Chamber and committees

As 1,000 of the football pitches that Emma Harper mentioned are in Glasgow, it is a big issue for my city, for sure. Does she agree that we need to look at ways in which we can communicate to the owners of such sites the negative way in which they transmit blight to a community? Perhaps we could do that through a punitive rates charge, for example, so that such owners are forced to do something with the site or sell it on to someone who will.

I rise to support in principle the idea of the national planning framework and what it is trying to achieve, but I cannot help but continue to feel that it is a bit of a missed opportunity, because a lot of what is described in it is not exceptionally different to what has gone before. In many cases, we see the same generalities; that is what worries me.

Although, on the face of it, nothing is desperately concerning, how the framework translates into local development plans will be the test of whether it is successful. That is where we still have great potential for NPF4 to fall flat, particularly given that the context is that it will be loaded on to planning departments that have already had vast cuts to their resources.

I am thinking in particular of Glasgow, which has had a headline budget cut of 10 per cent over the past decade. When that is projected on to the planning department, we see that there has been something of the order of a 60 per cent cut over the decade, because planning is the kind of back-office function that councils try to hammer first, in order to protect services such as social work.

I am worried that attempts to get the framework working will fall on fallow ground, in terms of resources. Although aspects of NPF4 are laudable, I worry that such things get hacked quite regularly by pretty canny developers. Within the national spatial strategy, a good example is the discussion of reusing vacant and derelict land, enhancing natural and built environments and protecting heritage assets. I declare an interest as a trustee of the Glasgow City Heritage Trust, and as someone who regularly spars with developers that are trying to destroy Glasgow’s built environment. The four definitions in NPF4 of what constitute permissible reasons to demolish a listed building are regularly abused and hacked by developers. I encounter that quite frequently.

Here is a good example. One reason is that a

“building is incapable of physical repair and re-use as verified through a detailed structural condition survey report”.

Those surveys are regularly produced by people who are in cahoots with the developer, who completely lack professional integrity and who will lay it on thick to justify demolition of perfectly salvageable buildings in order to maximise profit for the developer who wants to build something more cheaply. By doing so, they avoid incurring VAT at 20 per cent for renovation of the building, and instead incur 0 per cent VAT for demolishing it and building something new. That creates a perverse incentive. Frankly, there is a whole ecosystem of corruption around that, which militates against preservation of our historic environment. I am afraid that the four rules that are defined in the framework are so vague and loose that they are regularly hacked by pretty unscrupulous characters.

I encourage the minister to look at that matter in particular, and to engage to tighten it up. One example of how the system could be improved would be to ensure that surveys of buildings—on whether they are structurally capable of repair—are carried out by conservation-accredited structural engineers. Only two firms in Scotland are conservation accredited, but if that were made a statutory requirement it would immediately improve the integrity with which the process is carried out.

Does the member agree that the lack of accessibility of the planning system is a massive impediment? There are often huge, very complex documents to digest, and the onus is on communities to organise themselves to deal with all of that in fleeting moments. Does she agree that we need to look at making the process more accessible for communities?

Absolutely. I regularly made that plea to the Chancellor of the Exchequer when I sat in the House of Commons. Certainly, there are other ways that the Scottish Parliament could address the issue. For example, I know that Historic Environment Scotland has been looking at ways to create an offset or VAT rebate scheme for buildings that are on the buildings at risk register. Perhaps there are targeted ways in which we could try to ameliorate that issue in Scotland.

An interesting proposal for a demolition levy—which Paul McLennan, a member for East Lothian, has been looking at—has been made by the Chartered Institute of Building. That levy could, at least, move the playing field the other way by ensuring that someone who wants to demolish a building would have to pay a fee. That would offset the perverse incentive. The institute suggests that the levy would raise a conservative estimate of £1.5 million per annum, which could supercharge Historic Environment Scotland’s heritage and place fund, for example.

There are things that we should be looking at. I encourage the minister to look at how we connect that suggestion to economic incentives and price signals in order to drive good behaviour and bake it into the standards that we set for local development plans. The provision of an overarching national framework, through something like a demolition levy, could help to reinforce what local authorities can achieve.

Similarly, that could be achieved through measures such as compulsory sale orders, as opposed to compulsory purchase powers, which actually represent a significant financial constraint on local authorities. They tend to pursue compulsory purchase only for buildings such as the Barclays complex in Glasgow’s Tradeston, where one of the minister’s predecessors, Patricia Ferguson, successfully protected the Beco building from Glasgow City Council’s attempt to demolish it about 20 years ago. That building has now been converted into Barclays Eagle Labs. The B-listed warehouse came off the buildings at risk register, despite the efforts of Glasgow City Council 20 years ago. That was done as a result of back-to-back compulsory purchase orders to clean up the messy ownership. There were 20 or 30 owners, some of whom were dead or living in the Virgin Islands or Cayman Islands.

In order to clean such situations up and get ownership packaged and transferred so that buildings can be developed, we need to start bringing such mechanisms into the system so that we achieve effective and positive outcomes and get buildings off the buildings at risk register. About 108 buildings in Glasgow are on the register. As we speak, there are 2,659 empty homes in Glasgow and, in the city centre, there are more than 3 million square feet of unused floor space and 450 vacant buildings, which is equivalent to the size of the Freedom tower in New York.

Glasgow city centre itself has the lowest population density of any city centre in the United Kingdom, with only about 30,000 people living there. Manchester city centre has more than 100,000. That low density introduces all sorts of problems when it comes to creating so-called 20-minute neighbourhoods. Therefore, to crack the issue, we need to get price signals sorted, which is where I think NPF4 does not connect properly. Although, on the face of it, the framework is good, we need to do much more to get price signals sorted, because there are so many perverse incentives.

Mark Ruskell is making a very important point. I want to ask him for more detail about district heat networks, particularly the potential for one building to meet the requirements by putting in air-source heat pumps but, in doing so, undermine the critical mass needed for a community district heat network. Perhaps more definition could be delivered in the local development plans to make sure that we do not undermine that potential and have a tragedy of the commons.

To ask the First Minister what progress the Scottish Government has made in ending the use of hotels as temporary accommodation for children and families. (S6F-01658)

To ask the Scottish Government what discussions it has had with the Scottish Housing Regulator regarding the future of community housing associations. (S6O-01728)

In response to a recent written question, the First Minister’s cabinet secretary acknowledged that hotels are unsuitable accommodation for people who seek asylum, and condemned the Home Office’s use of bed and breakfasts. However, I understand that lone children who may be seeking asylum and who are in the care of Scottish local authorities, not the Home Office, are also being placed in unregulated hotel accommodation—among adult members of the wider homeless population and without cooking or laundry facilities.

The Scottish Government’s condemnation of Home Office use of hotel accommodation means nothing if devolved care services are acting in the same manner. Will the First Minister advise what steps that working group is taking to urgently relocate those lone children to supported accommodation, and will she make a commitment that no further children who are alone will be placed at risk in such unregulated hotels?

The minister might not be aware, but Reidvale Housing Association in Dennistoun in Glasgow, one of the oldest community housing associations in Scotland, is currently under threat of being railroaded into a merger against the wishes of residents and the wider local community, with members of more than 40 years’ standing being hounded off the management committee and co-opted members being brought in to gerrymander decisions that are critical to Reidvale’s future. To date, there has been utter intransigence on the part of the Scottish Housing Regulator, and the residents have lost all confidence in the process and the willingness of the regulator to help them. Will the minister look at the case of Reidvale with a view to pausing any tender process for a transfer of undertakings? Will he commit to working with me on a cross-party basis, with residents and with fellow Glasgow parliamentarians, to ensure that that vital community housing association remains rooted in its local community?

I accept the cabinet secretary’s point that the matter could be subject to legal challenge, but that does not necessarily mean that there should not be an attempt to try to reform the legislation and show some moral leadership. Many such matters are grey areas and are not at all well defined. If the matter is challenged, that would be an outcome because we would get a clear judgment on the situation. Perhaps the cabinet secretary might reconsider her position.