Meeting of the Parliament 09 January 2014
I must admit that when I saw this debate listed in the Business Bulletin last week, I did not immediately want to get involved in it, but on closer inspection I realised that the issues that were raised in the inquiry have probably been raised with the majority of MSPs by their constituents at one time or another. I thank the Justice Committee for finding time in its busy schedule—it has lots of bills going to it—to get involved in this post-legislative scrutiny. I know how difficult it is to find time to do such work.
My interest is twofold. I am interested as a constituency member who has constituents with on-going problems with factors involved in land maintenance, as already mentioned by Christine Grahame and others. I am also interested as convener of the Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee, which next week will begin consideration of the Housing (Scotland) Bill, which covers many areas relating to housing, including the right to buy, licensing requirements for mobile home sites with permanent residents, allocation of social housing and the use of the Scottish secure tenancy. It also includes the amendment of local authority powers to enforce repairs and maintenance in private homes, a registration system for letting agents, and part 3, which, among other things,
“allows local authorities to apply to the private rented housing panel for enforcement of the repairing standard, setting out the procedure for such applications and the right of appeal.”
I hope that Government officials who are dealing with the Housing (Scotland) Bill will have read the Justice Committee’s report and its recommendations, which I certainly will quiz them on. I will also ensure that my committee’s clerks have a conversation with the Justice Committee’s clerks, to see whether anything can be included in the bill to strengthen it and deal with some of the issues raised by the Justice Committee’s inquiry.
John Lamont articulated very well much of what I wanted to say about land management issues. I am a constituency member for Aberdeen, an area in which there is a housing boom. It is a large part of my constituency casework. Like John Lamont, I am concerned that home owners are not always well informed of their legal obligations on the purchase of a home. I remember that when my husband and I purchased our house more than 20 years ago, the solicitor told us among other things that we could not keep chickens. However, Mike Marriott from the Greenbelt Action Group said in evidence that buyers do not have the obligations spelled out to them, which I think is more common.
Like John Lamont, I believe that ideally green spaces in new estates should be looked after by local councils, as they look after green spaces in older estates. As a regional member, I was at the meeting with Greenbelt in 2011 that Christian Allard mentioned, which was very heated, as he said. It really is sad that these situations arise simply because companies such as Greenbelt cannot agree with house owners what level of land maintenance their fees should cover. As Alison McInnes said, there is not a simple solution because Greenbelt owns the land, so changing factors will not necessarily make much difference.
I sympathise with Patricia Ferguson and Sandra White on the factoring of the beautiful Glasgow tenements, which lots of people have bought to let, meaning that there is not the pride in those lovely tenements.