Chamber and committees

Sorry, my question was not about domestic fuel bills. I was asking about the plants.

Okay, thanks. What proportion of our total Scottish consumption will the measure impact on?

I just want to get a sense of how it all fits in.

That is really useful. It sounds as if detailed knowledge and experience—from inception right through to delivery—are required and we do not really have that in the UK or in Scotland. Did you discuss with CMAL or Transport Scotland delivering the 801 without LNG capacity? If you managed to have that conversation, what was their response? Quite a big delay has been built into the whole project.

The question for those bodies is to what extent increased energy efficiency is a key issue for the project. Will such work be useful for other ships that will be constructed in the UK?

That was helpful. I was thinking about ferries in general, not just those two ferries. The other thing I wanted to ask about was the repair and maintenance of existing ferries. If that is for somebody else—

Thanks very much—that is helpful.

Yes, I would, and thank you very much, convener, for the opportunity to address the committee this morning.

I am increasingly receiving casework from constituents on a range of issues arising with property factors. The main issue is that factors are seen as unaccountable, with high and rising costs, high quotes for repairs, insufficient information to assess value for money, poor communication, lack of engagement or interest in engaging with residents, historic debts being passed to current owners and people finding it very difficult to challenge costs or standards of work, to suggest improvements or to remove factors altogether.

Constituents feel powerless against factors that have been appointed by developers. There is a lack of a clear tendering process for the initial appointment, as referenced by the petitioner in highlighting the appointment of the factor by the developer. There is a lack of transparent information about services and costs before people commit to buying a new build, which means that they buy a property without knowing exactly what they are committing to financially. Reliance on title deeds is problematic, too, because they are not clear with regard to voting rights, processes and procedures.

Constituents have reported to me poor communication when responding to queries, unwillingness to engage on improving services or processes, errors in invoices and staff unclear about what they should be doing. There is also a big worry about future costs, including the costs of repairing unadopted roads, and people are worried about costs rising while their income is reducing and there being no help available if their income falls.

Using the code of practice to challenge factors is seen as incredibly cumbersome and as working against individual owners, who face a huge amount of organisation if they have to reach out to their neighbours. The First-tier Tribunal is also incredibly daunting to owners, as they might well be up against the factors and their legal teams.

I have asked written and oral questions on the steps that the Scottish Government will take to ensure that the system works for property owners. Moreover, in a working paper that was published last November, the Competition and Markets Authority referenced the imbalance of power between factors and home owners. The issues that constituents are raising with me come down to the power that factors have and the power that home owners have.

During the committee’s previous consideration of the petition, Mr Ewing made points in defence of the role of factors, and I want to make it clear that it is always better to have a factor in place than not. If there is no factor in place, buildings can fail or fall into a state of repair and basic health and safety approaches can end up not being followed. That is in no one’s interest, but there has to be more transparency in the system from factors being appointed to having the capacity to change them.

A constituent of mine has calculated how much their factor earns. They pay £45 a quarter in factor management fees in a development with more than 250 properties. In other words, in a development not that far from this Parliament, a factor is receiving over £11,000 a quarter, or nearly £50,000 a year for managing the property—and that does not include the cost of any works that need to be done, which owners themselves pay for.

To conclude, convener, I think that the Parliament has a duty to ensure that our constituents are protected through legislation. The Scottish Government has been slow to act on this matter, and I encourage the committee to use this petition in order to think of ways of ensuring a fair power balance between factors and home owners.

Thank you again for the opportunity to address the committee.

Okay. Thanks very much.

From the written evidence, for which we are very grateful, and the oral evidence so far, it has come across that there are some really big-ticket issues that need to be addressed. What difference has been made as regards engagement with Environmental Standards Scotland? It is now sitting there, but I was struck by Scottish Environment LINK’s comment that it

“welcomes the acceptance that Scotland is in breach of the access to justice requirements of the Aarhus Convention in relation to costs”.

How do we ensure that a difference is made in that respect?

Perhaps we can start with Lloyd Austin. There seems to be a big gap between what Environmental Standards Scotland was meant to achieve and the narrowness of what has been expected of it thus far. Once Lloyd has commented, we can pick up what the other submissions had to say.