Ms Maria Graham:

On the exemption regulations, because of the Covid extension they do not now expire until the end of February. We will bring regulations to the committee next month with a view to extending those to 2025 and look at smaller commercial premises such as pubs that are not being included in that. The committee will have a chance to look at that next month. I did not mention our own manual on bringing back homes. It tries to look at the exempt development, disabled access, fire certificates, other elements and what is needed for different houses to bring that together. We see an important part of town centre first and making the vacant homes officers full-time is to enable local authorities to be resourced and have toolkits available to them so they can support people through the process. I mention also that the fire regulations are currently under review. That includes looking in the bit that deals with existing buildings. That should go out for public consultation later this year. Part of our work is to see how we can support and enable the process.

On the vacancy tax, the Department of Finance is looking after the taxation. I understand it is collating the returns and looking at them at this point in time so we do not have any data on that as yet.