Good morning and welcome to the 21st meeting in 2023 of the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee. I remind all members and witnesses to ensure that their devices are on silent and all other notifications are turned off during the meeting. We've received apologies from Mark Griffin, MSP and Marie McNair. The first item on our agenda today is to decide whether to take item 4 in private. Are members agreed? Thank you, we are all agreed. The first item on our agenda today is to take evidence from three panels of witnesses on pre-budget scrutiny. We're joined in the room on our first panel by Sean Bailey from GMB Scotland. I've got to get this right now. Linda Somerville, Deputy General Secretary of Scottish Trades Union Congress. We are joined online by Joanna Baxter, who's the head of local government at Unison. We were due to hear from Graham McNab, who's the local government officer at Unite, but unfortunately he's been unable to join us. We're now going to turn to questions from members. We'll try to direct our questions to specific witnesses initially where possible, but if you would like to come in please indicate this to the clerks or if you're joining online as you are, Joanna, put an hour in the chat function. I've got a broad opening question and maybe Linda, I'll direct it to you initially. I'd be interested to hear if you could highlight the main challenge that you believe local government workforce is currently facing. Thank you very much, convener. I just want to say thanks for having us along today. I think it's increasing importance that trade union representatives are given evidence either at committee or given other opportunities to do so on behalf of the workforce. So thank you for doing that. It's really important to share workforce experiences.  That's quite a grim opening statement, but in some ways I think it's actually more realistic reflection on local government and where it's at at the moment than potentially some of the other narrative that we hear from Scottish Government or elsewhere. I mean, we think there's been a consistent underfunding of local government and we would agree with the estimates that were made, I think, last year after the budget between COSLA and the public finance directors of around £1 billion shortfall in local government. The impact of that underfunding we can see in our communities, we can see it in staff shortages across local authorities. I mean, everyone probably here has had some dealings with local authorities in the last, you know, six months or so. I mean, we're still coming out of a Covid backlog. I wouldn't say that we're certainly post Covid in terms of the medical situation, but the Covid backlog that there is from local authorities has not gone away. That is very, very evident in the workforce and what's been going on. We see services closing where some local authorities are choosing to close services and the impact that's having on our communities. I know that it's really important to the committee and, indeed, to local government generally to say how do we service our communities best. It's what public services are there to do. Scottish Government have made it a priority, again, when we welcome that in programme for government, that they want to make the efficient and effective public services a huge priority and that's obviously reflected in the new deal as well. But we think that there is a struggle to do that because it runs counter to actually what's happening on the ground where the workforce can see the implications that there are long-term now of underfunding where people are asked consistently to do more with less. So the work hasn't gone away. The work may have changed in some areas.  Some of the work can't be turned into, you know, there's no technical solution for it, a lot of it is people-centred work. So, therefore, it still needs workers to do that. So we've got a history, I think, of underfunding and we're now at a situation where I don't think it is unrealistic to talk about a crisis in local government. And in terms of the workforce, we see low morale, we see the impact there's been of industrial action over a number of years where workers are trying to get a decent pay rise against rising costs. And again, unfortunately, we look like we're heading in that direction again this year. I know the former Deputy First Minister after some of the discussions he'd had with both COSLA and the trade unions last year had a look to say that we need to learn some lessons from what's happened around industrial action and industrial relations really across the local authorities. And I'm not sure that we've got to that place, which is a bit unfortunate. So it's not the best, you know, outcome really at the moment for the workforce, for those that are there and they're very much committed to and trying to deliver good public services. Thanks very much for that. So Linda gave us a very comprehensive response, but if Sean or Joanna, if you want to add anything, you're welcome to come in. Joanna. Thank you, convener. I would just add to the contribution that Linda has made by saying I think the dispute, the industrial dispute that we have with COSLA at the moment is reflective of that decade of underfunding of local government because the pressure that workers are experiencing in terms of the work they are being asked to do, as Linda has said, jobs have been cut during the last decade, but none of the work has reduced. So we are seeing members under enormous pressure from stress both of the physical and emotional demands of trying to deliver high quality services without the adequate resources to do that. And I think last year's Scottish Government spending review indicated that the overall pay bill should be frozen and reducing the public sector workforce to pre-pandemic levels, which would amount to a loss of 30,000 public sector jobs against a background in which nine out of 10 jobs that were lost during the period of austerity were lost in local government. So I think that the current dispute that we are in with COSLA over pay, you will be aware that there is looming industrial action on the 26th, 7th and 8th of September. I believe that the industrial action ballot results that we have seen, certainly in unison, are reflective of that level of concern amongst the workforce, both in terms of pay but also the resourcing of their jobs. And I think it's untenable really for that overall pay bill to remain frozen. There does need to be a recognition of the enormous contribution that this workforce made. And I would just say that the ballot results that we saw, where we have a strike mandate covering over 21,000 members across 24 local authority areas and almost 2,000 schools, is absolutely unprecedented and I think demonstrates that feeling of concern and anger amongst the local government workforce. Thanks very much for that response. John, do you want to come in with anything? I just quickly. So I think just to reiterate some of the points where colleagues have made, underfunding is undoubtedly the largest obstacle to local government at the minute or the biggest issue, both in terms of service delivery but also in maintaining a happy and productive workforce. And as John, I say, you've got limited strikes over pay but as we've maintained over the previous few years, happy workers do not vote for strike action, happy workers do not take strike action. So it's not just about pay. There's all these underlying issues. We've seen for a long, long time the mental and physical impact that cuts have had. So I've only seen it in a minute. It is unfortunately, in my opinion, a consequence of the last 10, 15 years of cuts. There's no getting away from that. And I'm sure we'll get any more detail on some of those points later on. Great. Thank you very much for that. John, I'm going to come to you with the next question. It's kind of layering on from hearing about the challenges and thanks for flagging up the current dispute. So you're aware that we've got the new deal for local government, the new deal with local government and that's the Scottish Government and COSR currently working on the details of that. And I'd be interested to hear what your thoughts are on what the key ways this new deal could support local authorities in addressing the challenges that they're facing in terms of workforce. Thank you for that. That's a very good question. I think, in Unison, we were very interested to see the announcement of the new deal, the Verity House agreement. And our response at the time remains as it is today, which is that the Verity House agreement says many good things, but it contains no additional investment for local government. It indicates that local authorities will have greater fiscal flexibilities. That's welcome, but there is only so far that that will get them. And I have to say, unfortunately, given the current dispute that we are in with COSR, we have seen very little impact of this new deal in terms of the discourse that we are having with COSR. And if anything, actually, I would say that it is being used as being used as a reason why one side can't take on the other. So we approach COSR and say, if you don't have enough money to fund a decent pay offer, then why aren't you speaking to the Scottish Government to get the additional funding that you require to provide a decent pay offer? They say, well, we have very constructive relations with Scottish Government and therefore they can't possibly criticise them. We ask the Scottish Government why they are not speaking to COSR about the additional funding they would require to make a decent pay offer. They say at the Verity House agreement, we can't possibly interfere in COSR's relationship with the trade union. So far from being the solution that I think everybody would wish it to be, I don't believe the Verity House agreement has to date delivered any real positive or tangible benefits that the workforce might see the benefit from. So I think there needs to be a grown-up and honest conversation about the financial resources that local government needs to deliver the services that we all rely upon. And I would just cite some of the previous winter crisis that we've experienced. Local government are the people that deliver preventative services that support the health service. You cannot only address things like the winter crisis or indeed emergencies like COVID by investing in the NHS. You also have to invest in the preventative services that our members deliver day in, day out. Thanks for that. Could you just unpack what you mean by the preventative services just so we've got that on the record? So the kinds of preventative services local government delivers? Yes, so in terms of supporting people in their own homes, social care, care at home services but also frankly I think things like refuge collection which is something that people take for granted sometimes but I would say if you have rubbish piling up on the streets it won't belong before you have health issues or concerns of a different nature. I would go back to also the sorts of discussions that we were having with both Corsal and the Scottish Government during the COVID pandemic where our members who did graves were integral to ensuring that bodies weren't piling up. So there is a massive diversity of roles within local government which seem to get very little attention paid to them but which are actually crucial in terms of providing services that we all rely upon and then I would just also say as well the people that are covered by our strike mandate those who work in schools to support the education of our children also supports key workers by providing early year services as well to allow those key workers to get to work. We saw that during the pandemic so there is a massive role for local government in the provision of preventative services and I think we need to consider that in much greater detail when we look at investment into health education for example and ensure that local government get the financial resources that is necessary to actually provide those services. Thanks very much for going into that detail. Sean or Linda, do you want to add anything to the question around the new deal? The new deal, we have similar concerns but we welcome the changes that it brought in about ring fencing and given local authorities more devolved powers as they should have re-estate and really their devolved power to use their budgets as they see fit because local authorities are by the very nature of whether they are a rural community or an urban community they have all different challenges and one size does not fit all. We welcome that but any analysis of it shows and you have said that the Government are working on the detail of it but we still have to see any of that. It is really a glossy memorandum of understanding between two organisations and that is welcome because when they do have to have good engagement they do have to sit down and speak both formally and informally and the agreement allows for that so that is helpful but in terms of how it is actually going to pan out for the workforce we can't see at the moment that that is actually going to deliver because whilst there is a commitment to have regular reviews of funding there is no method to say how that will be done is that outside of the budget timescale is that alongside the budget is that at a different time what is that process so we don't have any detail about how that will work the thing about preventative spend as well whether you're looking at social work where there's a lot of preventative spend in our communities with criminal justice, with youth offending whether it's through working with families and those of the people that are vulnerable in our communities there's lots of preventative spending there as well and it's another area that's often not really highlighted about the benefit that that has and how local authorities some of it is statutory provision but a lot of it isn't and how local authorities are having to strip back these things unless it is statutory provision and tackling poverty, not just child poverty but tackling poverty is overall for families and for individuals is government's priority and yet the lack of provision there is for preventative services and those that are not statutory in local authorities because of their funding constraints means that that's working against Scottish Government's actual priorities Thanks for that Sean, do you want to add anything? I'm going to move on to questions from Willie Coffey Thanks very much, convener and good morning to everyone on this wet miserable day in Edinburgh Linda, you opened up with some comments about the budget allocations that are quite important to hear and to get on the record and you mentioned the billion pound shortfall that's been mentioned several times at this committee in the past If you have a look at the finance circular that accompanies the provisional budget it shows a 1.3 per cent real terms increase from last year to this and if you look over the last 10 years that provisional revenue settlement is actually a 4.3 per cent real terms increase Can you explain to us why there's such a divide between your own estimate of what the situation is and the figures that are in things like the finance circles How do we get such different figures, do you think? That was my estimate I was simply quoting what was both COSLA's and the Chartered Institute of Public Finance Administrators the estimate that they came up with but it's not something that we would disagree with we don't have the calculation for what the shortfall is that's the information that we have from workforces as to what they see I think that one of the things to look at has service provision changed over that period so whilst you may look at is it a static budget or is it an increasing budget so what is the absolute what can you buy with that what can be done with that budget and that's maybe where some of the problem is you've got a changing demographic in terms of our communities we've got an ageing population we have people that are living longer but not always living well and so these are things that local government are having to deal with we also have housing crisis where we've got a lack of housing and affordable housing local government are having to deal with a lack of capital budget sometimes to actually maintain what they've already got so I think that sometimes the issues around how budget calculations are done by different organisations are also around saying what needs done with that budget and how do we take that forward so it's more of an expression of what we think we need to do to serve our communities better and that seems to explain the disparity and the figures that we see quoted in front of us I think from time to time there's a lack of ambition about it as well I think where often some of the budget figures that the local government themselves might look at is say what do we need done to provide the services that we've already got and I think you know when the Scottish government are looking at their budget and this is obviously part of the process for that we need to think about what is the ambition we have and what's the vision we have for local government you know how do we want our services to look like in a community that is really flourishing not just existing, not just surviving or getting by so you know there's something there about any figures that we come across generally of what we need to plug the whole to plug the gap that's there not to think about what we could have if we actually made the best and allowed them to flourish cos poverty isn't just about money and people's pockets poverty is also about people having access to culture, libraries, you know all the things that they need so I think there's a much wider ambition there that we really should sometimes talk about That's good to hear that thanks very much for adding that I just wanted to ask a question about issues about workforce I note that our predecessor committee way back in 2018 it noted that our local authority workforces don't tend to reflect the communities they serve so a question that arose from that was what can we do to make our workforces more representative of the local communities and they were particularly highlighting those in senior positions as if there was a disparity there between the type of workforce we have within local government and the communities that are served is that something that any of our three colleagues recognise from that time, that previous committee report and do you think we've made any progress on that to date Can we try I don't know Linda again My colleagues come in but really what we're talking about there is a lack of diversity in some parts of our workforce particularly the agenda pay gap we'll feed into that when you're looking at early years provision and social care so any caring parts of the workforce we find that there's a gender pay back which therefore means it's less attractive and there are other reasons as well but less attractive for men to join that workforce so there's some issues there around pay that you probably need to look at in order to address that but occupational segregation whether it's horizontal or vertical occupational segregation exist throughout most workforces it's a persistent problem across most of western Europe not in other parts of the world and exist for deep rooted long term issues around structural inequalities really but there are things I think employers can do looking at quality part time work is one of the things that can be done and I think when you look at women moving into leadership positions or senior positions quality part time work is something that isn't always looked at job construction when you actually put new jobs together do they have to be full time quality part time work is something that is often seen as undervalued and women will talk about just work part time and that immediately therefore it actually denies the quality of the work that they do and the time that they are there and also women tend to find that they negotiate their cells into flexible working and when they're in a job they negotiate the hours that suit them and then they never change out of that job because they can never think that they'll get the same deal somewhere else so there's a whole thing that can be done that employers can take forward and local government is no different in fact local government should actually be outstanding in this remit for doing those type of employment practices I think employers sometimes are a bit frightened as well that they get it wrong so sometimes they want to take positive action to address an imbalance in the workforce that could be around making sure that they target the BMA community but they don't want to do anything because they think they're worried they'll get it wrong so I think there needs to be a bit of confidence built within employment employee relations and indeed sometimes local government like other organisations have devolved HR practice down to local managers with very very little training so I think there needs to be a bit more confidence in training there so that people can actually take positive action which is legal for them to do not positive discrimination but positive action to actually diversify their workforce Thanks for that Linda I wonder if I could invite Sean and Joanna maybe to comment on the previous committee's comments about the local authority workforce not being particularly representative of the communities that they have is that something that you recognise yourself and is there something we can do to improve that and then I can move on to another question I think that if I look at local government as a home then we talk about underfunding so the staffing levels have reduced and the shrink year on year through cuts, redundancy packages etc etc you aren't recruiting anybody new into that so you're not recruiting a more diverse pool of staff that enables them to go into the organisation so if you're an organisation that's shrinking you're never going to be able to have a positive intervention on the make-up of the demographics when that staffing pool so it shrinks you're going to keep holding on to people any progression through that is going to be the same people that are progressing you're not bringing them to the new organisation and it just becomes a death spiral I'm sure it's a phrase I'll repeat probably today I'll be overregging it but that's my experience Hannah Thank you a number of things that I would say on this so I would agree with Sean that if you are looking at a shrinking workforce your ability to secure increased diversity in that workforce becomes much more difficult if we look at areas like social care for example the last sets of data in terms of vacancy rates within social care that the SSC published demonstrate that for example Easton Bartonshire as of December 2022 had 60% vacancies Edinburgh had 59% vacancies in their services Dundee, Clackmannershire North Lanarkshire all had 57% vacancies in their services so there is a real issue about attracting people to work in local government very clearly our view is that central to that is pay I go back to the fact that we are in dispute at the moment on pay we were last year as well though so it doesn't seem like local authorities and the Scottish Government learnt the lessons about pay disputes and perhaps why so many of the workforce are willing to take industrial action to secure better pay deals I would just say that this does also affect positions at a more senior level whilst all three trade unions have sought to ensure that the lowest pay within local government are protected in our pay negotiations we've experienced a real squeeze in those members who are employed in middle income brackets there's been a very difficult balance for us to strike between trying to ensure that those on the lowest pay get decent uplifts but also protecting those in middle income bans and I would just also say that in terms of the discussions that we've had with COSLA about trying to bring the workforce up to a minimum of £15 an hour within a reasonable time period we would say within the space of three years what they say to us is we just can't afford it so you then see workers leaving local government to go and work either for the private sector or other areas of the public sector because they would secure higher wages in doing so so we continue the trend of shrinking workforce and increase pressure on those who remain and I think the other thing that adds to that is just to say that the whole focus on pay and funding means that actually everybody in local government is firefighting all the time and we don't get the opportunity that any of us would like to spend on some of the other conversations that we would like to have about diversity about, for example, greater flexibility in the working week reduction of the working week without detriment the use of new technologies if, for example OK, thank you very much for that Joanna, I wonder if I can ask a follow-up question convener just touching on inequalities Linda, you introduced some ideas about the problems that we face there we know that APS's local government report highlighted that most local authority staff are women, we all kind of knew that anyway but we know that there are still inequalities in pay and progression and gender segregation of occupations there's problems there and you go for a few suggestions about how we might overcome this, Linda in some of the comments that you had made earlier could you invite our three colleagues to expand on that and what are we actually doing to address these continuing inequalities particularly to women? I mean I don't know the specifics of what local government are doing I'm speaking much more generally about employers generally but my colleagues might know if there's any initiatives within local government but I think it's worth reflecting on Joanna's point that when organisations are firefighting around trying to keep services going often it is equalities that is put to the side because people say well we've not got time for that we can't invest in that just now or it's done in a way which is sometimes I've seen with employers is done in a way which is seemingly tokenistic because you actually need to take time and to change a lot of systems you need to think about unconscious bias training you need to think about who recruits how they recruit, how people are promoted what are the systems in place what networks exist within a workplace are they formal or informal networks have to put to in place formal networks for women for LGBT workers for example so that they can actually have a space that can support them in the way that in other parts of the workforce are supported so there's lots of things that employers can do but I completely agree that when people are firefighting and trying to provide services then it's sometimes not the top of the agenda I see my colleagues might know more about what specifically local government employers are doing at the moment about it Just very quickly again coming back to pay I suppose next week has joined I said we've got thousands of school staff including teachers who have been taking industrial action over the issue of pay this year and this year's pay award and this year's pay award still fails to match the offer that was given to English workers who worked for England and Wales councils to the tune of at least £500 that's more if it's prorated for part-time which majority of the school workers do work part-time, they're not full 37 hour weeks so if we want to talk about how we can particularly pay it equality there's a great first step there that can be easily resolved but in the next week is to at least match that pay offer that England and Wales got for this financial year Johanna how do we solve the problem about gender or segregation and the ability to encourage and promote more women into work and more creative ideas that Linda was mentioning about part-term and flexible working to attract more women into the local authority workforce perhaps well I think there's a lot that could be done but I go back to the point that I made earlier which is that nobody in local government is it has got the bandwidth at the moment to give that agenda the focus that it deserves and I think there is a real issue about how you attract people into local government itself never mind increasing the diversity of those who might apply and be appointed and all of this goes back to the discussions that we have on fair funding and pay you will not I think see real change and movement on these fundamentally important issues unless and until there is some long-term financial stability provided to local government that will allow them to invest in those issues we want to be having conversations with COSLA that look to how we can increase diversity how we can ensure the use of new technology to help our members do their jobs how we can attract younger people into the workforce that is an issue as well unfortunately all of our conversations at the moment are surrounded on the basis of pay the lack of decent pay and cuts and COSLA consistently say to us they don't have the funding to invest in decent pay rises we would view them as and that if they did invest in decent pay rises that would cost even more of our members at their jobs but unfortunately jobs are being cut at any rate we are at a crisis point in Scottish local government there is no more that they can cut without having a substantial a negative impact on the services that they are expected to provide and which our communities rely upon so I think there needs to be a real reflection on what we actually need to be providing local authorities in terms of the support that's required okay thank you very much for your contributions there everyone back to you thank you convener before I bring in Pam Gosall I'm just going to ask a very direct question which I think both Linda and Joanna you've been kind of touching on this so Joanna do you think the gender pay gap is improving so I can't speak for every single local authority area certainly it's an issue that we continue to try to address with local authorities on an individual basis but also with COSLA during our national negotiations with them I think more can certainly be done and should be done we have certainly tried to provide COSLA with suggestions and how to do that for example if there is an agreed programme to bring workers up to that minimum £15 an hour within the space of three years for example there are guidelines that we can agree about how to ensure you gender pay proof those changes to the pay system and structures and we did that previously when we agreed the full consolidation of the living wage we agreed a set of national guidelines about how it should be done and we spent a huge amount of time working with local authorities on an individual basis to make sure it was done properly and appropriately and that's the equal pay implications of those changes were reviewed during that process to ensure that the gender pay gap reduced rather than widened so that's a couple of things that I would say on that I'm going to move on now that was really helpful to get that clarity and I'm going to bring in Pam Gosall thank you chair good morning panel my question before I go on to my main question I wanted to touch on what Willie was speaking about my colleague Willie was talking about diversity in the workforces Joanna it's interesting you mentioned 60% vacancies in eastern Bartonshire that is the west of Scotland region that I cover I live there as well and something that came up just actually last week I was chairing a meeting between the council and between Milan care centre which was caring for the elderly Asian but also people that really needed that help so what came out of that was one of the questions that were asked by the BAME community was the fact that people that make these decisions whether cuts are made or services are changed on that panel is there anybody that's diverse I'm going to use those words that can have those that thinking that what should this service look like and one of the areas that they mentioned was getting shifted from one area to another facility which they had no basically people speaking the language no catering for their food that they eat and what about the clothes they wear and how they're going to integrate what's important is how they're going to integrate into with people from the western society and what is it that their culture needs this was brought up time and time again in this meeting and I was actually shocked and don't get me wrong the local government officers you know people working for the council I think we're a bit stuck to answer these questions so do you think things situations like this are going to come up more that they can't serve diverse communities because they actually don't understand how to serve them what their culture is because they don't have the diverse representation in their workforce Joanna do you think that's going to come up more have you heard of things like this so I don't know the details of the particular circumstances that you saw it I would say that local government officers are actually the people who implement political decisions so the decision makers about where cuts would fall are local elected politicians and just clarify the figure that I've provided it was vacancy rates as at December 2022 in social care I mean I would say that the local government workforce are doing absolutely the best job they can possibly do with the resources that they are provided at the moment to do it the problem is that the resources they are provided with are not sufficient and that leads us to question why that is that is the result of political decisions being made in council chambers and political decisions being made in Holyrood so I can only praise the local government workforce in terms of the efforts that they are making to serve their communities against a backdrop of what I would say is just cuts to the bone in terms of the services that they need, the workforce that is required to deliver it and I think those that are working striving to deliver for their communities day in, day out are doing a very, very good job against absolutely terrible circumstances if I'm honest and that's why there is such an increase in the stress that our members experience because they want to be delivering good local services to the communities that they serve they don't want to be delivering a bad service so clearly when they're not provided the resources they need that is going to take a toll not just in terms of the physical and emotional efforts that they make to get the job done but also because they care and they care if they are struggling to provide a good service so I don't think this is a simple answer but I certainly don't think the answer to it is to criticise a workforce that is delivering whilst also being on its knees Thank you Joanna I absolutely agree with you the officers were brilliant to be honest they were really trying to make good of a situation it was a public meeting that's why I'm speaking about it in here today but obviously it's important that as an elected member I stepped into chair to help but I'm just saying that it's sometimes not their fault you're absolutely right that they had to deal with a difficult situation because they didn't have that diverse workforce is there anything Sean or Linda would like to add to not probably the case but the situation more that how do we serve better diverse communities because we've got people coming in from refugees, asylum seekers living here as well, born here as well that how do we understand their cultures and how to deliver on the right service that we don't offend them but we also help them So I think you're absolutely right I think there's a wider issue of and it's been touched on a few times already today about how local government is becoming alienated I think from the communities to serve particularly in my being areas that I've got multiple deprivation of culture and stuff like that and I think the best way to do it is to try and just ensure that there's pathways for people and secure well paid employment from those communities all the way through these organisations and where if we're in a situation where funding has been cut year on year and that we're losing positions and the very jobs that are delivered as services on the front line there's no entry point for people to come in for any community and move up through the organisation and in those experiences then it's of course we're going to see more issues that are of a similar vein unless we try and reverse the current way of working I suppose would be the best way to say it at the moment Thank you, cheer could I ask just one more question please if it's possible, thanks Now thank you for that just around recruitment obviously Scottish councils fail to recruit overall workers for base A1 in four jobs the underfunding is the biggest challenge local government is facing today with obviously funding being cut to the bone leading to cut backs on service provisions as well as strikes over pay and condition I want to ask the question it's obviously becoming increasingly difficult to have these jobs looking attractive so do you think that they are more now unattractive around especially job security when people are looking for jobs and what impact is this having on skills shortages and on local government's ability to deliver on their priorities So I think we've all highlighted the high vacancy and I think the issue isn't just about not being able to recruit are people not applying I think there's an issue around in my finance advocacy that Glasgow sit behind me so I better watch what I'm saying but I think the issue is more about how these things are recorded and how accounts are done so they'll say that 60% of vacancies have not been filled for the last year a lot of this may come back to and it's only a total for my part I don't have facts or figures about how vacancies are managed when local government to save money so if you are having to make a saving of X amount the easiest way is not to backfill any of those vacancies will sit but if you have also systemically underfunded any services and you've not provided enough staff to deliver those services that service generalise on the existing workforce more so the existing workload then is dispersed amongst the remaining workforce they try and pick up a wee bit more work do the work a bit harder, a wee bit quicker fit it all in it's hard, they go off sick but to replace those or if they add another vacancy but these people never recruited to fill vacancies the easiest way to fill a vacancy maintenance service provision is to take on agency staff which incurs a higher cost and I think if we look at any serious discussion around how we can't fill vacancies in local government needs to have a serious discussion about the use of employment agencies in local government and how they too relate to me, I probably wouldn't have if I sat here all day but I think if it's a job we're asking we need to explore vacancies, we need to explore the use of employment agencies within local government Thank you for that Sean, just on that that you say obviously you need to explore a bit more but with obviously strikes, underpay and the conditions of very underfunding but does it actually do you think that local government jobs will, it might be a question for Joanna that local government jobs will become less unattractive and especially around the job security that people want certainty so they know that all this is happening out there so would they apply for a local government job or would they apply for the private sector job what's more secure here so it's just asking that question Sean, sorry Very simply put, I think it's still a very secure job and very attractive job I think local government provides not the services but the work for a lot of people to build a family the security is there, the flexibility is there the pay is still lagging it's still dragging behind and obviously the the challenges that you've got once you're in in terms of workload I think people are going to realise that it's a hard hard job, particularly in a lower end of a lot of these local government jobs you've picked up a lot of slack that the communities rely on the services to deliver these aren't just the easy jobs that you can make up in a lot of bed and going to even at a lowest level so it's refuse collection working in the schools of care they're hard physically and mentally and you'll have to put the hours in and I think that's maybe the biggest barrier to pay compared to the physical effort I think that if we can address that you'll start to see a lot more people wanting to come back into local government Thank you, Joanna, do you want to say anything on that? Yes, thank you so I think obviously job security has increased in terms of issues of concern because of the amount of cuts that have been made necessarily because of the underfunding that local government has received so job security is a concern I think it's become an increase in concern that's not to say that I disagree with Sean in terms of my analysis that these are good jobs and once people do get into employment within local government they are more likely to view them as secure jobs the difficulty is in relation to attracting people to work in local government and central to that is pay so it is clear and is a point that we have made both to Cosland Government that if you want to increase the value of money in your pocket right now today in the middle of a cost of living crisis you could apply to be a care worker within a local authority but you might actually earn more money per hour by going to work in a fast food chain now that's not a good position for local authorities to be in and we absolutely understand that with a local authority role comes other terms of conditions which make that a more attractive role overall but when you are in the middle of a cost of living crisis people are much more concerned about the money that they have in their pocket today rather than all of the other benefits that might come with a job so I think there is a bit of a analysis going on in terms of where people are choosing to work based on how they can pay their mortgage today had we been in a much more stable financial situation as a country then they might make different choices but there is a massive focus on day-to-day pay, salary levels and unfortunately that is the key thing that is making it very difficult for local authorities to attract people into working for local government so I'd go back to the fact that COSLA could be a leader on this, could provide the funding to achieve a minimum rate of pay of £15 an hour and that might help alleviate some of that pressure Thank you Thanks very much for that response I'm just going to remind us that we've got about 10 minutes left of the session but I think we've got some flexibility to go over a little bit I'd like to invite everyone to both my colleagues and Linda Sean and Joanna to try to keep our questions and our responses as tight as possible because we're not even halfway through our questions and I do think that quite a few of the things that we want to go on to ask may have already come out in previous questions but there is some detail that we do want to get to so with that I wanted to pick up a question about the rates of absence so the Accounts Commission highlighted that recruitment challenges and high sickness absence levels are considerably a source of pressure for councils the overall absence level for non-teaching staff in 2021 to 2022 were the highest on record at an average of 12.2 days per employee so I'd be interested to hear what, maybe I'll start with Linda, what you think the key drivers are of this increase and what can local authorities do to support staff to reduce levels of absence Briefly and I'll let my colleagues come in but I think that when you're looking at people taking time off work to ill health particularly if you're in a public sector role it's not something people do easily you know there's very much an attitude of well you know I've got a job to do and there's nobody else to do it if I'm not there so I'll come in but that's changed and that's changed for a number of reasons I think there's an impact probably of long Covid that should be looked at within those figures I think there's but the bigger issue is very much about workplace stress and that workplace stress is coming from the pressure of having to do too much and I think that that would be borne out it was interesting looking at the audit commissions report itself and the case studies that went alongside it where they looked at well-being initiatives I mean the initiatives that were listed were you know they were welcome for what they were but none of them actually get to the bottom of tackling either identifying or tackling what are the actual issues in terms of absence management that we need to get to and we would argue again that it's about the workplace pressures and the stress that there comes from people being burnt out from having to do so much you know social care is one of the areas that there are the biggest recruitment problems in and that is to do with pay but it's also to do with what the job looks like once you're in it you know where the job is an intense job that is quantified into 15 minute chunks where people are expected to deliver a service it's frankly almost undeliverable in that time so that's why they end up working more than their time for nothing you know so there's specific issues I think within there you know all too often when a health working group is well about employment and they looked at signposting you know workforces to signposting workers to services rather than saying what are the issues that are actually affecting people at work very much for that anybody else got anything to add Sean and then Joanna sorry Joanna just very quick again goes back to the point I made about it's all a consequence of cuts I'm sure again it's about how the existing workload doesn't deplete, you're not cutting the workload but you're cutting the staff so that work still needs to be done people still need to be cared for, bins still need to be lifted kids they'll need to be fed and looked after at school but you're doing that way a much reduced head count of staff and that existing workload sometimes doubles or triples on existing staff they're not growing any arms and legs they're not getting 15 minutes extra in a day if anything they're getting less time to do more work and I think if any of us had to experience that then we'd all agree that it would have a massive impact both on our mental and physical wellbeing and that impact again on the absence but one further point is that I think when that happens it's very hard to get out of it I spoke about a death spiral earlier passed with a snowball, would be a better way of looking at it once the issues around absence happen on a service if there's a higher absence that workload is then still moved into smaller and smaller people that issues snowballs it gets increasingly large for the remaining employees the stress that they're under increases and increases then if they go off that it's just that it's snowballs and it's very hard to put a stop to that and roll that snowball back up the hill and I think there needs to be a whole culture change in how we approach this and the best way I would think to do it just very quickly would be when I'm relying on agency to fill the gap we need to look back at head count staff and levels and build on contingencies and contingencies in terms of having extra workers for the work that needs done to cover those within it and they can step in at any time I think the local government used to have that before my time I've heard it from many of my esteemed colleagues we don't have that at the moment and that seems to be the biggest issue I'm getting from our members is we don't have contingencies in the service anymore and that would be a huge role to play in helping people Thanks very much for that detail, Joanna Do you want to add anything? Yes, just very quickly I agree about the points that have been made about the increase in workload that have remained given the cuts that have been made but I think there's a wider point there also about the fact that because everybody is chasing their tail you very often find that there isn't the sufficient attention to some people development that there could be so particularly in terms of line managers and the softer skills around supporting individuals at work so I cite as an example the education support staff members that we have very often report violence at work them experiencing violence in the workplace during the course of their jobs and I think better reporting better investigation prevention of all of that would certainly help them in terms of dealing with some of that some of those issues but also just ensuring that workplaces are safe for members to work in there is as Linda has said also issues about long Covid given the jobs that our members do they were more likely particularly in the care sector to pick up Covid through the course of their jobs so there is certainly an issue with that as well and the final point I'd say is that we do often find local authorities record absences in different ways so I think better consistency in terms of reporting not just in terms of absences but many other issues would also help as get a better picture of what's going on across the country great thanks very much for all of that everybody's response there I'd like to bring in Willie Coffey thanks again convener it's a quick question really about the ageing workforce perhaps within local authorities we hear and we read widely that local government workers are retiring earlier it seems about a contradiction that you can't have both at the same time what's your views on that do you have an ageing workforce within our councils and what can we do to address that maybe start with Sean this time I think we still do have an ageing workforce the stuff that people retire in early I think is mainly fed from the fact that again it's the consequence of cuts so if you're going to make savings it's your budget package part of that is redundancy packages a lot of time people who are at a pension will be aged will be asked to either take redundancy or take an early retirement rate but that still comes back to the fact that those who remain are still we're not recruiting anybody to replace posts so it's the same workforce that are fed year on year getting older we're not recruiting, we're not bringing enough people in at the bottom that are younger maybe at the bottom of the ladder to replace them so it's just the ageing workforce and people are retiring early doing their savings it just means that the head count is reducing so out of time somebody retires doesn't mean we're replacing them we're somebody that's younger you can get early retirement plus a gradual increase in the relative age of the workforce so a lot of times local government will make strategic decisions about who has access to early retirement and if it is party service provision still or if they're needed for service delivery so if party savings package is expected a service that role might not be needed anymore so to speak I think they'll all be needed but in terms of a local government I can see the value and they might think well that post's almost been made redundant by cuts if that's the case Linda and Joanna what can we do to try to resolve that or even reverse that Linda I'll let Joanna feel that she's probably very pleased Joanna what can we do to try and reverse that trend I'll go back to some of the evidence that I've already given around how we attract people into local government so he is certainly a factor in all of that the thing that I'd add to what Sean has already said about the use of early retirement in the process of first time roles is that what that does mean is that very often the most experienced workers those that have perhaps got longest service with local authorities are ones that are choosing to take voluntary early retirement and councils suffer when that knowledge leaves the workforce so it's not just about the vacancy rates it's about the skills and experience that councils are losing through the continued cuts that are being made and how that impacts the delivery of services at a local level Okay Thanks very much for that Joanna, thank you Thank you, thank you Willie I'm now going to bring in Pam Gosall Chair, I'm quite happy to ask this question the next one to the direct to the councils if it's okay Could you ask it here as well? That's fine, no no, sorry I was just saying at the time, sorry No worries, thank you In the past obviously the committee's heard about disproportionate impact on overall reduction in local authority personnel has had on council departments particularly in planning and building standards and upcoming pieces of legislation proposed by the SNP Government including the new build heat standards and the short-term scheme undoubtedly lead to an influx of applications to such departments and my question is around are these relevant departments adequately staffed and resorted do with an increase in workload without having any adverse impact on other stakeholders so I think I'd ask Joanna first, yeah So I would say that the areas of local government that have seen the most severe cuts over the past 10 years have you looked at the accounts commission report published in May of this year clearly demonstrates that the planning is an area that has seen the highest level of cuts of all local authority services central support services were not far behind that culture and leisure environmental and vote also big decreases to their funding but in the planning department for example I mean those cuts it was like 40% of their budget so do I think these services are adequately resource no I don't we have seen huge huge impacts in these areas so to give them additional workloads on top of what they already have with resources that have diminished considerably over the past 10 years I think is is well concerning and certainly I think additional resource needs to go into those areas Thank you Joanna Sean or Linda I agree with that and also I think about what I said earlier about what is the ambition for local government are they just doing what they've always done are they doing something different now some of the priorities that have been set both through the very house agreement and scotch government's own priorities around just transition and net zero that will be new work some of that some of that is new work that will come to local authorities that they will have to play their part looking at local authority housing heating retrofitting the other things that they will have ambition to do they will not be the work force to do them Yeah, just take a look No, we don't have the work force but that doesn't mean you say we shouldn't try I think any new projects that do come online need to be well resourced and I think there could be a stimulus for economic recovery and I think local government needs to be the foundation for any efficient and proper economic recovery in wider society it starts with the whole government these projects are adding bro, need to invest to get the returns on them Great, thanks very much I'm now going to bring in Ivan McKee Thanks very much, convener Thanks for your contribution so far this morning it's been interesting and clearly it counts in framed in terms of the perception that there's been reductions in headcount that's causing things to be more difficult than there might otherwise have been but if I look at the data and you can maybe help me to square this circle but if you look at the numbers the FTE headcount over the last five years has actually increased by 21,000 by nearly nine per cent increased so I'd just like to understand your perspective on why on a position where what you're articulating is cuts on reductions in headcount whereas the actual reality as a headcount has increased quite significantly over the last few years I don't know who wants to start with that Sure You mentioned the last five years in that period with the pandemic and there was immediate measures put in place and funding secured from various levels of government to ensure that staff are recruited to deliver maintained, keen essential services I imagine the devil will be in the detail Ivan but I imagine that will be a part of it I think if you look at the general trend since 2008 and over the last 10, 15 maybe more years headcount has drastically reduced I have various members in Glasgow City Council who regularly tell me that in terms of parts and gardeners we used to have 1,300 staff 10 years ago when I was just over 200 street sweepers were similar when I was just over 300 I imagine those trends are the same you walk into any kitchen in any school and you ask the head cook the head caterer how many staff have you got, how many staff should you have there's at least three out of the five staff you have maybe in the kitchen I think anecdotally if you have to walk into any workplace and ask them if the head counter has been reduced the workers themselves on the front line the delivery services will tell you they absolutely have I think I need to see the detail you're talking about but I accept that the pandemic did bring in additional sources of funding in the head counter Thanks very much for that and that again makes us even more interesting because you're quoting concrete examples of specific departments but if you actually and you talked about a 10-year time frame so I've looked at 10 years the head count now Q3 2023 is actually up 13,000 on what it was 10 years ago on Q3 2013 so the head count has increased over even over that 10-year period as well so that was regardless of Covid and I suppose the second question is then if a lot of people were brought in to do Covid specific stuff clearly we're now post pandemic are those people getting redeployed or should be redeployed or what should that position be because clearly if the argument was already for Covid we're now beyond Covid what is the situation we're looking at there Sorry about that question so you said that head count was down on what it was 10 years ago the reality is it's up on what it was 10 years ago and you said that the people were all brought in for Covid so of all those people were brought in for Covid and the last few years were passed Covid what are those people doing now so there has been a large push by employers particularly where I have to do what's called robust vacancy management so FMD has had long Covid and has not been able to return to work their position has been replaced temporarily due to that funding anyone who's not been able to return to work has been capable like that to a local term so there's been a reduction and there's been a transfer maybe and the head count overall head count but there's been a transition there from people who've come in to cover posts to go back out I can't speak across Scotland to see why there's been an increase but I think over 10, 15 years the needs of services will change how things have been redirected will change and where additional resources have been put placed in removing certain areas to reduce those and moved into other areas to increase head count as an actual consequence of time I'd love to see a bit more detail on some of the stuff we're talking about but I've maintained that for the experience of my members who deliver front-line services is that head count is reducing drastically and it's having a massive impact on their ability to do their job maybe the head count or somewhere else John, I don't know if you get any comments on that yes, so during that period we have also seen early years expansion for example so there's a particular area which has seen an expansion of the workforce to deliver services which were committed to by the Scottish Government so that's one area that directly contributes to an increase in staffing numbers but I think the devil is in the detail because while some areas have seen an expansion both in terms of workforce numbers but also services provided funding committees others have seen very drastic reductions so I think it's very difficult to put everything into one pot and say everyone's bankers head count's gone up it might have gone up in some areas but that has in our experience been directly related to policy priorities by the Scottish Government for which there has been ring fence funding provided to local authorities the areas of service provision which have not seen secure ring fence funding provided have suffered cuts okay, no thanks that might help clarify and you're right, there's clearly some work to be done to dig into the detail but I just thought it was illuminating that the data's shown a very different picture than what the narrative is I've got on the subject frankly I was going to leave that until the next panels okay, thank you we had a briefing a while ago which was around looking at local government as well and the figures we had and again you need to look at where different sources came from but the figures we had around local government was that we had an employment from 325,000 workers and down to 260,000 in 2020 in 2022 and that was excluding police and fire as well so there's going to be different ways that we've come up with those figures just come back on that, clarify those numbers we've quoted did include police and fire so 30,000 of that reduction was as a consequence of recategorisation of police and fire and if you look at that number 262 is the number where it actually just now so if you look back over the last 5 10 years the number actually has come up quite significantly if you go back to 2006, it's a different story but if we're talking about pressures today things that happened nearly 20 years ago is obviously a different conversation John very quickly I think you're right, I think it is illuminating and the areas that as John has said were ring fenced and there was national policy objectives that we have seen an increase in those to deliver those services so I don't think we're in disagreement here and I think that leads the questions earlier about the impact of the very house agreement and then we need to look at what impact that will have are we then putting the accountability for cuts or are we shifting that around like a practical hot potato and what impact won't that have so that is illuminating, it's interesting to take away I think you're absolutely right, I think it's getting under the detail of that and seeing where that addition and head count has been and for what purposes it's going to be permanent and as a consequence as you said what have increased in service provision because I don't deny that there has been as a result of policies and elsewhere an increase but it's really hard to get that focus when it's actually going on looking at it from 30,000 feet without passing out the data to understand the detail on it so thanks thanks very much, yes so some work there to be done finding that detail that concludes our question and sharing your perspectives in this discussion about workforce in Scotland and I now briefly suspend the meeting to allow for a change of our witnesses on our second panel this morning we're joined in the room by Martin Booth who's the Executive Director of Finance at Glasgow City Council and Paul Manning who's the Executive Director of Finance and Corporate Resources and Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the South Lanarkshire Council and we are joined online by Robert Emmett who is the Executive Director of Corporate Services at Dundee City Council and I'd like to welcome you all to the meeting this morning so we're going to just turn to our questions from members and as previously mentioned we'll try to direct our questions to a specific witness where possible but if you'd like to come in please indicate this to the clerks and Robert as you're appearing virtually into the chat function there's no need for you to operate your microphones as we'll be doing that for you automatically and sometimes a bit of a pause before that comes on so we know about that so I'm going to actually begin with the same general question that I asked a previous panel and I'd be interested to hear and maybe I'll direct it to you Martin so you know it's coming initially so I'd be interested to hear if you could highlight what the main challenge you believe is for the local government workforce at the moment OK, thanks chair I think a lot of the comments that we heard from the trade unions we would echo those comments the challenges of the resources that are available for local government around directed spending means that the pressure on our workforce is ever increasing and the challenges of recruitment across all grades and probably for the first time in more senior grades in recent years is much more challenging and we wouldn't disagree with any of the trade unions comments about pay but it's the affordability of that pay and actually I don't think we disagree with the trade unions on that either I think they acknowledged that affordability was an issue so yeah there's challenges across the board recruitment, retention about that Has anybody else got anything to add Paul? Again, in terms of picking up on Martin's answer, I'll not reiterate Martin's points but I'm in complete agreement with him maybe just to add it a little bit on that on recruitment obviously you had a lengthy discussion with the trade unions about why some of the reasons are around that one of the facets of that is recruitment into leadership posts as well and part of that we could attribute to the fact that over time the differentials between pay have become compressed and it makes it less appealing for people to take those roles so that's a facet that exists in this as well Thanks very much for that Robert, have you got anything to add? Nothing specific of this, Dan Great, thanks so you obviously your the question about the new deal with local government and I'd be interested to hear what you think might be some of the key ways that the new deal could support local authorities in addressing the challenges faced in terms of workforce and Martin, I'll start with you The Verity House agreement is something that we're all supportive of in principle, it's about recognising the importance of the relationship between local government and that mutuality of respect about respecting the local democratic right of local government I think where we are just now we're all supportive of that as a principle but actions speak louder than words we have had something like the Verity House agreement previously the Concordat was signed I think in 2008 or 2009 and didn't last for a very long time really before it kind of unraveled so what we need is actions that back up at that position we need transparency over decision making we need clear accountability so we need clear demonstration of the pressure that's been placed in local government finances I think I said to this committee before when I gave evidence about last year there was lots of information about where it compared Scottish Government's budget in real terms but compared it to local government's budget in cash terms now that's comparing apples and pears we need to be transparent and compare apples with apples or pears with pears well we're this is part of the work that we're doing isn't it, we'll go see what fruit tree we get later on Paul, did you want to come in? in terms of the Verity House agreement I'll echo what Martin said if I go back to part of the discussion already this morning around the importance of funding and that relationship and that being the basis for a good relationship in terms of pay and workforce part of what I'd be hoping for within the Verity House agreement are the dimensions within it that I'd like to see come through there is a look towards a fiscal framework which would stop a drift in funding away from local government which we have seen over a period of time and another facet around that which is really critical in terms of funding is the issue of ring fenced and directed spend so one of the tenets within the Verity House agreement is that the default position is that there wouldn't be ring fenced or directed spend now that is one of the reasons why you see a skewing of the impact of having to close budget gaps within councils to certain parts of the workforce so big parts of what councils do are effectively protected from cuts and by that I'm thinking principally of education at the prescription around teacher numbers and it's also very hard for local authorities to make savings within the area of activity that sits within integrated health and social care partnerships so what that means is the burden in terms of having to make savings falls on the minority of a council spend which is left so if I can give you the example of my own council between education and the activity that's within health and social care partnership it accounts for about 75% of what we spend it's difficult to close the budget gap by going to that 75% because of the protections that are afforded to it so it means that you're left trying to close the budget gap by looking at the 25% of activity that's left so that covers the things that you would traditionally think of in local government services from cleansing and waste planning for example services like her own in terms of back office services these are the points Joanna was making earlier on so if through the verity house agreement we can start to get more flexibility in local governments budgets to address anomalies like that I think that would greatly help the position Robert, do you have anything to add there just a couple of points that I make Nubina so first of all I think it's important as Martin was saying we have an open transparent conversation but also perhaps that it's longer term so we've been dealing for the past period with single year settlements and if we think of that in the context of trying to plan our workforce and the delivery of our services then if we can stretch that out to two and three years then that will help with good quality planning I think the strong alignment in terms of the objectives that we're trying to achieve in local and national government and the way we achieve them should be by making sure we're having an open discussion about our policies and just one further point if I may, Paul mentioned the fiscal framework as well as thinking about the spending we also need to be thinking about income and about tax raising and how we fund public services and having an open discussion around what the opportunities are around that Thanks very much for those additional points We're now going to move on to questions from Willie Coffey Thanks very much, convener, and good morning to everyone We heard in the last panel that everybody wants more money to come to local government, everybody and there's a proposal on the table regarding the council tax which if approved would bring £176 million extra into local government I could ask if your three councils have a position in this yet in what their view is We're trying to represent all 32 councils on this position We are just finalising a response on behalf of directs of finance section towards what Paul prepared so I'll let him come in in a second but the first point I'd make is council tax affecting bands E to H doesn't fall equally across the country so again to use Glasgow as an example 83 per cent of Glasgow's houses are bands A to D and in fact more than 10 per cent of the remaining chunk is band E so our bands F to H are less than 7 per cent of our total housing stock so it wouldn't fall equally among those higher bands there's still quite a high percentage of council tax reduction and I think the figures you're quoting are before council tax reduction so the we would absolutely support more money for local government there needs to be care taken that this is applied in a way that benefits everybody in society and not just the wealth there suburbs and again absolutely echo what Martin said and that starts to form the basis of a response that we were putting in as local government directors of finance what the point we would make is this isn't a substitute for local government finance or local tax reform this is simply adjusting what is there at the moment and the question of local government finance and taxation reform and Robert mentioned this a second ago is long standing and a final fundamental answer to that is still awaited so it isn't that it doesn't even address the issues around valuation so essentially you're still running with a system of bands that references values in the early 90s which can't be satisfactory and that doesn't address that Martin made the point about the benefit not necessarily falling equally and it would need to go through some form of distribution process for there to be a proper equalisation of benefit from that but the money that you quoted Mr Coffey is absolutely the reason why ourselves as directors of finance across 32 councils would be supportive of this given the funding position that councils are facing and when we can talk more about that later on given the position that we're facing we would have to look at that as a potential mitigation against cuts that are going to have to come against council services so that's the overwhelming reason why we would say this has to be looked at so a cautionary point off the back of that we would ideally in order to mitigate the potential effects of cuts I would look for that in 2024-25 that may not be doable at this point in 2023 it may not be possible even to make system changes to get that done for April 2024 so it might be something that we would need to accept over a phased period of time Thanks for that, Paul Robert, any comment on that question from your perspective I suppose just to reiterate my point around having to look at the value of public services and if we're going to deliver public services that we aspire to making sure that we're raising the taxes that relate to it and that the burden of those taxations is appropriately distributed certainly if you look at where current house values are and the proportion of income to tax then the system is not really fit for purpose I would contend from a professional perspective so it is due for reform I think that's a submission that we have made before and in the meantime though certainly my council has taken the view that we should be looking to do something here to alleviate the burden of and to protect services in the forthcoming period Okay, thanks very much for that I wonder if I could just ask you a question about inequality and particularly pay inequality we only need to look back some years to the position in Glasgow where that council fought tooth and nail to prevent equal pay for women and that has been overcome I'm glad to say but do you still see pay inequality particularly gender inequality still being there and a problem to overcome within Scotland's councils and something we should continue to address perhaps declare an interest as director of finance in Glasgow City Council we are still finalising that process we are going through well through the process of a job evaluation exercise that will then lead to a new paying grading system that will be as equality proof as anything possibly can be but that is not 100% guarantee from a pay inequality I think that issues are long standing historical issues over what in the past were perceived to be the things that led to a job being higher paid and I think that the world's massively moved on since then and it's dealing with those long term historical difficulties is the issue I'm pretty certain that in Glasgow our gender pay is actually positive so women are averaging more than men in Glasgow but that's not to take away from the fact that for our lowest paid staff they are predominantly occupations that are dominated by females but that's being addressed and as we go through our job evaluation and new paying grading system we will hopefully resolve that Thank you very much for that Martin Paul your own perspective on the gender pay gap is it closing or widening to your view? The short answer for my own council is that it's closing but it's still a negative gender pay gap it's just over 3% now that has improved frequently across the past couple of years and I do expect it to improve again when we get next year's stat and I'll explain why in a wee moment the majority of our council's workforce are women so it's nearly 74% 73.7% actually the national figure is 73.8% so we're as damn it right on the national average if I picked the education workforce where the position continues there is a high percentage of female employees within the education workforce but there's actually a positive gender pay balance within that workforce so on average women are paid more than men however within the overall workforce that includes teachers and non-teachers it's 3% and how that has been and continues to be addressed over a period of time unfortunately for societal reasons we have women in those lower paid roles part of a conscious decision taken by our council taken by many councils is to try and increase the level of pay in those lower paid roles it's been done through things like implementing the real living wage it's been done in our own authority and within others through progressive reviews in terms of job evaluation looking at the content within jobs and trying to properly evaluate it and that's led to a closing of the gap by enlarge by lifting the pay of those lower graded posts so that's actually reduced it to 3% we've had a review a job evaluation review of home care staff across the past year which has now come to fruition that's led to a significant increase in the pay for those staff so again that's a group of people who are predominantly female that will benefit that gap next year I would expect it to reduce much further so those are the measures that are used to try and close those gaps it's really encouraging to hear that as well Paul, thank you very much for that Robert, because you offer your own perspective on the gender pay gap issue just a couple of comments so we're in a slightly better position than Paul, I think our gap is just under 1% now in terms of where we're at I think I just want to go back perhaps to Martin's comments and say that the workforce has evolved over many years in particular ways and one of the biggest challenges is the fact that we have, I'm not quite sure what the professional phrase for it is but we have jobs which are typically or have typically been undertaken by one gender or another and trying one of the things that we're looking at is how do you find opportunities to make sure that there's equality of opportunity across all of the jobs within the workforce to everyone so it's something that we take very seriously but some of that is quite embedded in the way we work and the way we are as a society so changing that requires more effort thank you I'm now going to bring in Pam Gosall thank you chair good morning panel my questions around recruitment obviously we've heard this morning that vacancies are high Scottish councils fail to recruit workers for one in four jobs and we've heard from the panel before and yourself that underfunding is one of the biggest challenges local government has today and with these cuts obviously cut backs on service provisions as well as strikes over pay and conditions with obviously lower pay and uncertainty of that job security what impact do you think it will have on the skills shortages and on local government's ability to deliver on these priorities and also people moving more to the private sector we've heard because of that job security and that pay that we've got people, less people coming into local government and could I ask Paul that please first listen, I'm happy to pick up on that I do still think local government is an appealing career for a whole range of people in Scotland what I do think has started to have an impact on recruitment is in part that the fact that we are all and include the private sector where we're fishing in a shallower pool if I look at my own areas statistics levels of unemployment are at a record low what we do have is a higher level of economic inactivity which plays into that as well but there is a smaller group of people that we're trying to recruit from and some of the roles that local government have are challenging and in some places you can get equivalent money through doing things that aren't necessarily as challenging as the roles that the local government offers so councils are having to work harder in order to recruit and fill posts and that leads to some of the statistics that we've talked about this morning in terms of posts that are unfilled we are I think as a sector becoming increasingly innovative in terms of how we reach out and we engage with a potential workforce not everybody goes online or picks up a particular paper every Friday and tries to find a job that way so if I pick examples that my own councils used and that I know other councils use as well we've tried to be more innovative running things like job fairs in specific areas in different places so for example in social clubs working people's clubs simply putting on events getting folk in, showing them the jobs that are available in their geographic areas where travel might not be a boundary and through that we've successfully brought people back into our workforce and back into the labour market generally we've tried to do things like that one area where it's particularly difficult to recruit people is drivers so for things like from buses to bin lorry's local authorities are going to use drivers so we've had to be very innovative again using techniques like the ones I've described to try and get people back in to do those types of jobs and again another big area across things like professional services from things like procurement to accountancy are graduate apprenticeships so rather than simply people coming out of university even trying to look at people who are school age leavers as well bringing them in, putting them through a degree and a professional qualification while working for the local authority so these are all things that are done to try and innovate and to try and move things on so I'm not despairing in that respect I do think that local government is still a career that stands comparison with others there are other things that make it worthwhile working in local government and I do think councils are reaching out and engaging and doing their best to fill these posts and to build on Paul's positivity at the end there I think it is still a fantastic place where you can build a career I think we have a first rate pension fund we have very flexible working conditions and services for lots of staff while the job security is maybe not seen by the public as strong as it was in the past most councils still have a no compulsory redundancy policy so there is still job security there but as our trade union colleagues said earlier the workload is increasing and it's increasing quite substantially and pay is a challenge we don't have the flexibility and some of it is linked to equal pay but some of it is linked to funding where we can compete with the private sector we will lose particularly professional staff for quite substantial pay rises and for a job that's probably less taxing there's an account to joke in there somewhere but we've got examples of people that really have built careers so I'm not going to name a name here but one of my very senior team grew up in the end of Glasgow got enough qualifications to get into university started university but it became apparent quite quickly that its family needed them to bring a wage in and university wasn't bringing a wage in so he took a job as a clerical officer with the council he's built a career he's gone to university through day release he's professionally qualified and he's now ahead of service in a very big department across Scotland and he's very committed to Glasgow because of that I'm not going to name his name so I don't think he'll ever leave local government because he's absolutely committed that local government gave him an opportunity to do the training and the professional qualifications that his circumstance had made it difficult for him to do otherwise from a recruitment point of view this time last year I had eight qualified accountant vacancies I went to the market we couldn't get anybody that was suitably qualified so we made the decisions we employed ten graduates and we employed five apprentices so people that they weren't at a degree level they're both going through a programme one's a three-year programme one's a five-year programme to become qualified accountants but in the short term that brings lots of challenges the managers agreed that they would take trainees rather than not getting anyone at all but it increases their workload because they have to train these people and it would be better this year because they've got second-year trainees, not first-year trainees but it continues to be challenging Robert, did you want to come in? I think just a couple of points I think that there's no doubt that there's a challenge in terms of the availability of the workforce we know that in Dundee the figures around 10,000 or 11,000 people who are not economically active and one of the challenges finding ways to get people back into work or into work in a constructive in a constructive way and it's not just the public sector that we know from our work with employability that's struggling with employing people so the type of innovative approaches that Paul and Martin were talking about are relevant but even when we've successfully trained somewhat up for example as a trades person they can be offered double the money to go and work in the commercial sector somewhere in the short term so the remain challenges whilst we have an aging population we're going to this is an ongoing challenge for us as a workforce to be planning ahead and particularly as Martin was describing training our own staff who've then got a greater commitment to the work that we're doing I've actually got a little bit of a supplementary on that so I think this is about rural employment so from what I understand third of the rural population Scotland is employed in the public sector and I just wondered how things are going from your perspective in terms of the challenges of recruitment is it challenging there in similar ways or is it different I know you're not really based but I'm hoping you might have the big picture Paul I'll pick that up because I'm hoping to be more of a rural authority than Glasgow which probably applies to every council in Scotland there are challenges in specific areas and that arises partly through the way that the population is dispersed also things like transport links accessibility to good public transport regular public transport can be problematic we do see and this is probably influenced the way that the council has delivered certain services over a period of time for example through things like care services it can be more difficult to recruit in the rural part of South Lanarkshire than it is in the urban part and for that reason sometimes we've used outside care providers where they're available and that isn't necessarily the case across that whole geographic area so it can be difficult in those respects in providing services and in recruiting people part of what I went back to earlier on around the things that we've done to try and address that is a targeting recruitment exercises so rather than simply putting out a general advert that runs across the whole area go to the specific community make the people who you're talking to aware of the specific vacancies in their area and that type of targeted recruitment seems to have borne fruit but I can't take away from the fact it is a dimension of a greater challenge in the rural community than it is in the urban setting Thanks very much for that Robert, come on in I don't know if you know how previously I was director of finance with Coran and Yalyn Share and in an island community certainly public sector jobs carried a greater weight and they made a greater contribution towards the economy in terms of the work they were doing but certainly I know that recruitment is a more significant challenge particularly for professional posts in those locations and if you think about trying to provide care services as Paul alluded to in very remote places the availability of staff in the city as being challenging is very challenging so it requires more bespoke solutions around what you can do but that just mirrors I think population decline and the fact that we're still seeing both an ageing population and a population moving to the cities still I think and needs effective workforce planning the one thing I would say is that more flexible ways of working that have come off the back of Covid has helped in some cases Thanks very much for that I'm going to move on so in the previous panel we had a conversation with them about the rates of absence and we heard about from Sean Bailey the snowball effect and I just wonder what your thoughts are and also I think from Joanna about a need to make local government records absentees in different ways and a call for more consistent reporting so I wonder what you think from your perspective are the key drivers of the increase and what local authorities could do to support staff to reduce rates of absence I certainly couldn't disagree with any of the comments that my colleague Sean Bailey made about the pressure on a workforce I also think that there is a significant impact on the back of Covid both with people that are suffering from long-term conditions but also people that are reviewing about looking after their own health and perhaps people in the past would have come into work that are choosing to protect their own health and not to take risks in that area I don't recognise the comments that were made about a different way of calculating perhaps between the public sector and the private sector but I think that local government stats will be pretty consistently applied through things like the local government benchmarking framework which are never perfect but I think that there's a level of consistency on how we record things so I don't think that that's a particular issue but it may be different from how the private sector do it I would agree I think that in terms of inconsistencies my view is that those that did exist have been ironed out and the figures other colleagues may answer differently in terms of why the figures have reached the level that they have again I would go back to the point that was made by Martin I think that Covid in those 21-22 figures still plays an impact I think that there's an aspect that's in there as well around the fact that people were stretched across the period of the pandemic and there was maybe still a residual impact of that borne out in things like levels of psychological reasons for absence and that lift in the figure to the levels that it did I do think that we have an older workforce and I think that brings its own challenges as well in terms of measuring levels of absence simply levels of absence if I pick on the area of home care with him on authority I think somebody told me recently that the average home career is a 58-year-old lady so in terms of the demographic of people in their late 50s there are going to be more health challenges there there are going to be more reasons for absence and I think that's something that you're seeing more as we've come around that ageing workforce and the impact that that has so those are some of the reasons that I do think sit behind that very much Robert would you like to add to that thanks very much now I'm going to bring Willie Coffey in thanks again convener it's just on that issue Paul that you mentioned there about the ageing workforce how in your view can we have an ageing workforce for seeing more people retire in early ageing what you're saying are different groups of people I referenced a particular group of people in terms of a home care staff who have got an average age in their late 50s I think that the group of people who you are seeing retire earlier and this is my own anecdotal experience on this maybe aren't working in that area or maybe in things like more senior or managerial roles I do think you are seeing within the local government workforce what you would call a hollowing out so you're seeing experience and you're seeing managerial experience go from the workforce my point is you could have those two phenomena existing but within different groups within your workforce similar experience in Glasgow Martin and yourself Robert Yes I think it is in Glasgow anyone that retires under early retirement or voluntary retirement I have to sign off so we have quite strict controls around that and actually they're not just in senior roles they are across the piece we've got a lot of people that do flexible retirement again a lot of it to do with health and it's something we're very keen to support because we are concerned about the kind of brain drain among senior people and I think Joanne referred to this in her earlier answer about the concern over lots of experience disappearing so we can support somebody towards retirement by retaining them for maybe three days a week for a period of time to allow them to transition into retirement I think that that's a good thing in itself so we are seeing a number of people retiring that's how we're dealing with a lot of the pressures on our budgets we have to reduce our headcount and the easiest way is for people to retire either through normal retirement processes or through a voluntary redundant sale of the retirement process and we're not recruiting the same numbers at the entry level end of younger people coming through so that is leading to an aging workforce and we're all aging unfortunately Thanks very much for that, Martin Robert, any additional perspective on that issue about the aging workforce? Just a couple of comments I suppose if you look at how our workforce in Dundee is pretty much the same size as it was in 2019 and we've seen a change in the workforce, we've seen a shift away from corporate services and some neighbourhood services and growth in education and children family services if you look at the workforce that's underneath it in some of those services there are parts of the workforce in neighbourhood services for example where the majority of the workforce are in their late 50s and we're seeing a presumably what was a workforce that came in at a particular time reaching towards the end of their career and one of our challenges that we're concerned about is retaining expertise and knowledge in services as we go forward so that's where our workforce planning comes in about where are the changes coming we've got heat maps within the council that show where are the changes coming and help us think about what we might be doing to prepare for a loss of particular groups of staff at particular times Many thanks for that everyone Thank you Thanks very much, I'm going to bring in Pam Gosall Thank you chair My questions around earlier on we spoke about basically work pressures on departments so we've heard that there's a significant impact over on reduction in local authority personnel on certain council departments for example planning building standards departments and upcoming pieces of legislation proposed by the SNP Green Government including the new build heat standards and the short term lets licensing scheme will undoubtedly have influx of applications to such departments and I wanted to ask that you feel that these departments are adequately staffed and resourced to deal with an increase in this kind of workload without having adverse effects on stakeholders so this time I'll go to Martin first Thank you There is difficult to recruit across all professional grades including planning officers building control officers environmental health officers as well as surveyors, accountants, lawyers and all of those areas for the kind of planning building control environment of health there's additional pressures because the volume of people coming out with relevant graduate qualifications are less there is less places where subjects are studied than there was historically and that leads to challenges itself so it's easier there's more people graduating with an accountancy degree so that is less challenging although it continues to be challenging and we're still having to recruit and train our own but the other real issue in this area again and Paul touched on it earlier is the directed spend where social care and education have been protected by directed spend decisions and the area that's left which includes all of those professional services is the area where the cuts have to be made so the pressure on resources within those areas is very, very significant Robert, do you want to say anything on that? Mine's captured the main points I think there's no doubt that the work that we're doing in local government has changed and we need to be smarter about what we are doing and how we are doing it and I think it's incumbent on all of us to look at how we can use the resources that we've got and the scarce resources to be most effective across the public sector so we should be thinking about the outcomes that we're trying to achieve and what we are trying to achieve so there is a challenge for in particular posts and there is a change in the way that we are delivering services in local government but we should be prepared to look at different ways of doing things as we go forward and particularly looking at reduction of effort and how things are done so my personal observation would be that we've got a lot of bodies in the public sector we've got all sorts of people who are doing similar things and looking at doing similar things and ways that we can find of reducing duplications so resources are focused at the front line and the direct services that we need to deliver should be our priority so whilst I'm accounting by training we're not on means to on ends we're to support the function that we're trying to deliver and I suppose where I'm coming from is some people will be uncomfortable with change as it comes and we need to be trying to adapt as organisations and again just to go back to why our workforce planning is so important that we're thinking about the direction we're going in and where we can collaborate and how we might be doing things different what might we be looking like as organisations in five years time again I'll go over the points that have already been made in terms of Robert stressing the importance of workforce planning something that helped greatly with workforce planning is a greater degree of financial certainty if we know for a period of time the level of money that we're working with and you mentioned the commitment to net zero and planning towards that at the moment we're really working in the absence of a funding structure for that moving forward to those targets in the next decade so if we had a greater degree of the extent to which these commitments were going to be honoured financially and a greater degree of certainty in our financial settlements it takes away from inhibition about workforce planning so people are more likely to say okay this is what we need to do and these are the plans that we need to make people are more likely to fill posts on a permanent long term basis if that degree of certainty is there sorry I said this one speaking before we've also got a long history of where we have used the workforce planning to train the workforce of the future so when the 1140 hours for early learning childcare was brought in we went through a programme and that happened across the country where we supported staff in other areas of the council workforce to retrain to work in the early learning environment and in Glasgow we also a few years ago were really struggling with teachers so we created a team to programme to support staff to train as teachers where they were first of all given six months where they could take a day a week to spend it in a school so that they could be sure that they were comfortable working in that environment and then while they did a teacher training year we provided them with a bursary to provide them with a salary while they were doing that training on the basis that they would come back and work for us after that so again we use our workforce planning to try to plan those gaps in our workforce Great, thanks very much for that Robert, in a previous answer you mentioned these heat maps for your workforce planning that seems like something that's quite an interesting process is that something that all councils do? I don't know how the different councils go about I'm happy to share with the committee an example of the work that we've been doing I imagine other councils are looking at specific areas to see where challenges might arise in the future Great to see, thank you very much I'm going to bring in Ivan McKee Thanks very much, convener The first question I'm going to ask was just following up on the question I asked the previous panel trying to get some insight on the macro numbers but then I'd quite like to move on quite a lot and explore some of the stuff that Robert was talking about on contents improvement opportunities for innovation etc so I don't know if you can cast any light on that but it would be helpful, thanks We have the benefit of hearing the previous answer so I think the significant underlying trend is a significant reduction in the workforce over a number of years but I absolutely understand your question because the numbers have increased over the last 8 to 10 years that ties in with the increase in early learning and childcare resources so going from almost doubling the number of hours that are provided significantly increasing the workforce leading to us to retrain staff to support that also within that timescale with the roll-out of free school meals which has increased the uptake of children attending free school meals but perhaps one of the most subtle differences that was probably missed earlier was the classification of staff so the figures you're quoting are council staff that are excluding allios and in the period that we're talking about a number of allios have been brought back in-house most significantly I think in Glasgow where Cordair would have been excluded from those figures I can't remember the exact total workforce from Cordair but I know that just on catering and cleaning because they're now under my responsibility in Glasgow I've got 3,500 staff that previously wouldn't have been included I think when you add in the social care staff you're probably talking up towards 10,000 staff so that just in Glasgow now there's been similar moves in a number of other authorities where allios have been brought back in-house so I think that might be a significant element of that number that when you add it on to the early learning and childcare and the free school meals would more than account for that increase Thank you very much there must have been something there so I don't know as I ask yourselves or colleagues can perhaps come back to the committee with some more granularity and some of that if you're able to put some numbers around about either those policy changes or the reclassification changes just so that we can fill out the thing because my next question is going to be why is Dundee down 2% South Lanarkshire's up 5% and Glasgow's up 28% but you've answered that question already reclassification of allios which of course I wasn't aware that they weren't included so thanks very much for that I think what I'd like to do is explore a wee bit further as I said some of the points Robert was making round about opportunities for improvement removal of duplication collaboration between councils on back-office services duplication with a wider public sector including frankly with Government directorates as they're overlapping duplication there or with other agencies what's happening in that space and are you comfortable that we've got robust enough mechanisms to be able to share best practice and collaborate and understand and drive that as a kind of way of working rather than something we do exceptionally under pressure don't know who wants to come in first I start sorry I think this is an area that we haven't yet done enough on in terms of looking at how we can collaborate so I know that I don't know whether you've seen it or not but it's a piece of work that's the local authority chief executives looking at what our future council might look like and how it might work and we in Dundee for example are looking with our neighbours at what we might do differently and how we might share services some of it's driven by necessity and difficulty recruiting and some of it's driven by trying to identify opportunities to make sure that we're not we're as efficient as possible with our support services so for example one thing that I do at the moment now is to share a chief internal auditor with our neighbouring colleagues in Angus council I think there's still further things that we can do we should be thinking about whether services are provided locally or nationally and I suppose if you look at the number of bodies we've got and Martin was talking about allios what's the most effective and efficient way of delivering different services and councils are very much located in their place so we generally have a good oversight on what's happening in a particular place and I suppose that's where our focus should be around how are we improving things for Dundee in partnership or for anyone's local area not singling Dundee out for special treatment but how are we thinking about the outcomes that we're achieving and not just about the protecting the services and the structures and the individuals that we have at the moment there's lots of examples of where we do work with other councils so Robert mentioned that he shares a chief auditor with another council Glasgow provides the internal audit service completely for Shetland Islands Council we also provide the internal audit service for a number of other public bodies so Scottish Canals and Loch Lomond National Park we provide the internal audit service for that across lots of specialist areas even more so so we have a computer audit team within Glasgow so we provide on a kind of almost consultancy basis support to other local authorities predominantly in the west of Scotland but sometimes wider but you know there's a bit of a misnomer that shared services might be the answer to all the questions all the problems shared services have been about for a long time and they're not really massively taken off anywhere from a truly cross-organisational function to work best within an organisation and being as efficient as possible so again in Glasgow we've got a customer business services centre which is in effect a shared service centre within Glasgow where we've looked to centralise services and processes as much as possible but we actually learn as we go through that that some services are most efficiently and effectively delivered locally so we've transferred some staff back to for example education where staff lose their life for working because actually they want to think that they work in a school in their community and they want to deliver to services for that school and not think that they work in a shared service centre so it's getting the balance right between how we deliver services but it's something we work on all the time because we've been driving efficiencies because efficiencies avoid cuts as much as we possibly can Thanks chair and if I can come in probably most councils across Scotland provide examples of joint working I do think that it's more widespread than the general consciousness would have you believe for example my local authority as well as providing back office services for allios in our area we've got CEMIS which is the joint education system provider for Scotland which now provides education IT admin services for all 32 councils and again for them I'm providing the professional services back up so these relationships and these things exist as well as shared services a term I'd probably like to use is joint working it's a really good example of that in the Glasgow area Glasgow city region and the joint working around the city deal so you've got sitting behind which is on the face of it a massive economic investment funded by the councils the Scottish Government the UK Government you have services underpinning that for example a joint project management office which is existing and providing those services to all the councils that are involved so that that's not duplicated with an individual authorities and you've also got an economic information service that's there as well which is assisting all those authorities in progressing with the aims of the city deal so those things are there and that's helping to deliver a project that's leveraging in literally billions of pounds to that area so it's good to see that and the point you make Martin about very often decentralisation is actually more efficient than centralisation at least because you can get rid of an expensive corporate function that may not be adding as much value as you think it is so I totally appreciate that and my question was are you comfortable that there are mechanisms in place to facilitate that sharing and I suppose I'm thinking about the improvement service and other work that's happening but do you feel comfortable that that is part of the daily conversation and there's mechanisms to give effect to it I think we're very fortunate in Scotland in the 32 councils they do all talk to each other they talk through the directs of finance section they talk through SPDS they talk through SOLAS so there's a structure there where we do all talk and we share good practice, we share experience across the board and the thing that happens in all the kind of service areas so I think we have a big advantage maybe over other areas where the 32 is not too big a number for that to work effectively thank you very much thanks very much and now I'm going to bring in Miles Briggs thank you, convener, good morning today we've heard a lot about changes which the pandemic has brought forward and I wanted to ask with regards to how local governments measuring staff wellbeing around that and potentially individuals who are now permanently working at home or what opportunities that's opened up for the workforce so maybe bringing yourself Paul to start I think it's brought different challenges again I'm not drawing on my own authority for this this is something that I've had a discussion on over the past week there is a belief a view that this is actually more taxing on younger, newer employees because you don't have that foundation of understanding a workplace environment of having formed relationships so I heard about one employer which actually asked their new intake of employees to try and work as best they could more from the office in terms of the majority for the first two years if it was appropriate for the type of job they started working on a more hybrid or home working basis so these things are appreciated is being difficult hybrid working has opened up new opportunities so there are areas of staff who have become more marketable because they can work remotely I know of a procurement officer that we had who was working from his home in Lanarkshire with a London borough and that was valued by that employer because it's really really hard to get that resource that impacts on us because it makes it obviously harder to attract those people in as well because they've got a greater degree of coverage that they can work to one of the things that we did try to do as a council when this is going back to August 2022 was put a paper to council and it gets recognition in the local government overview report there's a link in that to the report that we did which was about a new deal for employees and one of the things that was within that was about a right to disconnect from the trust authority in Scotland to do it so what it was about was a policy that said look these are your rights as an employee these are your duties as a manager and wherever possible you should look only to be referencing, checking answering email correspondence within working hours put that in the consciousness of everybody within the organisation you've got a right to turn off what's becoming a factor in people's work in lives so other things within that new deal for employees paper as I say it covered this right to disconnect it did look at certain aspects around paternity support for pregnancy and loss in neonatal leave and it was a package of measures not with a particularly high cost which was worked through with the trade unions which took into account those additional measures that had come about through hybrid working, through the pandemic and tried to give something bank to the employees in that respect so that's just an example of I was doing that as a council but you'll see things like that across Scotland Martin or Robert does anything you want to I would agree with Paul's comments that it does bring benefits through flexibility and making it easier to manage a work-life balance making it downsized to hybrid working or home working that we just need to be very cautious about Paul mentioned the thing about training and we all learn all the time and we learn from each other and we don't learn as much when we're not sitting next to that person but just from our mental health I think I'm concerned about people that aren't engaging enough with other people and the impact on their mental health I know that at the start when everybody was working from home and I was no different and then actually we were getting work done in the house and it was too noisy so I came into the office as soon as I was allowed to come into the office and came back in full-time and it was only when I came back in I realised how important it was to separate working and home so I worked in the office 100 per cent of the time because actually my commute which isn't very long in and out of work is where I kind of switch on and switch off so I think from my mental health point of view encouraging people to come into the office at least a significant proportion of the time is really important that doesn't mean for everybody and everybody will be different but we need to make sure that we don't create future problems for our workforce Thanks for that and Robert did you want to come in? I think I would echo what colleagues have said I suppose the support that we're putting in place is probably a key component so we're working closely with colleagues in the unions to actually make sure that support is in place what we have found is that for some people there has been a challenge coming back to the workplace after Covid and we need to put in different measures and look at different ways of doing it going forward That's helpful and in terms of changes which we're seeing to services what works being undertaken look at how these are disproportionately potentially negatively impacting on women and minority groups within the workforce Is there any work taking place around that within your councils? If I maybe just generalise this a wee bit one thing we would always look to do and we've talked earlier on today about the financial challenges that face local authorities and some of the adjustments that will need to be made to services in order to try to close budget gaps and cope with that I use expressions like closing budget gaps in large part what that's going to mean are jobs being lost right and again we've talked about no redundancy commitments and we'd always try to redeploy people within the workforce what we do right and again this will apply across all councils as when we're looking at these measures we undertake things like equality's impact assessments and part of that will look at the impact on the workforce and there'll be conversations with the trade unions again the extent to which a predominantly female workforce I said earlier on more than three quarters of the workforce is female the extent to which I can protect women in the workplace from that is going to be a limited but we would always try to make sure that's a consideration when we're under taking change within services suppose tying it back to the last question as well what we should remember is the vast majority of our workforce can't work from hybrid working you can't be a care worker and work from home you can't be a teacher and work from home you can't be a refuse collector and work from home the vast majority of our staff are front-line delivery staff and if they're not working then the work's not being done so for the vast majority of our staff that doesn't apply and as Paul said applying our equality impact assessment to any change that we make is vital to make sure that we do things as fairly and equitably as possible I just wanted to return to Willie Coffey's question with regards to equal pay we've seen the situation in Birmingham and I wanted to ask are you aware of situations in Scotland councils who are still to settle that longer term equal pay claims and which councils potentially are exposed to that and any concerns that have been raised with government around that I think that in a public forum we'd be very ill advised to talk about any individual councils for things that may well become legal cases again difficult to speak about Birmingham Glasgow is the authority of an equivalent size we've worked through that process the important thing and from my understanding the issue that Birmingham had was they'd settled equal pay several years ago but they hadn't fully implemented an appropriate pay and grading system and structure to protect themselves from future claims and when I was answering Mr Coffey's question I was very clear that it is very challenging but our job evaluation and the new pay grading system that we're working through hand in hand with our trade union colleagues is vital for us to be able to limit that future liability that's great and thank you something that came up very briefly in the previous panel and I think it's connected to wellbeing but also recruitment was the idea that we've worked through the past week is that something that is being considered explored Martin? It's certainly something that's been talked about a lot in council chambers I probably should declare this as my personal view and not the view of any local authority or any organisation but going back to my answer to the last question where the vast majority of our workforce then somebody else has to work that fifth day so there is a 20% increase in the costs of delivering that service we can't afford what we've got just now so to put 20% on to our pay bill is not deliverable and actually the more there's talk of other workforce is going to a four day working week and the pressures that that will create it will lead to massive inequalities in our workforce so I'm not supportive of it anyway whatsoever as a personal statement Thank you very much, thanks for qualifying that Anybody else want to add to that? Robert? Just to say, within local government we already have a very flexible approach to working so we have certainly within my council we have people working compressed hours we have people working flexible arrangements reduced hours my own view is that as organisations in local government we're good employers responding to the needs of individual employees so that all exists but I would personally support Martin's view that given we're providing services in many cases seven days a week but often five days a week on a front line basis then trying to map that to a four day working week becomes very challenging and also we need people to be available to work when the services need to be provided so if you think about the hours that a school operates you can't do extra hours on a school day to facilitate it so I think there might be some pockets of services where it could work but by and large I think there's probably other priorities for us Thanks very much Okay so that concludes our questions and really thank you very much for your evidence today it's been insightful to get your perspectives and I now brief to spend the meeting to allow for a change of witnesses and final panel this morning we are joined in the room by James, who's the chief executive of APSI and Councillor Lynn Short, who's the chair we're also joined by Jerry Corns, who's the portfolio holder for workforce issues at Solace and Fiona Whitaker, who's the chief officer of people resources at North Lanarkshire Council and before we go to questions I'd like to invite Councillor Lynn Short to give a declaration of employment employed by Joe Fitzpatrick MSP for seven hours a week so I just wanted to declare that at this point Thank you very much so we're going to start I'm going to start with the general question that I've been asking at the beginning and that's just to hear from your perspectives what you think the main challenges are for local government workforce at the moment and I didn't say who to start with but maybe I'll start with Fiona I'm going to tie not too much to what my colleagues have said but obviously I very much support what they've said there are probably three points I think that I want to make that are most important certainly from my perspective and my role and also representing my colleagues in HR across the 32 local authorities one of the significant things that's really important to bear in mind is that we're operating and I think my colleague Paul Manning referred to this, we're operating Labour market so the actual availability of workforce is significantly less than it was prior to the pandemic if I give you some numbers certainly in my own area that illustrate that, you heard the reduction in the number of unemployment or the levels of unemployment in North Lanarkshire that's dropped from a kind of average of sort of 10, 11, 12,000 down to about 6,000 so it's now actually sitting at the lowest level that it's been in 10 years if you add to that then the increases in economic inactivity that we're seeing and certainly in my own area that's a jump of 10% what you're getting is an impact at both ends so the actual workforce availability is shrinking quite significantly so I just want to say that's one of the key things that I want to say I think if you add to that it's important to differentiate between the majority of workforces in local government which are bottom-end workforces front-line workforces, workforces that you've heard my colleagues talk a lot about that are very critical to us and by and large we recruit those workforces locally so I'd like to sort of emphasise that link between that local labour market and the availability of that workforce particularly in areas where we recruit from that kind of female 50-something population that is the population we've seen the biggest increase in economic inactivity so those two things link together significantly if I talk about the other aspects of local government workforce so those senior professionals you've heard a number of my colleagues say are difficult to attract the compression in our pay spine so those two bottom-ended pay awards has significantly impacted some of those roles in terms of their standing in the actual labour market additionally we've seen private sector organisations who've got more flexibility in what they do around their pay start to inflate their pay to be able to attract those individuals across to those organisations so that underpins a lot of the difficulty we have in facting and retaining the likes of accountants lawyers, architects significantly impacts us I think the last point I want to pick up and I think my colleague Paul Manning talked about this and the innovation and the answer I think lies in some of this and that's the ability of local government to access skills funding so things like apprentices and graduate apprentices are absolutely critical for us as it stands we don't have the funding to be able to support the development of particular workforce areas through our normal revenue funding so access to those sources of funding that come through the levy are absolutely critical for us so I'll give you a very brief example and then I'll stop and let my colleagues obviously come in so for social workers critical absolutely critical for us in an area of significant shortage Scotland as it stands we are only able to fund certainly my own authority about six places on a trainee scheme where a graduate apprenticeship to be available in social work for us we could significantly increase the number of social workers that we would be able to train locally and it is important that we train them locally because a lot of their practice is done locally so we must recruit them into local authorities and then put them through their training and their qualification so I'll stop there but just to illustrate there are three key points for me that have already been touched on but hopefully I'll give you a bit more information Thanks very much and it's very helpful to get that level of detail to start to help to give us a greater picture Anyone else want to come in on that? Mo? Thank you convener Very similar to Fiona Apsie regularly surveys our member authorities to find out what it is that is creating the issues for them and their work for survey finds that 76% of our member authorities within Scotland cite pay as the main factor both in recruitment and retention of staff there is some good news in that for Scottish local government it's 82% on a UK wide basis so it's marginally less of a factor here but nonetheless a huge issue Apsie's local government commissioner also explored this matter and I know Mr Coffey referred to that earlier one of the main things that came through the expert witnesses to our commission was a distinct lack of comprehensive workforce planning in local authorities and again that was on a UK wide basis but in part that does consistently cite the inability to plan long term for the workforce because of the short term nature of local government finance so those two things are absolut