Chamber and committees

We need to work through that a bit more. On the basis of what the UK building safety levy will bring in, we have estimated that around £30 million a year will be contributed. I guess that that will last for as long as the programme lasts for. We discussed whether the levy would continue once all the identified buildings had been remediated—that is a legitimate question. I see the contribution very much as funding the programme, so the levy would need to remain in place for as long as is required to do that, and it will need to be kept under review.

Another question was about what would happen if it turned out that the work was not as expensive as expected and a lot of buildings did not need the expected level of remediation. We can review the levy if that turns out to be the case, but I suspect that that will not turn out to be the case, given the scale of the problem.

Do we have a date for the bill’s introduction?

Those discussions are on-going. We are cognisant of the fact that Scotland has a larger small and medium-sized enterprises developer sector than is the case elsewhere. Those SMEs have been very important for the affordable housing sector.

When it comes to developers who will be required to contribute to remediation, we are talking about those that have a turnover of more than £10 million. Stephen Lea-Ross might want to say more about that.

Some of the buildings are very complex and some are not. Some are straightforward and may require little or no remediation but, as Stephen Lea-Ross said, the ones that require extensive remediation could, in themselves, take up to five years to remediate.

A lot of work has been done on that. I can give you some high-level information and come back with some details. In 2021, an inventory data collection project was undertaken by the Scottish Government using information gathered from local authority building standards departments. That established that around 382 buildings above 18m and around 500 buildings between 11m and 18m required some level of remediation.

There is then the question of the required level of remediation. A UK Government publication back in 2022 estimated between £640,000 and £790,000 for full remediation, but partial remediation could be considerably less than that. The point is that that is why the single building assessment will be so important. Each building will be different, so the cost of remediating each building will be different. The legislation that will come into force next year will give the tools to make sure that a single building assessment is done for each building.

It will take a number of years to work through. We have prioritised and made clear that we want the priority to be the highest buildings and those that are most at risk, if you like.

The inventory was done in 2021 and the figures are from a 2022 UK Government publication.

We need to ensure that the funding is in place and that the funding profile will meet the needs that are there.

A lot of work is going on in the background on that. As you can imagine, with an analysis of how many SBAs are going to come through, we will be able to see the balance between full remediation, partial remediation, no remediation required or a green light to say that the building is fine. We will be able to profile what the required spend will be over five, 10, 15 or 20 years as things begin to ramp up.

It is difficult to give an absolute analysis now, but the funding will be put in place. We are not going to embark on a remediation process for orphan buildings and then not see it through to completion as quickly as possible. However, the SBA process will take time. It requires high-level specialist technical skills, and that has proven to be a bit of an issue. Apologies that I cannot remember the exact specialist roles involved, but the engineers are looking at how they can bolster that and ensure that the skills are there. My worry is that it will take time if we have a backlog of SBAs that are all waiting for the same people to come in and do the assessment.

—and we will undoubtedly have to add significantly more than that. We will do that at the pace at which the single building assessments are carried out.

Developer remediation is also taking place, and they are getting on with the buildings for which they are responsible. Here, we are talking about buildings for which no developer is responsible. Work is on-going in many buildings that developers are responsible for themselves, and it is quite right that that should be the case.

We had quite a lot of discussion about that. My initial view was that that would have been the quickest and easiest route, but there was no agreement to do that.

There are some complications. Stephen Lea-Ross alluded to a major difference with regard to the legislation on ownership, freeholders and all of that. I think that it would have been possible to legislate for the UK as a whole but there was no agreement. Therefore, we had to craft legislation that was in line with UK legislation but that could take account of the differences. UK legislation might have been quicker and easier, but we are where we are.

We want to reflect on those operational issues. I am open-minded about what approach to take. We want to collect the levy in the most efficient and effective way possible, but we want to consider the approach further.