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We are working with partners on that, and the tripartite group is one of the groups that is helping us to do that. Through that, the Scottish Government, local authorities and the Scottish Allotments and Gardens Society work together.

There has been a slowing down of that work, because of our work on the good food nation. It tends to be the same people who are doing the work, and the good food nation has been prioritised. I do not think that that is necessarily a bad thing, but you are right that there are probably some easy gains that we need to make. However, we need to do that in partnership rather than telling colleagues what to do.

The NPF is still there and still exists, but it is probably useful at this point to recognise that the new deal is not only the Verity house agreement. It is important to say that because those terms are sometimes used as if they mean the same thing.

The Verity house agreement is part of the new deal with local government and is the partnership agreement. There are three other aspects underneath that, one of which is important to what we are talking about here. The first aspect is the fiscal framework, the second is the completion of the local governance review, which we have talked about, and the final strand is the joint work programme, which has an outcomes and accountability framework. That is really important and is the big difference between the Verity house agreement and the concordat.

The concordat served a really important purpose and was transformational at the time. In our new deal with local government, we are learning from some of the challenges of that concordat. Let us be honest: the lack of an outcomes and accountability framework meant that, over time, we reverted to old ways and ring fencing was used as an easy way of ticking a box and sometimes of being accountable to this committee. It is really important that we get the outcomes and accountability framework right. It is not something that we can do overnight, but the Verity house agreement gives us a set of agreed ways of working to achieve an outcomes and accountability framework that we hope will stand us in good stead well into the future.

I have met the leaders of all Scotland’s local authorities and, as part of that, with the leaders of all the political groups. The appetite is clear. Folk see a real opportunity to reset not only for this year and next year but for the long term, and to reset the way in which the Scottish Government and local government work together to benefit our communities.

There is an appetite for change across the parties in a way that did not exist before. That may be due to the fact that there may be a little less flag waving than there was with the concordat. It is clear that we are on a journey and that there is a lot of work to do. The Verity house agreement is a really important part of that process and an important partnership agreement, but it in no way concludes the new deal with local government. It is a starting point to a deal that is about how we are going to work together while respecting both democratic mandates.

There is not much to add. Having that spirit of partnership at the centre of all of our interactions is crucial. Clearly, there will need to be a mechanism for how we deal with disagreement, but, if we have that spirit of partnership as a starting point, I hope that disagreements will be the exception rather than the rule.

I do not think that it is unreasonable for the bodies mentioned by Councillor Heddle that carry out independent scrutiny—scrutiny that goes wider than that by, say, Audit Scotland and the Accounts Commission—to check their processes. The Accounts Commission, in particular, is likely to do that.

However, it is important that those of us with a democratic mandate to serve our constituents in this Parliament respect the democratic mandate that local councillors receive in their elections. If we all sign up to that, we can have appropriate scrutiny. If a policy area is shared, let us have those lines of accountability and ensure that Scottish ministers are challenged on the policy areas that we have set. Ultimately, though, local government will be challenged by its electorate on the decisions that it is making—and there might well be different decisions in different localities.

First, the strategic review group is not new—it involves the Deputy First Minister and the COSLA president meeting to look at, generally, all matters of shared interest. The outputs from that would probably normally be scrutinised through other parliamentary channels rather than directly through that channel.

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.