Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, February 28, 2023

Official Report 766KB pdf

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Community Planning Inquiry (Post-legislative Scrutiny of the Community Empowerment Act 2015)

The next item on our agenda today is to take evidence from two panels of witnesses on post-legislative scrutiny of the Community Empowerment Act 2015, in our community planning inquiry. This is our first session in the inquiry. We will look at the impact of the Community Empowerment Act 2015 on community planning and at how community planning partnerships respond to significant events, such as the Covid-19 pandemic and the current cost of living crisis.

We are joined, in our first panel of witnesses, by Carol Calder, who is the audit director at Audit Scotland; Stuart Graham, who is a representative of the community planning network; and Tim McKay, who is deputy chair at the Accounts Commission. We have received apologies from Councillor Steven Heddle, who is vice-president of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities. He was to have joined the panel today, but is unable to attend. I welcome our witnesses to the meeting.

We will try to direct questions to specific witnesses where possible, but if a witness would like to come in they should indicate that to the clerks. Each committee member will explore a particular theme. Annie Wells will start our discussion this morning by asking witnesses questions about the challenges that communities face.

Thank you, convener.

Good morning, panel. What are the main challenges that are being faced by communities across Scotland, and have they changed in the years since the act was passed in 2015? I am thinking about the Covid pandemic, in particular. Looking ahead, what role should community planning partnerships have in supporting communities during the cost of living crisis? I put those questions to Stuart Graham, first.

It is nice to see you again, Annie. Thank you for the question about the challenges that our communities face. You correctly identified the cost of living crisis as a current challenge. Climate change is also a big challenge that communities are increasingly aware of.

One of the things that we have noticed through our work on cost of living is that community planning is about looking upstream at causes as well as about trying to address things in the here and now. We are looking at the nature of poverty and how it has changed over the past 10, 15 and 20 years. One of the changes that we have noticed is that, previously, people probably thought of poverty as being synonymous with unemployment, and thought that if a person was in a job they were probably in a reasonably good place and would have a platform from which to progress in their life. However, we are increasingly aware—research is showing us this—that many people who are experiencing poverty are in work, so there is a different challenge.

We have worked with our community planning partners to address the cost of living crisis. I come from a council background, but we have worked closely with our third sector and other partners in employability to address the crisis.

We have to understand how the cost of living crisis impacts on different communities differently. We speak about our communities, but they have various communities within them. That was especially relevant in relation to the response to Covid. Work has been done in my community planning partnership—and probably in most partnerships in Scotland—on the differing impacts of the Covid crisis on different communities and people. We developed what we in Renfrewshire call a social renewal plan to address specific elements.

The community planning partnership can make use of all the intelligence that our various partners have. We engage with our individual communities in different ways; if we then bring their experience and knowledge together, we can form a better picture of how we can work together to address the issues that communities face.

There are learning and listening aspects to our community planning. There is also a deliberative aspect in relation to what we actually do to mitigate circumstances and—we hope—to address upstream practices, as well.

the Accounts Commission is more focused on local authorities. From our point of view, one of the big issues that has come out of Covid—or, rather, which will follow Covid—is that local authorities are struggling for sustainable funding streams, which obviously has a knock-on effect on community planning.

The other thing to say is that a lot of good things happened during the Covid pandemic—local authorities were very flexible in their responses. It is perhaps not an issue, but one of the points that we make is that a lot of the good practice and good things might disappear after we recover from Covid. We hope that the good practice will continue in the future.

To add to that, I note that community planning partnerships can help communities by working collaboratively. The issues that affect communities cannot be resolved by one agency—the council—alone. There has to be more collaboration and working together on how public sector resources in a place and a community can be used to best effect, whether that is about data—as Stuart Graham mentioned—and understanding communities well or working collaboratively to redesign services and improve inequalities.

Thank you very much for those answers, panel.

I will ask about inequalities. Data that has been collected by the Improvement Service shows massive inequalities between communities in the same local authority area; for example, between Springburn and Maryhill, and Kelvinside and Jordanhill, in Glasgow. Reducing inequalities is a core purpose of community planning. How successful has that been?

The way that the legislation was framed, in making reducing inequalities a particular duty of community planning, was helpful. It has helped us to focus on the fact that it is everyone’s duty to do that. As Carol Calder said, it is the duty not only of the council but of all the partners.

We have to bear it in mind that many of the wicked issues that we face are moving targets. It is not the case that issues that we have to address stay the same until we have addressed them. Inequalities are a movable feast.

We try to focus on the lived experience of people who are impacted by inequalities, and to work out the differences between communities that Annie Wells spoke about. Much more than we did previously, we now also talk about environmental justice, and justice in relation to the ways that our communities are served by various agencies.

One thing that we are looking to do together is to build consistency and cohesion into how we treat and react to all our communities. They can be communities of place who experience poverty, as evidenced through the Scottish index of multiple deprivation, or they could be communities of interest, such as disability groups and race equality groups.

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We, as public agencies—as Carol Calder said, the more we act together, the better we can do it—have to listen to those communities. We need to listen to them about the changes that they want, the demands that they make, and the things that they are experiencing and we must try to focus on that.

As Tim McKay said, it is also very often a question of resources, so we need to focus on where we put those resources. However, having that impetus 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 on inequalities. One of the issues that we have found is that the quality of data that comes out of the community planning process is not very good. When we talk about improving outcomes, we need to have data to show whether all the activity is improving outcomes, but such data does not really exist at the moment.

I will briefly add to that. In the Accounts Commission’s local government overview each year, we pull out case studies of councils having worked well with their partners to improve outcomes for local communities. We have a lot of ground-level evidence on project initiatives but, as Tim McKay said, there is a gap between that and what has happened strategically in the community planning partnerships in terms of their being able to demonstrate how their priorities and the actions that are being taken against those priorities are improving outcomes overall. There are things happening at the local level but there is a wee bit of a disconnect in relation to how partnerships can demonstrate overall improvements in respect of inequalities.

That is perfect. Thank you for those responses.

Stuart Graham has touched on the subject of my next question. We spoke about communities of place. The guidance to part 2 of the 2015 act speaks about impacts on communities of interest. People with disabilities have been mentioned; communities of interest also include young people leaving care and vulnerable adults, for example. Is there any evidence that community planning partnerships are identifying and engaging with those communities?

As Carol Calder said, there will be evidence in examples of good practice from various community planning partnerships. However, I cannot say off the top of my head whether that is cohesive right across the community planning landscape.

However, we now in some cases learn much more from the lived experience of those communities. Tim McKay is right that there can be gaps in data, especially in data on our inequalities communities. We can, I hope, address some of the gaps through day-to-day engagement with communities on things that are not yet evidenced in data, but are part of people’s experience.

We also have to bear in mind the interaction between various policy agendas. We are pursuing the digital agenda at the moment, for example, and are trying to get as many people online as possible. However, we need to recognise that there are dangers around that agenda in terms of digital exclusion; community planning can focus on that to try to anticipate inequalities and address them at source.

On the ground, we are probably better at speaking to our various communities than we were previously, but we need to keep going with that and to translate knowledge and understanding into policy direction in order to narrow inequalities.

Thanks very much for that.

I have one thing to add. Stuart Graham quite rightly referred to digital exclusion; that is a topic that we are very interested in. This year, we are doing a report on digital exclusion. It will look at communities of interest that are often digitally excluded—the aged, the poor and the young—and will consider the impact that that exclusion has had, particularly because, during Covid, an awful lot of services went digital. There is a danger that some people are being left behind because of that.

It sounds as though that report will be a valuable piece of work and that it will be useful to look at it.

I bring in Mark Griffin on community empowerment

The Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 was supposed to give communities a louder voice and a say over the services that they rely on, and to build, in communities, capacity to advocate on their own behalf. Is there evidence that that has happened? Is it happening consistently in 32 local authority areas, or do you see a difference in performance across the country?

Our best value audit reports look at community empowerment and partnership working in each individual council. There is a very strong commitment from councils to engage with communities. Councils traditionally consult on the budget process, but they might also consult on the cost of living crisis. Communities are involved in other ways. The pandemic was a turning point: then, communities and councils were working together really well to meet the needs of the most vulnerable people. There are lessons to be learned from that.

In answer to your question, I would say that the picture is mixed. There is not so much evidence about the extent to which communities are actively involved in decision making about services and reform of services. However, there is more evidence that councils are engaging communities in discussions about their priorities. The Accounts Commission will report on a national basis about the extent to which communities have been involved with councils to develop their new priorities with the new council make-up. That work is on-going and we will report on it next year. It will touch on some of the things that you are asking about.

The picture is varied across Scotland and there is not much evidence of communities being involved in strategic change, but there is much more engagement with and involvement by communities. The better councils have built on what was achieved during the Covid period. Tim McKay mentioned that we would like to see that momentum being sustained and not falling back; there has certainly been an increase in involvement.

We speak about how influential communities feel that they can be—whether they feel that they have a voice and can impact on policy decisions. That can happen in a number of ways, such as through community groups, community councils or third sector interfaces.

There is evidence that some groups feel that they have more influence than others. For example, legislation about community asset transfer has probably been easier for communities to grasp, because a building or piece of land is visible within the community, so the extent to which the community can decide what happens to it is very visible. Other aspects of the legislation have been a bit more difficult for communities to grasp; therefore, we might have seen less community involvement in those areas.

We are also seeing an increase in participatory budgeting exercises across Scotland. Councils are being asked to deliver 1 per cent of their budgets through participatory budgeting, through which people have a direct vote about councils’ spending, which is playing out across the piece.

Thanks for that, Stuart. That leads me on to my next question, which is about how empowered communities feel. The Scottish household survey statistics flagged up that communities feel less empowered. Do people know what community planning partnerships are? Do they know that they exist or what they do? What can we do—or ask the Government to do—to increase awareness of what community planning partnerships do and how people can get involved and have their voices heard, so that people make decisions about their services?

My personal view, which may not be the view of my community planning colleagues, is that community planning is sometimes the invisible glue. Perhaps we do not promote it as something that people should feel is separate from the public service that they receive. If community planning is working right, maybe communities should not know that four or five partners have joined together and worked really hard to deliver a joined-up service to them. It is more important that they know how to get involved and how to influence decisions, which can be through contact with their local councillor, MSP or MP; active involvement by joining a local community group; or influencing things through campaigns. Individuals should know that we are not asking them to be involved at every hour of every day, but we could get better at making sure that, when they need to get involved, they know how to do so.

We certainly want to encourage community groups to get active, organised and involved in solutions—sometimes before they identify problems, because it sometimes takes a problem to arise before people want to become empowered and get organised. One of the questions is about what they become empowered to do. It is for communities to say what they want to see in their local areas so that we can work better together to support them. There have been some positive moves towards that, but I am not sure whether we need to publicise or promote community planning partnerships as something different. We just want to get people involved where they are comfortable getting involved so that a better outcome is produced for them at the end of the day and they can evidence that back to us.

I have some anecdotal evidence that shows that sometimes, when expectations are raised, there are some perverse outcomes. I have a real-life example from some years ago to illustrate that. A community was involved in a big discussion about participatory budgeting. It was an all-day session that was very well run and there were ask-the-audience buttons and polls. At the end of the session, people were asked whether they felt more or less empowered as a result of being involved in the initiative and, actually, the data showed that they felt less empowered.

Because they were in a room together, they were able to discuss that result, and the reason why they felt less empowered was that they had more of an understanding of all the decisions that councils make and of what could be done and what services are provided. The session had opened up to them all the stuff that they were not involved in. Sometimes you need to look behind the figures, because community engagement raises expectations, and there can be perverse findings from that.

Mark Griffin asked how community planning partnerships are working across the country. Over the past five years, our best value reports have all looked at participatory budgeting and, to be honest, it is a patchwork—it is working a lot better in some places than it is in others. That is not so much about the community planning partnerships because, as Mark Griffin said, people do not really know what they are; it is really about what the partners do to get the message across, such as involving the public in the whole process, reducing bureaucracy and making participation requests.

The person in the street will not know quite what the process is, but if the community planning partnership or the council explains it and invites people to participate, that is the key to getting them in.

We will move on to our next theme, which is the role of the third sector. I remind our witnesses that they do not need to operate their microphones because we have somebody here to do that for us.

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I will not touch on every aspect of the third sector. I chair the cross-party group on social enterprise, which has also discussed the issue, so it has been picked up outwith this committee’s evidence sessions, and the same thing has been said there. There is a mixed picture across local authorities in relation to how people see community planning partnerships. They agree that the exercise is worth while but, across the board, there is a mixed picture as regards how people see participation and the involvement of local authorities.

Have the objectives of the 2015 act been met with regard to third sector participation? What can we do to ensure that the growth in community planning partnerships is sustained, along with the wellbeing of the groups, across all 32 local authority areas? I know that the convener will touch on locality plans. Part of the context that has come through is that participation is sometimes fine at that level but that, when it comes down to localities, it does not quite flow through.

I think that the first part of your question was about how the participation with the third sector has been.

Yes—it was about whether the ambitions of the 2015 act have been met in terms of third sector participation.

We have not done a lot of work on that, but there are challenges for the third sector, particularly just now, with the cost of living crisis and councils’ funding being really tight. It is about the extent to which their funding is going to be impacted by that. They are also at the mercy of short-term funding, so their ability to plan ahead and work on long-term projects with partners is inhibited.

We have not done specific audit work on that, but all the challenges that impact on councils—such as inflexibility, reductions and uncertainty of funding—also impact on third sector organisations and will be an inhibiting factors in relation to their ability to engage with partners to deliver services.

Will audit work on that be considered in the future? Community planning is looked at in the best value report, but it is considered more from a council point of view, rather than there being a focus on how the third sector is involved. The feedback that we have shows that some third sector organisations think that engagement with councils has worked very well and others think that it has not. Taking into account what you said about the pressures that exist, I wonder whether Audit Scotland and the Accounts Commission might in the future look at whether councils are doing enough to embed the third sector into community planning.

In the local government overview last year and our report this year, which will be out in May, we talk about the importance of reform of services and service redesign, which should be undertaken in conjunction with communities and the third sector as well as other public sector partners. We are beating that drum on the involvement of the third sector. In the future, we will do more work around reform and the extent to which councils are working with partners in the widest sense, including the third sector.

Tim McKay might be able to comment on some discussions that the Accounts Commission has had with the sector.

Generally, our relationships with the third sector are quite good. I think that the funding issue is crucial—not just the amount, but the continuity. As you know, it is a hand-to-mouth and year-to-year existence, so part of the solution is to get a longer-term fiscal framework, as we keep calling it.

I sponsor the local government overview, so I take your point. We can perhaps look a little more closely at how councils are bringing the third sector into community planning partnerships.

One of the key questions is how we ensure that growth is sustained across all 32 community planning areas. Stuart, I do not know what your experience is of hearing from local areas about that, but how can we get a more equitable experience?

“Equitable” is a good word. The experience will vary from area to area, and a lot of that is based on the relationships that are built over time and how good, not so good or challenging they are. One thing that we can do is to work to make those relationships as good as possible.

Covid and the cost of living crisis have shone a spotlight on the excellent work that the third sector does, and the value of the third sector has become a lot more visible to people because of its response. In fact, a lot of the resilience and adaptability that community planning partnerships have had during those events is due to the third sector.

The difficulty lies in how that translates into sustainability, as my colleague said. The third sector is seeking to be recognised for what it has provided and to be resourced adequately. That is sometimes difficult, and there is danger when there are mixed policy messages that say, “You’ve done a great job and you’re really important, but there’s a lack of resource, so you’re going to get less money.” Making sense of that can—understandably—be frustrating for third sector organisations.

We have to build on the positive strides that happened out of necessity during the past few years and ensure that as many agencies as possible can act to build good relations across the sector. Recognising what the third sector does, where it fits in and what its outcomes are is key to that. That relates to the question about influence. Sometimes, the influence that a person feels that they have as an individual is due to their being a member of a third sector organisation and the way that it acts as part of the community planning family. Those things are tied up together.

I like it that you call all those different elements the community planning family.

I am going to pick up the theme of local outcome improvement plans and locality plans, and I direct my first question to Carol Calder. Are local outcome improvement plans and locality plans the right mechanisms for tackling huge issues such as inequalities, poverty and climate change? Do they provide an opportunity to take a preventative approach?

As an auditor, I do not care what the mechanism is. I am not sure that I can say whether those are appropriate mechanisms, because it is not really for us to say that. However, what we look for in a preventative approach is whether it disrespects the boundaries of other partners or the third sector. It is about working with communities; allowing them to influence decision making and build trust and relationships; focusing on the areas where the most impact can be made and prioritising them; involving people in decisions about the services that they want; and breaking down the boundaries with other partners so that the resources in the community can be used to best effect.

I am repeating my response to an earlier question, but I cannot say whether the LOIPs or the area plans are helpful in that regard. They are a means to an end. It takes the motivation, ambition and willingness of all the people in the community planning family to work together to deliver clear outcomes for communities.

You said something about respecting boundaries, but you also talked about breaking them down. Based on what you have said, it is also about ensuring that the right groups are involved in the planning process.

I talked about disrespecting boundaries.

Ah. Good—I am glad that you have clarified that.

It is by ignoring the silos, the name tags and who is from which agency and by working collaboratively at that level that the gains can be made. I know that that happens. Stuart Graham has lots of examples of how it happens in local initiatives and projects across Scotland. Having more disrespecting of boundaries locally and more joint working, joint governance, joint resourcing, joint data sharing and scrutiny is the way that we can make the most of community planning.

That relates to what Tim McKay said earlier about the fact that local authorities were much more flexible during Covid. We are concerned that that is changing. Something of the respectful disrespecting of boundaries needs to stay in place.

You asked whether LOIPs are effective. A LOIP will be good and effective if it has a clear set of outcomes and a good data set to allow us to measure the outcomes. Unfortunately, that is not always the case. It is about whether there are good mechanisms in place.

In preparation for this meeting, we produced a little table that shows all the best value reports that we have done and which councils have LOIPs and which do not. A lot of councils do not have LOIPs. I do not want to draw too much from the data with an auditor sitting beside me, but that might indicate that LOIPs are not working as envisaged. However, a LOIP will be good and will work when it has good data and the outcomes can be measured.

Absolutely. The outcomes need to be SMART—specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely.

Connected with that, I am interested in whether you believe that there is a cluttered landscape of plans. Maybe some councils do not have LOIPs because they have to produce so many other plans in relation to responsibilities and strategic aims at the local level. How do CPPs and individual partners connect their CPP duties to other areas of responsibility such as integration joint boards, local planning and children’s services planning, for example?

The Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government have wrestled for a number of years with how to declutter that landscape. We had single outcome agreements at one point and, if I remember correctly, the thrust of those was to have one plan where everything would be covered. Maybe it was a wee bit too ambitious to try to contain everything within one document.

When we introduce a new plan or set of plans, we need to take account of the impact on other things and ensure that there is an overview somewhere of how the different plans will work together. That is particularly true of LOIPs. Community planning is supposed to be about being stronger when we work together and making sure that we are not pulling apart. The more separate plans we create, the greater the risk can be that we will unintentionally pull apart. We need to consider those unintentional consequences as well.

However, if we have a strong LOIP and a strong community planning partnership, we will have a vehicle that can, we hope, rein that in and say, “Hang on a minute—this is what we’re doing through children’s services planning, but how does it impact on what we’re doing on climate change or community safety?” We need to have a mechanism for those various plans to come together and speak to one other.

It can sometimes become messy where we have local plans and also plans at a regional level, such as some of our economic plans. In addition, the Scottish Government has its national performance targets. We have spoken in the past about having a golden thread between those things. It is about trying to get a sense of where each organisation fits in.

As Carol Calder said, disrespecting boundaries can be a good thing, so maybe we should be challenging each other—in a positive way—to try to move those outcomes on. It is about getting the right dialogues between the various plans that we are developing. There may be a good reason for having a set of three or four different plans; as long as they are speaking to and recognising their impacts on one other, that may be where we need to be.

It is about having coherence across all the plans. Of course, while everyone is being asked to create plans, delivery still needs to happen, and that parallel process is also challenging. Carol Calder wants to comment.

You stole my word “coherence”, convener. I was going to say that we look for coherence in the plans when we are auditing an individual council.

Plans are important. Without a plan, things will not happen. Plans make things happen, but they can be so complicated, messy and interlinked that they can stop things happening, too, or there can be perverse contradictions within them. We therefore look for simplicity and coherence in councils’ objective setting and priority setting and how that links to their partners’ priority setting. We also look at how councils demonstrate delivery against their key outcomes, because there is lots to measure.

I am sure that Stuart Graham will tell you how swamped in data we are, but does it tell us a story about whether things are improving? Not necessarily. There is a lot of data, and trying to see the wood through the trees is really difficult.

The important thing is the clarity of the measures, as Tim McKay said. It is about being able to demonstrate that a plan has delivered against the high-level priorities and having coherence across the plans so that they align with one other rather than cutting across one other and becoming too complicated. There can be so many measures and activities that it becomes impossible to see our way through them.

10:45  

Thanks for that. It takes quite a skill set to be able to pull all of that together.

One of the good examples that we have had is the work that is happening across Scotland with the Promise, which is particularly for care-experienced young people, whether they are still in care or are care leavers. That work has been nested into children’s services plans while also taking account of all the other partners. Those who are involved in it really think of themselves as being providers of children’s services, and it is about asking what more can be done. The universal aim is to improve outcomes for children but, within that, they are trying to reduce inequalities for care-experienced young people as a group. The way that those things are linked together and the enthusiasm with which people are buying into that work make it a good example, and we hope that it will bear fruit.

Thanks very much. It is great to have that example of the Promise.

We will move on to the next theme. Data is something that we have been touching on, but not delving into. There are questions from Marie McNair.

Good morning, panel. The issue of data has been touched on already. Back in 2013, Audit Scotland concluded that community planning partnerships

“are not able to show that they have had a significant impact in delivering improved outcomes across Scotland”.

Carol Calder, would you make the same assessment now?

We have not done any national work on community planning for a while, but we have done work on best value audit reports on individual councils and we are still reporting similar messages about the ability to demonstrate those improved outcomes at a high level. That remains an issue, so there is still a bit of a disconnect between what is happening on the ground and how partnerships can demonstrate how all of that activity has contributed to delivering against our priority outcomes.

It is not easy and, as I have said, we have discussed the complexity of the planning arrangements and all the data and measures that go into that. It is hard to extract from that and crystallise those measures, but it is really important to do so, because that demonstrates the worth of planning partnerships by demonstrating what they can do.

What evidence is there that community planning efforts are being focused on the most disadvantaged communities? Is there evidence of CPPs and individual partners using the data collected by the Improvement Service to target interventions and policies? I will pop that to Stuart Graham.

Just to rewind a bit to the data question, one of the issues that we sometimes find difficult in a local community planning partnership sense is that we get data from lots of different sources, but when, for example, we go to present an annual report through the LOIP, a lot of the data will not have been collected that year, so we cannot really get that full picture. There is an issue with the timing of data and how often it is collected, and then there is the question of what you are actually trying to make a difference on. You might be looking at a longer-term target; for example, a behavioural change in relation to public health might be a longer-term rather than a short-term target. We sometimes need to have a think about what we expect to see from the data that we get and then about whether we have that and how we might supplement the data.

In the cases where we have strong data and there is a strong correlation between the data that we have and the levers that the community planning partners can pull we can see a difference in what that outcome looks like compared with where there is a weaker link between those things. For example, if economic aspects have targets around the number of jobs being created or the number of VAT-registered firms in a local area, and something like the financial crash of 2008 happens, that knocks them all off. It is about understanding the influence of the community planning partnership’s investment on the outcome that you are looking to see. I probably have not explained that very well. Let me know if there is anything that you want me to clarify.

No, you are absolutely fine. Does anybody else want to come in on that?

I echo the point that Stuart Graham made about the data. I know from my practical experience when I was a councillor that when getting data—typically from the national health service, Police Scotland and the council—it is really difficult to get them to be coterminous: in other words, looking at the same period at the same time. I do not know whether there is a role for Scottish Government in trying to get those datasets a bit more aligned, but it can be very difficult to get sets of data that all look at the same period.

On your point about the inequalities in some areas and whether the data points towards those, the Scottish index of multiple deprivation has given us a good starting point. As you said, the Improvement Service has its own datasets on community planning and local authority areas. We always have to look at those to see what has changed since the SIMD data came in. For example, sometimes, if an area has been within the 5 per cent most deprived in an SIMD iteration, that might change if there is housing demolition and renewal in the area. That might not necessarily mean that the outcome would be improved for the people who already lived in 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 the data sources, to get as close as possible to the true picture of what is going on.

Therefore, one aspect—it is the same with all the other issues—is 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 was really impressed by the level of detail that the Improvement Service held on the interface.

What are the biggest challenges and barriers to CPPs making the impacts that the Local Government in Scotland Act 2003 and the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 anticipated? I will go back to Stuart Graham with that question.

The biggest barrier is that it is always a moving target; as I said, nothing is static. We always have to take account of the contextual aspects around the aspirations or outcomes that we were looking for at that particular time. The 2008 financial crisis was probably before that, but we have obviously had Covid and the cost of living crisis and we have to factor in wars, the energy crisis and all those sorts of things.

There will always be a resource barrier. That is never going to change. We will always have more work than we have resource to meet. What we 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. Lack of resource is a huge barrier to community planning partnerships, which aspire to make early interventions. That is something that we would always love to do more of, but the resources for that are significantly squeezed. We need to take those decisions, but that set of decisions always needs to be taken, reviewed and recalibrated as we go along, to see what it is best to do on the day.

We have made really good strides, and the Scottish Government has been good at being a partner in community planning at a local level rather than being the person who marks your jotters or homework and tells you whether you are doing well or badly. That has been really positive. The link between the local, regional and national could be much stronger.

Thanks for that. Carol Calder, do you want to comment?

The question about barriers is really difficult to answer. I might turn it on its head and ask what actually facilitates good partnership working. I guess that it is the things that I have mentioned before about building relationships and trust, which is really hard to do. I have mentioned disrespecting boundaries three times now. We all work in our silos and under our own logos, and it is hard to break that down. It happens at a very local level across councils across the country, but I think that there is more to do on that.

In an environment where there is so much uncertainty and financial pressure, the natural tendency is for agencies to hunker down and do their core work. I do not have any evidence to support that theory, but that is my speculation.

Not knowing what funding there will be in future definitely does not help. We are always ringing the bell for a fiscal framework that has more flexibility, because that is also a barrier. As Tim McKay and Stuart Graham said, there is an issue about things being coterminous, as well. The NHS and councils have very different cultures and different ways of operating, for example, and that gets in the way, as well as the data issues that Stuart mentioned—the timing, the period that the data from each organisation covers and trying to match those things together.

Some structural elements are barriers, but people make change happen, so if we flip it on its head and get the right leaders in the right places strategic change can happen. Those leaders are engaged, motivated and want to bring people along with them. They are also able to see the levers that exist in other agencies as well as in their own, and they can see that they can use those levers to make change.

Tim McKay, do you want to have the last word on that?

No, my colleagues answered the question very well.

We will move on to talk about culture change of statutory partners, with a question from Miles Briggs.

Good morning and thank you for joining us. You will be aware of the conversations that are taking place about the local governance review and the potential development of a new deal. How will those two things lead to opportunities to improve the picture and take the empowering communities agenda forward?

I refer you to my previous answer, because flexibility to do things differently with funding and more certainty about longer-term funding create more opportunities for councils to work with partners, communities and the third sector in order to deliver. The new deal is an important part of that. I will not speak on behalf of the commission because Tim McKay is sitting right next to me, but I am sure that it is very keen for the new deal to progress as soon as possible. Although it is inhibiting things at the moment, when it is agreed, it will help councils to be innovative and disrespect boundaries if the partnership agreement is framed in a way that allows more flexibility.

We have been pressing for a long time for what we refer to as a fiscal framework. That would mean a longer-term budgeting process for councils so that they know further in advance what their funding streams are likely to be.

I do not want to be controversial but, as Carol Calder said, part of the new deal is less ring fencing. Councils argue that ring fencing is constraining their ability to make more localised choices, so what might come out of the new deal is fewer constraints for councils in that respect. That will give them the freedom that they have been asking for to disrespect boundaries to some extent, which could help.

I want to bring together some of the questions that Annie Wells, Mark Griffin and Marie McNair asked. My reading of where we are with being able to empower communities, which comes from the schemes that I have been involved with in my area, is that middle-class communities know how to use the process and are well organised in doing so. How can we further embed empowerment, especially for those who are furthest removed from decision making and the planning system, so that they can organise in a way that allows them to create genuinely sustainable projects that can take over community assets or make the system work for them?

11:00  

My experience and my thinking, which have changed a wee bit, are slightly different. You are right to say that some of the more affluent communities with high levels of social capital and skills can organise themselves. Sometimes, however, that is equally true of our most hard-pressed communities, some of which have been involved in community engagement schemes going back to the 1990s or before that. It is often the case that such communities—I can think of some in our local authority area—are highly organised and aware of how they can work with the system.

There is also the bit in the middle—the areas that are neither tremendously affluent nor hard pressed, where people are just getting on with things. It is in those areas, where there is sometimes less of an organised community culture, that local assets need to be looked at.

On the point about culture change, we are finding that people are aware that, if there is a bit of land or a building in their area—and not just assets that a community planning partner does not want anything to do with—they can ask about it. In our area, we have some good and diverse examples of land and assets being used. When more of that happens in an area, we start to build up a critical mass of people in the community who know what the possibilities are and what outcomes can be achieved, and who have experience of doing that. Those people then start speaking to one other. Sometimes, the best bits of community planning are not what we try to do and to control; they are about communities learning for themselves. However, it takes a while to get that critical mass.

On asset transfer, I do not think that I have ever heard a community group say that a project was easier than it thought it would be—it is always the other way round. However, when a group has learned from a project and is willing to share that learning, that is when the critical mass starts to come. I have heard of areas where people in diverse communities have started to speak to one other about their different experiences and share their knowledge, which is invaluable.

We need to get to that point.

Yes.

This is about targeting. We cannot do everything for everybody all the time, so it must be about prioritising communities that are vulnerable or in more deprived areas. As has been mentioned, people there might not be as engaged with the council or there might be quite a groundswell of activism. It is for the partnerships to target those areas and agree what they want to focus on. That is the way to engage those who are not engaging.

Sometimes the issue is cultural rather than being to do with how well off people are. We get hotspots of people who are quite engaged in the community planning and empowerment process. Sometimes it is the poorer communities that are doing it. As Stuart Graham alluded to, that is because they build up a little pool of expertise and they see others doing it, which encourages action.

I will stick with that theme as I have a couple of other questions on it. What are your thoughts on how community planning partnerships work in practice with the statutory organisations? Has there been a genuine change in culture in partner organisations relating to budgets, staffing decisions and priorities?

I do not think that I have any evidence to enable me to answer that with any confidence. We have looked at individual councils and their relationships with other agencies and they have expressed the view that there are difficulties, particularly when it comes to engaging with the NHS. As I said earlier, the NHS is organised in quite a different way. Councils have a democratic mandate, but the NHS has a direct relationship with Government. However, I do not think that I can give any further examples.

In my experience, there are some good examples of that, but not at the level of organisations formally sharing their budgets; the good examples are perhaps a bit further down at the level of parts of organisations coming together to put in resource. For example, there is good community safety work where council wardens, the police and the fire service come together locally to do joint co-ordination tasks and they are working with housing officers and so on. Day-to-day staffing resources and the budgets that have been allocated for certain things are working really well in that area, but there is no formal situation whereby all the budgets are put into one pot.

On my side of things, there is generally more sharing of the financial outlook between different partners but, again, that does not really translate into people saying, “We’ll put all our money into one pot and decide what will comes out of it.”

On the point about prioritisation, there is probably an understanding at a strategic level, but there are some particularly good bits of work happening at a more operational managerial level. I am thinking about things such as local employability partnerships and partners working together to get positive destinations for school leavers. Partners are working together really strongly on those things.

Thank you for those examples. Schedule 1 to the act sets out a list of statutory partners. Should it be amended to include new partners or remove existing ones?

Our statutory partners are generally fine. Most people who need to be there are there, but it would be worth while to look at the third sector interfaces. I do not think that they could be statutory partners because they are not statutory bodies, but encouraging them to be as involved as possible might be a way forward.

There is a difficulty with regard to where the more regional partners can play into. It is quite difficult for the likes of the Scottish Enterprise groups, economic development groups and transport partnerships to play into the required number of community planning partners. Perhaps that process needs to be considered in order to make it work more effectively for those partners.

I would not take anyone out of the list. Is there anyone that you were thinking of removing or adding?

Not at all. I just wanted to ask the question.

I suppose that the answer is no. Stuart Graham makes a good point: it is useful to have those other, non-statutory organisations at the table, such as the Federation of Small Businesses. I know that some councils engage with them, which is a good thing.

That answer is helpful.

Engagement with the private sector is an area that could probably be strengthened, because it is supposed to be one of the key arms of community planning. We tend to engage with the chambers of commerce, which is good and effective, but there is perhaps more that we can do. We work through local employability partnerships and things like that, but we could perhaps do more in the private sector.

We move on to our final theme, which is leadership and the role of the Scottish Government and Audit Scotland.

I remember that, in 2003, when I was on East Ayrshire Council and the first of the community plan documents arrived, I thought, “Goodness gracious—who’s gonnae deliver this?”, or words to that effect. I wondered who would be behind it and who would lead it. The question of leadership arose early and it is still there, in my view. The success or otherwise of these things often comes down to good, strong, dynamic and enthusiastic leadership.

What are your views on that topic? How can we provide better leadership? I am not asking whether leadership is important, because we know that it is, but how do we get the type and quality of leadership that will drive the plans and engage with communities, which perhaps look to local authority officials to lead the processes? Do we need more of a focus on leadership at a national level? Should the Scottish Government make provision for leadership skills, or should local authorities do that? Your views on that would be appreciated.

As you have correctly identified, leadership is something that drives outcomes and gets us there. Police Scotland and the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service led some work in Renfrewshire a while ago that looked at having a leadership process—it was not a qualification—that community planning partners could buy into. From our perspective as a council, it was great that that process was led by the police and fire services.

There is leadership of the community planning process, which involves making sure that the process happens and that the vehicle is fit for purpose, and there is leadership of the agendas. The interesting thing for me is that various community planning partners are sometimes the best faces to lead some of that work. We have spoken a lot about community empowerment. Sometimes, the third sector interfaces will be the best organisations to lead on that, because communities engage with them most often. Some initiatives will be best led by councils and others will be best led by the police and fire services. Sometimes, the fire service is a good organisation to lead initiatives because it has a high public approval rating.

It is important to have some kind of process—it does not have to be a leadership qualification—that everyone must go through, and an understanding of each party’s agenda and what each party can contribute. The more that we take that approach, the better we will do.

Recently, Police Scotland has been adopting a public health approach to some aspects of its work, which is a good example of that. I do not think that that work is being driven through community planning, but that is effectively what it is. It is about an organisation saying, “Actually, we should be looking at our business in a different way and taking that on board.” For me, that is leadership: it is about changing the culture of how an organisation deals with certain things.

Willie Coffey is absolutely right to say that leadership is crucial. We refer to barriers to community planning partnerships working effectively, and poor leadership is sometimes one of them. In the best value reports, we identify where community planning partners are getting on well together, and that typically happens in councils where there is good leadership—although other partners can also have good leadership.

It is difficult to know how to encourage good leadership. Again, in our best value reports, we always emphasise how important leadership is and we identify where we feel that it has failed or caused a problem. I hope that that encourages good leadership. It is difficult to define good leadership, although we sometimes do that. Forgive me—I cannot quote the definition, but leadership is a bit like an elephant: we know it when we see it, but how we get it is a difficult question. Carol Calder may have the answer.

I have had a bit more time to think about it because I am answering Mr Coffey’s question last.

I have been thinking about how leadership has changed over the years. A direct route to being the chief executive of a council was to be the director of finance. However, leadership has changed: it is not just about managing a council, but is now about collaborative leadership. We picked up on some of the principles of that in our most recent local government overview report and we will pick up on the topic again when we look at reform and the redesign of services. It is not necessarily just about managing a council, although there are managers in councils who do that.

11:15  

Tim McKay has reminded me of the Scottish Leaders Forum. I was at its most recent meeting, at which somebody whose name I cannot remember quoted something that, when I heard it, made me think, “That’s brilliant—I’m going to use that.” He said, “Leadership works when you leave at the door your silos, your logos and your egos.” I thought, “I’ll remember that because it rhymes and it’s very clever”, but he was absolutely right. As I have said, plans do not make change; people do. Plans help to get us there, but it is the people who drive things forward.

As for what skill set we need for collaborative leadership, we are looking for people who are energised about change. They might in a way be voting for their own job to go, but they have a longer-term vision of where they want to get to. They will disrespect boundaries—I think that it is the fourth time that I have said that—but they will have the energy to do this sort of thing and will be looking for opportunities and levers. They will be thinking, “If I don’t have the levers, can I find out which other agencies do so that I can use them?” They will be asking, “How do we come together to make things happen?”

At that meeting of the Scottish Leaders Forum, I was interested to hear so much discussion about the issue and to see people recognising and understanding it and knowing where they need to get to. I guess that the next thing, though, is that, as an auditor, I want to see that that is happening. There is a lot of talk about collaborative leadership being what is needed to drive things forward. I think that the style of leadership has changed dramatically over the past 10 or 20 years.

Thank you so much for those responses. I want to widen things out a little with a question that is particularly for Carol Calder. Community planning is not just something that councils do; it stretches far further and wider than that. Do you or Audit Scotland look at such elements in your work on, for example, NHS services or the whole range of other publicly delivered services? Might you include community planning dimensions in such work?

We definitely look at partnership working across the piece in the work that we do. My focus is on local government, but we also have teams looking at the NHS and social care every year. However, the more that we work on those things, the more integrated that work becomes, because the issues are not based in silos but are cross cutting.

I would perhaps not use the term “community planning partnership”, as that is a specific thing, but I think that we would talk about partnership working in its wider sense, and we would definitely say that partnership working would include not just the public sector but the third sector and communities. I therefore think that you will see that weaving through quite a lot of our work.

I am not sure whether part of your question is about whether we are doing something specific on CPPs. On that issue, I would have to say, “Not at the moment.” However, we will continue to do work on best value in councils, which covers partnership working. In that respect, we will always be looking at partnership working.

Thank you. Is the Accounts Commission intending and planning to audit the CPP process?

It is not in our work programme at present—

But we have done it in the past.

Yes. As Carol Calder has said, we did a report on that a few years ago. Our work programme always takes world circumstances into account, and your question will certainly prompt me to ask the same question when we look at our work programme. However, there is nothing planned at the moment.

Okay. Thanks very much for that.

Willie Coffey asked about the skills that are required for leadership, and I note Carol Calder’s point about collaborative leadership. I have noticed that, when different organisations are brought together, you need facilitation skills and the ability to break down silos. Should a collaborative leadership style include those skills of facilitating things and bringing people together? Do we also need people who are specifically trained as facilitators to come into certain situations and help to break down silos?

We need either and both, to be honest. This is not just about corporate collaborative leadership; there is the political leadership, too. Just to be clear, I am about to speculate—I do not have any audit evidence for this—but one barrier might be the energy and drive in some chief executives to move things forward in a different way not being reflected in, say, joint services. If the councils that want to work together are of different political persuasions, that might get in the way of things, too. Facilitation to get over those barriers might be an issue to think about but, as I said, I am just thinking on my feet and speculating.

In short, I think that we need both—people who have been trained to have that skill set, and also external support coming in, depending on the circumstances.

It seems to me that, the more evidence-taking sessions that I sit through in both this committee and the other committee that I sit on, the more I feel that Scotland needs really well-trained facilitators.

This probably goes back to Willie Coffey’s question about leadership, but I want to highlight the work of the community planning improvement board, which is very much about how we drive the whole community planning system forward and how the leaders of the different community planning partners can take ownership of that in their organisations in a collective and collaborative sense. That work is facilitated by the Scottish Government and the Improvement Service, with one of my colleagues on the community planning network feeding into it, and it is a good example of trying to look at the whole system and move things on together.

That concludes our run-through of the themes of our inquiry. Your evidence has been very helpful for the next stage of our work on community planning partnerships. Thank you for coming in today to share your perspectives and experience.

I will suspend the meeting to allow a change of witnesses.

11:21 Meeting suspended.  

11:25 On resuming—  

I welcome our second panel of witnesses to the meeting. We are joined in the room by: Peter Kelly, director at the Poverty Alliance; Kirsty McNeill, policy and research officer at the Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights; and Ruth Whatling, head of policy and equality at Homeless Network Scotland. We are joined online by David Allan, deputy director at the Scottish Community Development Centre. As I mentioned to 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 that to the clerks. David, as you are appearing virtually, please indicate that you wish to come in by putting an R in the chat function.

Annie Wells will begin the questions. Three of our colleagues are joining us virtually, so some questions will come from people who are online.

Good morning, panel. What are the main challenges faced by communities across Scotland and have they changed in the years since the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 was passed? We could talk about the Covid pandemic, for example. Also, looking ahead, what role could community planning partnerships have in supporting communities during the cost of living crisis? I put that question to David Allan first.

The main challenge during the Covid pandemic was the increasing isolation of many of our disadvantaged and more—[Inaudible.]—communities—[Inaudible.] Coming out of Covid and going straight into the cost of living crisis has exacerbated the problems facing—[Inaudible.] That is what has happened throughout—

Sorry to interrupt, but your audio is dropping out. We will check with broadcasting. We might drop the video and see whether it works just with audio.

Okay. Is that better?

Brilliant. Go ahead.

I was just saying that moving from the pandemic and the increasing—[Inaudible.]—of some groups into being faced with the cost of living crisis—[Inaudible.]

David, your audio is still bad, and we still cannot hear you fully. We will go to someone in the room while we will try to work on the tech side. Peter Kelly, do you want to come in?

I would be happy to come in. Thanks for the invitation to come along.

Obviously, the Poverty Alliance’s key concern is around poverty and inequality. The challenge that has been 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 patterns of poverty and inequality in Scotland and across the UK. The significant challenge is that those patterns are oftentimes outwith the control of community planning partnerships and they cannot have a significant impact on them.

Since 2015, there has been downward pressure, through a series of changes and cuts to social security, on the incomes of those who were already on the lowest incomes. That context has made some of the long-term changes that community planning partnerships want to make all the more difficult to achieve.

11:30  

The pandemic clearly exacerbated many of the problems that already existed in many communities. I know that, over the past several years, committee members and other parliamentarians will have heard a great deal about what those problems were. I think that Dave Allan started to talk about the isolation that was experienced. Members of the Poverty Alliance have talked about the so-called supercharging of existing inequalities during the pandemic.

Those issues have made the challenges relating to the structures that are in place to address poverty and inequality all the more difficult to address.

I thank the committee for inviting me. It is great that a homelessness organisation is part of this discussion.

I will build on what Peter Kelly said. Poverty is the most important driver of homelessness. There is therefore a big risk that homelessness levels will increase. Homelessness can be prevented and tackled really effectively at a local level, so community planning partnerships have a key role to play in that regard.

I will say a little bit about the pandemic and the impacts on homelessness. You will probably all be aware that there was quite a positive impact on some aspects of homelessness. For example, the number of people rough sleeping dropped significantly. The number has gone back up a little, but it is still quite low in Scotland. The main homelessness problem in Scotland relates more to indoors than to outdoors.

A positive that came from the pandemic was that people were not evicted, following legislation that was introduced by the Scottish Government. However, there is a risk that the cost of living crisis and the other issues that Peter Kelly mentioned will result in an increase in the number of people who are homeless. There has already been an increase in the number of open homelessness applications and in the number of people in temporary accommodation.

There is a massive opportunity for community planning partnerships to play a role in preventing homelessness.

I, too, thank the committee for inviting me to contribute.

One of the main challenges for black and minority ethnic communities in Scotland is poverty, which links to the Covid pandemic and the current cost of living crisis. Statistics show that, in Scotland, 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. Despite the 2015 act requiring that socioeconomic inequalities be taken into account, a race-blind approach is being taken to tackling inequalities.

Each year, local child poverty action reports are created and presented to the Scottish Government by health boards and local authorities. In practice, community planning partnerships would be useful vehicles to deliver the reports. Our research has shown that, as far as we can see from the written reports, a race-blind approach is also taken to local child poverty action reports. The reports do not discuss in detail how child poverty is affecting various black and minority ethnic children or groups in the area. There is no evidence of targeted action, and there is very little data on whether black and minority ethnic families are engaging with mainstream services.

Black and minority ethnic people are at higher risk of poverty, but, in our experience, we do not necessarily see that from the work of community planning partnerships.

Thanks, Kirsty. We will go back to try David now. We have made some adjustments; let us see if we can hear him.

Can everybody hear me now?

So far, so good.

As I was saying before, and picking up on a couple of the other—[Inaudible.]

Things have changed over that time. The pandemic brought to the fore issues of people being increasingly isolated—[Inaudible.] Issues around poverty have tended to be more concentrated in urban areas of deprivation, but I think that they have become far more widespread—[Inaudible.]—rural deprivation—[Inaudible.]—huge issues as well. If we are aligning that to the community planning agenda, the dispersed nature of poverty or fragility becomes more difficult for community planning partnerships to deal with. There is the issue of critical mass: there might be only two or three people, or a particular group, in a particular area that have a particular issue, so it becomes more difficult to have a place-based response that is—[Inaudible.]

Those are real challenges moving forward.

Thanks for that, David.

I will move on a wee bit. We heard from the previous panel about the lack of data, but we have some data. Data is collected by the Improvement Service, which shows massive inequalities between communities in the same local authority areas, for example, in Glasgow, between Springburn and Maryhill, and Kelvinside and Jordanhill. Reducing inequalities is a core purpose of community planning. How successful has that been? Maybe David could kick that one off, seeing as he is still on my screen.

The point about data is really interesting, and I was interested in the conversation in the earlier part of the meeting. The issue is not only about the synchronising of data among agencies but about what data communities bring. A couple of years ago, we worked with local groups in Moray to develop data-led locality plans, and they were conscious of the kind of data that they were bringing to the perspective and considered how it could match up with, add to and complement the data that was being gathered by the council and the statutory partners.

That work was a good example of bringing in council statisticians to work with the groups to look at the breakdown of the data in the different areas. Localities had been placed on the data that did not make any sense to the communities involved—the localities were based on the raw data regarding level of deprivation from SIMD—[Inaudible.]—whereas the natural communities did not conform to those boundaries. The groups worked with the community planning partners to redefine those boundaries so that they made more sense. They recognised where there were concentrations of issues or problems—[Inaudible.]—inequalities as well, to see a way of bringing that together by addressing it as a whole community rather than by focusing on one particular, small part of the area.

Thanks for that, David. Your audio is still dropping out. I think that Kath Byrne is going to chat to you through the BlueJeans function to see whether we can sort that out. Does anyone in the room want to come in?

I will quickly follow up on what David was saying. The question around data is related to but also separate from the issue of whether we are having an impact on inequalities.

Over the period that I have observed community planning, I have seen a better use of data and I have seen data being used more creatively. I have seen the various actors at local level being very focused on how they use data and trying to understand the data that is available to them. For instance, in Inverclyde, a great deal of work has been going on with the local authority, with support from Public Health Scotland and the Improvement Service, to better understand the data that is available and how it can be applied. That is in the context of local child poverty action reports, but I think that the example is applicable to wider community planning.

There is more and better data around, and as David Allan said, it is important to bring in other forms of data, particularly qualitative data.

On the question about the long-term outcomes that are set in LOIPs—and elsewhere in other versions of plans—and whether inequalities are reducing, again we need to tease out what is within the gift of the various community planning partners that can affect those long-term outcomes. They might set the outcomes, but to what extent is it within their gift to achieve them?

For instance, we know that, very worryingly, health inequalities are starting to widen again in Scotland. The community planning partners can make a significant contribution to reducing those inequalities, but there are processes taking place at Scotland and UK levels that are driving some of those widening inequalities. We need to get the balance right between understanding the specific role of community planning partners in reducing those inequalities and the contribution that they make to that.

Annie, do you have any further questions?

I have one final question, convener. Kirsty McNeill spoke about this a bit earlier. As well as communities of place, the guidance on part 2 of the 2015 act referred to impacts on communities of interest. What evidence is there that community planning partnerships are identifying and engaging with those communities?

From our work on anti-racism and race equality we know that there is a considerable body of evidence that geographical approaches to tackling inequalities often fail and can widen inequalities. Our experience of locality planning, to a greater or lesser extent, replicates that. There is little evidence to show that locality planning is working for black and minority ethnic groups, and these communities are largely absent from the structures that are responsible for locality planning. If we discuss the plans in more detail later, we will see that there is very little mention of those communities in the plans.

Previously, staff in CRER—not me—supported a senior colleague in one of the most prominent community planning partnership organisations to propose a communities of interest-focused locality plan. That colleague had been able to come up with proposals that would target severe inequalities, staying firmly within the locality eligibility criteria. However, unfortunately, that did not go ahead, which was down to reluctance at senior level, where commitment to, and understanding of, inequalities is low. The community of interest in that case was the African community in Glasgow.

Thanks for that. Ruth Whatling, do you have anything to add?

People come in and out of homelessness, so the situation is not the same. However, people who are at risk of homelessness or who are at risk of the more repeat or entrenched forms of homelessness are really on the margins of society. They are marginalised and discriminated against across the board, so they are the people who are least likely to be engaged with in the planning processes.

Our organisation would therefore welcome something in the LOIPs about preventing homelessness, which would require engagement at a more organised systemic level with people who are at high risk of homelessness, many of whom will be the people who Kirsty McNeill and Peter Kelly are talking about. Therefore, in a sense, it is not the same clear group of people.

Peter, do you want to add anything?

No, I think that colleagues have covered the points well.

We will now move to the theme of community empowerment. Mark Griffin, who joins us online, has questions on that.

11:45  

The Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 was supposed to strengthen people’s voices and to give them a say in the services that they rely on. Has that been realised at all as a result of the act, particularly in relation to disadvantaged and marginalised communities? What more should we be asking Government to do to realise that and to give those marginalised and disadvantaged communities a voice in the services that they rely on?

We are still very much on a journey in relation to community empowerment, involvement or participation—whichever phrase you want to use. The Local Government in Scotland Act 2003 talked about making sure that people and communities are genuinely engaged in the decisions that affect their lives. Across Scotland, large parts of society and the population would not say that they feel as though they are actively engaged in the decisions that affect their lives. Things have definitely changed and improved, particularly since the 2015 act, but there is an awful lot of scope for further improvement.

I will again comment through the lens of the local child poverty action reports, which are a requirement under the Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017. We have seen some really creative approaches to involving people with direct experience of poverty in shaping those approaches to addressing child poverty at local level. We have seen a whole range of approaches. I could talk at length about different examples of local authorities and community planning partnerships actively seeking ways to engage with people, but those examples of good practice are still in the minority.

I do not feel as though we have embraced participation across community planning partnerships in their totality in the way that I guess that we hoped that we would have through the 2015 act. There has been improvement and progress, but much more can still be done.

I agree with Peter Kelly and will add to that.

A lot is written in national and local policy about the need to engage with people more widely, but the practice—certainly across Scotland—is not as consistent.

I was reminded of a piece of work that Heriot-Watt University did in England, but that is probably also relevant here, that suggested that localism can further marginalise people, particularly severely and multiply deprived people, in the community.

Similarly to what Kirsty McNeill mentioned earlier, I note that we need to put enough time, effort and expertise into meaningful engagement with people who are less likely to trust public services, people who may have experienced trauma and people who are really at the hard end, having experienced homelessness and all sorts of crises in their lives. Unless we get better at doing that, we are at risk of further marginalising people. Things have improved, and community empowerment is talked about a lot more than it used to be, but there is still a long way to go to get consistent practice.

I thank Ruth Whatling for that answer, in which she made some really good points.

At the national level, we undertook a review of all the LOIPs, to look at how they had detailed involvement with black and minority ethnic groups. We found that very few of them were involving such groups—or at least that their involvement was not detailed in those reports. A small number of them had mechanisms for engagement with people with protected characteristics. I think that one or two of them also had them in relation to race issues specifically, but that was not widespread practice.

I hope that I am not getting too detailed here, but we also looked at some of the locality plans in Glasgow. On those, there was little evidence of the involvement of black and minority ethnic groups. However, I highlight one example of good practice: in Govanhill, the locality plan notes the involvement of black and minority ethnic groups through community conversations, which were facilitated by a multilingual team.

There is a need for individuals and groups that are responsible for leading on the development and delivery of those plans to set out specifically how equality groups are involved in the related processes, but there is little incentive for marginalised communities to contribute their views or their time to involvement processes that might not improve their circumstances.

I emphasise what the other witnesses have said. We have seen the need for a systematic approach to promoting community involvement in community planning. Peter Kelly mentioned that that is still sporadic. There are good examples, but they are still dispersed and not adopted across the board.

The 2015 act required authorities and community planning partnerships to take a systematic approach to involving the whole range of communities in their areas in community planning processes and to improving situations. That has not been done. There are numerous reasons for that, but we need to get better at doing that. We need to be more systematic and put sufficient time and resource into helping people to participate equally with others who might be more comfortable with doing that.

There is also conversation about whether the 2015 act has just helped stronger communities to become even stronger and not helped to level the playing field in community participation. We need to consider that.

A report on the impact of the Christie commission said:

“community empowerment comes from strong relationships between community members and staff in public services”.

That is obvious and goes without saying.

Since the 2015 act was introduced, has there been a change in how open public service staff are, and how they go out, engage with and build relationships and trust with marginalised communities? Is the culture changing among staff in public services to the extent that we are getting meaningful engagement and participation?

It is difficult for us to speak to every area in Scotland, because we do not know the ins and outs, and, for the areas that we are not involved in, all we can see is from the plans.

In Glasgow, work that is done through the community planning partnerships tends to be achieved through good working relationships that exist, However, sometimes, there is a barrier with people at a higher level who are perhaps not as involved with equalities because there can be a lack of resourcing relating to equalities, both within specific posts and generally through public service organisations.

On the relationships between officials who are tasked with producing reports of whatever form, we have good evidence of change in a few community planning partnership areas.

Edinburgh has done interesting work to engage with people with direct experience of poverty on an on-going, long-term basis flowing from the Edinburgh Poverty Commission that was set up. That is now part and parcel of the LOIP. The end poverty Edinburgh group, which is a group of citizens in Edinburgh with experience of poverty, is referred to in the LOIP.

What has worked there, and in other community planning partnership areas, is taking time to build relationships and putting in resources. That would generally be done by the local authority, as local authorities often take the lead on that, to ensure that relationships are built up. Edinburgh is a good example. Similarly, Dundee has an approach in which participation and involvement are seen as a priority in the development of local child poverty action reports.

In other areas, including rural communities, there are some examples of good practice. For example, Aberdeenshire has adopted quite innovative ways of engaging with a panel of people with experience of poverty. That worked quite effectively during the pandemic, when there was remote or online engagement.

There are a lot of good examples, but I repeat that I would have to say that I am not convinced that such approaches are embedded enough in the way that community planning partnerships go about their business.

My final question, which is a broad one, is probably for all four witnesses. Are people in the groups with which you are involved even aware of community planning partnerships? Do they know what the partnerships do and how to get involved in them?

That will vary a lot. As we have discussed, in areas where we have had programmes of work, people might be a lot more aware of the local planning arrangements. However, with mechanisms such as LOIPs, people generally do not know how significant they are in local planning or what they drive. There is quite a big gap in awareness among the people with whom we work.

I agree with that. From the feedback from the groups that we work with and support across the country, it seems that, even where they are aware of community planning partnerships, there is a lack of understanding of how they can get involved and influence those processes and structures. There are different levels. People—certainly those in the more active groups—might be aware of community planning but less aware of how they can get involved and influence decision making.

I echo what David Allan has just said. Among the community and voluntary organisations in our network, there is an awareness of community planning partnerships and their function. However, those organisations’ capacity to engage is limited. That is a strategic decision that many organisations take. Their purpose is not to engage in community planning processes; it is to achieve the ends of their organisation. Therefore, community planning partnerships need to find ways to make the engagement relevant and possible.

Broadly speaking, the TSIs do a good job of representing third sector voices. It is a different question when we think about people with direct lived experience. However, by and large, TSIs do a good job in their engagement, which is often in quite difficult circumstances. It is difficult for TSIs to be part of the community planning partnerships, but their role is important.

Kirsty, do you have anything to add?

No—I think that the answer has been well covered.

We will move on to the role of the third sector. Paul McLennan has questions on that.

12:00  

The issue of the third sector’s involvement has been raised a couple of times. I used to chair a community planning partnership when I was an East Lothian councillor, and I know that one of the key things is, as has been said, the involvement of local organisations. Do you see any issues with regard to the involvement of your national organisations?

A prime example that I want to highlight is the poverty-related stigma report that Peter Kelly’s organisation has published and which talks about BME communities being twice as likely to be affected by such issues. How can we get national organisations involved in some of the discussions that are happening at local level in community planning partnerships? After all, that will be fundamental, because there are certain issues that need to be addressed at local level; indeed, Peter Kelly touched on the work that Inverclyde was doing in that respect.

My second question is about the role of TSIs, which Peter Kelly has mentioned. The evidence and feedback that we have received from the third sector on TSIs have been very mixed; some organisations had had very good experiences, while others had had not so good experiences. How do we get an equitable experience across all local authorities?

I will bring in Peter Kelly for my first question and then open things up to the other witnesses.

This sounds like a bit of a glib answer, but it is all about resources and capacity. National organisations such as ours see community planning partnerships as an important locus for influencing change at local level, but the reality is that trying to engage with 32 partnerships is just beyond our capacity.

The issue, then, is finding efficient ways of taking learning from examples of good practice on some of the themes that my organisation and colleagues work on and applying that to different places. Again, there is good evidence of our starting to do that a lot better. I am talking mostly about the area of child poverty, but the Improvement Service has been very effective at sharing good practice with officers engaged in child poverty planning at local level. That has been really important. Organisations such as SCDC have also been important in sharing good practice on what works with regard to involvement.

We need to find more and better ways of doing that, and support for national infrastructure organisations such as ours is important in allowing us to share some of the lessons that we are learning. For example, in our work on child poverty since the Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017, we have gathered a lot of good experiences and good practice from Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverclyde, Dundee and Aberdeenshire, but we have not really had the opportunity to share that as systematically as we would like to. I am sure that other national third sector organisations will be in the same position.

Resources are important, but we also have to recognise the constraints and find ways of efficiently and more effectively sharing what we are learning.

My response will be similar to Peter Kelly’s. We recently completed our “Staying in” programme, which is about place-based approaches to preventing homelessness, and some of the recommendations from that are really for local planning partners. We are going to their local planning meetings as much as we can, particularly in Glasgow, where the project took place.

We recognise that we cannot do that for all the community planning partnerships, so we are looking at sharing of good practice nationally through, for example, putting champions in place. Where local areas are really taking on board the recommendations, we are sharing that practice and saying, “Look at what you can do if you do things a little bit differently.”

That said, this is not just a matter of our finding clever and different ways of influencing change—it is also pertinent to the questions that have been raised about leadership. It is about the people who sit within local planning mechanisms seeing those things as being important to their work and seeking them out, as well as our trying to influence what they do.

I reinforce what both Peter Kelly and Ruth Whatling said. The importance of share learning, for CPPs and the people who are involved in them, cannot be overstressed.

A couple of years ago, we were involved with the Improvement Service in the context of a programme of work with all 32 CPPs on what they were learning about community participation, community involvement and community planning. The sharing of learning was really useful for all the CPPs involved. It was not just folk from the statutory agencies were involved in the process but community reps, TSIs and elected members. The role of national intermediaries can be really important in the wider sharing of learning about what works and what gets in the way of good community planning. I agree with Peter that such work needs to be resourced.

On the question about the involvement of national-level organisations in local planning, CRER is a national organisation, but we also work at Glasgow level. We were involved in equality-focused engagement around the Glasgow plan. I cannot comment on wider third sector involvement in Glasgow, aside from in the equalities context, but I can say that, as members of the CPP equalities group, we had direct input, as well as input to consultations through written submissions. We also did some facilitation with small community groups.

However, as I said in more detail in our written submission to a previous consultation, none of those routes led to a particularly successful outcome. Regardless of how well we are involved in such processes, decisions are ultimately made at the highest strategic level. Therefore, for us to get involved in every local area would not necessarily be a good use of our time. There are probably small black and minority ethnic groups that are better placed to speak to issues that might be unique in their areas.

Thank you.

We move on to the next theme: local outcomes improvement plans and locality plans. In the interests of time, I will try to combine three questions into one. A number of witnesses have touched on LOIPs, as I have learned that they are called. Kirsty McNeill, I thank CRER for its work on whether LOIPs engage with black, Asian and minority ethnic people.

Do the other witnesses think that LOIPs effectively address the inequalities that communities face? Do they take a preventative approach? Is there a cluttered landscape, when it comes to how individual partners connect their CPP duties with other areas of responsibility, in the context of, for example, integration joint boards, locality planning and children’s services?

There is a cluttered landscape of local planning processes, and it is becoming even more cluttered with the development of local place plans under the Planning (Scotland) Act 2019. The processes all offer good opportunities for people to get involved in influencing local planning, but there is a danger that people just do not know where their involvement will land and which plan will take precedence. That is not being addressed anywhere at the moment, as far as we can see, and it needs to be addressed if people are genuinely to feel involved and engaged in influencing the development of services and responses at local level.

We have seen some good examples of local folk getting involved, particularly in locality planning. Those processes are more community-led, rather than being top-down. There is still some way to go with that, particularly regarding how more marginalised communities can contribute to the planning process.

Does anyone else want to add to that?

In the interests of time, I will summarise part of our written response. We undertook a review of local outcomes improvement plans, which showed that the majority have very little focus on race equality, despite the guidance that plans should demonstrate an understanding of local needs and circumstances. Although a few plans highlighted specific actions relating to black and minority ethnic communities, the majority did not address those inequalities. Even when inequalities were mentioned, there was no discussion of strategies to tackle and address those inequalities—they were stated, but without any action plan.

I can talk about the preventative approach. One common theme with issues affecting black and minority ethnic communities is that, although there is an acknowledgement of the problem—for example, a mention of high rates of poverty or disproportionate levels of hate crime—that does not translate into preventative action.

Community cohesion is one area in which community planning could have a much stronger role in providing preventative approaches to reducing inequalities. There is a strong relationship between community cohesion, safety and discrimination. We know that a large number of racist hate crimes take place in Scotland, which contributes to a lack of cohesion at local level. There is a need for local solutions.

A good way forward would be to build community cohesion into local outcomes improvement work. That could create better relationships in local communities and could, ultimately, help to prevent hate crime and improve people’s lived experience. One way of helping that to happen would be to consider amending the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 to require CPPs to promote community cohesion.

I do not have an answer about the cluttered landscape. Others will be better placed to answer that question.

I can start with the cluttered landscape. From the viewpoint of an organisation that is external to the processes and does not have a responsibility to comply with them, the landscape feels cluttered. The discussions that we have with officials suggest that it feels burdensome for them.

What then happens is that external organisations gravitate towards the processes in which there is an opportunity to have an influence. I do not know whether LOIPs are seen in that way, partly because, although they are reviewed regularly, they are very long-term processes.

In the local child poverty action report process, there are opportunities to have an influence on what community planning partnerships do—and particularly on what local authorities do—and on how they use resources. We have seen that through the work that we have been involved in in Renfrewshire, where resources have followed engagement. That has been really positive; it is what we want to see. We have seen that in Inverclyde, too.

There is no doubt that the landscape is cluttered and that it is difficult for those of us who are external to say, “This is the important place where decisions will be made.”

You asked whether LOIPs take a preventative approach in addressing inequalities. Those that I have read certainly use the right language. However, I go back to my earlier point about the context that we are working in. The cost of living crisis and the pandemic have radically impacted the ability of community planning partners to follow through on the preventative approach. Quite rightly, they have spent the past three years responding to crises. There is a question about how we can ensure that we take a properly preventative approach as we come out of the crisis that we are in at the moment.

12:15  

You make a really good point that we are coming out of the Covid pandemic and are in a cost of living crisis, and that those have changed what needs to be addressed because urgent things come to the fore.

The next theme is on measuring the impact and use of data, although we have already touched on data. I will bring in Marie McNair, who joins us online.

Good afternoon, panel. My first question has been covered, so I will move on to the next one. Are CPPs and their partners using data to inform targeted interventions and policies?

The evidence that I have is that there is acute awareness of the need to use high-quality data. However, the challenge with some of the data that we are most concerned with, on poverty, is that we need good and timely data from a local level. Income and poverty statistics are always challenging because, generally, they are at best a year out of date when they arrive. Because of the pandemic, they have been even more out of date and less reliable. Getting access to good data on income and poverty is really important, as is supplementing the data where information is not available. As David Allan said, we should think about how we use engagement to supplement the data when there may not be useful sources.

However, there are other experiences. I mentioned Inverclyde, where good work has gone on to make better use of data and to ensure that it is well aligned with the outcomes and targets that are set. There is good evidence of the importance of using data. In work that we are involved with in Midlothian, data has come up as a key issue among community planning partners, which shows that the need for better data is still there.

It is a continuous process because, as new issues are identified, we need to identify data sources to support effective planning.

The national data that we have on homelessness is great. The Scottish Government collects it, and it is collected from people who approach their local authority for support.

We are in a similar situation to that of Peter Kelly’s organisation, but the time lag in receiving homelessness statistics is not as long as it is for poverty statistics; homelessness statistics are roughly five months old by the time that they are published, and they allow for significant comparisons to be made across local authorities.

However, the reason why I used that example is because, in the landscape of social policy, it is hard to attribute changes in data to specific interventions, even if we can drill down and know that a significant number of people are accessing services at the local level. That is because there are gaps in statistics on homelessness, as there are in other statistics, and one thing that is missing from the data is people’s voices. Maybe that is where the local planning mechanisms can come in—it might be indicative of the lack of awareness of the mechanisms at the local level that I am using different language every time that I mention them, so I apologise for that. Maybe community planning mechanisms can come in to engage with people and hear their voices, which are missing from the great-quality data that we have.

There has been a lot of talk today about data and the fact that there is so much data but, in relation to ethnicity in Scotland, we have had a lot of challenges with data availability at the national level. That is exacerbated at the local level—for example, we cannot see what the poverty rates are by ethnicity in local authority areas, which makes it challenging for community planning partnerships to take actions to improve outcomes. As I have highlighted, actions are not targeted on black and minority ethnic groups but, even if they were, we would struggle to have the required level of data to see whether improvements were being made. There are also the complications that Ruth Whatling pointed out.

We do not see any targeted interventions to address the inequalities that black and minority ethnic communities face, which means that gaps can, in theory, widen. There is an opportunity for targeted interventions to take place, as I highlighted, if more interventions are aimed at and focused on communities of interest alongside geographical communities.

Marie, do you have any more questions?

I have a final question, but I think that it has been covered. What are the biggest challenges and barriers to CPPs making the impacts that the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 anticipated?

Does anybody have anything to add on that question? Peter Kelly has an additional comment.

I have some final comments. Community planning partnerships have been tasked with a significant role and have a significant challenge. The biggest challenge that they face is the resources that are available to local partners to deliver on their responsibilities. That is a question of the resources that are available from the Scottish Government and the UK Government.

That is undoubtedly the biggest challenge that we face. Unless more resources go into local community planning partnerships and the various organisations around them, we will struggle to meet some of the long-term outcomes that have been set. The eternal question is how we get more resources into the system—unless we do that, we will continue to have some of those challenges.

We move on to theme 6, which is on culture change in statutory partners.

I will merge a few of my questions. What is the panel’s experience of partnership working in community planning? Where have you seen more collaboration taking place? Has the panel seen a shift towards preventative action? You have touched on the Edinburgh and Midlothian cases, but could you present any further examples, especially in relation to resources?

Who wants to come in first?

No one is leaping at it.

I will pick on Peter Kelly, as he referred to Edinburgh and Midlothian.

That is fine. We are in a position to give examples of good practice, because that is what we are drawn to. When we are drawn into those conversations, it is primarily with local authorities that want to improve practice. Another good example is Argyll and Bute Council. We have done a good deal of work with it and a range of community planning partners and service delivery organisations to improve their understanding of poverty and how it impacts people in the rural context.

You start to see where there is a willingness to do that work, which is in part driven by the plans that are put in place. If plans are put in place for more progress on addressing poverty, and if one of the means to do that is having different partners working together more closely, that drives collaboration.

The community planning process has been useful in helping to foster a greater collaborative approach. Through our work, I can see that really important changes have been made to how Argyll and Bute Council develops plans and puts them in place. That work focuses mostly on addressing child poverty. However, I know from engaging with other third sector organisations in Argyll and Bute that they might not have experienced the same sense of culture change and involvement. It is the same story: we need to spread the lessons relating to engagement and collaboration, even within one community planning partnership area.

I will consider the issue from a slightly different angle. Across Scotland, 26 local authorities now deliver the housing first approach, which is underpinned by the principle of collaboration. It is important that everyone, including the health and housing sectors, comes together to address the individual’s support needs. There are examples across Scotland of such an approach being taken effectively, when there are resources and leadership. There is therefore evidence to show that that approach can have a significant impact. That comes at the issue from an angle that is slightly different from the place approach.

The witnesses have touched on statutory partners throughout the session. Do you believe that anyone who is not included in schedule 1 to the 2015 act should be included? On the flipside, should anyone be excluded from those conversations? We can perhaps start on the positive and think about who should be included.

I guess that I have a question back to you. Housing is an incredibly important foundation for every person. We should consider the risk of experiencing homelessness and the impact that homelessness can have on people. My question is about how we get housing into the local planning mechanisms. Should we do that by requiring a specific part of a local authority to be represented on the group? That question about what is possible goes back to you.

That is not just an issue with the 2015 act. In relation to the integration of health and social care, housing is excluded. It is about creating that opportunity.

I think that David Allan wants to come in on Miles Briggs’s previous question. Please be succinct.

I will not say anything on the previous question, because Peter Kelly and Ruth Whatling have covered what I was going to say.

On the question about who else could be involved in community planning, it is difficult to legislate for non-statutory organisations. However, TSIs have a role in community planning, and it would be well worth considering extending the right to be involved in community planning to local community anchor organisations, such as community-based housing associations, community development trusts and so on, because they have an increasingly leading role in developing and supporting community infrastructure. That would be a good and positive road to go down if we want other groups to be involved on a more equal footing within CPPs.

The Department for Work and Pensions is sometimes involved at a local level. It plays an important part in relation to some of the issues that we are concerned about, so, although I do not think that we could require the DWP to be involved, more structured engagement with it would be really helpful.

We move to our seventh theme, which is on leadership and the role of the Scottish Government and local authorities. I will bring in Willie Coffey.

I have only one question, which is on the importance of leadership. Given the time, I will pick on Kirsty McNeill and ask her to offer an idea or two on the issue. We heard from the previous witnesses about the importance of leadership, but—let us be honest—such leadership is inconsistent across community planning partnerships. Do you agree that leadership is a key ingredient to delivering locally? Do we place enough emphasis on leadership and leadership skills to allow community planning partnerships to have a reasonable chance of success across the board?

I am afraid that we do not have time to go round all the witnesses, but I would be obliged if Kirsty McNeill could give her thoughts on that.

My answer will be fairly short anyway. I obviously agree that leadership is very important in relation to equality and anti-racism. Better leadership is needed in community planning spheres to create the right environment for change.

Specifically, the existing guidance for community planning partners could be strengthened in relation to tackling inequalities and, in particular, as I have highlighted today, inequalities that affect communities of interest. More generally, we should ensure that staff who are involved in community planning have the right equalities knowledge and competence to be able to deliver change for black and minority ethnic communities.

Thank you. If any of the other witnesses has any other points on that, I would be obliged if they could send them to the committee. We are really short of time, so I will hand back to the convener.

That was a great response from Kirsty McNeill. The witnesses have been brilliant. I have been making notes—I try not to make too many—on the things on which we can take action. The session has been very helpful. I apologise that we were pressed for time. We could talk about these issues at length. I appreciate the witnesses joining us today.

We agreed at the start of the meeting to take the next two items in private.

12:31 Meeting continued in private until 12:35.