Chamber and committees

The definition of peat was discussed during stage 1, and that is reflected in a variety of amendments, but why is there a focus on peat depth at all? The International Union for Conservation of Nature’s peatland programme is clear that all peat—from the shallowest peaty soils to deep layers—is vital and an integral part of the overall health of peatlands. In fact, the shallowest of peat soils, those less than 30cm in depth, are arguably the most in need of protection, being more susceptible to damage and drying out.

Early in my discussions about the bill with stakeholders, I was surprised to learn that the current definition, which is based on depth, stems from post-war land management strategies when Britain was looking to maximise its natural resources and agricultural productivity. It is based not on ecological understanding or rooted in climate adaptation practices, but rather in an arbitrary assessment that is based on what was required over half a century ago.

Amendment 169 seeks to remove that arbitrary definition entirely, removing the link between the depth of peat and its status under the licensing regime that is set out in the bill. All peat soils would therefore be subject to the muirburn licensing regime. In a time of climate emergency, we should be looking to maximise the protection of peat and not be undercutting the work that other parts of the Scottish Government are doing to fund the restoration of peatlands.

I am well aware that there will not be consensus on my amendment. I await the minister’s response, but I believe that it is important to highlight how peatland is defined.

On Monday, we had a fantastic session with farmers and crofters. It was insightful to talk to folk who are doing the work on the ground. One point that came up in the conversation was that farmers make something that, at the other end of the process, gets sold on to businesses that are considering their scope through emissions.

In your thinking about the objectives, how much consideration did you give to things such as the Sustainable Markets Initiative? I am not sure whether you are aware of it, but it has an agribusiness task force of Fortune 500 companies, which, globally, has decided on five metrics—greenhouse gases, water use, the efficiency of nitrogen and a couple of others. I realised that the committee had not talked about that, but it came up on Monday.

How much have you thought about the fact that we are using public money to support farmers and crofters to become more sustainable, yet some of them sell into global markets? Did you take that into account in thinking about the need for flexibility in the bill? Is that why you think that the bill needs to be a framework bill?

Sticking with the metrics piece, something else that came up was an anecdote from a farmer who has to do a carbon footprinting audit for one part of their business and a different one for another part. When the farmer shared that information, it spawned input from a whole lot of other people, so there is something there that we need to look at. How do we align that? Farmers are having to look one way to meet the needs of one company or industry and then another way for another. Other things came up around alignment with environmental metrics and biodiversity accounting and audits. Somebody said that they felt that, if they invited different companies to come and do their biodiversity audit, they would get different answers. How do we get to a place where there is clarity across the piece as to measurements and how we track things such as that?

Good morning, and welcome to the sixth meeting in 2024 of the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee. I remind all members and witnesses to ensure that their devices are on silent.

We have received apologies from Miles Briggs, and Brian Whittle joins us as a substitute member. Stephanie Callaghan is joining us online.

As this is Brian Whittle’s first time attending a meeting of the committee, under the first item on our agenda, I invite him to declare any relevant interests.

Thank you. We will now turn to questions. Please indicate to me if you would like to respond to a member’s question or to something that somebody else said. The intention is that, as far as we can manage, this should be a free-flowing conversation, although we have questions to lead the conversation. Sometimes you might not get to respond to a specific question, but you can tuck your response into a comment that you make at another time. Do not feel that you need to respond to every question—there might be things that are more pertinent to some of you than to others. That said, my initial question is an overarching one that is intended to allow a discussion of the big picture, so it would be good to hear from you all on this one.

It is great that we are all here to talk about the strategy in “Housing to 2040” and to do a bit of a review and a check-up on where we are, and it is great to have all of you in the room, because your organisations have been involved in setting the direction of the strategy. Obviously, there has been an intractable long-term problem with housing—it is not just a problem that we are facing now; it has been a problem for decades. Across the United Kingdom, since the first and second world wars, we have been trying to tackle the issue of getting affordable housing into the mix. It is a long-term problem, and it will be interesting to hear where you think we are now.

In that regard, what is your view of the high-level vision for housing set out in the “Housing to 2040” policy document? Is it still relevant, or does it need to be amended in any way in light of the changed economic context since 2021?

The committee has heard a lot about the issue of workforce in relation to the need to get housing built. Even if the money to build the houses were there, would we have the people to build them?

Brian Whittle has a supplementary question.

Thanks for that contribution, which brings the conversation to the question that I was going to ask, which is about retrofitting and the Scottish Government’s declared town centre first approach.

Some of you might be aware that Scotland’s Towns Partnership, the Scottish Futures Trust and others are doing a roadshow on town-centre living, looking at ways of getting more people to live in town centres and acknowledging that there is a lot of potential housing in the empty spaces above commercial properties. There are about 40,000 houses on the empty homes register, but those empty spaces are not officially viewed as being potential homes.

Those properties might represent low-hanging fruit, because retrofitting and renovating those properties would, I understand, cost about a third less than it would cost to do others. Obviously, we would have to think quite carefully about how we could make them relevant for modern living—for example, quite a few will have small rooms. We could bring in designers and architects to think about how to make those spaces work.

Through the roadshow, I have seen tremendous case studies of what people are doing to renovate buildings, transform churches and so on. I am interested to hear what you think about that opportunity. How does it fit into the “Housing to 2040” vision? I invite comments from ALACHO and COSLA initially, then perhaps Callum Chomczuk can respond, too.

Callum Chomczuk, do you want to speak on that? Does anyone else want to speak?

You say that it must be “a live ambition”. If it were, what would be done differently?