Chamber and committees

Yvette, you are doing such a great job. Thank you.

I have a final question about the impact that the presence of RAAC in homes is having on owners’ and tenants’ ability to obtain building and contents insurance. You touched on that and on mortgages, but my question is specifically about insurance. I have a further, connected question. Is there anything that you think the Scottish Government could do to support people in the affected properties in that regard?

For our second panel this morning we are joined by Peter Drummond, who is the chair of the practice committee at the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland, and Gloria Lo of OiSA Designs, who is a chartered architect. We will try to direct our questions to one or other of you specifically, but please do indicate to the clerks if you would like to come in. There is no need for you to operate your microphones; we will do that for you.

We will start with damp and mould and, before we get into specific questions about tenants and landlords and what people should or should not be doing, I thought that it would be good if we could get a bit of an understanding of the technical issues.

Gloria Lo, I am particularly directing this question at you. Some of those issues were highlighted earlier by the previous panel. I think that Shona Gorman mentioned that we need to get to the underbelly of the issue before we start saying, “This is what we should be doing.” It seems that that is part of the problem: we do not fully understand everything. I will give you a little bit of time to open that up, then we will come to a number of other questions in this area.

Great. Thank you very much for that. I found that useful and I hope that colleagues did, too. There are specific points, such as how we design a home that keeps us out of that zone of 13°C and 80 to 83 per cent humidity, that are potentially quite an interesting challenge.

Now we will get into some of our other questions. Peter Drummond, feel free to come in on this one. I would be interested to hear whether you have any views on how landlords in Scotland are addressing damp and mould in properties that they own. Are there any examples of good practice or are there other approaches that could be taken to deal with the problem?

Can I ask you to explain tanking briefly?

Before we move on to RAAC, something else comes to my mind. Gloria talked about building on flood plains and building too close to slopes. In my region—the Highlands and Islands—we have a lot of peatland, and I am seeing brand new housing estates being built on peatland.

If we identify damp and mould, can we map it? Is a map emerging that shows us where damp and mould are appearing? Could we map obvious places such as I have mentioned to see the pattern of where we have the problem, then tackle it more proactively through recognising where developers are building on land that might not be appropriate? That is one question.

Also, how can we make sure that we are not using inappropriate pieces of land for housing developments? Could we, as you mentioned, build houses on stilts, for example, and make sure that building standards approve the right type of design intervention for a place?

Could we do something about mapping damp and mould patterns across Scotland? Is anything like that going on, and would it be useful?

The next item on our agenda is consideration of the Council Tax (Exempt Dwellings) (Scotland) Amendment Order 2025 (SSI 2025/56). Do members have any comments on the instrument?

There are no comments. Does the committee agree that we do not wish to make any recommendations on the instrument?

Members indicated agreement.

The next item on our agenda is an evidence-taking session as part of our work on building safety and maintenance. We will be hearing this morning from two panels of witnesses.

For the first panel, we are joined in the room by Sean Clerkin, who is campaign co-ordinator at the Scottish Tenants Organisation; Yvette Hoskins, who is vice-chair of the Dundee RAAC campaign group; and Emma Saunders, who is the national organiser at Living Rent. We are also joined online by Aoife Deery, who is a senior social justice policy officer at Citizens Advice Scotland, and Shona Gorman, who is vice-chair of Tenants Together Scotland.

Before I turn to questions from members, I should point out that we have read in the press this morning that the Scottish Government has announced its intention to lodge amendments on damp and mould to the Housing (Scotland) Bill. We do not know the detail of those amendments yet, but it is still important that we have our conversation today, as it will, I hope, help the Government in that respect.

We will direct our questions to specific witnesses initially, but if you would like to come in, please indicate as much to the clerks. Aoife and Shona, you should do so by typing an R in the chat function. One less thing for you to think about is operating the microphones—we will do that for you.

Finally, before I begin with some initial questions about tenants’ experience and landlord practice, I should say that the session will be split into questions on damp and mould—those issues will be the primary focus for our first few questions—and questions on reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete. You might feel initially that we are not asking any questions that are relevant to your specific area, but we will definitely have questions for you.

As the first question is really for Citizens Advice Scotland, I will direct it to Aoife Deery, but it is also for Living Rent, Tenants Together Scotland and the Scottish Tenants Organisation. I am just cueing you up, Aoife, because I am interested in hearing how, from the work that you have been doing, you think the volume of tenant complaints about damp and mould in their homes has changed over the past couple of years.

I must stop you there, because we have specific questions about Awaab’s law. We will come on to that.

That is great. Thank you, Sean, for highlighting your perspective that landlords do not understand the issues of damp and mould in their properties.

Does anybody else want to comment on damp and mould? I note that Shona Gorman has not come in yet. I should say that we have previously heard about landlords blaming their tenants for problems with damp, even though it is reinforced in Scottish Government guidance that that should not be happening. I would be interested in hearing from Shona Gorman or Emma Saunders whether landlords’ attitudes to tenants reporting damp and mould problems have changed. Is there still the sort of blame culture that Sean Clerkin has highlighted?

Good morning, and welcome to the ninth meeting in 2025 of the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee. I remind all members and witnesses to ensure that their devices are on silent. Fulton MacGregor is joining us online this morning, and we have received apologies from Alexander Stewart and Meghan Gallacher.

I warmly welcome Graham Simpson to the meeting. As this is Mr Simpson’s first time attending a meeting of the committee since becoming a substitute member, the first item on our agenda is to invite him to declare any relevant interests.