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Yes. We are defining “substantial rent arrears” as up to or the equivalent of six months’ rent in the private rented sector. We are using the specific figure of £2,250 in the social rented sector, which is roughly equivalent to six months’ average rent in that sector. Amanda, do you want to comment?

Thank you, convener, and good morning to colleagues.

I am here to provide an update on the actions taken following my attendance at the committee on 1 March, when the committee considered the revised Scottish social housing charter.

In response to the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee’s query about our consultation with secured creditors of registered social landlords or their representatives, the Accounts Commission and the Equality and Human Rights Commission, I can confirm that we wrote to all eight statutory consultees in the Housing (Scotland) Act 2010 to ensure that there was no dubiety about the compliance with the duty to consult on the charter. We sought their views on the revised charter and provided the same 12-week response period in line with the original full consultation. We received responses from all statutory consultees, including secured creditors of registered social landlords, UK Finance, the Accounts Commission, Audit Scotland and the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

The overwhelming response from all the statutory consultees was that they were content with the changes that had been made to the charter. In light of some additional comments that they provided, we have made some further minor changes to the version of the charter that the committee considered in March. We have added to the equalities outcome the need for landlords to eliminate discrimination and advance equality of opportunity; revised the wording of the quality of housing outcome to provide additional clarity; changed the value for money outcome from a standard to an outcome; and highlighted the legal requirement to consult tenants on rents and service charges in the supporting narrative.

I trust that those actions provide the committee—as they have to the DPLRC—with assurances of compliance in relation to consultation with statutory consultees in the review of the charter.

The charter and the regulator’s reports provide an improvement framework for tenants and landlords to assess and compare landlord performance, and encourage landlords to deliver improved services for their tenants and other customers.

Finally, as I think I did in March, I want to place on record my thanks to the officials who have worked on what has proved to be a highly successful tool for improving services in the social housing sector, as well as my thanks to all those in the sector and others who have engaged with the consultations. I hope that the committee is content with the revised charter and that it will recommend that Parliament approve it.

Throughout all this—and I am afraid to say that this happens quite often—it has been difficult to get clarity from the UK Government in a timely way either on the consequentials that are available or, indeed, on other ways in which we might have worked together more closely and more collaboratively to address this entire issue. Miles Briggs will recall the frustration that the cabinet secretary expressed in the statement about the inability of not just the Scottish Government but the Welsh Government to successfully make the case for the UK to work constructively and around the same table with us on a shared and coherent response to this situation. I also point out that some of the approaches that the UK Government is taking for England alone make use of the availability of UK-level reserve powers. There is a great deal in this entire situation about which one could have made a very strong case for collaborative working between the Governments in the UK, and it is not for want of trying that that has not happened.

As for the work that needs to happen now, we clearly have to continue with the single building assessment to identify where specific changes need to be made and to work not only with home and building owners but with the developer community to ensure that this activity can be funded.

The compliance plan manager would have responsibility for all aspects of compliance—not only for the fire safety issues that we have talked about, but for wider compliance with building regulations

It might be worth our while to write to the committee with an update on the pilot that Stephen Garvin mentioned, and to let members know how it is developing and when we expect to be able to evaluate it more fully.

It is pretty clear that building standards are continuously under review and evolving. Since I have been a member of the Scottish Parliament, there have been regular updates and continuous incremental improvements to building standards.

As Stephen Garvin indicated, there are differences in context between Scotland and England. We need to ensure that we hear from the widest range of stakeholders about the Scottish situation, and we need to continue to develop and improve based on the challenges and requirements here, rather than to echo actions that are taken in England, for the English context.

The new building regulations are broadly in line with the proposition that was consulted on, and the response to the consultation was supportive of the general approach that we are taking.

Dr Garvin might wish to add something about the origin and why 11m was considered as part of the development of the proposal.

The current standards resulted from a specific review of the type of cladding materials that have been causing the most significant concern since Grenfell, and the specific changes in this set of regulations will address those issues. Nonetheless, it is clear that the wider transformation of the energy performance of our homes needs to be undertaken in a way that is not only safe in terms of fire risk, but which contributes to healthy air quality in buildings and addresses direct energy issues. I do not know whether Steven Scott or Stephen Garvin wants to add anything from an energy or fire perspective.

The standard introduces a requirement to mitigate the risk of summer overheating in new homes and new residential buildings that are used in a similar way. We are aware that that is a lower risk in Scotland than in other parts of the UK, but it is important that we establish that overheating can be considered a risk in new build, and that we examine how to mitigate the likely impacts of our future climate.

The initial provisions take a fairly simple approach, focusing on the issues of heat gain through windows and the removal of heat build-up through effective ventilation. There is also an option to model the risk for more unusual or highly glazed building types. Designers will address that by limiting excessive heat gained through the location and specification of windows and by improving the ventilation of buildings. Those measures will provide occupiers with more assurance that their homes are warm and easy to heat, but also comfortable in the summer months.

Our proposal is that, under the 2024 new-build heat standard, direct emissions heating systems will no longer be permitted in new buildings. A further consultation this summer will set out details of plans to remove gas, oil and biofuel boilers as options from 2024. The 2022 regulations still permit the construction of new homes with those heating systems, but they set more challenging overall emissions and energy performance targets. The 2022 standards will ask for any building with a direct emissions heating system to be designed for a simple future retrofit and the installation of a zero direct emissions source, with information on that option to be provided to the owner.

From this year, wet heating systems in all new buildings should be designed to operate at lower temperatures to optimise the efficient operation of zero direct emissions systems such as heat pumps in the future.

The cladding stakeholder group meets regularly to explore such issues, engaging with the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, UK Finance, the Law Society of Scotland and other organisations. The responsibility for the buying and selling of property needs to involve a proportionate approach, only requiring EWS1 for blocks that fall within the guidance from the RICS.

The system was put in place by the lending industry. Although we understand why that approach was taken, we believe that it must be applied proportionately. In Scotland, it is being applied flat by flat, rather than in relation to whole blocks. That is a result of the common ownership model that we have here, which David Blair was describing earlier.

However, we are working with stakeholders to try and ensure that they will accept a whole-building EWS1 as an output from the single building assessment process.