Meeting of the Parliament 17 March 2026 [Draft]
Thank you, Presiding Officer. I thank the Finance and Public Administration Committee for its scrutiny of the bill and I welcome the evidence and insights that were provided by the Scottish Property Federation, Homes for Scotland and developers, both before and after the introduction of the bill.
The committee’s stage 1 report made no recommendation on the bill. It recognised the need for further funding, while raising concerns about the potential for the levy to depress house building figures and requiring a balance between revenue generation and impacts. To put that need for balance in context, it is helpful to set out the scale of the work that we are undertaking.
The cladding remediation programme will undertake work to address the estimated 1,260 to 1,450 residential buildings in Scotland of 11m or more in height that require work to alleviate external wall system life safety fire risks. Following its pilot phase, in which critical Scotland-specific issues relating to assessment and consent were addressed, the programme is now progressing with building assessments at pace, and grant offers were issued to 473 buildings by the end of 2025.
In the next few years, the programme will significantly ramp up its activity in assessments and remediation in line with our 2029 target to resolve every high-risk residential building over 18m identified with unsafe cladding.