Hansard

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to my amendments. I will run through them in the order in which they appear in the groupings. As members will be aware, repairs to common property have caused considerable controversy in Edinburgh in the aftermath of the statutory repairs scandal. I know that I am not alone among Edinburgh colleagues in that I still receive casework on that. Alongside Dave Stewart’s Defective and Dangerous Buildings (Recovery of Expenses) (Scotland) Bill, which is being considered, the Housing (Scotland) Bill provides an opportunity to mend problems and to learn from the experience in Edinburgh. Section 72 is welcome, because it will give local authorities the power to pay and—crucially—to recover a share of scheme costs. Inability to proceed with work because of unwilling or unidentifiable owners has caused unacceptable delays to home repairs, and is one reason why constituents have continued to turn to councils for intervention via statutory notices, even though previous legislation enables majority decisions to be made under a tenement management scheme. Amendment 149 is really a probing amendment on the apportionment of costs when a local authority uses the new power. It is based on the approach in the City of Edinburgh District Council Order Confirmation Act 1991, which provides the basis of the City of Edinburgh Council’s statutory notice system. I am interested to hear the minister’s comments on the amendment. I have lodged amendment 149 because, under the 1991 act, the council can apportion the cost of statutory repair work among owners on an equal-share basis. That does not prevent owners from pursuing their fellow owners through civil action when the amount paid does not reflect the situation that is set out in title deeds, but it is a simple way to process and administer the provisions from the council’s perspective, and it would avoid the council’s having to pay costly legal expenses when an owner challenges the apportionment. Amendment 149 would allow alternative determination methods to be used, when they are considered to be reasonable. For example, if there is only one missing share, it would be very straightforward to determine it as being the remainder once all the other shares have been paid according to the tenement management scheme, but the amendment would, in the event that a local authority were to step in to pay for more than one owner’s share, allow the missing shares to be split evenly between those owners. Where owners who are liable for a missing share are unwilling or unable to work with the other owners to find a constructive way forward, the amendment would enable a process that would minimise the risk of expensive and protracted legal action, for which the councils would have to pay, to determine the cost for the owners concerned. Amendments 153 and 154 seek to clarify the requirement that an owner be notified before a local authority steps in to pay a missing share. One of the scenarios that would allow the local authority to pay a missing share is if the owner cannot be identified or found. In such circumstances, it would not be possible to notify the owner directly, so amendment 154 would require the authority to publish notice of its intention to pay the missing share in two newspapers, including—if it is practical to do so—a local newspaper. To complete the circle, amendment 153 makes it clear that only in circumstances in which the identity of the owner is known would the local authority be required to notify that owner directly rather than advertise in the press. The requirement to publish notification in the press when an owner cannot be identified has been used before—for example, in the Antisocial Behaviour etc (Scotland) Act 2004. During the process of drafting the amendments, it was noted that there has been a recent trend away from publishing notices due to the falling circulations of newspapers, so if anyone has an alternative suggestion, I would be willing to listen to it. However, my current suggestion is that a notice be published in newspapers, because an understandable transparency comes from that. I see amendments 150 and 151 as probing amendments, too, but I am very concerned about the issues that they address. They would allow local authorities to pay a missing share to registered social landlords. Amendment 150 would enable Scottish ministers to make regulations to achieve that, following a period of consultation to consider the issue. Such a power would apply only in cases in which the RSL is the owner of, or is responsible for, maintenance of any part of a tenement building. The regulations would have the power to amend primary legislation, so amendment 151 would require that the use of affirmative procedure apply to any such regulations. Amendments 150 and 151 follow on from the debate that we had in response to Dave Stewart’s Defective and Dangerous Buildings (Recovery of Expenses) (Scotland) Bill. The issue was raised by the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations, which said that, in general, housing associations undertake repairs with agreement from owners, but are in some circumstances required to pay the costs for people who are not prepared to pay up, and so the RSLs in effect bear the cost beyond what they should pay in order to ensure the safety and security of their assets. Civil remedies to recover costs in such cases can be protracted and unsuccessful. That money could otherwise be used to improve existing stock or could go towards much-needed new homes. Since evidence was taken during the stage 1 process for Dave Stewart’s Defective and Dangerous Buildings (Recovery of Expenses) (Scotland) Bill, I have been made aware that in Edinburgh there are currently 11 examples of housing associations taking properties out of their letting pools because they cannot carry out common repairs and the properties do not meet the standard at which they are prepared to let houses. That means that there is currently lost income of about £40,000. Moreover, the properties are deteriorating, which is bad news for everybody else in the building, and the situation is leading to housing associations selling off properties where there is a minority ownership. That is bad news, because it will lead to less of a spread of tenancies throughout the city, and it is very bad for the income of housing associations. Amendment 152 seeks to amend the recovery time for repayment charges when a local authority has paid a missing share. It has similarities to amendment 7, which is in the name of Jim Eadie, but it would go slightly further. The current provisions in the Housing (Scotland) Act 2006 state that a repayment charge is recoverable over a period of 30 years. However, in the evidence that was taken during consideration of Dave Stewart’s Defective and Dangerous Buildings (Recovery of Expenses) (Scotland) Bill, there was a consensus that 30 years is too long a period for recovery of such expenses, so amendment 152 does not take the approach of using 30 annual instalments, but instead would give the local authority much greater flexibility by allowing recovery of “instalments at such frequency, and over such period of time not exceeding 30 years, as the local authority determines to be reasonable in the circumstances.” It would also give ministers the option of producing guidance on the factors that are to be considered by the local authority in determining what constitutes a reasonable frequency and period of recovery. Such guidance would be useful to ensure that repayment charges were being assessed in a consistent and fair way across the country. One of the reasons why I was keen to remove the 30 years provision is that, in my experience as both an owner and a representative, houses need to be repaired and maintained much more frequently than every 30 years. That is also true in relation to other amendments that Jim Eadie has prepared, such as amendment 9 in the third group of amendments that we will consider today. We need to create an expectation among owners that repairing is not a once-in-a-lifetime activity, and that they need to repair their properties more regularly. Amendment 152 will create that expectation. Amendment 35, in the name of Malcolm Chisholm, is on tenement management schemes. One of the key benefits of the approach that is taken in section 72 will be the ability of local authorities not just to pay for a missing share but to be able to recover the costs from the relevant owner. At the moment, local authorities’ finances are being squeezed, but in principle the certainty of being able to recover their costs for carrying out works that will benefit the owner of a property is a good one, and amendment 35 seeks to minimise the risk of non-recovery even further by providing that a repayment charge that is issued in respect of repair work would be secured by prior ranking over all other burdens on a property. That would mean that, in the event of a property’s being sold, repayment of the charge would take precedence over all the other burdens, thereby ensuring full recovery of costs by the local authority. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to explain the reasoning behind the amendments. I have done so in detail because the provisions that they would insert are not in the bill as introduced, and I know from having experienced many problems with the statutory repairs process in Edinburgh that the details are crucial. I particularly want to test out the different choices for how the legislation could be framed. I move amendment 149.