Good morning and welcome everyone to the 12th meeting of the local government communities committee. Can I remind everyone present to turn off mobile phones as meeting papers are providing digital format tablets? You may see members using these during the meeting, so if you see members using electronic devices, I promise you that's what we're doing with them. I say that in a parrot fashion every meeting, just as a disclaimer. No apologies have been received. We've got a full house this morning, I'm delighted to see. We move to agenda item 1, payment to returning officers in Scotland. The committee will take evidence from a number of witnesses to explore the purpose and the appropriateness of providing payments or fees to returning officers for the conduct of elections in Scotland. Can I welcome Jonathan Shaffey, campaign organiser, Electoral Reform Society Scotland. Navraj Singh Galech, my apologies for my pronunciation there, senior lecturer in climate law, University of Edinburgh, and Dr Toby James, senior lecturer in British and Comparative Politics, University of East Anglia. Thank you all of you for coming along this morning. It's most appreciated. I indicated that no one wishes to make an opening statement, so we'll move straight to questions. Perhaps we can just state the most obvious question before we get some of the technical aspects that we want to interrogate here today, but there obviously was a significant concern over the level of payments to mostly local authority chief executives in recent years reported to being £1 million over the last two years and those payments increasing and becoming more regular, particularly given the fact that elections used to be a once in a while occasion in Scotland. However, as evidence that we have before is self-evident that in the last 15 years pretty much there's been election every year and it has been known to be two elections in a year, that's a significant amount of cash going to what members of the public would consider to be highly paid, highly demurated officials in the first place. There may be reasons for why they receive these sums. We wish to interrogate that further, but do you understand the public concern and how would you comment in relation to that? Who would like to start us off? Dr James? I'm very happy to. First of all, thank you very much for inviting me to give evidence to the committee. I mean, I entirely understand why the committee is interested in this and why there would be public concern about the amount of money which seems to be going to returning officers, especially at a time where there's widespread, if you like it, austerity in terms of the public sector, but also most people are not seeing major increases in their own income. I guess what I'd say, though, is that it's important to be aware that this isn't, if you like, a bonus that officials are taking. This is money which they are receiving for undertaking a specific task, and they do that independently from their position, and it's right. There is a case for them being awarded money for that, but there's especially a case here for reviewing this, perhaps reducing the fee, reducing the money. I think one particular point, though, is that there's a severe lack of transparency in the amount of money that's going on here. This figure cited in the BBC, for example, widely, I think that you're alluding to, tends to be the amount that they could claim for, and doesn't mean that it is the amount that they do claim for. We don't know, as far as I'm aware, actually how much that money they are, if you like, taking as personal income, and what way they are looking to use that money for other things, such as paying their more junior staff for the overtime that they are doing. The key thing that could come from this is an increase in transparency, and that's something that certainly a committee could recommend here. Okay, any more witnesses who want to add to that? Naveras sing. Thank you. I think that I would endorse most of that, and I should actually start by saying thank you very much for the invitation and apologies on my part for the lateness of my submission, which I think you've all received. One of the points that I make in that document, in addition to what Dr James has just said, is that returning officers are a key node in the delivery of this incredibly important function of electoral administration. The responsibilities that they bear are statutory responsibilities, they are criminal and civil liabilities. Which raises the question as to what exactly these monies are for, what are they being paid for? If they're being paid for their labour, then I think there's certainly an argument that says that, well, this is a routineised job, which, as you said, Chair, convener, occurs at least in the last 15 years on an annual, sometimes a biannual basis. There are systems and procedures in place and staffs, which are very considerable in experience and so on. From a labour perspective, it's not obvious that these are payments which are well paid. From a responsibility perspective, however, these are the officials who are ultimately responsible for the delivery of the election and are responsible if things go wrong, a different argument emerges. I think that's where we might perhaps better focus our attentions, and that we might veer towards being risk averse in how we move forward from this, from the status quo. Do we want to start moving on the basis of public disquiet such as it is, or is there, as was just said, a need for a more substantial evidence basis about transparency of funds but also other matters before we make strong claims for reform? Mr Shaffey, do you want to tell anything? Yes. First of all, thank you for inviting the Electoral Reform Society to the meeting. Our agenda is to bring democracy closer to people—that's part of it—but to make it as transparent as possible and to build as much faith as possible between the people and the democratic systems and representatives involved in the democratic process. Now, I suppose that there are probably two key points that we'd want to make. The first is that we do want to recognise the importance of the job. We do want to recognise some of the things that have been said previously around the responsibilities involved. However, we also feel that we want those people, returning officers, to be seen as ambassadors driven by their ambitions for democracy and driven by delivering democracy for people. We are concerned about the perception that people are involved in this process for high rewards financially. We think that that is an issue of concern for the general public in the context that we live in today politically. That would be one point that we want to raise. The other point is that this idea of people being close to democracy and close to the various processes around elections. On that basis, we would like to see there being some form of balancing around how much these individuals are paid so that people feel a sense of proximity to the processes at home. I suppose also that, because we are interested in strengthening democratic procedures, we would like to think about ways in which resources can be funneled down the chain as far as possible to ensure that we have a well-resourced democratic infrastructure. I suppose that that would be our key points in relation to the matters. Can I come back to transparency? We do not know for sure at any election how much any individual returning officer receives. We do not know if they take it all. We do not know if they give money to charity. We do not know if they give it to lower-grade staff who have to take on a lot of the work burden in relation to that. That leads to a lot of concern because of the lack of transparency. Should all that information be captured on an annual basis consistently and in the one place for members of the public to scrutinise and make a judgment call on themselves and whether they feel that that is appropriate, because with the absence of clear, identifiable information, that is what causes even greater anxiety and concern. Should that happen is a matter of course. If it should happen, who would have the responsibility for doing it, given the fact that my understanding is that payments for local authority elections are driven by a causula process. For Scottish elections, it is now very recently the Scottish Government, but for UK and European elections, it is the Westminster Government. How do we pull all that together to get transparency? It seems almost set up to be as untransparent as possible. Anyone wants to consider those points? Dr James? Yes, thank you. I entirely agree about the lack of transparency. This applies to this issue of returning office fees but also the wider funding of elections. My colleague Alistair Clark and I undertook a survey at the EU referendum. We found that many officials lack funding for the conducts of elections, but also for the compilation of the electoral register. There is no systematic process across the UK or in Scotland to collect this information. The UK Electoral Commission undertook a financial survey of local authorities between 2010 and 2012, which gave a really good picture of what was going on. That project stopped and that project ended and did not cover the issue that we are covering here today. I entirely agree that there should be this systematic process in place. In terms of who does this, the Electoral Commission could be well placed to do that because they did invest a lot of time in developing a particular methodology for making this information transparent. They have done that for that period, so the Electoral Commission in Scotland could collaboratively do that with them. Can I just say at this point that the average single takes you in, but if the answers are broadly similar, you do not feel required to answer every question, but can we take you at this point? I think that it very much depends on what it is that you want this information for. What information is required? Do we want information of transparency on the aggregate sum that returning officers are receiving, or do we want to know how much each individual returning officer is receiving and then what they are doing with it? Those are two very different questions, which require two very different sets of solutions. If it is the aggregate figure, then one approach might be for returning officers to be asked to inform perhaps the Electoral Commission how much they have received and what they have done with it, but only the aggregate sum is disclosed. If it is the former, then you will require a much tougher non-voluntary scheme in which everybody's receipts are received. Of course, we do not ask them for what they receive in terms of their salaries ordinarily, and this is akin to a salary. It opens up quite difficult questions on precisely this. If it is going to be a non-aggregate sum, if it is going to be differentiated, there is the real risk that, A, it becomes a witch hunt. It is well known, for example, that some chief executives give this particular sum to charity. Some are well known within their local authorities for doing that. Others do not quite reasonably. You can imagine where this discourse goes. Secondly, for those who do not take all the money, there is going to be a pressure for them to do so in the future. You are going to get some unanticipated consequences that would be deleterious. The final question from myself and my fellow colleagues want in. You mentioned, Mr Singh, the idea that it is akin to a salary. However, that begs the question that, if chief executives are doing the task of a returning officer, there are other duties that they cannot carry out at that time. There is a displacement effect, and they are receiving a salary from their local authorities, and that burden will fall on other staff within local authorities. I think that the evidence that we have received is that elections and returning officers have done exceptionally good jobs over the years. We would not want to undermine the success of that, so there is no idea of a witch hunt whatsoever from this committee. However, we also want to make sure that, when financial recompense kicks in, we know how much it is and where it is going. If it is a salary, we know what public officials are doing for that salary. It is just as important that lower-ranking public officials in local authority areas who may have to take on additional burdens as a consequence of that are also doing the rated appropriately. Do you think that full disclosure on that basis would be helpful? Full disclosure and transparency are really difficult to argue against, aren't they? There is an intuitive preference for it, but I nonetheless think that you need to be careful about how it is structured. If the argument is that everybody down the chain, everybody who touches the work should be appropriately re-remunirated, nobody could disagree. That is obviously the case. Full transparency does not flow from that proposition. I would agree with the former as to the latter. I would want to have a much more worked-out scheme, which is making clear how this operates. Indeed, whether it is operable or not, I think that, in your remarks, you described the multilevel nature of electoral administration in the United Kingdom and how difficult it will be to collect that information. Would any other witnesses like to add to that, Mr Shaffey? Just to say that our approach is to look at democracy in an overarching sense, so when you look at the scrutiny that politicians are under in terms of pay expenses and so on, we also think that transparency in terms of the structures and the processes that go with elections are as important because it is about building public trust, not just in the representatives and not just in the debate that happens around elections, but also in the process itself. For us, while taking on board some of the difficulties that there may be involved, we want to see that transparency and not least because we want to see how it can be made even more effective because we do agree that the job that the turning officers have done has been a good one, but we also want to see how we can maximise resources and transparency, and that is going to be vital. Dr James, do you want to add anything? Just briefly, I think that transparency would be a very good idea in this area. If nothing else, this news story has become widespread and it gives a perception, as I think we have already suggested, that electoral officials, senior executives, are taking money when they should be there promoting the democratic process. If in fact the reality is that this is money that is being received for electoral services, which are then redistributing and paying senior staff, this could be a very positive thing for democracy, because it can actually alleviate and explain, especially in the current climate, where there is considerable concern about elites and executives and the role of government around the world. Good morning, panel. I would like to explore a bit more this bit about remuneration. Both in the written evidence that we have received and a couple of you have intimated this morning that a good reason for this is that some returning officers pay their staff out of it and that some of them give the money to charity. I suppose that my question is, should we be relying on the benevolence of highly paid officers to pay staff who are also involved in the process, and is it appropriate that those officers are deciding which charities public money goes to? I would like to start with a blank piece of paper, this would not be the scheme that you ended up with, no doubt. A more rational scheme of reward would be ideally preferable, but I do not think that anybody would argue against that. The risk is the effect of system integrity when you start altering a key part of it, namely payments. It could be that it probably is not beyond the wit of humankind to come up with a system of payments that does not alter the integrity of the system, but it needs to be done carefully. Just on the issue of paying the staff, it is worth saying that staff are routinely paid, they are not volunteers if you would like, they have permanent positions, they have salaries. But what has happened in intellectual services across the UK over the course of a number of years is that there has been built-up business process pressures. There has been an increasing late registration applications because it has become online and it has become very seasonal, everyone likes to do things at the last minute naturally because it is Christmas shopping, boat registration, you leave it to the last minute. At the same time, there is increasingly a number of people applying for postal votes, so what you are getting at the time of an election is a lot of stress with intellectual services and that is leaving to people doing extra hours, extra time, working long hours and beyond weekend. Where it could be the staff that is returning office are using its money to pay the staff, but we just do not know because that information is not made public. I refer to all the previous points on that. That sort of refers to the point that I was making earlier around transparency, also leading towards higher efficiency and maximising the resources available in intellectual services, so I agree and essentially would argue that it is about building as far and as deep as possible the idea that our returning officers and associated staff are really in this to deliver for the people and to deliver the democratic services, which actually there is a large growing concern around members of the public having question marks over, especially as has been pointed out in the last number of contributions, especially as the political situation itself gets more and more terse. I do not think that I thank you for those answers. Nobody quite responded to the point about the senior officers deciding which charities those monies go to and how that might be perceived by the public. We have all got our favourite charities, but it is public money that is being used in them. Sorry if I may. It is public money, but if it is a kind salary, it is their money. We do not second-guess how they disperse their salary. I suppose, convener, that point was made as a good reason for keeping the current system, and Alistair Clarke's written submission to the committee, so that is what I am probing. Can I say something about transparency? I think that we need to be clear about the burden that we are putting on transparency. Is transparency good in its own right? Do we want transparency regardless of the consequences, or does transparency lead to particular outcomes? We have heard it sometimes said that transparency leads to greater efficiency, although it leads to greater public trust. Is that the case? I mean, just anecdotally, if you think about the regime for election expenditure and income, which was introduced by Perpera, that has radically expanded the information that the public has, the transparency that we have on how political parties and political actors receive income, how they expend that income, how they distribute it and so on. Has public trust increased in that process? I would say that it is almost certainly not. That is not a reason for not having transparency, but it is a reason for being clearer about what work we want transparency to do and why we want it. Ruth, do you want to come back on that? Mr Singh, you said that we do not know the salaries of chief execs. We know exactly what the salaries are, and they are all on six-figure salaries in Scotland. They are extremely well paid. This is the nub of the question. They are very well remunerated people. In the eyes of the public, this should be part of their job. They should not be getting what Dr James describes as a bonus. In fact, you said that it is not a bonus. It is a bonus because it is in addition to what they are already getting. The question is, should they be getting paid extra for what many people would regard as something that should be considered to be part of their job? It is clearly not part of their job. There is a statutory regime that has been created to demarcate very clearly in the representation of the People's Act section 23-27, that this is not their job. It has a separate range of functions and responsibilities that are separate from those of the chief executive of the local authority. It is not their job. It is an additional role that they undertake in Scotland by sheriffs. It is very valuable that it is separated because it insulates them from any other influences that they may have as being chief executive of their local authority. It is important that we have electoral officials that are independent, that are not therefore subject to any other influences and that run elections completely independently. Mr Shafi, do you want to add anything? Nothing in particular to add. Apart from the point that I have been making throughout, which is that we want those individuals to be driven by delivering democracy and not by the sort of rumination that you are referring to. That does not mean that we do not think that those are jobs that deserve adequate pay, but we think that that has to be brought closer into what you refer to, the public goods and, in particular, the public's perception of that type of pay. You would hope that they would be driven in any case, given the high-powered jobs that they have. Mr Singh, you rightly referred to the statutory regime, so I guess the question that flows from that is should the statutory regime change so that it does become part of their job? Well, I suppose that there is also a broad question as to are returning officers rather the people who should be doing this job in acting-quar chief executives? Is there a broader argument, a broader need for an electoral management service that undertakes this role and a range of other roles? This is a question that has been knocking around in Scotland and the United Kingdom more broadly for a number of years. The problem is that, as we all know, as soon as one starts establishing a new bureaucracy to undertake this function, any cost-saving or any cost-avoidance that we might think we are making by taking away this million pounds or whatever it is from returning officers will be quickly swallowed by a new electoral bureaucracy. You have to specify what the new regime might look like. I agree that it is important to keep the existing system in that sense. You could centralise functions within one organisation like the electoral management board, but that would not necessarily at all save money because they would then need more resources and if it is the public purse that we are focusing on here, that is important. Research shows that sometimes electoral centralised bodies are more expensive and having a local person on the ground who knows their constituency, knows their area, knows the types of places where they can hold account and that it is appropriate, is really important. When you centralise things too much, you lose that local knowledge, which is very valuable. The last point that was made there about there being proximity and local knowledge being vital to the delivery of democratic services. One more question from myself. If we accept that councils are best placed to carry out this role and if you accept—I do not necessarily accept this—that there should be extra money paid, should the money not then just go to the council and not one person? There is a specific suggestion and a reflection on that. You would have to rerun contracts of local government officials if you are willing to undertake that process. I suppose none of us are suggesting that this would be easy and that change has to be signposted and organised very carefully, but it is not a reason not to do the change. That is important. When we are talking about the levels of resources we have to run elections and to make sure that there is public faith in them, we want to see that more efficiently, but also more broadly distributed. The point that you raised is that it is not going to be necessarily an easy process. I would underline that saying that we want to see these sorts of things happen does not mean that we are saying that the work that people have done up until this point has been invalid. I do not think that that is anyone's position, but we are very conscious of the building of public trust and of entrenching that. That will take, as the years progress, a number of reforms, of which the point that you make is a very valid one. I have to say that, in 37 years in politics, the first time I have heard that returning officers give away payments to charities or staff. I am fairly cynical, as I believe a number of my colleagues are about this process. The reason for that is that, when I was in Glasgow City Council, some years ago I was talking about when the chief executive was retiring. Those days were fewer elections and they said that they will retire in an election year because the fee gets accounts towards his final salary, which means that it bumps his pension up for 20 years or whatever it happens to be. I am not talking about a one-off payment here, but it could be costing the public purse a significant amount of money for a number of years. I really cannot see how it can be justified to pay the returning officer, who de facto is always the chief executive of the council in my experience, what £33,238 for the 2016 Scottish part election. Mr Shaffey talked about being motivated to deliver democracy. That is more than any of the candidates were allowed to spend in that election. Absolutely. I think that your contribution outlines the public attitude to this question. There are dangers unless this is looked at and assessed. It is one thing that people feel that they are not in touch with their politicians or their political representatives, which we know is a phenomenon. It is quite an honour to feel that their democratic services and processes themselves are perceived to be undermined by the sort of thing that you talk about. It is about the public feeling—this relates to previous points that were made about local proximity—but really feeling in touch with how their elections are run, and really driving that into society as far as we can. I would agree with the point made. I do not disagree. There are obvious reasons to be concerned here that you very eloquently outlined. As a result of that, it makes sense to review the fees that are being paid. I guess I would add that we should be careful to think about the UK-wide system. We do not have a system that becomes complicated. We have one rule for Scottish elections and others for UK-wide elections, because it then becomes very difficult to administer. This should perhaps hopefully kick off the conversation across the UK as well. Building on some of the previous questions, there is a strong case for diverting some of these fees, as it stands, from returning officers' services to expenses, as they are set out in the fees and charges order, because that would make more money available for local authorities to conduct the poll. I think that the association of electoral administrators in the previous consultation response to other inquiries pointed out to the other things that could be covered as part of that. At the moment, local authorities are taking the brunt of the cost. For example, postal vote applications are all coming in crunch period in the last minute registration deadline that really places cost pressures on electoral services and takes money from everything, from all the other important things that they provide. Mr Singh, do you want to add anything? I would just... Is it Mr Gibson? Sorry, I can't quite see your nameplate. I've made exactly the point that you just met. Thank you. I've made exactly that point on the public record previously. I made it in my evidence, in my submission. I think that is a serious risk that goes to the question of public confidence in the system. The structural rates of these fees, I would completely agree, are appropriate for reconsideration. There's no doubt about that, I don't think. I think that one of the pieces of evidence from the representative bodies of chief executives, they made a remark about these fees being in line with other positions of responsibility, but they don't say which positions of responsibility they're comparing them with. I think that would be an area for exploration, a proper area for exploration. The other thing is, and this goes back to the previous speaker, if I may, if we're considering or mooting the idea of moving overall responsibility for electoral administration to council officials, qua council officials, I think it might be worthwhile looking at the trajectory here. So prior to 1977, there were sheriffs, independents, unimpeachable. After 1977, council chief executives operating qua returning officers to ensure their independence from the process. Then it would be local authority officials acting as local authority officials. I think I would suggest that that would be an unhelpful trajectory for the purposes of public confidence in the process. Mr Gibson, do you want to follow up? Yes, Mr Singh, in section 4 of your submission in page 680 talk about Orkney and Shetland constituency, our turning officer charge has been £2,500. That's quite a diverse, obviously, geographic constituency. Edinburgh was £16,548. Is the workload 6.6 times higher for Edinburgh? When we go back to the figure for Glasgow, I mentioned the Scottish Parliament elections. Not only is it £33,238, which is significantly higher in the average salary in the UK, little in Scotland. It's also more than, well, nearly £11,000 more than a turn officer. For the UK general election, I realised that one or two more constituencies in Glasgow are at a whole new level. However, how are those figures calculated and how, in any way, can they be justified in Edinburgh versus Orkney and the sums of money that are paid, for example, in Glasgow from one election to another? I can imagine that the workload is significantly greater. I'm sorry. Thanks, Mr Singh. It's actually Mr Gawley, but never mind. That's fine. I can tell you how they calculate it and the charges order. It's a straightforward mechanical process that I lay out in the two schedules to my submission and part two. It's a straightforward method of calculation. Whether it's justifiable or not, I think it is an open question. I wouldn't say that I'm competent to answer that. Do you want to ask each panel what they thought it was? Okay. Dr James? I mean, just briefly, just to say that the challenges are very different for running a poll in a very urban area, in a very rural area. I don't think it makes sense to say it's six times more difficult, if you like. In some ways, there are more difficult and pressing challenges. We are conducting a poll, finding polling stations, dealing with the types of logistical issues that come up in more remote parts of Scotland. It seems certainly that that existing criteria doesn't make sense. Certainly, my interviews and experience with the turning officers reflect that. Do you want to see traffic? Not much, but to be honest, I agree pretty much with the last comment that was made. Alexander Stewart? Thanks, convener. Thank you for your comments so far. I have a real concern about this whole process. I feel, and I think that the public, due to the perception that there's an uncomfortableness about this whole element. From my experience over the last 18 years in a council, and I've been at every election during that time, an industry has started to grow within the council itself. You have a democratic services director, you have an election team that are working on a daily basis throughout the year to administer what's happening. Registration for postal votes, as I believe, dealt with through the evaluation boards that it takes. That's another arm of the organisation that's dealing with that. As we get closer to an election, the individuals then come together doing the normal day job, which is administering an election. The returning officer, whoever he or she is, is the overseer for the week before and on the whole 24-hour cycle of an election day, when polling stations might be starting at 5am in the morning, and by the time the count is concluded, it's 5am the following morning. I appreciate that there's done some anti-social process within all of that, but I still find it very difficult to believe that we are dealing with one or two individuals who are receiving the lion's share of the funding here, when in reality there's a small army of individuals doing the job and receiving no further remuneration for that job. I think that you've made a very good case for there being a wider distribution of financial resources. We want to see this pushed down the chain, and we want to see it in much of the way that you've lined up. People understand that there needs to be a wider layer of people involved in the process. I think that the public would appreciate that process being better and more fairly resourced and not just concentrated financially into the hands of one individual. I think that that's the direction of travel that we're moving in. The big question that will come is how we begin to start thinking about how that would be implemented. Mr Gally, do you want to come in? I think that there's a distinction to be made, to be drawn here between whether payments should be made and the level of payments. If I understand correctly, you're making an argument on the latter point. I would agree. Dr James? Just a comment about the army, if you like. There's big teams that are involved in running elections. One of the major changes that's been introduced across the UK has been the introduction of individual electoral registration, which has been a major business process change for everywhere. It's had cost consequences, it's made the process more expensive, and it's also placed a particular burden on individuals who have been doing this. I've got research that shows this. A survey that was undertaken in February earlier this year shows that half of electoral officials, more broadly, the army, if you like, have thought about leaving their position within the last year as a result of this. There's this high stress, high pressure, big turnover, and that is the environment in which elections, although they've been run very successfully in Scotland so far, could create problems and pressures where new staff misunderstandings. They need to be nurtured and looked after. The army is as important as the commander, if you like. I think that, following on from all that, we have to understand that, as you've indicated, it's becoming an annual performance, it's becoming an annual event. We should be trying to do an audit trail of how successful it's being managed within an authority and to see if there really is value for money in the sums that are being paid to individuals who, as we've already heard, already receive a large salary in comparison with many. The individuals who are in the army, as I've said, who do the work, are earning a fraction of the money that the returning officer has to be given. You cannot say that it's anything else than a bonus, because it is a bonus on their salary for just administering something or overseeing, ticking a few boxes or having a look at the end of the day to make sure that everything is sorted. The army of people dealing with postal votes, the run-up to week before, 10 days before, just before the close of poll, etc. They are the ones that are having to deal with the pressure. You go to a count and it's all now electronic in many respects in Scotland or its hand. Once again, there's an army of individuals who are being paid for that role to manage that situation, and the returning officer is doing less and less of the role and less and less of the management. I think that you make your point very well. Mr Stewart, does anyone want to reflect on that? Can I just make one comment on that? There's a strange kind of contradiction in the sense that we want to see pressure increase on electoral services during the period of elections, because we want to see numbers of people engaging in elections increase. That means more people voting, more people doing it via postal votes, more people registering, so we want to see an increase in pressure, and that's why we think there needs to be a reaction to that. The two work hand in hand. Dr James? Just to say, a theme throughout that comment and throughout the committee so far has been that this has increasingly become an annual event and it's become more routine. That is so, but it's also a process that at the same time has become more complex because we have greater variety of elections, different types of electoral systems, different types of ballots, more complex laws, 30 or 40 laws that returning officers have to be aware of when they go into the electoral process. There have been recommendations by the law commissions to simplify this and make it much more routine. However, it has to be recognised that there is a degree of complexity for the returning officers but also for staff that has become more of a problem. I think that people on the whole think that chief executives run elections, they see them at the count and they think that the returning officer is the chief executive. I think that there's quite a bit of trust in the system. There have been problems in past elections in 2007, for example. It's only when it comes to the money that people have begun to ask a few questions. However, just to clarify, the Registration People Act makes it clear that the local authority shall appoint an officer of the authority, so it need not be the chief executive. I'm just wondering whether—I've got two questions, really. One is, do the returning officers actually do this job in their own time? Secondly, there doesn't appear to be any statutory provision for anyone other than the returning officer, for example deputies who have similar levels of shared responsibility to get any remuneration. That relies on the benevolence of the returning officer thinking that they should perhaps get some if it's been a particularly difficult election or whatever. I wonder if you can clarify that latter point and also say if you know whether, in fact, returning officers are doing those jobs in their own time. Dr James? In terms of our returning officers doing this job in their own time, it's very difficult to know or measure that. What I can say is that having done interviews with electoral officials, a current theme is that many returning officers are very hands-on, proactive and do roll their sleeves up, get involved in this, and are involved in the management process, the location of polling stations and the like. Whereas some others are more content, although they can't devolve responsibility formally, do use middle management staff to do this, it's impossible to do that. Obviously, this job is only one-half the process, if you like. I think that Westminster Select Committee did look at the issue of chief executive pay a couple of years ago, and that's a report that the committee might find interesting, because that's the other side of the coin, if you like. Any other witnesses who want to add to that? Mr Rowman, do you want to follow up on any of that? Okay, fine. The question is obviously, as Mr Galley made clear at the beginning, that the responsibility in this post is considerable. There are liabilities, that their face to things goes wrong, and people need to have a trust in the system. So I don't think that anyone is questioning the fact that existing returning officers are not trustworthy in any way. However, I think that there is a question mark over the extent to which existing returning officers who tend to be chief executives are seen as independent returning officers by the public, and the money highlights that question in their minds. It's something that we'll reflect on as to whether, in fact, the law may perhaps be changed such that there's greater flexibility in who can be appointed, for example, somebody outside of the council, a retired chief executive, for example, so there's greater flexibility. I'll leave it there. Do you want to reflect on that comment? If I may say that I think that you're right to point out that it's not that people distrust returning officers, it's that people distrust people who get loads of money, to be quite blunt. A lot of our research is based on the relationship between people's incomes and their voting patterns, and if, indeed, they're even registered to vote, you find that the lowest voter registrations and lowest turnouts at elections are often coincide, more often than not, with those areas of lowest income. So when we're talking about money, when we're talking about financial rumination, that really is the sticking point. Actually, when you think this through, it's much better, it's much more efficient to have that money properly spread to the various arms of the services that we've discussed already this morning, and I think that that does help to breed the sort of confidence that you're talking about. I would also say just lastly that I think a lot of what we are seeing happen around the discussion, around democracy in more general terms is that democracy is constantly evolving. Democracy and the process of democratic institutions, structures and processes doesn't really have a full stop. We are constantly looking at ways in which we can improve and adapt, and one of the things that you have to do as part of that process is to look forward and work out and try to make some forecast as to where problems might emerge, and one area where problems may well emerge in a much more public fashion is around what you're talking about. There being this sense of the financial rumination being too high, not sped enough around the service. Mr Galley? Thank you. To Mr Whiteman's first question about could it be somebody other than the chief executive or an officer akin, there is a statutory expectation that it will be the chief executive. In my note, I refer to the expression of the under-secretary of state at the time that that was the appropriate official, so that answers that point. On the question of whose time this is occurring in, I think that that's a really good question in the sense that chief executives are already incredibly busy doing a large role of high-pressured work on top of this, on an annual, bi-annual or whatever basis, they then have to, in addition to that, do this enormously responsible job of running the democratic process. In what time is this occurring? Are they working 24-hour days? How much of this work is deputed? My concern about this is that it's a rather masochistic approach to the labour market, which I thought we'd given up on, really.  If you were to make an argument that this is a professional job of great responsibility, which needs to be done properly, this isn't the way you would do it. That would be an argument. It becomes too pressured and so on and so forth. Then there's the other question about defusing them or devolving the money. The money, I don't think, is paid for labour. This was my opening remark. It's not paid for the quantum of work that you do. It's paid for the responsibility which flows from the job. That, the responsibility, does not flow down. It rests with the returning officer. Okay. Thank you. Dr James, do you want to add anything? Just briefly, I think that there may be arguments and there's legal impediments perhaps for giving the role to someone else. One advantage of the returning officer being a chief executive is that they have obviously a sense of informal kind of managerial kudos within the organisation. If the chief executive says something, by and large, smaller units will feel as if they need to do that. When it comes to elections within a short time period, giving additional staff, providing extra resources, that can make a big difference. I think that it has some other value there. Okay. We're really going to have to move on because we're running a bit late. No, because Elaine Smith wants in as well. Sorry, Mr Whiteman. It's interesting to have a question about more evidence sessions for the witnesses that are waiting for the next evidence session. We'll run this for maybe another 10 minutes or so, and then we'll conclude there. Elaine Smith. Thanks very much, convener. Actually, just picking up on the previous point before I come to something else that I wish to ask, it did occur to me that, with such big responsible jobs that chief executives have and they're remunerated accordingly, how on earth do they then have the time to do this? What else loses out when they are? I think that that's a point that Mr Galley had raised. It's something that we need to be thinking about. On Mr Galley's evidence, could I specifically ask on page 6, you talk about the, well actually it's part of a section that talks about the complications in England and Wales, but you mention here that the job of returning officer is a ceremonial ex-officio role. Does that mean that it's remunerated then? Could I specifically say that? No, no, it's ex-officio, but it's not ceremonial as such, but it's, and it continues to be remunerated on the basis of the charge order. Okay, thanks, so there used to be a ceremonial because that's what you had in your submission to us. But I also say that it's ex-officio, certainly, and that it's, and in certain circumstances, it's deputed down. Sorry, it's definitely. It's deputed down in England and Wales, so there's a different regime in England and Wales. But it's still paid. So bringing us back then to the paid role of this and the point that you also made, Mr Galley, about the whole thing being about responsibility perhaps rather than labour, in that regard, are any of the panel aware, and I thank you all for coming this one, I should have said that first, but are any of the panel aware if there have been any sanctions, and if we look at problems that we know about over the years, such as boxes lost at sea, issues with postal votes, the first time the electoral counting system was tried, for example, we have seen problems in issues, so have there been any sanctions at all, does anyone know? I think that Dr James is the expert here. No pressure, Dr James. I'll put it all in my head, I'm not aware of the data on that. I mean, I think that that's something that we certainly would be worth collating. But it's certainly the case that electoral officials, returning officers, have been within the court, subject to the courts, in the case of the Tower Hamlets electoral fraud inquiry, for example, initially the returning officer was put before the courts in that case, but I'm not sure of whether the Electoral Commission how many cases they have stopped the fee going to returning officers, but I'm sure they can tell you next week. This goes to the question of the evidence base, and I think that there's a real need for a far more detailed knowledge of exactly what goes on, whether it's relating to the specific point that you just made, or the sums that are paid out, or the lever of superannuation that attaches to them, which I think was a point made by Mr Stewart. I think that we just need to know more, and those are the right sorts of questions, I would say. Thank you. Also, on the Electoral Management Board, I don't know how much is known about that, and it obviously only covers the administration of local government elections, is that something that might be able to be expanded? I think that Mr Galley talked about if we were to set up independent systems, then there might be a lot of work in that, more ready, perhaps more funding, but is that something that perhaps is there and could be looked at to see whether there's possibilities? It could certainly be looked at. I think that this was a matter that has already been looked at after the electoral difficulties in 2007 that you referred to. Those are amongst the issues that were surveyed. I think that it might be worth while asking the people who are more intimately involved in that process as to what consideration they gave to this issue and why it would be appropriate to revisit that issue so soon again. Just before we draw to an end here, it's worth just clarifying something because, of course, we will have chief executives before us to give their views on it, and they'll be crucial because they've done the job on the ground. Already today, we've heard concerns in relation to transparency over payments, we've heard concerns over the level of payments, over the consistency of payments, over the workload that may or may not be involved by returning officers, what they may not do if they're doing that workload. The army of soldiers in the ground at Alexander Stewart referred to that may not be compensated for the additional work that they have to do. We are saying that elections are run very well in Scotland, but is it also reasonable to say that this does have to change? The system of payments somehow has to change, would we get consensus in relation to that if not exactly how payments to returning officers or whoever else are done, but the system does have to change? Mr Shafi, can we start with yourself? Yes, I'll just be very short, yes. Mr Galley? I think that the system needs to be better justified and if appropriate justifications aren't forthcoming then it has to change, but justification I think is the starting point. Okay, so more scrutiny at the moment Mr Galley, more better understanding of what's going on and then potentially changing the future, but let's wait and see what the evidence shows. Exactly. Okay, that's helpful. Dr James? I would probably agree, I think transparency is something that could happen very quickly, at low cost and we would immediately clear up providers of the information to undertake some wider review, but I think it's worth stressing that there's a need to review not only this area of how much money returning officers are receiving, but actually some of the pressures that are going on underneath there as well and reviewing the overall situation. I don't know also if you're aware that the Scottish Government has said there will be an elections bill on the lifetime of this Parliament. Might that be an opportunity to scrutinise some of this further and see whether on a Scottish level we can provide more consistency and transparency? I would just say, I mean yes, I think that one element that you should also consider is actually to do some engagement with members of the public over the issues. I think it's good to hear from folk involved in this professionally, to hear from chief executives, be quite interested to find out, and actually we might do some work on this, thinking about it, to find out what the attitudes of the general public are in relation to this and get some evidence on that. I don't know if Mr Galley or Dr James wants to add anything before we bring the session to a close. I could clarify Ms Smith's point about ceremonials, but I could do that off the record, if that's preferable. I'm happy for you to point out that far. Sorry, I just found that point in the text that you referred to. So, in England and Wales, the returning officer as such is a county sheriff or a chairman of a chairperson of a district council, but the acting returning officer, who is a council official, actually does the job, and they are the person that's remunerated. In some ways, building on that, I think it would be an excellent idea for there to be further inquiry based around the potential of being some Scottish elections bill, but there's also this issue of trying to develop systems that jar with the wider UK context, so that we're not asking electoral officials to kind of work, if you'd like, to too many sets of electoral laws and practices as well. All that remains for me is to thank all three of you for coming along here today. Can I make an appeal to follow the further evidence sessions that we take, and if there's any additional points that you want to make, please don't hesitate to get in contact with us and help inform the conclusions that will eventually come to in relation to this short inquiry. I thank all of you again and can I suspend briefly for a moment? Good morning and welcome back to the local government and communities committee. Prior to the previous item that we just heard evidence in relation to the payments to returning officers, I should have taken agenda item 1 first, which I didn't do, so I'm now going to do that formally now, and that's a decision to take business in private. The committee has asked to decide whether to agree to take item 6 in private if that would be agreeable to the committee. Okay, thank you. I just wanted to do that formally to keep ourselves right, so when I move to agenda item 3, which is subordinate legislation parts 2, 3 and 5 of the Community Empowerment Scotland Act 2015, the committee will undertake second evidence session part 2, 3 and 5 of the Community Empowerment Scotland Act 2015. There's nine Scottish statutory instruments SSIs relating to part 2 community planning and part 5 asset transfer requests that were laid before Parliament on 10 November 2016. Further SSIs relating to part 3 participation requests are expected to be laid later in the year rather, and therefore evidence relating to the section will refer to regulations that are currently in draft form and will feed into its formal scrutiny of the final instruments. That said, can I welcome Assistant Chief Constable Andy Cowie, local policing North Police Scotland, Sandra Holmes, community asset sector lead Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Iona Colvin, director of health and social care North Ayrshire, NHS Ayrshire and Arn, Bruce Kylo, head of policy and planning, Strachlid partnership for transport and Richard Davidson, strategic manager, Scottish natural heritage. We're not having any brief opening statements from witnesses this morning, given the size of the witnesses panel that we have today, so we'll move straight to questions and Andy Wightman. Thank you, convener. Welcome witnesses. The statutory instruments we're looking at relate to community planning and asset transfer in a draft on participation requests. How significant do you think, in general terms, that the powers contained in the community empowerment act are for your organisation's work in general? What do you see as the benefits and what do you see as some of the challenges in implementing the new legislation? Who would like to go first on that? Sandra Holmes is the first to catch my eye. Thank you, Sandra. That's just a note. I can be a bit absent-minded. Please do make an effort to catch my eye. I won't be ignoring you. I promise, Sandra. Certainly within high, we very much welcome the direction of travel to encourage us to continue to support communities and to make any engagements that we have with communities meaningful and relevant to them. High, we've got a unique remit that includes working alongside communities as well as our work to promote businesses. We see the step change in having the statutory framework really to give communities confidence that, when they engage with us, we'll take due consideration of their input and we'll reflect on that and engage appropriately with them. We very much welcome the direction of travel. Thanks. It builds on some of the duties that we have in the Public Bodies Act. As director of health and social care, I'm interested in how we develop the duties that we have in North Ayrshire and Ayrshire and Arran. We've been developing our locality planning approach. We've got a significant piece of work that we've done both within the community planning partnership but also within the health and social care partnership, which is really the delivery of the health service in the community. It's been building on that. We've had a number of successful events in terms of locality planning events that have then fed into the development of our strategic plan for the priorities for health and social care and wider into the community planning partnership. It's building in that direction but we're trying to meld that together, along with the requirements in the Public Bodies Act to involve professionals, particularly general practitioners and other health professionals, in determining those priorities. We've now established locality planning with GPs involved, with integrated joint board members involved, which is a range of people from elected members of the council through to staff representatives who are chairing those committees. That's been a really interesting development in terms of communities identifying their priorities clearly and alongside medical practitioners and other practitioners who deliver the services but also feeding into the whole area of our communities of interest as well. We've had a number of participatory budgeting events and we will have also in the spring a communities of interest one around mental health because mental health has come through in the whole of North Ayrshire as a significant issue for every community. What I'm thinking is that this legislation then allows that maybe to develop further in terms of how we look at the delivery of some of those services in the future and the ownership of some of the assets. I suppose that the one word that would come to mind is opportunity and it's using the new act to build on the strong partnership ethos that we've had right back to the 2003. There is no community planning when that came into being and I suppose I would anchor that against two particular things. One is simplifying some of the bureaucracy within planning so under the police and fire reform act as you're well aware there's a requirement for local police plans in the 32 local authority areas and we have seized the opportunity of the local outcome improvement plans that came out of community empowerment to simplify that so therefore instead of having silo organisational local police and plans the direction of travel that we now want to move in is to have in those local police and plans much more integrated or part of the loypes as they're called so that simplifies it because I think to be authentic as an organisation we would kid ourselves if we think that we solve any problems on our own it's about working together and that has been the tradition within Scotland so it's actually seizing that and making it simpler for ourselves and for partners to work together to deliver community benefit in that wider aspect so that's one opportunity. The other bit is around localism and being responsive to local communities and I think that participation options and requirements on us really builds on the direction we want to move in which is about empowering our officers and staff within the organisation to be more responsive to those local challenges and opportunities as it's worded in the act so there's a real chance to build on some of the strengths because we would see that actually there's a lot of strength in community engagement already but this takes it to the next level so it's not forgetting about those strengths it's about enhancing them and moving it forward to the next level. Bruce Kylo. Thanks very much convener and thanks for the opportunity to come and speak to the committee this morning. You may be aware that SPT has been a community planning strategy community planning partner since 2003 and we found it to be a very useful process for us to engage both with local communities and third sector bodies but also the wider family council family etc and that's something that we've done and have been glad to do over the last 13 years. One of the ways that we've done that is through annually producing what we call transport outcome reports which is a detailed information for each local area they're available to all members of the CPP or local councillors and we put that up on our website and that's just our way of trying to demonstrate the value locally of the SPT services that we provide for example you'll be aware transport is strategic and often cross boundary but services don't observe local authority boundaries so it's sometimes a challenge for us to try and get things down to a local level and that's something that we're very aware of is going to the locality planning but that's something we do try to convey through you know for example we run the Glasgow subway and although that's something that's based within Glasgow people from other council areas do use it so people in North Lanarkshire etc do get the benefit of that so I think there's the current community planning system works very well for us we welcome the community empowerment act I think there probably just a wee note of concern would be around the fact that as I say we are strategic regional cross boundary and the ability of organisations like ourselves and other regional and national bodies to break things down to a very small local level to demonstrate the value that we are delivering in that very small local area is something that we would just note a note of caution on okay thank you Richard Davidson yes we we also welcome the broader stronger framework that the community empowerment act provides we've always felt that community involvement engagement and empowerment is really important from an environmental point of view and a lot of communities do do very good work around environmental issues so we would hope that this framework these rights for community bodies to get more involved in in these sorts of issues is a really powerful one you know it's it's not without one or two challenges from our point of view bit like Strathclyde passenger transport executive you know SNH is a national body we have to deal with a lot of communities a lot of local authorities and all community planning partnerships but it's very much an opportunity rather than a challenge if you like there are far more opportunities coming out of this to put the environment more at centre in in how community planning partnerships work for example okay so that gives us a context mr rightman do you want to drill down on some of that a couple of specifics but i'll come back later perhaps okay can i maybe ask in relation to the evidence session we had previously where we were looking at asset transfer requests it was quite easy when we were thinking about the local authority for what that might mean but i suppose the variety of organisations we have in front of us today i would be interested to know have you thought about what that might mean in relation to the facilities or land that that you have and have you given thought to assets that the community might be interested in taking more control over ownership of it but is kylo first and then Richard Davidson yeah absolutely um convener i think from our point of view being very grateful to the colleagues in the Scottish government who have taken account of our our views in the in the legislation for example Glasgow subway is an operational piece of railway um we wouldn't want somebody coming in and requesting that one of the stations was was transferred to them although we do try to work with the local communities obviously because i think from that point of view there are national strategic pieces of infrastructure that need protected it would include the subway and that would include our bus stations as well and we do have other land that we've got available and that's something that we'll happily put up on our website and let people know about but i think you'll be aware that sometimes transport projects can take many many years to deliver both in the planning and getting the funding together and that's something that i think is is important to remember that we may want to hold on to a piece of land because of the wider longer term strategic need for it for example old rail solums which may need to be opened up at some point in the future or pieces of land which may be needed for a park and ride or that sort of thing so i think there is huge opportunities for local communities i think one thing that we'd say about it is that we would like to see a strong emphasis and responsibility placed on the community body when they're applying to an organisation like ourselves or in Dales when they're asking so that it's clear demonstrable need for that land a good governance structure within that community body and something that allows us a level of reassurance and being able to deal with that organisation and from a legal point of view so again very much welcome the opportunity it provides but just from a strategic transport point of view very keen to protect the infrastructure that we have Richard Davidson yeah in our case our main assets for us a transfer would be nature reserves that that we own or buildings our board last week approved what's quite a long title but a rural land asset management plan which basically reviewed all of our nature reserves that we do own and look at the opportunities for engaging with communities about transfer of assets to them and what sorts of issues would arise from that so adopting what we hope is a is a pretty positive proactive approach to that okay that's helpful it's under homes i think when asset transfer is talked about generally people tend to think about sort of local authority assets that are surplus to requirement and this is changing things on to a new footing it's very much putting this of the power in the hands of communities to come forward to any public authority to request not only to purchase but also to lease or to use or to occupy public assets buildings or land at any time in the future for high we've got quite an extensive property portfolio many built assets and they're very much for us productive assets we don't really have anything that we would deem to be surplus so we'll have a range of business units most of these will be units that we've actually constructed and then we seek to get tenants to come in to create economic opportunities we also have sites for development and we're looking at those quite strategically looking at getting the most productive use out of that site and then we've got a range of operational offices as well we have recently in april of this year we actually amended our disposals policy to better reflect the forthcoming requirements of asset transfer and we've introduced best value decision making when we seek to dispose of our assets so we will frequently put assets on to the market our default position has always been when we've got a tenant in one of our buildings is to offer the assets at market value terms to the tenant I think it's important to recognise that businesses develop economic and social benefits as do communities so we introduced the asset transfer policy and the asset transfer policy was then if there was a community interest in any of the assets we were seeking to sell or to lease we would then look at our decision making on the best value judgment looking at taking account of the wider non-financial benefits that the bidders were going to take forward and again including businesses alongside communities in that we've had one example when we were seeking to lease an asset we went through the process and in terms of the bids that we received we only actually received one bid which was from a community organisation and that was a lease that went went to that community through the asset transfer process we've currently got a live case at the moment where we've got one business interest and two community interests over a single piece of ground that we've got and we're just going through the assessment process there within high we've also provided grant assistance to communities to secure assets either from ourselves but more so from other organisations private and public and we've got an example where we supported a community in Tyrie to purchase a business unit from ourselves and they now have their own premises in that business unit and they've also got other tenants that's a way of generating income for the local community so I think it is important to see that these are productive assets as well as surplus assets but productive assets can do very well in community hands as well as in other hands. Thank you I don't know if Iona Colvin or Andy Cowey wants to follow up on any of that. Yeah I mean it's it's again it's an opportunity there for for ourselves I suppose contextually as you refer to convener the new chief constable has put in place collaborative work to develop a 10-year strategy which is called 2026 and that's obviously looking at what service we're seeking to deliver with communities and partners moving forward and that will be going out for public consultation in January February time next year and the estate is an enabler of delivering service it's not the other way around so therefore you know as an organisation we are looking internally first of all at seeing what are the current demands for the estate from the public from ourselves and from that working through there's a huge number of collaborative opportunities where with other public sector bodies and other people we can actually share roofs and actually work closer together and we've seen examples in Aberdeen of a community hub and there's all sorts of opportunities out there so we're seeking to gain early change opportunities and there's a number of consultations out and about with people looking at that locally but given the geography of Scotland we will always need to have bases for our officers to patrol from they need to turn up and change into their uniforms and get their gear on and out they go so we will always need a wide geographic spread of that the scotch police authority own all our premises so it's actually a decision for themselves around what happens with them in longer term but the moment we are looking looking at our estate and again on the back of 2026 and that public consultation thereafter once we're clear and agreed within Scotland about what we're trying to do as a police service then we have to look at the estate so that will be coming out for wider public consultation later on in 2017 and asset transfer is going to be built into the processes there because obviously we have over 420 operational buildings within Scotland and across the length and breadth so we will build in that asset transfer policies into that to make sure that's encompassed. I've got a call on how we'd be looking at health and social care partnerships in the context of asset transfer where would they sit? Yeah so I think the work that we're doing just now is going along that direction in terms of working with all partners within communities I'm thinking just now specifically about the island of Arran for example where we're working with all the partners within the island to look at the use of the totality of the assets that are owned by the NHS and the council because none of its owned by the partnership and to look at how we use that in the future and particularly we're in this instance we're looking at how we use the hospital in Arran and I think as you go forward I think you can see opportunities maybe to also look at parts of that estate being used by other parts of the community for different reasons. Highland have actually done quite a lot of work on this and have done a number of community asset transfers in terms of the services that they have some that I'm thinking about. I think Lochaber and a couple of other places in Highland where actually they've worked with community groups to look at the community groups then taking ownership and running services in the more isolated communities so that's something that we would want to learn from and to look at as we move forward with the model. Okay that's very helpful. The number of bids from MSPs for supplementary questions now we're trying to stick with asset transfer here so we can do it in a theme that Alexander Stewart was the first to indicate is it on asset transfer or should it be later? It does cover that. Cover that or it's on that. I want to specifically deal with the assistant chief constable on it because in your submission you talk about responding to the needs of communities that lie at the heart of Police Scotland and I think we would expect you to say that in your submission. If it wasn't in your submission we'd be wondering why not and when we're looking at the challenges that you face and you've gone into that in the last answer about the complexities that we have of the buildings that you have across your state now and that opens up some real challenges for you but it also opens up some real opportunities and when you're having some negotiation I'm aware that that negotiation and consultation is taking place across some communities at the moment and there is some criticism from within that because some people see it as an erosion, a removal or a loss and it's how you balance that because with that came confidence in some communities about your role and your responsibility and if that does change and there is a removal there's a loss or there's an erosion then that has an impact on the community that you're left with trying to manage and represent so your views on that would be interesting. That's very specific to Mr Cowley. I think the question quite rightly is framed around service and erosion of service because service is actually delivered by people not by buildings and I suppose you know we all have to manage whether it's a household budget or an organisational budget around that and it makes no sense to have a building if we're only occupying one of three floors and it's costing an arm and a leg because it leaks like a sieve to maintain that if there is a smarter option, a more collaborative option in that vicinity and that's what we're seeking to see in these change opportunities as we're depicting them but the important thing is to remember is that it's still local officers that will be deploying to members of the public. 95 per cent of our calls come in through the telephone and officers are deployed around that and the feedback that we're getting is that people want to see the officers and to have that service delivered so it is a balancing act absolutely around being able to fulfil our statutory duty but also in the opportunities here is is there a wider public benefit under asset transfer and that's one of the ones that we're exploring with Government officials as well as it's down to the accountable officer apparently within the SPA to make that decision around what's best value public benefit versus the requirement to maintain our statutory function and receive that capital receipt and it's going to be challenging there I mean you could envisage the situation where you have a couple of competitive community bids for premises or for a lease and then how do you weigh up the public benefit around that so I think as the previous speakers talked about I think a lot of that thinking will evolve as we go through some of the early examples of that but it's about service delivery and how can we do that in a joined up way within the budget we have thank you for that lots of supply and asset transfer kath Gibson yeah specifically to Sandra Holmes I mean one of the the concerns that was raised last week in evidence was the horrendous amount of time it takes to negotiate some of these transfers we heard of one case where apparently there was a willing buyer and a willing seller but five years later nothing apparently had happened that was a local authority case now you obviously have a lot of experience in the Highlands and Islands of this I'm just wondering you know what you're doing to overcome that you know in order that community organisations don't become disheartened with the length of time actually takes to negotiate these transfers I think it's fair to say that any community acquisition or asset transfer is sometimes measured in months and years rather than weeks part of the process it really depends where the community starting from if a community's got a very clear identified need and they can articulate that need and they can then identify an asset that can then help them deliver that need locally and then they're able to negotiate with a willing seller things can go through quite quickly invariably though it'll take some time for the community to actually develop the case and that's where work of Highlands and Islands Enterprise alongside our partners can actually really help the community capacity building and that's a big part of the process and I do think that the asset transfer provisions provide a framework for authorities to work to but isn't the only route if a public authority is looking to dispose of an asset it isn't mandated it has to go down the asset transfer route they can still be a willing seller so there's nothing at all to take away from doing something really quick what asset transfer does give to communities though is it gives that ability that if they put forward an asset transfer request the authority then has to deal with that request and can't dispose of the asset in the interim to any other organisation and so I think that gives a lot of power to communities to sort of guide and control the conversations for me I think the benefit to communities of asset transfer is having that engagement and that better traction with public authorities over access to buildings and it might be that at least might be appropriate it could be that use of a building could be appropriate communities tend to have aspirations for ownership and that can bring long-term benefits to them a lot of the work that we do in Highlands I mentioned before is actually providing the assistance on the funding side to actually enable the purchase to go ahead and alongside colleagues in the big lottery fund we administer the Scottish land fund on behalf of Scottish government and that's a budget of 10 million pounds for this current financial year to really facilitate asset transfer and other purchases perhaps in the private sector as well so I think asset transfer does bring benefits the part of the process and I was looking at the evidence that Ditas provided following your submission or their evidence session last week I think it's really vitally important that communities take the time that they need to prepare and to do the relevant business planning as soon as you take on a lease or particularly ownership you're then taking on responsibility so it's important that you actually get the right asset and you've got the means to manage it and to maintain it over long term and fundamentally it's all about delivering improved outcomes there's lots and lots of communities out there across Scotland a lot of them in the Highlands and Islands who've actually demonstrated very effectively that this can be done and I think taking time to prepare and to get all the ducks in a row is actually a very big indicator of that asset then being successfully owned by communities so it's not a process that you would want to sort of shortcut it is to look at it openly and do the proper business planning around that okay Elaine Smith thanks very much convener and thanks to the panel for coming to join us could I ask a general question to the panel which perhaps comes in on the back of what Sandra Holmes has just been saying but while I'm thinking about it I'd like to ask a specific question to Assistant Chief Constable the general question would be that it can't we've heard in evidence it can be an expensive process for communities to explore an interest in an asset so at which point would you think that the asset should be frozen because some of the concern was that they spend the funding to explore it to draw up business plans etc etc but before they actually finalise getting the asset it's already been disposed of so there must be a point where perhaps it would make sense to freeze that other than the rules that are there already but specifically to the Assistant Chief Constable while I leave that question there could I ask on the police submission on page 12 the Chief Constable you say that legal clauses will also be required to ensure that a community group cannot obtain premises under the act and then sell later at a substantial profit we'd just like to explore that a bit more with you for example you may think that some local authorities may have assets that would obtain so for example maybe Carnegie libraries or parts that were gifted to public sector but then they are sold at a profit into the private sector so in what way do you think it would be different if a community took on an asset they shouldn't be allowed to then sell later at a profit would it be different if they then were to be putting that profit back into the community and why is it that the public of bodies can sell them at substantial profits Assistant Chief Constable come to last chance at that point but it was a kind of more general question there that's good it gives you more time to think about an answer Mr Cowie be bad who would like to come in first Sandra Holmes I'll happily speak to that I'm very comfortable with how asset transfer is provided for in the act in terms of the point of when it's frozen we need to get a balance here between the opportunities for communities and also just the day-to-day operation of the public authority in terms of managing its asset portfolio which in some cases can be quite an active property market in terms of selling things on and within high we were as part of our consultation or contributing to the consultation process we were keen to put a point to express the need for asset transfer not to interfere with the on-going property market because organisations be it communities or businesses who are seeking to purchase an asset go through a big process and if things then get stymied by a late asset transfer request coming in once the asset has been marketed it has got consequences because asset transfer is there for communities to act at any time the idea is that they could then be proactive and engage with us at an early stage and we would enter into meaningful dialogue and I think the guidance is quite clear that it does encourage communities to come forward at a pre-application stage but clearly asset transfer itself doesn't take effect until you get the full asset transfer request we've also got the community right to buy provisions which are also open for application to public authority assets so there's a range of opportunities there for communities to secure assets but we need to get a balancing act and I'm certainly comfortable with the way that the this is provided for within the legislation Are you on a call when did you want to add anything to that? It's not really my strong point but I think I'm thinking about what Sandra said. No no it's the bit between the operational business and the ability to dispose of estate and also to look at opportunities and I suppose what I'm thinking is that we are working very much proactively with our local communities to identify need and you would hope that that would then grow naturally from that work rather than something that suddenly came out of the blue in terms of a request for a community asset transfer. And it might be very different for health and social care partners if you're actually owning the assets. It's a partnership after all Bruce Cailor did you want to add anything? Yeah just to just to say I think part of the responsibility should best with the organisations like ourselves I mentioned earlier on about certain assets might appear to be unused for example pieces of land that they might be reserved for some future strategic transport use a new rail line new road whatever it may may be so I think there should be a responsibility in organisations like ourselves to be absolutely clear when we're putting the information in the website or people are looking up a particular asset or checking what an organisation has available to be clear about what the future potential uses of that may be and also the statutory basis for that is it included in a local development plan is it included in the strategic development plan our regional transport strategy etc so I think there is I wouldn't pretend to be an expert in property transactions but I think there is an opportunity so that communities when they are bodies are looking at perhaps looking at our assets they can see clearly that this may be available may look available just now but there is a potential future use for a strategic transport reason. Richard Davidson Yeah nothing much to add but I think I think we would certainly agree that the regulations are right in terms of freezing the asset at that particular point but I think there's quite a lot of this as about providing support to communities in developing their ideas and proposals and certainly when we have supported community land buyouts and say the outer hebrides we have provided quite a lot of environmental advice to help with those community bodies to generate good quality business plans to oversee the transfer of the assets so I think we have to build that up and I think the other element is around openness and transparency you know this shouldn't really be a closed process you know up to the point where the former request is made and I think I think I think it was Richard Shaw at your evidence session last week was calling for more of that you know sort of openness and transparency and I think that that for us would be the way forward. Okay and oh Sandra Holmes do you want to come just a brief comment we're actually involved in a live case at the moment where we're seeking to dispose of a commercial asset and I think this is where the sort of public authorities can go beyond what's in the legislation so within the area where this asset is situated there's a very active community land owning development trust and we have engaged with that development trust to see if they would have any interest in the asset prior to our entering into fair discussions with the transfer so there's things that we can do when we know the community's on the ground we know what their aspirations are we know what the local development plans are so there's some things that we can do where we're actually being proactive which is beyond what would be required of us within the legislation and we certainly have embraced those approaches. Mr Cowie will eventually reach you I'm sure we'll get a full some answer by by now. Beautiful. Does that mean now? Is that the nod? Yes, please. Thank you very much. I'll give you a simple police officer's answer to that from my understanding of the technicalities it's I suppose to answer your timing question I would experience over the last few years is it takes about 12 to 18 months to start off with the thought that a property may be surplus in the consultation going through governance both internally and with the Scottish Police Authority you're then dependent on market conditions and that can take a few months or it can take 18 months two years so the whole process is quite elongated so actually the guidance talking around freezing something is not particularly hard to bear around that so that's hopefully the timing question answered. The other one around the the I suppose it's the best value aspect I don't want to talk about specific examples but perhaps two kind of general comments there we're going through the thinking that some of our surplus estate we could get a certain amount back into the public person capital receipt if we sell it as is ie an old building that hasn't been used for two or three years and the developer then buys it knocks it down gets planning consent for a shopping mall and reaps a huge dividend out of that whereas actually with a small bit of investment if we got the planning permission as police service and an SPA then actually the market value of it would be significantly higher so the public purse would benefit more from there. The other aspect of that is in selling huge capital assets and I have to be careful because some of them are still under kind of the negotiation discussion but they're well known around that is a condition of sale is that if the developer buys this massive property and makes a huge profit selling it on within a certain period of time some of that has to come back to the public purse so it's more a general comment around that and I suppose translating that into asset transfer requests it would be about the case would be made by the community body to say that there's public benefit to doing this and taking a lower bid than possibly comes in from a private individual or a company but it also has to be you know in a couple of years time if it's sold for it significantly more where has that public benefit gone and it would just be kind of following that thinking through that we were consistent with that public benefit aspect it's not sought to be you know we're going to use this as a way to say no to everything absolutely not but just want to make sure that the rationale is defensible for any sale. I think it does need a bit more exploring just in terms of how that would work with illegal clauses that you mentioned for community groups and if it's actually sold to them how then they would be paying it back who they would be paying it back to if they later sold it on I think that perhaps needs a bit more thinking about. I'm also concerned about the leasing but we also had if I may convener we had some evidence saying that this whole process might in the asset transfer situation might make leasing more complicated than it is just now would you have any views on that? Complicated in the sense that obviously the lease is between parties who's at least from and to who's applying for it who's actually holds the lease so largely that wouldn't be a police Scotland or SBA. We lease properties off other people so it would just need to be clear in our asset register to community groups that actually there's no point in putting time and effort into a bid to lease something that we don't actually own. Two further questions from members on asset transfer and can I just say to Smygwyr what we are going to move on to planning in a moment I promise you but in the meantime Graham Simpson. Thanks very very quick so we took some evidence last week which basically said that if a public body isn't as engaged as Highlands and Islands Enterprise in this they could quite easily wriggle out of asset transfer requests. Would you agree with that and a sort of follow-up question? It kind of goes from what Elaine was saying and she was suggesting that bodies could make profits but what if it fails? Who then takes on the asset if a community body has taken it on and the whole thing collapses? I see Mr Kylo and Mr Davidson scribbling away furiously whilst that question has been asked on a new general would want to come in first perhaps? I'm just remaining myself so I didn't lose track of the question convener. I think the spirit of the legislation is something that the public bodies have to enter into. I've said earlier on about the cross boundary nature of transport the strategic nature as we're all aware of the long term nature of some of the infrastructure projects that we do so I think there has to be an acknowledgement that we will be keeping an eye on our assets also other agencies assets councils etc for long term future infrastructure requirements for the transport network that could lead to potential difficulties if they were transferred to community transport bodies. I don't think the spirit of the legislation is there for public bodies to to wrigol out of it. I think it has to be the responsibility in the organisation as other panel members have said about being transparent about being open about being clear on your website or whatever you publish this information that you may have a future use for it or another agency may have a future use for it transport Scotland councils etc from a transport point of view network rail etc so I think that that has to be the the spirit in which we would we would enter into and being as upfront as we as we possibly could as we generally try to do with regards to the community bodies when it when it works and if they make a profit that's that's for other people to talk about but if it fails I think this is something that has we've discussed before you know does the responsibility fall back on the agency who sold it to them does it fall back in the local council and obviously in the current financial climate for local government things are particularly challenging but I think that's again something that notwithstanding the resource implications of that in terms of staff I think as long as there's a good communication between the the organisations and a clear monitoring of the use of that asset by the community body who's bought the or taking control of the asset then that that should work I think it's very much a wait and see for some of this and we'll just have to have to look for that in the future Mr Davidson yes I could see you know that argument by wriggling out but I think in practice there's at least a couple of things one is the policy presumption if you like behind the legislation is pretty clear that this is in support of community empowerment um and make it happen um we would very much see community empowerment in terms of sort of asset transfer as being a force for good rather than a negative uh because we want to see more communities looking after the environment throughout throughout scotland um I think where where there where there might be a little bit of an issue is around how an asset transfer request is actually assessed you know in terms of you know the the criteria that are used you know in our case it's hard to think of an example where we would say no but for example if a community wanted to to buy a piece of land in a nature reserve that was about planting a lot of trees that was their long-term use which would otherwise sort of ruin why it is a nature reserve then that might be a legitimate reason to say in this form you know it's not doable but I wouldn't class that as wriggling out that's an honest assessment of what the implications are for why that land is an asset in the first place any other don't you compelled if you don't have a particular view on it any particular comments Sandra Holmes I'll just be brief and in terms of wriggling out I think the default position is to agree to the request unless you've got justified reasons not to so it's an open and transparent process and there's also a very robust appeals process built into the legislation so if the community organisation isn't satisfied either because they've been rejected or they can't they don't agree with the terms and conditions that the assets being offered by the local the public authority that they can appeal that in terms of what happens if it goes into community ownership and then the community ownership organisation suffers some form of failure I think it's important to realise and accept that failure will happen it hasn't been a regular occurrence in terms of community asset ownership projects but in terms of what would happen to the assets it really depends on how the organisation is it's governing documents how it's constituted and normally what would happen once all the liabilities are dealt with depending on what's in the constitution it would usually be that the asset would transfer to a similar organisation and depending if the organisation's been set up to comply with various parts of the land reform act ministers would have a role in determining what that organisation might be so it's no different to any other organisation that they'll have the solution clauses and the assets would have to be accounted for but it isn't a regular occurrence but it's not to say it doesn't happen Any additional comments from witnesses in that? Mr Simpson do you want to follow up on any of that? What if there isn't a similar organisation to step in? Opposition depending on how the organisation is set up that it could fall back to Scottish ministers I've solved the cast more information about the way we have them here The final question on asset transfer even if you then provoke lots of other questions from members so we can move on to something else Andy Whiteman Thank you convener. Just a brief question on registers of land under 6 and 94 you have a duty to publish to establish and maintain a register of land I'm just wondering if everyone's on time for that for the 23rd of January and if there are any issues around that and secondly a very specific question for Helen's Nails Enterprise you have a large area of land the Cairngormas state which you leased to a company called Natural Retreats since 2014 I'm wondering in that context was there any attempt to do an asset transfer or not? So we'll answer that question last perhaps was the same we did with Mr Cowie but a more general question about register of land Richard Davidson yes back for completing that okay yes Bruce Kylo yes um just for the record I see nodding heads I think Iona it might not be your organisation because you don't hold well just that I am also director of the health board and and of the council so the answer is yes we're both I would expect yes depending what hat your wearing answer says yeah unless it's the IGIB hat in which the answer is it's nothing to do with me right okay that's helpful Andy Cowie yes on track with that yeah sorry Sandra Holmes I thought you'd have more time to to craft an answer will you miss Holmes yes I wasn't close to this Mr Whiteman but the the land that we've got at Cairngorm also includes the the funicular and we're quite a localised organisation that we've got local area teams and our local area team will have engaged with the local community from memory I don't think there was any desire from within the community to get involved in that process in terms of taking on the asset and delivering it but I with this I'll just check that and come back to you with more detail Mr Whiteman anything in addition to that the very patient with my guire good morning everyone I'd like to hear a bit about part two now the community planning aspect of things and firstly say that I welcome there's going to be a specific focus on tackling inequality and I guess that that will sit more comfortably with some organisations and others so I'd be keen to hear your thoughts on that. The other bit I'd like to hear from you on is that CPPs will be at quite different places around the country I imagine and there may still be a need for a bit of a culture change within some so it was just to hear your reflections on whether there was a need for more clarity around accountability and performance amongst partners within the CPP. Okay who'd like to start us off in that Mr Davidson you're making eye contact with me at the wrong time. In terms of inequalities you might think Scottish Natural Heritage particularly urban community planning partnerships where a lot of inequalities do exist why would we wish to be involved but we see urban populations and improving access to good quality nature and green space as being vitally important to reducing some of the inequalities for example around around health and physical activity for example so we very much welcome sort of the focus on inequalities you know it's not without challenges for an organisation like SNH you know where a lot of our staff resource and funding is out with urban areas but we are sort of moving towards for example our ERDF green infrastructure project which is looking at ways of improving the quality of green space in some of the poorer sections areas of Scotland. In terms of existing community planning partnerships although we haven't been a statutory community planning partner for until you know this new act coming in we have recognised for a long time the value of getting involved in community planning partnerships and trying to put the environment into their thinking their agendas their priorities you know so basically showing how your nature can help deliver health benefits so it's not necessarily about getting an environmental outcome into your a loyp or a locality plan or whatever or a single outcome agreement to date even without being a statutory partner we have been engaged to a greater or lesser extent through groups or even full membership of community planning partnership boards with about 15 community planning partnerships out of the 32 you know so over a period of time we would expect that to steadily increase as the as the governance core of the community planning partnership started to bring in what are now statutory community planning partners and so we stand ready to support that. Bruce Kylo, did you want to add anything? Thanks convener I think it's very much accepted now that the transport can play one of the main roles in tackling inequality and ensuring that the most deprived areas of our communities can have the same access to opportunities as others and that's something that we in SPT are continually focused on particularly when bus services may be withdrawn there's no services after six o'clock or at the weekend so that's something that we are focused on and that can sometimes be very a very local issue but it also can have an impact on the much wider transport network so again I just make a plea really that the understanding of the strategic regional nature cross boundary nature of transport is there just like inequality it doesn't observe local authority boundaries or wards or whatever the locality areas that we're talking about I'm guided that there's around about 30 local outcome improvement areas across six councils so far in the west of Scotland I think we'd be looking convener at providing a very much original response to some of that just so that people can get the bigger picture of what's happening in their wider area as well as specifically in the local area I think from our point of view with regards to community planning I think like anything there's always an opportunity for greater transparency greater accountability but we've benefited from community planning I was talking with Iona earlier on that there's dialogue going on between our organisations about improving transport access to healthcare in her area and that's the type of thing that comes out of community planning as long as it's followed up and there's a formal process just to make sure that that action is taken forward you'll also be aware that one of our big things is over the last two or three years has been the west of Scotland community transport network hugely useful way of adding to the transport network particularly for those deprived areas very much community led and something that we've been able to promote and really sell at the community planning partnerships across the west of Scotland the west of Scotland community transport network is the first of its kind in Scotland and it sets the standard that we expect expect from community transport operators and allows us to invest in them so there's huge opportunities that have come out of community planning that I think we could build on for the future and we most certainly will try to do that. Iona would you like to add anything just for your name check? It's a good example I think in terms of I really welcome this I keep going to call you councillor McGuire Ruth because I think it's in health and social care often what we're dealing with is not trying to teach granny to suck eggs here but often what we're dealing with is the consequence of inequalities and I think one of the things that we're doing and working with the IJB and in partnership with community planning is highlighting the consequences of those inequalities for our communities in which in an area like North Ayrshire or East Ayrshire or even South Ayrshire are quite different in each of our communities and we have an area for example where one part of the community is relatively well off but lives longer and another part of our area where basically people suffer ill health for long periods of time and that has meant that the demand on health and social care is phenomenal and the increase in demand that we've seen over the last couple of years has been really quite remarkable and part of that is as we work through in terms of the community planning partnership and looking at what we can do is about unearthing that and showing it for what it is and then working with other community planning partners to say what are you going to do about it because this is not just about health and social care responses actually it's about transport actually it's about people getting jobs because we know that when people get jobs that apart from we do have an issue with low income clearly but when people generally when people get jobs then their health and their well-being improves and the health and well-being of their children improves actually it's about childcare it's about education it's about attainment and it's about all of those things and so in North Ayrshire we've developed what we're calling fair for all which is a health which is an inequality strategy which actually puts the demands on all the community planning partnerships to look at those issues through the issues that we have through the inequalities lens to say is this going to make it better or worse for people are we going to improve situation for people who are the worst off and who are most excluded across the area and how do we actually try in an area which has suffered badly through the recession how are we actually trying to shift the position that we need to shift for those people who are experiencing the worst of the inequalities gap thank you Sandra Holmes you want to add anything in relation to just to say that the inclusion agenda is very relevant to the work of high and for us it's often looking at disparity of opportunity across our region and looking at our more remote rural communities often inequality is a multitude of factors and it's very deep rooted and as we mentioned previously you know these are issues that we can't overcome in isolation this is where community planning can make a big difference focusing on inequalities high doesn't tend to engage with individuals or service users that are at an extreme risk but we contribute to the wider environment to try and create better opportunities through employment through social enterprise etc to provide wider opportunities to help bring people out of disadvantage Andy Corry yeah just uh i'll echo Sandra's comments obviously being responsible for policing from Perth north i'll have a perspective which reflects that rural deprivation can be different from urban deprivation but just equally impactful and that's one of the challenges i suppose as we take forward locality planning in that the definition in the act about 30 000 people kind of is a difficult one so if you take a shetland example their locality that they feel is the the most unequal and poor outcomes are the more remote islands within shetland but they nowhere near get 30 000 people but they still feel that they should be using the principles of the act to address that so the vulnerabilities focus of police scotland moving forward will very much pick up and emphasize that outcomes and inequalities piece because 80 percent of our calls are not crime related they're about vulnerability whether they're missing people mental health or repeat victimisation so that's very much in our sights around that vulnerability and inequality bit and the second part of your question if i recall it correctly was around accountability as you'll expect within a hierarchical organisation accountability is one of our kind of watchwords and if i can anchor it maybe around the example in Perth and Cunross they've identified five localities within the community planning partnership the renamed the local community planning partnership is an action partnership just to focus everybody's mind on what's actually about is action not just talking around it and one of our local chief inspectors she's responsible for chairing one of the action partnerships so not just a police only function right across the board so they're working with the community choices fund which is obviously funded from yourselves uh matched by the local authority so they're doing all the participatory budgeting piece and they also have our locality team so we have identifiable officers from constable sergeant inspector etc all accountable and named around taking forward some of those actions so it's developmental for our staff but it's also we think that's where our organisational effort and energy should be focused in delivering and that's just one example we could give you very many more across scotland thank you for for those answers i just want to come back to the rest of the panel on that point of accountability and performance and hear if they think there's need for a bit of clarity around that because it's good to hear that everyone is working well and hear the good examples of where it is working and making a difference but do you think on that specific point there's more needed or are you comfortable that the public would be content with with the arrangements as they are seeing you'll work together are you on a call well the outcome for improving inequality sits with the health and social care partnerships and it's a national outcome against which we are measured and it's always been one that's troubled me somewhat because of what i said earlier which is that whilst there are some things we can do through health and social care and particularly through health if we think about health improvement type activity it very much needs to be done with the rest of the public bodies and so i think that we're looking at how we line up those outcomes in relation to the loyp so that we make sure that actually that outcome from my point of view in terms of improving inequalities actually sits with the wider community planning partnership as well as with health and social care not that i'm trying to duck the outcome because i'm not but it is i know that you know more jobs in North Ayrshire will make more difference than more healthcare we know that but it's it does need to be i think very clear in terms of the focus and it's not an easy area to tackle either because the research is kind of mixed there are there are areas where we know that if we take certain action we will make a difference and it's very much about that and i think that's been the focus in North Ayrshire and i think in East Ayrshire as well in terms of looking at where did you make a difference so some of it is transport so what we do with our roads what we do with transport all of that does actually has been proven to to make a difference in terms of the inequalities agenda and i've obviously mentioned jobs but and the position of particularly of women and the issue around childcare which obviously government is trying to tackle just now as well obviously does make a difference so for me that i welcome that fact that we will all have some responsibility in terms of incorporation of some of these wide of of some of the individual outcomes into the wider outcomes for the community planning partnership and i lona colvin happily signed posting but is kylo during that answer i wonder what the comment relation to accountability yeah absolutely um convener i think that there's the need to do that is is never greater considering the amount of resource that that is perhaps less less available now for local government and partners like ourselves and and working with colleagues in like iona and others in health boards and councils we need to maximize the return for our investment if i can say our budget for for example supporting local bus services has remained bodily static for around about the last few years around about 12 million pounds a year still a significant amount of money but we've done various things to try and make that stretch further and we have got the facts and figures now to back up what's happened there i believe our my bus service or demand responsive transport service with over half a million passengers a year easily the most popular drt service in scotland and one of the best in the in the uk and it shows the demand that's out there um but you can see the wider much much wider benefits i think and this is perhaps an area for greater work those people using our my bus service are getting out and about we're going to the shops going to the bingo doing various other things which will be having a huge impact on their mental health and and their their physical health being able to socialize with people that's perhaps an area that could be improved in terms of the impact of of transport i mentioned earlier on the argument that transport is good for for reducing inequality i think that's been one but i think we need to move it to the next stage and start to to look at some of these things the wider impacts of of transport on our communities it is a derived demand people want to go they go to a place to go and do something and how can the work that we do and transport access to healthcare what positive benefit is that having beyond just getting somebody to the place that they're going that's perhaps an area convener that that could be improved in terms of monitoring and accountability and performance okay thank you i'm conscious don't feel the need to but mr davis and and miss holmes hasn't responded in relation to that do you want to add anything um i think the only thing that i would add is um you obviously the benefit if you like of of the changes under the community empowerment act is to broaden the range of organisations that are classed as statutory community planning partners and i think there'll be a sort of a period when sort of existing community planning partnerships come to terms with that and how they sort of bring in these wider partners obviously as i mentioned earlier you know for some community planning partnerships we're already heavily involved but for a number of others we've had very little if any involvement i suppose one of one of the tests from our point of view is how how does that sort of relationship that arrangement change over a period of time but i don't think that needs formal reviews sort of built in i think that'll be picked up over over time how would i sort of sound home as you want to add anything? yes just very briefly i think that community planning is now shared in terms of its responsibility across all partners and clearly supports accountability but also the outcome focused approach community planning partners will have to set out the difference that they intend to achieve at one three in 10 year sort of cycles and and to report in progress towards that so i think that's a very helpful way to help demonstrate accountability in active monitoring and reporting back and then taking step changes to ensure that things are still on track to deliver the outcomes can we maybe just we're coming to the end of our time but there was one question i think we should ask because it was a theme in last week's evidence session and that was around participation requests and there's a a number of questions we can ask in relation to that but we won't because of time but there was a feeling that they have to be there has to be a structure to participation requests but we have to be careful that there's still flexibility in the system because there's lots of groups and organisations already working very well with the organisations here and others and we wouldn't want participation requests to be seen as so rigid they could actually exclude or dissuade folk that already are organisations and community groups that are already in the system from not participating i suppose if you were to be cynical about it not that i am being of course but once you struck that you pierced it once those participation requests are so structured then if you don't follow the rules as rigidly set out then you can actually deny the participation to certain organisations and groups so any comments you have about how body such as your own should handle participation requests and the regulations and guidelines that will be coming into force would be would be welcome because that would tie in with last week's evidence anyone in relation to that. Bruce Kyllwell Thank you, convener. I think that the principle of participation requests is as you're saying is very much difficult to deny but i think from our point of view being a regional organisation i keep bringing up this regional strategic thing just because we do cover 12 council areas we do cover 2.14 million people and for example there's round about 81 active community councils in one local authority area in Glasgow so the concern from our point of view would be the impact of if we were doing a fairly major project you'll be aware of smart card ticketing the subway modernisation etc fairly big projects fast link others that we've been involved in over the years fairly big projects if there was a series of participation requests where it perhaps led to an overwhelming amount coming in from the resource that we've got in terms of staff time to be able to assist those people in doing that and participating in it i think that's where our biggest concern would come in again as i said earlier on with regard to the locality planning we would seek to find a way where we could work with those organisations perhaps on a regional basis through another forum we're very keen that the way that we work just now with local communities both in terms of direct consultation with them for example in relation to the subway modernisation accessibility impacts with disabled people we do try to work with them as best we can in a way that suits them and also suits us and i think the reality of that is something that we'll be trying to put into the participation requests we do engage with local communities all the time just now but we would be fearful i think of an overwhelming amount of participation requests coming in for particular projects and i think we would seek to try and do that on a regional basis okay thank you and before we take the rest of the witnesses this will probably be you might be relieved to hear your last opportunity to make a comment if there's anything else you want to draw to the committee's attention now we have a good time to do it we'll wrap it up in the next few minutes or so so i will take all of you because whether you want to reply to participation requests or not will be your final chance to give a comment to the committee so Richard Davidson i think to a large extent i think this actually increases pressure might not be quite the right word but pressure on public bodies around informal approaches and actually engaging much more with communities around the services that they provide at the end of the day i think well there's part of me that almost thinks that you know if community bodies have to go through the full process of a participation request there's something that might not be quite right in how those services are designed and delivered in the first place so certainly our approach to it is you know is around that sort of being more positive more proactive around that inform length so just to illustrate that with an example you know we're aware that you know we've got you know Scottish Government have asked us to lead the implementation of what's called the root map for the Scottish biodiversity strategy to 2020 and we're aware that you know there's quite a lot of disengagement around biodiversity issues with young people so we've been working with young scott on setting up a national youth advisory panel to guide us on you know on what would work from their point of view what connections to make you're around young people in biodiversity and improving outcomes you know from that work for young people now that hasn't required a formal participation request but it's an example i think of how public organisations have to work more creatively more imaginatively with communities i think just just one final point this goes back a little bit i suppose to the community planning but you know one of the things that we'd be particularly looking for out of community planning is around the place making sorts of approaches so really combining if you like at a local level what is being done through community planning and what is being done through spatial development planning i think there's a real advantage in bringing those closer together thank you maybe andy cowie i think you know evidence from christie shows that the more you involve people in decision making around the service design and delivery the better it is whether it's community resilience dealing with flooding right up to to the routine stuff so we're absolutely keen to do that both externally and also internally with our own staff having come through the trauma of a merger we're now merging from the other side of that driving forward and it's about empowering our staff as well to be more involved with our communities so we already have at constable level people going to community councils to give reports to take feedback and we would see this as just another aspect of that but i suppose picking up that the point from earlier some of the participation requests may come in if a services seem to be failing to deliver outcomes because already it's a fairly broad church around people participating at that local level so we have to be very careful and that's where the accountability comes in in the annual report are we actually delivering that service but not absolutely comfortable we see it as a big opportunity for us as we move forward thank you very much Sandra Holmes in terms of participation requests i think this is an area that high feels we do a lot already but we can always do more we're very connected to our communities we've got a very strong local presence so people can get engaged with somebody at a local level they perhaps know already many of our communities are already very empowered and i think the test for us here will be to see how participation requests can hopefully reach out to some communities that perhaps feel less able to engage in the process but i think the point that you raised about it would be a shame if participation requests made something more complex for us it's all about having constructive dialogue in an approach that's appropriate for the community and that's taking steps to ensure that we make that easy and transparent for them thank you very much and finally iona coven in terms of participation requests i mean i'd love to see that i think you know we're working so well with our communities that that basically will be anticipating all the participation requests but given that this applies to communities of interest as well as geographical communities i think that it is inevitable that there may well be some conflicting views at some point i'm thinking for example that we've just done a we've just done consultation around changes to learning disability services and what you see there is very different views between younger parents of children of young people with learning disability and older parents in terms of the the types of services and the approach that should be taken so i think that it is likely that there will be some disagreements i think the issue for us is how we deal with that as transparently as we can and and that we need to set that out transparently and that everybody needs to feel that their view has been heard for me the bit of work that really we need to do we need to think through quite quickly is the interface between the two pieces of legislation around the public bodies act and that desire to include the people who use and provide health and social care services and the community empowerment act and that for me is something that we probably need to work through quickly in terms of making sure that we merge everything together thank you very much thank you can i thank all our witnesses and i want to call on that particular point time has defeated us just now this afternoon we've just gone to 12 o'clock do contact as if there's more information you want us to have in relation to that indeed that's an offer to all the witnesses as we continue evidence in relation to statutory incidents for the community empowerment act can i just also put on the record before we move into private session that the committee will hear from the minister for local government housing kevin shiwt at its meeting on the 30th of November to consider the statutory incidents further can i thank you again for your attendance this morning and we now move into private session thank you