Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): I welcome the following representatives from the Landlords Association for Northern Ireland (LANI) to give their evidence to the Committee and answer any questions that members may have: Mr Robert Greer, chair; Mr Dairmid Laird, estate agent and property manager; Mr Stephen Magill, estate agent and property manager; and Mr Richard Smyth. Just let me know when you are settled, and then we will take your evidence.

Mr Robert Greer (Landlords Association for Northern Ireland): Hello, Chair. Do I open?

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Yes, please, Robert. You are well named, by the way.

Mr Greer: Thank you very much. I thank the Committee for allowing us to address it today. For those who do not know, the Landlords Association for Northern Ireland was formed in 1988, and our main purpose is education. We have six to eight main lectures a year on aspects of landlordism and Bills that are coming in. Naturally, we also lobby where, we think, we can gain traction. Today, we are talking on the Dilapidation Bill. I have three others with me, and I will defer to Richard, if that is OK.

Mr Richard Smyth (Landlords Association for Northern Ireland): We submitted a paper on 3 October that covered most of the points. I do not know whether the Committee has seen that.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Yes, we have that.

Mr Smyth: I will work with that. It is about looking for the reasons why properties are vacant, and there always is a reason. In small rural towns, for instance, there are often derelict shops, and there is often a reason for that. Maybe it is because Tesco opened on the periphery of the town and the local butcher cannot then survive. What do we do? We know the problem: the local butcher has been put out of business and has lost his livelihood. The Bill will slap a notice on him to spend money on his shop, but he has no money coming in any more. It feels as if such cases are a little unfair. There is a stick, but we would like a carrot, too.

That leads me on to the next problem, which is what you do with a vacant shop in the middle of a town where the footfall is down and you cannot compete against Tesco. We know the problem. The Bill just feels like a bit of stick, which feels unfair. I do not know what the solution is. In a lot of cases, those buildings might need to be repurposed, and there are other types of buildings as well, but repurposing them to what? You are then stuck with the planning problems dealing with waste water etc. Repurposing for residential use or whatever is so difficult, and the solutions are not really in the Bill. It feels like a stick but with no solution.

There are other types of buildings. Apart from shops, there are churches all over the country that have fallen into disuse. Some of those will be heritage sites, so you have to take that into account, but, again, how do you repurpose them? There are also houses in the middle of a block, maybe the owner has been lost or whatever, and they are an eyesore. Yes, let us try to deal with that, but, again, they might be better turned into flats or repurposed in some way, perhaps as a house in multiple occupation (HMO) or whatever. To say that the owner has to, within 14 days, start dealing with it — reroofing it or whatever — is not really the right solution. Although the Bill has some merit, there are problems.

What are the solutions? First, we should get a warning notice. As I outlined in our submission, one problem is the strict deadline. Often, a property has been lying vacant for years, but, suddenly, the council slaps a notice on it and you have 14 days to appeal it and another few days to do something. It could have been lying vacant for so long that someone could be on holiday, get the notice served on them and have 14 days to appeal. That is too short. It should be, maybe, three months or whatever, and, ideally, there should be a warning notice served first to say, "We are going to do this". A lot of this is so that the owner and the councils can work on a solution rather than, bang, you have a notice and, if you do not take action in a certain time, you will have a conviction. Convictions for not doing things can affect you. If you have a conviction and you try to go to America, you have to declare that. We all really do not want convictions, but every owner who has a property wants a solution, and the Bill just does not provide it. It is much more complicated than a simplistic Act will sort out.

We have covered the deadlines and the reasons that properties could be lying vacant. When it comes to appeals against a notice, it is too prescriptive. There are only four or five reasons. What if the notice has been served on the wrong person? It should be served on the appropriate person. We have properties that we manage, and there are minority shareholders. Some of them own 2·5% of the property. They will show up on the Land Registry, and they might be the only person in Northern Ireland who does so and could be served with a notice. They are not really in control of what happens. In the list of valid reasons for an appeal against a notice, I want the ability to say, "I am not the appropriate person".

The other issue is trustees. In probate, charities or whatever, the trustee will come through as an interested person and can have a notice served on them. Under the list of valid reasons for appeal, not being the appropriate person is not listed. That needs to be added. How would you get a trustee to administer your estate if they all thought that they could get a conviction for not dealing with a property that may be part of a family dispute? We have had probate cases lasting for years, and that is why the property lies vacant. In theory, the trustee can get a fine and a criminal conviction for that.

The Bill is too simplistic. We can see the merit in some of it, but it needs amendment to reflect those problems.

In the case of towns, we would love urban development grants (UDGs) to come back in. That is maybe a step too far. The Bill is the stick; we want a carrot to refurbish our town centres. Maybe that is coming later. Who knows?

The other issue is time to sell. If you have a notice slapped on you to do something to a property and it has been lying, you might think, "What will I do? I am going to sell it". You have 14 days to appeal, but it could take six months to sell something. We need more reasonable timescales for a building that, probably, has been lying vacant for five years. Work on the timescales and the appeals, please.

Those are my quick thoughts.

Mr Dairmid Laird (Landlords Association for Northern Ireland): As Richard says, when it comes to the basic thrust of the Bill, there is an awful lot in there that is good and, hopefully, fit for purpose.

One of the aspects is that the Bill gives councils completely unfettered rights. There is no limit to the scope of what can be asked for. Furthermore, it talks about "amenity", but that is completely subjective. It is hard: one person thinks that something is affecting amenity, while somebody else does not. That is an issue. There appears to be no aspect of the Bill under which discretion can be applied. It is dangerous to introduce legislation under which the folk in charge — the councils — do not have the ability to exercise discretion. We have seen that issue with other legislation. Even when the Department has issued guidance, the guidance has been ignored, because the council has said, "We have taken legal advice, and the legal advice says that we can go with the wording of the legislation rather than the guidance". As I said, I would like to see some discretion being added for exceptional circumstances, because, in any legislation, you cannot get one jacket that fits everybody.

The final thing to mention is that, as Richard said, the Bill gives councils powers to sanction property owners. The problem is that that will lead to sticking-plaster repairs. Ideally, if a repair is being carried out, you want to see something that is sustainable rather than something that just pushes the problem further down the line.

Planning relaxations should be considered with the Bill. Obviously, housing is an enormous problem, perhaps more so in rural areas than anywhere else. Take the example of the butcher's shop: whilst it would not pay to spend the money to do it up again as a shop, if there were some relaxation so that it could be converted into two one-bedroom flats through an enhanced planning aspect, that would sort the housing problem and give the property owner the opportunity to spend money or sell the property to somebody who can spend money on it. There has to be an economic return from the property, otherwise all we are doing is putting a sticking plaster on the problem, pushing it further down the line, and, when the sticking plaster falls off, putting another one on. It does not get to the cause of the issue and the fallout.

Mr Stephen Magill (Landlords Association for Northern Ireland): From my point of view, there is no real, specific detail on what you need to do to a property. If a property is sitting with no roof, you put a roof on it. If you have to put a roof on, must it comply with current building control standards? Do we need to get building control for that? If the windows are broken, do we put new windows in? Do we board them up and paint them, as happens all round Belfast? There needs to be more detail on what has to be done before a notice can be given.

As a landlord who is also a property owner, I also worry that, if there is minor, low-level neglect or dilapidation, I can be hit with a £500 fine. That is fine, if I am aware of it, but if, for example, I am ill or travelling and do not meet the deadline, I will have to go to court. I know from our experience with other legislation that, if I go to court and lose my appeal, I will not be a "fit and proper person" to be a landlord who lets houses, so I will lose my livelihood. The Bill needs to be reasonable about the cause. I am worried about the potential for me to lose my livelihood because I miss something by 28 days.

Mr Greer: Committee, you have heard what my three colleagues have said. I will leave you with these thoughts. The question is not asked as to why a valuable asset remains in a derelict condition. Why does it sit there for 20 years? People pay rates on such properties. The answer, we think, is the difficulty of obtaining planning permission for an effective and economic use of the property. I think of the housing management area that I know, in which we have several derelict buildings, mainly in the wider university area, and they are lying empty. You cannot get planning permission other than for a single-family home. The trouble with converting a property into a single-family home is the cost of the rehabilitation. Building costs are staggering at the moment; they equate to around £2,000 per square metre or £200 per square foot. No landlord or other party will spend that sort of money in order to house a family without looking — I dare to introduce such an ugly thing — for a grant of some sort, rather like the urban development grants that we had. In other words, there would be a percentage shortfall after the rehabilitation.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): No problem, thank you. You have illustrated the complexity of the issue. Your opening submission began with the closing of the butcher's shop in the high street and the fact that retail activity has changed, as have the way we live and our habitation. Do you accept that the current legislation is failing, that there is an ongoing issue with dereliction that leads to dilapidation and that change is required?

Mr Greer: Most certainly.

Mr Smyth: We get building control notices for dangerous buildings. I have had notices about dangerous chimneys. Building control, through the City Hall, can issue a notice to fix a derelict building, for example, if a gutter is hanging off. Some of it is there for dangerous structures, but it does not have the facility to make us renovate or put new windows in and the like. The dangerous part is dealt with. It is not as lacking as was suggested in the introduction here.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): I have a worry about the existing legislation and even this Bill. It is not that I think that they do not go far enough, however. The legislation's opening gambit is that a council "may". It is not mandatory; it is open to interpretation. A council will have powers to act, if it chooses to use them.

Dairmid, you talked about the interpretation of "amenity". I am not sure that that is as subjective as you say it is. I would like you to explain that a wee bit further. I want to look at it from a retail perspective. More recently, however, I had a gentleman in my office who has a house in Limavady where, for 35 years, the neighbouring property has been derelict and has fallen into dilapidation with a significant loss of amenity to his living conditions and to the value of his house.

I am from Lisburn, so I have used the example of Bridge Street, where significant investment was made in about 80% of the properties there. Issues such as probate, however, or a reluctant landlord have meant that some structures remain beyond dangerous, and the council has found it difficult to act on those occasions. There is a risk to public safety, and there is an absolute loss of amenity. You say, however, that the interpretation of "amenity" is —

Mr Laird: My problem with it is not the more serious issues, because those are simple and obvious. Let us imagine that somebody has graffiti on the side of their building or there is a build-up of rubbish. We have dealt with similar legislation for landlords in the university area, and there is HMO legislation. One of our members might say to us, "There is a build-up of leaves in my forecourt area, and I have been served with a notice". To my mind, that has a minor impact, but does it fall under "amenity"? It is about those issues. When you get further up the scale, I agree with you entirely. I am concerned about the minimal things. If an HMO landlord has graffiti on the side of a property, they have to deal with it not just once or twice but again and again. I am thinking about those sorts of issues rather than further up the line, in which case I accept what you say totally.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): I appreciate that, and it makes a lot of sense. I also want to explore situations where exceptional circumstances might exist. I think Robert pointed out that the ownership of a property and the ability to effect a remedy is not linear. Have you come across any exceptional circumstances that might exist, outside of probate or other legal aspects?

Mr Laird: Church properties, which Richard looks after and can speak better about, in instances where trustees say, "Yes, I'm the trustee of this property". It is difficult for anybody to take on what would now become the onerous obligation of repurposing a derelict church. As I say, there should be some sort of discretion whereby, in exceptional circumstances, councils have the ability to make a different decision. With other legislation, they say, "Look, sorry, the Act is quite clear. This is what we have to do. We do not have any discretion". Every Bill should have discretion applied to it.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): The discretion would not extend to the point where doing nothing is an option. I cannot think of a precedent where doing nothing is a get-out. I really understand the point about the trustee carrying the risk; I get that.

Someone talked about what the remedy looks like. Does it mean boarding up, or does it mean like-for-like replacement? That is a really good avenue that needs to be examined. Councils need to know what is a reasonable ask, I suspect. I think that you asked whether, if a roof is missing, the building needs one. Beyond that, what does it need? It is impossible to get a tenant, for instance, if it is on a high street.

The other thing that you rightly point out is that — this is not going to happen — it should be linked to a high street task force and a wider property strategy for how we live. I am not so content about repurposing every shop for HMOs, flats or one-bedroom apartments, because that is the wrong trajectory.

Mr Laird: Do you not agree that, especially in rural areas where there are enormous housing issues, it is unlikely that there will be a user found for a vacant shop in the middle of a street, given that people are now internet shopping and supermarket shopping? It would not pay a landlord or any property owner to spend the money to do that up as a single home. However, if they spend a little more to create two units, there would be an economic return, making it viable for them. At the same time, it would create two units of accommodation for folk in an area where there is not sufficient housing. That should be explored.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): I will finish on this one. That already exists, because it happens on Bridge Street, where I have my office. That was a reasonably thriving area 100 years ago, I suppose. All the properties were shops, and they looked for a remedy through repurposing those. The difficulty is that that impacts on the retail offering. The fewer shops there are, the less chance there is of a good retail offering. Balance is important. The Bill does not move that out of the realms of possibility, to be fair.

Mr Laird: Our suggestion was that there should be an added aspect — an enhancement — to give you a better opportunity to repurpose a building.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): OK. I will bring in members now. Thank you very much for your answers.

Mr Blair: I am really grateful for the engagement and take on board the points that you have raised, especially your comments on the 14-day deadline. In the business world, that is a short turnaround. You would be hard pushed to get a Department to turn around lots of things within 14 days. I make that point now because I am sure that it will be made again.

You will know that we have had conversations with representative bodies and others on the issue. We are falling into the trap of generalising. It is perfectly understandable that that happens. There are multiple circumstances in which properties become derelict. Not all owners are landlords waiting to convert a property into apartments or trustees or people who inherited an old house and now live in Australia, but all those are examples that I can think of in my area.

I hope that you do not mind my playing devil's advocate a bit with some of the points that have been raised. For example, you mentioned the costs of converting a building into a single-family home. The issue of single-family homes was dealt with extensively there. What is the cheaper comparison there? Surely, there is a greater cost between a single-family home conversion and an apartment or HMO conversion. We are talking here about the saleability and profitability of the property. When we get into profitability, do you accept that grant aid is a difficult area, because grant-aiding a profitable exercise is probably not what taxpayers want government to do?

Mr Magill: My family home was vandalised and set on fire; in the end even though I had planning permission, it was cheaper to knock it down. It has been a vacant site for the last seven years. I see that where I work in BT7 and BT9. There are commercial buildings in Shaftesbury Square, such as the old DHSS office, that have been vacant for 30 years and are blighted. Visitors to our city, who are going to the university area, pass an eyesore. I see it in the houses beside my properties on Wolseley Street and Tates Avenue, where there are derelict houses on main thoroughfares. The cheapest option for the owner of a derelict house is to knock it down, which causes more blight.

Mr Greer: When it is knocked down, they normally leave the front wall, the facade of the building. To get a satisfactory, long-term solution, conversions are not desirable. It is better to build, according to the current regulations, and that requires the property to be essentially rebuilt. The benefits of doing that not only for the owner but for the neighbours are outstanding. I have a property with a derelict property next door, and I have trouble with rats that come from next door. There are dozens of other properties with the same problem. Let us get those properties rebuilt, particularly the infills in terraced properties.

Mr Laird: John, I can answer two of your questions. In a case where a grant was given and the property was sold on — I am old enough to remember the old urban development grants, which effectively leveraged money from the property owner — if it was sold within a certain time, the money was clawed back. An option would be to extend the time for the clawback if it is sold. If a property is being done up into a single home, there will be one rental income coming from it. The cost to repurpose a building into two flats is less than 1·5 times the cost of doing it as a single home, but you have doubled the income. You can reach the maximum amount for a rental income, and, if you want to bring properties back, there has to be an incentive for the landlord. It does not advantage anyone if the landlord's best option is to knock the property down and there is then a gap-toothed frontage. There has to be a reason to spend the money in a sustainable way that can be maintained indefinitely. It is not about the cheapest way to do it, because there will still be no money coming in from it. There has to be a carrot to go with the stick.

Mr Blair: I get that, and you have answered my question about the comparison for a single replacement house, and the answer is apartments and the planning argument that will come with that. There is a demand for that, and I know that from my constituency.

You listed a number of examples, such as planning and probate delays, and I mentioned the great-nephew in Australia. However, some people deliberately leave property vacant — you seem to have experienced that next door to your properties, given the examples that you mentioned — and that is why the legislation is required urgently. All of us around the table have constituents with a derelict or dangerous property that has glass or slate falling onto the pavement and present a risk to public safety. For that reason, the legislation is required, but do you accept that there is deliberate abandonment of properties until they become more profitable?

Mr Laird: If someone owns a derelict property and a notice is served on them, ideally it is an asset that should bring in money. They want a return from the property. The problem is that they cannot borrow the money from a lending institution because the figures do not add up.

The notice will be served. As you explained, there are instances in which slates are coming off a roof or there is glass. Those situations absolutely require attention. I think that few landlords or property owners would want to put themselves in that position. They have an asset, there is a value attached to it, and they want to bring it back into use. The problem is that the figures have to add up for them to be able to do so.

If there were a relaxation in planning so that you could create several housing units, that would be the key. Everybody needs housing. I do not think that people in any rural town or any city in the Province are saying, "Listen, we have enough housing". This is an opportunity to bring it back. The amenity value of the site will increase. You will have brought it back. Once you bring it back, that should be it for ever. It should be sustainable, because of the rent that it can bring in. The problem is that, unless you can give a viable use to the property owner from which they get a return, they will spend the smallest amount of money that they can.

Mr Greer: Bear in mind that those people have an annual bill in the form of rates. I do not think that they pay rates if the building is roofless, but they pay annual rates for most of those buildings. That is more economic for them than paying out £150,000 or £200,000 to rehabilitate the property, because they find that, when they do that, the returns do not match the expenditure.

Mr Smyth: Give us time to develop a scheme. Look at the £500 million Tribeca scheme in North Street in Belfast. Are you going to serve notices on those people and give them 14 days? They have been negotiating with the Belfast City Council for five years or maybe longer about whether the development would be retail, offices or whatever. You cannot do anything in 14 days. Give us a warning notice. The councils should engage with us before it happens. Let us make our points. Do not hit us with a hammer. With property, everything takes a long time. There does not seem to be an understanding in the Bill of how long it takes to develop a scheme.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): You seem to be well read on the Bill, but a pre-warning discussion should be triggered before any letters are issued. In your experience, is it the current legislation that leads to the difficulties? From the dilapidation that I see on the street, it seems as though the powers certainly do not exist, particularly when it comes to loss of amenity. It is a wee bit like pre-application discussions: a council should engage in a pre-warning discussion. A reasonable time frame and an agreed way forward should be reflected in the guidance. My difficulty has not been about the interpretation of the discussions; it has been that, if you have a building that is 100 years old, for instance, you could get a structural engineer's report that says, "This building should be knocked down" and another one that says, "No. It can't be", and you are then absolutely stuck with two expert opinions. People employ lawyers, and we all use data in different ways, but we need to find a way of getting past that. This is an opportunity. The good thing is that we are at the point of the discussion that is about development of the legislation and where concerns can be raised and acted on.

Going back to my first point, is it not your reading of the Bill that a pre-warning discussion will take place before any letter is issued? If that is the case, that should take care of the time periods for the warning letters.

Mr Laird: As we have said, one of the problems is that the time periods are not sufficient. All of us have issues with trying to get contractors to carry out roofing works and whatever. Contractors say, "Listen, I can do that in January" or, "I can do that three months down the line". It is absolutely impossible to do anything, other than on the most basic of items, within 14 days. You talked about trying to get a structural engineer's report: you will not get that within 14 days. It has to be accepted that, if we are going to be served some sort of notice, we need to be given an opportunity to deal with it.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): I imagine that any guidance or regulation that is developed will need to include a time frame. I think that you are right, by the way. Even getting tradespeople these days is almost impossible, especially for stonework; wooden, handmade windows; or whatever. That is all really difficult. I accept that the test of reasonableness needs to apply to the council and officers. Do you accept, similarly, that, in the pre-warning discussion, it is reasonable to have a time frame for response? If it is left open-ended, it will never —.

Mr Greer: I think that that is reasonable.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): You are concentrating, and rightly so, on the seven days, the 14 days and the 28 days, which are for the written notices, the time to respond and the time to lodge an appeal. However, before that — in the pre-warning discussion, which, I imagine, would be with a council official — there needs to be a time frame to respond and agree the way forward. That cannot be left open-ended, because, if it was, you would never get to the actual warning.

Mr Smyth: I am involved, on the periphery, in the work at Ballynafeigh Methodist Church on the Ormeau Road. It has taken four years to get planning through. The builder started last month. We have a phase 2, which involves building housing as well. That could take another three or four years. We understand the planning system and the issues with how to deal with waste water. We have problems that are not the fault of the property owner; they are a problem of society at large. We have not paid for what we should have been paying for over the past 10 years.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): There should be no jeopardy in the pre-warning discussions, if a plan has been agreed. I am sure that all MLAs have been in touch with councils about delays in planning. In fact, it is one of our hot topics for a different reason. There are logjams, and different councils perform at different speeds and rates. I agree with you that, if it is a planning issue, that is no fault of the landlord. If planning has been applied for and agreed to, that is different, but, if it is the council's fault, the jeopardy should be the council's.

Mr Laird: It goes back to discretion. The opportunity for the council to exercise discretion in certain circumstances, should be built in. Without naming those specific circumstances, the ability to exercise discretion should apply.

Mr Smyth: Under clause 5, an appeal can only be brought on specific grounds. There are five such grounds, and planning is not in there. Notice could be served on the wrong person. A building society could have "an interest in the land", but are you going to serve a notice on Nationwide, if that is the only one that you can find where there is a mortgage? The grounds for appeal are too prescriptive. I want more flexibility in there.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): We can certainly look at that.

Mr Blair: I have a quick question, which has kind of been answered. We have been more specific about which areas we are talking about. I caution though, Richard, to be careful about asking for processes to be quicker at on one end to avoid a four-year wait and, at the same time, asking for them to be longer at the other end. It would be contradictory to do that. I am trying to define it in order for the Committee to form an opinion. A professional adviser, an architect, a solicitor or whoever could be on holiday for two or three weeks. Do you agree, therefore, that the time frame should be slightly longer than 14 days? Twenty-eight days is pretty standard in government processes.

Mr Smyth: I feel that, sometimes, they copy and paste the standard, but property takes so much longer. There are other things that happen in society where 14 days or 28 days is apt. Property has a particular problem, in that everything takes so long. I think that we should extend it to three months. In most cases, the buildings have been lying vacant for years, so there should be a much longer time frame for reports from builders etc. I think that it should be three months or even six months.

Mr Laird: It maybe depends on the extent of the problem. If something is dangerous, it has to be dealt with straightaway. It goes back to what we said about the amenity. Graffiti on the side of a building or a build-up of rubbish does not need to be dealt with within 14 days, but a build-up of asbestos is more important. Discretion needs to be applied in different circumstances so that the council's hands are not absolutely tied. The councils would still be in charge, but it would give them flexibility.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): There has to be a common-sense approach.

Mr Laird: Yes, absolutely.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Getting the remedy and the time frames agreed is critical.

Mr T Buchanan: The issue of planning has been touched on throughout the conversation on the Bill. Do you believe that the difficulties with planning and problems with getting planning permission have led to the situation that we have today with all the vacant buildings? If somebody is looking for planning permission, it takes them so long to get it. If they want to turn a building into two flats but cannot get access to the footpath for those two flats, they do not get permission. That has turned a lot of people off. That is why we have so many vacant buildings. Do you believe that it will be difficult to implement a lot of what is in the Bill unless there is a bit of freeing up in the planning system?

Mr Greer: I could not agree more with your statement.

Mr Smyth: Some of the big houses, for which we can only get planning to reinstate them as a big six- or seven-bedroom house, have no amenity area at the back. We could not sell them as a five- or six-bedroom house with a wee yard — 6 feet by 5 feet — at the back. Everybody who has a family wants a bit of open space. There is not even a market for that, so they are far better being converted into smaller units, but the planners will not let us do it.

Mr T Buchanan: Yes. What changes to planning do you need to allow this to progress?

Mr Magill: We need a deadline, like there is in London, whereby, if the planners do not make a decision within 12 weeks, the developer gets a refund of the fee. There needs to be something to speed up the planning process. It can take four years for planning permission to be granted, if it is granted at all. I have spotted a property that would make excellent two-bedroom apartments for families, but I know that I will not get planning for that use, because it is a large three-storey building on a main road that happens to overlap with a HMO policy area — it is now called a HMO management area. Belfast City Council has adopted the guidance of a new ruled called HOU10 — "House 10" — whereby no intensification is allowed within that area. However, intensification is what we need in our inner cities if they are to be kept alive.

There is no such thing as a family who wants to live in a 100-year-old house with no front or back garden; families want to live in nice, purpose-built houses that are well insulated, like those that the housing associations and developers provide. What, therefore, are we going to do with all those buildings? We cannot get planning permission, and it is not economical for us to put them back into use for a single family, because families do not want them. The only option is to convert them into what is needed, which is two-bedroom, three-person homes. That is what the demand is for. Advisers have told me that housing associations do not really want one-bedroom units. The need is for two-bedroom, three-person homes where somebody can be looked after in their old age, maybe with a live-in carer. That is what is needed.

We are being totally hampered. Every week, I see properties that I could develop and make money on some day. More importantly, however, those properties are often beside my other properties, causing me problems, and I could turn them, but I cannot get planning permission. I would be wasting my time and money even thinking about going for planning permission — it would take forever. We need something to speed it up. For any building that is served a notice or highlighted, let us get the planners in to say, "Can we fast-track this?", and do something that is needed. I am from the city, but my father is from Rostrevor. I was talking to one of my family there, who said, "Our kids can't afford to live here anymore, because it has become such a nice area. Our children can't even afford to live in the town". Why not take the old butcher shop and turn it into a couple of flats, and let the town's population grow and develop instead of having people exiting to the cities?

Mr T Buchanan: Flexibility in planning is key to moving this forward.

Mr Laird: Absolutely.

Mr T Buchanan: OK. Thank you.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Do members have any other questions for the witnesses? Are you happy enough? OK.

That was a really great session; it was very informative. Thank you for answering the questions so well. We will certainly use this in our deliberations on and scrutiny of the Bill. Do you have any final comments to make?

Mr Greer: I will just thank you, Chair. As you know, we are not used to appearing in front of a Committee.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): You did very well.

Mr Greer: You have done very well yourselves. Your Committee's —

Mr Magill: Knowledge.

Mr Greer: — knowledge of and commitment to the subject was quite surprising. It is wonderful to see.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Thank you. I really appreciate that.

Mr Smyth: We would love you to use our knowledge, if you can. We would love to engage further, if we can help. We all want the same thing.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): I appreciate that. When we are going through the clauses of the Bill, we may call on you again. If there is anything else that you want to provide, please feel free to fire it through to the Committee team. Thank you so much.