 Ddiolch yn ddatblygu i fynd i'r 15 yst immune yn 2014. Diolch yn ddatblygu i fynd i fynd i fynd i fynd i fynd i fynd i fynd i fynd i fynd i fynd i fynd i fynd i unreアttoedd myfynuol, gydaolion i ailenigol, neu gyntaf i gyflasiwyr sydd wedi ei angendiwyd yn ddiagisio'r system. Roedd y troi sefydlu i panchain o'r wél i gyflasiwyr o'r divided a erbyn dmwylliant. Roedd y troi ei gyflasiwyr o'r pagodd iawn i fynd i fynd i fynd i'r gyrdd ymlaesol. Yma yw i gyd yn ei bwysig gyda thaith efallai mwy o ddechrau ddegun â ddegwn i gynnwys 3, 4, 5 i gyd yn ei bwysig, felly i gyd yn ei bwysig i gynnwys ei wneud, panwn i gynnwys 4 a 5 i gynnwys 3 i gynnwys 2? Yn y rhan o gyd yn ei bwysig i gynnwys 3 i gynnwys 4 i gynnwys 3, 5, 5 i gynnwys 3 i gynnwys 4, 5 nid am y grwys i gynnwys 1, 5 i gynnwys 2. A i gynnwys hyn yw i gynnwys I would like to welcome the panel, Councillor Mac Roberts, leader of the Scottish Conservative Group on Perth and Kinross Council, Councillor Steve Burgess, leader of the Scottish Greens and the City of Edinburgh Council, Councillor Susan Aitken, leader of the SNP group on Glasgow City Council and Councillor Peter McNamara, leader of the Scottish Labour Party on North Ayrshire Council. Welcome, and any of you would like to make any opening remarks. No, in which case we'll move straight on to questioning. One of the things that some members of the committee have done is gone to Germany, Sweden and Denmark to look at local government and how it operates in these countries, and obviously they have a constitutional standing there and various other legal frameworks to show the positioning of local government within the governance of these countries. Can I ask you, do you think it would be helpful if there was a constitutional place for local government? Obviously we have the Concordat, which has dealt with some matters, but we're interested in what you think about a constitutional place. Can we really start with Councillor Burgess? Yes, thank you, convener, and thanks to the committee for inviting me to give evidence to you this morning. Yes, as you say in many other European countries, the place of local government is protected and enshrined within the constitution of that country. I do feel that that would be a useful thing to happen for local government in Scotland. Of course, if Scotland becomes an independent country following the referendum and there is the proposal to have a constitution that might provide an opportunity for local government to be enshrined in a new constitution, I feel that it's important because it would give local government a standing on its own in the eyes of the people and the public. It wouldn't be at the behest of the central government to change or abolish that standing. Along with the existence of local government in the constitution, you could also enshrine some of the responsibilities of local government as well, not only its existence. That, I understand, is the case in other European countries at the moment. I think that that would be a welcome move. Thank you for asking me along here today to give my opinion on these questions. Constitutional, we don't have a constitution, so it's very difficult to enshrine local government in a constitutional format. I personally think that flexibility is all and the ability of being able to change things more easily without being bound by constitution is the way forward. I would slightly disagree with that. I honestly believe that in all the time that I have been involved in local government, there has been a discussion about parity of esteem, and it's about the parity of esteem that I am keen on because, like the previous speaker, Councillor Steve Burgess, I do believe that it should be enshrined in the constitution in order to protect it, but also to give it its place in society, in Scottish society, so I am very keen that we have a protection, if you like, within the constitution. The other part that you make about protecting the activities of local government is another crucial part of what we would be looking for. Certainly, I have a fear of a centralising agenda no matter who the party is, and the talk at the minute is centralising, for example, education. Now, I have a real fear that that could happen, and unless and until we get it protected in local government, then that is something that we should all be extremely concerned about. Yes, I would largely agree with what Councillor Burgess said and much of what Councillor McNamara said. I would absolutely, in the event that we have a constitution in Scotland, it would be absolutely right to have local government enshrined in that constitution in the same way that Councillor Burgess described. In terms of powers, that is obviously a discussion for whatever method we come up with across Scotland for devising a constitution. I think that flexibility has to be there, the way forward in local government from the Christie's commission, and just generally the view is partnership. Powers that we enshrine for local government, we should be aware, may be powers that are shared with other organisations and other bodies in the future. In terms of the status, the parity of esteem, as Councillor McNamara said, and the place of local government in Scottish society, that would be an extremely useful thing. Perhaps its biggest impact would be in the confidence of local government, if you like. There is perhaps always inevitably going to be a certain amount of tension between central government and local government, regardless of the party political setup at any one time, but having the confidence and the assuredness of a constitutional position would allow local government perhaps to relax a little bit and maybe innovate more within that context, knowing that it has that protection. Thank you very much. That is very useful. We have just talked about parity of esteem. Councillor Burgess talked about the standing in the eyes of the public, and Councillor Aitken mentioned place. One of the things that is the situation in European countries is much, much higher turnout for local government elections. Do you think that parity of esteem, that place, the standing in the eyes of the public, actually helps to get those higher turnouts in these other countries? Councillor McNamara, do you want to start this time, please? I could not honestly answer whether there would be a greater turnout in an election, but in my experience, the electorate, when I go to the electorate, have the understanding of the workings of local government is not widely understood, and I don't know whether that is because people either don't care or they don't understand the power of local government until they need something, and that's when they start to stand up and shout at local government whenever there's a difficulty, but it's never when something goes well, for example, litter collection in the streets aren't dirt anymore in people, so whether that would make people come out and vote, I couldn't honestly say what would make people come out and vote though, is if there was an understanding that it had protection, that there was a greater understanding of the work that councils do, and I don't think we do enough to educate and to inform the electorate of the work that we do. We try very hard settling in North Ayrshire, but it's whether people view it as a powerful organisation, i.e. that if they don't get what they want, they will go to the next higher level, for example, your MSP or your MP, and it's that parity of esteem that I'm looking for. Once you gain that, and once people understand where the council is in the scheme of things, then I think they would be much more likely to participate in voting for the individual in their particular area to protect the facilities and the services that they get. Sir Roberts, please. Thank you. First, I'd just like to say that you have to earn it. Secondly, when your question about turnouts in European local elections, well, I think I only know the French system, and it operates at a far lower level than our current system, and I think the thing there is that people know who the mayor is, people know who his councillors are, whereas our local authorities, many people do not know who their local councillor is, they don't even know who the provost is. So I think if you get down to an ideal, there must be an ideal size of a unit, at which point people feel more involved in the locality, they know the people involved, and therefore they're prepared to turn out and vote for them in a local election, and these elections are hard fought, I know that. Thank you. Councillor Burgess, please. Thanks, convener. Yes, in Edinburgh, as in other parts of Scotland, we have experienced low voter turnouts in the last local government election in Edinburgh, so a turnout just under 40 per cent, a wee bit higher than the rest of the country, but it's still very low and worryingly across different polling districts that can vary as much from 7 per cent turnout to 60 per cent turnout, so clearly people are choosing not to take part in elections. I would agree that, at least to some extent, esteem has to be earned, and I think in Edinburgh we've had our challenges about maintaining esteem for local government with some very challenging issues recently, including the tram and shared repair service, and the council is obviously working to rebuild its esteem with local people over those. I think that a constitutional enshrining local government in a constitution, I think, would help raise the esteem, but I think fundamentally to address people's willingness to take part in local government election, you really need to make local government relate to people's lives, and they need to feel that local government is making decisions and has power, including overraising local taxes, that affects their lives. So, whilst the constitutional enshrining might be important, I think that there are other things that people will get to later in the discussion that would help with low turnout and low engagement with the council. I don't think that constitution, in and of itself, will directly improve turnout, and I think that, as other witnesses have said, there's a much wider range of issues at stake to do with political engagement generally and to do with the esteem with which politicians are held, regardless of which level they're elected at. I think, though, that where the constitution could have an impact is in this issue of exactly what Councillor Burgess was saying there about engagement and about directly empowering communities and citizens and neighbourhoods. It comes back to this question of a constitutional protection giving local authorities, both local government as a body and individual local authorities, the confidence in their own status to then start to devolve their own power down and start to empower their electors and their communities much more. If they feel that they're not threatened and if local government feels that its status isn't threatened, it can perhaps start to let go some of its power a little bit more and stop thinking about ceding power but think more about sharing power with the people who actually elect it directly and that I think will be where we need to make the difference in order to start to raise turnout and raise political engagement generally is to make people feel involved and give people that direct involvement and empower them to be involved. Councillor McNamara, you want to come back in? I wholeheartedly agree with that and the way that you do gain esteem is if the local elected representative is seen to be working within the community not just dictating to it and the one of the things that we've enacted within our area is locality planning whereby an area is selected or they have to be selected and all of the services that should be working in that area, for example police, social work, community workers, wardens, the housing department, cleansing, all of that come together to address the issues within that locality but crucial to that is the elected representative to be working not directing but actually on the ground working within the area to be seen and to be taken up the issues that have been raised that way if they are seen to be hard working locally elected representatives their esteem will rise and the community will then understand much better the activities of local government where they need to go to get a problem solved how they can get it solved but most crucially that local community is empowered the work of the local community is taking the council forward not the other way about and for me that is crucial to the future of local government that we have to empower local communities and in order to do that we need more resources to go in and that's just my first bid for some resources. Okay, we're probably going to talk about many of these things as we go along. Cameron Buchanan, first of all, please. Good morning, thank you very much indeed. You mentioned the turnout in local elections. Do you think the advent of multi-walled councils has had any impact on the turnout and would you all be in favour of keeping the system? Definitely and I think the advent of PR in local government is probably the best thing to happen to local government in Scotland for a very long time and there's no doubt that it's completely opened up our democracy at local level and at any sort of return to the way it used to be the unrepresentative political way I think would be a real step backwards for local government in Scotland. Certainly just speaking from my own point of view, to get a wee bit parochial, the word that I represent is a three-member word and the three councillors are all from different parties and I think that works very well and it works to the benefit of the word. We have and I know that other councils have similar sort of set-ups area partnership committees which we meet with members of the community and also people from local police for example, local housing association, local minority ethnic forum, those kinds of organisations and make decisions primarily around small grants but also on things like the local police strategy and the fact that there are three of us who are elected members directly elected members from different political backgrounds with different perspectives but working together very much in the interests of the neighbourhood and not working on a party political basis in that context although we might do in other parts of the council and other committees is positively advantageous. I think it's better for local communities. The trick is to expand and extend that. The way that we've started and it is at its very early stages in Glasgow certainly that we've started to bring the community into direct decision making about where funding is allocated about how strategies are implemented at very local level. The trick is to start to expand that working and that's where you start to have the impact on turnout. How have you done that? It's through community councils or what? Yes, community councils, it's through the community planning process so it's the sort of lowest level of the community planning process in Glasgow if you like is at ward level and so there are representatives from each community council and in my own ward where there are three community councils represented we also have other community organisations and community representatives that doesn't work everywhere of course because there are some parts of the city where there aren't active community councils where there's a real dearth of community councils it so happens that I represent a fairly affluent ward where people are fairly active the community councils are quite engaged so it does work well for us it doesn't necessarily replicate everywhere else and there's still a big job to do. The single transferable vote system had no impact whatsoever on turnout it made it neither better nor worse but I would say it's also the way forward I wouldn't like to see it changed I think my ward there's three councillors or three of us and we all work together all from different parties and that certainly works you have to work for your community as councillor Mack the man who says you dictate your community at your peril working with communities is difficult it's good for it's easy for councillors because they know their patch but it's very difficult getting groups of people together except on single issues it's very difficult to get a group like community councils there are community councils in all in every single community in my ward but I know in parts of Perth there are none so who do you consult with there it is difficult. I would agree that the introduction of the proportion representation STV election didn't have an effect on voter turnout but that first election was coupled with a scotch parliament election so it's probably hard to separate to the most recent council election in which it was a standalone council election saw a reduction in voter turnout but there's no evidence that that is to do with proportional representation I would argue actually that without proportional representation the turnout might have been actually lower people have got more choice clearly to elect councillors who represent their views under a PR system and have councillors who represent their views act for them and act in the council and so I think that's been very healthy in a number of councillors now my own party is represented by single members or small small groups and so we have been able to represent people in the community who share the similar political views to ours residents because of PR they now have a choice about who they come to within a ward indeed they can come to one councillor or several at a time and set us off against each other in my own ward we actually work we got four parties represented but we actually work very collaboratively on issues that are of concern to the community and and to individuals these are largely that people aren't concerned about party political issues they're concerned about delivery of services and so on and those are things that local councillors can can work together on and indeed we also have we have a neighbourhood partnership model in the council that brings together representatives of the community councils and councillors and voluntary organisations and the police together to form a neighbourhood partnership covering a couple of wards or so those have been interesting what I would say is that the level of what's tried to do is to devolve down some spending to these neighbourhood partnerships and I think that's very key in terms of getting people interested in local government and so on but I would say that that spending is still probably 0.1% of the council budget only so there are decisions about environment projects roads and community grants that are devolved down to these neighbourhood partnerships but I don't think it's reached the level at which the general wider community have seen the value of that and it's the neighbourhood partnerships are still probably only engaging a very limited number of people in the community the only point I would like to make is that it's not simply down to war level that we work it's down to street level there are maybe half a dozen streets that we could get together and the big issue for my community and what I've seen is a change in their attitude and their respect for the individuals who are doing creating or providing the services for example there is a change of emphasis and attitude towards the police because the police are no longer them they are now part of the community and the police have changed because the I do recall a very first man I had with the local constabulary and they said look Peter I'm not a social worker I'm a policeman I arrest people a lot them up well that has changed because they now understand the community they are there to serve and they now understand the difficulties of those communities and not a lot better than they did before now for me that has changed not only the attitude of the residents who by it's not community councils they set up their own groups I for example have set up about six seven tenants residents groups one chairman of which who had never chaired a meeting before in the life she stood against me in the council now I welcome that because that meant she had learned and was growing and developing and that's what it's all about it's about empowering people and not simply at a ward level I have to say though that at a ward level you're absolutely right if they don't get the answer from me they go to somebody else and they say Peter might not matter said this and you have that conflict at times whether you like it or not but I have to say that the three members that I have worked with I've got four member ward all different parties all recognise that ultimately we have to work together because if we don't then the person who suffers is a community and that is a bad reflection on all of us so we don't do that. If STV isn't the answer to better turnout in local elections what in your opinion is going to help better turnout in local elections? On you go through Councillor Mattyn Amara. Clearly from what I've been saying to you my understanding would be that once people are empowered once they understand the power they have they're more likely to exercise that right to vote and I said right to the outset I do believe that communities don't fully appreciate the work and the services that councillors do on their behalf but they also don't understand the power that they have to influence those people and when I joined the council I was a telephone engineer and I joined because I was in a volunteer trade union I stood politically to win the award. Ultimately I became so immersed in my community I forgot about the politics in fact I've been disciplined by the Labour Party but it's down to empowering people for me and it's not about me doing it it's about giving people the opportunity to do it for themselves and I think that's the most important part. Thank you very much for that. Stuart McMillan please. Thank you. Can we follow on from that line of questioning? Do you think the size and the structure of the local authorities that we have in Scotland are correct or would you amend them? Okay can we start with Councillor Roberts please and I think I may have misread a signal from you earlier so if you want to add anything to what was asked previously please feel free to do that. Well I was just going to say that I feel that if we want to revitalise local government at the lowest level I think we should fund, we should give community councils budgets to operate services directly in their locality, grass-cutting, dog warden service, play parks et cetera and I would think if we did that we might find all these local these community councils which are currently in a bans would start up again because they would have the power to deliver services that people really really worry about a lot, they come to me a lot about these sort of small relatively small issues and I think that would that would be a start in getting people really involved in local government. Okay can I ask what is to stop councils doing that right at this moment in time? I don't know why we don't do it. I think we should. Councillor Burgess? Yes just I think size is very important in terms of encouraging voter turnout because if people feel that decisions are being made that affect them in their local area they're more likely to be engaged and interested in that. We've had a report done, our party had a report done by land reform campaigner Andy Wightman I think the committee's aware of that report or renewing local democracy in Scotland but in that report showed a very clear correlation between voter turnout and the size of local government and as local government has contracted in Scotland and been consolidated so turnout has has lowered as well whereas in in other countries where local government is smaller and closer to the people people are more engaged and motivated to take part in in in in the in the local government so Andy Wightman's paper suggests a figure of about 20 000 per municipality that could be empowered to make decisions on a local level but our party hasn't formally discussed any you know specific sizes but it's obviously a much I think the size of local government units now in Scotland are about 170 000 each something like that and his recommendation is 20 so you see that and that that's a huge difference in in the size of the unit so I think you know that must you question much much smaller would bring people in they'd actually be taking part you'd have many more people actually representing their local areas it wouldn't just be councillors you'd have many more people who are actually representatives and that would increase participation itself. I know there's lots of evidence about the and I read some of Andy Wightman's report as well and I know that some of your previous witnesses to this community have talked about that evidence that the smaller the size of local government the more people are inclined to engage with it electorally and just day to day and I know that's the kind of the evidence from other countries but I would say that I do think that we can do a lot more with what we've got just now I think the structures that we have currently may well not be perfect but we have tools and we have the ability within those structures and it's up to individual councils to use them and to have the will to to themselves devolve and an embrace of severity. Glasgow is probably the most kind of classic example of where this needs to happen it is a very big council and most individual citizens in Glasgow will see the council as a monolith which doesn't actually bear very much relation to them in their neighbourhoods or their streets and their day to day lives and so of course there's going to be a lack of engagement when that's the perception and to a large extent the reality. Glasgow has started to talk about things like community budgeting it has started to use the community planning process it's starting to talk about it's following Edinburgh's lead in trying to be a cooperative council again at very early stages there are a lot of things that are possible at the moment I would say they're far from embraced as much as they should be but the possibilities are there I think the community planning structures the community empowerment bill when it comes will give us a great deal of scope to think about how we actually do these things and I also think there's other things going on in terms of policy which conversely some people might have characterised them as centralisation but they actually give us opportunities for for subsidiarity and for local empowerment and local involvement like having the Scottish police force for example I would say that in actual fact the direct engagement and involvement with the police in my ward is now greatly improved and that the impact the input that you know albeit at the moment a fairly small group of citizens but the input that they have into a very very local policing plan is enhanced from the way it was previously I think health and social care integration gives a similar kind of opportunities and similar kind of scope at the moment the area partnerships that I talked about in Glasgow the in terms of budgeting all they really have just now is is relatively small grants but the opportunities for them with perhaps an expanded membership to look at for example the health and social care budget for the award particularly perhaps around health improvement and public health issues I think are absolutely myriad and bringing health and social care together in an integrated structure gives gives us the opportunities to do that and again I think one of your previous witnesses I think it might be Professor Mitchell had said that we need to stop thinking that the only people who are entitled or who have the right to make decisions at local level are those who've been directly elected because the reality is that our communities are absolutely full of people who are incredibly engaged who know their communities who know what is what is necessary for improving ordinary people's lives and we need to have we need to have the courage and we need to have the will to give them the ability to make decisions about their neighbourhoods. I have to disagree with the police part of it because I didn't know that 220 odd officers are walking about with guns and there is no democratic control over that so that has a real concern for me but in saying that I think the engagement with our local community started before the centralisation of the police service I think they were well engaged in my community and have been for for some time as I've already pointed out but I would not advocate change in local government again I I've come through the last change and I do not wish to go through that again apart from waste of money I think you're absolutely right there are tools already available to us to work within our communities but we also have pieces of legislation for example asset transfer the community empowerment bill these are tools that we could be using to enhance the lives of the communities we seek to represent and we shouldn't be afraid of them I have to say that there are some councillors who said to me and I'll quote they said to me to create a residence group you're only creating a stick to beat yourself with and that is a modern day thought and it's a frightening thought because if there are councillors out there who think that by engaging with the community it's somehow creating a stick to beat yourself with then why goodness sake why the standard for election in the first place so I actually believe we should be engaging with much more of a community and I think we do have the tools to do it but for goodness sake let's not start changing local government again hello hello sir could I just make a service and a centralisation again it's centralisation most of the the crime that certainly certainly affects people in my locality and it's a rural very low crime area is minor crime anti social behaviour things like that now we have community safety wardens we have traffic wardens we may end up eventually possibly taking the the european model where they have different types of police forces you have a central service that deals with major crime and you might have a local police service as well which deals with minor crime that would give that would give people a better chance to to to feel that they they have more in control and councils would be more in control of minor crime before I take Mr McMillan back in one of the things which I'm interested in obviously for for many areas it's the first time that there have been ward policing plans can I ask you is it the first time for for your own area to have ward policing plans and have they gone down well with the public obviously councillor eight can has covered that to a degree but is it councillor robert's is it a new thing ward policing plans and person can Ross police locally have always worked well with us they attend community council meetings and I think to be honest that's the best thing that they actually do that they become a local presence to sit there they take notes and the report on crime in the area which is frankly almost non-existent but I think that that contributes a lot but the the major problem I find and I think people do find the community is the constant changing of the police presence you just get used to one senior officer or even one local officer and he's changed but was there ward policing plans previously and yes person can Ross their work cancer matter what policing plans yes they're a fairly new initiative I'm a convener of a community justice authority so I remember the introduction of them but as I say Steven house introduced community sorry warden community policing and I welcome it my fear is that we do we no longer have control over how that is implemented and if somebody changes for example Steven house goes and somebody else comes in and says the priority is no longer community policing what control do I have over that what community control do we have over that and I would suggest that we would have none and so the warden yet we do have ward policing plans but it fits in with our locality planning which is down to street level not simply down to the ward in terms of what you've already said to cancer ache and do you think that that the public themselves have more say over policing in their areas with the implementation of ward policing plans and I take it from what you've said Glasgow didn't have that previously and they had relatively local policing plans but they were on they weren't down to a single ward area the for example in my area it was previously it was two wards which were side by side but it so happens that the neighbouring ward to mine is considerably bigger and has a very different kind of criminal justice needs and local issues and it dominated in terms of the local policing plan so the the difference between moving even from from two wards down to one ward has been significant and yes I I do think that there is more input and I think there is there is more engagement I would say that our community sergeant has we've had him maybe we're just lucky but we've had a consistent presence from him certainly albeit in the relatively short time that I've been a councillor and he is now a member of the area partnership he wasn't before he would just be an attender so there is there is direct discussion he's not simply presenting a plan to the members of the community councils and the other organisations who sit at that partnership anymore the whole partnership is sitting down and drawing up that plan and and deciding what the priorities should be so that's that's the real difference there and I think I think it's a significant difference actually yes well neighborhood policing isn't isn't new to Edinburgh and the city has been you know developing ways of working directly with the police I think there've been some concerns that with the advent of police Scotland that that the community focus may have been diluted there are still community plans in place and Edinburgh actually also directly funds 44 community police and they have their own performance indicators which the police are to report back to the to the council on the the duties of these police cover I wonder if it would be possible to just go back to the question that you said about what's to stop local government doing it now because I think it's just a very maybe an important point my understanding is in Edinburgh when we move to try to devolve down some spending to neighborhood partnerships that the councillors had to be involved in those neighborhood partnerships in order to give to sanction or approve the spending of those neighborhood partnerships now I'm not absolutely clear on this but I think there may be a legal impediment to councils just devolving down spending to local level to community councils or whatever the a new what that legal impediment was no I'm not absolutely clear I'm sorry just an impression I have but I just wanted to flag that up because you know if it's if if it's important that we do devolve down and there is a barrier then maybe that has to be addressed if there is a barrier and we find a barrier then we will certainly look at that but I think one of the things which we have been finding is you know where there is the possibility of devolution of budgeting it seems that folks say that there are difficulties but yet we've yet to find somebody who says has been able to say what that difficulty actually is and sorry Mr McMillan. Thank you convener certainly one of the other points that has came up not just certainly with this particular piece of work but certainly with other strands of work that this committee has undertaken it has been the issue of of powers for local authorities and we have heard evidence certainly in this particular inquiry in terms of trying to obtain more powers for local authorities for more powers to be devolved to local authorities now if that actually were to be the case one of the issues that we have certainly have faced is that there really has been kind of not any concrete proposals for what the local authorities would actually do with a with additional powers but b with the additional financial autonomy and I'm just I'm keen to try to kind of obviously get your opinions on that because there is a bit of a gap there in terms of evidence that we've received going through this particular inquiry. Mr McMillan, do you want to go first on that one? Can I say it goes back to what we were talking about earlier I am more keen to be using the powers we have at the minute better rather than seek more powers because what you're talking about goes back to your earlier question is about changing local government again and I think we're only just through a changing local government I think we're still coming to terms with the powers that we have my fear is that some of them are being centralised and I think that's what I'm suggesting to you possibly local government hasn't demonstrated properly the the way that it can use its powers at the minute so I think what I'm starting off by saying right at the outset I want to protect what we've got I would like to see it in the constitution and I would like to see us demonstrate to our local communities the use of those powers an awful lot better than we have to date. I think that's it. We're already gaining powers in some ways through some of the policy direction that's coming about and I'd come back to health and social care integration. While the new health and social care partnerships will obviously mean that local government shares its responsibility for adult social care services with the the NHS board in return the NHS board will share its responsibility for primary care services with with local government so that those creation of those partnerships actually gives local authorities oversight and direct democratic oversight over areas of the health service that it didn't have previously. So you know it's not a one-way street in terms of the the the thing around centralisation which is I think it's something we we we get to hung up on sometimes without wanting to you know suggest that it's all right to to consistently chip away at local government. I think I mentioned earlier the way forward is thinking about partnership so we should always be thinking about where power is best shared that we think of that as sharing rather than than having power removed or or or seeding power and because if that's what delivers the best outcomes then then that's that's what we should we should be up for. Can I pose one quick question is on the partnerships? Do you think that that the sharing agenda and the partnership approach is actually the best method to empower local communities? I think it's at the kind of the high level partnerships like the health and social care partnerships I think there is plenty of flexibility there to allow health and social care partnerships in for example an area like Glasgow to then use that structure to go down and have neighbourhood partnerships for example if that's what they choose to do and I would hope that that will happen once that process of setting up those partnerships has kind of been completed and gone through its cycle if you like. Thinking about yeah absolutely at a more local level at a neighbourhood level yes that's that's how we should be thinking if we think in the spirit of partnership all the time if we think of partnership with third sector organisations partnership with housing providers with tenants organisations with residents associations with community councils with all the myriad of local organisations that exist then you know in my own ward for example there's a number of kind of community projects that are setting up community gardens and urban crafts and things like that there's all sorts of really interesting things going on there if we think as a council that we are working in partnership with those people then yes that's the right route to start to empower them and empower other citizens who are not necessarily directly involved in organisations who are not necessarily members of things but who see the difference that those organisations make in their own street and in their own communities yes that is a route to empowerment and I would say that's the mindset that we should be getting ourselves into if we're serious about about empowering communities and then as a result increasing engagement increasing turnout and all the other things that you know it takes us it's a virtuous circle if you like it takes us back to the question in the beginning of the session yes thanks I think it is the case that the powers of local authorities have been eroded previously had control over water and sewerage and further education and most recently the police has been taken away from local authorities on the other hand local authorities have had some new powers and one of those is power over local energy supplies and we're very keen to promote that in Edinburgh proposed an energy services company for Edinburgh which should have the ability to reduce costs and generate revenue for the council but I think key for me is fiscal powers for the for the local authority and in Edinburgh like other local authorities you know 70 percent of our funding comes directly from central government 20 percent through the council tax and 10 percent through now 10 percent through fees and charges but of course the council tax element most recently has been frozen by central government and certainly in my party we're quite critical of that approach because we feel that that it removes the ability of local government to of course fund itself and and for the people to make decisions about how the council tax should be set but also so it has a funding impact but it also has an impact on how people proceed local government and and they're part in determining you know who governs them and how they govern them financially so you know for example at the moment it wouldn't be possible for my party to make a proposal at a in a manifesto an election to increase council tax by x percent to invest in services or infrastructure in our city. What is that responsible for you to do that? Well of course you know technically we could raise council tax but the finance minister has made it clear to councils that if they were to do that they would lose an element of their block funding so for Edinburgh the moment that would be about £9.5 million we would lose in the grant from central government this would mean we would have to increase council tax by so much that we'd actually lose most of the money that we got by the increase in council tax. Is it possible for any party to go in a manifesto to say that they were going to raise council tax? Practically and politically it's it wouldn't be possible to do that okay but just just to say so I think the power to vary council tax is key but there are also other fiscal powers that local government could have and are presently denied and we have direct experience of that in Edinburgh when the transient visitor levy was proposed there was cross party support for that but when we went to central government to ask about the feasibility of that we were told we didn't have the power to do it and what's more they weren't about to give us the power to do it so there are other financial mechanisms that are currently blocked to councils and so in terms of fiscal powers I think it's key that as in other countries local government has a control over a good proportion and I know that 50 percent is being talked about of the money that it raises and that would we think that would would pull in people see the importance of local government over their over their lives over their finances and also local government if it raised 50 percent of its income it would be far more responsible for seeing that that money was spent wisely because people would hold them very much more to account about that. Can I ask you in terms of central government blocking you from bringing in the hotel bed tax which can you define central government there for us? No it was Fergus Ewing actually who I think may say but although I think the finance minister did say something about it as well but statements were made in Parliament in answer parliamentary questions and I wasn't party myself to negotiations that happened between the council administration and the government but I'm assured by existing coalition that they did make representation to the government about it and were turned down. I'm happy to have more detail on who said what about it in government. We'll look at that and any other information you can provide would be useful. In evidence to this committee Hugh Dunn who I think is your director of finance at Edinburgh said the public generally generally do not look at how much comes from government grant how much comes from what used to be non-domestic rates and how much comes from council tax they just look at the quantum so generally we show total resources that the council has. Do you agree with Mr Dunn or do you think the last bit? The last sentence is they just look at the quantum so generally we show the total resources that the council has. Generally we show the... Yeah we were talking about the accounts but you know basically he was saying that the public are not really interested and where the money comes from they're just interested in the total. Do you agree with that? I think the public are probably most interested in what hits them in the pocket and the council tax is one of those things and obviously the council tax freeze has been very popular. People are very glad their council tax hasn't risen but you know there is another aspect to that which is that if for example in Edinburgh we had been able to raise council tax just by inflation over the period of the freeze we would have had something in the order of £210 million extra to invest in local infrastructure and services and right now the council is I think has a £50 million whole in its infrastructure investment including £25 million in schools and so you know it's a very it's a very raw issue and very pertinent issue I think. You could also argue that if you raise taxation at this time you might may actually put more folk into a situation where they actually need to use the resources but you know I'm playing devil's advocate here in some regards. Councillor Roberts. More power for local authorities. We've lost police, we've lost fire and I think there's a fear that education might be next so rather than worrying about getting more powers I think the worry is hanging on to the ones that we have but I don't think we should get too hung up on lines you know you lose that there's a line it's gone and you have no influence. We're now working in the as Councillor Aiken said the health and social care partnership now are we ceding powers there are we gaining them are we gaining something from the national health service or are they gaining from us well there's no clear division there anymore we're working with others so we're not ceding powers we're not gaining powers I don't think we should worry too much about that as far as infrastructure costs I can't just I'd like to mention that we can you can borrow from the public works loan board for infrastructure it's only really revenue you should be worrying about when we when we talk about council tax but as far as powers go which ones would we which would which ones would person can loss like to have which additional powers well I don't think there's any at the moment. We have got a huge amount of questions to go through you I've got lots of members so if we keep the questions very brief now and the answers brief as well folks so we can get as much and as we possibly can I'd be grateful. Mark McDonnell yeah there's been some chat about the engagement with communities and one of the things which I'm struck by is that there seems to be an awful lot of talking going on but how much is that talking actually influencing the decisions that the councillor then taking because if all communities are getting is a nice chat with their local councillors but then the council administration are taking actions which the communities don't feel involved with or empowered within does that not mean essentially that communities aren't really involved or engaged they just get to have a nice chat with their local councillors. Sir Roberts first please. I think that it is very difficult I work with communities I work with my ward as do my other two colleagues and it is difficult getting communities together for anything rather than one off building a new church or a new football pitch you can get people together to work on that basis but whenever the project is finished they go so if you're going to be working with communities it is difficult working with community councils is the only permanent structure that's there that we can work with others come and go but maybe that's just the way it's going to be but I think I think in my ward certainly it's a very prosperous ward where people they just expect the services to be like Tesco's they go in if they need a tin of beans they go to Tesco's they go wherever it is and they buy the tin of beans they get it and they go away they don't personally you know they don't want to be involved with Tesco's buying policies or worrying about where the tin of beans comes from and I think they just they just expect the services to be delivered and and that's basically what we do but we do try to work with communities and on single issues very successful. Sir Matt Nomara please. I would disagree with that I think it's very easy to work with communities if you put your mind to it and it's not just simply about sitting down and having a chat with your local councillor and as I've been trying to explain to you it's about empowering that community a couple of streets came to me something like 120 to 140 houses predominantly young families and a mixture slightly older ones but the problem was that they were having trouble with vandalism graffiti etc so I called them eating in the local hall some 70 to 80% of the residents turned up we got the police along but we most importantly set up a residence group and we tackled not just the policing issue it turned out it was two young people in the street were causing problems that was resolved the graffiti was removed we then looked at street lighting pavements roads the back gardens fenced them off roofs were done windows were done all of the other ancillary problems that were facing that community faced were dealt with now it wasn't dealt with overnight it's patience that has to be what all that community wanted to know was that they were actually in the plan that the community the council were putting together and in fact they influenced that plan that's the most important thing but for me the real story was that one old woman was out in her garden and her next door neighbour started to speak to her and they engaged with each other not simply with the councillor or the the police the important thing was that community as I say at these meetings you know coronation streets got a lot to answer for you know you go in and you shut their curtains and you don't communicate with your next door neighbour that's the big problem but what they do is and still do they still meet that seven years later that's not just having a wee chat that's actually caring about your community and I've done that in several areas in my ward and it's being copied but it takes a lot of hard work on behalf of both the community and the council. I think it's a very mixed picture there's definitely I mean I could I could cite examples of the kind of thing that Councillor McNamara is talking about where genuine difference has been made by engagement at local level and at absolute neighbourhood level not just ward but undoubtedly I think there is a gulf between what is being talked about in terms of community involvement community engagement through the community planning process and what is actually happening now that's partly because it's relatively early for certainly for Glasgow and I'm sure for a lot of other councils they're really just starting to get to grips with these ideas in a lot of cases things like community budgeting for example and it hasn't got to the point where people on the ground will start to to feel the impact of it and feel the engagement but there's also an issue about one part and I can only really speak for Glasgow in this I suppose but one part of the council talking about these things and having I think genuinely good aspirations to involve communities while another part perhaps does the rather old-fashioned way of going about imposing changes on people very often those are communities of interest you might call rather than geographical communities so a particular group of service users in Glasgow I would say older people and people learning disabilities and their carers have been particular issues recently and have had a whole number of problems where the way of going about changing services and reconfiguring services which is something we all recognise is necessary particularly in the current financial climate but nonetheless it's been pursued in such a way that it's enormously alienated people and there's been a real loss of confidence and trust so yeah there is definitely there's still a gulf between aspirations in some parts of the council and those being carried through to be in a culture that the entire local authority has signed up to of genuine engagement and genuine involvement and we're still quite a long way from achieving that. Sir Burgess please. Yes, thanks. My group and the council are very keen on the issue of participation and we recognise that it's not where it should be. The people's service that they do in Edinburgh every year 5,000 people shows that about 40% of people don't feel that they have any influence about council decision making so we've been proposing a number of practical measures within the council in terms of people engaging with the council so things like pushing early consultation on the council budget and really responding to what people say about the budget, the webcasting of meetings which is being rolled out at the council, the setting up of a petitions committee, participatory budgeting has been pioneered in the Leith Ward in Edinburgh by one of our councillors, Councillor Chapman. So we're doing what we can and the council, be fair, is also setting up the coalition. They're very keen on the co-operative approach and a number of projects in key areas, such as energy, adult care and housing to try to bring forward co-operative models working with the community. Having said all that, I feel that there is probably a limit to what you can do with existing structures. We have neighbourhood partnerships, we have community councils, community councils in Edinburgh involve 540 or so people. That's a fairly small amount of people and the key thing is that out of those 43 councils that we have, community councils that we have, there were only elections in three cases. In other words, there's not enough interest locally to create enough demand for places in the community council for people to, further to be an election. As I come back to, I think, that there may be a need to do something, yes, we can reform existing local government and improve it, but there may be a need to actually directly devolve down powers to smaller units that are closer to people and take decisions that actually affect their lives. Then, if people see that there are smaller units of local government that they can engage with, that they can actually make a difference to what happens in their area, then we'll see more participation. At the moment, I totally get a point about nice chat with councillors. I think from many people, they can feel very isolated from what was on in local government. I take on board the point entirely that people will tend to engage when there is something that directly affects them. Two school closure proposals in my constituency and very well attended meetings regarding those, but many of those people will have engaged with that agenda only and will not take further involvement in community aspects affecting their community. In terms of community councils, there's been talk about devolving budgets down. It's worth remembering that community councils do currently have budgets. They're probably not very substantial, but they do have money that they can use to make small improvements to their communities. At the same time, if budgets were to be devolved to community councils, given the democratic deficiency, if you will, that exists where many community councils don't elect, many of them have fallen away, many of them are very unrepresentative of the community in terms of the fact that they may be only come from a couple of streets within the area that they serve, how can we ensure that when budgets are devolved to that level, that community councils would be able to use them in a representative fashion? Is there a need maybe to look at reforming the structure of community councils, given that some of the evidence that we've received is that that has been largely untouched since the 1970s? I know I'm largely going to lose this battle, but could you please be brief, because I do have a number of other questions that need to be brought to bear. Can we start, Councillor Burgess, this time first please? I think you're right. If I want to get a huge attendance at a meeting in my ward, I would have it on parking controls, and you will see hundreds of people turning out for that, because it's an issue that's going to affect them directly. In terms of community councils, yes, I think that there's a perception about community councils at the moment, and perception and practice, and it may be that we have to have something different, just something, it's called something different for a start, and then yes, the structure perhaps needed to find a way to make the community councils more representative of the community in general. Yes, short answer. I think that we undoubtedly have to look at community councils if we're serious about this, but that's as much about having the idea of devolving budgets hand in hand with building community capacity, and also realising that community councils aren't the only structure at local level who are capable of making these kinds of decisions. Macnare, please. I totally agree with you, and I would like to see a reform, and a partnership working we've spoken about, and I'm a big fan of partnership working, and one of the partners in this is our community, and it's not about the great and the good in the community either, it's predominantly those who are less well off, that are the ones who need the services more, so I think we have to engage in an awful lot more, and it's community capacity that we need to be building up. I think if you give community councils limited local powers, then people will come. It will just happen. People will turn them because they have an interest. Talking about budgets, one of my community councils managed to acquire £180,000 from a local house builder, which required planning permission and etc etc, so they actually had £180,000, which is a huge budget, and this money's been spent in the locality grants for this, that etc, and now it's a sports complex, so they can do it, they can do it, they just need a bit more power. Thank you, thanks for your brevity there. I will be short and speak because I think what I'm about to ask has been largely answered. Councillor Burgess had mentioned earlier about the fiscal autonomy for local governments, and Andy Wight also spoke about the UK 12.7 of local government revenue, and in Scotland it's only 10.7 of the revenues. If we are able, what changes should be made to the current level of financial autonomy for local authorities? Now I could hazard a guess at you had mentioned earlier on about, I know we're not allowed to call it bed tax, it's tourist tax or whatever it's called now, and whatever guys, but things like local income tax, land and property tax, sales tax, visitor levies, what is there feeling around that? We'll go from Councillor Roberts to the left. I think that you start introducing different additional taxation, then you're going to make people move from perhaps one local authority area to another, that's the great danger I would say. I think we can, if certainly Perth and Ross which is in the expanding community, we can recover quite a bit of cash from developers' contributions, house building etc, whether the climate is still there for that, I don't know, but that's what we are looking to, we are looking to recover something like £9 million, £9 million, £10 million over the next 10 years from developers' contributions, so that's perhaps one source of income that would not have the effect of additional taxation or general taxation, whether it's on bedrooms or whatever it's called, to move people from one local authority area to another. I think any elected body has to have the ability to raise finance, and at this minute in time we don't have that ability, in fact it has diminished. The difficulty we have with council tax is because it's been flat cash over a period of time, there is the deficit now to make it up, but we'd be politically a nightmare. So, there were proposals previously about local income tax etc, etc, and I'm not a mathematician, but I can tell you, it will not be, whatever you come down to, will not be popular. The ultimate aim of what we should be talking about is providing a service to the community, and they have to welcome that opportunity for better schools, better housing, whatever. So, at this minute in time, I'm not prepared to say what kind of taxation, but we should have the ability to be able to raise finances and be held accountable for that. Mr Reitken. Yeah, I would agree to a significant set of what councillor Matt Marra said there, that obviously there are a number of options available, some have been explored in the past, and for whatever reason, not come to fruition and not being taken through. I'm no doubt that it's something that will be returned to. The issue just now is, and it's why the council tax freeze was brought in, obviously, with the majority support, and I was reading Glasgow's submission to this earlier, and I did think it was slightly odd that it had to go at the council tax freeze, because it was the first item in the administration's manifesto for elections. So, there is general agreement that this is not the right time to be raising people's household bills. As time moves on, and perhaps we start to see a change or an improvement in the economic situation, then I've no doubt that the question of local government income-raising will definitely be returned to. Yes, the current strictures are not sustainable in the longer term, in terms of the kind of things that we're aspiring to have talked about autonomy and flexibility within local government, but the current council tax freeze that everyone is the majority of the kind of body politic in Scotland, if you like, are signed up to, is clearly the right policy for just now, but in perhaps following or around about the time of the next local government elections and other serious look at the various options, like land value tax, like local income tax, and even whether individual local authorities could make their choices from a menu of what are the best forms of local taxation for them to suit their circumstances best. It might well be something that the Parliament and COSLA and local government in Scotland would want to explore in more detail. Although I was saying earlier that I came to see that the council tax freeze removed, our party isn't actually very supportive of the council tax like a lot of other parties, and we favour land value taxation as an alternative to the council tax. We also would like to see things like the transient visitor levy also given to local government to have a say over, but at the moment the only flexibility that councils have are over fees and charges, and in Edinburgh we've seen fees and charges grow to half, just under half, that raised through the council tax. Of course fees and charges in themselves are controlled in terms of what you can raise fees and charges on is controlled by central government, but the other point about them is that they're regressive, that they're not set in relation to people's wealth or ability to pay, so I feel that that's a pretty unhealthy situation at the moment, and I would like to see that unlocked. Alec Rowley, please. I wonder if when we talk about community empowerment and budgets, are we talking on the margins, because the day-to-day decision making within local government, the overwhelming majority of decisions that are taking an impact on people's lives will be taken by the professionals. If you look at the education budget, it makes up 45-48% of a local authority budget and is spent in the main, in local schools, so arguably could you go much slower, and who would you involve in that? If you add social work, both the children and families and the older people services to that, it can take the local authority budget up to nearer 80%, and therefore those are being made by professional decisions. Sometimes this discussion this morning you would think that councillors are making all these decisions, but actually they're not. It's professionals that are making decisions on the overwhelming bit of the local authority budget. And back to the point you made about the Tesco, the analogy with Tesco. I would say that I wouldn't necessarily disagree that what people are looking for at the end of the day is if somebody is stuck in a hospital and can't get out, because there's not the money in place to actually put the home care package in place or buy them a place in a care home, then, and again it's the professionals that's making those decisions. So, you know, are we talking about the margins here? Let's start with Councillor Burgess this time, please. I think right in that the vast majority of a council budget is already earmarked for essential services and essential infrastructure, and when we come to set our budget, you know, 99% of the budget is there. And actually now with increasing budget demands and a relatively smaller budget in real terms year on year, there's actually very little room for councillors to be creative about new policy in that sense. Although I would say we do still have to, we approve that spending, you know, the recommendations by officers on the provision of services, so we still have a very important role there. I think as you devolve down power to smaller units of local government, clearly there will be things that it would be important for those further to be collaboration around to maintain services, but there are still quite a lot of services and activities that could be devolved down to, you know, local communities. So I think, you know, there is scope there in terms of what proportion of the budget not absolutely fixed on that, but we, our party certainly in terms of participatory budgeting, we had a figure of 1%. The budget or the council budget is being an initial target to devolve down to existing local structures to make decisions over. Yes, of course, you're right that officers are making the decisions about the, you know, the day-to-day spending of the big budgets, although one would hope with a strategic direction set for them by the political administration that's been elected. And so when it does come to community budgeting, you're talking about small sums of money, but sometimes the margins are what makes the difference. And I would come back to the likes of the community empowerment bill and asset transfer, for example. If you're living in a community and there is a disused council building, you know, a closed school or something, which has become a magnet for graffiti or for anti-social behaviour, teenage drinking, or is just an eyesore, and the community is empowered to do something about that, to take over that asset and transform it, that might be a marginal change, but it's a change that could make a significant difference to that community's sense of itself and its wellbeing and the individuals who live within it. So, yes, you're right in the overall scheme of things. We're not talking about the big bucks in terms of local government budgets, but equally we shouldn't underestimate what we're capable of achieving if we seriously embrace the community empowerment agenda. Thanks a lot, Matt. Thanks, Chair. The crash in 2008, prior to that as a local authority, we did make the decisions. Politically, we introduced minimum wage, we introduced classroom assistance, we doubled the number of apprentices, we gave direction to the council. These were our political priorities. Sadly, since then, we've had to sit down year on year and cut the budget. Now, nobody wants to cut the budget, so you look for the best options possible with the minimum impact in the community you represent. More recently, what we've been trying to do is to go into the community, and I find this rather a bit odd that the time when we go to cut the budget, we take it out to the community to explain to them why we're cutting, but we didn't ever go to them and say to them, by the way, we're spending money on minimum wage or apprentices. We got elected to do that, but now we're taking the budget out and saying, this is a difficult thing we are facing. We are facing £60 million. We've already reduced £40 million. We've got another £25 million to find out how, goodness knows, where we're going to get that. So, of course, we rely on the professionals to come forward, but they will obviously have to reflect the political need of the council. They will know what will be acceptable and what will not be acceptable. Sadly, we're getting to the point where nothing is acceptable. That's the difficulty. We've got the statutory duties and we've got to fund them. By the time we take the total cost of all of these, you've only left us maybe 10 per cent of your budget, which is, you might call, slightly flexible. That, because of the cuts that we're facing, we have faced and there are more to come, that's the area where we have to make the cuts. We can't close secondary schools, we can't stop community care, we have to do that. That's where the cuts come. And when you come to cutting grass or play parks, public toilets and so on, these are the things that are public libraries, that is where we will have to make our future cuts and we're making them already and that really hits people. They're the sort of things that get people up in arms and get them forming interest groups, but it's overall funding and the fact that we are fixed, we are funding, our expenditure is so fixed, so much of our expenditure is fixed, there's very little flexibility anywhere else. That's where I'm trying to come to. It's not to undermine the policy direction that councillors say. It is the key question around finance and really what I would suggest to you is that unless we actually start to look at how local government is financed, then that margin is going to be even less because we have demographics, the health and social care partnership, you're bringing two partners together, both in massive overspends, almost setting it up to fail if it's not financed properly. That really, I think, what's come across here is very little in the oral evidence of what local government's view is in terms of how to be financed for the future. And I would suggest to you that times are going to be even tougher over the next few years and local government's voice needs to be talking about how it's properly financed. We've got to the stage now where we can't make any more efficiency savings than what we deliver, so we then have to start cutting back on services, and of course we've been asked to do more with less. Yeah, I think we tried to explain it earlier, I do agree with you, finance is crucial politically and for all the services, so I think you're absolutely right, we have to look at local government finance seriously. But to go back to your other point about the health and social care partnership, I would disagree with you that it's set up to fail. I think what we've got here is two massive budgets which could be used an awful lot better. I am on our health and social care partnership and I want to use the money an awful lot better rather than having people bedblocking or whatever. The facility should be at home for them to be able to go home and be properly cared for, but we need to put the services in place and we also need to change the culture in both of those monolithic organisations, local government and the NHS. So I think there is a change agenda as in something else that we should embrace, and in order to try and save money we have tried to embrace the change agenda, but what I'm trying to say to you is we've got to bit the bones now, we're not cutting the fat off anymore and that's the frightening thing, and politically we will wakin up to this both at national level and at local government level to our pearl I have to say you know because we will be doing stuff which is totally unpalatable. Do you remain in who you have yet to answer can maybe go on this as well. Has Perth and Kinross or North Ayrshire carried out zero based budgeting exercises or priority based budgeting exercises at all and has there been any discussion about what is a statutory service and what is not? Because again this comes down to interpretation often by officers. I know that for example in education we have a statutory responsibility to educate, but we don't have a statutory responsibility to have schools, so I mean there analyse the dilemma so I don't like to get into what's statutory and what's not, I like to get into the fact that what is best for the community and what do they expect to receive. I'm a bit of a gumption I think Mr Councillor Matini-Marra. I think we just perceive what statutory duties are such as educating children, providing housing and providing community care. We don't actually look at the legislation in microscopic detail to see what we could get away with not doing. Zero based budgeting exercises has there been one in Perth? No. Has there been one in North Ayrshire? Yeah. Okay. Councillor Ayrkin. I think you're absolutely right and I did a lot what Councillor Matini-Marra said. Yes, the future of financing a local government is something that has to be looked at very seriously. I don't think there's a clear consensus or a clear view in local government just now at all about what that should be, what that future is. I think the recent discussions around budget and at COSLA for example have thrown up all sorts of different views even just around the funding formula about how that should go forward. In actual fact the leader of my own council leaving the last COSLA leaders meeting suggested that COSLA had just hand it all over to the finance secretary and not have any control over the formula at all, which to be fair I don't think he got an enormous amount of support for. There isn't a clear consensus just now and there obviously does have to be some serious discussion across local government but also with with you all as members of the Scottish Parliament of our national parliament and with the Scottish government as well about the best way forward on this, there are a number of options available to us and I'm not sure all of them have been explored in the depths that they require to be for us to come to a decision about what's the best one and in response to what you were asking convener, certainly in Glasgow there are serious discussions about what is and what is not a statutory service and I would say in social work particularly which happens to be the service I'm most familiar with but also in land and environmental services. A lot of the drive behind the cooperative council idea is to do with that actually about trying to get individuals and communities to think about what they would do and what they can do for themselves rather than relying on the council to do it for them so that there's definitely discussion around that just now. A zero based or priority based budgeting exercise across the council is there being one? No, I don't know that I'm aware of. Councillor Burgess. There hasn't been a zero based budgeting exercise in Edinburgh but faced with the fiscal challenges and financial challenges, the council has recently instigated what they call bold, better outcomes, leaner delivery and the council is setting about looking at what it absolutely has to provide in terms of outcomes and trying to get some focus on that and that will be used to direct council spending in the future. Awesome, please. Thank you, convener. Good morning. Start off my questions to Councillor McNamara and Councillor Roberts and I should say Councillor McNamara, you made a comment, you made two comments actually about the minimum wage. I hope north there she has been paying the minimum wage since 1999 or you might have a queue of workers I thought it was a living wage but you did say the minimum wage so I just wanted to get that clarified. Could I ask Councillor McNamara or Councillor Roberts, have you served on a majority administration or a coalition administration? I know the answer in terms of the Councillor Burgess and Councillor Aiken but I'd be interested from Councillor Roberts and Councillor McNamara's point of view and whether or not the impact or you've seen any clear impact in terms of the decision making within the council and your engagement within the decision making process. Councillor McNamara, do you want to go first please? Yes, I have served on a majority council and sorry, your second part of your question is to find out whether or not what your view is or your perception of the decision making in the process because what I've heard this morning and my perception of what I've heard from the four panel members this morning is everything seems to be working fine in the local authorities, it seems to be very, decision making seems to be very consensual, there doesn't seem to be any disputes regarding how the majority or coalition administration decides how the budgets are spent because my interpretation is that you all seem to be fully engaged, fully involved in the decision making process and I would have heard expected to hear the same answers from four council leaders if they were sitting in front of us today giving the evidence to the questions that have been asked so far. So the question is really do you see a difference in terms or your perception of how the decision making process operates from being in the administration to being in the opposition? I think from that my own experience the biggest difference is not being engaged earlier, when we were in the administration you were engaged with officers earlier and they constructed things around what you would say politically, when you're in the opposition you have to await that decision because you are not in the position of influence and the direction of travel of the council and I think from my perspective I have been on the council since 88 and I'm used to being in the administration in whatever term or whatever position and it became very difficult I have to say to be on the other side of the bench and to await and try to formulate an argument against but it's something that we are coming to terms with. In fact I think this will be the first time in an opposition position that we are actually asking finance officers to come and talk to us prior to the budget setting process so that we can influence and bring in our topnesworth if you like prior to the budget being placed before us. I think that will be the first time that we've done that. My council, Perthyn Carros, is currently run by a minority administration who require our support. We work with them on an issue by issue basis. We see all the pre-agendas and we have weekly meetings with the administration to go over the papers coming up before the council. Sometimes things have to be with it on and on occasions we have actually actively voted against the administration to get what we particularly wanted. As far as budgets go, the budget process, all the council groups have the use of an officer who goes over the options that are available and we all draft our own budgets. They usually end up in a very similar manner because we're given the fixed, these are your fixed costs and here are the options for savings and perhaps for additional expenditure. So we are well informed of the process and everything that is actually happening is particularly financial. When it comes to budgets we are extremely well informed and we know exactly what's happening on budget day. I appreciate those responses, particularly Councillor McNamara's position of being one being in the administration and then not being in the administration and the information that's then supplied from the administration to allow you to fully engage and understand Councillor Roberts' position in terms of assisting a minority administration. One of the issues is do you think, and this can include Councillor Burgess and Councillor Aiken, do you think administrations, council administrations, provide enough information early enough not only for the opposition council groups but for communities to become fully engaged in the budget setting process? Because we hear, we have heard in this committee recently that some local authorities will say we consult communities but at what stage do they start consulting the communities? Is it once the decisions have been made or is it once the majority administration has made a decision or is it prior to that and do you think there is enough consultation takes place? We'll go left to right Councillor Burgess first please. When I joined the council in 2007, the budget practice was that the administration would present their budget on budget day and that was the first time that you saw it. There would be a recommendation from officers a few months in advance but that was it. The budget process has improved greatly and I'd like to think that we were part of pushing for that in our group. Now the council leader is committed to publishing the budget and the last budget was published in September ahead of the February decision, so five months. That includes consultation with the community. We get presented with the officers' recommendations that have been approved for draft by the coalition that we get to see and then we can base our own budget on that. We are given as much support as we want. We're assigned an officer to help us to bring forward our own budget proposals. Things are getting better and we also have pre-budget day discussions with the finance convener and deputy. Now we're beginning to see some minor concessions where some of the things that we propose on budget day are accepted by the coalition, although that is very small at the moment. We're talking about £100,000 to £200,000 worth of policy. One of the problems that we've had is accessing a detailed level of information to determine what departments are actually spending on and therefore what we could propose changes to. That's one criticism that we still have. We still don't get enough detail about departmental spending that would allow us to propose more change. The questions up until now have primarily been about budgeting at a neighbourhood level. In terms of the overall budget setting process, we have some very serious concerns about the way that it's handled in my council. Having said that, I know that the most recent budget in Glasgow was a two-year budget, so it was a much more minimal process this year, but for last year, when the budget was set, the finance spokesperson from our group engaged at length with officers, as I believe, in fact, the green group on the council did as well, and drew up our budget proposals and amendments to the administration's budget on the basis of that. There was sharing of information. I would say that it was sought by us by the SNP group to a certain extent. In fact, we made a decision in the group that we would make the offer to the administration where we could work with them and find areas of agreement. We would do so and seek to amend where we had serious concerns, and that was what happened. Is that information made available to communities at a macro level of budget setting? No, it's not. I made clear earlier that the aspirations and the talk around community involvement—there is consensus about within the council across the political spectrum—would be about the speed and the depth of how that is being taken forward. However, it is absolutely clear that those aspirations are nowhere near being fulfilled, and Glasgow, and in some cases, are still talk, and aren't close to it at all. Our group certainly has some very serious concerns about the way that decisions are made within the council and the process that that takes place. As far as communicating the budget externally, we have a straight talking event that goes on, and it started in the previous administration, but it's not down to the micro part of the budget. It's about a generalisation on here's the amount of money we've got, and here's what we've got to find. Here are areas that we're looking at, but on a political level we are a lot smaller than Glasgow and Edinburgh, so I can meet with the leader of the council and say here's my areas of concern, and we can discuss that and hopefully take the budget forward in a consensual way that hasn't happened in the past. That has been my experience so far. The budget process takes some three months before actual budget day to go over all the figures and dig down deep and see what they all mean, but the budget is not revealed to anybody until budget day when each party puts forward a budget, that's if the party does put forward a budget, and then there's a bit of wrangling in council to decide eventually because it's a minority administration so they have to carry other parties. There is a wrangle in council to get a final budget, but as far as communities are concerned they are not consulted before the budget day, they have no idea really what's coming forward. Their only input into the budget process is basically through their councillors who should actually know the interest of their areas and push forward anything that can be put into the budget to benefit their own wards. One final question, community. Some members spoke about a written constitution for local government. Should that written constitution contain the duties that would be expected of a local government body to deliver, what I mean by that, at the present moment we talked about statutory duties and we know that some local authorities have other duties that they carry out. They make the decision on that. What should be contained within that written constitution? I wouldn't like to determine that here and now, I think that would be my answer. Certainly there would be scope to contain duties and therefore to protect the responsibility of local government to deliver on those duties. Yes, I think probably should what they are. I would like to answer that at the moment. I think that what should be in the constitution is perhaps rather more around the principles of what we believe local government to be, what it's for. I think if we start to get down to detailing specific duties in the constitution then we perhaps leave ourselves open to then having difficulties in expanding those duties in future, for example, or changing those duties or altering those duties, but that might be something for a constitutional amendment process for a future Scottish Supreme Court to take on that. I think that for me a constitution would be a contract and that would be a contract between the community and the local authority and the Parliament and we would be obliged to fulfil that contract. What is in the contract is something I believe we still have to discuss and I have already indicated there are some areas that I would definitely not like to lose and there are some which I would like to get back. So basically you're saying we make all our duties statutory duties, which gives no flexibility to individual councillors, but what suits Glasgow doesn't necessarily suit Berthshire so we would have no way of discerning. We wouldn't be able to deliver the services that our particular councils need. That leads me on to a final question in terms of the flexibility. We've been to the islands recently to hear evidence from them about their circumstances. We have two councillors from cities here today, two councillors from rural-ish but with quite large towns in them. Do you think that uniformity works in local government or do you actually need that flexibility to take into account your own circumstances in your own areas and in terms of that flexibility what could be put in place in your areas to improve that situation? Councillor Roberts. First I'd like to say that Perth is a city by the way, not a town. I beg your pardon. I keep forgetting about the six cities scenario, Councillor Roberts, and I'll go and slap myself in the fingers after this. You're right. What suits Perth city does not necessarily suit Perth rural so we have to have flexibility in how we deliver our services. That's all I could say. Councillor Mattynwmara. I would agree with that because in my ward actually takes in Adrosyn and Arran to totally diverse communities and you even have to talk differently when you're on the island as opposed to talking differently on the mainland so flexibility is crucial to take forward because ultimately what we want to do is reflect the community and what their requirements are so yes. Perth Ayrshire do you know engaged with Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles round about our islands, our future because of the Arran situation? Well as I'm in the minority on North Ayrshire Council I'll have to ask. Okay thank you very much. Councillor Aitken. Yeah and I think uniformity in local government is a contradiction in terms and what we should be looking for perhaps is achieving consistency and quality of delivery of service but the way that services are delivered is must be flexible and must be open to local circumstances because they're so varied across not just across Scotland but within council areas particularly the larger ones. Councillor Burgess please. I think could support flexibility in local government. The paper by Andy Wightman actually suggests the Lego brick model where municipalities, smaller municipalities can come together in different combinations and that would provide a large degree of flexibility. Can I thank you all for your evidence today? A lengthy session but I think the length of time that this has taken shows how worthwhile your evidence has been to the committee this morning. I now suspend and we move into private session.