 Good morning and welcome to the 12th meeting in 2023 of the local government housing and planning committee. I would like to let everyone know that Miles Briggs has given us apologies for this meeting. May I remind all members and witnesses to ensure that their devices are on silent and that all notifications are turned off during the meeting? The first item of our agenda today is to decide whether to take items 4, 5 and 6 in private. Are we all agreed? We're agreed. Thank you. The next item on our agenda today is to take evidence on the town and country planning, development planning, Scotland regulations 2023 from Dofiths Patrick, the minister for local government empowerment and planning for the Scottish government. Mr Fitzpatrick is joined by the Scottish Government officials, Kristen Anderson, who is the principal planner, Andy Cunaird, who is the head of transforming planning, and Cary Thomson, who is the head of development planning and housing. I welcome witnesses to our meeting and I would like to invite the minister to make a brief opening statement. Thank you very much, convener, and good morning to everyone. I think that the last time I was at this committee was as convener of session 4's local government and regeneration committee. I note Mark was a member way back then in 2011, but that said in preparing for this morning, I felt a little bit soon after my appointment to be facing a double committee session, but it is good to be back. I would like to thank the committee for this opportunity to briefly outline the approach to the new development planning provisions. The provisions are contained in Scottish statutory instrument 2023, number 101, and the associated commencement, saving and transitional arrangements regulations. Scotland's plan-led system of development is widely supported. As you are aware from your consideration of national planning framework 4, the Scottish Government is strengthening development planning as part of our wider planning reform programme. That includes changes to what constitutes the development plan, the interplay between NPF4 and LDPs in terms of policies, and the process of preparing local development plans with a greater focus on delivery. Together, those changes create opportunity for LDPs to refocus on delivering place-based outcomes. The broad framework for new-style LDPs and their preparation is set out in the primary legislation, the Planning Scotland Act 2019, which made strategic changes to LDPs. Those regulations provide the detail of how the actual requirements should be fulfilled. The new regulations were informed by extensive engagement with key stakeholders, with inputs from the cross-sectoral development planning working group that led to public consultation on the main regulations and draft guidance along with the consultation on draft NPF4 and the separate consultation with targeted engagement on the definition of gypsies and travellers. Overall, respondents were generally supportive of our proposed approach of carefully targeted regulations. More detail will be provided in the fuller associated guidance. I can assure the committee that the regulations were finalised taking account of the comments raised through the public consultation. The policy note sets out details of the consultations, including issues raised and the regulations now reflect that feedback. We have not included all of the suggestions put forward within the regulations themselves, but we will address the matters raised in the guidance. That connection between the regulations and the guidance is key. We have sought to strike a balance between having a clear statutory framework and clear guidance to support all stakeholders in implementing the new system, while giving planning authorities flexibility to implement the statutory procedures in ways that best suits their places, their communities and their own organisational priorities. We also intend to identify and share best practice as the new system beds in. We welcome the opportunity to come back to the committee to talk through the comprehensive guidance once it is published, if that is something that the committee would be interested in. Commencement number 12 will commence various provisions of the 2019 act, needed to support the envisaged new system of LDPs. We have also provided savings and transitional arrangements for plans that started under the current system. We know from our discussions with stakeholders that planning authorities are eager to get on with their new style plans, and those regulations will provide a solid foundation for a consistent approach to plan making across the country. I look forward to answering your questions with perhaps a bit more support than usual from Kirsten Cary and Andy. I am certainly aware of the eagerness in my local authority. There has been some great work already initiated around local development plans and community engagement. You began to touch on that, but I would be interested to hear a little bit more deeply about how the Scottish Government consulted on the regulations, what significant issues were raised during the consultation and what changes were made in the light of representations that were received. Obviously, extensive work at the start of the cost sectoral development working group was involved right from the outset. Before we put pen to paper, there were three subgroups that looked at procedures, evidence reports and the gate check and the scope and content with each of those produced outputs in February 2021, offering information on their ideas to support development of the regulations. On the public consultation on the proposed LDP regulations and guidance, there were more than 14 weeks between December 2021 until the end of March, and that ran alongside the consultation and the draft NPF4. That allowed people to have a joined up understanding as they were looking at the consultation. There were 87 responses received from planning authorities, key agencies, development property and land management bodies. Importantly, there was a separate consultation on the definition of gypsies and travellers, which ran between December 2022 and February 2023. That enabled targeted involvement of the community and the opportunity to explain the specific matters associated with the definition and the specific context in terms of what it was used. That allowed four in-person consultation events with travelling community members. I think that there are 41 responses to that, but if you look at that, there is probably a good example of best practice about how we engage with communities that sometimes appear to be more difficult to engage with in terms of consultations. On the issues raised, there was generally broad agreement with the majority of the proposals. Overall, there seemed to be agreement that the regulations should be kept to a minimum, supporting the flexibility and ability to address potential problems arising. We were able to make some changes to the draft regulations on a few areas, but on balance many of the issues raised will be dealt with in the guidance, rather than in the regulations, in terms of the principle of keeping the regulations to a minimum, to make sure that we have a clear legal framework where the guidance that can be updated based on best practice is where most of the other points from the consultation were taken in. Christian, have I missed any bits that you would like to fill in? That is the main point. There are a few points of detail that we covered in the regulations, for example. Some members of the business community wanted to ensure that at examinations there is an opportunity for them to comment on any further information that is provided, so we provided for that. As the minister indicated, we have added the definition of gypsies and travellers and the feedback that was quite a lot consensus on the changes that required for that definition, which we have taken on board. We have updated some of the information and considerations that planners have to take into account when preparing their local development plan. There are things in there that have added around the climate change agenda, so adding in things around national lot and regional marine plans, open space strategies and flood risk management plans. Thank you very much for that. It is good to hear about the additional clarity around the climate. I would be interested to hear how you expect a planning authority to go about developing an evidence report and what opportunities will there be for communities and individuals to input into the process? The evidence report is really important to make sure that there is robust evidence evidence-led plan making. It should provide a summary of what the evidence means for plan making and the aim is to frontload that work. You were asking what the process is. About how the authority would go about developing it exactly and then the opportunities for communities and individuals to input. It is important that it is frontloaded in terms of that involvement with the community. That is one of the crucial things. It is important in terms of involving communities at the earliest opportunity. I am going to ask Christon to help me if you can. The act already sets out different groups that the planning authority has to engage as it is preparing its evidence report. Those groups cover quite a wide cross-sector people. It includes the key agencies, specifically children and young people, and it sets out those types, including school pupils, youth councillors and youth parliament representatives. It also includes the public at large, so that is quite a large category that covers most groups. We have also set out how we include the statements in the evidence report of how they have engaged with disabled people, gypsies and travellers that we spoke about earlier, and community councils. We think that we have captured a wide range of engagements. In terms of that engagement, the focus really is on that early collaborative engagement to inform how sufficient that evidence is rather than the more formal responding to a report. It is about a more embrace of holistic approach to engagement. In terms of engaging with young people or any of the groups that you have identified, it is pretty much up to the planning authority to decide how they go about doing that. Yes, but there will be separate statutory guidance that will be bringing forward on effective community engagement and development plans. That will be published shortly. The evidence report that has to be produced is key to making sure that that engagement is appropriate for the local place and communities. It might not be the same everywhere, I guess, but that is the key point. Thank you for that. I will bring in Annie Wells. Thank you, convener. Good morning, minister. Good morning, panel. Following on from Arrianne's question, I was just wondering, minister, if you could explain why the Scottish Government has chosen not to establish minimum evidence and consultation requirements for evidence reports? One of the big concerns would be if we had laid out in the regulations minimum requirements in terms of the evidence and consultation, that could very much be seen as the bar and could very much be seen as a tick box exercise. This is about us trying to get a system which is able to adapt. The guidance will be crucial in terms of that, but there is a real danger if we set those minimum requirements, then that is seen as what we inform them of tick the box and then move on to the next thing. Hopefully that is the way that it will be seen by folk engaging, but crucially because so much will be in the guidance, it will be easier for us to adapt that going forward. It will be a living document, so it is not an addition one or two, so we can make sure that the guidance makes sure that we support everyone to engage in the way that we expect it to. That will continue to be monitored throughout this year and anything you would come back to the committee with, anything that changes in that. The guidance is happy to come and speak to the committee when the guidance is published, but it will be a live document and if the committee feels that there has been a significant change to that, it will want to discuss further. We are now going to move to questions from Willie Coffey. Thank you very much, convener, and good morning to you, Joel. Could you just say a wee bit more about the gate checking exercise and maybe for the benefit of the committee and anybody watching just to explain briefly what is gate checking? Is it a series of tests that need to be applied to almost verify that the LDP is compliant? Of course, a broad range of issues, that is my estimate of that, but just broadly what is it and will it be the same in every local authority or do local authorities get to define it themselves? The assessment of the evidence report is what we are terming, the gate check is obviously a new process, so that will provide an independent assessment of whether the planning authority has sufficient information to prepare an LDP and that will be carried out by a person appointed by Scottish ministers, usually a reporter from the planning and environmental appeals division, so it is a new independent process. Do you want to add a little bit more about gate checking? Yes, it is a new process. As the minister outlined, it will be for the reporter to consider whether there is sufficient information within that evidence report that compiles the different types of evidence that will allow them to progress to the next stage of preparing their plan. So it is almost like the baseline information and with whoever there is enough information of what to plan for and then the proposed plan sets out where things go. Does the reporter set issue some guidelines about what should be in it or can local authorities determine the context and make up of it themselves? It will be for the reporter to decide the procedure. They will provide the evidence report and we will set out in the guidance some templates of what the evidence report should look like. It is up to the reporter wherever they want to invite for written or oral procedures to assess that information. Any resource implications that you can envisage with that process, any additional resource requirement that you anticipate might be needed to make sure that that is a smooth process? We have been in discussions with our colleagues in DPA on the planning environmental appeals division and they have been aware of preparing for these new changes this new stage since the planning act in 2019. They will get themselves ready for that. They are also reaching out to planning authorities across the country, particularly the ones who are going to be the early pioneers to get them ready. It includes the logistics of how they will present that information and upload it to their data servers to make sure that they have those conversations early on. We expect planning authorities to develop those plans over a period of about five years, so they are not all going to come at once. The six authorities that we think are ahead of the game should be phased over a period of time. Thank you for that. Another query that I have is about the online map-based provision for plans. I am certainly aware of East Asia's capability to plan and department with the online mapping systems, but is that broadly available across Scotland? Are there any technical resource requirements and issues that you are aware of for authorities to implement these systems? We are working with the high-level group to look at the range of skills that are required for the new plan, so we are ensuring that we have performance improvement and necessary reform to support that cross-sectoral approach to the range of skills, including the mapping skills, if there are additional resources. Is there anything specific about the mapping? I can maybe just come up in a bit on that. Another crucial element of the overall wider planning reform programme is the work that we are doing just now in the digital transformation of the planning system and of services. One key element of that is how we can better use reliable open access data and map that out around the country so that authorities and those who may be looking to invest in development will have access to that same information mapped out. That is not available across the board at the moment? Not yet. It is something that we are actively working on at the moment. Who do we help to support and fund local authorities that need to invest in that or are we expecting them to make that investment? Our digital programme is a six-year £35 million investment by the Scottish Government working with the authorities and wider stakeholders. Excellent. Just like any minister, the system that is seen at East Asia is really good and the local people really engage with that. I am sure that somebody from East Asia is hearing what you are saying and there will be an invite on it to come and chat with them. Many thanks for the answers to those questions, minister. Thank you. I actually got a couple of supplementaries on that. On the previous question, you mentioned that there are some local authorities that are already head in the process. Can you tell us which ones? You can write to us and let us know. Maybe we are about to just write and talk a little about them. Some of them are like Loch Lomond in the Trossach National Park Authority, I think Midlothian Fife. But we are just having those conversations and I think that the improvement service is providing us with data from all the local authorities on their timelines, but we are expecting that some of those may overtake each other. I think that some are eager to learn from Fife and the others as the early doors. Thanks very much for that. The other piece on the mapping. What level of detail is that mapping going to? What kind of information would we get from the mapping system? Sort of looking at lots and lots of different layers of different types of information, so it can be around what development plans are already allocating for and it can be where there are designations, could be environmental designations of bits of land, vacant and derelict land, all of these things. It's all kind of data that can be marked based on layers of that. Is that system robust enough to go to the level of if we wanted to set up a cadastral system at some point that that would be possible in that system? So that's certainly the thinking at the moment. It's a piece of work that's the early days of scoping out exactly what it's going to do and how it's going to shape, but we can see it sitting with a platform of which development plans, including national planning framework, can sit in the future. Okay, great. That's good to hear that it's something that we can grow arms and legs and be very useful, because it's clearly been, that's been an issue, is the whole mapping of Scotland. What are those significant changes that were brought in by the planning act itself rather than these legislation, so that's why work is on-going? Thanks. We're now going to bring in Ivan McKee with a question. Yeah, thanks very much, morning minister and officials. It was round about the requirements on planning authorities to notify owners and occupiers of land, neighbouring development sites that are identified in the proposed plan, where that proposal may have a significant impact on their land and about the resource implications of that. So it was just to ask what consideration have you given to what those resource implications may be and if there was any thinking about additional resources being made available to support that. Yep, I think we're generally comfortable that the majority of the changes that are made by these regulations, as such the majority of changes would have been made by the planning act that is already in place and, as I said, we've tried to keep the regulations to a minimum. Andy, was that? Just going to say that that requirement is in the existing system already, in the existing arrangements for preparing local development plans. It's not you and these regulations. Okay, thanks. And Marie? Thank you. Minister and your officials, can you explain how you decided on the list of key agencies to be consulted by the planning authority when drafting the LDP, and there are not some obvious emissions such as Network Rail in Visit Scotland? The key agencies are really the same key agencies that were in the 2008 regulations. There are some changes because some of the organisations have changed their names, so Scottish Natural Heritage is now NatureScot, for instance. And there are a couple of new agencies, which, so Cythus Scotland Enterprise, for instance, effectively has the same role as Highland Islands Enterprise, obviously different geographies, so that's the kind of main changes. Largely, it is just based on the 2008 regulations. In terms of which agencies were key and which were not, some of the agencies that might make sense to be key agencies, Transport Scotland, Marine Scotland, are agencies of the Scottish Government, so it's absolutely important that they're engaged, but the legislation wouldn't allow them to be key agencies because of the nature of their of them being effectively part of the Scottish Government. But guidance will make it clear that even some of those big organisations should still be connected. Obviously, Network Rail is a part of the UK Government, but nonetheless, the regional transport partnerships are in there. I guess that Visit Scotland is probably in a similar place to the other groups. I wonder if you're able to set out how the Government feels that local plan authorities should balance the policies and proposals that they consult on and develop locally with, maybe, any potential competing interests or clashes that they might be with NPF4. How do you expect planning authorities to resolve those? You talked about the guidance that you're planning on releasing to supplement NPF4. I wonder if you're able to give an indication of when that might be. In terms of when NPF4 sits alongside and the act sets out the climate for planning authorities to take NPF into account when preparing their LDP. It's a bit different, so I think that in the past you would have expected the national planning framework to virtually be replicated within the local plan, so that's no longer necessary, because they sit alongside each other, so I think that's a much more sensible way of working. You're right, the guidance is really crucial. Do we have a kind of expectation in terms of when? Yeah, we're expecting it after around the time, maybe just shortly after the regulations come into force, but we're talking about these. I think that one of the concerns—I don't know if this is the right place to ask this question, but one of the concerns that I have is that we've got NPF4, then we've got local development plans, and then you've got my favourite topic, which is local place plans, and I see Andy smile in there because he knows I bring it up. I think that one of the concerns that I have is that we've got these local development plans that are maybe going to take five years to create, so that's an interesting and useful bit of information, actually, but if a community hasn't got on board with—they're not at that point where they're going, oh, we want to create a local place plan, how do you see—if you've got a plan, a local development plan that's kind of done and dusted and this is it—here it is—how will communities be able to then, at a later stage, how will their local place plans be honoured and respected and the local development plan opens up and gives space for that community expression? The regulations that we're putting in place is all about trying to make sure that we're getting that engagement when we're doing that, but it's absolutely appropriate that we have those different layers and it's all about trying to get engagement at the earliest possible time in terms of specific—in terms of it—interfacing with place. Yeah, yeah, sure. The provisions around the local place plans were intentionally light touch so that we weren't trying to, I guess, brigade local communities into doing something by a particular time, so they can bring forward a local place plan at any time through the life cycle of the LDP. Alongside the work on these regulations, and we'll just shortly be starting work on the regulations that are required for how you would make amendments to the local development plan so it could be up within that 10-year cycle, so just an in-process amendments that can be made, so there would still be opportunities if there are local place plans that the authority then wants to take forward the proposals from within that, they could just make amendments to the LDP. Okay, look forward to seeing that regulation. I think that's it, so thank you very much for the evidence on this today. It was very helpful, I think that we've got some useful bits of information there. The minister will be staying with us for our next evidence session, as he said at the beginning, but I now suspend the meeting for five minutes to allow for a changeover of supporting officials. Thank you. The next item on our agenda today is to take evidence on the community planning inquiry. This is the final evidence session before we reflect on all the evidence that we've heard in recent months and consider what conclusions we might draw from it. A final report will then go from the committee to the Scottish Government, and we are joined for this session again by Dau Fitzpatrick, the Scottish Government's Minister for Local Government, Empowerment and Planning. For this session, Mr Fitzpatrick is joined by Scottish Government officials, Andrew Connell, who is the team leader from Public Service Reform and Community Planning, and David Milne, who is also a team leader from Public Service Reform and Community Planning. We are joined online by Councillor Stephen Heddle, who is the vice president of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, COSLA. Councillor Heddle is joined by Simon Cameron, who is the chief officer from the workforce and corporate policy team, and Lucy Devlin, who is policy assistant at the workforce and corporate policy team, COSLA. I welcome all of our witnesses this morning. We will try to direct our questions to specific witnesses where possible. However, if you would like to come in, please indicate to the clerks, and Councillor Heddle, if you can do that by typing an R in the chat function, we can bring you in. There is no need for you to manually turn your microphones on and off, as we will do that for you. I now invite the minister to make a brief opening statement. I am grateful to the committee for the opportunity to discuss community planning as part of its on-going post-legislative scrutiny of the Community Empowerment Scotland Act 2015. Convener, as you are aware, part 2 of the act introduces reforms to community planning and provides a statutory purpose for public sector bodies to work together and with communities to improve outcomes and reduce inequalities. This government is committed to community planning. It enables genuine partnership working and provides an ideal platform through which to address the deep-rooted and complex social, economic and environmental challenges that affect communities across Scotland. As a result, the place-based actions that community planning partnerships take on local priorities also support imported public service reform ambitions for the Scottish Government nationally. For example, eradication of child poverty, economic transformation and adjust transition to net zero and tackling health inequalities. The Scottish Government is conducting an informal review of part 2 of the Community Empowerment Act, which covers community planning. The review builds on practical learning and engagement with partners, including the community planning improvement board, to ensure that community planning is as effective as it can be. I know that the committee has heard evidence from a range of witnesses, all of whom have valuable experience of community planning. I have noted their examples of successful community planning in practice since the act, as well as where there is potential for continued improvement in how community planning operates in practice. The committee's findings and recommendations will inform our review and help us to further improve community planning so that it supports our ambition to enhance partnership working and improve outcomes for communities across Scotland. I look forward to receiving the committee's report in due course and continuing to engage with members on how to ensure that community planning continues to help to improve outcomes for communities across Scotland. I invite Councillor Heddle to make a brief opening statement if he would like to. I thank the chair for the invitation to the panel to give evidence alongside Mr Fitpatrick today. I am very much welcome to his opening remarks. I think that it shows that both the local government and the Scottish Government are on the same page with respect to that. I, too, would like to reiterate the local government's commitment to community planning. I think that it is fair to say that the aspirations expressed by Campbell Christie remain as valid as ever. We endorse those aspirations at the time and remain committed to carry them through, particularly around the areas of early intervention and prevention. I think that the evidence that has been gathered so far shows that there may be still a distance to go. That is reflected in the findings to date. I would say that we recognise and support those findings. Personally, I was slightly surprised at the findings in respect of third sector interfaces because, in my own area, I feel that we have a very good relationship with the voluntary sector and they do work for us. However, I think that that shows the progress that we can make nationally learning from each other. I think that the findings to date would certainly underline the ones that speak about the need to enable the commitment and contribution, particularly of partners, particularly of national agencies or bodies under national direction, to be able to be responsive and flexible at the local level. In short, through our evidence today, the costalists hope to emphasise the importance of the participation engagement from all partners and, relatedly, to highlight the need to situate community planning within the broader work on public service reform, which Mr Fitzpatrick referenced. That also includes the local governor's review. We very much believe that fully empowering local partners to work meaningfully together and to reduce barriers to collaborative working will help to achieve better outcomes locally and nationally and to respond to the issues of place that have been highlighted. Our objective clearly has to be better services and better local decision meeting and not just cost cutting to balance national budgets. We feel that this is very much a place-based initiative and it has to do with what it says in the problem in terms of community planning. I am going to open with a number of questions around culture change before we move on to the other themes that we have been exploring in the evidence session so far. Back in 2015, community planning was seen as central to public service reform in tackling inequalities and aiding prevention, as we have both articulated. The committee heard that the picture on the ground is very variable. Again, you have picked that up. I would be interested to hear from your sense what impact community planning has had and maybe I will start with the minister. Public service reform, particularly how we deliver effective and efficient public services, has to be supported by effective community planning. That work is key to achieving the cross-cutting missions set out by the Scottish Government's policy perspective, including tackling inequalities and aiding prevention. One of the three priorities of the Scottish Government from the recent budget is that public service remains sustainable and well-placed to improve outcomes and reduce inequalities. We are reinforcing that in our engagement with public bodies, many of the statutory community planning partners and emphasising that they need to pursue opportunities to do that, both alone and in collaboration. You mentioned the degree of variability, but by the very nature you would expect there to be variability, but it is obviously for the Government to ensure—it is the Government's role to ensure that it acts and its implementation on the ground remains fit for purpose. That is why the then Minister for Public Finance and Planning and Community Wealth announced the review that we are taking forward and why I welcome the work of this committee. It is important to say that variation is in itself not a bad thing. We would always resist the idea to brand local variation as a poscode lottery. That is often the sort of choice that is made due to local need and availability of finance locally. As Mr Sparrow said, variation is to be expected. We would absolutely want to improve the situation. The culture change for statutory partners plays new responsibilities for participation on the bodies. We need to go beyond that to enable, as I said, the national agents to free up the local officers to participate more fully locally. That is perhaps a shortcoming that could easily be overcome. We would certainly improve the collaborative working locally so that the partners would be participating rather than attending, which is sometimes the case. I think that that has been found in the evidence given so far. The situation there is one that is perhaps understandable. We have to ask ourselves the question of what are the key priorities for our partners? Are those of the community planning partnership in the place? Are the targets that are set by their employers and their ministers? We need to be able to get to a better balance of both so that it can be more biased towards or shifted more towards the priorities of the community planning partnership and the place. I think that we have the opportunity to do that through the work that is being done here and the local government's review. Indeed, the work that we will take forward and respect the community wealth building as well is also going to be around. Thanks very much for that. You have set me up very well for my next question, because I think that I am starting to understand community wealth building. That is the bill that is going to be coming through the committee at some point. In my deep understanding on that, I start to see that community planning partnerships could really be the place that a good part of community wealth building could be delivered. I would be interested to see what you think the role of CPPs going forward are with community wealth building, but also Covid recovery is something that has been talked about through our evidence sessions and also the new deal for local government. Maybe because you mentioned the words community wealth building already, I will start with you, Councillor Heddle. I must be more careful than the words I use going forward. I was so thrilled today too, so I am not really wanting to hear the sound way of advice I should say that. Community wealth building is a very exciting thing to take forward and obviously is being led primarily by our colleagues in Ayrshire. They have done a lot of work towards that, so we are looking towards them as exemplars of what we can achieve in respect of that. Clearly, that is tied in also with participatory budgeting, so I am not leading into a question participatory budgeting, but it is the citizen participation and the participation of partners is key in that, as well as retaining wealth locally. The way to do that is to make sure that all the local actors are involved and the community planning partnership serves as an important forum to keep everybody in the loop. The value of keeping everybody in the loop is if people can respond to that, so return on to the empower and other agencies and our partners as well as local government to be able to respond to the local priorities is key in that. I am starting to lose the thread here that might remind me from not answering your question. That is hard. No, you are doing a fine job. It was just really about CPPs and the role going forward, but I think that one of the things that you have talked about there about the importance of CPPs in terms of the community wealth building bill being a forum that can keep everyone in the loop. I would also imagine that there is also an incredible opportunity there for say an orcney or wherever we are of working with those partners to identify local procurement, so we are starting to bring procurement locally through those agencies. That is something that I am starting to get excited about. Absolutely. That can go beyond the vanilla procurement to work collaboratively to support the employment in such an issue as that. The discussions that we have in orcney—I am a member of the health board as well—share experience in respect of that to deal with supporting employers. I will probably stop there if that is okay. That is fine. I will come to you, minister. I really focus on community wealth building, but it is more a general question around how you see the CPPs going forward, the role of them, for the wealth building bill, but also in Covid recovery and also in the new deal for local government. Community planning will continue to have a really important role in supporting a range of priorities such as Covid recovery, promoting population health, tackling health and equalities. Increasingly, there will be a role for community wealth building, as you have mentioned, particularly in terms of economic development in our communities. That is obviously being led by the Minister for Community Wealth and Public Finance, so I will ask David to comment and indulge your passion. There is also an increasing role in climate action, so supporting community-led place-based approaches. There is a really exciting opportunity there, and if we get that right, there will be huge benefits. We are continuing discussions with COSLA, CPIB and other partners to support improvements to community planning in the context of the new deal with local government and the local governance review. David, do you want to indulge your convener? Community wealth building, in a sense, is almost like a tool that feeds other local priorities, so the role of public sector bodies as employers, as procurers, as owners and operators of estates and assets. How are they used to best support economic development and improvement and also some of the kind of social and environmental challenges facing local areas? The work on the community wealth building bill is actually built on some good experience, much of which has taken place at community planning partnership level already, including in North Ayrshire. Collaborative work has been incorporated into some local outcome improvement plans, for instance, in Midlothian and Dundee. Some public sector bodies, notably public NHS boards, are developing their own roles as anchor organisations, so recognising how they undertake their work is as important as the work that they do. Just briefly on Covid recovery, maybe this also reflects convener back to your initial question about culture, in light of the pandemic. We witnessed some dynamic working through CPPs, anyway, during the pandemic, but also subsequently in that most CPPs have reviewed and either have or are in the process of updating their local outcome improvement plans to reflect the changing reality, both from Covid recovery and, increasingly, in the current cost of living crisis. Different manifestations are all focused on the same underpinning issue, which is that communities in Scotland that have, for decades, been most disadvantaged, that have suffered most through the pandemic and the current cost of living crisis. That is really an area where, by working together on community planning, partners can make a difference. Thank you very much for that, David. It is good to hear that, in terms of the community wealth building, my sense is that it is a buzz in Scotland and that people are pushing the process already in a way, eager to get on with it as a tremendous opportunity. It is great to hear about the work that we have had that experience in the pandemic, and you have talked about dynamic working. Obviously, it is great to hear that that experience has fed into changing and adapting. I believe that you want to come back in and, after that, we will move on to the next theme. Thank you for your first year in Dilsons. It was a reminder that I hadn't actually responded in terms of the Covid recovery point. Covid, the pandemic, was obviously an example of how they both look with authorities in their own right and the community planning partnerships, as well can respond to a crisis effectively and at pace. We have to recognise that the Covid pandemic and the funding that followed it placed us in an unusual situation, where the availability of resource was not so much an issue. It was a challenge on us to spend the resource that we have effectively and quickly. I think that both the councils and the community planning partnerships rose to the challenge. I am sure that that will be audited, and I remain confident that the councils will be shown to have responded very effectively and economically. That would respond to the principle that we should bear in mind that the community planning partnerships can bring to the fore, given that it brings together the various groups. David Millan was saying that, in the context of the pandemic, we have updated our priorities, but we have also convened other members on to the community planning partnerships that can offer advice and relevant information, particularly in respect of business partnerships that are coming on to the community planning partnerships, as we attempted to maintain the viability of our local businesses. In general, the previous examples have been around youth unemployment. That was a priority that brought together the local authority, the job centre class and the third sector to work very effectively in a lower area to make very concrete inroads into the field of youth unemployment. That is simply an example of how the community planning partnerships can work together very effectively and quickly. I said that we would move on, but I have another question. You have both talked about the importance and effectiveness of community planning partnerships up until now. I would be interested to hear your view on the funding of CPPs. Do you think that the current approach to that funding is effective? There are some really good examples of partners aligning the resources, notably staff and premises, towards a shared purpose, so that, collectively, they can achieve more than by working separately. The important point in relation to funding is that partners should use their collective resources in whatever way best enables them to deliver on local priorities in line with their own organisation's role and responsibilities. I have heard the arguments that partners should allocate funds towards a pot of money that CPPs control. I would be interested in learning more about the benefits and risks of that approach. That is one of the things that you have been looking at. I think that there are recommendations coming out of the community planning improvement board, which I am looking forward to discussing with the CPIB chair, which I have not yet discussed. Do we still have Councillor Heddle? No? Okay. Is there anyone on the team who wants to pick that up? Oh, he is back. All right, you are back. Great. You are on mute at the moment. We will just get your mic on for you. Yeah, apologies for my connection. Did I miss a question? So it was just a question about funding. Did you hear about that? Did you hear it? Do you want me to say it again? Oh yeah, I had your initial question. I mean, I think that this is an issue because the situation at present is that the resource in the community planning partnerships is primarily by local authorities. It is an educated staff to perform the clerking role. We do the bulk of the work in preparing the local outcomes improvement plan. We really could do with more buy-in from our partners. It is difficult enough at present to resource the staff that we have working on the loyps jointly. I mean, I made the point, what is the key priorities for partners? How invested are our partners in the community planning partnerships? They do not have a statutory financial investment in it. There is an expectation that they are going to contribute. I do not want to be directive of our partners. I think that the expectation could do a bit more to being realised, to contribute to the running of the partnership. Dropped out again. Okay. I think that we got the bulk of the response and that was very helpful. I am now going to move on to the theme of tackling inequalities. Annie Wells is leading on that, Annie. Thank you, convener. Good morning, panel. We know that participation and engagement are hugely important when it comes to community planning, but I would like to ask the minister firstly what more should be done to ensure that marginalised communities, including communities of interest, have a voice in the community planning process in each local authority area. We know that it differs in each local authority area and even in some areas within a local authority area. I wonder if we could get your take on that, minister. As the member says, community engagement is really important for community planning, given its focus on improving outcomes and reducing inequalities. Engagement at personal or family level is particularly important for households experiencing disadvantage to understand what matters to that household around which suitable responses can be shaped. Direct engagement using the usual methods might not always be appropriate, so we need to look at different ways to ensure that they have the opportunity to have their voice heard on the issues that matter to them and feel confident that those views have been heard. Looking at some of the examples that you have had, it is interesting to hear from the CPPs looking to engage with people in less formal settings where they are likely to already be. For example, the North Lanarkshire CPP engaging in schools and health centres, the East Asia Asia CPP hosting an annual joint session with the Children and Young Persons Cabinet and local MSYPs. We need to look at how we can do more of that and share that best practice. It will be variable because, by the very nature, communities are different, places are different, but it is good to see some examples of CPPs reaching out to make sure that they are not just—I think that the concern is that you are just hearing from the same folk and not hearing the people who are most impacted by the plans that they are intending to take forward. That is kind of what we have been hearing as well. I do not know whether Councillor Herll had anything to add to that as well from a local point of view. I would agree with the minister's reflections there. I think that it is absolutely true that we probably can do more to reach out to the marginalised communities and communities of interest and that we should be doing this. If we were to set out a plan how we do that, that is part of our loyp. We should do more on that. I do not think that that would necessarily be a bad thing. The involvement of our partners in reaching out is a powerful tool of the community planning partnership in Orkney. We do much of our engagement using the voluntary sector, voluntary action in Orkney, which often leads on the community engagement for us. We have conducted exercises in each of our ferry-linked islands. Obviously, even within Orkney, there are issues of insularity and double insularity with respect to the mainland on which I live. On localities, this is one of our localities. We are obviously obliged to reach out to them and to reflect their opinions. I simply agree that we can do more. The CPP is able to do this involving our partners. We are now going to move on to our next theme, which is community empowerment. Mark Griffin is leading on that. It has been eight years since the Community Empowerment Act was passed. I just wanted to ask the minister and Councillor Heddle whether they can point to any evidence that shows that communities are more empowered now than they were back then when the act was passed and come to the minister first. The whole purpose of the act was to empower communities. It is a reasonable question to ask, for example. There are three areas that I would like to highlight. The first is participation requests, which help people to start a dialogue about the things that matter in their communities. That allows people to have a voice, their voice heard in policy and service development through contributing to decision-making processes, and then to challenge decisions and seek support for alternatives that obviously improve outcomes. Since 2017, there have been 75 participation requests made. That includes community participation in outcome improvement processes for things like peer safety issues, local road improvements, the future of local police officers and improvements to community halls. The second area that I would like to flag up is the asset transfer legislation that is designed to encourage and support ownership and control of assets by communities. Since coming into force on 23 January 2017, there have been 203 asset transfers that have been agreed, and there is obviously more in progress. That includes parks, woodlands, sports and recreational facilities and community hubs. Helping to reduce inequalities by ensuring that all communities can be in control of their outcomes and environments. The final area, which I think that the councillor mentioned briefly—I do not know if I am flagging this up for him—is participatory budgeting. It is a tool for communities empowerment that enables local people to have a direct say in how public money is spent. There has been an impressive scaling up of participatory budgeting in Scotland over the past few years, with more than 200,000 people directly deciding on how money is spent in their local community. It is three areas in which we can see real involvement. It shows why it is so important that we keep up doing this work to encourage more involvement from communities and more empowerment. Did you have anything to add to that? Are you able to point to anything that shows a more empowered nation than it was when the act was passed? I think that, to be honest, we can do more. We can expect more in terms of travelling towards the aspirations of both the community empowerment act and the aspirations of the Sambalchristian message. I think that we would like to see the partnerships empowered more to be able to empower or place us more. We would like to be able to make more progress in respect of the early intervention and prevention agendas, which is key to the fundamental success of the community planning partnerships that are originally envisaged. On the provisions of the act, I think that one of the things that has surprised me is the fact that community asset transfers have not happened as much as might have been expected. In my own area, what we have found is that, in terms of asset transfers, we find that our community organisations are quite happy for the local authority to maintain ownership of the asset and maintain the asset itself rather than pass the burden of responsibility to them. That has been something that has prevented asset transfers from taking off to the extent that we expected. Maybe a review of that would be relevant to why the laudable aspiration of asset transfers has perhaps not taken place as often as it has been envisaged. It has been my experience that, quite often, asset transfers happen because the local community does not want to lose it when it is proposed for closure. It is almost like the last resort, so I am not saying that it is helpful. I can come to my second question and just ask if we are doing enough to build capacity in communities, whether we are doing enough to support communities to get involved in decision making and how we are supporting the existing infrastructure of what role the community councils have in community planning, and perhaps we can come to councillor Heddle first. In terms of building capacity, building capacity is very important. That brings us into the issue of local police plans and how they fit into the landscape because we are absolutely clear that, in planning terms, we must make sure that local police plans are not just a tool for wealthy and well-resourced communities, but also a tool for the communities. Perhaps the organisation capacity does not have the resources to put those things together. That is long been a concern of local government, so it cascades into how you empower communities in terms of the wider community planning agenda. We are at present an absence of resources issue. We can give communities a voice through consultation, but how do we support them to make informed decisions? How do we support them to produce plans, to take forward things such as asset transfers? How do we do that? It comes back to, I am sorry to say this, the under-resourcing of local government and the fact that we are a billion pounds short where we would like to be compared with where we are. Otherwise, we would be able to do more for our marginalised communities to support them, to make full use of the tools that are available to them. Minister, anything to add on the capacity? I think that, in terms of capacity, we need to recognise that it is never going to be a done deal, so we need to continue to build and invest in building capacity. One of the ways that the Scottish Government does that is by funding the Scottish Community Development Centre, the SCDC, which in turn supports community-based groups in Scotland to engage with participation requests. I asked about community councils as well. Obviously, community councils are one of many community bodies listed in the statutory guidance, and CPPs should engage with them constructively. I have not asked David to add a little bit. Just very briefly, thank you minister. I suppose that maybe just one thing to add to this is the importance of community engagement and empowerment being very much a kind of relationship of building approach. It is not simply exercises of engagement. It is public services locally building long-term relationships with the communities, which provides a platform from which communities can at least get scope to understand what they are capable of doing themselves, how they can fulfil their aspirations and build the capacity around all of that. As the minister says, the support for SCDC provides assistance for community bodies in that respect. Also, the reviews that are taking place of other parts of the community empowerment act, including on part 3 and part 5 around participation requests and asset transfers, I think will be getting into that space as well. Mark, I believe that Councillor Hill will want to come back in briefly. Yes, thanks again, chair. It is only the point about community councils, and I think that that is a point well made. Community councils are an important democratic layer of O4 democracy. I think that it is important that the community planning partnerships do consult community councils, but the community councils themselves need to be empowered as well. I know that across Scotland there are issues in people to participate in community councils. That is unfortunate, because it would be good to have heard that. I think that we better move on. Have we lost everybody now? No? Okay, good. Thanks, Mark, for that. We are going to move on to the third sector on communities with Ivan. Thanks very much, convener. Before I start on that, I just want to have it so that I can ask a brief supplementary to Mark Griffin's question on evidence. The minister went through a number of examples of work that was being done, but we have, if you look at the Scottish Household Survey in 2015, 24 per cent of people in Scotland felt that their influence decisions affected their local areas, and that was 24 per cent, and in 2019 that dropped to 18 per cent. I believe that that is also reflected by a worse than performance in the national performance framework around community empowerment indicator on social capital. When you look at that hard evidence, it suggests that things have got worse rather than better, so I would really just like to get the minister's reflections on that. If that is something that is on the radar and drives the approach to understanding whether we are making progress or not. The question was, for example, when the act came in, so I had three main examples from that, but I think that it is absolutely appropriate that we look at this. It is why the previous minister asked for our view to take part in why I welcome the work of this committee, because I think that the fact is that the more local engagement we have, the more communities are involved in decision making, the better decision we want to make, so that is absolutely something that I think that we recognise and why, as I say, I welcome the work that this committee is doing. Two areas that I wanted to touch on. First was on the third sector, and obviously I am new to the committee, but if I had a look back through the official report and picking up on the work that Paul McLennan was investigating as part of that. It is fair to say that community anchor organisations of third sector development trusts express quite a number of frustrations with community planning, and certainly my only experience in Glasgow, the CPP—although it has the word community in its title—is very far away from communities. In actual fact, there are two layers below that sectoral level, and then at your partnership level, before you get to anything that you would fairly describe as being engaging with what you might describe as a community. I suppose that the question is what can be done to make sure that third sector organisations, anchor organisations and element trusts, that those frustrations are allayed and that they have got more of an input to the work of CPPs, and perhaps a reflection—and it was interesting to hear Councillor Heddle's comments on Orkney, which is a community of 20,000 people, very different from a community of 650,000 people, whether there is a structural issue there that prevents CPPs from doing the job that they should be doing and getting close to what actually happens on the ground. The statutory guidance is absolutely clear in relation to third sector organisations and third sector interfaces. The third sector has an important role to play in community planning at a strategic level around the board table, but with the engagement that we were talking about earlier, sometimes the third sector will be the organisation that can engage with the communities that we are particularly trying to make change for, so it is really important that they are part of the picture, helping to build capacity, skills, confidence in communities and general community empowerment activity. There are lots of reasons why the third sector should be involved. I guess that your question was whether there is something within the current structures that is preventing that. I would argue that that is not the case, because there are some really good examples where the third sector has been able to be engaged. Particularly examples that I have in front of me, Perth and Kinross Association of Voluntary Services co-chairing the CPP, so they are not stats to remember, but nonetheless they are co-chairing, engaged remfisher, co-chairing their CPP forum for empowering communities, and the strong involvement of flargo communities together. That is their anchor organisation in the five-float loop. There is nothing structural of those places where that is not happening. There are strong arguments for why it should be happening. If the only one was to reach those communities that we are trying to support in terms of inequalities and deprivation, that would be a reason for doing it. You raised the question about the communities being divorced maybe two or three levels away from the CPP. From my reading of previous evidence, there was a bit of a debate around the significance of that. An argument made about what matters to communities is that they feel confident that public services will come to them, will listen and will do something based on what they hear. They do not, arguably, necessarily need to know that that is being channeled through a CPP formal structure. Increasingly the way that CPPs are organised is probably fair to say, which is a general point, but a lot of the work is being decentralised. From board-level to thematic groups or locality groups. In many cases, there is quite informal working including among front-line staff. At that level, potentially, the importance of those people working in public services is engaging with third sector and directly with communities, just to get a sense of what matters to them and responding to that. That is a fair comment. It was described as the glow behind the scenes in one of the papers. I suppose that it does not take away from the fact that when I engage with local community organisations who do great work on the front line, and I have many frustrations in many areas, they tend to work in coalesced together organically, but there is not a sense that this is something that the CPP or any other structure is adding value to. In fact, the area partnerships are seen largely as a mechanism for funding to local organisations rather than anything that is pulling anything together strategically and coherently. Indeed, community councils have a role to play there, which is quite important. I suppose that it is just to reflect back on that frustration that was expressed about third sector not feeling part of that process. In the meantime, it is a third sector interface, which again is quite far removed from the people on the ground who are actually delivering real stuff in real communities. I do not have any reflections on that. I do not have councillor here to say that Orkney has a different experience due to size. I will move on to my next point, which is about the engagement of the business community in delivering community empowerment on a very important strand at a local level and what steps can be taken to ensure that that is effectively involved. As part of that, I will reflect on reading through the evidence that I was not engaged in. The work of Scottish Enterprise and other enterprise agencies was referenced, and I will give a perspective on that from my previous work with businesses and enterprise agencies. I was a price to see Scottish Enterprise referenced, and I know that they are mentioned as one of the stakeholders. To my experience, working with them, their role is much more at a national strategic level, working to build world-leading industrial and technology clusters that make Scotland competitive, rather than being involved in the nuts and bolts of what happens at a very local level. I would have thought that that was more of a role for business gateway, frankly, so I will welcome any reflections on that as well. Engagement with business is important for community planning. Businesses are part of our local communities. That is the starting point. They can and should play a role in community planning and improving outcomes for local communities. Some of the particular ways that the business community is involved is in supporting fair work and making connections with the employability scheme. There is definitely a role, and there are some really good examples of where that has been taken forward. A couple of areas that I have examples of for where the way that has been really good work would be the team in North Ayrshire, where they are developed to address North Ayrshire's job density figures of 0.5. Five for every two people of working-age population by providing local businesses with tailored support to help them to develop and grow. Businesses are given a single point of contact from which they can access all the available support to them through the council and other EDR partners. That approach provides a tailor-made support that reflects the specific needs of business, and an external evaluation that was conducted in 2018 showed that TNA delivers £19 million in additional wages, £39.5 million in GVA and 590 jobs. If we get that right, there is a real plus to having business involved. The other example that I have would be the partnership working in the Outer Hebrides, so a very different area. Recent best value audit reports that the council found that it has worked closely with local economic partners, including Highlands and Islands Enterprise, business gateways, Skills Development Scotland and Stormy Portafell Authority, and co-locating teams in the council's main office. That is obviously a bit of a savings there, but there are two very different examples of where engagement with business is benefiting that community planning. Do you want to add anything further, David? Just something very, very brief. Mr McKee mentioned Scottish Enterprise. What I picked up from some of the evidence given by previous witnesses was that there was maybe a bit of a difference in response between, on the one hand, Scottish Enterprise and Visit Scotland, whose role is more national or closer to national compared with South of Scotland Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise, which consider themselves to have a strong role in community planning. The way that community planning arrangements work, and this is set out in the guidance, allows for different partners to have differentiated approaches, depending on how much difference they can make. One other point to make is that, ideally, what we would be looking for is a bit of a golden thread running between economic ambitions at national, regional and local level. There was a report that the Community Planning Improvement Board produced in 2021, which included an annex that summarised the key findings of community planning. Since the act, one of the things that it recognised or found was that CPPs had been effective in using city region and growth deals as a way of supporting CPP's own strategic objectives, including what is particularly around addressing economic disadvantage locally. It is absolutely fair to say that, at Highlands, I have got a different remit, and I think that that is well recognised. I was just surprised that there was no role for Gateway, and I would have thought that there would have been the agency that would have been engaged with local business communities much more than AC, but that is the point. That is something that we can reflect on. Frankly, AC has got the resource constraints that it prioritised, and that is probably not where they are at any value, to be honest. The West of Wales shows that there is not a blockage to the connection with business Gateway or other organisations. What is appropriate to the local locality in the communities? I think that we will try to go back to Councillor Hiddell and see if we can get him to respond to both of your questions, because I think that it would be good to hear from Cosley on that. Can you remember the two questions? I think so. Refresh me memory if I fail. Apologies for the connection issues. The connection has been rock solid for three years. It is a pain. It is not working today. I think that the initial question was about the communities feeling disengaged. Increasingly, we have gone for 24 per cent, and I think that it was 16 per cent. I think that a very good point was made by David Milne about the will he feel engaged if your action leads to another action. I think that there is a difficulty that there is an inability to respond to requests through the CPP or through council channels due to lack of funding. If somebody complains about holding the road and you cannot fix it, they will not feel particularly empowered. I think that there is also a larger context of disillusionment in democracy post Brexit, which I think is maybe cascading down through all levels. There is no excuse to not try and do things better. I think that the point being made about involvement with the third sector interface is important. From my perspective, I think that it is essential that they are empowered to aid us in our consultation and communication with the communities. I see them as a key part of the community planning partnership. Certainly not. They lead one of our four key priorities and do it very well. On the role of businesses, the Covid pandemic has shown that we need to reach out to businesses more to find out what is ailing them. The HIE set on our community planning partnership in Orkney and, again, lead one of our economic development priorities. Formerly, of course, there were the local enterprise companies and far more devolutionary locally. The chief of Orkney Enterprise had a checkbook that he could write 100,000-pound checks in to respond to issues that reflect ability that does not pertain these days. We need to reach out to business organisations, either through the economic development agencies' proxies to chambers of commerce, if they exist or through informal business groupings, if they don't. On the role of the SIE, I would say that the SIE should have a role. The national role at present is perhaps through their own choice, due to their own funding issues, and that they should be engaged in more with businesses and pipeline in businesses towards business gateway. I think that that is a separate conversation. I am going to pick up the theme of local outcome improvement plans and locality plans, the practical tools. The 2015 act replaced the single outcome agreement with the local outcome improvement plans. I would be interested to hear your thoughts on what impact that has had. I will start with Councillor Hiddle. For the point of view of the ancient single outcome agreement, it obviously bothered more flexibility due to the fact that it was an era of less ring fencing. We could have more flexibility to direct our resources, certainly to local authorities, and that would suggest probably collectively as well. The local outcome improvement plans have, in terms of meeting the reporting requirements of the Scottish Government, been a fairly painless and logical evolution. The single outcome agreement was always felt to be a more significant document. It was a partnership document with the Scottish Government, but it was the quid pro quo for the flexibility of funding. I do not want to devalue the loypes. The fact that they are revisited on an annual basis maintains focus and allows priorities to evolve. As time goes, the priorities become more relevant. The issue that can happen is that, in the rightly developing priorities, which are very local, we are creating more indicators to report on, but we do not necessarily align with the indicators in the local government benchmarking framework, which is probably our gold standard for the things that should be reported on. As we consider the local government review and the new deal, the possibility of de-ring fencing of funds and more of a focus on outcomes, we need to look at the loypes, at the local government benchmarking framework and indicators, and to something that is perhaps more streamlined, more focused on outcomes and more focused on early intervention and prevention, as was the aspiration in the first place for community planning partnerships. To reflect also that this is necessarily a long game that you are playing if you are doing early intervention and prevention. It has to be something that is given the chance to endure and succeed. I reflect on my early days as a council leader back in 2012 and 2013, and there was a great store set by early years' collaboratives. That was about 10 years ago, and it was going to be a billion pounds directed towards that. I have no idea if that was allowed to come to fruition or what the impact of that was, but it certainly seemed something that could have been transformational. Whether it was allowed to succeed or whether I am just taking my eye off the ball and have not seen it succeed in, I am not sure, but I think that the message is a long game and that we need to stick with it and recognise perhaps that it is going to be difficult to report in the early years of that initiative. Thank you very much for that. The notes that I have in front of me are really important. It is so important that they are ambitious yet realistic and that they focus on improving outcomes and reducing inequalities. On the concept of the new deal going forward, we need to understand outcomes better and understand what it is that we are trying to achieve. Andy, do you want to talk a little bit about what that might mean going forward in the context of the new deal? I think that within the context of the new deal, it is the Government's position that we are still in that listening and learning mode as part of our informal review of what works within the context of community planning, how are loypes operating in practice, what needs to change, if anything, and as part of that listening and learning mode, working closely with COSLA, working closely with the community planning improvement board and reflecting on their feedback from their partners and bringing that back to the Scottish Government to see what updates we might want to provide in any guidance if there is an ask or a need for any updates there. The point that Councillor Heddle made also, and I think that the minister touched on it a bit, is this bit about getting streamlined around the indicators and looking at the local government benchmark frameworks as being the gold standard. I think that it is always that thing that we need to be looking at how do we – well, actually, it's my next question, so I'll just ask my next question, which is how do you think partners should tackle the challenge of loypes aligning with other strategic plans and how do partners connect their CPP duties with other areas of responsibilities, like integration joint boards, locality planning, and Councillor Heddle also children services planning? Maybe I'll start with Councillor Heddle and then come to the minister. Yeah, thank you very much, sure. If you don't mind, I would probably like to involve my costler colleagues because I know that they have greater expertise than I do in response to this and, you know, they've been admirably quiet so far. Absolutely welcome. I don't know who to call on, though, but... Hi there. Yes. Can you just repeat the question for me? That would be fantastic. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, so I've been interested to hear how partners – how you think partners should tackle the challenge of loypes aligning with other strategic plans and how do you think partners can connect their CPP duties with other areas of responsibility, like IJBs, locality planning, and children services planning? Yeah, I think that that's a significant challenge and I think I suppose I would reflect on the opportunity with the new deal in terms of between ourselves and the Scottish Government in terms of trying to align that. Obviously, there's a broad range of strategies that come from across government to try and impact on the benefits of local communities and the life experiences of those that we deliver essential services to. I think that's where we would reflect on something such as the local governance review and the opportunity that that provides to look at the whole system and ask ourselves the question of the alignment of the priorities that we're looking to make. Obviously, local outcome improvement plans are very much that. They are what local communities a. prioritise, b. feel that they need and c. want to see happen across their area, and that will have the greatest impact on their life opportunities and their life chances. Now, while clearly there will remain high-level strategic outcomes that we want to see for the whole of Scotland, I think that being able to embrace an asymmetric approach and encourage local partners from national bodies to see the impact of taking different approaches and working together through the CPP is of critical need for us. That's why I reflect on the local governance review if we continue in the manner that we are with that piece of work. For example, looking at single island authorities and, indeed, Council of Heddles' own area will be one of the lead areas in terms of how we might do that. It provides the opportunity for local and national partners to come together and work and operate in different ways that truly does place-based approaches and communities at the heart of what they're doing. It's really important that we work to prevent a clutter on the landscape where we have different bodies and the CPPs are ideally placed to help with that. I think that one of the examples that you had would be the community planning Aberdeen, where the Aberdeen health and social care partnership views common data. It shows that it is possible to have one set of data, for instance, which is used by multiple partners. The challenge with counting more things and expecting more reporting becomes burdensome. That's one of the things that we really need to be mindful of going forward, particularly in terms of what we're trying to do around the new deal for local government. David, do you want to maybe talk a little bit more about how those groups interface? I suppose that there are a couple of levels to this. One is about how the partnerships connect and interconnect. I guess that when we were framing the statutory guidance for community planning back in 2016, one of the things that we wanted to try and ensure was that there was nothing in statutory guidance that placed artificial controls or barriers in terms of how different partnerships arrangements work. There's flexibility, at least from a community planning guidance perspective, to link in with other partnership arrangements, however, you want. You sometimes find that children's services partnership is part of the community planning partnership structure in some instances. I think that it's fair to say that, at least in several cases, that's been reciprocated in guidance for other partnership arrangements or other planning arrangements. For instance, with local place plans, there's an expectation on community bodies there to have regard to the relevant locality plan. That's all already being established. There's something there about architecture. The other thing that I think maybe is to highlight is actually the underpinning drive and motivation here. Across Government, as a committee, you're hopefully seeing across a wide range of policy areas a clear and common focus on public sector organisations working together and with communities on place-based person-centres approaches—whole systems, in many cases, that actually work in the round to tackle disadvantaged support, economic development in insustainable ways, and more. That's also increasingly being reflected in Scottish Government's own relationships with its public bodies. Coming out of the last Scottish budget, or one of the priorities there is about sustainable public services, that has led Government to enter into discussions or conversations with public bodies across Scotland about how they ensure that they remain sustainable in the future, with a strong emphasis on working in partnership and a strong emphasis on prevention as being important both to prevent the human cost and disadvantage, but also to help keep public services ffiscally sustainable long-term by moderating demand on expensive crisis intervention services. I think that what this is hopefully driving is a greater sense of shared collective ambition, which provides, if you like, a common basis for local partnership working. I will now move on to questions from Marie McNair. The committee has heard in the inquiry that CPPs struggle to demonstrate how activities are leading to improved outcomes. As is required by the 2015 act, what more can the Scottish Government and other public bodies do to help CPPs to demonstrate impact? It follows back from the last question where we talked about making sure that we weren't overly burdening all of our public bodies in terms of producing data. I wonder if that is the answer to that, to making sure that we are collecting the correct data, whether it's quantitatively or qualitatively, and then making sure that we can share that to understand progress towards improving local outcomes? That may be the best answer there. The committee understands that the Scottish Government is conducting a review of the community empowerment act, but part 2 of the act has not been reviewed. What is the reason for that? Does the Government have any plans to review community planning in the future? Are community groups of voice during the inquiry that reform is needed? The part 2 of the act has been reviewed by an informal process, which felt like the appropriate level of... It's all about making sure that we're using resources collectively, but, David. Minister, at the time to the decision that last year that part 2 should be included within the scope of the review of parts of the committee empowerment act, we've used terminology like informal just to provide assurance from the very start that there's no question of government questioning its continued commitment to community planning, so everything was of the focus on how do we build on the strengths of community planning and take it further? So far, we've had the advantage of having the committee planning improvement board, which has, in any case, undertaken work to consider how community planning can more effectively take forward some of the key challenges, particularly around the Covid recovery priorities of improving wellbeing for children and young people and household income for families at risk, as well as addressing climate change challenges. So, there's a rapport from that and that, and the committee's findings will inform the Government's further work on review. Convener, at the start you made the point about Andrew and I having the same job titles. The reason for that is that I've had responsibility for community planning for a while. Andrew is now taking over, so that will be his joy as we move on. We should see if Councillor Heddle wants to come in on question 11 around demonstrating that activities are leading to the improved outcomes. Councillor Heddle, I don't know if you picked up Marie's first question. I'm afraid there's no house in the void at that point. Okay, in the void. Do you want to ask it again? Sure. The committee has heard during the inquiry that CPPs may struggle to demonstrate how activities are leading to improved outcomes. Is this a requirement of the 2015 act? What more can the Scottish Government and other public bodies do to help CPPs demonstrate impact? I'll try. I think that we might be able to address that in the previous answers around what are the appropriate indicators and what are the ones that are reflective of outcomes and what are the ones that are reflective of shared priorities of the partners. I think that there's work to be done there. I recognise that there's perhaps a disconnect between activity and being able to demonstrate impact. I think that it's only appropriate to say that I think that we can do better here. In return to my theme, if we can declutter our indicators, if we can bring things to a coherent focus related to the local government benchmark and framework. Obviously, there's no just local government that's reporting here. It's the partnership in other bodies, so I recognise that we perhaps need to go beyond that, but remain coherent with the LCBF. I think that that would be the main point that I would make. I was trying to make the other point that I was trying to make that moving towards early intervention to recognise that it's a long game to play here. In terms of the number of indicators and the number of objectives, obviously the number of partners that's in the partnership have different priorities and pool in different directions. This is a personal opinion here, so sometimes I wonder if we should just pick on some very few objectives, something like child poverty, and just say, okay, we're going to concentrate on child poverty here, because if we fix child poverty, we're obviously fixed employment, housing, general poverty, and we'll obviously contribute demonstrably to early intervention and prevention at the same time. Streamlining is probably the answer, perhaps not as drastic as I've just suggested, but that's an example of the thinking that we could be doing this way. We can contemplate these things. I think that a streamlining approach is true. It's like it is that thing. Where's the intervention point that will give us the most impact for the activities that we carry out? That leads nicely on to Willie Coffey's contribution. He's leading on the theme of leadership, accountability, and audit. Thanks again, convener, and good morning to you once more. I wanted to touch on issues about leadership for the minister and councillor Hedle, a little bit about accountability and whether there's a role for audit in the CPP process. The committee has heard some great examples of how CPPs are working particularly well in a number of areas of Scotland, but it's not uniform, it's not across the board, and perhaps some CPPs need some assistance and help to improve. One of the ingredients that we think may contribute to that is effective local leadership. It's just to get your views and whether you agree with that. One of the comments that was made by someone at the committee was really useful. It said that effective leaders should leave at the door their silos, their logos and their egos. That struck a chord, I think, with the members in the committee. Broadly speaking, minister, do you agree with that? Is there a job of work to be done in trying to share this good practice in local leadership to get the CPPs more effective? I'll leave the silos, logos and egos at the door. I think that's going to be a good slogan for most partnership working. There are good examples of shared leadership, and I think that it's becoming more widespread as the systems embed, so we are seeing some really good examples across the country, some of which you have heard. That then improves the relationships, which then makes a difference when something particularly unusual happens, for instance. Through Covid, I think that the shared leadership model allowed for a response at a local level, which probably wouldn't have been possible if those connections hadn't already been made in that wider respect and shared leadership. Very often, there wasn't a need for formal CPP meetings to take a Covid response, but the connections had already been made. I think that the premise of your question about leaving the silos, logos and egos, I think that you are absolutely right, and we need to look at the best examples that there are in terms of taking that forward. The CPIB's 2021 progress and potential report highlighted that there was widespread support and commitment to community planning, and that it continued to be seen as an important vehicle for co-ordinate multi-agency work. On that basis, I think that people need to then take the next step and recognise that that needs to be taken forward with shared local leadership. CPIB has obviously been doing a fair bit of work to help us to guide how the system might be improved going forward. Maybe just one point on Mr Coffey raised the question of scrutiny as well in there, so just one part of that. Obviously, the council commission is independent of Scottish Government, so it reaches its own conclusions. However, it does assess how well local authorities work in partnership with others, including through community planning in their annual performance audits and the occasional best value audits at the undertake of local authorities. The ministers request some of the inspectorates, including Healthcare Improvement Scotland, Care Inspectorate, HMICS and Education Scotland, to undertake a series of joint inspections into how services work in the round to provide care and support both for adults and for children and young people. The reason I mentioned that is that that is already getting into the territory of how public services work around what matters to people. The chair of the accounts commission also chairs a group called the Streetic Scrutiny Group, which brings senior leaders from scrutiny bodies together. Partly, it is about co-ordinating local government audit and inspections so that there are not three buses turning up at the same time at a local authorities door. However, it is about reflecting on how audit and inspection can better reflect some of the reform aspirations that Councillor Heddle was referring to earlier, based on Chris Day around prevention and engaging with communities and shared leadership. Government officials are part of that group as well. Those discussions do take place while respecting the independence of the accounts commission. Again, I look to Andrew in saying this and saying that this is something that our own further review work can consider. Thanks for that, David. Councillor Heddle, could you just offer a few comments on the leadership issue? You must see across COSLA really good effective community planning partnerships working and perhaps some that need to improve. Do you think that the successful ingredient there is local leadership providing that kind of dynamic engagement with local people on the ground? Is that something that we can share across most of the authorities in Scotland in your view? Yeah, I would agree with your point that local leadership is hugely important and emphasises the local aspect of that. I might bring in my colleagues to do the kind of the… Apologies, I think that we have lost Councillor Heddle again. We see you. Yeah, okay, that is great, thanks. Apologies, yes, having lost Councillor Heddle again over a while to come back in. Obviously, as Councillor Heddle was saying, the importance of local leadership is absolutely essential in this kind of space. The CPIB, the community planning improvement board itself is doing an awful lot of work to make sure that that sharing of good practice is happening across Scotland and through COSLA, through things such as elective members bulletins and the rest, we are continuously improving and highlighting to colleagues across the country through not only that elective members briefing opportunity but also through all of our professional networks the areas of good practice that are happening. Yet again, I suppose that there is a reflection into where, through things such as the local government benchmarking framework and the work that goes on with our colleagues in the improvement service, yet again being able to highlight the work that individual councillors are taking. We have heard a lot about it today, for example, the work in North Ayrshire around community wealth building, etc. Those are matters that are brought to not only the floor of COSLA leaders but also through the COSLA boards that we have got and yet again a broad range of effective learning spaces that we have got and professional networks that we have. Thank you for that. While we wait and hope that COSLA Heddle comes back in, I could maybe move on and just ask a query to the minister about broader accountability and the role for audit again. Joel, we know that CPPs do not have a formal, they are not formal, accountable bodies but they are very much part of our reporting process that sits in there with the partnerships in their agencies that they work with. Where should the accountability line go, CPPs? Should there be one? Should there be a formal accountability channel? I remember Audit Scotland did a report on CPPs and their effectiveness about 10 years ago on the 10th anniversary of the CPPs. One of their comments at that time was that they were not able to show that they had a significant impact on delivering local outcomes. I think that that has changed significantly in the last 10 years. You have given a number of examples yourself, but where do you see accountability in audit roles sitting? Should it be Audit Scotland or the Council Commission or some other mechanism or none at all? Obviously Audit Scotland and the Council Commission have a particular role in looking at the landscape and Audit Scotland particularly have been able to highlight in a way that maybe others couldn't with confidence that there has been a shift in terms of the focus for council chief executive's leadership, for instance, no longer just about leading their own organisation, but now they universally see the wider partnership and collaborative leadership as part of their role. We need to be careful that we are not creating bureaucracy, that then becomes a block to delivering the outcomes and the benefit for our communities. I think that that is really important and I think that we do that by collaboration. If we can have a shared understanding across all the partners about what the outcomes we are trying to achieve, councillor Heddle suggested that that should be slimmed down. While he said that having one outcome might be going further than we would want to go, I think that that is probably a sensible thing for us to do and that is some of the discussions that we are currently having with COSLIST about what are the most important outcomes that we are trying to achieve. If we have a shared understanding of that across all the partners, it becomes much easier for us to see for the public to see. The public is not really concerned about whether that is an outcome or a measure that has been produced by Audit Scotland or the Accounts Commission. They want to see the difference on the ground. They want to see services in their communities and in their places. Thanks for that, Joe Heddle. Now, councillor Heddle, I see that you are back. I wonder if you just heard that query there. Where is the accountability line? Where should it be formally audited by bodies like Audit Scotland and the Accounts Commissioners? Should we not go there? How do we demonstrate that outcomes are being achieved? I can come to that point via the point that I was going to make before I was cut off, if that is okay, which is around your point about the importance of local leadership, which I totally agree. I can strongly believe that local leaders have to be invested in the partnership. They have to be like directors when they are sitting on the partnership, their obligation is to the aspirations of the partnership. To be able to do that, they need to be empowered, fiscally and functionally to do so. No, I think that local authorities are totally invested in the community planning partnerships. We need to make sure that our partners are similarly invested, and it is not just that the mercy of personalities and perspectives. When I was the leader of the community planning partnership, we had a rotten inspection for the rotten best value review, but we turned into a good best value review. The community planning partnership was humming at that point because there was no reality check to everybody and the partners were chastened and invested. It is how do you manage to keep that going? It is incumbent on ministers and agencies to direct and empower their participants in the community planning partnerships or proxies in the community planning partnerships. They are local people because the local aspect and the place aspect has to be retained because that is what we are responding to, we are responding to our communities. I think that the more directive approach from the agencies and ministers to the community planning partnership is a serious thing and you have to take it seriously would help to maintain a continuity of that. Returning to your question whether we should be auditing this, I would say that we are already auditing it. The best value reviews that we have had in the past do take a very forensic look at the operation of the partnership and are sometimes an unsparing look. I do not know whether we need to augment that in any way. Many thanks for your contributions and comments. That concludes our questions and it has been a really useful discussion. It has been powerful to have both the Scottish Government and COSLA in the same space in responding to our questions. It was heartening to hear local governance review mentioned quite a number of times and also the new deal mentioned a good number of times and to hear that you are working on areas that we are taking a strong interest in. It has been really useful to hear your perspectives on the community planning partnership. We will take that away and it will be a useful element to add to our report. I am also really grateful to hear that you have already been paying attention to the work that we have been doing in this area. I am glad that we could contribute constructively in that way. Many thanks for joining us this morning. As we agreed at the start of the meeting to take the next item in private, that was the last public item. I now close the public part of the meeting.