I welcome to the 16th meeting of 2022 of the Economy and Fair Work Committee. I have received apologies from Gordon MacDonald MSP and John Mason MSP is attending as the committee substitutes. Our first item of business this morning is the final evidence session on our town centres and retail inquiry. I welcome Tom Arthur MSP, Minister for Public Finance, Planning building. Catherine Brown, Head of Retail and Cities Unit, and David Cowan, Head of Regenerations Unit at the Scottish Government. As always, if members and witnesses can keep their questions and answers as concise as possible, I would also ask the minister if he could be as specific as possible in the answers and avoid generalisations. We are at the stage where the committee are considering our recommendations and we do want them to be as relevant and constructive as possible, so I invite the minister to make a short opening statement. Thank you very much, convener, and good morning to the committee. I'm very grateful for the opportunity to participate. As I'm sure the committee will appreciate, we face a challenging time in terms of the real impacts of rising inflation, but post-pandemic we also have a real opportunity to work together to transform our town centres. The inquiry is, indeed, very timely. Our town, city, village and neighbourhood centres are vital to the collective wellbeing of our society, economy and environment. They are part of the solution to the big challenges on economic recovery, climate change, public health inequalities and more. Challenges that have been exacerbated and accelerated by Covid-19, Brexit and the cost of living crisis. A recent response to the review of the town centre action plan recognises that success requires a collaborative approach, working that builds local assets. We need to harness the local energy and pride that people have for their towns and town centres. 59 actions coalesce around themes identified in the review and are designed to help deliver our shared ambitions on net zero, wellbeing economy and enterprise in communities. They demonstrate our shared commitment with local government and their wider partners to support communities and businesses. Our response includes a call to action for all to do their part in rebuilding, re-energising and reimagining our towns, putting the health of our town centres at the heart of decision making. Collaboration and partnership are also the cornerstones for delivering our recently published retail strategy, city centre recovery task force report, the development national planning framework for and the consultation on potential changes to permitted development rights. All of these actions build on and strengthen one another. I take just one of those policies, the retail strategy. Retail is vital to Scotland's communities, society and economy, as was clearly demonstrated during the pandemic. With over 240,000 employed within the sector, it is the largest in Scotland, with a high proportion of female and young workers. However, as you will have heard, the retail sector has seen on-going challenges and change exacerbated by the pandemic. How we shop directly impacts on retail businesses and has implications for our town and city centres. The retail strategy outlines how we will work with businesses and trade unions to deliver a strong, prosperous and vibrant retail sector, which supports our end-set ambition of innovative and productive businesses, regions and communities. As I announced in Parliament, we will establish a new industry leadership group for retail that will drive delivery of the strategy actions, in particular on improving fair work across the sector. I am delighted to confirm that the group will be co-chaired by Andrew Murphy. Andrew is the chief operating officer for the John Lewis partnership and has had a long and successful career in the retail sector. I very much welcome Andrew's insight and expertise in helping to deliver the retail strategy. I will conclude there, but I reiterate my gratitude for the committee for undertaking this inquiry at this time and for the opportunity to discuss these matters this morning. You mentioned a number of reports in your opening statement. The committee is aware that there are a number of strategies around town centres at the moment. We did hear from Professor Lee Sparks in the first session. Although there is broad support for the direction of travel from the Government, there is some concern about the way in which the documents work together, whether they complement each other, whether they have effectively our ministers and Government working so that the strategies are delivered collectively. Do you want to say a bit about how, because you mentioned the retail strategy, the response to the town centres, the national planning framework, there is quite a lot going on. Are they working cohesively? I think that it is a really important point, just for the committee's awareness. I discussed these very matters with Professor Sparks earlier this week. I think that it is an important point. I think that the committee will be aware from having scrutinised these matters in detail that there is consistency across each range of strategies. Fundamentally, it is about a place-based approach. It is about partnership, working and collaboration. It is a recognition that, at the heart of the review of town centres and, indeed, as the principle, we have adopted, is that town centres are for everyone, but everyone has a role to play in making their towns and town centres a success. That partnership work is apparent when you look across a range of strategies. However, there is a point of taking. This is something that has come up in scrutiny of the draft national planning framework. Is there a need to be more explicit and to communicate more clearly where those links are to allow ease of use so that stakeholders can have that confidence and understanding that there is a joined-up approach? One of the things that I undertook to do in response to the Parliament's scrutiny of the draft NPF4 is to reflect on how we can make through the delivery plan for NPF4 those links more clear. One of the things that I have had in discussion with Professor Sparks in Scotland's town partnership is that there are potential products that can be developed, lines of narrative and communication to help me to make those links more explicit. That is an important point that I am reflecting on. I think that implicitly there are connections right across the review of the retail strategy, draft national planning framework 4, housing 2040 and the town centre action plan 2. Those links are very much apparent about collaboration, a place-based approach and the importance of community wealth building. However, I take the point that there is a need to perhaps make me to links more explicit and clear and that is something that I am determined to do. There have been some concerns around capacity as well. If there is a lack of policy coherence or an understanding of what the priorities are, we have heard about a shortage of planners who will be well aware of the pressures that are on planning departments, capacity for communities and being able to pursue a lot of the ambitions that they have for their communities. It is quite an ambitious programme that has been brought forward. How can you talk about partnership? How can you ensure that there is enough capacity within partners to deliver on the programmes? Again, that is a really important point. I was clear when I made a statement to Parliament on draft NPF 4, specifically on resourcing and planning. That would be a priority. Those documents and strategies are nothing if they are not delivered in action on the ground. For example, what we are doing around planners, I have to respect the autonomy of local government to decide how it allocates its resources. Early action that we have taken is from April of this year. Planning fees have increased. There is evidence that that is feeding in to increased resources for planning departments across the country. For example, I am sure that you will be familiar with convener in Fife. There have been a number of planning positions advertised by the local authority there. I am aware that there are other local authorities looking at how they can use the resources gained by the increase in planning fees to enable them to provide additional capacity within their departments. Other important piece of work is through the high-level group in planning performance. We provide support for hops and RTPI to do a bit of work on a future planner project. That report has been received. I am not aware yet if hops have published it, but I understand that it will be published. We are going to work very closely through the high-level group to look at ways in which we can action that. That is about increasing the number of people coming into the planning profession and ensuring that we are able to retain those who are already within planning as well. In terms of resourcing, we have taken early action on planning fees. I am committed to working with the high-level group to look towards full-cost recovery. That is a complex issue, as the committee will be aware, but it is something that through partnership working, we are endeavouring to progress. On the issue of recruitment and retention, we have supported RTPI in hopes to do that work on future planners and we are having continued discussions about how we can action some of the proposals that have been put forward from that report. I will ask a quick question about retail workforce for a handover to Fiona Hyslop. We had a session on the retail sector. We heard from Close the Gap. There were some questions raised about the retail strategy and about the recognition of the change in workforce. The example that they use is that we see a reduction in front-of-shop staff, which tends to be female-dominated employment and an increase in logistics, whether that is within warehouses or those type of work that is mainly male-dominated. Those are also better-paid jobs. As we see a shift in the workplace, how can we ensure that the existing workforce and women, in particular, have opportunities in the new way in which retail is being delivered? I was some concern that the retail strategy did not really reflect those kind of challenges. There are two points in the retail strategy. One of our first priorities, indeed it will be the first priority, is to develop a fair work agreement. As the committee will appreciate, powers over employment law are reserved, so there is no way in which to mandate or force through legislation matters regarding to fair work. We simply do not have that power within the Parliament, so we take a range of measures across a range of areas, for example, through fair work first. One of the commitments and endsets is to progress sexual fair work agreements. I think that they were talking more about skills, opportunities for skills training. I am going to come on to that, because one of the key aspects of fair work is the opportunity for progression and effective worker voice, so ensuring that employers understand the concerns of workers that can be about skills. I am going to come specifically to the skills action in a moment, but also the opportunity for progression within the workplace environment. The fair work agreement is going to be an early priority of the ILG, and I have had very constructive engagement recently with Tracy Gilbert at BuzzDot. The second point, and I think that this responds more specifically to the matter that you raise, is that we have a commitment to a skills audit and action plan. That is something that we are going to progress through the industry leadership group, and that will be done through engagement with Skills Development Scotland, Scottish Funding Council and other partners. I am very alive to the fact that retail is changing, and it is broadly more reflective of the reality of the workforce that jobs that appear in 10 years might become obsolescent in 30 years. People within their working lives are going to experience a need to continually professionally develop the idea that you can walk into a yard at 16 years in apprenticeship and be doing the same job when you are 65. For most professions, there is no longer the case, and that is applicable to retail as well, so that is going to change. That is why the skills audit and action plan is one of the key strategic commitments in the strategy that will be taken forward by the ILG. Do we have a timescale for the skills audit and action plan? I think that that was a commitment, if I am correct, from Ron Caffer in the first one to two years. We are looking at developing that. In the draft delivery plan that we published alongside the strategy, the indicative timescale was one to two years. We committed, in the retail strategy publication, to agree a final delivery plan with the industry leadership group once it is established. That is still to be worked through the fine detail of that. I want to cover development of properties. It is clear that absentee landlords are a real problem in the development of town centres. The status quo for locating them—many of them live internationally or based internationally if they can find them—recovery of our engagement is very difficult. The status quo is not working in tackling the problem of absentee landlords. What is the Government doing and what can it do to improve that situation so that we can develop properties that are owned by absentee landlords? That is a problem that we all recognise in all of our constituencies and regions. There are two things that we are doing. The first and the most immediate is the devolution of empty property relief to local government. That will take place from April next year. The second is that we have a programme for government commitment to reform of compulsory purchase orders and to look at compulsory sales orders. That is a committee that will appreciate. It is a very complex piece of work and it will require time. I understand the need for pace and urgency, but I am sure that the committee will appreciate that. We need to get that right. That is a commitment for later on in this session that we will be looking to bring forward legislation to reform CPO. More generally, in terms of looking at the viability and attractiveness for property owners to use properties to rent them out, I recognise that there was evidence that the committee took on processes that involve change of use class. We are actively consulting on that at the moment in phase 2 of the Permitted Development Rights review. That is a live consultation, which we opened last month and continues until August. That looks at, for example, use class orders, simplifying that process, and aspects around permitted development rights. On the fundamental issue of tackling what you have described as absentee landlords, that is something that we are, as I say, the immediate action of devolution of property relief and reform of CPO and looking at CSO. Those are all very good if you can find the landlord. Is there anything that can be done in terms of the registration of landlords to improve that, so that they can be a better registration so that they can be located in the first place? That is a fair point, but there are particular challenges there. It is something that I am happy to reflect on about what more we can do. I do not represent anything that you want to comment on, David. Not really. That has been attempted before the registration of landlords, and it has not taken us very far. I think that the empty property relief is the one that we are watching most for now. I would say that we also work with, pardon me, partners, and Scotland's town's partnership is working with local authorities, and we are very much trying to help to build dialogue with pension funds and the like, so that it is much more positive conversations. I think that the market itself is starting to shift, to be frank. People are looking at the police properties as assets any longer. They are going to generate income into the long-term if things continue as they are. We are seeing a lot more people who otherwise would not have engaged, landlords who would not have started to engage in and around town centres because they want to see what more can be done to turn those back into assets again rather than liabilities as they are becoming. I think as well that landlords' attitudes are going to be reflected by market conditions and what they see as opportunities. I appreciate that the issue around CPO, CSO is more of a stick, but the carrot is also more attractive to town centres and city centres. The more opportunities that they present, the more attractive they are going to be for existing landlords to make use of their properties, whether that be in retail, residential and conversion or to sell-on. That sounds a bit like wishful thinking that the market will resolve, but we might come back to that with you in our report, minister. On the development of shops and the units above shops, particularly for housing, the costs for that are particularly prohibitive for private enterprise, the retrofit costs, improving accessibility. There is a desire to have more people living in town centres and, for example, to order people in terms of social mix and single households. However, what can the Scottish Government do to incentivise social landlords to take on those properties and to provide good-quality mixed tenure in our town centres? What are you doing differently to make that work? There are two points that would make one arm, which is partial relative to the commitment in housing in 2020-40, with regards to the empty homes audit. That is under way at the moment and should be completed by early next year, after which consideration will be given to next further actions, including funding. The second point is in regard to the planning system. We have within the consultation on permitted development rights, we are seeking views on, for example, residential conversions being included within that. It is not something that I have to say that I think there is strong stakeholder support for, but we are keen to take views because another aspect of that is the key powers within the planning act on master plan consent areas, which can affect and allow planning authorities to create planning regimes that are bespoke to specific areas within their planning authority to perhaps simplify planning processes. In terms of looking at funding issues, we are doing that through the empty homes audit and funding that it can come at potentially after that. On regulatory matters, there is the permitted development rights consultation that we are doing, and there is a commitment to bring forward the master plan consent provisions within the planning act. In funding, in data gathering and analysis, that works under way. The next step from that will be to look at funding, and on regulatory matters, i.e. the planning system, we are actively consulting on that at the moment with the commitment to bring forward the provisions that I outlined. Is there obviously a particular issue around how do you incentivise funding for town centre housing development? Looking at the city centre task force report, there were nine specific proposals for housing in city centres, which was in far more detail than what was proposed in the TCAP 2, the town centre action plan 2, and the housing aspects of the Scottish Government's town centre report seemed quite light compared to the city centre task force report. Clearly, your responsibilities are in relation to planning public finance, community wealth, and the cabinet secretary on housing and social justice is a lead on housing, but there does not seem to be as strong a read across for incentivising town centre housing development in your plans as were published in the city centre plans. Is there something that we can do to make sure that those financial incentives that will be absolutely required to enable town centre housing development to be established? Can you try to make sure that there is a more joined-up approach so that you can mobilise the housing investment that is clearly available for a city centre, but you need to get it into town centre development as well? I would also point to the provisions in the draft national planning framework. I am conscious of that as a draft document in public consultation in parliamentary scrutiny, so I do not want to get into that in too much detail. However, the direction of travel or air around compact design in 20-minute neighbourhoods limiting out of town development town centre first approach is all there. We already have the guidance for local housing strategy and local authorities to demonstrate how we are using the town centre first principle. Indeed, with the ships as well, there is updated guidance to be published shortly, and that will ask local authorities to include a summary of investment priorities for housing in town centres. In local housing strategies and strategic housing investment plans in NPF4, across a range of areas, to complement my earlier points on the empty homes audit and PDR master plan consent areas, there is alignment on that. Across those various areas, it speaks to the point that you make around the need to increase the density of population within town centres. Fundamental, the key to realising ambitions for town centres and city centres is more people living there. Is that density of population that is required to sustain commerce within town and city centres? We recognise that as an absolute priority, but it also comes to a point—I know that you made previously in a session, Ms Hyslop—that is moving away from the deficit model to looking at opportunity. What can town centres and city centres do? Are there solutions to so many of our problems? Having more people living in town centres is an absolute necessity, for example, to realise the ambition of 20-minute neighbourhoods, which, again, is going to be essential for meeting our ambitions around greenhouse gas emission reduction. The NPF4 and the planning framework are absolutely critical for a whole variety of reasons, but it does not come with an enormous big funding pot, as far as I am aware. The issue that I am raising is how can we mobilise the resources that are available in the housing budget to be mobilised into town centre living, particularly because we know that it is more costly to build in town centres than it is on greenfield sites, so we are going to have to find some incentivisation. I recognise that point. Obviously, it is important to be clear that NPF4 is not a capital spend document. In the delivery plan, there is an existing range of capital spend programmes, infrastructure and investment, and housing 24 contains aspects of that. When we publish the delivery plan alongside the final NPF4 for Parliament to consider, that will bring a lot of that together. Ultimately, development is not just about the public sector investment, but the private sector as well, which has an enormous role to play in that area. The delivery plan that we publish alongside NPF4 will help to demonstrate that co-ordinated approach that the committee is asking for. We would be interested in funding as well, minister, but I will pass back to the convener. Just following up on the issue of empty buildings, we know that there are more and more of these in our town centres. It is fair to say that some local councils who gave evidence do not think that they have enough powers to deal with that problem, and you have referred to the review of powers relating to compulsory purchase. Others say that they do have the powers, but they just do not have the resources, whether that is staffing or the funding to maybe carry out repairs to buildings that they then have to chase the landlord to get that money back, often, as we have heard, an absent landlord. What is the Government's take on it? Why is there so many derelict buildings in our town centres where action is not being taken to bring them back into a usable state? I think that you appreciate that the causes are multifaceted and the response has to be multifaceted, fundamentally underlying the condition of our town centres. It is important to remember that there are some great examples of town centres that are thriving in Scotland, but each town centre is unique. Each is different, and each has a different set of assets in what is to build. Ultimately, the dynamic of our town centres is a reflection of the underlying economy, not just in terms of the total value of the economy, but how it operates. There was a point that Professor Sparks made in his evidence to the committee, which is, I think, along the lines of, that actions of the last 50 years have cumulatively done harm to our town centres, and it will take time to undo that. There are specific interventions that we can discuss, and I think that I have covered much of that in previous answers, be that around CPO reforms, CSO, PDR, master plan consent areas, changes to national planning policy. I think that the key is the underlying economic model, and I think that that is where community wealth building is so vitally important, moving away from an extractive model to a model that sees more wealth retained within communities, more democratic ownership of businesses, so more pluralistic models, so that the owners of businesses are rooted within their communities, an actual economic manifestation of a place-based approach. I think that that is how we get to a sustained place. In terms of the support for local authorities, I already touched on the increase in planning fees, which is feeding through in some local authorities to an increase in the number of people working within planning departments, so that will help to address that issue. I have already touched upon the work around recruitment and retention, so there is work that we are taking forward, but, ultimately, in terms of how local authorities choose to resource their various departments, that is a matter in quite properly for the democratically elected members and local authorities to take forward. I do not know if there is anything that you would like to add to that, David. I suppose that when it comes to vacant buildings, pardon me, this was an issue that we heard in the first review as well. I would say that some progress has been made. Funding has been made available through the Scottish Government, either through town centre funding. Currently, we have the vacant and derelict land investment programme and we have a place-based investment programme, which local authorities get an allocation. What we are seeing is that local authorities are using that money to tackle vacant buildings in certain circumstances. What about those examples where you have to have the landlord working with you in order to make that happen? There are good examples of that, probably not enough funding but good examples of that, but what about when the landlord, frankly, is doing very little? It seems that the feedback that we have is that the council could only take action when that building is dangerous. If there are no windows and there are trees growing through the front of the building and it is in a dreadful state and nobody is going to touch it at the moment, the council cannot do a lot about that. Surely we have to look at the powers that I will say to councils. You need to intervene now. That market failure that the minister talks about you need to intervene now and get the landlord to bring that into a proper state. I would quickly answer that. I totally agree. All the circumstances are different, so you have to find the conversations where there is a willing landlord to join in with what the town centre is trying to do and invest in that themselves if they are not willing to do that and then to see if there is an opportunity to do that as a willing transaction in the first instance. If they are not willing then the minister has already mentioned compulsory purchase orders, which many local authorities do use to take that action. We know that there are still many gaps and there are still many problems, but many local authorities are using CPLs to do stuff in town centres. The challenge that we have had is that that is quite a radical approach for a building system in a poor state. What councils really need is the power to intervene and say that you bring that up into a usable standard to the landlord rather than the taxpayer to buy the whole building itself in a town centre where there is a market failure, so why would the council suddenly want to show up in the high street? That is obviously an issue that the committee will cover. On the issue of resources, we heard from the enterprise networks during the reverence session in South of Scotland Enterprise, and the Hounds and Hounds Enterprise have a particular focus on that place-based approach, so the type of funding to bring those buildings into a proper use is coming from South of Scotland Enterprise, for example, in Dumfries and Highlands and Islands Enterprise. However, if you are a building and an owner in air, for example, you do not have that same support because Scottish Enterprise has a different remit, is that a fair reflection of the circumstances that we face? Please correct me if I misunderstood your question. In regard to the funding that is available, it is available on a place-based investment programme that is vacant in Delacland and Thruman programme. That is the funding that is available to all 32 local authorities across Scotland. We had a lot of projects that South of Scotland Enterprise and Hounds and Highlands Enterprise took a particular emphasis on that place-based approach, so over and above the central funding from Government, you have support coming from the Enterprise agencies for projects in their areas, that you do not have coming from Scottish Enterprise in the areas that South of Scotland and Highlands and Islands do not cover. That is a point that I am happy to take away and reflect on, but I would need to see some specific examples and specific details to understand the point that you are making in some more detail. I would say that Highlands and Islands Enterprise has always had a community and place focus when it was established responding to the circumstances of that geography, so it was different to South of Scotland Enterprise very much modelled itself on the HIE model, very much again put in place in community at its heart looking at that geography, so they tend to get more involved in those local community-led projects. Scottish Enterprise has a different remit, so that will be why there is a different response in those areas. I am sure that the committee will pick up on that that different remit does mean that we do appear to have a gap in those areas not covered by South of Scotland Enterprise and Hounds and Highlands Enterprise because they have that social remit, which means that a project in the town centre and the mid-stable project that we visited, for example, does get support from South of Scotland Enterprise. If that project was in air, it wouldn't get support from Scottish Enterprise because they have a very different remit. There are a couple of areas that I would like to develop with you. The first is about business rates. We have heard a lot about business rates and the evidence and how it is a disincentive for town centre regeneration because of the higher rates that are applicable to the town centre sites as opposed to sites that might be out of town. Do you agree that there should be a wholesale reform in order to link value to its holding back investment to the tax regime supporting positive outcomes for town centres and the environment? The first thing that we need to recognise is the reforms that were already under way. We had the Barclay review that was reported a few years back and some of the final recommendations will not come into effect until next year. We recently had the report from Fraser of Alder Institute on the small business bonus scheme and one of the issues that it identified was around data. We are establishing the process of establishing a short-life working group to look specifically at those recommendations. We are taking further action, for example, around, as I mentioned earlier, the devolution of empty property relief. As for the call for a full-scale reform, I would note that beyond Barclay, the UK Government recently had a review of non-domestic rates in England and, ultimately, what that review landed on was, effectively, what we have already introduced, for example, moving from five-year to three-year valuation cycles. Indeed, they still have a two-year tone date, whereas we are going to a one-year tone date to ensure that that revaluation is as reflective of prevailing market conditions as possible. In the context of a revaluation in 2023 and given the experience of the last few years, what my understanding is of what is very important to the sector, because, as my member mentioned, non-domestic rates impact hugely and widely across a range of different sectors, is the need for stability. The immediate priority will be the completion of the implementation of the Barclay reforms, the short-life working group to consider the Fraser of Allander Institute report, and beyond that, any considerations, beyond the specific considerations that take place in budget time, would have to be taken in line with our framework for tax, which we published in December last year. As well as the Adam Smith principles, it also includes a principle around engagement, so any changes that would take place to NDR would have to be proceeded by considerable engagement with all sectors and businesses that are impacted by non-domestic rates, which, of course, while very important for our town and city centres, goes far beyond that. I recognise the complexity of non-domestic rates and the calls by a wide number of sectors looking for relief from them. Specifically, if we are looking to regenerate town centres, that seems to be a very high priority to look at. I would simply ask you to take that into consideration when the various reports come back. I am sure that you have on-going engagement with a range of sectors on non-domestic rates. I would add that we provide the most generous package of reliefs anywhere in the UK in total. Since the start of the pandemic, we have totaled £1.6 billion. I think that NDR reliefs this year are estimated to be of a value of £802 million. The small business bonus scheme is estimated to lift 111,000 properties out of non-domestic rates relief together. As I am sure that if any of us were to go on to an assessor's portal and look at the high streets and their constituencies in regions, we would see many, many businesses that benefit from non-domestic rates. It is no surprise that the federation of small businesses has been so clear in its calls for the small business bonus scheme to be maintained and to be conveyed a fact. It is recognised by the Fraser of Ander report that many, many small businesses see that scheme as a immense value to their profitability and viability. Last week, Michelle Thompson and I went to Burnt Island, which is a thriving little high street, which is next to Cercodi. It tells us that businesses in Cercodi want to move to Burnt Island. Burnt Island has the advantages of smaller units, the small business bonus scheme. We had evidence from Llover Langton during the inquiry. Cercodi high street does have a lot of empty units. It is a challenging environment, big units. Part of that is the rate scheme. It is great for a place like Burnt Island, which is a small high street and is thriving and has diverse businesses, but it is not supporting the bigger town centres where we are seeing closures and mismatch units and a high street that is finding it difficult to recover, notwithstanding all the community effort that goes into that. Do you talk about engaging on the non-domestic rates, but is there a timescale attached to that or is that seen as something that needs to be resolved? What I want to say is that I do not want to pre-empt the work of the short-life working group on looking at the specific issue around data, because I think that that is key. We understand all of it that there is not always a direct relationship between rateable value and the performance of a business. That is self-evident. However, the key issue of data, and that was something that the Fraser Vallander report identified, was the lack of data. To have an informed discussion and a more informed engagement around the future of non-domestic rates, we first need to address that issue of data, so although I do not want to pre-empt the work of the short-life working group, I will say that I do not see that as an end, but rather as the beginning of a process, because I recognise that the issues that you have raised, convener. I would like to move on to the second area, which I think is quite important. It is about money. At the end of the day, this whole thing comes down to money and availability of money, and can we generate through the wealth that the country has the ability to carry out these regenerations? Across Scotland, there are many examples that have been shown to us of individual projects that are viable, thriving and delivering to their communities. We have not seen one single all-encompassing regeneration for a town centre in all of that. The parts that we have seen in places such as Dumfries and so on are very capital intensive. The capital has to come from somewhere. There is an assumption that some will come from the private sector, but there seems to be an assumption among many of the community groups that money ultimately will come from the Scottish Government and or the councils, which I think is a wee bit optimistic in terms of the extent that money is going to have to be made available. Let us suppose that somehow we can get the money together to start major regeneration projects in towns across Scotland. Where are the communities in which these regeneration projects are being executed are reasonably well healed, where they have disposable income? Projects and so on seem to thrive much more than in communities where there is less disposable income. If we invest in a wealthier community, it would seem to me that there is a higher propensity for that to succeed. If it is in a more vulnerable area where there is less resources available, where people have less disposable income, that is going to be much more difficult to sustain in the short, medium term at least. How do we make these particular regenerations viable? How do we make them sustainable? It is really among our less well-off communities that we are keen to see these redevelopments come in, because they are the ones that need it most, and yet they may not have the resources within them to sustain them, at least in the short, medium term. How do we make them sustainable? How do we put a plan in place that this can happen? And is the Government prepared to put these additional resources in over and above the capital to keep it ticking over on a year-by-year basis? It is a really important question. I think that it is at the heart of regeneration. If I have understood you correctly, the basic point is that regeneration is a process. It is not an event. It is not about rolling into town a new facility being opened and that is the end of it. What comes after that? If I can give one example from my constituency of Renfisher South, if I was there in a ministerial capacity to officially open a new community centre, Moss Edge Valley Centre, Llynwood will be familiar to everyone on the committee, and we will all be familiar with the history of Llynwood and what happened 40 years ago when the car plant shut and the severe impact it had. Indeed, its name has become synonymous with deindustrialisation in the west of Scotland. That was an area that still faces significant challenges, but a group of local residents, all women, got together in 2009 over the kitchen table and thought, how do we respond to this? They were incredibly frustrated with the state of their town centre in Llynwood. What are we going to do about it? It was interesting because a lot of people in 2009 would have been thinking, how do we respond to the economic catastrophe of the financial crash? We saw what some responses were. They started around the kitchen table and thought, we need to do something for our community. They went from a position where Llynwood had various descriptors applied on it, which were not flattering with the gas to the state of the town centre to now having a redesigned town centre with active participation and engagement from the local community to the opening of a new bespoke community centre and cafe. That new community centre had support from the Scottish Government totaling £1.4 million, but I think that the total investment—correct me if I'm wrong, David—was about £2.4 million. They were able to leverage in money from outwith the Scottish Government, so we were able to provide support, but through various other funding streams, not public sector, other funding streams they were able to leverage in additional resource. They now have a thriving community cafe. They are going to require continued support going forward, but they have a clear vision to becoming sustainable. When I was at the official launch on Friday morning, the manager of the air custody Flanagan, who has been at heart of this for the past 13 years, and her remark said something that I was really struck by and really encouraged by. I have got the title community wealth, and I am conscious that there are varying degrees of knowledge and awareness around community wealth building. What Cassie spoke about at that event was that, in terms of being sustainable, what they have to be looking at is the lynwyd economy, or the lynwyd pound, as she put it. The cafe is about employability schemes partnering up with the local college nearby, but they are also employing local people. They are partnering up with St Murnt football club, but they also said that they are going to procure locally, so that is about going to the local pitchers and the local bakers. When you spend in that cafe, that money is going back into other businesses in lynwyd. You look at community wealth building, and the land and property pillar will be owned by that asset. That is a community development trust that is taking that on. Through the community asset transfer process, regenerational capital grant funding has helped to enable that. The workforce pillar is employing local people, and that is giving people a wage that gives them disposable income to spend in their local community on the spend. The spend element is something that is going to be in terms of their procurement for their products, that they are going to be selling in their cafe, and that they are looking to other examples of other small businesses in their areas. That is an example of community wealth building in action. We do not call it community wealth building. We do not use that label. It was something that has organically evolved out of that process of community empowerment. That is just one example of a regeneration intervention that is moving towards becoming self-sustaining, but not only for itself but in promoting that cultural shift, turning the dial, moving to a system where we are redistributing economically. We do not have to think about redistributing because wealth is being retained within the local community. That is one example of an area that would perhaps be classified as being of lower income or disadvantaged. It has had to face the challenges of deindustrialisation, the long-lasting challenges over four decades, and it is something that has been done by the community. I know that there are countless other examples. I know that when Phil Frentis was in front of the committee, he spoke about another, my hometown, Barhead, in some detail, which demonstrated what happens when you do have significant investment, public sector investment with the establishment of a council office, a health service, refurbishing a sports centre to go and turn it into a community hub, as well as a support centre. You draw people in into the town centre and that supports the local economic ecosystem as well because you then have passing trade. Those investments can be a catalyst for further change. If it is a public sector building opening, clearly that is going to be bringing people in who are going to be able to spend locally. If you are supporting a local group to go and take over on that set, the key is to ensuring that in the early years you have that resource support, which we provide to get them to a position where their self-sustaining. When they reach that point, the intervention is no longer required. You have ultimately not just had an intervention that is built on asset, you have changed the culture and attitudes, and you have built human capacity there as well, human capital, to go and take forwards, not just the project that they have taken forward, but to go and take forward further projects as well. That is just an example of an area that people could look at as more challenging or deprived, which is an exemplar of what regeneration can achieve, and not just regeneration as an event, but as a process that is fundamentally changing the local economy. What do you say, minister, is encouraging, but when it comes back to a project that has been successful and made itself sustainable, and that exists all through different communities, we do not yet have a template that we can roll out town by town for town-centre regeneration, and clearly communities are different. It has to be tailored to whatever the local community is, but it all comes back to money and it all comes back to making it sustainable, because there is no point in putting these nice shiny buildings and everything in place if they are going to have to be subsidised at vast expense for years to come. They have to become sustainable, and that is one of the key things that I do not see coming out of the evidence that we have seen so far. We have individual projects that are sustainable, that have made themselves sustainable, but if we are looking at a regeneration of a town centre with refurbishing shops, refurbishing apartments above those shops and changing the whole experience, that is a very different beast. I think that the key point is the fact that every town is different. It is not, to an extent, so much about what is specifically done, but about how you go about it. That is where the place-based approach is so fundamental. In my own area, I give an example, for example, of the transformative impact that the great tapestry of Scotland in Galashill is having, a strategic investment, but a place-based approach with the transport interchange as well. That is having a positive impact. I am not the opportunity yet, I know that you will have been to mid-staple. That is an area that I will be visiting shortly in the next few weeks, but you will be able to find different examples around Scotland, which are, if not completely unique or so generous, are nonetheless distinct to them in particular areas, and recognise the assets that a particular town or community has in working around them. I am conscious that, perhaps in the decades following the Second World War, we were in the high noon of planning, and we could have standardisation and a uniform approach. Ultimately, that did not recognise that it was regeneration that had been done to communities, rather than with communities. That is the key difference now with a place-based approach. We have to do things in partnership with communities. We have to have that local buy-in, and that comes across a whole range of different areas, whether that be about local community groups taking on assets, increasing the number of pluralistic business models, be that of employ ownerships or co-operatives, whether it is greater engagement through the planning system, for example, through the use of local place plans, or it is strengthening community planning partnerships to make sure that public sector and private sector, as well, are working collaboratively. There is that need for that place-based approach for collaboration, rather than some grand scheme being developed remotely and imposed on a community. We have to work with the community and recognise the assets. It is about a way of working and an approach about engaging, about asking people what they want for their own town, for their own town centre. That is absolutely vital. I do not know if there is anything that you would want to add beyond that, David. I suppose that it is done on the point about sustainability and the point about town centre regeneration, ultimately. For the regeneration funding that my team is responsible for, viability is one of the key questions that we look at, but it is not just viability, it is about that place-based question. It was quite a unique bit of funding when it was set of the regeneration capital grant fund, which we have now managed to grow into the place-based investment programme, which is a significant capital investment over five years, £325 million. However, there is a panel of people who come together to assess proposals, but one of the first questions that is asked is how is this part of a wider plan for that place? We are not looking for single projects, because that is not going to lead to town centre regeneration. It could be a catalyst, but how is it going to catalyze and how is it going to change? The viability question is one of the first things that we look at. We had long conversations with other funders along with the group at Scott MacAe that is leading that forward to really understand the viability of that, because everyone wants that to happen, but nobody wants it to fail. You have to ask those questions first. Where is the viability question that is not answered? It does not mean that it gets written off. It is how can we collectively then get behind that? Whose best place to help support that community to take that forward to the point when it is sustainable? All of that should be a catalyst for the wider plan for that place and not just a standalone project. It is going to take time though. It is going to take time, but it is not an easy thing to turn around a town centre. I want to make some progress now. Alexander Burnett, John Mason. Thank you, convener. You just raised with a convener a minute ago the response to the Fraser of Allander report and the importance of a short-working group. How important their work was and if you could give an update on where their work is at and when you expect a response to be published? We are in the process of establishing it. I believe that invitations have went out, but I would be happy to write to the committee once the group is met for the first time and provide an update if that would be useful. The second question is also on finance, around the online sales tax. I wonder whether you could use Scottish Government proposals to consult on such a tax. I wonder if you could just outline where those proposals are at and how you see that might be implemented. I understand that that would have to be a UK tax. Or is that possible within the Scottish Parliament? What discussions with the UK Government on that and is it still the intention that revenues from such a tax would be used to reduce business rates? I will ask Catherine to commit in a moment. We have been engaging with the UK Government on this. As you will be aware, there is a commitment to explore the introduction of a national online sales tax, but I am very much conscious that this is an area that the UK Government has been consulting on. Clearly, it would be sensible and understood that we want to have a clear understanding of what the UK Government's position on this was before seeking to introduce a tax here. Obviously, any tax that we would introduce would be done in a way that is consistent with our framework for tax. I spoke earlier on the principles about being clear what the tax is for and the issue of engagement. Again, this is very much speculative at this stage because it is still to see firm proposals from the UK Government. My understanding is that they have intended that any revenues would be hypobligated towards non-domestic rates relief. Clearly, we would have to see what would come out of that. Of course, we would expect any money to come to Scotland via the Barnett formula as usual, and it would be part of the budget process to decide how that would be best allocated. I think that we are very much ahead of ourselves here because we have to see exactly what the UK Government is going to bring forward. I will ask Catherine to come in if she wants to add anything to that. Just to reiterate what the minister says, we are following the UK Government's proposals closely. Their consultation on the online sales tax closed on 20 May. The consultation is very wide in scope. Until the UK Government comes forward with some firmer proposals, it is difficult to see what a Scottish proposition could look like. That is the position at the moment. We have been engaging with them at official level, but we just need to wait and see what comes out of that. Would you have made a submission to that consultation? As I understand, the Scottish Government does not formally respond to UK Government consultations. That official level engagement is what happens at ministerial level as well. Before I bring in John Mason, can I just ask another question that is related to e-commerce? We had a session on e-commerce and on the channels. We heard from Gillian Mothorthorth, who was one of our witnesses. She suggested that Scotland was under performing when it comes to e-commerce businesses, that we do not collect the statistics on it, that we do not really invest in a workforce. She said that we know that we do not have a thriving e-commerce sector in Scotland and that money will flow into the hubs in Manchester and London, where fantastic e-commerce businesses are being built around airports and transport links. She expressed a view that we were missing the boat on that, that we did not put enough investment into building e-commerce businesses. During that panel, we also heard about the digital boost programme, which people welcomed, but felt that there could be more resources put into that. I think that Michelle and I, when we met a business last week, who have developed a website, were not aware of what support was offered through business gateway through the digital boost programme. There are two things. One is about the digital boost programme, what can investment is going into that. There was a recognition that was a good programme. Can it get some more investment? Secondly, how do we grow our e-commerce sector and recognise that it is an important sector with her suggestions that in Scotland it is not valued enough? I will ask Catherine to come in a moment on the digital boost programme. With regard to what we can do, there are two aspects to it. There is a commitment on the action to look at the aspects of the national strategy for economic transformation, which are particularly relevant to the retail sector. That is something that will be an early priority for the ILG in clearly looking at issues around uptake in digital and productivity or key to that. That is something that the ILG will be looking at specifically. The other point that you touched on, convener, was the issue of skills. That again, digital skills will obviously be captured by the skills audit and subsequent action plan that we undertake as part of the industry leadership group. That is a point in terms of needing to seize the opportunities that digital provides and to make that as inclusive as possible and to ensure that the workforce has opportunities to participate in that. It is something that we are very aligned to and it will be taken forward as part of the work of the industry leadership group on digital boost. If there is anything further that we want to add. Just to expand briefly, one of the priorities of the retail strategy is to focus on delivery of the actions in the national strategy for economic transformation that will directly support the retail sector. As the minister says, looking at digital connectivity, infrastructure and digital adoption is absolutely part of that. There is also a strand of actions within the retail strategy to help retail harness the opportunities of digital. One of the express commitments is to promote digital boost programme to the retail sector, because we know that more businesses need to know about that and to promote that. It is very popular and it is not a policy for which I am responsible. We are working with colleagues on that. The final piece is the digital upskilling and reskilling. We know that that is going to be increasingly important as the sector continues to involve. That is why digital skills are given such primacy within the retail strategy actions. Catherine, do you say that the strategies are tied to the national 10-year economic strategy? Will there be a strand that is focused on retail? Specifically, the IALG will be looking at ends through a retail lens. I have been to the digital groups and they will be looking specifically at the national strategy for economic transformation to see what role retail plays in realising that vision and to recognise what the priorities are within the set and how they relate to retail. For example, that offer of a lifelong commitment to upskilling is a commitment within the national strategy for economic transformation. That has clear relation to what we are looking to do around retail and what we are talking about ensuring that the workforce is continually upskilled as technology-driven change has its impacts on what it means to work within the retail sector. Alexander Burnett asked about online sales tax. I take the point that we are waiting to see what the UK decides. Can you clarify what powers we have? Could we introduce an online sales tax even if the UK does not? Yes, there are powers. I believe that it is a correct committee from wrong, but from memory section 80B of the Scotland Act allows new taxes to be created. It is a process that requires engagement and agreement with the UK Government and the UK Parliament, but that was a provision that was added. I cannot remember if it was a 2012 or a 2016 act, but it is there. Okay, thanks very much. I mean continuing a kind of finance theme. Colin Beattie also asked you about non-domestic rates and a possible revamp. I mean, I think that it is great that the committee has been out visiting quite a number of sites, and I picked up from some of the notes on that that quite a lot of retail businesses would prefer if non-domestic rates were linked more to turnover instead of to the value of the property. I think that one of the concerns was that if they improve their property, then automatically the non-domestic rates go up, and that is a problem for them. Is that something that could be considered? I think that it is important to recognise that non-domestic rates have been, I think, since its inception. I mean, the legislation, which is still in force, was back to, I think, 1854 for memory, so it is the property that attacks on land and heritages, so to move away from that is quite a fundamental shift, and I made reference earlier on to the work that was undertaken for the UK Government, which they published in the autumn of last year, and that concluded that a sort of broad property-based tax was still relevant, and indeed that is something, I think, as well that I call correctly came out of the bartery process as well. I think that there would have to be clarity on what would replace a property-based tax, and today I have not heard a set of proposals come forward. They are clearly different views and opinions articulated about what potentially could replace a property tax, but it still has a relation to land and property, so to speak, rather than moving to a tax that is effectively a sales tax, for example, or something along those lines. We have no plans to move away from the existing system, but, as I have always said in those matters, I am happy to hear ideas and people who want to put forward views and discuss them. I am more than happy to hear that, but I have not, in terms of when this has been looked at in Scotland in England, has not been a convincing, clear, coherent proposition to put forward as to what should replace non-domestic rates. The focus very much at the moment is on maintaining stability in the system and commitment to the small business bonus and seeing through the revaluation next year. I take the point that will be major to move completely away from property to turnover, although it is a bit strange that you get two identical properties, and one has a huge turnover and one has a tiny turnover, and they are paying the same in rates, unless they have a small business bonus. Maybe some kind of hybrid might be possible, but I accept that that is going to have to be looked at over time. 1854 is a rather long time. There has been subsequent live isolation since in 2020. On the wider question then of costs being in the city centre, I think again in the visits that the committee made, they picked up a number of issues with that. For example, parking costs tend to be higher in the city centre than they are in out of town, so that advantage is there out of town. I guess an older building has more maintenance issues probably than a newer building in a shopping centre out of town. Closing a street was mentioned. I think that that was in Hamilton that the local shops wanted to maybe put on an event, a special Saturday. They had to actually pay the council to close the street. So there was this kind of message that they were just facing a lot of extra costs being in a city centre or a town centre. Is there anything we can do about that, or is that just up to local councils? I think that we have already discussed at some of the broader strategic measures that could be taken at a national level around planning, regulation and taxation. A lot of those matters are going to be specific to local areas in the local authority. In partnership and engagement with business and people who live in the community are best placed to make those judgments. We have clear national direction of travel around, for example, promoting active travel, 20-minute neighbourhoods and also the recognition that what city centres and town centres can offer is something unique. I think that we understand that there is a spectrum in which retail can sit from the functional to the experiential and that in terms of an experience, a town centre of a city centre that is not just retail, it is hospitality, leisure entertainment and a whole range of different activities, as well as often being a pleasant place in which to be because of the built environment. Those are all things that town centres and city centres offer, which are unique to their particular place. I think that it is a made reference to it in earlier answers. To drive footfall in town centres from outwith town centres is about making most of those assets, to make it worth, to make it an experience that people want to come in for, to enjoy, but there is also the key important part, which is increasing residential populations, increasing that population density within our city centres and town centres, because that provides you with the means of sustaining more businesses locally, even just in the functional aspect of retail. Obviously, if people live there then that is great and there is no transport cost, but another cost is that if somebody is working or visiting out for a meal in a town and the public transport stops very early, they are going to have to pay for a taxi home or something like that if they do not live in that particular town. Do you think that transport is part of this in reviving town centres? Absolutely. Transport is a huge role to play. I think that we would all recognise that and that is why there is a significant investment over the course of this parliamentary term, particularly in areas such as active travel to make town centres and city centres more accessible. In terms of investments as well within our bus service infrastructure, so that is something that is... People are not going to cycle home in the middle of the night for 20 miles, are they? I mean, they need a bus or something. You know, I take that point, but there will be people, for example, who are perhaps in this sort of cusp of a town centre, who would cycle or would walk into a town centre, for example. The reality is that there has to be a recognition that for people who want to feel safe and secure when they walk in and out of town centres and city centres as well. It is obviously very important to recognise, but not everyone experiences walking around their town centres and city centres in the same way. There are aspects around people with disabilities, and there is a gendered aspect of that as well, which is very, very important. That is something that we are giving very careful consideration to as part of our work on the draft national planning framework, as well to ensure that those policies are taken or licensed to those points. Okay, thanks, convener. I thank you. I thank you, Maggie Chapman, for being here and for what you have said so far. I want to explore a couple of areas, firstly, around community engagement. You said in your opening remarks that you wanted useful town centres as being at the heart of decision making. Can I ask—what did you mean by that—and also how? How do we make that so? I think that decisions—this is again in terms of how I suppose decisions are in planning and investment are taking, looking at can that take place within the town centre, can we make use of that town centre asset? That is the town centre first principle. I think that it might be useful, David, to give a bit of background and history on how town centre first came along and how it is being applied and the differences that it is making. Town centre first principle came out of the first national review of town centres. It was an ask from that. We took that away, so I thought that through and then worked with local government as to what that might mean. During that first review, there were a couple of courts closed down during the review, which was a bit of an own goal. That was a case in point. We could have that conversation with local government. Local government were getting blamed for the court closing down in a town centre. Local government had no locus for that decision at all. It was an institutional decision taken with the interests of the institution, not with the interests of the town. The town centre first principle is trying to turn that on its head and say that your starting point should be the health of the town centre. It is not to say that everything must go in the town centre, because someone did ask me, should Amazon be in the town centre? It is like, well, no, it has to be proportionate and relevant. What it means is that if you are making decisions about a place, you should be engaging with other people in that place and you should be engaging with that community to understand what the impact of that decision is going to be. It does not mean that you have to stay in that town centre, but maybe you have to mitigate the impacts of something if you are closing it down. It is really trying to put that town centre at the heart of it. What is that place trying to be? My decision is going to have an impact on whether or not that town can achieve it. I suppose that one of the challenges you talk about engaging with the community is how we define community matters. I think that they will be competing and conflicting definitions or qualifying criteria for that. However, one of the things that we have heard about is the lack of capacity, potentially, in some areas. The capacity, community engagement and direct community involvement in planning in democracy varies considerably across Scotland. What is possible for us to think about supporting capacity building, whether that is about four community councils, development trust or the different ways of bringing people in? How do we make sure that we are engaging with the community as a whole and not just the people who have vested interests or who have loud voices or deep pockets? It is an important point and it is not an easy answer to that question. There is a range of different ways. I could point to, for example, take planning the Scottish Government to support past formerly planning aid Scotland, which can provide support. We are rolling forward. We have an agreement that has caused a lot in the target of 1 per cent for participatory budgeting and particularly the shared ambition to move away from just dedicated pots of money to mainstreaming that. That, again, is about continuing engagement with something that the committee wishes to explore with some fantastic examples of PBE taking place in Ferguson Park in Renfisher. That helps to engage people and gives people agency and a say in their communities. That has a catalyzing effect, because when people perhaps get involved with one particular issue or project and encourage them to become involved in more issues, I recognise the point that you make. Often groups that can perhaps be defined as the voice of the community would not necessarily be recognised by everyone in the community, so there is on-going work that has to take place. Local place plans have recently been introduced through regulations, which came through the planning act in 2019, providing people with more opportunities. We have recently finished consulting on the new style local development plans, which we will publish or respond to in due course. That will be looking in ways in which we can increase community engagement involving the planning system, because we are all aware that, sometimes, when it comes to planning, engagement often can take place at a point of conflict rather than collaboration. The earlier engagement that is in the planning system with communities, the more likelihood is that people will be able to feel that they have agency in a role in shaping their communities rather than reacting to proposed change that they want to see. Whether it is through things at local place plans, participatory budgeting or the support that we provide directly to communities through things such as community asset transfer, our support for the Empowering Communities programme, there is a range of different areas that are available, but there is also fundamentally going to be an aspect of cultural change, and that will take time, so it needs to be continued work. However, I take that point, because it is something that, with community empowerment, is one of my responsibilities, and with a forthcoming review of the Community Empowerment Act, I am very much alive to, and I am keen to have continued dialogue about how we can maximise involvement and engagement from all communities, not just in the future to return centres and planning, but across a whole range of areas and service delivery. I suppose that links in to the point, and you have mentioned it a few times, about visions for places and making sure that people who live, work, study, and play in those areas are the people who are involved in generating the vision. We have heard a couple of challenges around that, one being the lack of expertise, or the lack of capacity as well. One potential solution for that would be to have a central resource of expertise, of support, that could be mobilised in different parts of the country at different times to support a local community to develop that. There are discussions, I am not sure that that is a second view of the committee yet, but I am interested in what your thoughts on that would be. I suppose that, linked to that, one of the other challenges that we have heard about is that, when there is funding available for visioning projects, it quite often is very short term. Where it has been successful elsewhere, it has been, here is a pot of money, we do not actually know what the end product is going to be, but there is trust and there is the freedom of the community to then run with it sometimes for 10 years. I am just wondering that that would see quite a marked shift in how we have supported community visioning projects. I just wondered what your perspectives on that was. On the second point, I think that it comes down to, if I am wrong in this chapter, but it is about our tolerance for risk and the trust that we have in community organisations to go forward and deliver. Clearly, there is a need to ensure that, particularly when it is publicly involved, we are getting best value and there is full transparency and accountability, but I do recognise that there is a need to have a tolerance for risk. To the extent that we have seen in some of the investments that have taken place where we go through a rigorous process, we can never absolutely eliminate risk. We have seen that ultimately that has been a worthwhile investment because we have seen, I made a reference to the example in Lynwood earlier, that it was a very challenging experience for that local community and for the people who are leading that effort in the community development trust. They had situations where they had been unsuccessful for funding and significant step backs, and for a lot of community groups, they might have just at that point felt that we cannot go any further, but they had that support ultimately in the end and were able to deliver. I take that point very seriously and it is something that I reflect on regularly. When we talk about an entrepreneurial culture, it is not just about corporate entrepreneurialism but community entrepreneurialism and having that tolerance and that is something that is essential culturally to realise community wealth building. On a point around a centralised resource, I would just want to make the point that there is often very significant and sustained engagement between Scottish Government officials and local groups, not just within my portfolio and regeneration, but for example in land as well. I invite David to say a few words about how Government engages at the official level directly with local communities. My team has got something called the Empowerment Communities programme, and it is there to support communities and build capacity for communities. I am also very much trying to link that to then capital projects so that those communities are supported and able to bring forward capital projects and drive the change that we want to see and lead that visioning. Linwood is a good example of a chance meeting with Kirsty. I went down with a couple of my team to find out what they are trying to do and very much got behind what they were trying to do once we understood it and then tried to help and see what other supports might be available. Whether it needs to be essential resources, that is a fair question to answer. I think that there is a lot of resource there already, but I think that someone has a job to try to bring those bits of resource and try to help the communities to navigate that field. I think that we are getting better at it, as I say collectively, but there is probably still a bit more to be done there, but that has got to be working with the local authorities and with the third sector. We do have a range of intermediary partners that we work with regularly who were bought into the whole town centre first place approach. We are very much trying to support those disadvantaged communities in the main to build their capacity. We have the core foundation that we work with, the Development Trust Association, the Be Inspiring Scotland. I will upset people by forgetting who they are, but there is a range of intermediary partners who have much better skills than my team, but I have the relationship on my team, so we can have those conversations and say who is best place to support, who can we get behind, what are the pots of money, how can we help people to access that. On the point about trust, that has to run through it. If you do not trust each other, there is no point in doing it to be perfectly frank. We set something up called the Strength and Communities programme quite a few years ago now, but that was the whole premise with trust. We talked to our partners who make recommendations to us about communities that are at a tipping point where they have really good ideas, but they might be just a bit knackered and they do not have the skills and the capacity, so we are investing in them. We are not saying that it is a one-off investment, we are saying that it is an investment, but if things change, tell us. That is what you think you are going to achieve, but circumstances might change, so tell us. We are not going to pull the money away, but it is a trusting relationship. Once assets are up and running, we have a discussion with them about when their income goes up and our investment can go down. We have things in place, so we have to learn from them. That is helpful. I suppose that there is that tension between financial and other support for capital projects, but there is also something about financing and supporting the process of determining what those projects should be in the first place. I think that that is often where some of the gaps of the weaknesses are, but I will leave it there for now. It is from a moment in the people quarter that there was an issue around insurance that they had shared with us that they maybe did not realise the significance of the insurance liability that they had, so I think that there was a discussion around expertise support for projects like that that they can be accessed centrally. Just before I come to Jim Harcaw's Donson, you have mentioned the time centre first principle. The committee has heard about the challenges and the difficulties that can be delivered when it comes out of town developments. We all have examples in our regions and constituencies where there is a desire to invest in the town centre, but applications come in for an out-of-town development that has been granted. The businesses in the town centre feel that that pulls business away from them. We have heard—I think that it was a session with Lee Sparks about suggestions for an out-of-town moratorium being introduced that would then clearly prioritise town centre developments. Is that something that the Government are considering at all or have given us thought to? What I can say is that I appreciate that the planning system has to operate in a way that is consistent with legislation. In terms of planning policy, what we have set out in draft NPF 4—obviously, that will be subject to our reflections following the parliamentary scrutiny process in the public consultation and we will bring that back to Parliament in due course, but we set out quite a clear direction, not just on specific policies on town centre first and city centres, but also on urban energies and on retail as well. Within the policy handbook, within the 35 policies, there are clear policies to promote town centres and to seek to limit out-of-town. Ultimately, decisions have to be taken by individual planning authorities and it has to be consistent with the local development plan unless material considerations suggest otherwise, but on that specific issue of limiting out-of-town and promoting town centres and town centre first, that is very clear and very explicit within the draft NPF 4. Thank you very much, andy Cymru, morning to the minister and colleagues. Some of the issues that I was going to raise have been covered by Maggie Chapman anyway, which is great, so can I ask about rural communities? Obviously, it is an issue for myself up in the highlands and islands. Rural towns and villages often face a number of obstacles costs to deliver goods, so they are higher. Transport can be limited and more costly and provided of a lot of time by local authorities. Things like the internet and broadband can be less reliable.  Because they are more expensive to deliver public services to, they could be the ones where public services are withdrawn from first and they lose post offices as well and banks and we have all seen the examples of it. How do we make sure that rural communities do not miss out and are able to overcome those particular barriers that face their town centres? It is an excellent question, but one of the things that town centres perhaps can be even more of a vital resource within rural communities. Indeed, in many cases, they are providing lifeline products and services. Ultimately, the funding that we provide to support town centres has already been narrated throughout this session. It is available to all local authorities, including rural authorities, within the draft national planning framework for specific policies that would be specifically applicable to rural communities. There is a recognition of that, but I think that fundamentally the issues that we would see perhaps in more densely populated areas of central belt are still relevant to rural communities in the sense that we want to increase the density of population within our town centres. There is always a risk of urban edges sprawl and that is limiting at having that compact growth. With that greater density of population, that can more realistically sustain town centres as well. Perhaps David, in terms of the work in the process of the review and developing the response, how we ensure that rural voices were heard and that specific rural concerns were captured? We commissioned the Scottish Towns Partnership to take forward the review, and it had a range of evidence sessions, including with rural communities. We were interested to understand that. Those views were captured in the Towns Interaction Plan. The Towns Interaction Plan is building on work that has gone previously, so there has been a small towns group, for example, which has been making sure that rural voices are heard and that rural issues are understood. I guess that the other thing that I would reflect on is that we talked earlier about the Highlands and Islands Enterprise and South of Scotland Enterprise. The Strength and Communities programme that I mentioned, we deliberately wanted to learn from what happened in the Highlands and Islands, but that approach to place and community support and understanding those issues. We could take that to other parts of Scotland. South of Scotland Enterprise now fulfills that role, along with the local authorities. We are very much looking at rural communities and understanding those issues. Those issues are starting to be embedded in the approaches of the enterprise agencies and local authorities. The Towns Interaction Plan does not specify which towns are important. We think that all towns are important—rural or urban. Taking some of those particular issues at face, which John Mason rightly pointed out, you are unlikely to cycle 20 miles into a rural community having a male do the things and then cycle home again. Local bus traffic is really important, but there is pressure on finances, particularly if they are subsidised by local councils. There are a number of issues that, as I say, you have raised. Specifically, how can we ensure what are those issues that you have discussed with you and with the Enterprise bodies? How do we ensure that those are being addressed? A bus route in a town centre might be extremely profitable. It might not be profitable in a rural community, and some of those other things might not be profitable. They cost a lot more. Of course, a lot of those communities are seasonal. They do very well parts of the year, but they are limited the rest of the time. What are those issues that were raised and how can they specifically be dealt with and how are they being taken forward, I suppose, by Enterprise bodies? The Enterprise bodies are exactly what they were doing. For South of Scotland, for example, they have put a place in community at the heart. I think that the regional economic strategy that they have developed is really focusing on the key towns and the work that they are doing, I guess, in the south of Scotland. It is also the place, the borderlands place programme investment as well, which is very much looking at that. For me anyway, what we try to say and we work with the Enterprise agencies and how do we support the communities themselves, as I have said, is to really understand what the challenges and opportunities are in a place and then set that out and say that this is what we want to do. We will have a role, but it is the local authorities, its other partners, its transport bodies and stuff to say how they can get behind that, have those conversations and understand what the challenges and the difficulties are and see how we can bend investment so that it is the right thing that is happening in those places. I appreciate this fully given the region that you represent. I am always very conscious of just attaching the label rural and thinking that catches all and not recognising the diversity of rural communities. One area, I think, where there is a particular relevance is around, and it is very well established in many rural communities, around community ownership. I think that the piece around community wealth building, there is a lot of community wealth building that is already taking place within rural communities and indeed conversations that I have had with more rural communities may have said, we have been doing this stuff for ages, you are just sitting down and catching up with us on this. That is very encouraging, but recognises the fact that it is well established there and community-owned assets are incredibly important. Clearly local authorities are working with communities and indeed the development enterprise agencies have a role to play nationally. The question is about what frameworks do we have in place? Do we have policies that are flexible enough and adaptable enough to those particular circumstances? Are funding streams available and applicable? I think that that is something that we do have, but we continually seek to engage to understand because communities are dynamic and needs will change and the challenges will change and opportunities will arise. My job is ministers to make sure that the support that we put in place nationally is responsive to that and is not static. I think that there is a fair point. Obviously, in a lot of communities across the Highlands and Islands and particularly in some of the islands themselves, community is very important. They are unique communities in many ways and their sense of entrepreneurship is very much established, but they still need support. Obviously, when you have pressure on council budgets, you have pressure on Highlands and Islands budgets that causes issues. Can I just ask a slightly different question? It is more of a technical one and it is something that has been brought up before. When there is a compulsory purchase order by a council, does that take into account the liability? For example, if a property might have a value of £100,000 but it is in such a state of disrepair that it is going to require £100,000 to just make it safe and then another half a million to bring it up How is that done? Obviously, that is quite important and how a council might choose to make a decision. I am not an expert on CPO. I will say it very quickly. My understanding is that it is based on a valuation. If there is a disagreement about valuation, that has to be settled. No, it is only the purchase price that it has taken account of. It might be that the valuation is given a £50,000 but it does not take into account the cost of making it safe. There is a massive disincentive for a council because essentially, when times are tight, they are buying and compulsory perching a property that they are paying money for but it does not represent anything close to what they are going to get back for. Would that be right? It can be a disincentive but for a CPO, again, I am not an expert so I could be entirely wrong here but for a CPO, my understanding is that there needs to be a clear use so it is not just buying the property for the sake of buying the property. There needs to be a clear purpose for the CPO so that business case would have had to be thought through beforehand. It cannot just be bought in the fact that it is dangerous. The landlord or the owner is not taking any action. It has to be. You have to clear your use for it. We did hear about the situation where a council will go in if a building is unsafe, they will do a repair and they are entitled to carry out the repair but then there is the difficulty of reclaiming the funds back from the landlord either because the landlord could be absentee landlord or it could be a landlord who is just not cooperating with the council. I think that we have heard that that could be a disincentive for a council to take on a repair, even though the repair may be necessary. Is that an area that the Government has considered? I know that legislation was recently passed that enabled councils to do that but we have heard some issues that have not been working as effectively as it could be that councils might be reluctant to get involved in a dilapidated building that has concerns about whether they would ultimately end up with ownership of it or if they are able to recover the costs. I understand the scenario that you are describing. I believe that there is a building's safety power but we can take that away and look into that further. That is something that the committee might return to in the report. It was evidence that we heard on the visits. I am happy to take that away and I think that as well, these conversations are going to become more regular as we move towards introducing legislation reform of CPO and looking at CSO as well and particularly thinking that more broadly about land assembly and unlocking opportunities as well within town centres where perhaps it is one building that is not in public ownership can be the barrier to a regeneration project taking place. I will pick up on that last point. While you were talking earlier, I had a quick look at the Scottish Government spreadsheet around the number of CPO's. I thought that I would just pick an arbitrary year that I picked 2021 of which I could see 10 of which 4 were retail units of the type described by Colin Smith earlier, so quite low in number and the other six seem to be for road buildings. It would be useful for the committee to understand more about the number, the rationale, the process and so in general terms. Before I move on to my main area, another point that Fiona Wright at the start of this session picked up, I would like personally to understand more rationale of why we cannot get registration of beneficial owner or legal owner up front of a property at the point of purchase and why we cannot put in a process similar to what we have done with the register of persons holding controlled interest in land for property given that it is such a big issue. Again, it might be that you are not able to answer that just now, but consistently through the feedback that we have heard through this inquiry, we have heard that that is an issue. Any comments on that before I move on to my main area? Given the detail, if you would be content, Mr Robinson, the committee's comment mark, we have to respond in writing so I can provide a more detailed response. I suppose to think about, well, if we wanted to do that, how would we do it? It is clearly an issue, although I fully accept the complexity around it. What I wanted to cover today was our shared interest in culture and culture at the heart of place around town centres. We have heard evidence in the inquiry commentary that culture must be at the table, to what extent it can be involved in bids and so on. We have even heard commentary that bodies such as Creative Scotland should be made a statutory consultees. I suppose that my question is, where do you see culture at the heart of town centres? Can you give me any more thinking about how the Government might be able to assist that as we come out of the pandemic and all the issues that we have covered today? I am conscious of the time. This is a huge area, and you are absolutely correct to recognise it. It is a mutual interest in this area, all of us. I think that the first thing I would always say is to recognise culture for its intrinsic value. I do not even feel comfortable using the term culture as some catch-all label for so many diverse fields, but for shorthand, let us use culture. Recognising it for its intrinsic value and the fact that it is to be enjoyed in and of itself. Yes, it certainly can help to draw people into town centres and stimulate conversation and promote for the investment and attract more businesses, but it is also first to recognise that the contribution of artists across any medium should be valued in and of itself, and that is a positive thing. It is another thing that our town centres can offer. It is hugely important, and it adds to my experiential point of middle on, beyond just retail or town centres as being something functional, where you go for your messages, where you go to get your haircut or where you go to the pub. Something beyond that is the synergies that town centres are greater than some other parts. That culture can be utilising the existing assets and the built environment. I give an example of support that was provided in Galashu. It has worked with the local energy and development trust and the Town and Tapas project, if I recall correctly, or correct the record of a misremembered term. QR codes on buildings. You hold your phone to the camera and you then get a history of the architecture, helping people to look up and take a deeper understanding of their built environment. The other thing that has happened in Galashu was the commissioning of murals and walls. Anyone familiar walking around Glasgow would see that as well. It enhances the environment in which people live, but it also helps to give people a sense of place and a sense of identity, which I think is so important for town centres. Out-of-town retail plays a hugely important part in our economy in providing employment and services. Town centres and city centres can provide a sense of identity, place, history, heritage and where I'm from. That is an X factor in culture, such an important part of that. It can manifest itself in a whole range of ways, from things as simple as encouraging people to look up and learn the history of the environment, a mural on the wall or a significant investment such as the great tapestry of Scotland to draw people in from outwith the community. The range of ways in which it is applicable is multifarious. It is as diverse as culture is itself. I appreciate that. That was a hard question to ask you. I revisited the culture strategy that Fiona Hyslop has done, which is an excellent piece of work. It is almost to me getting culture at the heart of all the different arms and activities that the Scottish Government is doing because of the importance of place. I had a very interesting comment from Alasra Mackay, who is the chief executive of the RSNO. He said that it shouldn't be seen as subsidy or public monies. It should be seen as a seed capital because of the GVA that it brings. I thought that that was a very effective way. I'm happy for you to come back to the committee because I do appreciate that it was a hard question. I'm interested in what interventions you think you could make to town centres specifically that utilises the concept of culture at the heart of place building and growth and all the touch points that we've covered a lot of it today. I know that I've made this point several times, but we all recognise that it's fundamentally about the existing assets that are there, the community and the people, and it has to be driven from the local community in the sense of pride that they take in their particular place. In terms of what is provided in terms of support, it has to be the design and decisions that are taken at that local level, and the support around delivery comes from other partners as well. However, cultural interventions have to be done with the community and reflect the identity of the community, the values of the community, the history of the community. I think that that's where it can be most impactful. It comes back to the point that regeneration is not just about bricks and mortar, it's about a state of mind as well, and that's where culture can have such an important role in changing attitudes to a place and helping to reframe how people think about their own communities. That is such an important part of the regeneration journey. I don't know if you've got any comments to make about how culture has informed the work that's been going on over the past decade on regeneration. I would say that culture and heritage are central to so much of the regeneration across Scotland, because they are visible and love physical assets very often. However, capturing the story of places and understanding where the communities come from and where they're going is really important to local people, and so often that is the catalyst for change. Things have changed, but are there industrial heritage? You've watched it change and stuff, so coal mining communities are former industrial towns very much hanging onto their heritage, but understanding that they need to evolve and change so it's very much at the heart of what we do. We're kind of agnostic as to what the catalyst is for regeneration, but as I say very very often it's culture, and we work very closely with culture colleagues in the Scottish Government, but equally with partners. National Lottery, we meet quarterly with the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Historic Environment Scotland, Creative Scotland sometimes comes to that and a couple others, because we have projects, capital projects that we've jointly invested in, so we come together to make sure that those are deliverable and understand the wider impact that it's having on place in regeneration. I totally agree with you around key stakeholders being at the table, and that includes that. It goes back to a point that Maggie made earlier, and you picked up on a minister about community entrepreneurialism, of which arguably musicians, artists and so on are entrepreneurs and starting to think about them like that. I suppose that I won't press you to an answer, but I am interested in whether the Scottish Government has or is giving consideration to ideas that would practically support people in culture when we think about it at the heart of place, whether that's targeted rates relief or so on going back to some of the points made by John Mason, but rather than thinking of it as a broad brush across the top, culture is good, it contributes to society, actually thinking of it as at the heart of town centre regeneration and enablement, because it brings in so many other things and supports so many other types of businesses as well. I'm conscious of how deep the subject is. If you're content, I'm happy to come back and write and provide more detail in some examples and elaborate on some of the points that I've made this morning. I think that that would be helpful, thank you very much. We didn't have evidence from culture accounts, and they were talking about getting more practical measures, whether that's looking at the business rates scheme or so it's giving access to properties for culture and community or for artists or to set up workshops or that kind of thing. Studios, if there was a more sympathetic rates regime or financial regime to support that, that would be practical measures that would help explain it. I think that she gave, I think that it was Danoone, she gave an example of a town which had taken the role of artists to their heart and artists had settled there and it had been successful, but some of it was about access to suitable buildings and a sympathetic financial regime to support it. Okay, if everyone's finished, thank you very much Minister for Evidence this morning, that's been really helpful for our inquiry, and thank you to Catherine Brown and David Coffin as well. We'll have a brief suspension while we change away witnesses. The committee will now take evidence on the registers of Scotland information and access, et cetera, miscellaneous amendment order 2022. So I welcome back to the meeting Tom Arthur, Minister for Public Finance, Planning and Community Wales, who's joined by Megan Stefaniac, a lawyer with the Scottish Government, and Harry Murray, policy lead registers of Scotland. I invite the minister to make a short opening statement. Thank you, convener. I'm grateful for the opportunity to speak to this instrument, which relates to the provisions of extracts of documents held in registers under the control of the keeper of the registers of Scotland. The keeper plays a vital role in the Scottish economy by safeguarding property rights through the registration of documents, the land register and the register of say signs, in addition to the registration of documents and the number of other registers that support the legal profession. Extracts are copies of registered documents that have an evidential status equivalent to that of the original and can therefore be used in lieu of the original, including in court. Prior to the pandemic, extracts were mainly issued as paper documents in line with how customers interacted with ROS at the time. However, in the period since the pandemic began, the majority of extracts issued by ROS have been in digital format. That reflects the way in which both ROSs and the legal profession's work has shifted towards the use of digital services where possible. The provision of digital extracts has proven hugely popular with stakeholders with strong support to express both informally and through public consultation to enable the provision of digital extracts across all of the keeper's registers. That order therefore seeks to achieve that in the following ways. The register of deeds in the books of council on session has until this point remain paper-based due to its primary function as a way of preserving documents. However, that register will open to electronic documents on 1 October this year, and the order makes provision but extracts can be issued in electronic format from this time. The order also sets out the default form of extract to be issued depending on how the registered document was submitted. Extracts for paper documents will be provided on paper, and extracts for electronic documents will be provided electronically. In both cases, electronic or paper extracts are available on request if the default format is not suitable for the customer. The order also makes provision that extracts of deeds registered in the register of say-zines can be issued in electronic format, bringing the register into line with existing provisions governing the other property register, the land register. Finally, the order makes a number of clarifactory amendments to the Register of Executions Scotland Act 1877 in support of the provision of digital extracts and removes reference to legislation no longer in future. I am joined today by Harry Murray from the register of Scotland and Megan Steffaniac from the Scottish Legal Government Directorate, who will be happy to assist me in answering any questions. Any members have any questions that they wish to ask the minister or to the officials? We will now move to agenda item 3, which is the former consideration of the motion to approve the instrument. I invite the minister to speak to and move the motion. I think that I have to read it all out. S6M-04636, that the Economy and Fair Work Committee recommends the Register of Scotland Information and Access, etc., miscellaneous attainment amendment, order 2022, to be approved. If no member wishes to speak, we will then put the question on the motion. The question is that motion S6M-04636 be approved. Are we all agreed? Thank you that it's all agreed and the motion is approved. A short factual report of the committee's decision will be prepared and published. I thank the minister and his officials for joining us today. Thank you very much. I move to the private session for remainder of the meeting.