Chamber and committees

John Blackwood and Tim Douglas, do you or your members have any experience of local authority interventions on that front? Are there any examples of local authorities getting in touch with members to talk about standards? What does that process look like? How is it handled on both sides?

I have a question for John Kerr. It is not about a council’s role as a social landlord but about its strategic responsibility in ensuring that all homes in the local authority area meet the tolerable standard and its ability to report breaches of that standard to the tribunal. How proactive are councils in assessing stock across all tenures? What do you do to support private tenants, too? In the previous session, we heard that private tenants sometimes live in houses with damp or mould but do not have the time or the energy to pursue that, or they might be concerned about their tenancy if they were to do so. What are councils doing proactively in relation to all the stock in local authority areas?

Thank you.

Before I begin, I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests, which states that I am the owner of a private rented property in the North Lanarkshire Council area.

Today’s debate on community-led housing is welcome, particularly as it allows us to discuss the role that that can play in addressing the rural and island housing crisis. I congratulate my colleague from the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee on securing the debating time today.

I am an MSP for Central Scotland, and there are actually many rural villages in my region. People who live in those villages tell us that they feel very distant from Edinburgh, Glasgow and other cities in Scotland. They also tell us that they know best what suits their own area and what does and does not work, which is a sentiment that would be reflected in all of Scotland’s communities. That is a vital reminder for us that a one-size-fits-all policy or decision rarely works for all of Scotland. Even worse, such decisions can sometimes have a negative impact if they lose the buy-in of the communities that they impact in a way that is not desired.

We can all agree that more can and should be done to facilitate community-led housing and remove barriers to locally based projects that rely on local knowledge and local input about what people’s needs are and what local people think are the solutions for their own towns and villages.

In November last year, I visited the Western Isles to learn about the severe housing crisis there and the impact of the cost of living crisis that people faced. That was at the start of a devastating winter that would leave 80 per cent of residents in fuel poverty. They felt badly let down by the UK Government’s energy support scheme because their heating oil and solid fuel had not been capped. Residents, the council and local organisations said that they felt let down by the Scottish Government, too. Tighean Innse Gall, or TIG, which is the organisation tasked with delivering the area-based scheme for the council, cited a lack of rural proofing in the PAS 2035/2030 retrofit standards as the reason for the closure of its insulation department, with the loss of 14 jobs and the loss of that service.

The Hebridean Housing Partnership told me about its maintenance regime. Maintaining its stock is absolutely crucial considering that that stock bears the brunt of the Atlantic weather. The partnership talked about how a potential social sector rent freeze might impact on its ability to do that good work.

I also heard about the huge variations in the costs of building housing in the Western Isles. It costs tens of thousands of pounds more to build on Barra than on Lewis. Most decision makers in Edinburgh would consider the Western Isles to be one homogeneous area, but, in fact, there are real differences there.

We debated Scotland’s national housing emergency yesterday. However, as Ariane Burgess’s motion points out, for rural and island communities, the emergency is compounded by the diverse and significant challenges that they face, with the implications that that has for sustaining their populations. Ferries, fuel poverty, the increased costs of just about everything, the ability to access healthcare and education and poor digital connectivity all interact with the housing crisis and make island and rural life extremely challenging.

Local people will say that they know best what does and does not work for them. We should trust them to tackle their own local housing emergency. They know best, and we should give them the tools to do that.

I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests, which shows that I am the owner of a rented property in the North Lanarkshire Council area.

Yesterday, I joked with the Minister for Housing that not many of his colleagues would be welcomed to their posts in an Opposition motion. However, we and organisations such as Shelter and Homes for Scotland have been calling for a dedicated housing minister for months, and we hope that he will bring a long-overdue and renewed focus on tackling our housing emergency. I appreciated his candour and expertise when we worked together in committee, and I hope that he will take that approach into Government.

Although we welcome the change in personnel, we also need a change in Government direction, because the task is urgent. Since our previous debate on the topic, the housing emergency has, as predicted, become worse. The new homes pipeline has continued to dry up; the rent freeze has failed, with rents increasing at their highest pace in a decade; some 10,000 children are in temporary accommodation, which is a record high; and at least 125 social tenants have been evicted from their homes under the so-called eviction ban.

In addition, the Government’s temporary accommodation task and finish group has confirmed what we already knew—that the ambition of the “Ending Homelessness Together” action plan has not matched realities on the ground. Furthermore, the Scottish Housing Regulator now reports that

“there is an emerging risk of systemic failure in ... homelessness services.”

In advance of today’s debate, Crisis in Scotland has shared with me—and many other members, I am sure—cases of households that it has been supporting. One family is trapped in local authority temporary accommodation that is infested with mice and rats. As a result of damp and mould, children are experiencing recurring viral illnesses, with their general practitioner recommending strongly that they leave those premises.

In another case, Tracy, a woman in her 40s with Crohn’s disease and Asperger’s, has spent more than four years in temporary accommodation in Edinburgh. She was left with no hot water for 18 months. However, it was not the lack of hot water but the severe damp and mould that rotted her wheelchair, which led to her being isolated, and destroyed old family photographs, school reports and treasured memories of her children’s time as youngsters. In Scotland in 2023, it took Tracy appearing on the STV programme “Scotland Tonight” for her to be offered a new home.

A homeless person in Midlothian faces a 96-week wait for their homelessness application to be closed. Across the country, the average wait is more than six months. Worse still—this is a national scandal—is the fact that at least 157 homeless Scots died in the past year, seemingly without Government response or reaction.

Labour’s motion lays down the task at hand for the new minister. If we want to end the homelessness emergency and the crisis in temporary accommodation, we need more homes. We need new social and private homes, and we need empty homes to be brought back into the social sector for living in.

I echo the key recommendation of the temporary accommodation task and finish group report. The Government must set an interim target of delivering 38,500 social homes by 2026. That number has not been plucked out of thin air but is from independent academic research that was commissioned by the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations, Shelter and the Chartered Institute of Housing, which have demonstrated clearly that that would reduce housing need.

Shelter points out that social approvals are at their worst level since 2013 and starts are at their worst level since 2016. Both are down by 20 per cent. That means that we are seeing progress being rolled back. At the current rate, there is a real fear that the 2032 target will not be met.

We are absolutely clear that targets in themselves will not build a single home. However, they sharpen minds, such as those of the ministers who are appointed to build the homes that we need. Because the wider housing crisis continues, we need an all-tenure target, too. Success in the supply programme cannot be separated from success in supply in the wider market.

Homes for Scotland points to the Government’s research that shows that, in 2019, developer contributions were worth more than £30,000 for each private home that was built. Its survey found that three in 10 affordable homes were delivered because of the building of private homes.

That is why we are calling on Parliament to back Homes for Scotland’s call to return to the target of building 25,000 homes annually in order to start making progress on catching up on the homes that should have been built over the past five years.

We cannot support the Government’s amendment because it avoids a commitment to supporting the recommendations that are contained in its own group’s report. I am sure that the Minister for Housing, having spent time, with me, on the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee, would not expect me to accept the Government’s claim that it is delivering investment in local government core funding—not when the vice-president of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities was at the committee yesterday talking about the £1 billion shortfall, and not when Scottish National Party presidents and resource spokespersons at COSLA echo the same call.

The fact that no local authority has been able to fulfil all the rapid rehousing aims shows that, without proper Government support, the rapid rehousing transitions that are envisaged by the Government are impossible. During January’s debate, the minister’s predecessor repeatedly referred to the work of the group that the Government had rightly set up. Now that it has been given a chance to respond to that group, the Government has all but dismissed the very recommendations that it has made.

That is no fresh start. It is just a long list of rehashed promises—

Certainly, Presiding Officer.

I hope that that will change with the change of minister. The minister will absolutely have my support if it does.

I move,

That the Parliament acknowledges the recommendations of the Temporary Accommodation Task and Finish Group and urges the Scottish Government to act upon them as soon as possible to tackle the rising tide of homelessness; welcomes the long overdue appointment of a dedicated Minister for Housing to the Scottish Government to focus minds; regrets the cuts to the affordable housing supply programme in the Scottish Government’s Budget, in light of the risk that its house building target will not be met; agrees that the Scottish Government should, at a minimum, adequately fund the delivery of new social homes through the Affordable Housing Supply Programme to meet an interim target of delivering 38,500 social homes by 2026; considers that the Scottish Government should commit to a target of building 25,000 all-tenure new homes annually, and presses the Scottish Government to publish a review of funding of homelessness services, including any identified funding gaps and the provision of continued funding for Rapid Rehousing Transition Plans and the prevention of homelessness.

It has been eight years since the Community Empowerment (Scotland) 2015 Act was passed. Can the minister and Councillor Heddle point to any evidence that shows that communities are more empowered now than they were back when the act was passed? I will go to the minister first.

My experience is that, quite often, asset transfers happen almost as a last resort, when there is a proposal to close a facility and the local community does not want to lose it. Your comment is helpful.

Are we doing enough to build capacity in communities and to support them to get involved in decision making? How are we supporting existing infrastructure, and what role do community councils have in community planning? I ask Councillor Heddle to respond first.

Thanks, minister.

Councillor Heddle, do you have anything to add? Are you able to point to anything that shows that the nation is more empowered than it was when the 2015 act was passed?

Are you able to set out how the Government feels that local planning authorities should balance the policies and proposals that they consult on and develop locally with potential competing interests or clashes with NPF4? How do you expect planning authorities to resolve those issues? You talked about the guidance that you plan to release to supplement NPF4. When might that be released?