Chamber and committees

At the moment, companies are buying up bits of Scotland to plant trees in order to achieve their carbon offsetting targets. An architect called Craig White gave a presentation in Parliament and talked about the idea—which I do not think originated with him—of taking that a step further by looking at locking up carbon in housing through retrofitting and building with Scottish timber. Instead of planting trees and having them potentially being taken down by storms or whatever, which means that we would not be certain that the carbon would be locked up, we could ensure that the carbon was genuinely locked up by using it in houses. I have not had a chance to delve into that suggestion, but I think that it is interesting with regard to our thinking about building housing stock in the future and also retrofitting existing stock. There is potentially something there.

What are your thoughts on the Scottish Government’s plans for the energy efficiency standards for the private rented sector? Do you think that that will help us get anywhere with regard to climate change? I accept that that target is just a target, but is that a helpful policy that will help us get somewhere?

That is a good point. We need to think about the infrastructure piece, as well as the issue of insurance. What you have said is interesting, because it seems to me that someone needs to enter this space. Leadership needs to be shown by local authorities or individuals who realise the job creation potential and the opportunity that exists for companies to enter the retrofit space. We will need such companies all over the country, so some initiative needs to be shown.

I am aware of someone in my region who has just painstakingly retrofitted their own cottage, which involved going down the road of learning and understanding all aspects of the process. They are now considering whether to take that further and set up a business, because they have an incredible amount of knowledge that could be shared, but, as Clare Wharmby said, we need financing to be available so that private home owners can take that leap.

I have a few more questions to ask. Staying on housing, I would be interested to hear what your thoughts are on whether we need to have a bit more clarity with regard to building standards and planning. At the moment, we use timber frames, and we congratulate ourselves on doing so—we say, “Yes, we use timber frames whereas, south of the border, they don’t use timber frames.” However, we still use concrete blocks in the walls, which involve a lot of embodied carbon.

Is there a need for more clarity in that space? I know for a fact that it is possible to build great buildings using timber. There is the potential to use more Scottish timber, but simply by using timber in general we can get the embodied carbon out of what we build. Does the plan need to be clearer on that? The issue is about not only what we emit, but what we emit through embodied carbon emissions.

That is similar to comments that we heard in our round-table session. Does anyone have anything else to add? Craig Hatton is on the point of saying something—come on in, Craig.

Good morning, and welcome to the 33rd 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. Meghan Gallacher, Mark Griffin and Fulton MacGregor are joining us online this morning, and Willie Coffey has offered his apologies for the meeting.

The first item on our agenda is a decision on taking business in private. Do members agree to take items 3 and 4 in private?

Members indicated agreement.

Gail Macgregor mentioned the idea that we need to collaborate on a route map. How should that collaboration take place, and what should the timescales be, given that a parliamentary election is coming up and that local authority elections will take place in 2027?

Is the framework of the Verity house agreement helping that better communication in terms of co-design?

Thanks. I have a point of clarification for Gail Macgregor. I had the good fortune to go to a fantastic event that was run by Moray Climate Action Network with Moray Council and the Scottish Climate Intelligence Service. It was tremendous. I say to Clare Wharmby that it was incredible to see the data and the way that councils can work with it. Gail, are you not only looking at the work that you need to do within the local authority and its estate, but taking leadership across the territory, for want of a better word?

I saw George Tarvit indicating that he was going to pick that up.

That brings us to the conclusion of our questions for this morning. Many thanks to you all for joining us in the discussion. I feel like we could have gone on for a bit longer and dug into some of the things that you have been talking about, but we can come back to you in writing if we need to do that.

That concludes the public part of this meeting.

We will have a few more questions on that later, to go into a bit more detail.

You do not all have to answer this question, but I would like to get your views on the Scottish Government’s new proposal to legislate for heat in buildings following the election—we were all hoping that it was going to happen in the current session—including the proposed target to decarbonise heating systems by 2045. Maybe Nicola Barclay could come in on that initially.