Chamber and committees

Rural households can face challenges in the transition to zero-emissions heating, such as those relating to generally higher costs of installation, older buildings and fuel poverty. In recognition of that, our area-based schemes provide enhanced support to rural households, and the warmer homes Scotland scheme supports those in, or at risk of, fuel poverty.

This year, we made £3 million available for Scotland’s most remote off-grid communities to upgrade their energy systems. As we develop the islands energy strategy, we are considering options for an islands uplift across our delivery programmes to provide additional support in island areas.

The answer lies partly with Scottish Government programmes and partly with the United Kingdom regulated energy system, which needs to take action to ensure that we have upgrades to the electricity grid so that it is more resilient. That factor is recognised in the Scottish Government’s “Heat in Buildings Strategy—Achieving Net Zero Emissions in Scotland's Buildings” and in our on-going work and engagement with the UK Government.

It is worth recognising that even existing fossil fuel boilers will suffer if there is an electrical power failure. People cannot necessarily rely on existing systems. Some of the challenges relating to the resilience of the electricity grid apply to existing systems, just as they will to net zero heating systems.

Overall, the picture is strong. Since the original charter was introduced, as you will be aware, the regulator monitors and reports against the outcomes in the charter, and that has shown a continued improvement, pretty much year on year. There is a strong view across the sector that, from the its creation to the first review and now to this second review, the charter has been effective and is improving standards.

It is always worth reflecting on the fact that practice and standards vary. Every social landlord will recognise that they can always do things better. It is always appropriate for any organisation, whether public service or private or third sector, to continually reflect on how it can learn lessons and do better. That applies to the regulator as well. We can continually reflect on how the regulator can provide better information for tenants, enabling them to hold their social landlords accountable.

Across the sector, the view and the evidence are strong that the charter has had a strong and pretty consistent impact in improving service.

I do not think that we have concerns that there are major issues with the accuracy of reporting.

As I said, we are looking to propose a change to the Scottish Housing Regulator’s existing functions in the social rented sector, so that it has a greater role in relation to improvement. When the legislation is introduced, it will be for the committee to consider whether we have got the approach right or whether an alternative approach is required.

I look forward to the responses to the current consultation, which we will consider carefully. We will aim to implement the most effective solution possible. I look forward to the committee’s engagement on that, too.

It is the Parliament that has given the responsibilities and duties to the regulator, and the regulator reports to the Parliament. We propose—or, at least, in the current consultation, discuss—some potential changes to the remit of the regulator; as I mentioned earlier to the convener, there is a proposal for a regulator for the private rented sector as well. There will be some discussion, no doubt, about how and to what extent those might integrate, or whether there are reasons why we should keep them fully separate.

The regulator will, I think, be reporting to the committee fairly soon. That is an opportunity for the committee to hold the regulator to account for its work and for the reports that it presents.

It might be that officials have an extra word to add here. I suspect that some of those questions should be put to the SHR. Parliament sets the legislation that sets out the duties of the independent regulator and the Government can propose changes to that legislation, but we do not instruct the SHR on how to perform its functions, or individual social landlords on how they should achieve the framework’s outcomes. Some questions might be more relevant to the SHR than they are to the Government.

Anne Cook might want to add something.

Obviously, there have been significant issues in the past couple of years, and we are aware that the timescales for repairs have suffered as a result of the pandemic. I think that most people would acknowledge that that has been for understandable practical reasons. As we recover from the pandemic, it will be important to ensure that social landlords do what they can not just to reduce those timescales but to address any backlog.

The regulator, which you will hear from later this month, collects information on timescales. I will be as interested as you are in the on-going reporting of the information that the regulator can present to ensure that we address those issues. However, as I said, it is for the regulator, which is independent of Government, to collect that information and for social landlords to address how they best achieve the outcomes that are set in the charter.

In isolation, that is a very fair point. There is huge value in the services that you are talking about, and I think that that is understood across the sector. One of the issues is that we want the charter to be a clear, comprehensible and easy-to-use document for tenants, not an incredibly high-level detailed policy document that only housing professionals can make use of.

Through the consultation, we were keen to understand what tenants want to see in the charter. A huge range of other options are not necessarily captured in the outcomes, including the services that you are talking about; the detail of how we provide welfare rights and money advice services to tenants; how social landlords who choose to can perform a wider role; and a great many other aspects of the detailed operation of social housing.

We wanted the outcomes and the charter to reflect the priorities of tenants and the document to be expressed in clear language so that it was easy for tenants to use. The absence of specific detail on a particular issue does not reflect its lack of importance but results from our ensuring that the way that we revise and express the charter reflects the priorities of tenants and that the document remains useful to them.

The first review after the charter’s creation was in 2017, and we anticipate another five-year review. I do not imagine that we would need to make any major or comprehensive changes before that review. However, as I have said in relation to several points that have come up, the situation is changing in relation to energy, the net zero targets, decarbonisation and the role of social landlords in achieving that, as well as in relation to the wider landscape of tenants’ rights and the approach to achieving tenure-neutral outcomes between the social and private rented sectors. There will be opportunities to continue to use the charter in that changing context. However, our expectation is to have a further review at the next natural five-year point rather than open it up at a deeper level much sooner than that.

The answer to that question will always be yes. Since its creation, through its review to now, the cohort of tenants will have changed—the people who engaged 10 years ago might not be the tenants who are there today—therefore, our intention is to repeat the approach that we took at the previous review point, in 2017. A series of events were held to promote the charter, which were judged to be quite successful and pretty popular. Our intention is to go through that process again and to develop a publicity strategy to ensure that as many tenants as possible are aware of the charter. That is not just about Government action; it also means encouraging landlords to promote the revised charter in their engagement activities with tenants and other customers.

The intention is that some hard copies will be made available to those who want them. However, over the past couple of years, social landlords—like the rest of us—have recognised that digital means of communication can be really effective. After an initial period of some uncertainty, many social landlords’ tenants found that it was something that they had taken to as well. Many of those digital means of communication will be used very effectively, too.