Meeting of the Parliament 09 January 2014
I associate myself completely with the comments made earlier about David McLetchie’s sense of humour—he is definitely missed in this chamber.
Like my former colleagues on the Justice Committee, I thank the witnesses who gave evidence to the committee for our inquiry. We went from feeling that it was a dry debate to feeling that it was a very important and quite fascinating one. Members have highlighted most of the inquiry’s findings, but I will explain what I got out of the inquiry.
I could feel Patricia Ferguson’s frustration when she was speaking earlier about the difficulty of getting things changed in relation to landlords, tenants and buildings. In my previous existence as a councillor, I was chair of the City of Edinburgh Council regulatory committee that dealt with licensing for houses in multiple occupation. We dealt with all the problems of burdens and the fact that factors did not act responsibly in some instances. It was deeply frustrating, for example, trying to get representatives of eight properties together when three or four of them were absentee landlords. I fully understand where Patricia Ferguson is coming from on that kind of issue, which can be very difficult, particularly when it comes to common repairs and the like. Dealing with those matters took a lot of time.
As an MSP, I have dealt with various related issues in my constituency. In my area on the west side of the city, we have a number of suburban-type properties that have factors and burdens, including management fees, and we have had difficult situations with them. For example, as was mentioned earlier, although developments might have been built with the idea that there would be residents associations, many of them become moribund. The fact that there was no residents association made it difficult for me in a particular case to identify who was paying what to whom and who represented and could speak for the community.
In that case, frustrations built up among residents regarding the relationship with the land management company that dealt with a grass area. The residents felt that they were not getting value for money and that there was no way of getting their voice heard by the management company, so the relationship between the two parties fell apart. Indeed, it was a good example of how things can go wrong.
There had been a turnover of residents, but the current residents thought that one area was supposed to be a part of the land management scheme. It turned out that the land was not part of the scheme. The land was terribly overgrown, but the land management company said that it could not deal with the land because to take it on would mean that the company would be seen as being liable and having presumed ownership.
I thoroughly agree with the comments that all members have made about the difficulties, and I welcome the minister’s comments. The legislation deals with something that is very important to people who live in particular areas. We must do our best to sort out the difficulties.
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