Chamber and committees

I thank the member for his speech so far, which has been really interesting. Does he recognise that the solution to the problem that he describes might be a heritage levy on new development areas, such as conservation areas, which could help contribute to the common good?

Built Environment Forum Scotland identified another potential solution, around having common sinking funds for residential and—potentially—commercial properties, so that common repairs are well funded in advance, instead of a massive amount of money suddenly having to be spent in reaction to the failure of a building or structure.

Thank you, Presiding Officer. I apologise for being two minutes late to this meeting of the Parliament, which was due to being at a meeting to do with racism in Scottish society.

Does the minister agree that it is faintly ridiculous that, in order to avoid redundancies, Ferguson Marine, which is a publicly owned shipyard, is now almost entirely dependent on building sub-contract work for BAE Systems on a type 26 programme for the Ministry of Defence while the Scottish Government is handing a £100 million ferry contract to a Turkish shipyard and is likely to award another £100 million ferry contract to a Turkish shipyard? Is that not completely contradictory to any idea of a national ferry building or shipbuilding strategy?

Will the member give way?

I thank Bob Doris for his contribution. Does he recognise that, 10 years since the demolition of Springburn public halls, one of the major concerns in the city of Glasgow is about buildings that are in council ownership that remain derelict and continue to blight areas including Springburn?

Does the minister agree that the Clyde Gateway is an interesting model? Clyde Gateway is unique in being the only public development corporation left in Scotland. Perhaps the model could be emulated on a grander scale—for Glasgow as a whole and perhaps at national level—to bring distressed assets back into use.

I thank Emma Harper for bringing the debate to the chamber. As a trustee of the Glasgow City Heritage Trust, I have a strong personal passion for the issue. Indeed, Glasgow has long been synonymous with its architectural beauty and the grandeur of its buildings, which make it one of the most handsome urban cityscapes in the world. It is testament to previous generations of enlightened Glaswegians that we remain blessed by the legacy of geniuses such as Alexander “Greek” Thomson, James Miller, John James Burnet and Charles Rennie Mackintosh. They were able to flourish in the city of Glasgow due to a potent combination of inspired patrons, including the Corporation of Glasgow, who understood the enduring value of good design, and the design rules that were devised by the first city architect, John Carrick, which ensured that Glasgow followed a rigorous plan that was driven by the Glasgow City Improvement Trust and gave rise to a dense grid of the tenement streets that are so fundamental to our city’s identity.

Although we admire and adore the product of that architectural golden age and need to do everything that we can to preserve and protect it today, it is true that current planning law would not enable it to be built today—in fact, it would prevent that from happening. That is one of the great ironies: the things that we cherish and the communities that we like the most in our city are unable to be replicated because of current planning law. It is a great disappointment that we have not been able to address that in national planning framework 4.

The work of organisations such as the Glasgow City Heritage Trust, which was established 15 years ago, in 2007, is pivotal.

I absolutely agree with the member. A major issue is that previous generations had plot-based development rules for planning. A city plan was laid out and the city was built up progressively. Private investors were invited to build it up in that planned sequence by the city architect, in this instance, or the city improvement trust, and many of those developments were sponsored by the city.

However, today, our planning system is fundamentally discretionary. All the bases on which buildings are designed and developed are left in the hands of developers. There is no code of design, no code for how a building should look in relation to the community and no code on the materials that should be used. It is very arbitrary, and buildings are often value engineered to the point of not being well designed at all, which is a major concern.

There are perverse incentives at the heart of our planning system that drive perverse behaviour. For example, in Glasgow, 108 of our more than 1,800 listed buildings are on the buildings at risk register for Scotland. That is quite a high rate. A major impediment to bringing back into use the buildings that are at risk, which are of architectural and heritage value, is the fact that to do so incurs a VAT rate of 20 per cent, whereas knocking the building down and building it from scratch incurs no VAT. That is a perverse incentive—it is what is known as a conservation deficit—and it often militates against bringing potentially fantastic buildings back into use.

As members have done in the debate, I could rhyme off a list of such buildings in Glasgow, not least the Springburn winter gardens in Springburn park, which I have been desperately trying to bring back into active use for more than 10 years, but I continue to be frustrated in that goal. One of the major impediments relates to the VAT issue and the conservation deficit. The usual way to deal with that is to apply for funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, the regeneration capital grant fund or the UK Government’s levelling up fund, as Glasgow is doing for the People’s Palace. The fundamental problem with that is that it is a lottery, and there will always be losers in such a process.

I do not understand why the Scottish Government cannot think more laterally about the issue and say, “These buildings have long-term value. How do we measure the value of these restored assets? How do we guarantee these buildings as incredible, irreplaceable and precious parts of our built heritage?” It needs to recognise that throwing grants at the issue on an arbitrary lottery-type basis will not work and will not be sustainable in the long term.

The Glasgow City Heritage Trust’s annual budget barely touches the sides of the scale of the problem in Glasgow: 70,000 tenements need £3 billion-worth of repairs. At the rate at which the trust is funded, it would take 2,000 years to do that. We need to seriously up our game in Scotland on how we resource this. A national plan should not involve throwing money at projects that will not work or be viable; it should involve providing initial investment that can, over 100 years, be earned back. Revenue from council tax, non-domestic rates and rent would come back into the city and the urban community. Property values would rise in the area, and communities that would otherwise suffer terribly would be reinvigorated, because a higher proportion of the buildings that are at risk are in the poorest districts of our towns and cities.

In that regard, it is important that the Government considers ways of dealing with the conservation deficit problem in Scotland—it should not simply extend the grant funding—because it is a major issue that holds up the potential rejuvenation of thousands of amazing architectural edifices in our cities and towns.

Will the member give way?

I thank Jackie Dunbar for her interesting speech. I clarify that the committee has recommended a minimum of £3,000, but the figure could potentially be up to £5,000, based on the evidence that was heard. There is flexibility there, and I look forward to the Government lodging an amendment; if it does not do so, perhaps the committee will lodge an amendment at stage 2. We will see what happens.