{"id":7264,"date":"2014-02-28T18:02:37","date_gmt":"2014-02-28T18:02:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ihbconline.co.uk\/newsachive\/?p=7264"},"modified":"2014-02-28T18:02:37","modified_gmt":"2014-02-28T18:02:37","slug":"ihbcs-sc-branch-pushes-duty-of-care-vat-relief-more-in-bill-talks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/?p=7264","title":{"rendered":"IHBC\u2019s SC Branch pushes \u2018duty of care\u2019, VAT relief & more in Bill talks"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Sutton of the IHBC\u2019s Scotland Branch Committee highlighted the potential of a \u2018duty of care\u2019 and benefits of VAT reductions as part of his evidence to the Scottish Local Government and Regeneration Committee at their recent meeting on the \u2018Defective and Dangerous Buildings (Recovery of Expenses) (Scotland) Bill<\/span>\u2019.<\/p>\n

To raise awareness of the importance of the Bill – which seeks to strengthen the recovery of works carried out in default by a \u2018charging order\u2019 on the title – and the potential benefits of his suggestions, he has also written a related article in the Herald and contributed to discussions on the IHBC\u2019s Linkedin Group.<\/p>\n

The Committee Meeting transcript records:<\/p>\n

IHBC agrees that the current situation does not work well and that there is a lack of proactive work – the main danger is that the Bill seeks to tackle the results of the problem \u2013 rather than address how the problem might be prevented in the first place. In particular it fails to explore options such as:-<\/p>\n

\u00b7 How a formal \u2018Duty of Care\u2019 might best be promoted \u2013 perhaps starting with a formal legislative responsibility on all public bodies to protect, enhance and have special regard to Scotland\u2019s historic environment in exercising their duties, and to designated assets in state ownership.<\/p>\n

\u00b7 How a fiscal policy could better encourage building repair and maintenance (eg say a \u00a33,000 tax allowance over a 3 year period) to help improve maintenance, or<\/p>\n

\u00b7 Exploring whether \u2013 as recently suggested for London \u2013 Council Tax could be able to be applied at a double rate on vacant properties after due notice (say 2 years to allow time for action to sell or renovate the property). This seeks to address the current position that currently there is minimal financial penalty (indeed often a tax saving) on owners arising from letting a building deteriorate to the point of becoming uninhabitable, or<\/p>\n

\u00b7 How a lower VAT rate would act as an incentive to encourage repair and maintenance work (as opposed to the current new build VAT incentive. This might also address the current incentive to use non-VAT registered companies – and the related \u2018cash\u2019 economy. IHBC has worked with many other groups (such as Federation of Master Builders) to research the benefits of a lower (5%) VAT rate for heritage building repair work \u2013 and will be updating this research at a Westminster Parliamentary Reception on 3 March 2014. All too often a 20% VAT rate adversely affects the viability of refurbishment projects \u2013 favouring housebuilders over home owners. Hopefully government will realise that a simple, cost-effective relaxation of tax on maintenance and repairs can offer a much wider range of benefits to the treasury, while also supporting carbon reduction, building standards, heritage skills, and cheaper heating bills, as research and experience both demonstrate, or<\/p>\n

\u00b7 How \u2018short life\u2019 uses might be encouraged \u2013 whether from a national Scottish Short-life Housing Association, or encouraging \u2018pop-up\u2019 temporary uses. Temporary Licences (of at least 2 years) can help minimise deterioration during the development process and facilitate effective temporary uses.<\/p>\n

Any of these options are likely to be more successful than the suggested \u2018certification and inspection\u2019 (MoT) regime suggested.<\/p>\n

Dave Sutton said of the IHBC\u2019s contribution to the development of the Bill:<\/p>\n

\u2018I think our presence (and that of the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations) helped broaden issue from just Building Standards. It was also good that IHBC had set within the \u2018bigger picture\u2019, of vacant & derelict sites) \u2013 whereas other submissions focused more narrowly on the Bill (the Convenor did seek to query me on whether the reduced 4% BAR in England arose from \u2018their more flexible planning use approach\u2019! – my response was on HLF targeting grants to BAR). The BS officers suggested average cost of Defective Building Notice work around \u00a33k \u2013 though I suggested there may be multiple actions on a problem site raising cost to \u2018substantial\u2019 (over \u00a320k).\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018There was broad agreement on many issues, with the sponsor of the Bill, David Stewart MSP, suggesting certain amendments at the end:<\/p>\n

\u00b7 On charging notice, to reduce 30 year period to 5 years \u2013 with flexibility according to level of debt, which was broadly supported.<\/p>\n

\u00b7 To link with Community Empowerment Bill and to also embrace the Liability Notice approach (as already in Historic Environment (Amendment) (Scotland) Act 2011), which then offers Council differing potential approaches according to circumstances<\/p>\n

\u00b7 There was a more cautious or mixed approach to applying a 2-year back-dating option, despite the current \u00a33.9m accumulated debt. A preference for a Registers of Scotland \u2018pre-registration\u2019 stage for the Charging Order (or Liability Notice) of potential debt was felt to be more useful (given gap period between instructing works in default and presenting owner with bill) to deal with those who swap company owners etc to try and avoid responsibilities.\u2019<\/p>\n

A film and papers are now available at<\/span>: LINK<\/a><\/p>\n

Read the Briefing at<\/span>: LINK\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

See David\u2019s related article in the Herald at<\/span>: LINK<\/a><\/p>\n

Join the IHBC\u2019s Linkedin discussion<\/span>:\u00a0HERE<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Sutton of the IHBC\u2019s Scotland Branch Committee highlighted the potential of a \u2018duty of care\u2019 and benefits of VAT reductions as part of his evidence to the Scottish Local Government and Regeneration Committee at their recent meeting on the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ihbc-newsblog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7264"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7265,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7264\/revisions\/7265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}