Hansard

I thank the member for the Highlands and Islands, Ms Burgess, for her members’ business motion today.

Community-controlled housing associations are vitally important to the prosperity of communities across Scotland. In recent years, we have seen more and more of them being swallowed up by larger, locally unaccountable housing associations, many with head offices outwith Scotland. That is a great shame, because the whole purpose of social housing in Scotland is to ensure that there is a social element to the basic commodity of housing. There is a rich history of success in the community-controlled housing sector. It is not—or, at least, it should not be—a method for wealth extraction or the stripping of assets that are currently owned and managed in the community; it should not be a corporate game of boardroom Monopoly with no get-out-of-jail-free card for tenants when the big boys fail to deliver; and it should not be a lever by which to control finance, remove democratic power and exert unwelcome external influence.

If we go back to the original pioneering days of the Glasgow Corporation slum clearances and the first community housing association that was set up to save those tenement districts in Glasgow, we see that it was done on the basis that those taking control of the assets were management committees of committed volunteers, elected by local people, who were rooted in their communities and knew what was best for the local people who lived and worked there. That was the very genesis of community-controlled housing associations and, sadly, I fear that we are swiftly departing from that stated aim.

Let me just put on the record that not all large housing associations are bad. In some instances, they are actually very good, and there is undoubtedly a role for them to play in this sector. However, we are now seeing community-controlled housing associations that are financially robust, solvent and providing great services to their tenants being taken over at board level and railroaded into mergers, with promises of a land of milk and honey.

There is no better example of that than Reidvale Housing Association in the east end of Glasgow, as the member for Stirling pointed out earlier. It was set up in 1975 as one of the first community-run housing associations in the UK. It acquired a swathe of tenement properties in Dennistoun and prevented the evisceration of that community. Since then, it has refurbished its 900 properties and brought its community back to life through the introduction of traffic-calming measures in a densely populated part of Glasgow. Indeed, it is one of the most attractive communities to live in in the city today.

Reidvale Housing Association is financially robust, solvent and able to easily provide the services that its tenants and the wider community require. Yet, it has been earmarked for what is being dubbed as a transfer but is in reality a takeover. The housing association that is looking to acquire Reidvale’s assets and stock has named itself Places for People Scotland, yet in reality it is a massive England-based parent company called Places for People, which operates in Scotland as Castle Rock Edinvar Housing Association—some of our Edinburgh colleagues may be aware of it. They may also be aware that the parent company appoints Castle Rock Edinvar Housing Association’s board and that it can remove members at will, as well as placing its own staff on the board. Currently, the Reidvale board is elected annually at its annual general meeting by tenants and other service users, and the board members are free and able to stand for election. That is a democratic right that will be ripped away if Places for People and Castle Rock Edinvar get their way.

To entice current Reidvale residents, the company is offering a five-year rent freeze guarantee, despite the housing regulator’s website showing that Places for People’s rents elsewhere in the country are up to 26 per cent higher than the Scottish average. Let us have a quick look at its performance compared to Reidvale’s: the average rent that is charged by Reidvale for a three-bedroom flat is £69 per week; Places for People charges £98 per week. Reidvale has a current overall satisfaction rate of 95 per cent; PFP has a satisfaction rate of 81 per cent. Eighty-nine per cent of Reidvale’s stock meets the Scottish housing quality standard; quite shockingly, only 3 per cent of PFP’s stock meets those standards. Reidvale’s average response time for emergency repairs is three hours; PFP takes 14 hours on average, which is more than four times slower. For non-emergency repairs, Reidvale takes one day on average; PFP takes 17 days, which is 17 times slower.

The whole thing stinks, and it begs the question: why? Why would a housing association that is predominantly based in England with an outpost in Edinburgh want to acquire a Glasgow-based housing association? I think that the answer is quite straightforward: profit. It knows that it would be incredibly profitable in the long term, due to the area in which Reidvale sits, and it knows that it will be incredibly profitable because Reidvale is a profitable organisation with zero debt.

I am conscious of the time, but, just before I finish, I will say that the minister and the Government more generally will be wondering why this is a political issue and not something that can just be left to the regulator to sort out. The reality is that, unless we introduce legislation in the Parliament that compels the Scottish Housing Regulator to provide on-going practical support to community-controlled housing associations to ensure that they are not swallowed by poorly performing behemoths, this charade will continue unabated. Organisations that have a proven track record of bringing about regeneration, prosperity and inclusivity to neighbourhoods and communities are being lost. If we are all going to stand here and wonder why that is happening, while allowing it to happen, we are all complicit.

The modus operandi of the big, unaccountable housing associations is to build new soulless schemes. We do not need that, especially not in Glasgow. We need strong, locally-run community controlled housing associations that are rooted in our local areas and are determined to grow and develop, with quality and inclusivity at the forefront of their minds, alongside providing a real influencing role for tenants and volunteers. Let us be clear that, like every other sector in this country, the big players and corporates do not do this out of the goodness of their hearts: they do it because it makes them very rich. They can dress it up all they like with promises that they will not keep, but I can assure them that we and the local community will fight them every step of the way.

I ask colleagues across all parties to seek to agree to the need for legislative and regulatory change urgently in order to preserve and further develop a community-controlled housing model that will continue to serve Scotland’s people well and deliver the real and measurable outcomes for its communities that we sorely need.