 Rhaid fawr. Welcome to the 19th meeting of 2014 of the Public Coddict Committee. I have apologies. Ken Macintosh running late but he will be with us at some point. The first item on the agenda is an invitation to declare interest. Members will be aware of significant changes in SNP committee membership across all committees. Bruce Crawford, Willie Coffey ac James Dornan yn ymgyrch eu symud i'r comitec. Bruce yma wedi gyd, ond ond ymlaen nhw'n dal doedd, a ond wedi gwneud y cymdeithasot ar gyflwyno'n hwnnw. Rwy'n ganwethaf fusfadwch y Prifysgol Cymru, ac mae'n amlwg â gydag ysgol fyddol. James Dornan yn ddifenni Abern ac mae wedi ei ch ganlawchMichael, ac roedd yn llyfr ystafell o'r cyrraedd yn ddechrau. Mae'n gwneud eu cyfleol o'r coffi willy. Ieithaith i chi'n cyffrith Cymru, mae'n mynd i ddisgwyl yn ddiwrnod 2007. Mae'n ddiwedd i'r gweithio'r cyfnodd y Llongaidd yng nghymryd i dderweddol chi'n ei ddau gyda'r gweithio'r cwmp yng nghymru. Mae fe wneud â'i ddau'r cyffrith yng Nghymru, Willi's attention to detail and also his life experience was very useful in many of the reports that we looked at. I'm not sure what Willi has actually moved on to, but I'm sure he will bring the same attention to detail and the same effort that he put into this committee, and we certainly appreciated the efforts of all of them, but in particular just need to pay tribute to Willi's long-standing service to the committee. We have a formidable group of MSPs replacing them, Nigel Don, Gil Parterson and David Torrance. I know that David, you have already been a substitute member of the committee, but can I just, for formal reasons, invite all of you to declare any relevant interests that you might have, Nigel? Thank you, convener, and it's a pleasure to be here. I simply draw members' attention to my register of interests, and I don't believe I have anything to add to that in the context of this committee. Okay, Gil. Nothing to add, but refer to my members' register of interests for the public or the committee to peruse. Okay, and David? Nothing to add, just refer members to my register of interests. Okay, thank you very much for that. Second item on the agenda, decisions about taking business in private. Members will note that we've already decided to take item 5 in private. Can we agree to take items 4 and 6 in private as well? Yes. Thank you. The third item on the agenda, section 23 report, community planning, turning ambition into action. This is a joint report from the Auditor General for Scotland and the Audit Commission. We have Caroline Gardner, the Auditor General, back at the committee once again. Again, Douglas Sinclair, a man who has had many roles in Scottish public life over many years and has probably a unique insight into the workings of the public sector in Scotland. Also, Anthony Clark is the Assistant Director of Best Value, Scrutiny and Improvement. Auditor General, you would like to make a contribution? Thank you, convener. I'll introduce the report and we'll, as always, answer questions jointly. Some of you may remember that in March 2013, the Chair of the Accounts Commission and I gave evidence to this committee on our last report on community planning. This report provides an update on progress since then and gives a sense of the direction of travel of community planning in the context of the statement of ambition. Community planning is really important because the Government sees it as a central plank in its plans for public service reform, in making the shift to prevention and in meeting the continuing pressures on public finances. So, how well community planning partnerships are working is a central part of the plans for all of those important areas of reform. In our report, we found that aspects of community planning are improving. All of the partners are more actively involved than they were in our last report and they are now agreeing shared priorities that they can work together jointly in the context of community planning. There's a better understanding of the resources that they've got available to them and they're recognising the importance of prevention and thinking about what they can do to make that a reality. These are really important building blocks but there's lots more to do. For example, this time around we've still found little evidence of effective leadership, scrutiny and challenge in community planning partnership boards and many community planning partnerships are still not clear about what they're expected to achieve or about the specific improvements they're aiming to make. The Scottish Government, the national community planning group and COSLA have an important leadership role in overcoming those shortcomings and they have taken steps to promote the importance of community planning. In July, the national community planning group issued a set of principles for partnerships focusing on prevention, joint resourcing, community engagement and reducing inequalities. This was intended to set out an ambitious but realistic improvement agenda for community planning based on the experience so far of implementing the statement of ambition. The national community planning group, the Government and COSLA now need to work together to set out what this refocused approach means in practice, what they expect of community planning partnerships and how success in implementing these new principles will be assessed. We think that two important aspects of that work will be addressing the uncertainty about the extent which the focus of community planning should be on local needs or on national priorities and in providing greater clarity about the role that community planning and partnerships should play in public service reform. We found that community planning partnerships have begun to identify what resources they've got available to deliver their priorities but they're not yet targeting those resources as effectively as they could do. That's particularly important as pressures on budgets and staff tighten when partners will have to make difficult choices about allocating their resources between competing priorities. They'll also need to work closely with local communities to ensure that the significant changes that are needed to how public services are delivered do command public support. In addition, public bodies are held to account mostly for the performance of the mainstream services they deliver and their achievement of national targets and this can create additional tensions. As I recently reported, NHS boards focus on meeting challenging financial and performance targets each year does make it difficult for them to think about longer term outcomes and to do the necessary long term financial planning to move it in that direction. We think that competing pressures on resources may hold back the shift to prevention as partner organisations will initially need to continue delivering their current services while investing in the new services needed for the future. The lack of a coherent national framework for assessing the performance and pace of community planning partnerships is another hurdle. This means that there is no overall picture of how individual community planning partnerships are performing and what progress is being made towards the implementation of the statement of ambition. The lack of this clear national picture makes it hard for Government and COSLA to identify which CPPs need the most support and which particular areas they are finding hardest to get right. We make a number of recommendations in the report for the Scottish Government, the national community planning group, COSLA and community planning partnerships themselves. I will focus on the ones that are directly related to Government for the purposes of this morning but you will see the rest in the report. Firstly, we would like to see the Scottish Government and COSLA working together to set out what their refocused approach means for the statement of ambition and what they expect of community planning partnerships across Scotland. That includes developing a national framework for assessing and reporting progress and implementing the statement of ambition. Secondly, because this is complex and challenging work, we would also like to see the Scottish Government and COSLA working with the improvement service and others to put in place a programme of well-targeted practical support for community planning partnerships in the areas that most need improvement. Finally, we would like to see the Scottish Government holding central Government bodies and the NHS to account more consistently and directly for their contribution to community planning as well as for delivering the services that they are primarily responsible for. Thank you convener, as always Douglas Anthony and I will be happy to answer questions from the committee. Okay, thank you for that. I seem to remember discussions on community planning. When I was a council leader in the mid-1990s and Douglas Sinclair was the chief executive of COSLA, am I right in thinking that this debate has been going on that long? Absolutely convener, community planning dates from 2003. That's the local government that brought it into being. I think that to some extent it had a fairly fallow period until the statement of ambition jointly announced by COSLA and the Scottish Government in 2013, which gave it a renewed emphasis. As Karen has indicated, I think that we did find in our audits that enthusiasm and commitment has, if anything, increased. So that's a positive. You talk about the enthusiasm and commitment increasing and yet, if you read the report, it would appear that it's having a vital practical impact across Scotland. We have been discussing this since the 1990s. It came in in the legislation you said in 2003 and yet many CPPs, according to the report, are not clear about what they are expected to achieve now. Frankly, if community planning is worth anything and if it's of value, then surely people should be clear about what is expected. And if it's of no value, why are we bothering to persist with something that people are doing nothing about? The report says governance and accountability in CPPs remain weak. And yet again, and this is not the first time when we've been discussing some of these public sector boards, there is limited evidence of challenge at a board level. So not only do they not know what they're supposed to be doing, which is frankly outrageous, but when they are there in a position to do something, they are not challenging. So where is the public accountability and the public scrutiny if we have people who are not challenging and frankly also people who don't know what they're doing when they are there? What's the point of this? Well, maybe I could kick off on that one and Caroline could come in. I think community planning, the argument for community planning is as strong now as it was in 2003, which is essentially that the needs of individuals or communities can seldom be met by one single organisation if you look at crime, the control of crime, the solving of crimes that matter for the police, but the causes of crime are out with the control of police. There are a matter of bad housing, poor health, bad education, bad planning and so on. There are all issues that the other partners can play their part in resolving. So I think the case with community planning still exists. I think part of the difficulty touching your second point is that I think there's been an unrealistic expectation about what community planning can deliver. It can't solve all the problems. It's on these cross-cutting issues where it can add value, in particular reducing inequality. I think that it's taking community planning partnerships some time to understand where their added value really can make a difference. The third point is the one that you make about public sector boards. One of the points that we make in our report is that these are voluntary partnerships. They are not statutory bodies. There is a statutory duty on each of the partners to participate, but they are not statutory bodies. They are voluntary partnerships. If you look at the partnerships and you look at the people around the table, they all come from different backgrounds. They have different roles. They have different accountabilities. That makes building that sense of trust and relationships. It's one of the things that we've highlighted in the report. It's actually quite difficult. Our sense is that community planning partnerships have not invested enough in understanding the complexity of the nature of the relationships that are around the board. You take, for example, somebody who's a councillor. That's not the same thing as an executive of a health board. A chief executive of a council has a different set of responsibilities and authorities from, say, the chief executive of a health board. I think that the effective community planning partnership boards, and there are some examples, have spent time trying to understand how they can make a difference and the scope for them making a difference. I think that that's an issue for all community planning partnership boards to spend more time understanding the nature of the relationship and understanding where they can make a difference. The point that you make about accountability is a fair one. There are different accountabilities. The council accountable to local accurate, the health board ultimately accountable to Parliament. That's why we're strongly recommending the report, The Need for a National Framework, jointly developed by the Scottish Government in Costa to assess the performance of community planning partnerships and to ensure that those community planning partnerships who particularly need support are the ones where support is targeted to. Can I just say that my criticism isn't of the people who produced the report. My concern is about what you have found at local level. Now, Mr Sinclair, you make the point that the case for community planning is as strong now as it has ever been, and I accept that. But the evidence is that you say in mitigation that there are people on these boards from different backgrounds, and I understand that. But I would question why any organisation, whether it's council or any of the other partners, puts someone onto a board if they don't think that that person is capable of performing the duties required when they go on to that board. Now, you know, if we then find that there is insufficient clarity and distinction in roles and responsibilities, then all of that needs to be worked out. But if these boards are simply rubber stamping whatever is put in front of them with no criticism, with no scrutiny, and with no challenge, then I come back to the point I made earlier. What is the point of this? Are we not just wasting good public money in a model that's not working, and if it remains as important now as ever, then why is the commitment not there to make this work? Sorry, Auditor General, you wanted to come in. Thank you, convener. I wanted to pick up your point about confusion about their role, because I think that's at the heart of the range of questions you've been asking. Our view is that the statement of ambition and then last year the refocusing on the four principles of prevention, inequalities and so on are all important steps in the right direction. And our audit work found that in spite of that, people at a local level, the people on the boards of those partnerships are still confused about how far what they're doing should be about local priorities and how far it has to take account of national priorities and the national performance framework, and how far they should be focusing on prevention, as against how far they should be looking at all public services in their areas. As Douglas said, none of these partnerships can do everything. They're not set up to do that, they don't have the resources, and we have a whole range of other public bodies. What we want to see is the Government and COSLA really sharpening that focus on the good practice that is there. We've seen some very good practice of partnerships thinking about what their area needs and what they can do, and then addressing these questions of accountability that are real and can make it difficult, particularly where partnerships are struggling to make the progress we all want to see. Before I bring Mary Scanlon in, can I ask a final question? Who is the... Which is the key organisation then in starting to make this happen what you say is necessary? Whose responsibility is that? The Scottish Government has the overall responsibility in setting policy. It's been working very closely with COSLA and the wider national community planning group to do it. Our recommendation is to those three parties really through the national group to be doing the things we've described, clarifying what they're for, improving the accountability arrangements and making sure that all public bodies are held to account for their contribution I think the other point I would add in relation to that is that you don't want to lose the ambition and the statement of ambition but if anything, the statement of ambition was overambitious. It talked about the board's been genuine board with all the authorities and accountability that the board has. You cannot ascribe that to a voluntary partnership so some of that language needs to be modified and changed. There are also issues of confusion within the statement of ambition and the role of CPPs in public sector reform. It says in the statement of ambition that they should be at the heart of the development of health and social care partnerships. That's not what's happening on the ground. CPPs are very confused about the nature of the relationship with the developing health and social care partnerships so we think that it would benefit community planning partnerships if the statement of ambition was more rooted in the reality of what is actually happening out there. Mary Scanlon? If I may just turn the clock back 18 months we did have a report on this in March 2013 and at that time basically and I quote 10 years after community planning was given a statutory basis CPPs are not able to show that they've had any significant impact on delivering improved outcomes are not clear about their priorities for improvement and too often everything has seemed to be a priority meaning nothing is a priority et cetera et cetera and no one is taking any responsibility. That was after 10 years and I remember that members of this committee were to say the least a bit disappointed about the progress after 10 years but we were given many warm words and we were told that statements of ambition and lots of things were happening so in good faith the committee thought right CPPs on track so when I got the report last week convener I thought here we are we're getting an update positive CPP that's not what we've got there's barely been any progress and I quote convener there's an ambiguity both nationally and locally about the extent of the focus of community planning to which the focus of community planning is on local needs or about delivering national priorities so neither the Government or locally haven't got a scooby what they're doing Scottish Government is not yet consistently holding central government bodies or the NHS to account and then just I won't read it all but little evidence that CPP boards are demonstrating the levels of leadership and challenge of the commitment of ambition that we were all told 18 months ago was going to be the answer the also lack of focus on how community planning will improve outcomes for specific communities and reduce the gap between most and least deprived which is a key part of the new First Minister's approach which I support statement of ambition places community planning at the core but CPPs are not clear about what they should play and if I could just take you over to between paragraph 30 and 31 given that this Parliament is to have significant new powers we've still got all the organisations out there working in little silos and we've got to bring in legislation to get NHS to work with social work and councils so with more powers coming to the Parliament we're still being told the links between community planning and national public service reform are not clear so to put it mildly I'm really disappointed because I feel we've got a lot of very warm words after 10 years there was pretty well no progress and 18 months later still confused at the local level that's not good enough am I right am I reading this accurately the concerns that we've reported on here not always in the language that we would use but in the right direction around them I've quoted you just from the report you're absolutely right Ms Scanlon they're the areas that we've raised concerns about equally we have this time reported that there's been progress on the partnerships working more genuinely as partnerships agreeing priority getting a grip on the resources they've got available and some of those things so we have seen progress as well but the recommendations we're making are taking away some of the barriers that are stopping that progress fulfilling the promise that it's got and especially in the context of a Parliament that will have significant new powers that will still have financial pressures and where those inequalities and other demographic changes are going to keep on increasing the pressure on public services the fact that there are financial pressures is not an excuse for not working together surely that is the basis for more advantage and more positive outcomes from working together and how can you agree shared priorities but you can't work them through I don't understand that because you agree shared priorities you've said that twice today in the opening statement you've said it again and yet at local level people are confused national government aren't telling local government there's no tie in there's no integration between national and local priorities so if you're agreeing priorities what does that mean it's not working through the system I'll kick off and I can see Douglas wants to add to it in a sense I think agreeing the shared priorities is the easy bit it's not easy they're just not doing it the hard bit is then to say okay if these are our priorities who's going to do what what people and buildings and other resources are we going to put behind it how will we know it's working given often those priorities are things that have an effect how will we know we're moving in the right direction now we've seen some pockets where that's being done really well the report that we published on Glasgow community planning partnership had them focused on a small number of priorities that really have got the potential to get to the roots of poverty, ill health, inequality and have a big difference over time in other places we're not seeing that and the recommendations we're making are aimed at making sure that both for the government and at local level people are learning from the experience of where it is working well but also taking away the barriers and some of that ambiguity that we've touched on is exactly what is making it harder for people to do it it's not the only thing but it would help just my final question I know Douglas wants to come in but can I just ask this convener 10 years after community planning you know it's like one out of 10 18 months after your first lack of progress we've got more lack of progress in five years time when I'm into my glorious retirement on this committee will this committee still be sitting saying what's happening to community planning you know when do you think this is going to happen because it's a member of this committee which I think is a really important committee in this parliament there's in personally a sense of frustration that I'm wasting my time reading that we were made great promises and I read cover to cover trying to find that little gem of progress and apart from one or two local based practices it's not there so when is it going to happen can I just say that the frustration is not with the people who have produced the report it's with the failure of those who are responsible for implementation precisely we understand that that's not a problem my view is that we have seen progress since our last report 18 months ago but further progress and certainly on the scale that we all think is needed will require the government and local community planning partnerships to tackle the things that we've set out in our recommendation we've tried to make them constructive and challenging and to focus on the things that we think need to happen without that there won't be much progress I think the point I would add and I do understand your frustration is that this report is probably slightly different from our earlier one in that the recommendations aren't just targeted at the community planning partnerships there is much targeted at central government and at Cosworth and the national community planning group they have to play their part it would be presumptuous of me to say that if our recommendations are all implemented then in five years time you would receive progress but we do believe that these recommendations are fundamentally important for community planning to move from where it is to where we all want it to be So does the leadership need to come from national government or? I think all parts leadership from national government in terms of recommendations we've made there particularly about the need to develop a system of accountability for community planning partnerships to assess their performance Cosworth to play their role in encouraging local authorities to play a more active role in community planning as indeed as Carlynes indicated national government in holding the bodies for which they're responsible to account in more detail and to challenge them more effectively there's an issue of challenge right across the board for all the partners the national community planning group as we've indicated the need to revise the statement of ambition to root it more in the reality and to set stretching targets and I think to encourage community planning partnerships themselves to develop more effectively the point about a limited number of priorities is to do it Comment here Thank you convener I think everyone who's dealt with these reports before have seen the degree of some frustration and for those of us who have been the local authority members as well we can see why some of these things come out and just in really what Mr Sinclair was saying brings to mind section 49 of the report dealing with the councillors local councillors have a democratic community leadership role they're put there by the people democratically are used to making the decisions on the budgets in relation to those local authorities and while NHS boards for instance have boards which people can become members I suppose but it's not seen as an easy thing to get attached to and then you're taking the democratic right of councillors to make their decisions and the NHS boards right to deal with their budgets for instance I'm just using these as an example but their right to deal with their budget in the way they see fit and the obvious strains that come between the boards particularly when you're starting to talk in terms of health and social care all these sort of things and you made quite a lot of the democratic thing there but it doesn't look terribly democratic across the board of the CPPs it only looks democratic over a particular section of the CPPs when you start to bring in third sector partners or the police democratic are those it's not an easy nut to crack and I can see why just in that paragraph and perhaps the one after a sort of small identifiable cause of friction now we can say from central government you have to do something to make things better give a dictate if you like but until we start to reconcile that area there at the sharp end of where decisions are made would you not agree that perhaps we have quite a bit more work to do there than perhaps at the more centralised end? I think the challenge for CPPs is to understand the nature of accountability that each partner has its own accountability as you rightly say the council to local electorate the health board to parliament and so on I think that what we need to encourage them to do is as well as recognising their shared accountability their shared accountability around the CPP table I might take a slight issue about when you talk about my budget I think the challenge, the council's budget I think it's the public's budget and I think all public money is the public's budget I'm sorry but that's so very well looking at that way but it doesn't work out that way I mean a council a council leader I would take Mr Henry's experience as a council leader is looking at his budget wondering how to make best use of it and he doesn't think well this budget belongs to the NHS he thinks this is my responsibility this is what I'm trying to get at I understand the point you're making I think it again is part of the problem with the statement of ambition it was maybe over ambitious in terms of all resources would be put on the table in terms of education and social work has the prime responsibility for delivering those areas equally the health board in terms of health we're talking about where budgets overlap and the issues like drugs and alcohol community safety those are the budgets that people can put on the table and going back to a point that I think Mary Scarlin made if you join those budgets up you can make better use of them instead of each partner developing his own budget strategy if you put those budgets on the table where budgets overlap, where interests overlap that's where they can make a difference and I think that's the challenge for CPPs to get into not to argue about mainstream budgets but budgets where there is an overlap and where they can actually make a difference in terms of reducing inequality reducing crime and so on that's the culture change that I think CPPs the journey that they're on I just wonder on health and social care partnerships have made any measurable difference to that process I'll kick off and again Douglas will want to add to what I say it's early days but one of the things we heard very strongly through the audit work that's behind this report was that community planning partnerships aren't clear about their role in relation to health and social care integration the guidance says that community planning partnership should be central to it but we have separate bodies with separate geographical boundaries and the interaction between them is something again that we think needs to be clarified to make sure that they understand what they're doing that everybody's pulling in the same direction and that when there are process between the responsibilities on health and social care integration and what the community planning partnership is doing that's understood and managed and planned for That sounds like there haven't been any difference at all to be honest I would say probably it is too early and what difference they can make is not clear to them or to us given the way the guidance has been developed So let me just try to be very specific about this If we can't judge how whether they can make any difference to something that Parliament's passed in a law which is a measurable outcome for all of us then to coin the convener's phrase what's the point of these organisations there's a very specific thing we've asked the public sector to do and they're playing, I take it at your point as early but they're not playing any role The question that we've got I think is how clear it is to partnerships and indeed to government exactly what contribution you would expect in relation to planning partnerships to make two health and social care integration We make the wider point in here about the link between this and public service reform health and social care integration is a really key part of that but the links between them and the contribution you would expect to make how that links to the responsibilities they've got for the wider prevention agenda across other issues of health and social care is not clear to people on the ground so unless their contribution is difficult and possibly unfair on that Indeed, no, I totally take that point but so when Parliament passed health and social care integration legislation the government or COSLA or anyone else never said what or never specifically provided guidance or clear instruction as to what CPP's role should be in that would that be fair? There is a clear statement in the guidance around integration which says community planning partnerships should be central to it but not what that means in practice given the whole range of expectations around them at the moment and the competing priorities that people have got in planning partnerships and integration Totally take that, but given this is such a specific and clear area of policy that was passed cross-party in Parliament and that kind of thing we find here that Audit Scotland can't find in its assessment that you've just done for us or for you but we're now reading that it's made at this stage any measurable difference to that crucial part of public policy change I wouldn't expect to be able to see they've made a difference now but what I would expect is Government and COSLA being clear about the contribution they expect community planning partnerships to make so that in future exactly that judgment can be taken, we're not saying that yet Despite the fact that we passed this legislation some time ago and it's been talked about for years and so on and so forth COSLA and the Government didn't make it clear what these bodies should do To be fair, health and social care partnerships don't come into full being until April 2016 which is a point worth making because those boards will become a member of the community planning partnership and I think that Karen has indicated it is a bit early to say what the nature of that relationship will be but we certainly did find there's a huge amount of confusion currently in terms of the role that CPPs play in relation to health and social care integration I've asked the director of my local NHS board how many meetings he's been to about all this over the last three years and he looked at the sky boards and chief executives of councils never mind all the other officials he's been to hundreds of meetings to discuss this and yet the clarity that you seek you can't find hasn't been provided in terms of their roles I think the focus very much just now is between the council and the health board actually making the integrated joint board work in practice and I think the issue of the relationship with the CPP to be fair is of secondary consideration you've also got the fact that health and social care partnerships are a statutory body it's own tension and I wonder there in exactly that point Mr Sinclair do you think I wondered about your recommendations on this don't you think you need to be an awful lot firmer about this don't you need to recommend this has to become to work Mary Scanlon's point this has got to be a statutory function that's a matter for government I don't think it's a matter for either the general or the council commission of course it's a matter for you but you can make a recommendation for that I think the issue is the government have made these statutory bodies in the context of public sector reform it would seem odd to create even more statutory bodies so on paragraph 23 where Audit Scotland very firmly and in my view rightly point out down that paragraph that partners formal lines of accountability are not to the CPP board but to their own organisations board now we can name them all isn't that a fundamental failure of the system isn't that where I think you've been inferring that in your contributions this morning isn't that where it basically falls down which is meaning that partners in the central government and NHS parts of public services are being pulled in two directions it's clearest in the NHS where NHS boards are held to account as we've reported previously for their financial performance and their performance against the heat targets every year and those heat targets tend to be shorter term things that matter to people but that aren't going to help us move towards reshaping services prevention and so on we don't think that's necessarily leading straight to a recommendation making the partnership statutory partnerships but it does mean you need to balance what people are held to account for they need to be held to account for their contribution to community planning as well as for delivering the mainstream things that they're required to do and that's true right across the piece for NHS and central government bodies just add to that one of the things that will strengthen accountability and that's a difficult concept in terms of ownership partnership but leave that aside the community empowerment bill places a whole set of new duties for the partners in terms of committee resources, data, information, participation in community planning partnership so I think that will shine a stronger light in terms of individual contributions towards making community planning partnerships work and I think it will be interesting to see how defaulting partners if I can put it like that are held to account by their parent body indeed and again the other paragraph that jumped at me on this was 20 in which again and you've infer this in your evidence this morning I quote there are a range of views both nationally and locally about the role and purpose of community planning what it can be expected to achieve I mean again not just say if they haven't sorted that out we've had all the guidance in the world going back 20 years now you could argue certainly in more recent times and we haven't even sorted out that basic dichotomy in what a CPP is meant to do I think what's been helpful has been as Carlynes indicated in her opening remarks the revised statement by the national community planning group which very much focuses on folk areas and particularly the role of community planning partnerships in reducing inequality so I think that sharper focus is helpful and in a sense takes away the excuse of CPPs not knowing what they're there to do a cynical policy maker say we can all sign up to reducing inequality I mean absolutely you may find no one across politics who disagrees with reducing inequality but if you can't sort out whether it's a local perspective on how to reduce it or a national policy which this board has to implement then we'll be here in five years time as Mary Scanlon rightly observes saying I agree Mr Sinclair we passed that policy five years ago not a blind bit of difference has been made I don't think it's an either or I think it's a both and if you look at Glasgow's priorities the three priorities they have they all contribute towards the national outcomes so I think it's actually a false dichotomy okay thank you Carlynes and David Torrance As Mary Scanlon has already said about 18 months ago we looked at this last and I remember the disappointment we had then that this had been running for 10 years at that point and the progress had been so slow there seems to be some progress but it seems to be painfully slow and indeed the last time I remember us commenting it could be another 10 years before we see a decent impact but it seems extraordinary now you've highlighted a few areas here which are of concern one is of leadership and that's consistent through the report and it was consistent in the last report is there any signs of improvement in leadership looking at local level who normally chairs the CPPs is it an independent chair is it usually someone from the council political whatever I'll ask Anthony to come in a moment on the specifics of what we found in this year's audit work I think we are seeing improvements in leadership by all of the partners involved in terms of really taking seriously what community planning's for getting that clarity about the things they're going to focus on and being much more transparent about the resources they bring to it what's needed now is to build on the pockets of that happening very well in some places and to learn from it right across Scotland there are some real beacons of good practice but I think we were all very impressed by the difference that that is making with some of the most intractable problems in Scotland it's not happening consistently among the partnerships that we've looked at this year and our wider experience through the audit work Anthony can you say a bit more about how the boards work at the moment the majority of CPP boards are chaired by the leader of council but there are examples of independent chairs but it's not that common and just to amplify Caroline's point across all of the five audits that we did this year significantly improved attendance, participation and commitment to community planning but still a long way to go another thing you've raised is in connection with budgets and obviously you make it clear that CPPs don't actually control a budget which I wouldn't actually expect but you also comment that they don't seem to have any influence over the budgets that are being set which seems extraordinary given the fact that it's a partnership arrangement that all these other bodies NHS and so on are all involved in it how can this be improved? I'm sure Douglas will have a perspective as well the statement of ambition talked about meaningful pre-consideration of budgets horrible jargony term but what it meant was that the partners should be looking at each other's budgets at a point where they could still make a difference, still discuss whether that allocation of resources was right influence each other to move resources into the things that were most important and the things that each partner could make a difference at I think it's fair to say we haven't seen much evidence of that so far and in my view that's not very surprising I think it goes back to the accountability that the report talks about and that Mr Kear was touching on previously about the formal accountability for those budgets, opening that up in what's often a very tight and increasingly difficult process in the current financial climate is very difficult what we have seen success in and what we've focused on in the report is much more about saying okay so if our priority is about reducing drug abuse in this area what resources, what people buildings other assets and resources do we bring to bear on that and how can we collectively make better use of them can we think about what the health services is putting in, what the police locally are doing, what social care services are doing, what we're doing in schools and think about that pot as a single pot and how we move around what people do in the buildings they use and the ways that they work that looks to us much more promising than trying to open up budgets at this stage given all the real challenges there would be about accountability and the fact that focus seems to us the thing that will make most difference rather than opening it up too wide Is there any evidence at all that CPPs are able to influence the budget decisions of their partners do we have any evidence on that because it seems to me at the end of the day it all comes down to money in order to achieve progress We're seeing it in a very positive way where people are focusing in on priorities in that way that they are shifting what goes in and perhaps influencing each other's decisions about the more investment or fewer cuts we're also seeing it in a slightly different context in places where people are talking about health and social care integration so in Highland where they've gone for the lead agency model there has been discussion about the council putting more money in to support the financial pressures the health board is facing on services for older people so there's real openness around the resources that are needed and resources shifting but I think it tends to be either at the margins or around specific issues like that rather than a wider sense of what are we collectively bringing to bear on public services in this area I think that's absolutely right I think it's not about the totality of budgets it's about the budgets in relation to the particular priorities of the CPPs and how they can influence that, that's the key bit One of the key things of course is that CPPs can't operate in isolation and you have touched on areas where CPPs have been very successful at tapping into local data and information but clearly that's not uniform without the initiatives that you've mentioned here which are pretty much one off as a routine measure what data would they normally tap into to be able to reach the decisions would it all come from partner organisations would they have any capability to achieve that themselves? Again Anthony's got the detail and I'll ask him to come in in a moment what we would expect them to see though what we would expect to see is the partners they can about what are the problems that are facing this part of Scotland what are the strengths, what are the trends what is it that we should be focusing in on and then drilling down to their own data to try and build on that we've seen some examples where that's starting to work really well and some partnerships that are still really struggling with the idea of it Anthony The majority of the analytical support that CPPs receive tends to come from a local authority but it also involves bringing together the data from police, fire and rescue to look at patterns of service demand demographics and social needs in the area and some of the more advanced partnerships are starting to invest in joint resources, joint analytical resources to help them do the kind of detail planning about the different needs of the communities to help them to target their resources most effectively I mean all that has a cost who's picking up the cost? Well currently I suspect it's largely the council I think one of the points in the community empowerment bill is extending that duty on all the partners to contribute towards the cost one of the key issues I think in community planning partnerships how well they're actually resourced in terms of the bodies supporting community planning there's still a sense that community planning is still too much the Saturday job rather than the day job and we need to get that mindset shifted and it does require all the partners to make a bigger contribution towards resourcing community planning more effectively Is there any evidence at the moment of any budgeting for CPPs for their costs that it's coming from partners or as you said is it all coming from the councils? I think largely it's coming from councils I think it's largely absorbed within councils costs I don't think it's as transparent as it might be That's obviously a concern because you would expect to see buying from the partners and part of that is writing a check even if it's not a large one and when it becomes an act it will increase the potential role of other partners it's also worth making the point in the bill that you talked about the leadership of the council the bill changes that the leadership that you talked about the council chairing the CPP the duty of the council to facilitate and maintain community planning that's been abolished so it becomes much more a joint enterprise a joint endeavour Can I stick with the first point that Colin Beattie raised at the end there about the costs and you said Mr Sinclair that the community empowerment bill will impose a duty on partners to contribute towards the costs in what way will they have to do that and how will it be enforced if there's a legal obligation? Well I think it Andy, don't keep me right I think the bill talks about contributing resources information and data what's not clear from the bill is what happens if one of the partners defaults in terms of their obligation I think it's an interesting point there about the council as the arbiter if you take away the leadership role of the council who's actually going to resolve a complaint about a partner not actually making their full contribution around the table that's not... well the bill's silent on that I think it's fair to say so should both the relevant committee and indeed members look at strengthening that aspect of the legislation to ensure that not only is the duty to contribute fully understood and absolutely clear but that the mechanism for enforcing that contribution is stated in legislation because the last thing we want is to come back to this type of discussion in a few years time when everybody said great intentions but unfortunately there is no clarity about how this will be enforced I think that's a very important point I don't see the point when Judy's in the bill unless you have a mechanism to ensure that Judy is complied with that's perhaps something that we can pass on to the local government committee David Torrance and then Gil Paterson Thank you convener and good morning Of the 32 CPPs across Scotland were six which share the same boundaries as NHS boards Has it been easier for them to progress a community plan and focus on the local needs compared to the other 26 CPPs I think we've looked at one whether it's a determinist determinist boundary I don't think you can argue that boundaries, determinist boundaries of themselves make it easier it should in a sense but it's also I remember one chief executive making the point to me that because our boundaries are not determinist it means we try even harder to make the thing work I think the one example where we did an audit which was Orkney we found that the performance that would have expected given that common boundary didn't come up to expectations because of a very difficult relationship between the council and the health board and it's true to say that in any community planning partners another example it's true of any other partners that the relationship between the two leading players the council and the health board is not working then it's highly unlikely that the community planning partnership will work effectively On scrutiny, on paragraph 5 it says there is no Korean national framework for assessing the performance and pace many of the local authorities who are a major player in it like 5 have a scrutiny committee which looks at their CCP performance and are they getting best value for budget so is there not a lot of other local authorities do that who could report bad the progress of the CCP I think you raised an interesting point as to the potential for community planning partnerships to develop their own scrutiny arrangements I don't think we had lots of evidence that there's a great deal of self-evaluation self-criticism actually happening I think what we found is at two levels for the partnerships you're quite right that for councils there is scrutiny in place, some of it works well some of it less well for the partnership that tends not to be the case across the piece there's not enough of the partnership boards really challenging each other about how well they're doing against the aims they've got and secondly it's quite hard to do it with a bit of external challenge in the way that good local government scrutiny does with for example an opposition member chairing the scrutiny committee it's hard to see how you would get that into the partnership because of their nature and it's both of those that I think we would like to see more of more challenge and more external challenge coming into the process thank you Kay, Gil Paterson Good morning I want to go back to the integration of health and social care and here we have two really big beasts in budgetary terms and responsibilities and despite I mean since the whole life of this parliament and probably 20 years before that we've been trying to cajole these two organisations to come together and here now to use legislation to really enforce it to try and make an impact and we'll be yet to see if that's going to prove successful I've got a feeling it will that's my own view but since we're having to do that and get these organisations who are well resourced in terms of people resources in terms of money and yet these difficulties occur on the positive side and this is my real question coming up what's the likelihood when the integration takes place the boards are set up and panels are set up and some of the organisations that we're concerned about including local authorities involved in the decisions there is that likely to help this process take place or is it going to be entirely at odds from what we're trying to achieve here I think we all recognise that integrating health and social care is both essential and has been very slow to happen in practice and it's a policy decision about how you go about that parliamentary support has decided to go for the integrated model using either integration joint boards or a lead agency model and we're at the early stages of seeing that happen we have made submissions during the legislative process about the things we think needs to be in place to make that effective based on our audit experience across Scotland the statutory board is part of that but a lot of other things as well will be needed in terms of the accountability and resources, the culture all of the things that we're seeing being challenges here and it's early doors in the way that we work in practice we will continue to look at it through our respective audit responsibilities as it comes into place over the next couple of years at the same time though I think that getting community planning right could either make a big contribution to that making sure that the information they're working with and the wider picture of how health and social care sit in the area as a whole to effect it is right and that people are pulling in the same direction rather than running the risks of pulling in different directions so almost regardless of what happens with the integration agenda I think getting this right can help to make that more effective or get in the way depending on how well it works but my question is the fact that this is taking place is it likely to enhance is it likely to show example or in itself almost force people to work together because of the two big beasts starting to to work together themselves I would have thought that if councils and health boards can make a success of health and social care partnerships and the key to that I think will be culture in the sense of health board members understanding their loyalty is not back to their own organisation is to the best interests of the health and social care partnership is the same point if you were a councillor appointed to a police committee your loyalty is to the best interests of the police committee I think that's going to take a bit of time but if that can be achieved and they can exhibit really good joint working I think that that will put more pressure on community planning partnerships to say well if health and social care partnerships can make this work we should be doing better ourselves my other question was in relation to you said that there was good practice out there and I wondered if it's possible to take that good practice and show it by example is there a mechanism we can use or the Government or COSLA can use to almost bring it to the table to an area to organisations that really I'm not getting their act together particularly in reference to your call that leadership at national level is improving but many CPPs are not clearly about are clear about what they are expected to achieve I would have thought that if there is an example somewhere it might be good for them to see it working in real term in real time absolutely one of the points we make in terms of the work that we might do is that we don't think there will be huge benefit in doing more big audits of community planning partnerships we've done eight across a good swath of different kind of community planning partnerships urban, rural, councils, island and we're not convinced we'll learn a great deal more from doing as another 24 but we do think to take your point on board one of the things that we should we could do more not only ourselves but indeed with other partners is to capture good practice so that we get beyond the point that if it's not invented here I'm not prepared to do it a good practice should be a good traveller in Scotland it isn't just now and I think there are some CPPs who are exhibiting good practice I think the issue is how we communicate that to other partners and encourage them not to reinvent the wheel but to take it on board but you have the points well made I want to tie my two questions together so we've taken the bold step to bring in legislation to bring about collaboration between the two organisations is it possible or practical could it legislation be used could you put this into a bill to force it to happen or is it just too too difficult well to be fair you mentioned the fact that community planning has been on the statute since 2003 and when it was established in 2003 it was provision in the act whereby a community planning partnership could apply to Scottish ministers to become an incorporated body no community planning partnership has ever so applied to become an incorporated body which perhaps says that there isn't the appetite out there at this point in time whether there will be in future I don't know but I come back to my point I think it seems to me if we're in the business of public sector reform as the government stated it is to create more bodies, more statutory bodies seemed to me to go against that flow I just wanted to put a point on the record Mr Sinclair you were talking about legislation would become effective in 2016 we actually didn't need that legislation and as a representative from Highland NHS Highland and Highland Council have been merged now since April 2012 so there are authorities out there that are doing it and it's very worrying that there seems to be a lack of guidance in terms of outcomes as Tabish Scott raised but I just don't think we need to sit back and wait till 2016 it is already happening I think that's a very fair point and I think a key part of that and it reflects one of the points we make in our report is the importance of building that relationship of trust between the leader of the council the chair of the health board and I think that Highland is a very, very good example of where there was a strong relationship of trust and they decided to embark on the lead agency model We're visiting there in February so we might get a chance to ask some questions on that Nigel Don Good morning The focus of the report before us is particularly about management and I understand that the questions you've had so far have been around that but one of the issues that we always have when we're trying to manage something is to be able to measure the outcomes usually when that's in Pound Shillings and Pence you can find a way of doing it but if the measure of equalities within my community is something like whether or not a child has gone to school having had breakfast before they get there and there's a different challenge now I'm wondering whether you believe from what you've seen so far that the right kind of information is simply being measured in such a way that it could then be put into an appropriate database which could then be accessed by the right people and turned into meaningful information my point being that if the basic data doesn't exist you're not going to get anything out the other end It's a really good question and the answer is in some places people are moving in the right direction we talked before about one of the confusions being how far community planning partnerships are about local needs and how far they're about national priorities as Douglas has said actually it's about both but you need to be clear which national priorities you're focusing on and where and which groups of people are your focus locally and you need to both be very clear what actions you intend to take to move those longer term outcomes and how you'll know you're moving in the right direction so providing breakfast for children in primary school or nursery school might be a really important contribution towards both making Scotland a great place to grow up but also having a healthy population and a healthy older population in a generation's time but you need to be measuring whether the right children are getting breakfast how regularly they're doing it how that varies across classes in a school and schools in an area where there's a longer term outcome so you can track it now that can easily sound like it's a really techy, bean countery thing to be suggesting actually we think it is all about leadership and management it's saying if we want to make sure that the poorest children in our area both are being decently fed at least once a day and are therefore set up to learn well at school we need to make sure that we are taking action in every school in every classroom to make that happen that's one of the things that's collaborative actually is doing very well in getting some of that change happening in parts of Scotland already again linking that up to what's happening through community planning is a way we think that you can help good practice spread, help the people who are further behind learn from those who are doing well this really is all about focus and about tying together what's going on rather than dissipating it yeah thank you but if I could come back to it and it I'm now beginning to realise the question the way I did because I'm going back about five years to the point where the Scottish Government introduced free school breakfasts and did a trial on it and I remember trying to have a conversation along the lines of you really need to measure this and there are examples and Hull would be one of them where people have been doing this for a very long time and know how to get the right answers but if you don't invest enough of your project in measurement and you never actually know what happened unfortunately I think five years ago we didn't so we don't know what happened now I would still come back to the basic point that if you don't take the time, the effort and therefore the money to measure what you really need to be able to assess and incidentally you have to start with a baseline or you never know whether it's changed then the best management in the world is still guessing I do want to come back to do you see in your audit work because clearly it's not your responsibility local authorities perhaps in particular but the other organisations that you're working with recognising the need to measure whatever it is and actually then taking the steps to do that measurement I agree completely with the point you're making and one of the things that we often report to this committee is that that data isn't being collected the answer is still in parts there are some places where that's being done really well where people recognise that to know you're getting breakfast to the right children regularly enough to make a difference you have to be recording that and then acting on what it tells you the same is true in relation to teeth cleaning hand washing in hospitals and in the best places we see that planning going on in the partnership and then charts on the wall where you can see what's happening day by day in other places it doesn't get the attention it deserves people think it's a bit of the sort of techie stuff either that will happen by itself or that's not important and we're not seeing it so it's one of the examples of good practice that we think Government, Cosmer and the Improvement Service could be helping to spread building on what's already happening and it's why we think that national framework for assessing how community planning is doing is so important so that we can we can avoid keeping on reinventing the wheel once we've learnt what works in one place if I might convener pursue that though in a slightly different direction I represent a rural community in many senses at least 25% of the folk in my constituency don't live in a town and I think you've already mentioned that it is certainly in here I think section 45 refers to assessment of areas of multiple deprivation or multiple deprivation in general and the extraordinary difficulty in actually measuring that in dispersed communities now again I feel that's a problem we haven't yet solved it's probably one we've now identified but again we're not going to be able to measure all the things we've been talking about if we simply cannot get down somehow or other to understanding what's happening in this farmhouse or that set of colleges and we're left with the average across north Angus ain't going to tell me anything that I couldn't previously have guessed now again there's a methodological this is a methodological question but do you see people beginning to get their minds around how they're going to crack that given that we now at least understand this problem I think Anthony may want to come in at a moment I think people are starting to in some places again this patchiness is true throughout you're absolutely right that things like the Scottish index of multiple deprivation aren't as good as they need to be for populations as a whole in rural areas because of the small numbers very dispersed but what the best community planning partnerships are doing is using their real local knowledge if we think about aspects of inequality about children who are going to struggle most in life because of poverty and the other sorts of deprivation they face actually teachers and social workers and police officers tend to know who those families are and you can get that really local knowledge into the community planning process if you're doing it well by really working with localities that make sense into both the data around people's experience homing in on small enough areas that you can get a feel for it we're doing that in some places but again it's not something which is happening as widely as it needs to across the piece It may be just worth adding the point that Solace, Coesla and the Improvement Service are developing, trying to develop this process of beginning to develop performance indicators for community planning partnerships in the same way they have done for local authorities so that might help the process of measurement I just wanted to make a couple of brief points if that's okay to the committee as Caroline said this is an area of very patchy performance but the best CPPs are measuring performance at the whole area level within specific communities and also for particular groups and they recognise the needs to gather data in lots of different ways and analyse it in different ways and what we're also seeing is a real awareness across government of the need to get data more available at local level as well because there are difficulties I think at the time for CPPs in bringing together data from different sectors because it's captured and gathered in different ways and can't always be brought together in sensible ways for planning purposes I think it was useful that Nigel Don in that final contribution actually brought this whole debate back to the impact on ordinary people to children to people living in communities right across Scotland because far too much of this debate takes place between bureaucrats and between politicians in bureaucrats and it's in a language that no one can understand this is passing the wider public by and yet the significance of some of this is that it will fundamentally affect the way that services are delivered to ordinary people the length and breadth of Scotland so something's got to give we can't go on with this we can't have fine intentions that are not being delivered and no means to deliver them and I do apologise that if at times our frustration seems to have been directed at you it's not that because you have provided a valuable service in bringing to us the analysis of frankly failure across Scotland yes one or two areas where there has been some success but the overriding message I think from this is one of failure failure to take responsibility seriously failure to implement and failure to deliver now there has to be some kind of change to this it's not your job to come up with the decisions that will change things for the better but we do value the evidence that you provide that helps us to encourage the debate that those with the power will hopefully listen to when they're coming to decisions but one of the things I did wonder about it does seem that the whole public sector landscape in a very small country is very cluttered a number of members today have talked about some of the big organisations Gil Paterson talked about the big beasts but a number of big organisations that are very remote from local communities where I think David Torrance was talking about boundaries and areas of responsibility not being coterminous and therefore a failure of one or the other not to be able to engage properly and I wonder whether in terms of the best use of public resources and public money whether at some point Audit Scotland might look at the public sector landscape whether it is too cluttered whether there is waste whether there is inefficiency now I'm not expecting you to come up with a solution that says you know there has to be there have to be fewer of these organisations there have to be mergers that's where politicians to decide but at some point surely we need to look and reflect that what's happening just now is a bureaucratic nightmare that in many respects is inefficient and unfortunately those inefficiencies are obscuring the excellent work that's often been done at a local level right across Scotland somebody at some point needs to put on the table an analysis that will draw up short politicians of all parties and hopefully make them think about differently about what has been done so I'll leave you with that thought but thank you very much for what turned out to be quite a stimulating discussion on a subject that is probably dry and obscure to most people so thank you and with that we will move in to private session