Chamber and committees

Okay. It is interesting that, at the beginning, you said that part of the bill is about improving the renting experience, and you talked about pets and personalisation. I imagine that, if a person knows that they have a landlord who proactively provides all those certificates and ensures that those requirements are fulfilled, that would be helpful in the relationship that they are entering into.

Thanks. You will probably be aware that the committee is monitoring petition PE1778, which is about the landlord register in general. There are concerns that it does not really do what it needs to do. Maybe there is something in that space as well. The bill is being drawn around the provision of affordable rent, but the experience that people are paying for is also important.

So it is about timing and the purpose of the bill but, as your review develops in the coming months and the bill is still going through the process, might you come to a different view based on that review?

We will move on to the theme of implementation. I will bring in Mark Griffin.

We will have to move on, because we are a bit pressed for time. Thanks so much for clarifying the work that you have been doing with landlords in relation to monitoring the landlord registration system, with the data showing that there has been a 2.1 per cent increase in the number of registered properties.

We have come to the end of our session. It has been really helpful to have you here to answer questions so that we can get some details on your thinking behind the bill and its intention.

I will briefly suspend the meeting to allow for a change of witnesses.

I welcome our second panel: Chris Donaldson is the head of rent service Scotland.

I will ask the opening question. Will you explain how the adjudication process in the Private Housing (Tenancies) (Scotland) Act 2016 works in practice, what timescales are involved and what data you use to assess open market rents?

That is quite insightful. My ears pricked up when you mentioned rural and island issues. Pam Gosal has a question.

That is super. Thanks so much for that overview. Certainly, it was helpful to hear the breadth and depth of the work that you did and where you went to find the evidence of the situation that we face. We have a number of areas that we want to explore and I will begin with councillor workload and responsibility. However, before I do, I want to declare an interest: I have a brother who is a serving councillor. I just want to get that on the record.

There is an assumption in public life that being an MP or an MSP is a full-time job. I am interested to understand why a local councillor job is not considered full time, when the demands on councillors are, at times, at least on par with demands on parliamentarians.

I am sorry Colin, but I will have to ask you to wind up because we are quite tight for time with our next panel.

It has been a very interesting piece of deep questioning. I have a question about social media and boundaries and possible training for councillors to understand that they do not need to be available 24/7. It sounds inappropriate that people are contacting councillors late at night and they feel that they have to respond. Maybe there is something there that we need to look at. Certainly, we will take note of the need for that formal data set. That could be useful for us. I can see that you have identified quite a lot of strands of work.

It is important to keep that hybrid option, but it is also a good approach to encourage a meeting where people can imagine seeing most of the people on their committee or whatever. Gordon MacDonald is joining us online and has a couple of questions.