Meeting of the Parliament 12 March 2024
It provides a degree of risk, so that a building is not just “safe” or “unsafe”. The feeling was that that could have brought many buildings within the register that might in fact be safe. Giving a degree of risk was felt to be much more helpful and appropriate.
An important part of the bill’s provisions is to establish the cladding assurance register, which is a document that will provide consistent information and assurance to residents and to mortgage and insurance providers about the status of a building. One key consideration for the committee was the issue of when a building can be entered into that register. We considered whether that should happen at an earlier stage, to provide initial assurance that work will take place, or on completion of the work, to give a final assurance that the work had been completed. The Government’s response seemed to me to point to the latter option, because it said that including properties on a register if they had not yet been remediated might impact on both the privacy and safety of residents who are affected and therefore would not normally be considered. However, as we heard from the minister during his opening remarks, the Government has agreed to give further consideration to the issue at stage 2.
The final area that I will mention is the proposal to introduce a responsible developers scheme. Some of our developer witnesses asked for more detail to enable them to scrutinise that in advance of the legislation being passed and a number of members here today have referred to that. The Government’s position is that providing that in secondary legislation will give us greater flexibility and align us with the process that is being adopted by the UK Government. The process to agree a Scottish safer buildings developer remediation contract is under way and it is my understanding that that also mirrors the approach that is being taken down south.
I said at the outset that there has been really thorough examination by committee members of the many issues presented to us as we considered the Housing (Cladding Remediation) (Scotland) Bill. I hope that that will be recognised by other members who are here today. The bill may be relatively small, but it is an incredibly important piece of work for us all. Where we can improve it, let us ensure that we do. It is crucial to get this right and I look forward to other members’ speeches as the debate develops.
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