Chamber and committees

It is disappointing that the Government is not minded to support the amendments. It is also disappointing that I have had no engagement whatsoever with the Government to try to reach a point of consensus on them. Particularly at a time when Scotland is celebrating half a century of community-based housing associations, it is a pity that the Government is snubbing the sector in that way.

—because this year marks the 50th anniversary of Scotland’s first community-based housing associations.

I will speak to the remainder of my amendments in my closing remarks.

I move amendment 101.

Does the cabinet secretary agree that the requirement for agreement by a two-thirds majority of shareholders in the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies Act 2014 is justified? Does she accept that the attempted asset stripping of £180 million of community housing should be of concern to the Government?

Unfortunately, no invitation was extended to me. I was keen to work across the chamber to reach consensus on the amendments, but that co-operation was not forthcoming. The amendments have the support of the co-operative sector and the community-based housing sector in Scotland. It is important to recognise that there are valid and genuine concerns that have not been heard by the Government either today or at other times during the passage of the legislation.

We need proactive support to protect community-based housing associations that are clearly vulnerable to takeovers by large national housing groups, and to sustain housing co-operatives, which are actively being chastised by the regulator, which says that having committee membership restricted to tenants is not good enough.

It is broadly recognised that, when transfers take place, they should enjoy supermajority support. When they do not enjoy such support, that should be a red flag and a matter of concern. Bringing the threshold up to two thirds is a prudent and benign measure to ensure that we do not have another situation such as that involving Reidvale Housing Association, where a community has had to fight a rearguard action to save its housing association stock.

Similarly, in a situation involving a transfer of engagements, priority should be given to ensuring that community-based housing stock goes to another community-based housing association in the first instance. If that does not prove to be viable or appropriate, the opportunity could be opened up more widely to national housing groups. There would be a bit of a sliding scale—we should not lock national housing groups out of the process, as it might be appropriate for them to be involved.

The measures that I have raised are all reasonable and would have been of great benefit to the sector. I would have enjoyed having a greater opportunity to engage in discussions around them, but it seems that the changeover of ministers has militated against that. It is unfortunate that we cannot do something with the proposals in the bill.

I press amendment 101.

It is unfortunate, because the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, who led the amendments process at stage 2, had offered to work with me to agree something at stage 3, but that conversation was not facilitated and never took place, so it seems that we have been unable to reach a compromise.

I am not trying to knock out existing provisions. Local authorities should be able to pick from a sliding scale of interventions, such as maintenance orders and obligations on landlords. However, if that approach is irreconcilable, the ultimate option would be to move towards compulsory purchase, which is already practised in Glasgow. My idea is about how we formalise that approach and move it beyond Glasgow to ensure that other local authorities do it. The amendment could be a mechanism to do it, but we need to hear whether the cabinet secretary has other proposals.

Perhaps I can provide some clarity on the point that Graham Simpson makes. That activity has already been undertaken in the city of Glasgow, and my idea is to provide a better system of allowing tenants to express their desire for their property to be considered for such a scheme. It would create a better demand signal or understanding about substandard properties that might be eligible for the compulsory purchase order activity that is already undertaken in Glasgow. Other local authorities do not have such a scheme. In Glasgow, the need for it is significant.

It might be worth considering a scheme to offset the cost of making good dilapidations against the value of the property. There are provisions for that in relation to listed buildings, although, unfortunately, those provisions have been exercised on only one occasion—in Dundee—in the 25-plus years for which the legislation has been in force. There are behavioural issues with local authorities, but it is worth testing the idea and trying to put it on the statute book. It would be a useful mechanism.

I rise to speak to amendment 115 and the associated amendment 117. As has been intimated by colleagues across the chamber, the purpose of amendment 115 is to ensure that if a property in private let is deemed to be substandard by failing to meet either the repairing standard or the tolerable standard for a period of longer than 12 months, the tenant would have a right in statute to apply to the local authority to initiate action, in addition to the obligations of the local authority that already exist in statute, as was already discussed, in several housing acts going back to the 1980s.

In addition to the provisions that already exist for a local authority, such as for the issuing of closing orders, demolition orders, maintenance orders or repairing orders, the local authority could consider escalation to issuing a compulsory purchase order for the property. After doing so, it could transfer the property to an appropriate local registered social landlord, whether that be the local authority itself, in the case of local authorities that have council housing, or a third-party housing association, in the case of local authorities, such as Glasgow, where direct local authority operation of social housing no longer takes place.

The Government could underwrite that procedure and recover the costs of the purchase over a reasonable period—for example, 25 years from the receiving social landlord taking ownership of the property. That would have the effect of making the policy, in effect, cost neutral for the Government. It would also be a much more sustainable investment strategy than, for example, having to fund emergency temporary accommodation on a haphazard, ad hoc basis. It would allow for the established best practice of using CPOs to take over long-term vacant housing stock to be expanded to the takeover of housing stock that is generally in poor condition, although habitable. That approach has already been undertaken in Glasgow districts such as Govanhill. If that best practice were scaled up on a national basis, it would be more systematic in nature and lessons could be learned from it.

There is already such provision in legislation. For example, section 45 of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) (Scotland) Act 1997 allows for

“a direction for minimum compensation”,

such that, when the local authority acquires a property, it can offset the costs of repairing the building against the property’s value. In that way the authority does not incur that full cost of acquisition—it can offset it.

There is reasonable scope in the bill to do something useful to improve the mechanisms that are available to local authorities to bring dilapidated housing stock back up to a reasonable standard for habitation.

As has been mentioned, Glasgow has been at the forefront of using compulsory purchase orders to tackle problems of long-term vacant properties, which has increased affordable housing supply and ensured the upkeep of pre-1919 tenement stock in particular, of which there was around 70,000 in the city, with an estimated repair backlog of £3 billion. The compulsory purchase order process has been a good way of responding to the blight that has been caused by derelict and abandoned flats and homes that have been left vacant for a variety of reasons, or properties that have previously been let out but are now below the tolerable standard.

With the Government’s recent announcement of an increase in the acquisitions fund from £40 million to £80 million, that would be a useful way of focusing that money into areas of priority need. Glasgow’s promotion of compulsory purchase orders has sent a message that the local authority is active in taking steps against private landlords or other individuals who fail to address problems with their property, although it is seen as a last-resort measure. Fifty-two homes across Glasgow have been pursued for compulsory purchases since 2019, and 34 of those cases have concluded with the acquisition of the property. In other cases, with the serving of the notice, 13 owners opted to sell voluntarily to housing associations, and a further two properties were sold or occupied by family members, which meant that the planned compulsory purchase order was not continued.

In all the cases to date in which compulsory purchase orders have been confirmed, once Glasgow City Council has invested in the property, it has entered into back-to-back agreements with local community-based housing associations, of which there are more than 60 in Glasgow, which have carried out the necessary repair works with support and grant funding to bring the property up to a tolerable standard and back into active use in order to provide affordable housing for those who need it.

Given the housing emergency in Glasgow and other parts of Scotland, that need is particularly acute, so it would be a useful tool to bring in now. We need not wait for the Government’s on-going consultation on wider CPOs, because the pace of change needs something to get ahead of it. That could be a useful mechanism for the Government to implement now and test how it works and performs with local authorities.

Some of the properties that have previously been targeted for CPOs have been lying empty for more than 14 years, while other properties have been designated as being below the tolerable standard for more than five years. All those empty properties, because they are generally tenemental stock, create environmental blight and affect neighbours in the wider community and even in the same close. Therefore, the benefit that is derived from bringing those properties and other homes back into use is massive, particularly for tenants and owners who live in close proximity and who have suffered because of abandonment or the poor quality of maintenance.

Although there are budgetary constraints that limit how many CPOs a local authority can achieve, those steps are useful. They are, of course, complicated, time consuming, costly and resource intensive, but we can build a learning curve. In Glasgow’s case, they are dependent on building a partnership with housing associations.

The Government should consider accepting the amendment, moving forward with the approach and testing how it could perform.

I thank the cabinet secretary for his statement. The Health, Social Care and Sport Committee had the opportunity to visit Skye in May 2024, which was an insightful visit, certainly for me as a rather parochial Glaswegian—it was my first visit to the island. The insights of the staff at Portree and at Broadford were instructive.

On that visit, some helpful suggestions were made. One that stuck out for me was that the abandoned old Broadford hospital buildings that were boarded up could be readily converted into accommodation for visiting clinicians, or even more permanent accommodation for people who are looking to develop careers on the island. The housing pressure still seems to be a structural challenge there. Therefore, although it is welcome that the practitioner vacancies have been filled, the longer-term need to preserve career pathways on the island is important.

Another key point was that the CT scanner at Broadford does not exist. Having a scanner there is an obvious way to reduce ambulance transfers to Raigmore. Could that matter be looked at?

To ask the Scottish Government what work is being undertaken to improve the rehabilitation of people who are subject to short prison sentences. (S6O-04943)

I visited Barlinnie prison last month. The staff there were clear that short prison sentences do not have the benefits in rehabilitation that they would like, and there needs to be improvement in that area. One case was cited of a young man who had been released after a short sentence and was back in prison because he did not know how to pay rent to his landlord; he was so humiliated by that that he ran away and ended up back on drugs and in a fight. Clearly, that case was a failure; it resulted in a bad outcome for that person and for society. Will the minister undertake to review the efficacy of short-term sentencing so that, in each case in which it does not work, we can address why it has not worked and deal with that?