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The pilot was set up to look at high-risk buildings, and ownership was one issue initially. I am aware that you have raised this issue before. Some building safety regimes are already in place and we have learned the process. When we discussed this in May, we did not have to deal with the RAAC issue, which was just coming into view. We were looking at how safe our schools are. I am not saying that there is no on-going building maintenance at schools, colleges or universities; there are regimes in place and we know what those look like.

There is a broader building safety group that looks at those issues. Kate Hall or Rachel Sunderland may want to talk about that. There is already an established building safety regime. Rachel or Kate may want to touch on the other things you mentioned.

The building and fire safety group has specific discussions on those points to ensure that the regimes and building control system that are in place are monitored. It is really important that those issues are picked up. We will obviously continue to have discussions with the UK Government on what it is doing; there are on-going discussions on a number of issues. However, as I said, the ministerial group on building and fire safety picks up those issues.

Obviously, we have learned lessons from what the building safety regime looked like for RAAC, which, in a way, came out of the blue. We must make sure that nothing comes as a surprise, so there are regular discussions about that.

Another important point, which we have not touched on so far, is about the building safety levy and how it develops over time.

That is not my area of responsibility, but I work closely with the minister who is responsible for that and I have been involved in but not led discussions on the building safety levy. Developers are aware of the levy being introduced and what it will look like. We are working closely with UK Government colleagues on that.

It is important to set this in the context of the broader, longer-term outlook. We are working closely with UK Government colleagues on how to introduce that legislation. Discussions are already under way with developers, who might have slightly different people at the meetings—perhaps more on the finance side. Those discussions are taking place in parallel with what we are doing already as we look towards introducing the building safety levy.

I will let Kate Hall respond first and then come back on that myself.

I am happy to write to the committee if there is any progress on that, but we continue to push the issue on a regular basis.

In speaking to residents, that issue has come up quite a bit. It was raised at a meeting that I had just last week with residents of a number of developments. A key point is that there has been a large increase in the number of people in the directorate who are working in the cladding area. I know that we need to do a bit more work in that area, and we are looking at communication protocols.

Communication is slightly different for each building, each developer and each factor. There has to be a personalised approach, but communication needs to get better. As I said, the directorate has grown over the past number of months as the bill has developed and as we have done more work in this area. I acknowledge that we need to do more on communication, but it needs to be personalised to each building.

Even if there is nothing in particular to say, we should tell residents that there is nothing to say but that work is being carried out. The fact that there has been a vacuum is what people are concerned about. We have picked up on that in the pilot project. The issue has been raised by residents. I acknowledge that more could have been done, but we are working on that just now.

Homes for Scotland has arranged round-table discussions and we have also met individual developers. We tend to meet a mix of managing directors, finance directors and the technical people who need to be in the room. We also have technical people in the room when policy is discussed at round tables and at the individual discussions, so things are quite well covered.

That has been the main issue in the discussions with Homes for Scotland and with individual developers. I will bring in officials to talk about the technical discussions that they have had.

When I came into this role, I had a number of key objectives, one of which was to get a developer commitment letter to ensure that they signed up to what we were trying to do. The issue was raised when I spoke to individual developers at that stage, and we got the letter signed; the next stage was to move towards the long-form contract, which was when the SBA issue came up.

When the SBA process was raised, I asked officials to set up a task and finish group, which has been running for a number of months now, to work on the exact specifications. We did that, and Homes for Scotland was present at that meeting; we then had individual and round-table discussions. In fact, there have been a number of round tables as we have worked on that.

As the tenure system is slightly different in Scotland, there was a Scottish advice note, and we talked about moving towards a publicly available specification and the technical specifications to go along with that. We also had individual discussions with developers.

The SBA will pick up different things in different buildings, depending on where the developers are. We have tried to work very closely with developers, but we need to have technical specifications, both for the safety of residents and so that we are satisfied. That is incredibly important.

The key thing for me was to have individual discussions and to listen. I visited a number of buildings, so that I was not just hearing from developers but going out and telling people what we were looking at, what we were doing and what clarity we needed. That has been the priority all the way through and we are not far away from getting agreement with all the developers. It has probably slowed down progress, but it is important that we, and the developers, are happy with the specifications. Most important, even though they might not know the technical specifications, residents must believe in us and in the developers. That has been a focus for me all the way through, and it will continue to be a focus in our discussions with individual developers.

I will bring in Rachel Sunderland or Kate Hall to talk about where we are now. I know that really good progress has been made on that and that we will soon have that agreement and be able to move forward. It is important to have that in place. Rachel might want to say a little more about that.

Again, convener, I am happy to write back to the committee when we reach agreement, to keep you up to date on that.

I will bring in officials in a wee second. Generally speaking, the cladding safety issue is the most important thing. When it comes to individual buildings, I know from the first week in the job that there were specific concerns about one building—I will not name it—on which tough decisions had to be made. Within a day or two, there were issues that were causing us real concern. There were a couple of buildings like that, for which decisions had to be made in order to negate risks quickly.

On the binary—pass or fail—scoring, our getting down to the level of detail that we are talking about and having agreement in place on the specification are really important. In relation to some of the evidence, some people might not be aware of our discussions with developers about what that looks like. That is the level of detail that we are down to, because this is not just about the specifications going forward, but about where we are just now.

Discussions are always taking place with developers about individual buildings that are going through the system, so that aspect is always looked at.

Kate Hall or Rachel Sunderland might want to talk about some of the technical discussions that have been had. The questions that are always at the forefront of our minds are these: as work is carried out or as we move towards work being carried out, is the building safe and what is the standard?

If there are specific risks, as there have been in some buildings, we have taken action to negate those risks. In my statement, I mentioned giving us the powers to do that: at the moment, we must negotiate with developers and local authorities to allow us to take that action. When the bill is passed, we will be able to carry out immediate work, if that is required.

We have had issues in relation to negotiating with other stakeholders about negating some of the immediate risk. As I said, I have seen a couple of examples of that.

I will bring in Kate Hall to comment on the tolerable standard and what has been fed back. As I said, the issue is at the forefront of our minds, always.