Meeting of the Parliament 09 January 2014
I welcome this debate. I joined the Justice Committee a few months ago, too late to have any input into its excellent report, “Inquiry into the effectiveness of the provisions of the Title Conditions (Scotland) Act 2003”—not the most engaging title, if I may say so.
As we heard, the report is about properties and land, and their ownership and maintenance. I note that the Justice Committee and the Scottish Government agree that we have a cultural problem with land and property ownership in Scotland. Today we have an opportunity to tackle a culture that glorifies consumerism for the many but reserves ownership and control of properties and land for the few.
Last night, BBC 1 Scotland exposed that culture in its excellent programme, “The Men Who Own Scotland”. BBC reporter David Miller used the examples of Scandinavian countries and France to show how different the culture is in other countries. Paul Wheelhouse, Minister for Environment and Climate Change, gave our party’s vision for the future. It is a vision that I share—a vision of our rural and urban communities taking a full part in managing land and properties.
I agree with the BBC programme last night and with the response of the Scottish Government today: we do not need a revolution or even legislation to change this culture. We need to define the direction of travel for the future of property and land in Scotland as regards both ownership and management. Doing nothing is not an option, as the report said. A strong code of practice is the start that our communities need to gain control of the management of land and properties—management that they are paying for. I join John Lamont in his call for more information on the timing of the establishment of such a code from the minister.
In January 2009, in my home town of Westhill, more than 110 residents heckled the boss of the firm Greenbelt Group over the upkeep of open spaces. The boss admitted that pictures showing the lack of upkeep of treasured open spaces in the neighbourhood were “terrible”. I remember that the public meeting was long and heated, with members of the Scottish Parliament sitting alongside Aberdeenshire Council employees, representatives of developers and councillors to hear the explanations from the company. I was there, and the explanations were not adequate then and are still not adequate now.
The committee and the Government found that the main reason that the position of consumers of services that are provided by landowning land maintenance companies appears to have improved in recent years is that individuals and organised groups of residents have given up. After many years of fruitless negotiations and protests, they have returned to their normal lives.
The local resistance to the Greenbelt Group has largely dissipated in my home town, with the majority of the Leddach Grange residents appearing to have grudgingly accepted that payment is unavoidable. They feel let down, not only by the people from the Greenbelt Group but by local authorities and local developers. Firms such as Greenbelt continue to profit while residents pay through the nose for relatively basic services. I thank Charlie Flint for his email on that subject—Charlie formed the Leddach Grange residents association in August 2005. The picture is the same across the region that I represent. I hear that maintenance charges recently increased from £163 to £228 in Inverurie, Aberdeenshire.
I feel that more top-down, complex and impractical legislation is not what is required, as we want to reflect the aspirations of our communities—both urban and rural. I thank the members of the Justice Committee at the time of the inquiry for their work and the Scottish Government for its measured response.
16:08