really want to be fair, why do you not change to that sort of lease?
I have tried to explain that while other commercial operations and lets have comparative evidence available for the consideration of the arbiter—I am familiar with commercial leases and that is what happens if landlord and tenant cannot agree—there is nothing else that can be compared to Carbeth.
Thank you for coming. As I said to the previous witnesses, we may contact you further about this. I suspect that this meeting will not be our only consideration of this problem.
If anyone wants to visit Carbeth estate, they are more than welcome to get in touch with us.
Thank you.
Yes.
I notice that that research is due to be concluded shortly. Can you give a more fixed time scale?
Yes.
Is it fair to say that no final decision has been taken on whether legislation will be introduced, or what the nature of such legislation would be?
That is correct. The land reform policy group considered the issue and put out a report for consultation that included a proposal for legislation to give greater security for those who "own" property on leased land. We received about 120 responses to that consultation. Opinions were sharply divided between those for and against legislation—I can elaborate on that, if you want. Others did not answer directly, or raised other points. Following the consultation, ministers decided that further information and consideration was needed before they could decide about legislation. That is why we commissioned the research, which is in two stages.
Do members have any quick questions?
I realise that this is a difficult question. Is it possible to take into account similar huts that we have heard about in other parts of the UK?
I will pass on the question about the legal differences—it would be a different legal framework. Much has been said about the Welsh case, about which we have information, in Holt's field in the Gower peninsula. I understand that while those huts may have started off like the Carbeth huts, they are used as the main or principal residence of the majority of people and therefore are in a different position. Legal cases went through the courts and eventually reached the House of Lords, which considered whether the chalets were a fixture on the land—a point that relates to who owns the chalets.
My comments will be general, as it is difficult to comment on these particular cases, partly because we have not yet seen the leases and do not know the facts and circumstances of all the cases.
Gordon, do you have a quick question?
I shall leave aside the question of who owns the huts and whether they are fixtures or not, which is quite complicated. This is to do with a lease of land. Forget the hut on the land—these people are leasing land and there is a rental provision that allows the landlord to charge whatever he likes. Is there a particular problem in simply having a provision that there is rent control when land is leased, leaving aside whether there is a building on it? For example, if one were to rent out land, there could be a barrier to an arbitrary charge of £1 million a week—which, theoretically, could be charged—and some form of rent tribunal control on the lease of land. Is that technically bad or good, possible or impossible?
Any proposal for regulation or control of rents would need to take account of the purpose of that control and its likely impact. My responsibilities are in the area of housing and I am responsible for the Rent Registration Service, which was mentioned earlier. There is a history of rent control and regulation in housing and there are principles around the concept of a fair rent and a market rent on which that control is based. If we were to extend rent regulation into land that is used for building huts, we would need to establish some kind of principle and a regulatory body. Certainly the Rent Registration Service has no expertise in the setting of rents for hut sites, which is a specific subject, or for caravan sites and so on. Its expertise is quite specific.
I do not want you to settle into a long exchange, Gordon, because we have already gone beyond our time limit and the minister is waiting.
I shall pass the second question over to Isobel in a moment. On the first question, I foresee some difficulties. The proposal for legislation would have to be worked up in more detail. Any legislation in this area would have to be fair to both landowner and tenant and we would have to ensure that it was compliant with the European convention on human rights. We want to avoid hybridity and retrospection.
Basically, your position is that you are not sure at this stage whether the proposals are viable.
That is right. There are quite a lot of difficulties that would need to be worked through.
That must make it difficult for you to answer the second part of my question.
The only thing that I can say at this stage is that the proposals are not absolutely impossible. Much depends on the viability issue, but it is also a matter of timing.
That is what we need to know. If something can be worked out, will it be possible to include it in the land reform bill? The committee must determine how to proceed with this issue. If certain things are technically impossible, we would cause ourselves difficulties by going down a certain road.
I accept all that has been said about the difficulties that are involved in this case. If one were to start from the historical position that I went into, would that assist in the viability of the proposal?
I am not sure that I understand the question.
I am referring to the historical position of the hutters from the '20s and '30s and to the definition of legislation that would deal just with those particular issues.
The way in which the huts have developed and the nature of the huts would help in shaping a definition, but there would have to be a generic definition and one that clearly identifies the people for whom we are trying to target protection.
Thank you for coming along. Although what you had to say has been somewhat abbreviated it has nevertheless helped us to clarify some of the issues that we will have to deal with if we are to take this further.
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