Chamber and committees

Thank you. I recall that you and I attended the online event about healthy homes in the Lochaber, Skye and Lochalsh area. The people there did their own survey, and their results were quite different from those of the Scottish house condition survey. It is important to think about how we get a local nuanced and deeper understanding of what is going on, so I appreciate the fact that you have said that you will look into that further.

We have come to the end of our questions on building safety and maintenance, so I will briefly suspend the meeting to allow for a short comfort break before we return for our questions on the housing to 2040 policy.

I welcome our witnesses back to the meeting.

We turn to questions on the housing to 2040 strategy and I will begin with a broad question about the vision. We heard at our round-table sessions that, broadly speaking, people really appreciate the vision, but I would be interested to hear what you think needs to be put in place to deliver it. After all, concerns were raised about the lack of a delivery plan and the lack of indicators to measure the strategy’s success. Moreover, what is the role for the national performance framework in delivering on the strategy? At the moment, housing is not even mentioned in the national planning framework.

And what about the national performance framework?

Great—thanks for that.

I just want to go into a bit of detail. Among the key measures that the housing to 2040 strategy intends to cover are decarbonising heat in homes, which we touched on in the previous evidence session, and tackling the high rents in the private sector, which your colleague Patrick Harvie is working on. Another key measure is

“a single set of standards”

for housing quality and accessibility. Where is that work at this time?

It has been interesting to hear about the work of the housing investment task force and its potential. You also mentioned a number of times the work of Professor Ken Gibb. One of the things that he brought up in the round-table discussion that he attended was a concern about the ambition of the housing to 2040 policy to de-speculate the housing market. How do you keep that in mind? To what extent has the housing to 2040 strategy group discussed that? At the heart of everything that we are talking about is the speculative aspect that has entered the market. How do we move away from that and get to a position in which Scotland is providing homes for people?

Good. Mark Griffin and Stephanie Callaghan have supplementary questions.

I know that you were not going to, but others were.

It is convener.

Thank you for that great beginning. Does anyone else want to come in on that? Does everyone agree that we need to pursue community wealth building in Scotland?

The cross-party group on social enterprise has been talking about growing the economy and the need for the work of social enterprises and co-operatives to account for at least a third of Scotland’s economy. Quite a lot of effort needs to be made in that regard.