Chamber and committees

Thank you very much. I see that Peter Drummond, Dave Aitken and Craig Ross want to come in, too.

Thank you for that, Dave. It is good to hear a rundown of what has been put in place.

Thank you, Peter. Laura Hughes wants to come in on this question, too.

The next item on our agenda is to take evidence on the Building (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2022. The SSI is a negative instrument and there is no requirement for the committee to report on it. However, given the committee’s long-standing interest in issues related to fire safety in buildings, and following on from the work of our predecessor committee, the intention is that this session will provide an opportunity to discuss that topic more broadly. Then, at our next meeting, we will take evidence on the regulations from the Minister for Zero Carbon Buildings, Active Travel and Tenants’ Rights.

We are joined today by David Aitken, who is the building standards team leader at Dundee City Council and a past chair of Local Authority Building Standards Scotland; Chris Ashurst, who is the group co-ordinator for the High Rise Scotland Action Group; Peter Drummond, who is the chair of the practice committee at the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland and chair of the building standards (fire safety) review panel; George Edwardes, who is the technical steering group manager for the Fire Protection Association; Laura Hughes, who is a manager for general insurance at the Association of British Insurers; and Craig Ross, who is a building standards specialist at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. We have apologies from Dr Paul Stollard, who is the former chair of the building standards (fire safety) review panel.

I welcome our witnesses to the meeting. There are a lot of you, which is fantastic. Before we get started, I want to correct for the record a factual error in one of our committee papers, which states that Dr Stollard chaired the most recent fire safety review panel. That panel was in fact chaired by Peter Drummond of RIAS. I apologise for any confusion.

George Edwardes and Laura Hughes join us remotely. Given the number of witnesses in the session, I do not expect everyone to respond to every question. It would be helpful if members could direct their questions to a specific witness where possible, although I will be happy to bring in others who wish to contribute. If other witnesses wish to comment, they should indicate to me or the clerk their desire to do so, and I will bring them in at an appropriate point. I would be grateful if George and Laura could indicate when they wish to come in by typing R in the chat function in BlueJeans.

I will now open up the session to questions from members. I will ask the first question, which I direct to Peter Drummond. Are you satisfied that the requirement to use only non-combustible material in external wall cladding systems on buildings with a storey that is 11m or more above ground is sufficient to protect occupants from the possibility of significant fire spread up the outside of such buildings?

Thank you. Chris Ashurst has indicated that he would like to come back in.

Thank you for bringing in that important bit of detail.

We will move forward with the questions. I will bring in Annie Wells.

If no one else wants to come in, we will move on to questions from Willie Coffey.

I will follow up. We have begun to discuss the issue, but I will tidy it up a little. I direct my questions to Chris to start with.

What challenges do you foresee in taking forward the single building assessment programme and the Scottish Government-funded cladding remediation work? That is one bit of the question.

I represent a region that has a lot of islands and rural areas. I am therefore interested in what challenges might be faced by those parts of Scotland. That is my second question.

I also have a third question—I will get them all in in one go. How do we ensure that quality is not compromised in favour of budgetary savings?

I apologise for that suspension. We have sorted out the technical issue by moving to a new committee room. I will now give the floor back to Miles Briggs to continue with his questions.

Are there any takers for that? Peter Drummond, do not worry about dominating the meeting, if you have the insight.