Chamber and committees

My understanding is that the fishery boards and trusts have been collecting data on the impact of sea lice in a particular water body for a number of years, funded by salmon farming companies and the Scottish Government, often for the purpose of environmental management plans. If that data exists, what are the barriers to SEPA using that data to inform its enforcement decisions?

You have access to the data and are using it.

I have heard differently in relation to cleaner fish disappearing. Maybe that is something that we can look at.

Thanks for that. I will bring in Miles Briggs.

That brings us to the end of our questions. Thank you for coming in and joining us online today. It has been helpful to hear the perspective of the councils.

Thank you. As that was the final public item on our agenda today, I now close the public part of our meeting.

Good morning, and welcome to the 20th meeting in 2024 of the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee. We have received apologies from Stephanie Callaghan, and I welcome Colin Beattie, who is attending as her substitute. Mark Griffin will be joining us remotely.

I remind all members and witnesses to ensure that their devices are on silent and that all other notifications are turned off during the meeting.

The first item on our agenda is to take evidence on the Housing (Scotland) Bill from two panels of witnesses. For our first panel, we are joined in the room by John Blackwood, who is chief executive of the Scottish Association of Landlords; Dr John Boyle, who is director of research and strategy for Rettie; Timothy Douglas, who is head of policy and campaigns for Propertymark; and Anna Gardiner, who is a policy adviser on rural property for Scottish Land & Estates. We are joined online by Robin Blacklock, who is managing director at Dowbrae Ltd, and Cedric Bucher, who is chief executive of Hearthstone Investments. I welcome the witnesses to the meeting.

We will try to direct our questions to specific witnesses, when possible, but if you would like to come in, please indicate clearly to me or the clerks. For those online, please do that by typing an R in the chat function, although I believe that one of you needs to put up your hand on Zoom, which is fine, too. There is no need for you to turn your microphones on and off, because that will be done for you.

The Scottish Government states that the bill

“contains a package of reforms which will help ensure people have a safe, secure, and affordable place to live.”

From today’s discussion, we want to understand your perspective on that.

I have a number of questions about rent. My first question is for everybody, particularly those who have something new to add. What are your views on the bill’s provisions on rent control areas? If such areas were introduced in particular parts of Scotland, would that lead to much sought-after rent stabilisation?

I will bring in John Blackwood first.

Before I bring in John Boyle, who has indicated that he wants to speak, I note that we have some special rural-focused questions for Anna Gardiner later, so she should not feel that she needs to address those issues now. I know that she can give a rural perspective, and those questions will be coming up right after this.

John Blackwood and Timothy Douglas have said that there is an issue with supply. It would be interesting to get information on that, and we will discuss data and how we can track things later. It is also helpful to understand that the bill sits within a wider piece of work, which is called the “Housing to 2040” strategy, and there is a commitment to introduce other things to address supply. As I said at the beginning, the bill has a particular focus on ensuring that people have a safe, secure and affordable place to live.

I will bring in John Boyle.

I will ask my second question, because we have started to get into other areas here. This is specifically for Hearthstone Investments and Dowbrae Ltd. You have both made the point that rent controls can be workable, so I would be interested to hear more detail from you both on how rent controls could be acceptable to institutional investors.

Cedric Bucher, what is your perspective from Hearthstone Investments?