Seòmar agus comataidhean

Sure.

As Tom Arthur said in the previous evidence session, we expect to get the output of the local governance review by the beginning of next year—I think that “early next year” was the language that he used. A really important on-going piece of work is the “Democracy matters” conversation, but an equally important piece of work involves looking at single authority models, with Orkney Islands Council, Western Isles Council and, I think, Argyll and Bute Council looking at whether such a model will work for them.

As I have been going around local authorities, I have been saying to them, “If there’s something that, two years ago, you thought might not work”—which is where Argyll and Bute Council was a few years ago—“and you want to look at it again, do not hesitate.” Argyll and Bute Council is likely to come forward with a single authority model that it thinks might help it get sustainability. These things need to be worked through in partnership, and that will, I hope, allow us to make the changes. I do not expect these things to be carbon copies of one another. If we end up with three single authority models, I expect that each will be unique and will work for what is right for the area.

I know that other island authorities, particularly Shetland Islands Council, do not want to take the same route. Instead, they talk about the partnerships that they have developed under the current arrangements, and we would hold them up as exemplars.

There is a lot of learning to be done, and any changes that we make in this respect will be looked at by other authorities. I hope that, even if we do not end up with a single authority, the work that we have done in looking at the issue will help us to improve the sustainability of public services as a whole.

The purpose of the 2015 act was to empower communities, so it is reasonable to ask for examples. I will highlight three areas. The first is participation requests, which help people to start a dialogue about the issues that matter in their communities. They allow people to have their voices heard in policy and service development through contributions to decision-making processes, and to challenge decisions and seek support for alternatives, which improves outcomes.

Since 2017, 75 participation requests have been made, which includes community participation and outcome improvement processes for issues such as pier safety, local road improvements, the future of local police offices and improvements to community halls.

The second area to consider is the asset transfer provisions, which is designed to encourage and support ownership and control of assets by communities. Since it came into force on 23 January 2017, 203 asset transfers have been agreed and there are more in progress. They include parks, woodlands, sports and recreational facilities and community hubs. Asset transfer helps to reduce inequalities by ensuring that all communities can be in control of their outcomes and environments.

The final area, which Councillor Heddle mentioned briefly—I might be teeing this up for him—is participatory budgeting, which is a tool for community empowerment that enables local people to have a direct say in how public money is spent. There has been an impressive scaling up of participatory budgeting in Scotland over the past few years, with more than 200,000 people being involved in deciding how money has been spent in their communities

Those are three areas in which we can see real involvement, which shows why it is so important that we keep doing the work to encourage more involvement by and empowerment of communities.

We are generally comfortable that the majority of the changes are not being made by the regulations; the majority of the changes were made by the Planning (Scotland) Act 2019, which is already in place. As I said, we have tried to keep the regulations to a minimum.

As you said, community engagement is really important for community planning, given its focus on improving outcomes and reducing inequalities. Engagement at personal or family level is especially important for households that experience disadvantage, in order that we can understand what matters to those households, so that suitable responses can be shaped around that.

However, direct engagement—using the usual methods—might not always be appropriate, so we need to look at different ways of ensuring that people have the opportunity to have their voices heard on the issues that matter to them, and that they feel confident that their views have been heard.

It has been interesting to hear about examples of CPPs engaging with people in less formal settings, in which they are likely already to be: for example, the North Lanarkshire CPP’s engagement in schools and health centres and the East Ayrshire CPP’s hosting of an annual joint session with its children and young people’s cabinet and local members of the Scottish Youth Parliament. We need to look at how we can do more of that and share such best practice.

What is done will vary because communities are, by their very nature, different and places are different. However, it is good to see examples of CPPs reaching out. The concern, however, is that they are just hearing from the same folk as ever and not from the people who are most impacted by the plans that they intend to take forward.

The Western Isles example shows that there is not a blockage to a connection with Business Gateway or other organisations.

It is important that we work to prevent there being a clutter of different bodies in the landscape, and CPPs are ideally placed to help with that. One example that the committee had was from Community Planning Aberdeen, in which the Aberdeen health and social care partnership used common data. That showed that it is possible to have one set of data that is used by multiple partners.

The challenge as we count more things and expect more reporting is that doing so becomes burdensome. We need to be mindful of that, particularly in what we are trying to do with the new deal for local government. David, do you want to talk a bit about how the groups interface?

We are working with the high-level group to look at the range of skills that are required for the new plans. That is to ensure that we have performance improvement and the necessary reform to support that cross-sectoral approach to the range of skills, including mapping skills, that is needed, and to determine whether additional resource is needed.

Was there anything specific about the mapping that you want to know about? I see that Andy Kinnaird wants to come in.

Part 2 of the act is being reviewed through an informal process, which felt like the appropriate level. It is all about ensuring that we use resources correctly.

I ask David Milne to comment.

Thank you for those comments, which are largely similar to the notes that I have in front of me. LOIPs are really important, and it is important that they are ambitious, yet realistic, with that focus on improvement outcomes and reducing inequalities.

In terms of the concept of the new deal, we need to understand outcomes better and what it is that we are trying to achieve. I will ask Andrew Connal to talk a bit about what that might mean in the context of the new deal.