Seòmar agus comataidhean

It is a work in progress. This committee has done a good job of trying to achieve a balance and, when the Conveners Group met the COSLA leader body recently, we said, “COSLA is an organisation, and the Parliament is an organisation. How can we work together in a better way?” I hope that those are the kinds of things that support the Government to work well with COSLA. It is about creating an atmosphere of respect, as John said.

Before we move on to workforce issues, would you like to make any other comments about what is required from the Scottish Government’s forthcoming budget?

Before I bring in Fulton MacGregor, who is online and has a few questions, I want to pick up on something that was talked about last week, which is now a thread that has started to come through the pre-budget scrutiny. There is a limited envelope and there are different pressures. The pressures that have been highlighted to us are early years provision, free school meals and adult social care—those are the looming pressures that most local authorities face. There has been a call for a national conversation with people about what they should expect from their traditional public services, given that there is a shift in direction—local authorities need to make available that provision, which is important, which means that they need to look at reducing other services, such as libraries.

I want to bring that issue into the scope of the budget challenges piece, because that is the conversation that we are having. There are those three critical areas, but most people maybe do not understand that a big shift is happening. People are going about their daily lives, but they do not understand that there are issues that need to be addressed quite critically and rapidly. We must address the ageing population, as well as the Government commitment in the Verity house agreement around tackling childhood poverty.

I do not know whether I have a question in there, but I want to bring that issue in. Has that come into your thinking?

It was useful that the point that the fiscal framework needs to include the funding formula came up in last week’s meeting. That is the difficult bit. We heard from the smaller local authorities that things have changed in their demographics and that the pressures that they are now seeing are not being covered by the formula.

We will move on to the theme of workforce challenges; you will be glad to know that these are our last few questions.

That is good to hear.

The next item on our agenda is an evidence session on the draft Climate Change (Local Development Plan) (Repeals) (Scotland) Order 2025 with Ivan McKee, the Minister for Public Finance. The minister is joined by Adam Henry, who is a senior planner for the Scottish Government. I welcome our witnesses to the meeting.

The instrument has been laid under the affirmative procedure, which means that the Parliament must approve it before it comes into force. Following the evidence session, the committee will be invited to consider a motion that recommends that the regulations be approved. I remind everyone that officials can speak during this item but not in the debate on the motion that will follow it. I invite the minister to make a short opening statement.

Come on in, Adam; you could just rattle through the numbers.

Thanks for asking that question, Mr Coffey—it is important to be clear that there is no duplication.

I note that Andrew Burns said that local authorities do not welcome being audited, but I think that being audited is part of the relationship—it is like two sides of the walnut, in a way. It creates essential feedback loops for councils to keep them on the straight and narrow, as you said, Mr Burns. That relationship is important.

Before I ask about the invest to save fund, I want to come back to the question that Willie Coffey brought up about councils working with communities. The Minister for Public Finance made a statement to the Parliament on the public service reform strategy, during which he talked about a range of things—he simplified a lot of things—and said that the Scottish Government is going to

“unlock the potential of the third sector”.—[Official Report, 19 June 2025; c 56.]

You talked about the challenge around communities feeling that things are being done to them and the importance of councils being more collaborative and engaging with communities in a way that goes beyond consultation. However, the idea of unlocking the potential of the third sector concerns me because it involves the idea of organisations in the sector—which are mostly run by boards of volunteers—picking up quite a lot of things that public services and local authorities can no longer handle. What are your thoughts on that? Should we be concerned that we are pushing things into the third sector and that that is not a space that has a feedback loop?

That is helpful. Multiyear funding will be good, but we are still looking at a lot of great work that is volunteer run and I imagine that colleagues find the same when they go out to meet development trusts or organisations that are doing that work. I find that there is a smaller pool of people who want to be on boards and take responsibility for compliance and all that kind of thing. That is not your job, but when we talk about the delivery of services by local government, it is good to recognise that things are also moving to the third sector.

I have a question about the invest to save fund. I am interested to hear your views on that and how future iterations of the fund could support more collaboration and flexibility, which are one of the five pillars you would like to see happen.

As no other member wants to ask a question, I turn to agenda item 3, which is the formal consideration of motion S6M-18057.

Motion moved,

That the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee recommends that the Climate Change (Local Development Plan) (Repeals) (Scotland) Order 2025 [draft] be approved.—[Ivan McKee.]

Our next agenda item is evidence taking as part of our scrutiny of the Scottish budget 2026-27. We are joined by Andrew Burns, who is deputy chair of the Accounts Commission; Derek Yule, who is a member of the commission; Blyth Deans, who is an audit director at Audit Scotland; and Martin McLauchlan, who is a senior manager at Audit Scotland. I welcome our witnesses to the meeting. We have around 90 minutes for this discussion. There is no need for witnesses to operate their own microphones. We have agreed that we will direct our questions to Andrew Burns in the first instance, who will distribute them as he thinks appropriate.

I will ask the first question, which is about the commission’s call for transformational change. You said that there is not enough evidence that truly transformational change is taking place, but, last week, one council chief executive told the committee that they had a sense that the use of the word “transformation” was “too loose”. What do you mean when you talk about a transformation? What does a transformed local authority look like? What should local authorities look like in 10 years’ time?