Hansard

I appreciate the opportunity to come along and speak to the petitions committee this morning. I am obviously here to support the petition PE2105, which I am supporting on behalf of my constituents right across the region that I cover, which is South Scotland. I have been contacted many times about this issue, which is important not only because of the need to save beautiful and historic buildings in the region for future generations, but because there seems to be a need to enhance the guidelines around dangerous buildings. In my work with constituents since being elected, I have found that we have a number of ordinary members of the public who really care about their communities and the buildings and the history of the villages that they live in. Often, they raise issues with the council and other public bodies and ask whether advance work could be done before an emergency situation is reached. Unfortunately, in a number of cases in the three years that I have been a member, I have agreed with my constituents that that does not seem to be a priority and that the system seems to not be working very well. We end up the use of legislation around emergency building care. Of course, my constituents understand that it is important that the public is protected. There is no question of that, but they feel that there is a loophole in that we get to emergency situations and then the legislation is used, whereas things could be different if we had enhanced guidelines. I want to thank, in particular, my constituent Esther Clark, who has worked tirelessly to address this issue in Ayr, where she lives, and where there are many historic buildings, which we know may be getting to the point where they are at risk. It is with some urgency that I say that we would do well to support the petition, in order that we do not continue to have this unnecessary response in situations where we feel that the public could be vulnerable. I hope that the petitions committee will continue to consider the petition. Thank you. 10:15