Chamber and committees

Is that why we have seen growth that other parts of the UK have not?

I hear what you say about your marketing budget not being adequate, but how do you spend the money that you receive for that? How important are social media?

I know that I said that my previous question would be my final question, but this is now my final question: how will you measure whether such strategic change has been successful?

Do we have the right balance between the landlord’s powers and the tenant’s right to reclaim their deposit?

Good morning. I will ask about part 4 of the bill and unclaimed tenancy deposits. Minister, you said in your opening remarks that you want to use those deposits for the benefit of tenants in the private rented sector. Can you be more specific about what you mean by that and what the cost would be of providing that additional service?

I was going to ask about that. There seems to have been a substantial increase in the number of deposits that have not been claimed. In March 2021, the value of those deposits was £3.3 million; in March 2024, it was £5.4 million. There seems to have been a big increase between March and September 2023. Do we know why that happened at that time?

I have looked at the numbers for the three deposit schemes. The figures were provided by the Scottish Association of Landlords. Mydeposits Scotland’s unclaimed deposits increased by 16 per cent over that three-year period, while SafeDeposits Scotland’s figure for the period was 69 per cent and Letting Protection Service Scotland’s figure increased by nearly 300 per cent. Do they all operate on the same basis, and do they all operate with regard to the same demographic?

A survey that was done back in 2017—which considered, I think, only one of the deposit schemes—showed that some international students forgot about their deposits, some thought that they would not get them back and some thought that it was too inconvenient to reclaim them. What can we do to address that? We are now seven years down the line, and the amount of money that is lying unclaimed has probably more than doubled since 2017.

Before I ask about that, I need Tony Cain to clarify a wee point. In answer to Willie Coffey’s question about rent controls and how they operate in other countries, you said that there was a level of imbalance in the Scottish housing markets. What did you mean by that, and what is the nature of the imbalance?

Yes, and there are 140,000 more homes than households in Scotland.