Good morning, and welcome to the ninth meeting of the local government housing and planning committee in 2021. We've received apologies from committee member Willie Coffey, and I would like to ask all members and witnesses to ensure that their mobile phones are on silent and that all other notifications are turned off during the meeting. The first item on business on our agenda today is a decision on whether to consider items 4 and 5 in the agenda in private. Are we agreed? The second item on our agenda today is to take evidence as part of the committee's consideration of the Scottish Government's local governance review. We will take evidence from three panels this morning. Firstly, I welcome to the committee Rona Mackay, community council member from Bemecula, community council, Alison McLeod, society secretary from Mid-Steeple quarter, Debbie Herron, development manager from Forrest area community trust, Pauline Smith, chief executive from Connect community trust, and Philip Ravel, community board member from sustaining Dumbar. We are going to move straight to questions. Witnesses, if you wish to respond or contribute to the discussion, please put an R in the chat box to indicate this. It may be that there are some questions that are not necessarily relevant to your experience, and what we're going to try to do is direct our questions initially to initial one or two people. If you do want to come in on the questions, you're welcome to. I just want to start by saying that we are in a privileged position to be overseeing the conclusion of the local governance review, which launched in 2017 and ensuring that it's finding shape the upcoming local democracy bill and the community and community wealth building. I'd like to begin asking—I think that this one actually is a general question for everyone—I'd like to hear about your understanding of your local communities, what are the challenges—we'd like to understand what's going on in your local communities, what are the challenges, strengths and the roles that each organisation finds in improving the outcomes for local governance review. For the record, I do know Debbie Herron. We live in the same town and have worked recently together on the co-response to Covid-19, so great to have you here, Debbie. I'd like to begin with Rona, Alison, Debbie, then Pauline and then Phil. I can't hear you. Hello. Welcome. I live in Bimbicula and the chain of islands known as Uist. Starting off with the challenges, we have some huge challenges that we face. We're one of the first communities that will be affected by climate change due to rising sea levels. Our islands are connected by causeways and so any rising sea levels is obviously going to affect us and already is affecting us in terms of people getting to work during stormy weather and to school and to any other facilities that need. We're tackling that. Our communities are trying to do their best to think the way around it, but it's a huge challenge. To get our voice heard and get anyone to take an interest and to help us with that is a challenge, too, being so remote from any decision-making areas. Other challenges that we're facing just now have become critical services around mental health in Uist. We have huge problems, including suicide and alcoholism. We don't have any services to tackle them ourselves, so we're trying to look at ways that we can tackle isolation and what can we do as a community to do something about the poor mental health. Another problem is housing. A lot of our houses are getting bought up for second homes and we're worried that we'll end up like the Isle of Skye, which is mainly full of second homes and local people are getting pushed out. We know that our young people want to live in Uist and they want to set up a home here and have families. We currently have a majority of elderly population, which is a huge problem for us, and that's being exacerbated by young people not being able to find homes. That's another issue that we're trying to tackle as a community at the moment. Fuel poverty is a huge issue here. We know that it's an issue, we've known it for years, and we've done the research ourselves to look at fuel poverty and what needs to be done to tackle hard-treat housing. However, the change isn't happening and we're a small population of a few thousand people. To be able to tackle all those huge issues ourselves on our own is very difficult. I don't think that it's something that could be led only by statutory services. I think that it's something that we need support to be able to grow and lead on those issues ourselves and decide what needs to be done for them. Thank you very much, Rona. I just got a message that you did really well because I heard that the question got cut off. I'm just going to repeat it. We would just like to get a sense of your local community, what the challenges are, what the strengths are and the role of your organisation in trying to improve those outcomes. The next person is Alison McLeod from Midsteeble Quarter. Yes. Midsteeble Quarter is based in Dumfries and it arose from extensive consultation work carried out by our sister organisation Dove. Over many years, they provided a space for it to be safe to speak, where they spent a lot of time looking at the big picture. The question was, what is our town, what do we do about it? There was a mixture of this big picture thinking and discussion and hands-on work, volunteering work, which brought a lot of people in and gave them the conversation that otherwise wouldn't have been done. The issues that Dumfries and Dumfries Town Centre particularly is facing and was facing at that point was it's just pretty empty. There's nothing much happening there, where all the buildings used to be occupied in the past by shops on the ground floor and even longer ago by people, quite a substantial population living in the town centre. It has now gone down to almost nobody living there at all, lots of empty buildings and shops, empty shops, empty for decades, not just recently. The high street is particularly quiet and it's not in attractive place or it hasn't been in attractive place for new businesses to set up. Since the pandemic has got worse with businesses like large chains closing there, the discussion at the stove created a sense of ownership and empowerment and the decision that, as nobody else was going to do anything about the town centre, it was up to the local people to do something about it. Out of that came Midstiple Quarter, which is a separate organisation. We have been working hard over the past four years. We had identified a block of buildings, it's eight buildings in total, but they are very large buildings, they're deep, they're still in the medieval layout and they all include shops on the ground floor and what has been accommodation in the city floors above that. We are just about to start rebuilding the first of those buildings, which was the first one that came into ownership through a transfer from the council. The idea is all about building a community there. There will be a substantial number of homes, so there will be people living there, it will bring the area to life and it will mean that there will be things going on in the evening because there will be people living in the town centre. At the moment, the town centre just can live with the shats by the clock and it's like a ghost town. In the ground floors, we're going to have a business, but not just straight forward business. We have more community-based local enterprises and social enterprises. We have our first tenants just engaged at the moment in restoring the building so that it's fit to use. That is a community interest company that involves a large number of small creative businesses who couldn't afford their own properties and have been selling online or at markets to have a place where they can permanently be selling their modules and the things that they make. The building that we're rebuilding is going to provide a lot of support and opportunities to local small businesses. There will be a co-working space, meeting spaces, a retail space, a very flexible building with all sorts of opportunities for support for businesses, for networking. Those will be all local small businesses that, at the moment, are working from home or from premises that are not particularly suitable for them. It's all about enabling enterprise in that area but not the enterprise that we've had in the high street in the past that has been owned by companies that don't have any connection with them. I don't feel responsible for the community if it's all about benefit for the community in general, as well as for the small businesses. That's great. If we can go on to Debbie. It was great to hear a little bit of the detail on midstiple quarter, but we're looking at the challenges and the strengths in relationship to the governance review. If we can hear a bit about where you feel that there's blocks for you doing the things that you want to do in your community. It's hearing a little bit about the local community, what are the challenges in the community, what are the strengths, what's the role of the organisation. I'm just doing that because we've got nine more questions to go through, so we'll be able to tease out a lot more as we go through them. Debbie, thank you. Oh, thank you. Sorry, I lost the last few minutes of your conversation there. It cut out. Did you hear... Okay, so I was just saying that if you can... We've got about 10 questions. Is that her cutting out again? No, okay. We've got about 10 questions to go through, so this is just giving the committee... Do you hear anything at all? You can't hear anything at all. No. Okay, so maybe we should... You hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Okay, so we're just going to suspend briefly to do technical check because apparently there's problems with various people on the on the blue jeans. Okay, so now we'd like to hear from Debbie Herron from Forest Community Trust. Debbie, if you can give us an overview of your local community, what the challenges are, the strengths and the role of Forest Area Community Trust in overcoming and improving the outcomes. Sorry, you've gone again there, sorry Adriana, but I can... I think I know what you want, so I'll try. Give it a go and I'm sure it'll be fine. Yeah, okay. So Forest Area Community Trust is a development trust and part of the Development Trust Association Scotland Network. We work as the anchor organisation in the Forest Area in partnership with a range of other organisations, development trust, public agencies etc. Our aim really is to make Forest a better place to live, work and visit and to do that in partnership with others as much as we can. I think some of the things that were said just before there, we can echo that as well, but in addition part of the problem that we've got is around connectivity, not just in the forest area but across Murray. The towns of Elgin and Forest are relatively well serviced by broadband and IT, but once you get a mile or two out of town it can get extremely challenging for people to get connected. When we run our outreach programme of helping people, Forest Online, to help people to get connected, that can be our main challenge and I know that we get feedback from people that they can't get online in whatever way, shape or form, whether it's a dongle or whether it's connected through the landline. The other thing I think is around centralisation of NHS services. For example, obviously for economies of scale things happen in Elgin or wherever, but for some people that's or even Aberdeen and that's a real access issue for people because public transport isn't great or people can't afford to run a car if they live out somewhere that there's no bus route. Things like connectivity into services and healthcare is a real challenge. The other thing that is an issue is around communication with that. For example, if they run something locally, say, a vaccination programme for flu traps or something for children, there's a disconnect between what used to happen in the sense of people got their appointment letters from their local GP, they went along and it was fine now because it's done centrally. People are getting appointment dates for when clinics aren't running and there's confusion there for individuals and that's happened quite a lot lately. So there is an issue around providing the services that people need locally, I think, is important and that doesn't necessarily happen as well as it could. Obviously, resources are tight. We have the situation where, in Murray Council, we have released a lot of facilities, venues and buildings into community use and we've successfully had a community asset transfer in Rhorreston Hall, which has been great. However, there is a disconnect in communication within the local authority. For example, they obviously wanted to release resources into the community, which we've done, but there were proposals made to charge us for those venues, so on top of communities picking up the shortfall or the gaps that are in provision, there are also, in some cases, being expected to pay for that on top of that and to be totally blunt, communities don't have resources to cover those sorts of payments into things. Again, there's a thing around joined-up thinking, around connecting groups together, organisations and actually getting support in such a way that we can work collectively and in partnership better. There are lots of other things, but I think that that will do for a start. I'm sure that the questions that we ask on-going will bring out more of that. Next up is, I've forgotten my list, Pauline Smith from Connect Community. Trust Pauline, would you like to tell us about your community? Trust, and we're based in Greeter Easterhouse in Glasgow. I'm also part of the DT Scotland movement, so I'm one of the directors on there, so we're part of 300 plus organisations across Scotland as a development trust, but specifically to do with Connect and Greeter Easterhouse we run something like 80 odd services per week that are 90 per cent run by local people, but employees are volunteered or on the board. They range from youth clubs to employment advice, training, educational work, school work workshops, allotments, family clubs, income advice, the list goes on, but all run by local people and empowered by local people right the way through out of all of our services. Our strength, when you ask what our strength is, very much it's about local control and local people being in control of those services and them shaping and developing them right the way through from the ground up, right the way through the profession and developing them as we go. The pressures and the problems that we face at the moment are great, Easterhouse has a lot of unemployment, a lot of low incomes, we've had health issues that we've had to be overcoming over the years, and all of this has been sort of accentuated with the Covid issues that we've all faced, but we definitely are looking at education, employment, mental health issues, the low income, and for our organisations about sustainability as well. All the services that we've provided previously are now needed even more, so there's added pressure on our organisation and on local people to support each other. I know that later we're probably going to come on to the Covid thing, but the power of local people supporting each other throughout this period and wanting to do more. I suppose that the problem that we face is that we've got hundreds of things that we want to do, but we need the support to be able to do them, and we want to move quickly and efficiently and listen to what the people have got. Our strength is definitely this people power behind us, the power of local people having their say, but we want to make sure that it's reality. That's also the strength of our organisations is that, when people say that they need something, we help them to do it. We help them along to make things reality in their communities. We want to do more of that, and that's definitely one of our strengths, but also the challenges, which is where the local governance review has been very timid in the sense of having those conversations with people. What we don't want is false promises of, we want you to have your say, but what do you want control of, but not being able to take that forward? I think that the strength of all our organisations and third sector is that we do make them reality. We listen to what they are and we put them in charge of and lead on the developments that they want to see happen. I think that, when we're talking again about the strengths of our organisations, we've got probably a bit of, I think that we've got a hundred of volunteers, staff, placements, et cetera, that are all local people. That's the strength of our organisations, you know, that we can bring the voices of those people actually to the table. Catelyn, I suppose, decisions that are being made without their say, and I think that's what we bring to the table. I could go through the 80-odd different services and community control that we do, but I think that, certainly from the strengths and challenges that we face, is to do the sustainability and the financial implications and pressures that we've now seen coming out of Covid, which we already had prior to Covid. They've just been accentuated now, and there's more people needing more support and more help. Thank you very much for that. And Phil, do you like to tell us about your organisation strengths, challenges for the community as well? Thank you. Yes, I'll do my best. I'm on the board of Sustaining Dunbar, which is a community development trust. I'm also a convener of the Scottish Community's Climate Action Network, which is a network of over 200 groups across Scotland. Sustaining Dunbar is part of a vibrant network of community-led organisations in Dunbar. We, I guess, have a particular focus on how we can face up to the nature and climate emergencies and how we can use us as an opportunity to really transform our locality to ensure wellbeing for all in the flourishing environment. I suppose that our feeling is that one of the key challenges that we face, not just locally, but globally, is the climate and nature emergency. The challenge there is that we're coming into an unprecedented situation, and in order to really face up to that, we need to be able to tap into everybody's collective intelligence and local knowledge in order to come up with local solutions. And the key challenge that we face at the moment is that there aren't no local well-facilitated forums where we can really tap into people's local knowledge and ideas and imagination in a creative way, because we don't really have any functional local democratic spaces where that can happen. In terms of more specific challenges locally, we're facing really a housing crisis. Locally, the house prices are ridiculous locally and very few houses on the market. Even finding rented accommodation is extremely difficult and rents are going through the roof. This is connected with a planning system that really disempowers people locally. There's a huge pressure from housing developers in our area who've got options on local land to build lots of new housing. At the same time, no local people can access any land. There's lots of people who would like to build access land to set up their own housing co-ops, co-housing schemes, or self-build or whatever, but there's no chance of getting any. That relates to the lack of funding and resources that we make through the Covid crisis. We worked with 30 other local organisations to create a joint Covid recovery plan through what future we wanted to work towards, and we've created a what next action plan, but now we have no funding to implement that plan. That is a huge frustration that lots of different local organisations waste a huge amount of time trying to chase different pots of funding, and it's a huge waste of time and resource. When we get funding and projects come to an end, we lose a huge amount of expertise and knowledge when the funding comes to an end. Otherwise, because of the way that funding to local authorities has been cut over the recent years, there's very little support from local authority that the community development workers that we used to get a lot of support from and work closely with, grossly under resourced, and there's very little community development work funded by the local authority. That's probably enough for now, isn't it? Great, thank you very much. I'm going to go round everyone again with a second question, and this one can be a fairly brief answer, again, because we've got more questions than I and we don't have a lot of time. I wish we had a whole day to speak to you, because we try to select organisations representing from across the experience of Scotland, so we've got everyone. Rona, you're in Bimbacola, and then Pauline in Easterhouse, so it's great to hear the range of experiences. What I'd like to understand now, and I'll go through the same order, is what the level of involvement you had in the local government's review, your expectations when participating and communicating with the organisers, and also your understanding of the next steps. That could be just quite brief, just so that we understand if you have had engagement and how it's gone. I think that I got most of it, but you cut off at the end there. I went round quite a bit. I can hear you now. If you think that you got most of it, that would be great, just go ahead. Okay, so we, I can't list as many people as possible before today in Uist, and people that are very involved in the third sector. We used one accolade of third sector place this year, and it's due to the huge number of people who are involved in the third sector. Most people said that they hadn't heard of the local government's review, hadn't been involved and weren't sure what it was, but they all wanted to contribute their opinions and their thoughts on it and felt that they hadn't had an opportunity yet to take part in it. So it's difficult to say how to really answer that question more than just saying that, in the islands probably as a whole, I'm not sure that many people were aware of it, that it was happening or were able to contribute to it yet, but there is certainly a lot of people who do want to contribute and want to have their views put across, and it gave me those views to come across on their behalf today. That was great, thank you. The fact that your response is very helpful for the committee to hear that people don't even know what the local governance review is, that's really very good. So I'm going to ask the question again because I hear that my mic may not have been working and it was not so clear. So what we'd like to hear is about involvement in the local government review if you were involved, what your expectations were when participating were, and the communication with the organisers, and also your understanding of what the next steps are to be. And so now Alison. As I understand it, Miss Dibble Quarter were not involved directly in the local government review, but we're quite a young organisation, but I understand that the stove where, and that's surely the ideal place for that sort of discussion to be carried out because they engage so effectively, but I'm afraid I wasn't involved in it so I can't really comment on how that worked. Okay, thank you, Debbie. The democracy matters consultation process, we promoted it, but my understanding is that not many people engaged with it, and when I've asked around, I haven't had very much in the way of response. Okay, thank you. Ann Pauline. My experience is a wee bit different, so I've known about it and been involved in it through development trust association board, but also locally in our community. So when the conversation started we had galadies and events that we usually do anyway, but made the democracy matter conversation part of that, so there was questionnaires and everything that went through, all of our events and all our activities. We had meetings with our boards, volunteers, we also met with housing and other community organisations locally as well. I actually talked about what the democracy matter meant, and there was a submission between all of those organisations individually and also as a partnership in Greater Easterhouse that fed into the whole conversation, so we also submitted papers into that. Alison McKinlay, and I think Ryan has come out as well, met with our local community groups, so there were local events that took place with that as well. From a wider development trust point of view, there was also a submission from DTA Scotland on behalf of the members as well, so I've maybe got a different sort of view, because we were very heavily involved. We also attended some of the roadshow events and things like that that the Government has had and the Department has had. I think that as far as the next steps are concerned, when you're asking about the next steps, the only thing that's been disappointing up tonight is that it's stalled, but Covid has a lot to do with that. I'm a bit aware of that. I think that weed's community where extremely and other organisations and the partnership in Easterhouse was very much sort of on board with where this could go and what we could do and control the power, like all of those conversations being had, so we're quite excited about it. I think it's just sort of on that at the moment that that's a lot to do with Covid. I think that for us, we just want to see that next step taken. For all those conversations and all that feedback that's been given by communities to actually try and put that in place. I think that my understanding is that it's part of the programme for government next year, so it has been able to try and push this forward. So, hopefully, that's what we're talking about today, obviously. We are just keen to see it move forward quickly, if it can. Great, thank you Pauline and Phil. Yeah, well, Scan did run an event for our members once exactly three years ago, I think, as part of the democracy matters consultation, and our members got very excited by it at the time and came forward with lots of proposals for how democracy must be much more local and have many more resources and powers at the local level. Since then, personally, I've sort of been slightly kept abreast of where it's at through my involvement with the Scottish Community Alliance, but I think that if you asked anybody locally in Dunbar that they wouldn't have a clue what you're talking about, so yeah, I think that's it really. Okay, thank you very much. It's very interesting to get that perspective from all of you. I'm going to move over to questions that are going to be picked up by Paul McClellan. Paul. Yeah, thank you, convener, and can I refer everyone to my register of interests? I'm still a councillor on East Lothian Council, and also to declare that I know Philip Revill and was previously involved with Sistine and Dunbar, so it's good to see Philip here and others here. Just to kind of expand on the questions that the convener mentioned there, and it's really just talking in and about communities experience, your communities experience of working with local authorities and other local bodies and how your relationships can be improved, and I'll come across to, well, I'll take the initiative here. I'll ask Philip first of all. Thank you, Paul. Well, a mixed bag, I think you could say. In the past, we've had very good relationships with East Lothian Council and a lot of support with particular projects, but a lot depends on developing a relationship with a particular officer, and then there's a challenge when officers move on and there's reorganisation, and you have to re-establish that relationship from scratch. We had a lot of support when we were setting up the tier waste reuse hub, for example, and accepting waste and going to landfill and that sort of thing, but on other projects we've had much less support in trying to get to find premises to have a co-working space locally, for example, and I think that there's a real issue around lack of resource going into community development work locally. Philip, just a supplementary on that and it'll be the same question for everybody else is whether you think local people want to be more involved in decisions impacting their communities. Is there evidence for that and has Covid changed that one way or another? Well, I think there's no doubt that people would like to be, but it's difficult to answer that in a way, because I think people have felt so disconnected and disempowerant for so long that actually it's going to be quite a challenge for them to develop a real sense of agency, and I think that's particularly the case around the planning system where people feel that the system really is rigged in favour of large developers and really don't feel any agency to affect decisions, and that that relates to the community council as well. I think that actually they expend a huge amount of effort commenting on planning applications and then often feel ignored. Philip, thank you for that. Can I come on to Pauline just to ask the same question? I said just around about your experience with your local authority and other bodies, and whether you think that your own local community wants to get more involved in whether Covid has changed that? Yeah, I mean there's mixed relationships, I think probably everyone has mixed relationships with the councils, but certainly locally we have some really good active councillors that listen when we need action their day after listen, and they seem to get things done, but they do get things done. I think through all of this process we've always put it over, it's about helping councillors and it's the help in the council. You know, this isn't about taking power away from individuals or anyone, it's literally about we can help with the power of people that we've got that are seeing us day to day on a day to day basis, that we can help do that job, help improve the area, and essentially save the council money as well, you know. I mean our relationship for goods, I would say that there's a north, for instance, a north-east sector has one representative for the voluntary sector on it, which is supposed to be a voice for the whole voluntary sector, and they're supposed to represent 200 organisations in an area, it's impossible. So the way things in the council are the different structures are laid out, they're called community plan, but the actual voluntary sector isn't as heavily represented, I would say, within these current structures to allow you for the voices to get through. I think that on a local basis, when we're talking about what local people, they weren't involved, they absolutely did, you know, a boost of all of our services being run by local people, they weren't involved in delivery, and they weren't involved in having a say about what happens to them and their community, but we need, again, the powers to be able to do that, more structured, I suppose, and more locally, because, you know, even the decision making, if you want, I don't know, a grass cutter, something within our, one of the allergies that we always use is the community litter pitch, you know, we had to apply for funding within the council to actually get the money to do the equipment for litter pitch, you know, and we could have done that locally, you know, like if there's local budgets and local control in there, we could have quickly and efficiently done these things. I guess there's a desire for it, whether it's a formal structure all the time, not necessarily, but if you ask locally, if people know what community planning is, they'd probably say no, but actually if you say what they do know is the youth group, they know the connect, they know the housing association, they know all these structures and these people that they're engaged with, then I think that's going to be needed to strengthen on the local basis. Thanks for that answer to the question. Yeah, yeah, thank you very much. Debbie, then Alison and then Nona, if there's just the same question, if it's possible. Can you just repeat the question quickly? Yeah, just to your experience of your community, your experience in your community group of working with local authorities and other public bodies and whether you think that your own local community has an appetite to get for more empowerment and be more involved in decisions and whether that's changed since Covid? I would say yes, our community definitely wants to be involved in decision making and we have a very vibrant community with over 200 different sized groups and things locally. When the Covid pandemic hit, we worked very well together and collectively and were very fast to respond. There was a lot of volunteers who got up there and did things. The local authority was slower because obviously it's bigger and it's got bureaucracy to deal with. I would say the same as the others, that it's mixed with some officers and some departments like the community support unit. We've had excellent support and excellent relationships, other departments maybe not so. I think that there is an issue about communication between departments in the local authority, so if one department is doing something, another department can do something directly opposite to that. I think that it is mixed. I would say that we were very keen to work more in partnership with not just us but other organisations locally. There is an element around people who are very disenfranchised with the local authority, they just feel not heard, they feel they don't matter what they want, they don't get it, they don't see change, they don't see any improvement. That potentially is fair in some ways but not necessarily in others. I think that there is an appetite to work closer together and to do more. Again, there is an element around communication and for people to understand why decisions have been made and to make decisions more collectively, which are not happening at the moment. We've been dealing with buildings rather than running events and things like that, because our buildings are only just coming into use. Our work with the council has been fairly straightforward. A lot of it is getting planning permission and things like that, and our chief executive is a planning professional, so he's already had those links from his previous work. That has gone fairly straightforwardly. The first building that Midstable Quarter One was an asset transfer from the council, which has never happened fast, but I don't think that there were any major problems there. We've had some funding for rebuilding work. Our connections are mainly with council employees. We haven't had real interest from councillors, particularly. We don't hear a lot from them. We don't hear anything negative from them, but we don't have strong connections with our local councillors. One thing that we've been looking at is that there is an aquifer under the Priest Town Centre, which we are potentially going to access to provide the heat for a district heating scheme for our buildings and potentially more buildings. We have progressed that to the point where we've got funding in place to drill a borehole to investigate the potential. That's taken quite some time to get to that point. The council has explored that in the past, not to that stage but to an earlier stage, and then done nothing more with it. Now that we're more actively exploring it, I think that it's just coincidence possibly, but they are also looking at it again as something that they might look at. I don't know how that's going to work out. That's just recently, that's a reason that they're also looking at the idea of using this aquifer for heat for town centre buildings. We need to really have some kind of discussion with them about how that's going to work out. Rona, just do yourself briefly if you could come in on that one. It is a mixed bag as well for us personally, and I think that a lot of people find that the local councillors are really easy to access and to talk to. They're well known in the community. One of them set up in ran resilient years, which was driving force between and keeping our community going during the pandemic. It's a mixed bag, but a lot of major decisions can be made in Stornoway, which is a long way from where we live. It's a ferry ride for us, and it's two ferry rides for people from Barra to get to the council's building in Stornoway, and decisions can be made there without any consultation with communities in the other islands. One example in particular is in Barra, where they decided to knock down some existing buildings that the community was using and set up a completely new hub. The community was against some of the plans and very vocal about it, and one woman described to me how she just couldn't get to speak to anybody who made the decisions in Stornoway. She said that the only way that she was going to be able to speak to them was to drive all the way up and take two ferries and travel for an entire day, just to go and get her point made. It's a very mixed bag. On the other hand, our councillors are very easy to get hold of. One major problem is that our councillor is 100 per cent male councillors, and if you look across Scotland, it's 29 per cent male councillors. The female voice and representation ability to get their voice heard in the Western Isles is that we do most of the care at home and that sort of thing. Child care, there's very little voice, nothing ever happens in that. I'm guessing that's because we have 100 per cent male councillors and women don't feel that they have that access to the power and decision making at all. I'm going to move on to questions from Megan Gallagher. Thank you, convener, and good morning, panel. Before I ask my question this morning, like Paul, I would like to declare an interest, as I am a serving councillor in North Lanarkshire. My question to the panel today relates to the findings of the 2019 Scottish Household Survey, because it found that across Scotland only 18 per cent of people feel that they can influence decisions affecting their local area. It's what Rona was talking about just there. I'd like to ask the panel why they think that this is so low and what are the barriers. If I can just squeeze it in very quickly, if they think that participatory budgeting is the key to getting more people involved in decisions that influence their community, and if I could start with Rona, please. Our local paper recently talked to women across US about why they didn't go for councillor and why they didn't take part in the decision making or feel that they should. It came back that a lot of it was down to distance. They felt that having to spend time travelling to Stornoway for meetings and so on was just not something that they could do while looking after their own children. That can't only be the issue, because there aren't any female Stornoway councillors either. There must be other things that are a part here. Some of it is evening meetings. A lot of the councillors have to commit to huge numbers of evening meetings, which isn't good if you have children or parents to care for. Also, women felt that they can't feel that they can go into a room and have their voice heard. They are worried that they are going into a room that is absolutely full of male people making decisions to have the confidence for their own voice to be heard and to see what they think. Will they be taken seriously? It is again a problem for young people. Recently, we have started a project on a local energy plan for US, and we are trying to make it as inclusive as possible. We are talking to one young person about how to include the minute, because every meeting that he goes to, he stays completely silent in the meetings, and he said that he felt that meetings are not inclusive. For him, they are quite scary. They are terrifying times to say what you think and to have your voice heard. You don't know if other people will laugh at you or whether they won't take you seriously. Decision making isn't inclusive for young people either. A lot more has to be done to look at the different mechanisms and structures and the way that decision making is made. It is not always in a formal format in which people might not feel comfortable giving out their minority view. Thank you, Rona. If I could move to Pauline, please. I am conscious of terrain convener, so Pauline, if there are any other comments, thank you. Hi, I am sorry, but I was saying there that it feels intimidating within Glasgow, of course, that all the meetings take place in chambers. It is about making an effort to go into the chambers, and the chamber is building itself as intimidating even to walk into it. It doesn't feel as inclusive in that sense that your voice is going to be heard there because it is intimidating. I have not seen the survey itself, but when you ask locally again, do people have control over the services that are being heard within Connect and various other developments, I think that people would say yes. It is again how that question is structured. Do they feel that they have local decision making powers or control over what they do? I think that they would say yes within local structures that we have within Connect and within the local area, where, if you are interested in youth for instance, we have a many subgroups for youth stuff, we have an elderly subgroup, we have a disabled people with disability services, we have growings, we have all those little subgroups that people will dip in and dip out of because they are not as formal structures like that, but they are also things that they are interested in. Sometimes going to a big meeting where it has got an agenda of 50 items, they are not interested in all of that, they are interested because they have a granny, they have a sum side. That is why local structures work very good and they are very powerful in that sense as well. I think that that is what you said about PB. I do not have any experience myself for PB, but I may need to quote someone else on that. Thank you. Okay, and Philip, and then Debbie would also like to come in on this. Thank you. No, just to say really, I think that we urgently need great different sort of spaces where we can actually have properly deliberative conversations where we can bring in different perspectives and potentially conflicting opinions and creatively consider them in a meaningful and creative way. We urgently need those spaces and also the skills to convene and facilitate such spaces where everybody's voice can be heard. That seems absolutely crucial to me. Potentially, I think that we need to be prepared to play people for their time in participating in those sort of spaces because at the moment it's really a self-selecting group who can participate. We still have the time to do so. We can spare that time. In terms of participatory budgeting, again, I don't actually have any direct experience, but I think that we urgently need to be able to put in resources at grassroots level. I think that if we did have meaningful resources and investment coming in at level, then that is a good participatory budgeting way of allocating that funding. That could be a really good way of engaging many more people in the conversation about local priorities. A couple of things. One around engaging with meetings and things. Sometimes things are perceived as tick box exercises. If you are in a meeting, things go through so fast in general. Obviously, people have got limited time. However, there is no opportunity for anybody to have a say because then they will be voted on or whatever very quickly, so there isn't any opportunity to ask questions or get clarity on things before decisions are made. I think that local authorities need to go where the people are rather than expecting people to come with them. Our civic centre is Elgin, which is great, but not everybody can get there, so there needs to be ways that people can come and go out to communities rather than in and maybe circulate things around. Zoom is good or working online because it gives more people an opportunity to participate if they are in and it is good. Repoticipatory budgeting. I have a little bit of experience with that. There have been three or four different PV sessions happening across Murray. One of the money for Murray is a voluntary panel that is secured funding through Murray Council through the Scottish Government to do some PV. That went really well. It was transparent. Everybody voted. It was explained extremely clearly, but it is quite resource and time heavy to get people into understanding what the process is. There have been several other PV things happening in Murray, and I don't think that they have been as well communicated. I think that how PV works gets lost in translation, because it is a particular system. It does work, but if people do not understand it, they will move it to how they want their agenda to be. That has happened in the past, so that creates frustration and people do not like what happened. However, if it is transparent and it is open and people have had training in how to do it, it works. We have not really had much to do with councillors at all. I am not sure what the reason is for that, but we are at the acquisition and rebuilding stage rather than running activities or having activity in our buildings. We have a good relationship with some MSPs and we have a very close relationship with the community council that serves the centre of the town. That is a very important relationship, and we have represented that community council on our board. That is really important for building the sense of community. We put a lot of effort into having good communications with the participatory budgeting. No, we have not been involved in that. We are not delivering services at the moment, so it probably did not apply very well to its people quarter, but it also looked for quite big sums of money rather than small plots, usually. Great. Thank you, Alison. We are going to move on to a question from Eleanor Whitham. I need to press the button. I am on. Sorry, I could not see the light. Thank you, convener. Good morning, panel. Before I ask my question, I am going to declare the interest that I am still a seven councillor in East Ayrshire Council. In my own council area, communities are supported to create their own community led action plan, where they need a minimum of a 40 per cent return from every single household within their community for that to be a sovereign document. That then has representation and community planning and is also the basis for local place plans. Can I ask how your own organisations ensure that all voices are heard within their communities, not just for the people that have confidence, experience and the resources to come forward? Sometimes it is the usual faces around the same tables. Can I start perhaps with Pauline and then go to Rona, if that is possible? I have pre-empted the question by answering a few times through the question. I think that where we come from is to ensure that voices are heard. Physically being involved in delivering the services, walking through the door, disvoicing their opinion, they have lots of subgroups that I touched on in the previous question where people on our boards all have a specific interest in whether they got involved with the young people, whether it was care, whether it was a child with disability, whether it was employment. They all have their different reasons for getting involved. There is a wide array of skills and knowledge and personal experience that comes into the board, but that is also from the local people. One of our board members is the local lollipop women. They are talking to people on a continuous basis of ending out what do they need. We have our formal structures with subgroups, but we also have the informal chat. We do community brunch, lunch and dinner and all those social aspects of getting together and having a chat about what finding out what it is. We also have formal volunteer programmes. Again, all those voices are being heard constantly through the day-to-day services that we are running. The same old species come back to the confidence of getting into a community planning board meeting in Glasgow City Council. That is sometimes where it is the same facie, because it is that confidence level. We try to make sure that we have the structure and house on a local level to make sure that those voices are being heard and that there is a wide array of voices as possible. How comes to your service delivery on a day-to-day basis? Does it always have to be a formal structure? Thank you very much, Pauline. I am aware that some people might not hear the question, so I will just repeat the last bit of it. I would like to hear from Rona. It is about how the community council can make sure that all the voices in the community are heard, and it is not just the same people around the table all the time. It is about the wider recognition of every voice in your community. Rona, if you could come in on that. As I said before, we are putting together a used local energy plan, so it is not really through the community council, but it is something that we are doing in a wider community thing across several third sector organisations. What we are going to do is to have the usual workshops, which will be open to anyone who wants to attend and will geographically spread those out across US, but we are very aware that that will just give us the same enthusiastic voices who attend most consultations. We still want to hear from them what they think and what changes they would like to see in energy in US. However, this time we are going to hold some separate workshops, which will be very different. One of them will be aimed at young people and the second one will be aimed at vulnerable people. The third one will be aimed at the elderly or people with dementia or learning difficulties. The idea is to get out there and find the groups that we have not managed to ever consult with in the past. Look at different ways of consulting with them. Some feedback that we have had is that people do not like meetings, they do not want to have to have their voice heard or they would rather work through a different way, so maybe through more arts work or maybe just in small conversations and groups. We are going to be as flexible as we can to allow people to contribute in any way that they feel comfortable and see how it goes and try to see if we can get some very different opinions this time instead of the usual enthusiastic retired voices that we so often hear from. Thanks very much for that Rona, convener. I do not know if anybody else has an hour in the chat. So Debbie, we would like to come in and Alison. So we have the community councils locally, we also have the development trust, we have the area forum and we are looking pre-COVID, we did this and we are looking to do it again, some collaborative events so that we all share information and we also invite as many people as possible to come. They usually are very popular. Sorry Debbie, we have lost audio for you and she probably cannot hear me. We also actively go out to places like schools or healthcare centres or whatever and have chats and ask questions there as well. We are open to having people come in and have a chat with us. Online surveys work really well, we have incredibly good report returns for those and then we try and capture more detailed information from individuals with self-selecting focus groups, so that is how we get out there as much as we can with info. We make community engagement a high priority because in a town we are covering quite a big population, we potentially have around 40,000 in the area that we are covering, so it is not easy to engage with a population that size. We have a community engagement officer who works for us three days a week and we also have two days a week on-com, social media etc. That is a big part of our resource. We have a small staff team, so that is around 30 per cent of our staff team working in communications. We just use whatever way we can to communicate. It is difficult, but at the stage where we are at the empty building stage, we own five buildings, one of which we have demolished and we are only just getting a couple of the other buildings under way with activity in them, which is tenants rather than ours. We are using other spaces for what we call mean time use, so making them available to all sorts of people and using them ourselves, which is allowing people to go into the buildings and see what is going on there and have discussions. We regularly, during non-Covid times, have events that people can attend and where we provide a lot of information and where they are in person to speak to them about what we are doing, what our plans are and to listen to what they have got to say about that. Ensuring that all voices are heard, I think that we have had a really good start on that because of the really good groundwork on the stove, getting this all set up, designing it all, planning it all to start with, as the answer to what was the problem for the Dumfries Town centre problem. That included having a wide range of ways for people to get involved, including volunteering on a very practical basis, tidying up the town centre, cleaning buildings. Recently that started again and we have been working on a small lot of land behind one of our buildings, which is going to turn into a green space that people can access, people living and using the buildings can access. We encourage people to come into the buildings and talk to us. Our CEO is now a beast there and is very available for anybody that wants to meet with them. Thank you Alison, and I am going to move on to questions from Miles Briggs. Thank you convener. Good morning to everyone on the panel today. Can I ask what your understanding is of community wealth building and particularly your views on the roles of what are being called anchor organisations, for example as local housing associations, hospitals, colleges and universities? I might start with Alison because I think that you outlined how your organisation may have benefited early on from potential organisations supporting your establishment. I might start with you Alison, and then if anyone wants to put an hour in the chat. Yes, I suppose that we are talking about community wealth building and where the buildings are the building community in them. We are building a community that is not there at the moment. We haven't talked about it being wealth, but I suppose that it is local wealth. It's not debonyms and backspincers and the profits going to shareholders who don't live in Dumfries. It's about what's available locally, making the most of it. There's a lot of attributes to Dumfries and Galloway that we don't make as much of it as we should. It's an intensely creative place. There's just so much going on, but it's not really an opportunity for people to make a living out of it or not a proper living out of it. That's what we want to grow. There's also very good local food and drink. It's just allowing us to make the best of the assets that we have in the area by providing those buildings for small businesses and entrepreneurs working on growing, making, designing and using all their skills. Because they'll be sharing buildings or that this is a place that they can visit to work part-time, it will allow networks to build up where small businesses are working together, and that will be a strength that they'll each benefit from and the town will benefit from. It's also about building a community that's going to live in those buildings. We're talking to the university, which is based—it's partially based in the Crichton campus—but they don't have any student accommodation and they're interested in using some of the upper stories of our building for student flats, which will bring young life to the town centre. We're also talking about potential housing that's suitable for elderly people, which might also include something along the model that you see used in Holland and other places, where younger people can earn part of their accommodation costs by helping to provide care for elderly tenants. That can create a really good healthy relationship between the two age groups. We're open to all sorts of things that are innovative and inclusive and just build community where there really hasn't been one for 40 years and to have a much more local economy where we make the most of all the many things that we have in this area, both in terms of human resources and abilities and natural resources. Thank you. Is there anyone else who has to come forward? From what we've heard this morning, it seems that a lot of the work that has been undertaken is quite organic. I wanted to ask, in terms of the roles of community councils specifically, what in your opinion did you think should be improved to look at how their role can be strengthened or changed? I suppose that I should maybe start with Rona as you are on the community council and then move round. It's quite a bit of that question that I think we caught off at the beginning. Sorry, it was just to ask specifically, Rona, in terms of community councils, how you think your role could be strengthened or changed. Maybe what we'll do is we can put these in a letter. I don't know if you can hear me, but we've come to the end of our time anyway. We've got a few other questions and maybe some of you missed out because of the technology, so we'll put the questions in a letter to you and you can respond that way. Also, use that as an opportunity to let us know anything else that we may not have been able to cover this morning. Thank you very much for being with us. Thank you very much for being with us this morning. It was very good to hear a range of perspectives and clearly even from a very urban context to a very rural and island context, some of the issues are the same. It's been very good to get your sense so that we've got a sense of how this local governance review is going. Thanks for joining us this morning. Now we're going to suspend to allow a changeover for witnesses and have a wee pause. We're going to start back at 10.20. Is that correct? 10.20. Welcome back. We'll continue our consideration of the Scottish Government local governance review by taking evidence from representatives from COSLA. I welcome Councillor Alison Evanson, who is the president of COSLA. Hello, and Simon Cameron, who is the chief officer of the employer's team. Welcome to the committee this morning and we will move straight to questions. If you wish to respond or contribute to the discussion and we haven't called you in, you can put an R in the chat box. Some of my committee colleagues are joining us virtually as well. I'd be interested to get an update from you on the progress of the governance review from since May's elections and previously, the committee heard from COSLA about the principles that COSLA would like to see shaping the new fiscal framework. We're interested to know if you are now in a position to describe how it would work in practice. Good morning and thank you for inviting us along to speak today. Your volume is quite low. Is that on our end? Let's try again. Thank you very much for inviting us along to talk this morning. I'm really glad that you spoke about the local governance review, because I was quite concerned earlier that the word government was being brought in. Obviously, the whole local governance review has been about the reform of all public sector in order to improve outcomes for people across our communities, and I think that word governance is really important as part of that. Obviously, before the election, there was very close work between the joint owners of the local governance review, which is the Scottish Government and local government, and we shared the governance of the review. That focused on three impalments being needed to be taken forward concurrently—fiscal empowerment, as you've mentioned, functional empowerment and community empowerment. We got to the stage of agreeing that they would be taking forward because, by doing so, we'd be able to improve outcomes for citizens across our communities. During the months of Covid, obviously, everybody's attention was necessarily elsewhere, and so there was agreed not to be progress with the local governance review at that process. However, during Covid, we've also seen, through many communities right across Scotland, many examples of what could be achieved in terms of outcomes if the local governance review principles were put into practice and if people locally were empowered and trusted to deliver for their local communities. Covid itself showed us what could happen even though it wasn't happening. Since May's election, we have still been on hold with the development of the local governance review. Various councils across Scotland stand ready with their community partners and supported very much by COSLA to work on pilots that have been written up, which are ready to go and which need to be given that final go-ahead to be able to demonstrate in the communities how a collaborative partnership-based approach could really make a difference to making improving outcomes for everybody across the communities. These pilots stand ready, as I've said. I think that it was clear from earlier contributors this morning that what's really important is resources to make things happen. Things can't happen unless they're resourced, and obviously we're at the stage of needing to have the go-ahead for these pilots so that they can be progressed and that we can see the difference they can make across communities. As I've said, we stand ready to support the partners involved in these projects to move ahead. In terms of the fiscal framework, you also asked about, convener, the fiscal framework as we've talked before about the importance of that for local government. Again, many of the contributors earlier talked about areas where they feel that councils aren't working at the moment. I would argue very strongly that the reason councils aren't working in some of those areas that the contributors really want them to work is because councils aren't fiscally empowered to do so. That fiscal empowerment has not been put into operation, so councils have very little control over their funding. There's too much money that's still ring-fenced. There's too much comes in small pots of money throughout the year. Too much that comes with increasingly difficult and onerous admin reporting requirements, which make it very difficult to do work as well. Within all that, the local has been what's had to give, and the fiscal framework moving forward needs to be able to respond to local councils, local areas, local democracy and local empowerment to enable that work to be done at a local level so that multi-year funding is available, that councils and their partners can raise their own money locally, that things like participatory budgeting can be looked at in a really positive way at the local level as well. Our priorities for the fiscal framework remain the same. We continue to seek your support as a committee that the fiscal framework that would bring are delivered to improve local outcomes. Thank you for that. We're going to move on with a question from Mark Griffin, who's joining us virtually. Mark Griffin. I just wanted to ask—we've previously slaved her from yourselves, councillor Everson, and I'm causal about the principles that you would like to see shape the new fiscal framework, just to ask if you are now in a position to describe how it is working practice. Thank you very much for your question, Mark. I think that the things that I briefly outlined last answer are about that as well. The fiscal framework needs to be based, first of all, on a parity of esteem, a sense of working together and understanding the shared outcomes required from it. As we look at recovery and as we look towards moving forward for various kinds of renewal in terms of both economic and social, it is essential that the Scottish Government and local government work in partnership on that, and that we are able to work and collaborate with other areas in the public sector at a local level where it is appropriate to do so as well. The fiscal framework has to underpin that. Work is still on going on that, about how we will move forward, but multi-year funding is a crucial aspect of it. Councils are being free to raise their income in appropriate ways to their local area and their local community. We have talked about various forms of discretionary local taxation. We have had various examples of that, but we need to let councils fly with what is appropriate for their particular areas as well. We need to have certainty on the financial settlement as well so that there can be long-term strategic planning. I think that there is agreement across the piece that preventative work is essential. We have seen many pressures on health and social care services recently, for example. A lot of that could be addressed through preventative work going on across our communities, with everybody working together, public sector, third sector and our local councils as well. That requires the ability to have a certainty of strategic planning financially. It requires a certainty of the money coming in. That needs to happen without the ring-fencing, which increases centralisation without increasing that crucial principle of subsidiarity. Any fiscal framework that is going to be developed has to have the element of trust in it. If we are all working to deliver the same things for our communities, if we are all really engaged in supporting the local, then that trust should come into it so that councils can use that fiscal framework to deliver with their local communities for their local communities. I was just saying that certainty of funding is critical. The UK Government has recently published the multi-year spending review, and I know that that is something that I want to see the Scottish Government deliver, too. Following on from the UK Government's announcement on that multi-year spending review, what discussions early as it might be have you had with the Scottish Government on confirming whether COSLA or local authorities would receive multi-year settlements to give that ability a certainty of the plan? Discussions are on-going. We had a commitment a long while ago for a fiscal framework to be developed in Scotland. It has not yet been developed. We want to see it developing as quickly as possible. As I have said, the work is on-going, but we would appreciate the committee's support to ensure that that work done is done on a timely basis and that the principles, as I have talked about, are developed. In particular, multi-year funding to allow strategic planning and preventative work, which is on everyone's agenda, to allow that to happen with our local communities. Although the work is on-going, anything that the committee can do to help us to hasten that along would be very welcome. I want to come back briefly on that, Alison, and ask how much confidence do you have that will receive multi-year settlements from the Scottish Government from now on? I did not hear most of that question. I just heard the last bit about how confident are we that we will receive it. At the moment, all I can say is that the work is on-going, and that we want that to be developed. Obviously, as Mark Griffin implied, it depends as well on the UK Government and the funding that the Scottish Government is getting on. There is a cycle here that has to be developed. However, as part of that work, if we share our outcomes—if we really do share the outcomes of recovery, and I believe that we do—if we want to see that social renewal and economic renewal, and I believe that we all do, I think that there is shared belief in that one, I think that there should also be the understanding that we need to make the money in the right places to make that happen. Again, that comes back to the comment that I made on trust. It has not yet been promised to us, but if we work together on those processes that we want to do and we are working together, it is really important that it is delivered. Again, the committee adding its voice to that would be very helpful. Thank you for that. I will move to questions from Miles Briggs. Thank you, convener. Good morning to Councillor Everson and Mr Cameron. Thank you for joining us today. What has caused the understanding of the timetable for the future local governance review work? Do you think that this is going to be impacted by next year's local government elections? Thank you. We obviously have pilot projects that are ready to go and ready to be delivered across our communities. They obviously involve a far greater range of people than our councils. That is the point, isn't it? It is the partnership work that functional empowerment is coming through as well as working with other people. If they get started and are able to progress, that should be able to continue. I think that the important bit is the resourcing for them. As we have heard, things do not happen without resources. Community empowerment is not something that will not happen by sitting here and saying that we believe that community empowerment is essential. We believe that functional empowerment is essential. Those things need to be resourced and supported to develop, and that is something that we need to do. However, I will pass on to Simon now to comment on the detail of how things are progressing. Simon. Thank you, Councillor Everson. I thank you for the question. I think that with regards to timeframes that we have got, obviously we are working proactively with our colleagues and Government to re-establish the joint political oversight that we have for the local governance review. Clearly, the election is booming large in terms of what is happening in May. However, that does not stop us from continuing to progress the work that we can do locally. As Councillor Everson has said, I think that the strong commitment from both ourselves and Government to see the governance review continue to work towards a local democracy bill that strengthens local democracy across Scotland and takes an asymmetric approach across the country. Working on the fiscal empowerment that Councillor Everson has outlined, which we actively have a special interest group working on just now and engaging with colleagues in the local government finance section of Government, that is work that we can progress at pace. Obviously, it has got to be aligned with the recovery work that is on going just now. We want to see those intertwined and we welcome the opportunity to put in place a firm timescale for taking the work forward. Thank you for that. Looking at the two key bills that the Government has brought forward in the programme for government, both the local democracy bill and the community wealth building bill, what would COSLA like to see within those and what sort of discussions have you had? From what you have put out previously with regard to the national care service, do you think that there is an undermining of that potential opportunity for local democracy to be given more powers if we are seeing under the European Charter, for example, the discussions that we have had to recognise the role of local government but then a national care service that would centralise some of that? Thank you very much again. That is a very big question involving lots of aspects. In terms of your first question about the bills going through, I think that it is important to recognise that there is huge diversity across Scotland. One size will not fit everywhere and what works in one area will not necessarily work in another area. I think that the key has to be that local empowerment, that local appreciation and putting power in the community. We have seen what happens when people become disillusioned because they do not feel involved. I think that there was some hinting about that in the earlier session as well, where we need to encourage again that renewed sense of why people should be participating, what benefits to the local community and emphasise that localism and that diversity across Scotland has to be a key part of it. We have mentioned for a long time that principle of subsidiarity. That has to be a clear focus on anything going forward as well to make sure that decisions are made by the people who are affected by them and that we have that democratic accountability in the local area for those decisions being made. Obviously community wealth building, which you mentioned in part of your question as well, there is a huge potential in community wealth building in order to support local areas and support that social and economic renewal. Obviously local work, local jobs on a fair basis with people being rewarded for the work they are doing, has a huge part to play in tackling poverty and inequalities across Scotland. Community wealth building has a lot to offer in that, supporting wealth being created and used in the local area for the benefits of local people, creating local jobs and supporting local businesses and making sure that every penny that is spent in a local area brings back something to support the people who live there. Very much support community wealth being building taken forward and seeing local government very much, our councils are very much one of the anchor organisations in those local communities with the procurement powers that local government has, with assets they have at their disposal to use with the community, through community asset transfer or other schemes as well. Obviously through the people that councils employ, councils are some of the largest employers in many of our areas across Scotland and they can show a leadership role and set an example in that. 240,000 people across Scotland are employed by local government so there is a huge power in that as well. Community wealth building recognising the local and creating the conditions in which that model can be developed would obviously be something very much supported. You then moved on to the very small topic of the national care consultation and I think our views on that are very clear. That local voice has to shine through in the way care is delivered. Supporting people in our communities now is absolutely essential and that long-term structural change is not seen as by us as being the way to secure the changes that we need in terms of outcomes in delivering social care, in delivering health outcomes and improving well-being. Through that tackling inequalities and developing a human rights approach that does not need structural change, it needs resource, it needs empowerment, it needs to be part of this fiscal, functional and community empowerment that we have talked about beforehand because many of the things we need to improve care in Scotland are things that are allied. We will not be able to improve care unless we improve living in communities and we will not be able to improve that unless we improve our leisure services and as we improve the cultural services locally and less employment for our staff is on a fair basis as well. There is lots in it that will not be answered by structural change but could be answered now with crucial democratic accountability. Our lines on that are clear. A submission has been written and agreed at COSLA and I know that many councils have also agreed their submissions and I see today that SOLAS as well as the Society of Chief Executives has also put forward a similar view as well. Those submissions are in and I think our view is clear. Democratic local accountability remains key. Structural change will not bring about the changes that we need but working with our local communities at a local level and strengthening local democratic accountability can bring about that change. I am going to move on to some questions from Paul McClellan. Thank you, convener. Alison, thank you for your answer. It is leading on from your last question and it was on and around about across Scotland only 18 per cent of people feel that they can influence decisions affecting their local area. Why do you think this is and what are the barriers? I know that you touched on that but you wanted to add anything more in that regard? Yes. I think that it was interesting hearing the last session about the people who felt that they had been involved in the local governance review consultations and those that hadn't. I think that there was an awful lot of effort to spread the democracy matters work across Scotland and there was a communication made and events held in both communities of place and communities of interest and I think that distinction is actually important as well but as we heard some people didn't feel that they were involved and didn't know much about it either and I think there is a huge task for us in local government to support people to feel more involved and engaged in their communities and I think a big part of that work is by people feeling empowered if people feel that they can be part in decisions that affect them for outcomes in their local area they are more willing to get involved and at the moment when we have increasing centralisation when we have ring fence money so councils are not in a position to say yes we'll support that local project because councils you know don't have the resources to do that and even if people come democratically up with a good solution it's not possible to develop it for the reasons of lacking fiscal empowerment locally. I think if we can get over that and make localism more than a word a lot of people are talking about localism about 20-minute neighbourhoods about place planning and those things are all really important and really valuable to our communities but we need to resource them to make them work because they won't happen as I've said without people being involved. I think it's interesting as well making sure that voices across our community are heard and listening to Rona earlier about the comments she was making about why people aren't getting involved that's something else we are working hard at Cozzler to address we're trying very hard to address the diversity of people standing for for elected officers councillors many of the things in our councils at the moment that are seen as barriers like times of meetings organization of meetings you know the more voices around the table asking for those things to be changed the more they can be changed they are things that go through a process of governance themselves that can be altered by voices around the table and the willingness of course of people around that table already to reach out of hand and support people from diverse groups is there the improvement service itself running mentoring sessions to encourage people to count the already in place to encourage others to get involved is very much there so I think diversity of voices is important giving that voice of lived experience a sense that it doesn't make a difference is important and I think they're things that we are working on and again would urge colleagues in the committee to to support us and work with us on as well thank you Alison thank you for that the next question is it's moving away from that and it's talking about procurement and it's really just to ask your comments on the percentage of procurement probably spent on local authorities on local and social enterprises varies and I'm just wondering you know what your thoughts are on that and what more can be done to increase the proportion of procurement spent on local business and local social enterprises thank you and I think that's a name across Scotland to use procurement in a most positive way to support local communities and you know that spending power of local governments I've said is really important to be able to to make a difference locally but I'll pass it on to Simon for a more detailed answer please thank you thank you councillor ifton apologies could you repeat the the question mind my sound has been a different doubt yeah Simon just just asking for your thoughts on the variation and percentage of procurement spent by local authorities on local business and on social enterprises and what your views on what more could be done to try and support that you know more spending on local social enterprises and local business in terms of procurement in terms of procurement I mean obviously that is an area that we can continue to kind of seek to make improvements in and I'm looking at supporting claims by that I think I would reflect on some of the work that's going through the participative budgeting work and apologies easy for some to say others not so it's so easy is that reflecting in terms of the the outcomes that we've seen in terms of that level of work in the rest that actually by working with the social enterprises by showing that we can engage more effectively and meaningfully and get better levels of services the the levels of trust that councillor Everston has been referring to in the rest have been growing throughout the period of Covid and I think that trust building at the local level is somewhere where actually we can start to through our procurement rules and regulations the rest start to make more leeway into developing that work locally in the rest I think it just comes down to as you say that partnership working the confidence that we've got to work together in that space and making sure that the clear outcomes are there and shared at a local level I think that's why it goes back down to understanding the local aspect as opposed to of the national thank you and now we've got a question from Megan who's joining us virtually as well Megan to ask your question thank you and good morning councillor Everston and I would like to touch on the subject of community councils and how and indeed should their roles be strengthened or changed I think we saw during the pandemic some community councils flourished but unfortunately some community councils have not been able to meet so I would also like to hear your views in terms of how you think community councils are going to play a role as we head out the pandemic thank you thank you I think community councils have a crucial role to play and as a local councillor myself I attend three in my ward on a regular basis as well because it's important to have that engagement between elected councillors and our community councils as well I think that many have struggled during during the pandemic though others happened others have thrived in a local area and I suppose that again shows the diversity across Scotland and shows the role that councils must have in supporting where there are issues and encouraging as well it relates very much to the comments I've just given in answer as well about empowerment and people stating that they can make a difference in their communities the more there is a sense of people feeling they can make a difference the more active our community councils can be I think there is a need maybe to review some the organisation of some of our community councils and have some focus as well on that representation element of them and how people become part of the community council and how the community council works across the local community to gather voices as well I think we need to be very conscious all the time of equalities and making sure that we are supporting our community councils to have that equalities agenda and to look right across everyone in their communities as well there is some some tension sometimes between that community of place and that community of interest and you know our role in our in our local democratically elected local government is just cry and support that work as well and and to make sure that everything develops so that the voices of everyone across the community are heard and that that community community councils have also a part of that human rights and equalities agenda so I think there's general work to do on looking at that representative and that participatory democracy and working together on that I think community councils have a huge role to play as we're moving forward with locality planning as we're moving forward with empowerment as well but again that fiscal element is crucial in what we're doing moving forward so very much see a role for community councils they are a central part in our in our system throughout Scotland especially in the local area but working with them to promote equalities to give that sense of empowerment to give that sense of feeling people can make a difference needs to be done as well thank you thank you for that and I'm going to move on to a couple of questions our last questions you might be glad to hear but thank you so much for the in-depth answers you've been giving us so far we're going to move on to a couple of questions from Eleanor Wittam. Thank you very much convener and good morning president and Simon. Thank you very much for making the time to come and speak to us today. As you both know a big part of community fiscal empowerment is participatory budgeting and obviously this has been greatly impacted and interrupted by the Covid pandemic and it's just to get a kind of a temperature check as to where you think we're at with the the commitment to the 1% of council budgets being given over to communities for that fiscal empowerment of decisions and do we think that there's some areas where we're seeing a standout progress and other areas that might be needing some more support so it's just that kind of temperature check thank you thank you very much and good to see you again as well Eleanor. There will of course be diversity across Scotland you know each council is a different starting point with this work and Conser is ready to give support where it's asked for where it's needed and and that that is our role as as an organisation that covering the whole of Scotland so that is clear. I think the commitment to participatory budgeting is there I think I touch again on that resource element as well because you know these things can't happen without people there to make them happen and I think it's really important to acknowledge that the pressure on council staff throughout Covid to help with resilience to support recovery has been intense the finance coming into councils has not been as intense I think that that's a way to put it there as well but I think that with the will is there and as we're looking forward with the support that's available to be given through Conser and and colleagues in the Scottish Parliament as well the things can move forward from from now but we mustn't underestimate the work that's required to support it to happen and the resource needed to make it happen properly as well it was interesting to hear that same comment made from community groups as well they can't come forward for participatory budgeting either unless there is also resource there unless there are also people with with the skills knowledge experience to help drive it forward as well so there is work to do and we need to be committed as we are to that work in order to make this develop but again I'll pass it to Simon because I know he's directly involved in this as well Simon. Thank you councillor Everson and thank you for the question again I think absolutely we're seeing across Scotland an affirmation of the commitment towards participatory budgeting in the days and I think that although there has been the Covid delay as such there has been an awful lot of work that has continued in the vein of things such as the console system which is also an online system way of engaging with our local communities that work has now spread across virtually all 32 councils and we're starting to engage in different ways with the platform I think one of the things that we remain committed to is not only that level of spend and commitment to participatory budgeting of the 1% but is also actually defining for ourselves in Scotland what we mean by mainstream participatory budgeting so that actually we do get into a space where people do feel they can engage in a manner that suits them best and actually affect decisions on that for their lives daily either on a small local scale or across a wider area as well so very much we've seen from both leaders in terms of the recent recommitment to the 1% but also from elected members across Scotland a willingness and an eagerness to develop local democracy through the use of participatory budgeting I think just the affirmation from wider public sector partners would be something that we'd build on that we're always quite clear that obviously from a local authority perspective we've got our budgets and as a councillor Efsin rightly points out there is a resource issue that's always tied to the engagement process that we go through however if we build on that with our partners and they are committed as we are to engage with communities and work with them to make decisions in that way that will be something that will continue to develop and promote that form of participatory democracy. Thank you very much both for those answers I've got a wee change of direction now and you know stretch resources I've made the quest for efficient government across all spheres of government something that we're needing to work towards and I wonder whether there's a desire and a scope for councils to work more collectively over regions to deliver services and if so what needs to change in order for that to happen. Thank you very much for that question I mean that relates very much to the functional empowerment bit of our three empowerment we have been consistent throughout and it was agreed with the Scottish Government for the election as well that fiscal empowerment community empowerment and functional empowerment need to work together and that being able to collaborate where it's appropriate to collaborate is an important part of that functional empowerment now you'll obviously know already that in some areas you know that there is working across council borders as well in terms of economic development in terms of some of the deals that have been done on a regional level and in education and other areas as well that you know there is already some coming together I think the key to it has to be that councils are given that functional empowerment to come together with others where it is appropriate to do so and that might be in with other councils working across a wider area because it makes sense in their local area to do that it might be that functional empowerment is better delivered by by enabling at the council to come to where they say with the with the NHS to work at a closer level or with the police to work at a closer level to deliver particular programs locally with a preventative agenda with a social renewal and economic renewal agenda the key has to be that functional empowerment the where it is appropriate to do so councils and public sector partners and the third sector can come to work together with shared out objectives for better outcomes for their communities than throughout with that human rights and person-centered approach as well there's been various proposals across Scotland for things along these lines already the must point out obviously that this single public service model that Albany council has has very much had as part of their aspirations for a long time and the pilot projects that stand ready for the local governance review as well do involve people working together and there's a proposal from the issues for example working together within the client on community advice services advice services to members of the community who need that kind of advice you know that there's programs there standing ready to work on that basis so it's important that functional empowerment is one of the three empowerment and we do need to take it forward we need to allow what happens what's best for a local area to happen at local area but again we need it to be across the public sector it's not just councils cooperating with other councils it must be other sectors of parts of the public sector able to work together as well with a local place-based focus to do what's best for a local community thank you very much and that's the the end of our questions thank you so much for joining us this morning it's been good to hear your the perspectives of cosla and if there's anything else that you we just have a moment is there is anything else you briefly want to say that you want to make sure we hear or you want to underscore um you've got a moment to do that otherwise we'll um conclude the meeting just just underscore it's the local governance review and it's really important that all aspects of the public sector work together on this it is not something that local government can do on its own it's about improving outcomes for our communities working from position of trust to to to deliver and achieve the outcomes that i know we will share in terms of social and economic recovery so trying to encourage that position of trust as we've seen during the pandemic moving forward with functional community and fiscal empowerment equally being taken forward thank you thank you very much Alison and thank you Simon for also joining us i'm going to briefly suspend for a changeover of witnesses welcome back our third panel of witnesses to discuss the local governance review this morning has joined us in person and I welcome John Swinney deputy first minister and cabinet secretary for Covid recovery Brian Logan local governance review policy manager and Robin Hayes head of council tax unit at the Scottish government and we will move straight questions and i'm going to start with the first couple of them and i'd like to ask the about the Scottish government's understanding of how the local governance review has progressed since may's elections and when it will conclude good morning Coveer and i'm very happy to address these issues with the committee this morning the local governance review was started under the prior to the election and we've engaged substantively with the convention of Scottish local authorities and on its development and with wider stakeholders across the country in relation to the gathering of input and thinking consideration around the response to the review from that i suppose there are two substantive elements of feedback first of all there's the what i would describe as the the general responses of members of the public and community organisations some of which you will have heard this morning from a range of community organisations reflecting on the accomplishments of communities particularly during the pandemic but not limited solely to the pandemic and then the other grouping are a range of propositions that have emerged from local authorities and community planning partners about how some of the aspirations of the local governance review could be put into practice and obviously the government is considering some of these proposals and will respond to each of the proposals with our feedback on the the issues and the aspirations that are raised within those propositions so that's essentially what we're focused on in the aftermath of the review there's obviously this forms part of the agenda that then plays into the taking forward of a local democracy bill during this parliamentary term to which the government is committed thank you for that response local government has long been calling for a fiscal framework that could bring greater clarity certainty and transparency to local government finance it's been very encouraging that a fiscal framework is currently being developed by the Scottish Government and COSLA but the notice of potential strike action from up to 200,000 council workers across scotland emphasises that change is needed urgently i'd like to ask the deputy first minister and mr hains for a progress update on the fiscal framework and i'd also welcome a reassurance that the framework will deliver new or enhanced revenue raising powers for councils issues of ongoing consideration within government and in our dialogue with the convention of scots local authorities i can't give you the definitive assurance you seek in the question convener because these issues are still the subject of consideration the finance secretary is leading the work on the development of a rules-based fiscal framework that will be that that is the subject of current discussion with local government and will be concluded when those discussions are completed so the finance secretary will be able to update the committee and parliament on the development of the fiscal framework once that work has been undertaken i think it's important to recognise that there are already and have been for many years significant flexibilities available to local government for their own financial management and if we go back to 2007 the Scottish government i was the finance secretary at the time substantively relaxed ring fencing for example which which was a key request of local government to enable local government to have a range of flexibilities at its disposal and we and that of itself provided local government with much greater fiscal discretion to address its issues now when we come on to the discussion and the debate about industrial action i'm not altogether sure i would establish a connection between industrial action in local authorities or proposed industrial action and a fiscal framework for local government i think these are two distinct issues it is of course a matter for local government to conduct its employing relationships and negotiations where it is appropriate for it to do so it does that with the majority of local authority employees teachers are somewhat different where there's a tripartite negotiating framework in place but fundamentally it's for local authorities as employers to take forward that relationship and i wouldn't think that it's necessarily an issue that's directly related to a fiscal framework thank you for your response and we're going to take questions from miles breaks Mr Swinney and good morning to the panel as well i wanted to ask a few questions with regards to the national care service and because over a number of sessions we've been hearing concerns about the impact of a national care service on local governance so i wanted to ask specifically what impact the Scottish government's proposals for a national care service has had on the local governance review given coslers specifically have expressed concerns about its wide proposals and the impact on local democracy i think one of the key points that has been made by the government as part of the thinking around the national care service which is of course the subject of consultation at the present moment and which has been sustained by the government throughout is the importance of ensuring there is appropriate local voice is heard within the whole approach to a national care service so it's vital that we have the ability to hear and to engage with local communities around the delivery of care services they matter for local communities they will be different in different parts of the country so there has to be variation and variety in the way in which the service is delivered so it's critical that we hear the voice of local communities within the development of the national care service that's been a fundamental point and i accept that the proposals are local government has got particular observations about the proposals but it's important that we hear the voices of individuals who are pressing the government this was evident in the independent review around issues on consistency of service performance and delivery in different parts of the country about the standards that can be expected by citizens in all parts of the country and these are of course two very fundamental questions that have to be wrestled with within the discussions of the national care service thank you for that answer i think the committee welcomed the fact that you've put on record that the government intend to bring forward a local democracy bill but one of the fundamental things i think we have been hearing and i hear what you say in terms of people knowing that their voices been heard but a lot of the concerns relate to where powers will actually reside and you know the parliament's voted for a european charter bill which looked towards making sure those powers are respected by local government and i think where it's difficult for the committee to see the government's approach on this is there seems to be a fundamental contradiction between a national care service and these other streams of work which should look towards the powers of local government being protected so i just wonder if you had any view on that given these work streams which seem to contradict each other well be you know i fundamentally comment my politics on the point of view that decisions are best taken as close to people as they possibly can be that's why i believe in Scottish independence so the i think that's important that people are able to influence and shape the decisions that affect their lives but ultimately there is a discussion in a debate to be had about where are the proper arrangements for democratic governance to be exercised we have a national health service for example and i don't hear any sustained argument i don't hear any argument actually for suggesting that the national health service should in some way be changed from its current composition and made into something more localized than it in terms of its governance than it actually is and obviously ministers are accountable to the Scottish Parliament for the delivery of national health service functions as provided for in statute so there will be decisions taken and obviously it's for parliament to take these decisions it's not solely for the government to take these decisions about where the responsibility is best exercised for those functions i think there's also i think a substantive issue that the committee needs to consider in relation to its work on local governance which is about you know where is parliament's view on some questions of accountability because i frequently hear indeed i answer questions on this basis on a regular basis from members of parliament where members of parliament will be pressing the government to be responsible or to account for certain things that have happened which are exclusively not the responsibility of the government but in fact the responsibility of local authorities or other bodies but parliament acts in a fashion that essentially wants the government to be accountable for some of these responsibilities so i don't think the question is just for for the government about some of these points the question also rises for parliament for parliament to be clear in its mind about what it wants to where it believes accountability should rest and how that accountability should be exercised thank you for those responses we're going to now take a question from Megan Gallagher who's joining us online thank you convener and good morning deputy first minister i would like to hear your views on the balance in terms of those local authority budgets that are ring-fenced and those that are not and i know you've touched on that slightly and in addition if you'd be able to comment on the combination of a reduced budget settlement and ring fencing and the impact that this could have on councils in Scotland being able to make decisions at a local level which benefit their communities i think the you know i the debate on ring fencing is is not it's not a precise science and i wouldn't for a moment suggest that it is it is a question of judgment as i indicated in my earlier responses to the convener the the government in 2007 substantively relaxed ring fencing in local authorities i used to know these numbers off the top of my head but it's it's all a little bit rusty nowadays but you know i think we reduced ring fencing to something like about 15 percent of the local authority budgets when it had previously been as high as about 70 or 75 and we did that because local government put forward an argument that indicated they would be better able to meet the needs of their local community in terms of financial decision making by having the greater degree of flexibility that was envisaged and that's the point that lies really at the heart of Ms Gallagher's question that local authorities have that flexibility to meet the different and distinctive needs within their localities because what one local authority needs to the demand they need to meet is going to be different from another and and we've tried to to meet that as far as possible i think where we've found ourselves and some of this relates to some of my responses to the questions that Mr Briggs has put to me this morning is that where parliament wants the government to make sure particular outcomes are achieved then and the government may wish to do that as well then the tendency can be to introduce funding which will have a ring fenced character about it to make sure that we can be certain that resources are released in the expectation of certain outcomes being achieved so that you know that's often the judgment that is involved in whether resources should be ring fenced or whether they should be put into the the general funds of local authorities i think in relation to the the latter point of Ms Gallagher's question about the the budgets available for local authorities the government has obviously wrestled with a lot of financial challenges over the course of the last 10 years principally as we've wrestled with the the challenges of of austerity we've tried to deliver the best and strongest settlements we possibly could do for local authorities parliament of course has got to agree budget provisions and there is always the opportunity available to political parties to shape the government's budget proposals by the influence that can be exerted over those budget proposals and that will be the subject of debate in the forthcoming budget but i think one of the things that strengthens the ability of local authorities to meet the needs within their communities is the degree of flexibility the government has provided for those local authorities by relaxing ring fencing thank you for that i just want to come in on a supplementary on that and speaking with councillor evison she talks about in relation to ring fencing she talks about if we can get around agreed outcomes in her approaches can we get around agreed outcomes in a level of trust and and then therefore be able to move away from ring fencing and i just wonder if you can there's undoubtedly a discussion to be had there but i'd also i'd have to inject the word performance into that as well because i think some of the reasons why we have to introduce ring fencing is because we see too great a variation in performance amongst local authorities in the country some local authorities may be very good at delivering outcomes in certain areas and other local authorities are poor at so doing and parliament quite understandably i think pressurises the government to make sure that performance is at a higher level now we've tried a number of different ways and you know i took forward as part of the concordat with local authorities in 2007 the concept of single outcome agreements where we tried to reduce the reporting burden on local authorities by putting in place agreements with local authorities about you know by relaxing ring fencing what could we expect to be achieved in terms of the outcomes for local authorities i have to say the response to that and the achievement of outcomes was highly variable around the country and the evidence supports that so i'm not in any way closed in my mind to that but there would have to be an honest reflection of the fact that performance amongst local authorities is just too variable around the country for us to be able to confidently move into that territory at this particular stage i'm going to follow up there i'm just curious now do we have any evidence around why there's a variability on the performance i think there's i think there's available evidence from the accounts commission around their scrutiny of the way in which individual services are delivered indeed the improvement service do a lot of very good work on charting the relative performance of local authorities and the range of differences in individual service areas can be really quite difficult to justify i think and that's based on you know the improvement services there to try to help local authorities to deliver their improvement their improvements i very much applaud the improvement service for the work that they undertake because they are prepared to confront the fact that there is a variation in performance amongst local authorities which i think if we're going to have an honest conversation about this point has to be addressed so that these reports either from the accounts commission or the improvement service tend to give an insight service by service about where some of the differences lie we're going to move on to questions from paul mclellan thank you convener thank you deputy first minister and panel deputy first minister we've had an evidence sessions our past few weeks and today talking around about the desire for multi-year commitments spending commitments from local government and from local services i'm just wondering with UK government's publication of their spending review multi-year spending review last week will this enable Scottish Government to publish local government with multi-year settlements Mr mclellan is tempting me on to territory which is the proper preserve of the France secretary which i'll i'll i'll refrain from get myself into difficulty with the France secretary at this particular time in the budget cycle it's never a good idea for a cabinet secretary to get themselves into trouble with the France secretary so i shall leave Ms Forbes to update the committee on the substance of that point but as a general observation i would say that in recent years and some of this has been wholly understandable because of Covid and other factors the the UK government has not Covid Brexit you name it has been unable to offer longer term financial bridge information we've got a much greater line of sight in the forthcoming period than we have had so that's very welcome but as to how that is then handled by the finance secretary i shall leave for miss Forbes to share with the committee okay i've got another question and this might be tempting tempting again for for miss Forbes to answer this question because of that obviously i had the blueprint for local government and one of the things they mentioned around about was having more powers to raise and set taxes and more discretion for supposed local authorities to do that again just to get your view on that and again i know that kind of falls into the finance secretary again but just to use on that point there are of course discussions that we are taking forward practically on that subject with local authorities there are discussions under way around about the proposals in relation to i can't remember its former title with the concept of tourist taxes that are being looked at so there is the appetite to have that discussion with local authorities if they if they wish to do so thank you for that and we're going to now take a question from mark griffin who's also joining us online thanks community according to the 2019 scottish household survey only 18 percent of people think they can influence decisions affecting their local area and that seems to be a significant reduction since the passing of the community empowerment act i'd just like to ask the deputy first minister why you think that's the case what are the barriers stopping people influencing decisions and how the local government should review you might address that i think mr griffin's question raises a very serious point because ultimately if we go back to the question of outcomes what outcome are we interested in achieving with all of this activity and the outcome must be that individuals feel that they are able to shape the direction of their community and the way in which their lives are placed within that community so the the statistics that mr griffin puts to me are concerning that there might well be a decline i think interestingly during the course of the pandemic in a situation of extremis i think the degree of community leadership interaction decision making adaptation was at a higher level than i have seen it for many many years in in my experience so i think what that tells us is it's perfectly possible for communities to be much more closely involved in shaping their agenda and their direction as a consequence of the interventions they take but what we've got to make sure is that communities are not in a sense disengaged on that process or find that process much more difficult to participate in by the way in which we structure such processes so i think it's up to local authorities to make sure that they are putting off as i think they did during the pandemic a welcoming invitation to communities to shape the nature of the response that is taken forward in individual communities but we've got to make sure that that happens not just in a pandemic but it happens all the time and that's one of the fundamental points of the Covid recovery strategy that i've put that i put to Parliament before the october recess which is about trying to ensure that we capture and continue to mobilise that sense of community discretion and influence which has been such an asset to us during the pandemic thank you for that response and we're going to now move on to different subjects and questions from Eleanor Whitham. Thank you convener and good morning Deputy First Minister thank you for coming along and speaking with us today you will be aware of the recently published international review that was conducted by the local governance review team Quebec where i grew up is one of the case studies and despite the gradual growth in municipal powers over the last decade and nearly all local budgets being raised through local taxation there has not yet been a significant increase in citizen participation so which countries and examples from the review are getting the relationships and the resource allocations between the different spheres of government right i think it's i think it's difficult to to make a judgment about individual systems i think what the international review can do is it can help to inform our deliberations here about what are the right factors and considerations for us to to have but fundamentally the the the processes that appear to me through the international review to be having the greatest degree of effect are the ones which are providing sufficient opportunity and scope for communities to shape their own contribution to the way in which their priorities are determined so that i suppose would perhaps best be described as as a more permissive approach to the scope and the influence of local communities and then the second dimension i think is around about fiscal decision making where i think some of the examples that have been cited have in a sense reflected the choices that are made by individual local communities as being of a character that can enable them to take much more responsibility for taking fiscal decisions about their own wellbeing and that essentially i think comes down to and and this is you know i'm not going to suggest that this is easily replicable in this country where there's a degree of tolerance of difference of levels of local taxation and local responsibility individual area by individual area and i think i'm not sure that we would be able to sustain the argument or that argument would be so as well received in scotland as it is perhaps in other examples in the international review. Thank you very much for your answer. As we've just heard from the cause of president and her evidence, functional impairment is a key aspect of the local governance review. Can i ask you deputy first minister considering efficient government is within your own remit whether more regional and collaborative approaches is to service delivery as a Scottish government commitment? I'm interested in what is the right level at which decision making should be undertaken and discretion should be exercised and again to come back to the argument that i put forward in response to Megan Gallacher i don't think there's a precise science argument to this answer to this either. I worry about individual communities feeling a sense of a loss of control over what happens in their own individual locality so if i think about the areas that in the communities that i represent there are individual towns within my constituency and Elena Pwettemill represents a very similar type of area in terms of composition of population where in the past a very significant amount of civic discretion was exercised within those communities which created a sense of focus within those communities indeed that was reactivated frankly during the pandemic so if i think about all the really successful impactful developments that took place during the pandemic most of them not all of them most of them happened in these local communities that i talk about substantial towns where people came together they could put in place fixes to make sure everybody was looked after it was in colleagues that represent similar areas to me will know exactly what i'm talking about i feel a lot of that has been eroded for many years probably since local government reorganisation in the 1970s and it's been a sense there's been a sense of loss within communities about that now there have been over the years many good examples of how that sense of loss has been addressed by good community endeavour within those those communities when you then move away from some of these functions which are fundamentally about locality about the sense of community and the pride in the community and you come to some of the more sophisticated delivery of public services which parliament legislates for which can often carry some significantly onerous burdens on the delivery of those public services particularly around the quality of public services in areas like adult and child protection. I worry that the delivery of those services across 32 local authority areas where the population base of some of those local authority areas will be dramatically smaller than other areas but the burdens are the same the burdens that parliament applies to the delivery of a child protection service for the city of Glasgow is exactly the same as it applies for clap manager council and we expect it to be the assurance to be offered on the same basis but obviously the handling of cases will be a more frequent issue within the city of Glasgow than it will be in the in the clap manager area because of the difference in size which is why and I took forward a number of these different steps when I was education secretary the encouragement of collaboration amongst local authorities was a particular priority so again if I think about the area that I represent in Perth and Kinross there has been a great deal of collaboration amongst the three authorities Dundee Angus and Perth and Kinross around some of the delivery and the improvement of education services and child well-being services across the whole of those three council areas and I see significant improvements arising as a consequence of that so I think operating at that multi authority collaborative level is really welcome now that shouldn't be interpreted as the government committing to forcing that upon people because I don't think that's a particularly good way to proceed but if I do reflect on my experience as education secretary in 2016 when I advanced the concept of regional improvement collaboratives there was I would have to say a fair amount of hostility and resistance to it and once people actually got into a room and started talking about some of their challenges and started talking about the common themes and Miss Whitham will have seen this from her experience in Ayrshire amongst the three local authority areas there and the collaboration that could come out of that I think was pretty beneficial for children and young people within Scotland and indeed one of the pillars of the educational response to the pandemic was the west of Scotland improvement collaborative which took forward a huge amount of excellent work in the recording of online learning which was then made available right across the country on a choice basis to school pupils families teachers other local communities right across the country because of the common platform that we created around the east school but a fundamental source of thousands thousands of lessons that were recorded was the west of scotland collaborative pay warm tribute to everybody who was involved in that because it was a sterling piece of work that helped in the delivery of education so there is a very much a space for collaboration amongst local authorities I think what was achieved in education between 2016 and 2021 against the background of a lot of hostility and skepticism to the concept was actually something that helped us enormously to deliver sustainable education during the pandemic is it okay if I just come back really quickly with a little point on that and deputy first minister you said something that was really quite key to me there you know the reorganisation of local government in the 1970s and I think we're still seeing an effect of that nowadays if you listen to people who don't feel empowered in their communities they hark back to their borough council their town council where they had one council they had a set of people that met locally within that area and that one big representative that went to you know a wider national body how do we at this point in time where we still have our population that still harks back to those days how do we make sure that local governance review delivers that community empowerment that functional and that devolved power to local communities that we needed to we've got to do that by creating the space to enable communities to essentially advance that agenda I you know I don't think there is merit in replicating the the sort of borough council model that was in place in prior to the 1975 local government reorganisation but what I do think and I see this in communities I represent and in other communities around the country when the great privileges of my office is that I am able to see it first hand good innovations brought forward and I can think about particular developments which emerge perhaps for example through the the work of development trusts for example where you can where you can see community capacity being able to be built up year after year after year by communities committing for example I'm not prescribing this as a route through this to a concept of a development trust or it might be a a a a a a sceo and that brings together some community industry it enables developments to take place other propositions grow from that and communities are then able to exercise much greater distinctive delivery of services and purpose within a community and then a positively engaged local authority will recognise this is happening and will seek to engage with those communities to try to make sure that more functions can be deployed in that locality in a way that has the impact that we all seek within those communities and that may well perhaps address some of the points that Mr Griffin put to me about to what extent do people feel as if they can shape their local community agenda and there are some very good practices around the country where local authorities do enable much greater discretion to be exercised at local level and if that can be done in partnership with the development of some of these concept of development trusts or skeos or wider community engagement activities then I think that can perhaps address the fundamental point that I recognise that Elena Whitham puts to me about the sense of remoteness that people feel from public authority when they live in some of these communities and are anxious to be able to better shape the future of their community. I think that Miles Briggs would like to come in with the supplementary. I was interested in the responses that you were given to the committee on that Deputy First Minister because I think that there's also an element of the cost of delivering services as well which we need to look at. I say that through the eyes of being an Edinburgh MSP and knowing the challenges and the cost of living here in the capital but particularly Edinburgh City Council and NHS Lothian being the two lowest funded councils and health boards per head of population so I wanted to ask has there been any consideration about the cost of delivering services and a potential for example to deliver an Edinburgh waiting because we know that both the council and health board continuously report that delivering the workforce but also the cost of delivering services be it buying land and things like that is fundamentally more expensive here in the capital. I just wondered whether or not the Government had pursued any work around that. I recall some discussion of those points in the past. To be on the safe side, I think that I better write to the committee about any specific work that has been undertaken but of course if I go back to the issues around local government finance I suppose there's two points that are relevant here. Firstly, the distribution formula of funding among local authorities is a matter of dialogue and agreement with local authorities so if there was to be any proposition to change the distribution of funding within local authorities that would obviously be an issue that would have to be agreed by local authorities and I think there's a certain reluctance to discuss the distribution formula within local authorities at the present moment and has been generally the case. Second point I would make is that of course in previous budgets and this factor must still be in the budget settlements we agreed a particular supplement for the city of Edinburgh was a point I negotiated with the late margo mcdonald in the 2007 to 2011 Parliament and that will be factored into the budget arrangements that we have in place. There are of course ways of discussing these issues and on the health board funding that is of course determined by the NRAC arrangements and there are steps that have been taken over time to address exactly the issue that Mr Briggs puts to me. I want to come in and pick up and go into another area which is that we have been talking about this kind of in a context of coming out of Covid and recover