Hansard

Agenda item 3 is the consideration of new petitions. As there may be people in the public gallery or people at home who are joining us who have a new petition, I point out that, ahead of this consideration, we invite the Scottish Government to give us a preliminary view, and we invite the Parliament’s independent research body, the Scottish Parliament information centre—SPICe—to prepare a briefing for us on the issues raised by the petition. We do that because, historically, when we did not do it, that was the first thing that we did when we met to consider a petition, and it simply delayed moving forward with consideration in detail. We therefore have those briefings ahead of our consideration this morning. The first new petition is PE2094, on reviewing the Property Factors (Scotland) Act 2011 and expanding the remit of the First-tier Tribunal to include commercial properties. The petition, which has been lodged by Alban Bartley-Jones, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to review the legislation on property factors and to take steps to ensure that commercial properties are also protected, and to expand the remit of the First-tier Tribunal for Scotland housing and property chamber to allow it to consider cases affecting wholly commercial properties. The petition has been prompted by the petitioner’s experience of a commercial property factor continuing to bill building tenants despite not having a contract with any of them. The SPICe briefing highlights that the Property Factors (Scotland) Act 2011 has limited relevance for the commercial property sector, as the main aim behind the legislation was to “create a statutory framework which would protect Scottish homeowners who contract with property factors.” As the 2011 act does not apply in the case of wholly commercial properties, disputes between businesses and commercial property factors are dealt with in the normal court system rather than the First-tier Tribunal for Scotland housing and property chamber. In response to the petition, the Minister for Housing stated that the 2011 act was not intended to apply to property factors that are solely concerned with providing a service to commercial property owners and that the Scottish Government has no plans to amend the act to cover relationships between commercial property owners and factors where there is no residential element involved. This is the first consideration of the petition, and that is quite a trenchant response from the Scottish Government. Nonetheless, are there any options open to us that colleagues would like to propose? 10:00