Good morning and welcome to the sixth meeting in 2023 of the local government, housing and planning committee. Mark Griffin, Annie Wells and Marie McNair are joining us virtually today. May I remind all members and witnesses to ensure that their devices are on silent and that all other notifications are turned off during the meeting? The first item on our agenda today is to decide whether to take item 6, 7, 8 and 9 in private. Our members agreed. We all agreed. We're now turned to agenda item 2, which is to take evidence on the cost of living tenant protection Scotland Act 2022, amendment of expiry dates and rent cap modification regulations 2023, and the cost of living tenant protection Scotland Act early expiry and suspension of provisions regulations from 2023. From Patrick Harvie, the minister for zero carbon buildings, active travel and tenants rights, the Scottish Government, and Mr Harvie is joined for this item by the Scottish Government officials Yvonne Gavin, who is a team leader at the housing services rented sector reform unit. I'm going to... Adam, I'm sorry, but I'm not sure I can catch your name, but let's try. Adam Kravix, head of housing, homelessness and regeneration at the communities analytical division, Poppy Pryor, who's a lawyer, and Yvette Shepherd, who's the head of housing services and rented sector reform unit. I welcome the minister and his officials to the meeting and invite him to make an opening statement. Thank you and good morning, convener, and I appreciate that the full titles of these instruments are a bit of a mouthful, but I'm very pleased to be here to present, as you said, the cost of living tenant protection Scotland Act 2023, early expiry and suspension of provisions regulations 2023, and the cost of living tenant protection Scotland Act 2022 amendment. I've just realised that there's a typo in my brief. The first title should have been the tenant protection Scotland Act 2022, early expiry and suspension of provisions regulations 2023, and the cost of living tenant protection Scotland Act 2022 amendment of expiry dates and rent cap modification regulations 2023. Now, as convener yourself and committee members will remember, the emergency act that we introduced last year did have three key aims. Firstly, to protect tenants stabilising their housing costs by freezing rents. Secondly, to reduce the impacts of eviction and homelessness through moratorium on evictions. Thirdly, to avoid tenants being evicted from the rented sector by a landlord wanting to raise rents between tenancies during the temporary measures and to reduce unlawful evictions. The act itself came into force on 28 October and since then it's provided additional protection for tenants across the rented sector as we continue to live through these challenging and uncertain economic times. Last month, we published our first report on the operation of the emergency act covering the period from coming in force until the end of December. In that report and in line with the requirements in the act, we set out our intended position for the social rented sector rent cap post-March 2023. That's the main focus of one of the instruments before you. Scotland has led and continues to lead the way in the delivery of affordable housing across the UK with over 115,000 affordable homes since 2007 and equally ambitious targets over the next decade. Leading the way again within the UK, we've ended the right to buy to ensure that we retain social rented homes for people in the greatest need. Our commitment to affordable housing is second to none, and that's why we've placed so much emphasis on enabling continued investment in the delivery of high-quality social housing. During the passage of the cost of living bill through Parliament, concerns were raised across the chamber on the impact that a continued 0% rent freeze could have on that investment. Indeed, some of the members of the committee here today expressed those concerns. However, due to the unprecedented economic circumstances at the time, we felt it was imperative that all tenants living in the rented sector be afforded the protection provided by the emergency measures, but we agreed to work closely with social sector landlords, and indeed we'd already, by the time the bill completed its passage through Parliament, we'd already established a short life task and finish group to support that work. That group comprising a number of key social sector landlord representative groups, including COSLA, the Glasgow West of Scotland Forum, stressed the fine balance between affordability and investment, and the need to ensure that we set a social sector rent at a level that would ensure that essential work can continue, such as new-build programmes and work toward energy efficiency and carbon neutral targets. They reached an agreement that would see increases of 6.4% in respect of local authorities' social housing and 6.1% for housing associations as an average across Scotland. It's important to note that the agreement of an average figure is essential to allow some degree of flexibility. The majority of rents will be increased at a level below the agreed 6.4% and 6.1% figures, but there may be some landlords who will, for specific reasons, need to go beyond those levels. In light of that, the cost of living tenant protection Scotland Act early expiry and suspension of provisions regulations 2023 expired the rent cap for the social sector from 26 February, enabling social landlords to set rent levels that they judge in light of tenant feedback to strike that balance on supporting repairs, maintenance, working towards meeting carbon neutral targets and continuing to provide the wide range of support that they offer on a daily basis to their tenants in times of such pressure. Those regulations also make changes to the rent cap for the student accommodation sector. As laid out in the first report, feedback from stakeholders demonstrated that, in contrast to the mainstream private rented sector, the rent cap was having no impact on the student accommodation sector. That is because the nature of the majority of contractual student tenancy agreements means that rents are set annually, typically lasting the entire academic year and rarely, if at all, allow for end-tenancy rent increases. In light of that feedback and in recognition that student accommodation tenancies are structured differently from other types of tenancies, we concluded that the rent cap should be suspended from 30 March and the early expiry and suspension of provision regulations seek to do so. However, I want to make it clear that, by suspending the student accommodation rent cap instead of expiring it, ministers will continue to monitor the sector and have powers to revive those provisions if fresh evidence shows that there would be benefit from doing so to deliver a necessary and proportionate response to the cost of living. I would like to turn now to the affirmative instrument that you are considering today. Soon after we published our first report to Parliament, we laid the cost of living tenant protection Scotland Act 2022, amendment of expiry dates and rent cap modification regulations 2023, along with a statement of reasons. In addition to the first report on the Act, which was laid before Parliament on 12 January, the statement of reasons sets out updated data and economic analysis, which shows that the unprecedented economic possession has not yet changed fundamentally, and many households in the private rented sector in particular continue to struggle. Yesterday's announcement by Ofgem on energy price caps from April this year will bring no consolation. Despite the decreases, as the UK Government measures mean that the average domestic energy bill will still increase from £2,500 to £3,000 at the same time as the £400 energy bill support scheme has ended, driving up fuel poverty to over 50 per cent in the private rented sector. It is for that reason that the amendment of expiry dates and rent cap modification regulations seek to extend the rent cap measures for the private rented sector, as well as the eviction moratorium provisions across all rented sectors covered by the Act and the other important provisions in the Act for a further six month period to 30 September. On the continuation of the private sector rent cap measures, while the focus continues, of course, to be on protecting tenants, we also recognise that the on-going impact of the cost crisis may be having on some private landlords. That is why those regulations propose that the rent cap be varied to allow for within tenancy rent increases of up to 3 per cent. The voluntary approach to rent setting taken by landlords in the social sector is intended to equate to an approximate average rental increase of less than £5 per week across the country. Now, as rents in the private rented sector are generally significantly higher, allowing for a maximum rent increase of 3 per cent here equates to a similar average rent increase for tenants in a two-bedroom property, which is the most common property size in the private rented sector. We consider that this gives a measure of parity in monetary terms while continuing to protect tenants from unaffordable rent increases. There is also a safeguard for private landlords who could alternatively opt to rent service Scotland for a rent increase of up to 6 per cent if they have an increase in their defined prescribed property costs within a specified period. Turning to the proposed continuation of the eviction moratorium provisions, tenants in both the private and social rented sector as well as those living in student accommodation will continue to benefit from the additional time to find alternative accommodation provided by the six-month pause in the enforcement of eviction action. In addition, they are protected from private landlords seeking to end a tenancy to raise rents above the cap and reduce unlawful evictions by increasing the level of damages payable. As with the rent cap, the eviction moratorium provisions include a number of safeguards for landlords. Those recognise that there are some circumstances where enforcement of an eviction order or decree should be able to proceed to protect communities, for example in instances of serious antisocial behaviour, as well as to strike the appropriate balance between the protection of tenants and the rights of landlords. In summary, convener, we believe that the evidence showing that the cost crisis is very much still with us means that it is crucial that we continue some of the protections brought in by the Costs of Living Tenant Protection Act beyond 30 March this year. As promised during the passage of the bill through Parliament, we have kept the measures under review and continued to consider their on-going necessity and proportionality. We have used our powers to make changes to the act where the evidence showed that it was required. That is what the two instruments before you today are seeking to achieve. Thank you, convener, for the time being available to introduce the measures. I thank the committee for this scrutiny and I look forward to any questions that members have. Thank you very much minister for that detailed opening statement. We have a number of questions and you may have touched on some of them but I think we will ask the questions and it will give us an opportunity and you an opportunity to maybe open a little bit more deeper. I am going to begin with a general question and I am just a bit of a framing. The committee heard concerns from witnesses last week that the measures in the act are not addressing some of the fundamental housing problems in the housing system such as a lack of supply of affordable housing, high initial rents of private rented homes and homelessness provision, and Fenella Gabrish, who is trying to access private rented accommodation, told the committee that the barriers that we face day to day to try and access property is horrific. I would be interested to hear from the minister how the emergency act fits into what the Scottish Government is doing on affordable housing and on renting reform and specifically how can we use the powers in the emergency act to give a bridge to that wider reform. Thank you, convener. As I think we discussed with a number of members during the debates in Parliament during the passage of the bill itself, there are of course connections between the emergency measures contained in the act that's been passed and the long-term work that the Scottish Government is taking forward through the new deal for tenants and the commitment to a new housing bill later this year. However, the emergency legislation, although there were strong expectations for it and I think it delivered very important necessary protection, couldn't deliver everything that people would have wanted from that longer-term legislative reform. In particular, the protections on rent levels are around in-tenancy rent increases. They don't apply to the setting of new rents for new tenancies and that's well understood through the debates that we've had on the legislation. The longer-term work on rent controls is on-going and we are keen to engage with the sector. When I say the sector, I mean both landlord and tenant interests as well as those academics who can bring their expertise to bear on the way that the rental market works in housing. We're doing this in line with our commitment to the ethos that I think comes across well in housing to 2040, that the right to adequate housing is a human right and I think that we'll have a great deal more to say in due course. In relation to these measures, though, and the measures in the emergency act, the principle bridging mechanism that's been built in between the emergency legislation and the longer-term work is the power to alter the system of rent adjudication. We believe that if we moved directly from these emergency measures, switched them off entirely at some point in the future and simply moved directly back into open market comparisons for rent adjudication, there would be severe unintended consequences. In due course, we'll bring forward proposals for how we intend to use those powers in the act. Thanks for highlighting the fact that it's the rented adjudication that will create that bridge between what we have now and what you're bringing forward. On the rent cap, I'm interested to hear why the Scottish Government has, and you did touch on this in your opening statement, an opportunity for more, why has the Scottish Government taken a different approach to the continuation of the rent cap between different sectors and how proportionate and fair is this approach? Yes, as again was debated during the passage of the bill, we recognise that the two parts of the rented sector, the two dominant parts of the rented sector, the social rented sector and the private rented sector, do operate differently. In particular, the social rented sector has a long tradition and indeed requirements for consultation and engagement with tenants in relation to rent setting. We wanted to respect that necessary and valuable engagement and consultation. We know that rental income provides not necessarily for profit. Indeed, social landlords are not profit-making bodies, but for investment in new build, in retrofit for energy efficiency and net zero, as well as for maintenance and upgrades of existing properties and a wide range of other services that social landlords provide in the community. They plan those investments over a long time frame, and so, as a number of members echoed concerns from across the sector during the passage of the bill, I think that most people recognise that some short-term protection was necessary, but that if it continued at a 0 per cent cap for an extended period, this would not only reduce rental income in the year-of-the-caps operation but would have a compound impact on the financial planning of social landlords for a much longer period of time than that and would have a detrimental impact on tenants because of that reduced investment. Those factors do not apply in the same way to the private rental sector, which tends to be profit-making and in which, for example, we already see a lower level of energy efficiency than in the social rented sector due to some properties not having been upgraded in the way that will be required in the future through the new build heat standard as well as through the heat and buildings regulations around retrofit of existing properties. In the absence of some of those factors that apply in the social rented sector, we felt that it was appropriate. It was also necessary because in the absence of large organisations representing private landlords, we have a diverse and fragmented sector in the private rented sector. There was no opportunity to negotiate a voluntary agreement with private landlords that would have achieved the same effect as the agreement that I am pleased to say we reached with the social rented sector. A mixture of recognising the different factors, the different characteristics of the two parts of the rented sector, as well as the differences in opportunity to achieve voluntary agreement and the nature of how rent is set, led us to recognise that a different approach had to be taken. However, I would again place some emphasis on the broad level of parity that we are talking about. Because private rented sectors are significantly higher, we believe that there will be, in monetary terms, roughly speaking a parity between the rental increase that will be allowable for that most common type of property, the two-bedroom property in the private rented sector. I am now going to bring in Willie Coffey with some questions. Thank you very much, convener, and good morning, minister and your team. It is just to continue that discussion there, Patrick, with you. We heard at the committee last week about these below-inflation rent rises. We will provide challenges for social landlords in terms of improving homes and retrofitting, you mentioned that yourself. Have we been able to do any kind of assessment of the impact of that? Because it is bounty to have an impact in the immediate years to follow, what can we possibly do to assist? Is there any consideration of additional resource, perhaps, to assist with that particular problem? The impact is a matter that has been subject to concern from the social rented sector, but I think that we have been very pleased at the ability that we have had to reach agreement with the sector. Indeed, the average approach, the approach of not setting a cap, not even seeking a voluntary uniform cap for the social rented sector, but instead offering an average, allows for some flexibility. There will be some social landlords who have urgent need to invest in quality and maintenance, as well as other aspects of their investment programme. There will be those who have managed more successfully than others to keep rents low and under control during the pandemic, for example. They will not all have followed exactly the same path because they are independent bodies. Given the different circumstances that different social landlords are in, I think that it was appropriate that we allow some degree of flexibility, but social landlords exist for a social purpose. They are not there to extract the maximum rent that they can from the properties that they have on offer, and I think that they take that social purpose very seriously. None of them would be seeking to impose unaffordable rent increases or rent increases that can be reasonably avoided. In fact, some of the early indications that we are seeing from the rents that are being set are significantly below. I have seen figures from some of the local authorities that have set their rent increases for the coming year at two, three, four percent significantly below the average that we have been seeking, and I think that we anticipate that that will continue to be the case. The Scottish Housing Regulator will continue to give us information on that. I presume that you may have been knocking on your door to request or ask for consideration for additional resources, but will we keep an eye on that just to invite some kind of data gathering to help us to understand how that is progressing and what the impact is actually over the next few years so that we can be in a position to adjust if necessary in future years when times are a little bit better, let's hope. Absolutely. The commitment to social housing from the Scottish Government remains very strong. I think that there has always been an understanding that the targets for new provision within the current decade would be likely to be back-loaded to some extent. The impact of construction costs is obviously affecting that as well, but we are continuing to maintain that commitment to work with the social rented sector to understand not just the impact that this legislation may have had and may continue to have, but the wider necessity to provide the high-quality, net-zero and sufficient social housing that Scotland needs. We also heard last week from the regional network of tenants who were reminding us that the issue isn't just about rent, it's the whole cost of housing that they mentioned to the committee and they included things like service charges and energy costs too that are falling on them that need to be looked at. Is that something that the Government is aware of, the wider impact that some of these issues, economic issues, are bringing to bear? Is that something that we've given some consideration to and is there anything we can do about that to assist? Yes, and just to reinforce the emergency legislation, we've never suggested that it's a solution to every aspect of affordability in the rental market. We believed that it was necessary to prevent some very, very significant rent increases that we were becoming aware of and to protect people in the throes of this very extreme cost-of-living crisis. The longer-term goal of having a broader and deeper understanding of what affordability really means in housing is about acknowledging those wider costs and it will cover issues such as service charges and utilities that Willie Coffey raises, but I think a genuinely comprehensive understanding of affordability is also about place. It's about things like transport costs, it's about energy costs, as we've talked about, so it does require that longer-term work. Housing to 2040, as well as our commitment to legislation in this area, will continue to deliver on those aspirations. The committee has heard from a number of private landlords with regards to investor confidence in the sector being knocked and what they believe will be a significant number of landlords seeking to leave the market, so I just wanted to ask what assessments being made by the Scottish Government on the impact the private rent cap will have and also if there's any data which you could share with us specifically around urban and rural and island, if you have that. Yes, I mean there is obviously a longer-term argument that can be had and I'm sure I think we've had this argument played out in the chamber on a couple of occasions about whether a regulated approach to private renting is compatible with continued investment. Our view and in fact I think the view of the cross-party group on housing, the report on rent control acknowledged that regulated markets can be attractive to investors and indeed we regularly make the case that over the long term the history of the devolved approach to housing, for example, we've seen a very substantial increase in the size of the private rented sector at the same time as continued improvements in the robustness of regulation, so we don't believe that there's a fundamental contradiction between having a well-regulated sector that strikes appropriate balances for tenants' rights and having continued investment in the sector. As far as current data shows, we do have, although it's not a statistical source, it's more an administrative source of data, the Scottish landlord registration scheme, which shows that in December 2022 there were 340,149 private rented properties registered in Scotland and that's slightly more than the 339,632 that were registered in August before the introduction of the rent cap and just yesterday I was told that we've seen the figures for January and it's roughly the same, it's still very slightly up, not significantly, but very slightly up on the August figure. Now of course there will be those who will suggest that there's any tension at some future point for landlords to leave the private rented sector. I think, though, it's fair to say that we hear that from Scotland and we hear it from south of the border as well and some of the push factors there have involved tax changes that the UK government has pursued, which impact on landlords' profitability throughout the UK. There are severe challenges in the housing system throughout the UK and severe challenges to affordability. We believe that it's necessary and achievable to strike the right balance between protecting tenants in terms of affordability through regulation as well as ensuring that we have continued investment in housing supply. I don't know if the Scottish Government have live data on that, which you could share with us as a committee as well. I think it's as we approach the September date especially to see how potential changes and individual landlords' decisions will impact, I think that that's maybe the critical point. I wanted to return to a question that the convener asked with regard to the setting of 3 per cent and the suggestion that the Scottish Property Federation made in their evidence that they suggested that this should be closer to 5 per cent and, given inflation and what the ministers outlined, why that 6 per cent average for the social sector wasn't closer for the private rented sector? As I said in my opening remarks and reinforced to the convener, we believe that we have struck a balance that achieves a degree of parity. Private rented sector rents are significantly higher than social rented sector rents and so 3 per cent in the private rented sector is broadly equivalent to what the impact would be at £5 a week or thereabouts in the social rented sector if we look at the most common property type, the two bedroom property. Obviously there'll be slight variation for one bedroom properties or for three or four bedroom properties that average isn't something that we can apply at a uniform level. We need to control each individual rent individually to achieve that but setting this 3 per cent cap does achieve something which is broadly in parity in monetary terms and of course I would also reinforce that the additional safeguard for landlords is there. They can apply for an increase of up to 6 per cent through rent service Scotland if they are facing additional prescribed property costs during the specified period. I think that that does strike the appropriate balance between landlords who will in some cases, not in all cases but in a significant number of cases be facing significant challenges through the cost of living crisis but also on tenants. Tenants tend on average to have lower incomes than those living in other tenures. Tenants in the private rented sector they tenants spend a higher proportion of their income on their rent and are facing a number of other challenges and we believe that this legislation strikes the appropriate balance going forward. Thank you for that. You touched upon students and I wanted to ask with regard to Edinburgh specifically as an Edinburgh MSP. I've never known it so bad in terms of people contacting me to say that they can't find any property available, the levels of homelessness in the capital going up, the number of people now living in temporary accommodations, that's highest ever including the record number of children and pregnant women in temporary accommodation. The third outcome you mentioned of limiting homelessness doesn't seem to have necessarily helped in the capital but with regards to students I am concerned that this autumn when they return there will not be the accommodation available because many properties when students are moving out are going straight into longer term people who are working here in the capital. What assessment have you made of that especially for Edinburgh but with the universities as well and the messages which were put out last term to say if you don't have accommodation don't matriculate. We do have to continue to engage with the universities around the obligations that they have to look after the students that they choose to attract whether from domestic students or indeed overseas students. We took the views that the specific measures in the emergency legislation in relation to the purpose-built student accommodation market were not having any significant effect because the scope for end tenancy rent increases was negligible to non-existent. Although the intention was always there to try and achieve parity of protection we had to take the view that the impact of the specific measures on the rent cap in the purpose-built student accommodation sector was not having that effect and so that's been suspended. In relation to the wider arguments though I think we've long acknowledged that there are deeper issues to explore in relation to student accommodation that's why we have the current review on going. The members of the steering group of that review have been working hard. I think that that's nearing completion and we're expecting the steering group to give their recommendations to ministers which we will then of course at the appropriate time report to Parliament and give our response to. Myself and Mr Hepburn the minister responsible on the HE and FE side will continue to engage with each other across government and with the education sector around these issues. Have you had universities contacting Scottish Government to express their concerns on this issue? I'm not aware of contact that we've had recently from the universities on that. Education colleagues are in on-going dialogue with the universities and colleges but no specific does. I would finally just add because Miles Briggs mentioned homelessness that if we look at the tenures from which homelessness referrals are coming, obviously there's been an extended period for number of years where the private rented sector was a significantly higher source of homelessness than other tenures. That reduced significantly during the emergency legislation for Covid but has had a continual rise and now exceeds or prior to the introduction of this emergency legislation was now exceeding its pre-Covid levels. That increase hadn't been seen from other tenures and so we do have an issue in relation to eviction from the private rented sector as a source of homelessness and that's another reason why we believe that the measures particularly on protection from eviction remain necessary. We're now going to move online with questions from Mark Griffin. Thanks, convener. I'd just like to declare an interest as an owner of a private rented property in the North Lanarkshire council area. Good morning minister. You've touched on some of my areas of questioning in your opening statement and answers to the convener. I wonder whether you want to expand further on the Government's long-term plans to introduce private sector regulation and perhaps talk about how the transition between the emergency legislation and into further long-term rent controls might happen and maybe give the committee a more definitive timescale on when you expect to introduce that legislation. Yes. I think we confirmed fairly recently that the intention is to introduce that legislation as soon as we can after the summer recess this year. There are a number of areas where I think there's a very clear public expectation from stakeholders about the provisions in that plan particularly around homelessness prevention. We've also signalled through the New Deal for tenants, a number of other areas where we expect to make progress. The New Deal for tenants not only talked about the development of a national system of rent controls but also about other tenants' rights. For example, some of the softer things which just give people a sense of dignity at home, like the ability to personalise their home or to keep pets. We've also talked about some of the more challenging issues such as protection from infections during the winter months. The legislation that we will introduce to Parliament later this year will address a number of those measures and others. I think that the recognition across political parties about the value of the approach taken in housing to 2040 is important to flag up here as well. The approach to not only developing plans extensively with stakeholders and with the public but trying to create a long-term vision about the role that housing plays in meeting wider policy objectives for people in Scotland, from tackling poverty and inequality to creating and supporting jobs, looking at issues around demographics and depopulation, as well as, of course, our hugely important targets to emission reduction and net zero. Between the housing bill and the heat and buildings bill, we'll be addressing all aspects of that. Thank you for that. The other area that I wanted to cover was the issue that SFHA raised last week. That was about the mid-market rent being covered by the private sector rent cap. I wonder what the Government's view is of the mid-market rent being both part of the affordable housing supply programme and also covered by the private sector rent cap and considering their comments last week, whether the Government is considering amending the type of tenancy in the mid-market rent in the housing bill that you plan to bring forward after recess? Yes, thank you. It's a very good question. We acknowledge that there are, again, differences in the nature of the mid-market rent, both in the rent levels but also in what's included within rent, for example, issues in relation to service charges and others. While we took the view very clearly that, in relation to the emergency legislation, mid-market rent properties tended to be private residential tenancies and we'd be treated as private residential tenancies in terms of the act, we recognise that there are longer-term issues to work through before we get to the introduction of the new housing bill and a national system of rent controls. We're keen to engage with the social rented sector to understand their concerns about that and to identify the appropriate way to address those concerns. Thanks, Mark. We're going to stay with another member online and bring in Annie Wells. Thank you, convener. Good morning, Minister and your officials. Why do you think extending the evictions pauses necessary and proportionate, given that landlords generally pursue evictions last resort and that there are existing precautions already in place, such as the need for landlords to comply with rent arrears pre-action requirements? Thank you. I'll maybe start just by reinforcing the comments that I made earlier about the pattern of evictions from different tenures that I spoke about to Miles Briggs. For quite a long time, eviction from the private rented sector was extremely dominant as a source of new homelessness. That began to come under control again but remained high pre-pandemic and the emergency legislation in relation to Covid significantly reduced that. Since that time and before the introduction of the Cost of Living Act, we saw a very steady, very marked increase in homelessness coming from the private rented sector. We didn't see that same effect happening from either local authority or RSL social housing. There is a recognition that something very significant and harmful has happened there in relation to the sources of homelessness. Fundamentally, the economic situation has not markedly changed from the time that we introduced the legislation and the necessity for a level of protection, not only for a pause on eviction to allow people more time to find new accommodation if that's what they're facing, but also the very significant measures to create disincentives for unlawful eviction. Unlawful eviction remains a very serious problem in Scotland and the very, very low level of penalty that landlords previously faced meant that they didn't really find that disincentive. We've made it easier and more relevant for tenants who are being faced with unlawful or unreasonable eviction to take action to protect themselves from that. Both the moratorium and those additional protections through the measures against unlawful eviction, we believe, remain necessary in the current circumstances. In fact, the concern that's been raised from other members about availability of rented housing in some parts of the country, if anything, will reinforce in my view the sense of necessity for those measures. Now we're going to move to questions from Paul MacLennan. I can just declare an interest. I'm no north of a rental property to my in-laws in East Lothian. Last week, we had Shelter Scotland express concerns about the rent arrears around about being evicted for enter zero over £2,250. It called for this amount to be increased, as evidence from its law service showed that the work on eviction cases showed average amount was about £5,700. I'm just wondering if you gave any consideration to increasing that figure. Again, this is an issue that we debated. I think during the debates on the bill, I reflected on the factors that we try to weigh up in reaching an approach on rent arrears. The support that tenants in very severe rent arrears need, in my view, is not just to be stuck where they are building up ever more rent arrears. The support that they need is, for example, through the tenant grant fund and other forms of financial support, and the ability to work with their landlord in a constructive way to resolve the reasons why they are in rent arrears and to work out the best way forward for them. The approach that we have taken in setting the level of severe rent arrears that we have set out gives the appropriate level of protection without simply leaving people stuck where they are building up ever more unaffordable rent arrears. Those arrears, if they reach a level of severity significantly beyond what we've currently set out, would themselves be extremely destructive and disruptive to a person's circumstances going forward. Even if they did stay where they were or moved to another property, those debts become a burden that we think is unreasonable. The type of protection that people face in those arrears need is not simply to stay where they are and see those arrears grow ever more. The second person was really just talking about the act itself that doesn't provide any data on changes in homelessness over the period that's been enforced. The report in the act doesn't provide any data on changes in homelessness over the period that's been enforced. Can you say any more about the impact on measures on protecting tenants from homelessness? Are you expecting any increases in homelessness as the six months' restriction on enforcement of vaccination orders comes to an end? The provisions in our view very clearly, almost by definition, will have prevented some rented sector households from falling into homelessness by, as I said, giving them extra time to find alternative accommodation or to seek housing advice and support from specialist agencies. For private rented sector tenants, the measures continue to provide protection by making it easier and more meaningful, as I said, to challenge unlawful eviction. The type of experience that people can go through which is more likely to lead to homelessness. In fact, I count myself among the number. I narrowly avoided homelessness when I was evicted from a flat by a dodgy landlord before some of the current protections were in place, long before some of the current protections were in place. I take very seriously the impact on people's lives when they encounter those kind of behaviours and practices. The longer-term work on homelessness prevention duties is long awaited by the sector. We have engaged extensively with stakeholders to make sure that we are going to be bringing forward measures that will help to strengthen the protection against homelessness and to reduce that. I am not sure, Adam, if we have any current data that you want to throw into the conversation around current patterns? We published homelessness data at the end of January, but, as you say, there is a bit of a time delay between what, when local authorities provide us with the record-level data. The data that we published in January just took us to the end of September. The next release will be around July time, which will take us to the end of March, which will cover the period covered by the Act. The statistics we have published in January show increasing trends across homelessness and across user-temporary accommodation. The publication provides an insight into where the homelessness cases are coming from. It is not just the private rented sector. It is people wanting to live, leave their parental homes. There is a relationship breakdown. There is a whole analysis published on the website as to the causes of homelessness. The increase of households coming from the private rented sector and presenting as homeless may or may not be due to eviction. There could be other reasons why somebody chooses to leave or to present as homeless. I do not think that we can pin it down to evictions, but we can pin it down to the previous tenure and the main reason why people are presenting as homeless. We are now going to move back online and bring in Marie McNair. Thank you, convener, and good morning, minister and your team. The committee heard from Shelter Scotland that advisers report that tenants are unclear about the rights in relation to the Act. They say that there is a lack of clarity on the eviction provisions, where the Scottish Government mentioned is causing a bit of confusion. How would you respond to those concerns and what more can you do to ensure that tenants and landlords are aware of the rights under the Act and future changes? I was aware of the criticism that was raised by Shelter. I would very much welcome any further dialogue that we can have with Shelter or other agencies. I think that a certain advice Scotland would be discussing some of the same issues and hear its ideas about what more we can do. However, I draw attention to a significant amount of work that we have done both during the development of the new deal for tenants and particularly focused activity around the cost of living act, not just conventional news releases and activity across conventional media, but a wide range of social media content. The Renters Rights website was updated and advertised widely. We have had information available in the context of wider cost of living information, including distribution through GP surgeries, libraries, community centres, leisure centres, and that has included numbers and contact details for organisations that can offer individual advice and support, not just generic information about the provisions in the legislation. That information has included Shelter and Citizens Advice Scotland. There has also been direct communication through key partner organisations such as tenant and landlord representative bodies, social landlords, local authority landlords and educational establishments. That has given tenants the information that they need on the new legislation as well as how to access more information should they need it. We have also had direct communication with registered landlords via local authorities, text messaging alert and direct communication with registered letting agents as well. There has also been engagement with the three tenancy deposit schemes to facilitate dissemination of information with tenants who registered on their newsletters. There has been direct message to an extensive list of stakeholders, including colleges and universities and PBSA providers, confirming the nature of the measures and giving information for tenants. However, as I say, we will continue to be very open to further suggestions about more activity that we could take forward on that. Particularly as changes come through, I know that landlords as well as tenants will continue to have questions about what those changes mean for them and we are keen to make sure that they have access to the answers that they need. Thanks, minister. That information would be useful to the committee. Can you add on any other questions? My other question is covered. Thanks very much, Marie. I want to continue that a little bit, but more from the social rented sector side, I have been made aware that since this act came in, this is one social rented sector housing housing. I know where you are in discussions with them, but they have had an experience where people are getting the wrong message, the tenants are getting the wrong message, and they have seen an increase by 1.16 per cent in rent arrears. That figure is higher than any other reporting period in a previous financial year. What they were saying to me is that people think that they can just stop paying their rent, and then, as tenants, they are increasingly going to rears that they will have to pay. There is something there about messaging and communicating what is really happening with this act and other measures going forward. Are you in discussion with the housing associations about that? Yes, we are obviously in regular dialogue with them. I think that I have seen some media reports, for example, which have not quite captured the full detail. If an announcement is made about what is going to happen to the level of the cap, for example, not every media report captures properly the difference between the impact on the social and private rented sector. That is why we need to continue to work directly with the social landlords, for example, who have that on-going responsibility for consultation and tenant engagement, as well as with private landlord representative bodies and organisations that speak directly to tenants and advocate on their behalf. It is also worth reflecting that the organisations that engage with tenants in the social rented sector, who are not social housing providers such as the Tenant Information Service, as well as some of the work that local authorities have done, such as Glasgow's Tenant-led Housing Commission. I will be seeing some of them later this week. They also have a continued role in making sure that they let us know about additional channels of communication that we should be using but also in speaking directly to tenants. They have been very active in doing so. Thank you very much for that. It is good to hear that you are connected with that issue and proactive on it, and I agree with you that the nuance of this does not necessarily get conveyed in the media. I have one final question, which would be interesting to hear about the relationship between increasing intervention and regulation on private renting both over the last 20 years and the experience of other European countries. I think that when we have previously debated not so much this legislation but the new deal for tenants, this is clearly an area where some ideology comes into the debate a little bit. I think that there are those who see the view that a more deregulated, more free-market approach to housing will increase supply and that any level of impact on prices is going to be detrimental to that. Actually, if we look at some European countries, which have had systems of rent controls in place for a long time, we actually see a larger private rented sector in terms of proportion of the housing stock than we see in Scotland. That is not universal experience. I think that it is well understood that rent controls can achieve their objectives well or poorly. We are continuing to engage with all stakeholders to ensure that we design a system that is right for Scotland and that it is going to be able to achieve protection in terms of affordability but is also going to be consistent with what Scotland needs in terms of good quality of housing supply as well as investment in all of the hugely important priorities around transition to net zero. There is a connection between rental income and investment in either sector. That relationship between rental income and investment is not the same in the social rented sector, which, as I said earlier, is a non-profit-making sector, as it is in the private rented sector. There are examples of built rent, but a great deal of private rented accommodation is not actually provided by landlord. It is acquired by them. It is not necessarily built by them. It is acquired by them as existing properties. There are huge differences between the sectors, and we are keen to continue to do the work that we have been taking forward since the publication of the new deal for tenants and that will continue to be in development until the bill is introduced later this year. I look forward to a further extensive dialogue with the committee at that point. Thank you so much for your evidence today. We now turn to agenda item 3, which is consideration of the motion on the instrument. I invite the minister to move motion S6M-07703 that the local government housing and planning committee recommends that the cost of living tenant protection Scotland act 2022 amendment of expiry dates and rent cap modification regulations 2023 be approved. Thank you. Do members have any points that they wish to make? I am not going to rehearse the arguments that we made in the chamber with regard to our concerns, the legislation, but just to put on record once again that it is clear that that has impacted on both the social and private rented sector and very much destabilised them. I think that that is not necessarily my words, but the sector when they have been expressing their concerns. I welcome some of the changes that the Scottish Government has brought forward, but we will not be supporting it today. Thank you, Miles. Anybody else? No. Minister, is there anything that you wish to add? I do not think so. I think that we have covered the main arguments that needed to come across. Thank you. The question is that motion S6M-07703, in the name of Michael Matheson, be approved. Are we all agreed? We are not agreed. There will be a division. Those in favour of the motion, please raise your hands or if you are on blue jeans, press Y in the chat function. Those against the motion, please raise your hands if you are in the room and if on blue jeans, press N in the chat function. Those abstaining, please raise your hands or press A in the chat function on blue jeans. The result of division is 5-4-2 against and the motion is therefore agreed. The committee will publish a report setting out its recommendations on the instrument in the coming days. The next item in our agenda for today is consideration of two negative instruments. The cost of living tenant protection Scotland Act 2022, early expiry and suspension of provisions regulation 2023 and the local government Scotland Act 2004, Renumeration amendment regulations 2023. There is no requirement for the committee to make any recommendations on negative instruments. Do members have any comments on the instruments? Nobody has any comments. Is the committee agreed that we do not wish to make any recommendations in relation to the instruments? We're agreed. Thank you. I now suspend the meeting to allow for a change of witnesses. The next item on our agenda today is to take evidence from two panels of witnesses on community planning inquiry post legislative scrutiny of the Community Empowerment Act 2015. This is our first session on the inquiry. The inquiry is looking at the impact of the Community Empowerment Act 2015 on community planning and how community planning partnerships respond to significant events such as the Covid-19 pandemic and the current cost of living crisis. We are joined on our first panel of witnesses by Carol Calder, who is the audit director at Audit Scotland, Stuart Graham, who is a representative from community planning network, and Tim Mackay, who is the deputy chair at the accounts commission. We have received apologies from Councillor Heddle, who is the vice president of COSLA. He was to have joined the panel today but is unable to attend. I welcome our witnesses to the meeting. We'll try to direct our questions to a specific witness where possible, but if you'd like to come in, please indicate this to the clerks. Each committee member will be exploring a particular theme and Annie Wells will be starting our discussion this morning by asking you some questions about the challenges that communities face. Annie, I should say, three of our members are online, so we'll be going to questions coming from people online. Thank you, convener, and good morning panel. What are the main challenges faced by communities across Scotland? And have these changed in the years since the act was passed in 2015? I'm looking at the particular example of the Covid pandemic and also looking ahead what role should CPPs have in supporting communities during the cost of living crisis. I'll put that to Stuart first, thank you. Annie, nice to see you again. So, thanks for that question about the challenges that are facing our communities. I think you've correctly identified the cost of living as a cost of living crisis. As the current challenge, I think there's also a big challenge in terms of climate change as well that I think communities are becoming increasingly aware of. One of the things that we've noticed through our work on cost of living is that part of community planning is about trying to look upstream at the causes of things, as well as trying to address things in the here and now. And we're looking at the nature of poverty in some of the ways in which that's changed over the last 10, 15, 20 years or so. And I think one of the changes that we've noticed is that way back, you would probably have thought of poverty as being almost synonymous with unemployment. And if you were in a job, you were probably in a reasonably good place or had the platform to progress with your life. But now I think increasingly we're realizing that the research has shown us that much of the people who are experiencing poverty are actually in work as well. So that is a different challenge. What we have done in terms of addressing the cost of living crisis is we've worked with our community planning partners. I come from a council background but we've worked quite strongly with our third sector partners and with our other partners in employability spheres to try and address that. I think what we have to do is understand how it impacts differently. We speak about our communities, but our communities have different communities within them. And I think that that was especially the case with the response to Covid as well. So one of the pieces of work that's been done in our community planning partnership, but probably across most of them in Scotland, has been trying to look at the differential impact on different communities of the Covid crisis and how that's impacted differently on people. And then try to develop what we term around share of social renewal plan to address those specific elements of it. In terms of what we can do as a community planning partnership, I think we can make use of all the intelligence that our various different partners have got. So we will engage with our communities individually in different ways, but if we can collectively bring that experience and knowledge together, then we form a better picture of how we can then work together to address the issues that they face. So there's a learning and listening aspect to our community planning, and then I think there's a deliberative aspect of what we're actually going to do to mitigate the circumstances and then hopefully address the upstream practices as well. Just to speaking from the Accounts Commission point of view, which is more focused on local authorities, I think one of the big issues that's come out of Covid or rather will follow from Covid is that local authorities are struggling for a sustainable funding stream, and that has a knock-on effect, obviously, when it comes down to community planning. The other aspect is that actually a lot of good things happened during the Covid pandemic. Local authorities were very flexible in their response, and so one of the perhaps not issues, but one of the points that we make is that a lot of that good practice and a lot of those good things may disappear after Covid, after we recover from Covid, so we would like to hope that that good practice will continue in the future. Just to add to that, I think that the way that community planning partnerships can help communities is by working collaboratively. I think that the issues that affect the communities can't be resolved by one agency in the council alone. I think that there has to be more collaboration about working together, how the public sector resources in the place in the community can be used to best effect, whether that's about data, as Stewart mentioned, and understanding communities well, but also working collaboratively to redesign services and improve inequalities. Thanks very much for those answers, panel. I just want to talk about inequalities now as well, because data collected by the improvement service shows massive inequalities between communities in the same local authority area. For example, between Springburn on Mary Hill and Kelvin's side in Jordan Hill and Glasgow, reducing inequalities is a core purpose of community planning. How successful has that been? I think that the way that the legislation was framed in terms of making inequalities a particular duty of community planning was helpful, because it has helped to focus on the fact that it is everyone's duty to do that. As Carol said, it is not just the council but all the other partners as well. One of the things that we have to bear in mind is that many of the wicked issues that we face are moving targets, so it is not that we have an issue that we have to address, and that issue stays the same until we have addressed it. Equalities are a moving feast. What we try to do is focus on the lived experience of people who are impacted by those inequalities and work out what the differences are between some of those communities that you are speaking about. Much more so than previously, we talked about environmental justice and justice in terms of the ways that our communities are served by various different agencies. One of the things that we are looking to do is build together some consistency and cohesion in terms of how we treat and react to other communities. That can be communities of place who might be experienced poverty as evidenced through the SIMD, the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation, or it could be communities of interest, particularly things like disability groups and race quality groups as well. What we have to do as public agencies and as Carol was saying, the more we act together, the better we can do that, as by listening to those communities and listening to the changes and the demands that they make and the things that they are experiencing and trying to focus on that. As Tim said, that is very often a question of resources as well. We need to focus where we put those resources, but having that impetus, if you like, to reduce inequalities through community planning is helpful to us as partners in terms of shaping our response. It is interesting that you started your question by referring to the data and inequalities. One of the issues that we found is that the quality of data that comes out from the community planning process is not that good. When we talk about improving outcomes, we really need to have data to show that all that activity is improving outcomes, and that data really is not there at the moment. Just to briefly add to that, in the commission's local government overview each year, we pull out case studies where councils have worked well with their partners to improve outcomes for local communities. We have a lot of ground-level projects initiative evidence, but, as Tim said, there is a bit of a gap between that and what has happened strategically in the community planning partnership in being able to demonstrate how their priorities and the action that has been taken against them, how that is improving the outcomes overall. There are things happening at a local level, but a wee bit of a disconnect between how able partnerships are to demonstrate the overall improvements around their inequalities. Perfect. Thank you for those responses. Stuart McMillan touched on my next part of my question. He spoke about communities of place and the guidance that part 2 of the act spoke about the impacts on communities of interests. We have mentioned people with disabilities, but we are talking about young people leaving care, vulnerable adults as well. Is there any evidence that community planning partnerships are identifying and engaging with those communities? There will be evidence through, as Carol said, some of the good practice that we have, through various different community planning partnerships that are in place, whether that is cohesive right across the community planning landscape, if you like. I couldn't say off the top of my head here, but one of the things that we do in some cases better now is learn much more from the lived experience of those communities. We talk about data, and I think that I am right that there is maybe a gap in the data that we have sometimes, particularly about our inequalities communities, but where we can hopefully address some of those gaps is through actual day-to-day engagement with the communities. It is things that are not data evidence as yet, but they are experience that is coming through for people. What we have to bear in mind is the interaction between different policy agendas. If you like, we are pursuing the digital agenda at the moment and trying to get as many people online as possible, but we need to recognise that there are dangers there in terms of digital exclusion, and that is where community planning can come in as a focus to try and anticipate some of those inequalities and address them at source. On the ground, we are probably better at speaking to our various different communities than we were previously, but it is something that we really need to keep going and translate that knowledge and understanding into policy direction to narrow those inequalities. Thank you very much for that, Stuart. Just one thing to add. Stuart quite rightly referred to digital exclusion, and that is a topic that we are very interested in. This year, we are doing a report on digital exclusion. Just looking at those communities of interest who are often digitally excluded—the aged, the poor, the young—and just seeing the impact that that has had. Particularly as, during Covid, an awful lot of service has gone digital, as it were, and so there is a danger that some people are being left behind because of that. Thanks very much. I have no further questions. That report sounds like it will be a very valuable piece of work and useful to be able to have a look at. I am now going to bring in Mark Griffin on the theme of community empowerment. Mark. Thanks, convener. I want to come to Carol first. My question is just that the Community Empowerment Act was supposed to give communities a bigger voice if it is supposed to give them a say over the services that they rely on, start to build capacity in those communities for them to advocate on their own behalf. Do you wonder if there is any evidence that that has actually happened? Is it happening consistently over 32 local authority areas, or do you see a difference in performance across the country? Thank you for that question. Our best value audit reports will look at community empowerment and partnership work in each individual council. What we would say is that there is a very strong commitment from councils to engage with communities. The various different ways of consulting can be around the budget, which is traditionally done, but also around the cost to living crisis and other ways in which the communities have been involved. The pandemic, I think, was a turning point, because at that point, communities and councils are working together really well in order to meet the needs of the most vulnerable. There are lessons to be learned around that. In answer to your question, I would say that the picture is mixed. The extent to which communities are actively involved in decision making around reform of services, there is less evidence of that, but there is much more evidence now of councils engaging with communities and the discussions about what their priorities are. The Accounts Commission will be reporting on a national basis on the extent to which communities have been involved with councils developing their new priorities with the new council make-up. That is work that is on going at the moment, so we will be reporting that next year. That will touch on some of the things that you are asking about, but I would say that the picture is varied across Scotland. There is less evidence of communities being involved in strategic change, but there is much more in the way of engagement and involvement in communities. The better councils have built on what was achieved over Covid. Tim mentioned earlier that we would like to see that momentum sustained and not falling back, but there was certainly an increase in involvement. I do not know if anyone else in the panel is willing to add to that. Some of the things that we speak of are how influential communities feel, so do they feel that they have an opportunity to A, have a voice and B, impact on policy decisions that take place? That can happen in a number of ways. That can happen through individual community groups, community councils and third sector interfaces. It is one of the things that there is some evidence of that some groups will feel more influence than others. There is some of the legislation about community empowerment and community asset transfer, for example, which has probably been a bit easier to grasp for communities. A building or a piece of land is visible within a local community, then the extent to which a local community has a decision about what happens with that is very visible to them. Other parts of the legislation have been a bit more difficult for communities to grasp, so you might see less of that in terms of community involvement. The other thing that we are seeing increasingly more of—indeed, councils are being asked to deliver 1 per cent of their budgets through participatory budgeting—increasingly, you are seeing more participatory budgeting exercises across Scotland, where people are having a direct vote on spending, and that is playing out across the piece. That leads me on to my next question about how empowered communities feel, because the Scottish household survey statistics in a flag that communities feel less empowered and I wonder whether communities know what community planning partnerships are, whether they even know that they exist or what they do, what perhaps we can do or what can we be asking the Government to do to increase awareness of community planning partnerships, what they do, how people can get involved and to have their voice heard when it comes to people making decisions about their own services? It is one of those things that my own personal view, and it is maybe not the view of my other community planning colleagues, I do not know, is that community planning is sometimes the kind of invisible glue, so it is maybe not something that we promote, it is something that is separate from the public service that they feel, and if community planning is working right, then maybe communities should not know that those four or five partners have joined together and worked really hard to deliver a joined-up service to them. I think that what is more important is that they know how to get involved and how to influence decisions, and that can be from contact with the local councillor, their MSP, their MP, or it can be through active involvement, through joining a local community group, or it could be influencing things through campaigns. I think that it is about individuals knowing that we are not asking them to be involved every single day and every single hour of the day, but when they need to get involved that they know how to do that, and I think that that is something that we could get better at. But certainly what we want to do is encourage community groups to get active, get organised, and if they get involved in solutions before they identify problems, because sometimes I ask an issue that it takes a problem before people will want to become empowered and get organised. I think that one of the questions that I am empowered to do is what, and it is for the communities themselves to say that this is what we want to see in our local community, and that is when we can work better together to support them. I think that there has been some positive move towards that. I am not sure personally if we need to publicise or promote community planning partnerships is something different. What we just want to do is get people involved where they are comfortable with getting involved so that we reduce their better outcome for them at the end of the day and that they can evidence that back to us. Thanks to your and Carol, you wanted to come in. Just to say that I have got some anecdotal evidence that shows that sometimes the expectations are some perverse outcomes. This was a real-life example. It is some years ago now, but a community was involved in a big discussion about participatory budgeting. It was quite an all-day session and it was very well run. They asked the audience buttons so that they had polls and things. At the end of the poll, they asked people whether they felt more empowered as a result of being involved in that initiative. Actually, the data showed that they felt less empowered. They were able, because they were in a room, to discuss that. The reason they felt less empowered was because they had more of an understanding of all the decisions that councils make, what could be done, what services are provided. It opened up to them that there is all of that stuff that I am not involved in. Sometimes you need to look behind the figures because community engagement raises expectations and there can be some perverse findings from that. It was just to illustrate. Just to add, you asked about how it is working across the country. Our best value reports over the last five years have all looked at participatory budgeting. To be honest, it is a fairly patchwork sort of story. It is working a lot better in some places than others. Partly what it seems to be is not so much the community planning partnership, because people don't really, as you say, know what they are. It is really what the partners do to get the message across. Involving the public in the whole process, reducing bureaucracy, things like participation requests, for instance. Person in the street won't quite know what that is, but if the community planning partnership with the council explains it and invites people to participate, that's the key to getting them in. Thanks very much for that. Mark, are you complete? Yeah, that's me. Thanks. Thank you very much. We're now going to move on to the next theme, which is the role of the third sector. I just remind our panel that you don't need to operate your mics. We've got somebody here to do it for us. I'm going to bring in Paul McClellan. I want to touch on the role of the third sector, and I've chaired a cross-party group in social enterprises, so this has been picked up out with evidence sessions that we've had here as well, and they're saying the same thing. It's a mixed picture across all local authorities in terms of how they see the community planning partnerships. They're all in agreement that it's a worthwhile exercise, but across the board it's kind of mixed to how they see the participation and their involvement from local authorities. I suppose the first question is really in terms of third sector participation, how you see the act, has that been met, have the objectives of the act been met in terms of that, and I suppose what can we do then to ensure that the growth and community planning partnerships and the wellbeing, I think, in terms of whether the groups fail, how can that be sustained across all 32 local authorities? I know that the convener will be touching about locality plans. One of the things that he touched about was on saying that it was sometimes fine at that level when it came down to locality, it didn't quite flow through, and I know that the convener will be touching on that, but that was almost part of the context as well when it came through. The first part of your question is about the third sector and where the participation with the third sector is. Is that correct? Yeah, whether you think the ambitions of the act have been met in terms of third sector participation? We haven't done a lot of work on that, but I think there are such challenges for the third sector, particularly just now with the cost of living crisis and council's funding being really tight, is the extent to which their funding is going to be impacted by that. They are also at the mercy of short-term funding as well, so their ability to plan ahead and work on long-term projects with partners, I think, is inhibited by that, but we haven't done any specific work on any audit work on that, but I would say that the challenges that have impacted on the council in flexibility of funding, reducing funding, uncertainty, all impacts on the third sector as well, and that will be an inhibiting factor in their ability to engage with partners to deliver services. Tim, just on that, you mentioned about the audit work. Is that something that would be considered in the future, for example, because I know that the best value report community planning is looked at, but it's more from a council point of view rather than saying how are they and then involving the third sector. Certainly the feedback that we got with some third sector organisations thought that it worked very well with the councils, some didn't in terms of that, so I wonder if that would be future work that yourself and any council commission would look at to see how has that been embedded, and are councils doing enough to get this, and it's obviously taken into consideration what you're saying about the pressures, but are councils doing enough to embed the third sector into community planning, true community planning? Through the local government overview last year and we will be reporting at this year, at that be out in May, we talk about the importance of reform of services, service redesign, and that that should be undertaken in conjunction with communities and the third sector as well as other public sector partners. We are beating that drama around involvement of the third sector and we will be doing more work around reform and the extent to which councils are working with partners in its widest sense in the future as well, so that we'll have an element of the third sector. I think that Tim might be able to come in on some discussions that the commission has had with the sector itself. Yes, I mean generally our relationships are quite good with the third sector. I think that the funding issue is crucial and it's the amount but it's also the continuity. It's probably a hand-to-mouth existence year to year, so it's getting a more longer term fiscal framework as we keep referring to it as part of the solution. Certainly, I sponsored the local government overview, so I take your point. We can perhaps look a little bit more closely at how councils are bringing the third sector into that community planning partnership. Stuart, just on that point, one of the key things that was said was about how do we ensure that it's sustained across all 32 community planning areas? I don't know what your experience is of that, as of hearing from the local areas. How do we get a more equitable experience? I think that you've used a good word there in terms of equitable. I think that it will vary from area to area. A lot of that is based on the relationships that are built up over time and how good or maybe not so good and challenging those relationships are. One of the things that we can do is try to work to get those relationships as good as possible. Covid and currently the cost of living crisis have shown a real spotlight in a positive sense on the excellent work that the third sector does. The value of the third sector has become a lot more visible to many people through the response that it had there. A lot of the resilience and adaptability that community planning partnerships have had through those two crises has been due to the third sector. The difficulty then is how that translates, as my colleague said, into sustainability. From the third sector view, it is about trying to be recognised for what they provide and then resourced. Sometimes that is difficult and there is a danger of mixed policy measures in terms of you have done a great job and you are really important, but there is lack of resource. You are going to get less money and it is sometimes making sense of that. You can understand that that is frustrating for a lot of third sector organisations there. It is building on the positive strides that has happened out of necessity over the past few years and then trying to make sure that, as far as possible, we can, as many agencies can act to build those good relations across the sector. Recognising what the third sector does and where they fit in and what the outcomes are is key to that. That goes back to the last question as well about influence, because sometimes the influence that people feel as an individual is due to being a member of a third sector organisation. How then that third sector organisation acts as part of the community plan and family, so that is tied up together there. I will pick up on the theme of local outcome improvement plans and locality plans. Carol, I will direct the question to you. Do you think that local outcome improvement plans and locality plans are the right mechanisms for tackling huge issues, such as inequalities, poverty and climate change? Do they give an opportunity for taking a preventative approach? As an auditor, I do not care what your mechanism is. I am not sure that I can say whether or not I think that it is an appropriate mechanism. It is not really for us to say that, but what I would say is that what we would look for that will take a preventative approach is disrespecting boundaries, whether that is other partners or the third sector. It is working with communities. It is allowing them to influence decision making. It is about building trust and relationships and focusing on those areas where most impact can be made and prioritising those areas and involving people in the decisions about the services that they want. It is about breaking down boundaries between the other partners, so that the resources in a community can be used to best effect. I am repeating myself now from an earlier answer, but I cannot say to you whether or not the loypes or the area plans are helpful in that way. There remains to an end. It is the motivation, ambition and the willingness of all the people in the community planning family to work together to deliver on clear outcomes for particular communities. You said that it is both respecting boundaries but also breaking them down. It is also something about making sure that the right groups are involved in that planning process. I said that it is disrespecting boundaries. Ignoring the silos and the name tags of what agency, but actually working collaboratively at that level. I know that that happens. I am sure that Stuart Scott has lots of examples about how that happens in local initiatives and projects across Scotland, but I think that that is where the gains can be. There is more disrespecting of boundaries at local level, and there is more joint work in more joint governance, more joint resourcing, more joint data sharing and scrutiny. That is the way that we can make the most of community planning. I think that that is some of what Tim said earlier on about during Covid local authorities were much more flexible and we are concerned that that has changed. There is something about this respectful disrespecting of boundaries that needs to somehow stay in place. Does anyone else want to come in, Tim? You asked about loypes and whether they are effective. I think that a good loype is effective if it has a clear set of outcomes and a good dataset to allow you to measure the outcomes. Unfortunately, that does not always happen. Whether there is a good mechanism in preparation for this meeting, we produced a little table of all the best value reports we have done and councils had loypes and did not. A lot of them have not, in fact, got them, so that may be an indicator. I do not want to draw too much from the data with an auditor beside me, but that may be an indicator that they are not working as envisaged. However, a good one does work when it has good data and good outcomes can be measured. Yes, absolutely, they are measurable and they are smart. Connected to that, I would be interested to hear if you think that there is a cluttered landscape of plans and maybe that is why some councils do not have them because they have to do so many other plans. Plans, responsibilities, strategic aims at local level, how do CPPs and individual partners connect their CPP duties to other areas of responsibility that IJBs, local planning, children's service planning, for example? That is something that the Scottish Parliament has wrestled with and the Scottish Government has wrestled with for a number of years, how to declutter that landscape. We had single outcome agreements at one point. If I remember correctly, the thrust of that was to have one plan where everything was coming in. Maybe that was a wee bit too ambitious to contain everything within one document. However, we need to look at where and when we are introducing a new plan or a new set of plans that we take account of the impact on other things, particularly the local outcome, the loypes, so that we have somewhere that has an overview of how the different plans are working together. What CPPs are supposed to do is make sure that we work stronger together and that we are not pulling apart. As the more separate plans we have, the greater the risk is that we do unintentionally pull apart. Those are unintentional consequences as well. However, if you have a strong loyp and a strong community planning partnership, you have a vehicle that can hopefully rein that in and say, hang on a minute, that is what we are doing through children's services planning, but how does that impact on what we are doing with climate change, for example, or community safety? You have to have a mechanism for those various different plans speaking together. Where it can become sometimes messy is where you have local plans, but you also have plans that are at a regional level. Some of our economic plans, for example, then the Scottish Government has got its national performance targets. We have spoken in the past about a golden thread between that and it is about trying to get a sense of where each organisation fits in. As Carol said, disrespecting boundaries is a good thing and maybe we should be challenging each other in a positive way to try to move those outcomes on. Those dialogues are right between those different things. The different plans that we are developing might be a very good reason why there are, I say it, maybe three or four different plans, but as long as they are speaking to each other and recognising what the impact is on each other, that is where we need to be. Something about coherence across all those plans. Of course, everyone is being asked to create plans while delivery is still needing to happen, so it is that parallel process that is also challenging. Carol, you wanted to come in.  That is what we look for when we are auditing an individual councillor's coherency in the plans. Plans are important without a plan. Things will not happen. Plans make things happen, but plans can be so complicated and so messy and so interlinked that they can stop things happening too, or they can be perverse contradictions within plans. What we look for is simplicity and coherence in the councillor's objective setting, its priority setting, how that links to the partner's priority setting, how they are demonstrating the delivery against their key outcomes, because there are lots to measure. I am sure that Stuart will tell you how swamped in data there is, but is it data that tells us a story about whether things are improving? Not necessarily. There is not a lot of data and trying to see the wood through the trees is really difficult. The clarity of the measures, as Tim said, has been able to demonstrate those high-level priorities that they have been delivered against and coherency in the plans, so that they will align with each other, rather than cut across each other and become so complicated, so many measures and so many activities that it becomes impossible to see your way through it. It is quite a skill set to be able to pull that all together as well, isn't it? One of the good examples that we have got at the moment, if I can just say, is the work that is happening across Scotland with the promise, which is particularly for care experience to young people and care leavers, in the way that that has been nested into children services plans, but also taking account of all the other parliaments who would not immediately think of themselves as being providers of children services, and it is about saying what more can be done. That is, if you like, a universal aim to improve the outcomes for children, but, within that, trying to reduce the inequalities for the care experienced young people's group, in the way that those are linked together in the enthusiasm with which people are buying into that, is a good example, which will hopefully bear fruit. Thanks very much for that. It is great to have that example of the promise. I am going to move on to the next theme, and it is something that we have been touching on, but not delving into necessarily, and that is data. That is questions from Marie McNair. Thank you, convener, and good morning panel. The issue of data has been touched on already, but, back in 2013, Audit Scotland coded that community planning partnerships are not able to show that they have had significant impact in delivering improved outcomes across Scotland. I was just going to ask Carol, would you make that same assessment now? We have not done any national work on community planning for a while, but we have done work on BVAR's best value audit reports in individual councils, and we are still reporting similar messages about the ability to demonstrate those improved outcomes at a high level. That is still an issue. There is still a bit of a disconnect between what is happening on the ground and how partnerships can demonstrate how all that activity has contributed to delivering against priority outcomes. It is not easy. As I said, we have discussed about the complexity of the planning arrangements, all the data and measures that go in there. It is hard to extract from that and crystallise out those measures, but it is really important, because that is demonstrating the worth, that is demonstrating what the planning partnerships can do. Thank you for that, Carol. What evidence is there that community planning efforts are being focused on the most disadvantaged communities? It is evidence of CPPs and individual partners using the data collected by the Improvement Service to target interventions and policies. I will not pop back to Stuart. I want to rewind a bit back to the data one. One of the issues that we sometimes find difficult in a local community planning partnership sense is getting data from lots of different sources, but when you go to present a report on your loyp, a lot of the data will not have been collected that year, so you do not really get that full picture. There is an issue with the time and the data and how often it is collected. What is it that you are trying to make a difference on? You might be looking at something that is a longer term target. If it is a behavioural change, for example, about public health, it might be a longer term rather than a short term, so we sometimes need to have a think about what we expect to see from the data that we get back and then how we supplement that data back. In the cases in which we have strong data and a strong correlation between the data that we have and the levers that community planning partners have to pull and what that outcome looks like. We can see where there is a difference, but where there is a weaker link between that, for example, the economic, things will have maybe targets about jobs being created or the number of that registered firms in a local area, but if you get something like the financial crash in 2008, then that is going to knock all them off. It is about having an understanding of what the influence is of the community planning partnerships investment against what outcome you are looking to see. I have not explained that very well, but you want me to clarify. No, you are absolutely fine. MDLs want to come in on that. Can I just echo the point that Stuart made about the data? I know from my own practical experience when I was a councillor that getting data from, say, typically NHS Police Scotland and the council, getting them to be coterminous—in other words, looking at the same period at the same time—is really difficult. I do not know if there is a role for Scottish Government in trying to get those data sets a bit more aligned, but it can be very difficult getting a set of data that is all looking at the same period. You were raising about the inequalities within areas, if the data is pointed towards that. The index of multiple deprivation has been good in terms of giving us a starting point from that. As you said, the improvement service has got its own set of data about community planning, about the local areas. We always have to look at that and then see what has changed since that data has come in. For example, if an area is coming out within the 5 per cent most deprived in an SIND, and there is a iteration, that might change if there is a housing demolition renewal in that area. That might not necessarily mean that the outcome is improved for the people who lived within that area. It might be a new cohort of people, so we always have to factor in as much knowledge as we can about all those data sources to try to get as close to what we think is the true picture. One thing is about the same with the other issues as to try to get coherence between all the different bits of data that we all separately own to get something that is a bit better collectively. I have got to say that I was really impressed by the level of detail that the improvement service held on the interface that was quite impressive. My last question is what are the biggest challenges and barriers to CPPs making the impact of the 2003 and 2015 act anticipated? I think that the biggest barrier for me is that it is always a moving target, as I say. It is nothing static, so the aspirations of the outcomes that we are looking for. At that particular time, 2008 financial crisis was probably before that, but we have had the Covid and the cost of living crisis, factor in our wars, energy crisis, all those things as well. Those are contextual things that we always have to take account of. I think that some of the barriers that we face will always be a resource barrier, but that is never going to change. We are always going to have more work to do than we have resource to be able to do it. What we do have through community planning is a way to have that conversation about what we need to focus on now and where we can upstream things. That is a huge barrier to community planning partnerships, as the aspirations to be able to take early intervention are something that we would always love to do more of, but the resources are probably very significantly squeezed in terms of that. That is just in terms of that we need to take those decisions to do that. That is a set of decisions that always needs to be taken and always needs to be reviewed and recalibrated as we go along to say what is best to do today. I think that we have made really good strides. I think that the Scottish Government has been good at being a partner in community planning at a local level, rather than the person that march her jotters, if you like. March her homework and tell you whether you are doing well or badly. I think that that has been really positive as well. I think that link between the local, the national and the regional can be much stronger as well. Those are some of the things. It is a really difficult question to answer around the barriers. I might just turn it on its head and say, well, what actually facilitates good partnership working? It is the things that I have mentioned before about building relationships and trust. I said it three times now, but disrespecting boundaries is really hard to do. We all work in our silos and we all work under our own logos. It is quite hard to break that down, but it does happen at a very local level across councils, across the country. I think that there is more to do about that. I suppose that the natural tendency in an environment like this, where there is so much uncertainty and so much financial pressure, is that agencies hunker down and do their core work. I do not have any evidence to support that, but that is my speculation on that. What definitely does not help is not knowing what funding is going to be in the future. We are always ringing the bell for a more fiscal framework that has more flexibility in that. I think that that is a barrier too, but as Tim has said in Stuart, there is a thing about coterminus. There is a very different culture between the NHS and councils and different ways of operating. Those things get in the way, as well as the data issues that Stuart mentioned about the timing and when it covers and trying to match those things together. There are some structural elements that are barriers, but I think that flipping it on its head, what makes change happen is people. If you have got the right leaders with the right engagement motivation, bringing people along, seeing that the levers that exist in other agencies are with their own and using those levers to make change, that is when strategic change can happen. Tim, do you want a last word on that last question? No. My colleagues have answered that very well. Thanks very much, Marie. We are now going to move on to culture change of statutory partners with Miles Briggs. Good morning. Thank you for joining us today. The witnesses will be aware of some of the conversations that are taking place with regards to local governance review and the potential development of a new deal. Thinking about those two things, I wondered where you think they have the opportunity to help to improve the picture and take forward this empowering communities agenda. I have referred to my last answer, because having that flexibility in the funding, flexibility to do things differently, more certainty about funding in the longer term, creates more opportunities for councils to work with partners' communities in the third sector to deliver on that. The new deal is an important part of that. I will not speak on behalf of the commission, because Tim is sitting right next to me, but I am sure that the commission is keen for the new deal to progress as soon as possible. At the moment, that is inhibiting things, but when it is agreed, councils will help to be innovative and to disrespect boundaries if that partnership agreement is framed in such a way that allows more flexibility. We have been pressing for a long time for what we refer to as a fiscal framework, which is a more long-term budgeting process for councils so that they know more in advance what their likely funding streams are going to be. I do not want to be controversial, but councils argue that ring fencing is constraining their ability to make a more localised choice. What might well come out of the new deal is less constraints in that respect for councils. I think that that will give them the freedom that they have been asking for to disrespect boundaries to some extent, and that could well help. In terms of culture, I probably want to bring together some of the questions that Annie Wells, Mark Griffin and Marie McNair just asked as well. Where we are currently in being able to empower communities, my reading of it—this is from the schemes that I have been involved with in my constituency area—is that middle-class communities know how to use this, and are well organised to try to do that. How do you think that we can take forward embedding further empowerment, especially for those who are furthest removed from decision making and from the planning system, and being able to organise in a way that can genuinely make a sustainable project to take over community assets or to actually make the system work for them? My experience in my thinking is probably slightly different. It has changed a bit, but I think that you are right in saying that some of the more affluent communities have got a high level of social capital and can organise themselves and get skills and can do that. That is sometimes equally the view on our most hard-pressed communities, who have been involved in going back to the 1990s and beyond in community engagement and schemes. Very often in those communities, we can think of some in our local authority area where they are highly organised and highly aware of how they can work with the system. I think that there is then that bit in the middle, which the bits are neither tremendously affluent nor very hard-pressed, where people are just getting on with things. I think that those are the ones where there is sometimes fewer of an organised community culture that comes across and looks at the local assets. What we are finding in terms of culture change is that people are aware that, if there is a bit of land or a building in an area, they cannot go and ask about that. It is not just the ones that a community planning partner does not want anything to do with. Certainly in our area, we have got some good and quite diverse examples of land and assets being used. The more that happens in an area, the more you start to build up a critical mass of people in that community who know what the possibilities are, what outcomes can be achieved and have experience of how to do that. Then they start speaking to each other and sometimes the best bits of community planning is not what we try and do and try and control. It is about where communities learn from themselves, but it takes a while to get to that critical mass. In terms of asset transfer, I do not think that I have ever heard any community group say that that was easier and I thought that it was going to be. It is always the other way around, but if they have learned from that and are willing to share that, then that is when that critical mass starts to come. I have heard in areas of people in quite diverse communities start to speak to each other about their different experiences and share their knowledge as well, which is invaluable. We need to get to that point where people say that. Tim O'Carrill, do you have any points you want to raise on that? I was just targeting. I think that you cannot do everything for everybody all the time, so it has to be about prioritising where those areas or those communities are vulnerable and are in the more deprived areas. As you say, those people might not be as engaged with the council or there might be quite a groundswell of activism, but it is for the partnerships to target those areas and agree on where they want to focus, and that is the way to engage those who are not engaging. I think that it is sometimes cultural rather than how well-off people are, because you get those hotspots of people who are quite engaged in the whole community planning, community empowerment process, and sometimes it is actually poorer communities that are doing it, but I think that that is because, as Stuart alluded to, they build up a little pool of expertise to see others doing it, and so that encourages it. I have a couple of other questions, so I would be interested to hear what your thoughts are on how community planning partnership works in practice among the statutory organisations. Has there been a genuine change in culture within partner organisations, for example relating to budgets, staffing decisions and priorities? Any thoughts on that? I do not think that I have any evidence to be able to answer that question with any confidence. We have looked to individual councils and their relationships with other agencies, and they do express that there are difficulties, particularly engaging with the NHS. As I said earlier, it is organising quite a different way. Councils have a democratic mandate, but NHS is a direct relationship with the Government. I do not think that I can give any more examples than that. Just from my own experience, there are some good examples, but it is not organisations sharing their organisational budgets. It might be a bit further down the level of parts of organisations coming together to put in a bit of resource but not as formal as having a pooled budget. Certainly, there has been some really good community safety work, where council wardens and the police and the fire service have come together and are doing joint task and co-ordinating at a local level, working with housing officers and things like that. That is an area where day-to-day staff resource and the budgets that are being put to certain things are working really well, but there would not be a formal, well-all-putter budget in the one pot from that side of things. There probably is more sharing of generally what the financial outlook is between different partners, but that does not translate into putting all your money into the one pot and deciding what comes out of that. In terms of prioritising, the good work is probably an understanding strategic level, but there are some particularly good bits of working at a slightly more operational managerial level to look at that as local employability partnerships. Partners are working together to get positive destinations for school leavers, those sorts of things, where partners are working really strongly together. Thank you very much for those examples. I have another question. In schedule 1 of the act, it sets out a list of statutory partners. I would be interested to hear if you think it should be amended either to include new partners or perhaps remove existing ones? In terms of the statutory partners that we have, I think that they are generally fine. Most people need to be there. It is worthwhile looking at the third set of interfaces. I do not think that they can be statutory partners because they are not statutory bodies, but encouraging them to be as involved as possible might be a way to go forward. I think that there is a difficulty with more regional-based partners about where they can play into the likes of your Scottish enterprise groups, economic development groups, things like that, transport partnerships. It is quite difficult to play into the number of different community planning partnerships that they have to do. Maybe that is something that needs to be looked at to make that process work more effectively for them. I do not think that I would take anyone out of the list. I do not know if there was anyone who was thinking of removing or adding. No, not at all. We just wanted to ask the question. Right, no, I suppose it is the answer then. I think that Stuart makes a good point. There are all these other organisations that are maybe known statutory or like the Federation of Small Businesses and such. It is useful to have them at the table and I know that some councils do engage with them, which is a good thing. That is probably an area that can be strafned from the engagement with the private sector. The private sector is supposed to be one of the key arms of community planning. We tend to engage with the chambers of commerce. That is really good and that is really effective, but maybe there is more that we can do. We work through local employability partnerships and things like that, but maybe there is more that we can do with the private sector. Thank you. I am going to move on to our final team, which is leadership and the role for the Scottish Government Audit Scotland with Willie Coffey. Thank you very much, convener, and good morning, panel. I remember in 2003, when I was in East Ayrshire Council, one of the first of these community planning documents arrived and I thought, goodness gracious, who is going to deliver this? It was worse to that effect, I suppose, but who is going to be behind this and who is going to lead this? The question of leadership arose very early and is still there, in my view. The success of otherwise of these things is very often down to good, strong, dynamic, enthusiastic leadership. I was just to ask for your views on that topic and how we can better provide that. I do not mean to ask you as leadership important, but how do we get the type and the quality of leadership to drive those plans to engage with the communities who look to, perhaps, local authority officials to lead those processes? Do you think that we need to put more of a focus on it at national levels? Should the Scottish Government make provision for skills in leadership? Should the local authorities do it? You are using that very much, I appreciate it. I will start with Stuart, if that is okay. As you correctly identify, leadership is one of the things that drives the outcomes and gets you there. In terms of community planning, there was a bit of work done in Remshire a while ago, and it was actually led by police and fire. Having a leadership was not a qualification, but it was a process to go through for different community planning partners to buy into. That was a bit of leadership that police and fire were doing themselves, which was great from our perspective as a council. In terms of what we can do, there is a leadership of the community planning process itself, making sure that the process happens and that the vehicles fit for purpose. However, there is a leadership of particular agendas that we want to look at. The interesting thing for me is that there are different community planning partners that are sometimes the best face to lead some of those works. We have spoken a lot about community impairment today, and sometimes the TSI, third sector interface, will be the best person to lead that, because those are the people that the communities engage with most often. There is some work that is absolutely best led by councils and others that are best led by police and fire. Sometimes fire is a really good organisation to lead, because it has a particularly high public approval rating. I think that some sort of leadership qualification that everybody has got to go through, but some kind of understanding of each other's agenda and each other's contribution is really important. The more we do that, the better we can do. Recently, the fact that the police have been adopting a public health approach to some aspects of their work is a really good example of that. I do not think that that has been driven particularly through community planning, but that is effectively what it is. It is about one organisation saying that there is a different way that we should be looking at our business and taking that on board. That, for me, is leadership. That has been led in that way to change the culture of how that organisation deals with certain things. You are absolutely right about leadership being crucial. We refer to barriers to community planning partnerships working effectively. Sometimes it is poor leadership, and certainly in the best value reports where we have identified that community planning partners are getting on well together, typically it is in a council with good leadership. Obviously, the other partners can have good leadership as well. However, how to encourage it is difficult. Again, going back to our best value reports, we do always emphasise how important leadership is, and we always identify where we feel that leadership has failed and caused a problem. I hope that that encourages good leadership, but it is sometimes quite difficult to define. We do sometimes define what we think of as good leadership. Forgive me, I cannot quote you what that definition is, but it is like an elephant. You know it when you see it, but how you get it is a difficult question, it really is. Carol may have that, the answer to that is your question. I had a bit more time to think about it because it came to me last, but I was thinking about how leadership has changed over the years. A direct route into chief executive of a council was to be the director of finance, and leadership has changed. It is not about just managing a council now, it is about collaborative leadership. We picked up on some of the principles of collaborative leadership in our last local government overview report, and we will be picking up on it again now in terms of reform and redesigning services, because it is not about necessarily just managing a council. There are managers in the council who manage a council. Tim reminded me that there is a Scottish Leaders Forum, and I was at its last meeting, and somebody whose name I cannot remember gave this quote, which I thought was brilliant. He said that leadership works when you leave at the door your silos, your logos and your egos. I will remember that because it rhymes, and it was very clever. It was absolutely right. It is about plans do not make change, people make change, plans help us to get there, but it is the people that drive it forward. In terms of the skillset now for collaborative leadership, we are looking for people who are energised about making change. They might be voting for their own job to go in a way. There will be the people who have a longer-term vision about where they want to get to, and they will disrespect boundaries number four, as I said. However, they will be the ones who have the energy and are looking to the opportunities. Where are the levers? If I do not have them, which other agencies have them, and I can use them, how do we come together to make things happen? I was impressed at that last meeting of the Scottish Leaders Forum that there was a lot of discussion about that, and people recognise it and understand it, and they know when they need to get to. The next thing is that, as an auditor, I want to see that it is happening. There is a lot of talk about how collaborative leadership is what is needed to drive forward, and the style of leadership has changed dramatically over the past 10 or 20 years. Responses, thank you so much for them. I just wanted to widen it a little bit if I may, particularly to yourself. The community planning is not just something that the councils do. It stretches far further and wider on that. I was wondering if you, in Audit Scotland, had any element of that when you do your other work? For example, when you are looking at NHS services or you are looking at a whole range of other publicly delivered services, might you include community planning dimensions to that work a little bit more? We definitely have a partnership working across the piece in the work that we do in the different—my focus is around local government, but we have a team that looks at the NHS every year. We have a team that looks at social care, but the more we are working, the more integrated that work becomes because the issues are not based in the silos. The issues are cross-cutting. I maybe would not use the term community planning partnership because that is a specific thing, but I think that we talk about partnership working in its wider sense, and we definitely talk about partnership working to be included not just in the public sector but the third sector and communities. We speak about it in its widest sense. You will see that that has weaved through quite a lot of our work. Whether we are doing something specific on the CPPs, I am not sure whether that was part of your question, but not at the moment, but we will continue to do work on best value in councils that covers partnership working, so we will always be looking at partnership working in that respect. I thank you that my last question was just about whether you are intending or the Accounts Commission intending to audit CPPs as a process, a tool or is that something that you are planning to? It is not in our work programme pleasant. No, we have done it past. As Carol referred to, we did a report a few years ago. Our work programme is always taking the world circumstances into account, so you asking that question will certainly prompt me to ask that question when we are looking at our work programme, but there is nothing planned at the moment. Okay. Thanks very much for that. Thanks, Willie. You just talked about skills in terms of leadership, and Carol, you were talking about collaborative leadership. Something that comes up for me whenever you are bringing different organisations together is that skill of facilitation and that breaking down of the silos. I wondered if you thought that the collaborative leadership style would have that skill of facilitation of bringing people together, or do we think that we also need people who are specifically trained as facilitators that could come into certain situations to do that work of helping the silos to break down? I think either or both, to be honest. I think that it is not just about the corporate leadership and the corporate collaborative leadership. I think that there is also the political leadership as well. What might be a barrier, and I am speculating to be clear that I do not have any other evidence about that, but what might be a barrier is that the energy and drive across some of the chief executives to move things forward in quite a different way might not be reflected in terms of, I am thinking about joint services and so on. If the political persuasion of the councils that want to work together is different, that could maybe get in the way of things, so I think that facilitation around getting over those barriers might be an issue, but I am thinking on my feet and speculating really about that. I think that people who have that skill set have been trained to have that skill set, or external support that might come in depending on what the circumstances are. Thanks for that. It seems to me that more and more evidence sessions I sit through both in this committee and in other committees hit on. I feel that Scotland needs facilitators, really well trained ones. Stuart, you wanted to come in. I was just to say, and it probably speaks to Willys last point about leadership as well, as the work of the community planning improvement board. That is very much about looking about how we can drive forward the community planning system as a whole and how the leaders of the different national community planning partners can take ownership of that within their own organisations but in a collective and collaborative sense. That is facilitated by the Scottish Government, the Improvement Service and one of my colleagues in the community planning networks that feeds into that as well. It is a good example of trying to look at the system as a whole and move that one and move that together. That concludes our run through the themes. I think that it has been a very helpful next level of our work on community planning partnerships. Thank you so much for coming in today and sharing your perspectives and your experience. I now suspend the meeting to allow a change of witnesses. Our second panel of witnesses, we are joined in the room by Peter Kelly, who is the director at Poverty Alliance, Kirsty McNeill, who is the policy and research officer at Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights, and Ruth Watling, who is the head of policy and equality at Homeless Network Scotland. We are joined online by David Allen, who is the deputy director at the Scottish Community Development Centre. I welcome the witnesses to the meeting. As mentioned in the first panel, we will try to direct our questions to a specific witness where possible, but if you would like to come in, please indicate to the clerks and David, as you are appearing virtually, please do this by putting an R in the chat function. We are going to begin our questions with Annie Wells. We have three colleagues who are joining us virtually, so some questions are coming from people online. Annie. Thank you, convener, and good morning panel. What do you think are the main challenges faced by communities across Scotland and have these changed in the years since the act was passed in 2015? For example, when we talked about the Covid pandemic, what role could the CPPs have in supporting communities during the cost-of-in-crisis? I will put that one to David first, if you do not mind. I think that the main challenge is that during Covid, we faced everybody during the pandemic, in case of the isolation law of our disadvantaged communities. We were coming out of Covid going straight into a cost-of-living crisis, exacerbated the problems facing our communities, the biggest problems and the biggest problems. That is what is happening. David, sorry to interrupt, but your audio is dropping out a bit, so I think that maybe we will just check with broadcasting until we drop the video and just see if it works with audio. I was just saying, moving from the pandemic and the increasing of some groups of them into being faced with a cost-of-living crisis. Your audio is still bad. We are still not hearing you fully, so maybe we can go to someone in the room and we will try to work on the tech side of things. Peter Kelly, do you want to come in? Yes, happy to. Thank you for the question and thanks for the invitation to come along this morning. I think that the main challenge is facing communities. The poverty line is obviously coming from a perspective of our key concerns around poverty and inequality. I think that the challenges faced by communities and therefore by community planning partnerships over the past seven or eight years since the passing of the act and indeed before that is the rising pattern of poverty and inequality in Scotland and indeed across the UK. I think that the significant challenge there is that it is very often times outwith the control of community planning partnerships to really have a significant impact on some of those patterns. Over the period, even since 2015, we have seen downward pressure on the incomes of those who are already on the lowest incomes through a whole series of changes and cuts to social security. That context has made some of the long-term changes that community planning partnerships want to make all the more difficult to achieve. Going into the pandemic, that clearly exacerbated many of the problems that were already existing in many communities. I know that the committee and parliamentarians will have heard a great deal over the past several years about exactly what those problems were. Dave was starting to talk about the isolation that took place. Members of the poverty lines talked about the so-called supercharging of existing inequalities during the pandemic. Those have all made some of the challenges, the structures that are in place to address poverty and inequality, all the more difficult. Thank you for inviting me as well. It's great to have a homelessness organisation as part of this discussion, so thank you. Just building on what Peter was saying about poverty, it's the most important driver for homelessness. There's a big risk, therefore, that homelessness is going to increase and that prevention of homelessness can be tackled really effectively at a local level. The community planning partnerships have a really key role to play there. I just wanted to say a little bit about the pandemic and the impacts on homelessness, which you'll have probably all seen. There was quite a positive impact for parts of homelessness, for rough sleeping. The numbers dropped significantly. They have gone back up a little, but they're quite low in Scotland. The main homelessness issue in Scotland is seen as an indoor problem or an outdoor problem. The positives that came from the pandemic in terms of people not being evicted because of legislation that was introduced by Scottish Government are at risk of creating... No, that's the wrong way of saying it. There's a risk that the impact of the cost of living crisis and the other issues that Peter was alluding to are going to increase the numbers of people that are homeless. There's already increases in the number of open homelessness applications and the numbers of people in temporary accommodation. A massive opportunity for community planning partnerships to play a role in how we prevent that. One of the main challenges that we think there is for black and minority ethnic communities in Scotland, which is linked to both Covid and the current cost of living crisis, is poverty. Stats say that somebody from a black and minority ethnic background is more than twice as likely to be in poverty as somebody from a white Scottish or British background in Scotland. What we see is that, despite the requirements for the Community Empowerment Act for socioeconomic inequalities to be taken into account, there's a kind of raceblind approach to tackling those inequalities. On poverty, we know that the local child poverty action reports are created each year and they are presented to the Scottish Government by health boards and local authorities, but in practice community planning partnerships would be a useful vehicle to deliver those reports. Our research has shown that the local child poverty action reports are also taking a raceblind approach to their work, as far as we can see from the written reports. The reports don't discuss in detail how child poverty is affecting different black and minority ethnic children or groups in the area. There's no targeted action. There's very little data on whether black and minority ethnic families are engaging with mainstream services that are there. Black and minority ethnic people are at a higher risk of poverty, but you can't really see that through the community planning partnerships work necessarily from our experience. Thanks, Kirsty. We're going to go back and try David now. We've made some adjustments. Let's see if we can hear you. I think that what I was saying before I'm picking up on a couple of the other things I've changed over that time. I think that the pandemic brought to the four issues of people being isolated increasingly. Issues might be around a bit of poverty, and they might have been more concentrated in urban areas—the urban areas of deprivation. I think that we've come far more widespread through deprivation. That's a huge issue. On the community planning agenda, the disperse nature of poverty, our agility, becomes more difficult for community planning partnerships to deal with. We've got the issue of critical mass. There may be only two or three people in a particular area with a particular issue about the urban group, and it becomes more difficult for place-based responses, if you like. Those are real challenges, isn't it? Thanks very much for that, David. I'd just like to move on a wee bit. We heard from the last panel about the lack of data, but we do have some data. There is data collected by improvement services to massive inequalities between communities, which are in the same local authority area, and, for example, in Glasgow, between Springburn and Mary Hill and Kelvinside and Jordan Hill. Reducing inequalities is a core purpose of community planning, but how successful do you think that that's been? I don't know who wants to kick that one off. David, you're still on my screen at the moment. The thing about data is interesting in the conversation earlier on in the first part of the session. It's not just about the synchronising of data between agencies, but also about what data communities bring. A couple of years ago, we were working with a couple of local groups in Murray in developing interlegible quality plans. They were conscious of the fact that the kind of data that they were bringing into perspective, how did that match up, to add to and complement the data that was being gathered by the council and the statutory partners? They were a good example of bringing in the council statisticians to work with the groups that look at the breakdown of the data in the areas, because the localities placed on them, which can make any sense to the communities involved, but they were based on the raw data on levels of deprivation. Whereas the natural communities didn't conform to those boundaries, they worked well with the community planning partners to redefine those boundaries. They made more sense, but they also recognised where there were concentrations of issues or problems, inequalities, if you like, to see a way of bringing that together by addressing that as a whole community and not focusing on one particular small part of the area. Thanks for that, David. Your audio is still dropping out. I think that Cass is going to chat to you through the blue jeans function, and we'll see if we can sort that out still. Anyone in the room want to call Peter? Yeah, just to quickly follow up on what Dave was saying. I think the question around data and whether we're having an impact on inequalities, they're related, but almost separate questions. So I think that over the period that I've observed community planning, I've seen a better use of data and I've seen data being used more creatively. I've seen the various different actors at local level very focused on how they use data and trying to understand the data that's available to them. So, for instance, in Inverclyde, I know that there's been a great deal of work going on there with the local authority and with Public Health Scotland supporting and with the Improvement Service supporting to better understand the data that's available and how that can be applied. This is in the context of local child poverty action reports, but I think the example is applicable to wider community planning. I think that there's more and better data around what Dave was saying about other forms of data and particularly qualit