 Ysbun dungeonau gyda sut mae eich cren literary raisedeotמםau cyntafol yn 2018,maeg a the fact thatHarry Cymru. Mae cyfeinleid eaw hêl wedi ddiweddol i chi ddefnyddio i gyffreidio scenery a gwdwyddiant y Llyfridd y ty效 ni Everything and the Scrutiny committeechy해주 ar 많은 arblwg yn 2018. Rwyf i'n meddwl i gyda i ddweud i ddweud yr ystod einuoedd Cossiellol wrth gwrth. 2.Earth gwrth a gyrddwr anwr ystod y reportedd y 2017 a 2018 oeddeidiof ei cofwyr ystod y mae ddweudiool. 2.Polennu am gydag y ddweud i'r gondol, Caroline Gardner, gerdian a Senrwy Llywodraeth, Steven Boyle, gerdian a drosion, Pauline Gillan, gerdian oeddeidiono'r Sgwdd. 3.Polennu am gyrddwr anwr ystod y Prifysgwun cyworthydd. This is the fifth time that I have presented a section 22 report to the committee on the annual order of the Scottish Police Authority. This year, the auditor has given an unqualified opinion on the annual report and account, and there have been improvements in several key areas. Many of the concerns that I have highlighted at the committee in the past have been addressed. In particular, I welcome progress in the SPA's leadership, governance and financial management. Significant challenges remain, but the SPA is now better a place to address them than at any time in the past. Although financial management has improved, there is still a major financial challenge in both the short-term and the long-term. The SPA is still operating with a deficit in its revenue expenditure. In 2017-18, that deficit was £37.9 million, money that had to be found from elsewhere in the Scottish Government's budget. The SPA plans to return to a balanced budget by 2021, but its 10-year financial strategy suggests that it will return to a deficit position after that unless it changes its operating model. That change is also central to achieving the ambitions in policing in 2026. The estates and workforce strategies will be critical in changing how the service operates in the future, but there has been insufficient progress in developing them so far. Modernising the police services IT system is also essential. The SPA has now agreed a data, digital and ICT strategy, but it is not clear how the estimated £290 million cost will be funded. My report details an increase in external support costs during 2017-18. That reflects the scale of transformation that the SPA and Police Scotland seek to achieve and a recognition that they do not yet have the skills and experience required. It is critical, however, that that expenditure on external support is closely monitored, the intended benefits are realised and a transfer of knowledge is achieved. Finally, I noted in my report the uncertainty with how railway policing will be devolved to Scotland. I am concerned that unless that uncertainty is resolved, there is a risk that it will distract attention from the wider transformation agenda. In summary convener, there has been considerable progress and there are still some significant challenges to address. We will do our best to answer the committee's questions. I would like to open the committee session with David Stewart. Good morning and thank you for your evidence to date. Can I raise the issue about consultancy fees, which you mentioned in your section 22 report? As you point out, there has been a considerable jump in those fees. In your view, does that sort of send good value for money? It is too soon for me to conclude that it is good value for money, but I do recognise that both the scale of the transformation that the SPA and Police Scotland are seeking to achieve and the fact that they are still building their capacity and that there are some really specialist skills in those areas mean that it is appropriate to bring in external support where that is required. What is really important is that they monitor the expenditure carefully and make sure that they are getting the benefits that they expected and that they are achieving that transfer of knowledge into the organisation so that they are building their capacity for the future. The first time you have protected my next question, which is the strength of internal monitoring. Obviously, you have had a view in the section 22 report, but do you believe that within the organisations there are strong systems for monitoring and evaluation? I will ask Pauline Gilan to talk you through what she sees in her roles at the Audit Manager. Thank you. In the past, in our audit reports, we have noted that there has been a lack of skills and capacity in the finance function of SPA and Police Scotland by bringing in additional resources. The finance function has been strengthened and we have reported during 2017-18 that we have evidence of that strengthening of overall budget control and monitoring and management. We will continue in 2018-19 to review that and to ensure that all the additional consultancy contracts that have been awarded are being appropriately monitored and managed. I will move on to the related area. You mentioned the burden because of the number and cost of procurement and finance. To what extent do you believe that some of that could be brought in-house or is there more room for developing procurement and finance in-house? As far as I understand, there are intentions to strengthen the internal capacity in terms of procurement, so having permanent internal staff who are in charge of procurement. In general terms, there is an opportunity cost. Spending on consultancy can be converted into having permanent staff, which tends to be a lot cheaper on the long run. Is that a reasonable assessment to make as a generalisation in that fashion? Yes, it is. We would expect in the medium to long term that the expenditure on external support would decrease as internally the capacity and skills strengthen. Bill Bowman, you can follow up on that a little bit. We have your report here, but supporting that is the Audit Scotland annual audit report. In that, you have a section called Significant Findings in the Audit of the Financial Statements. There are six items, and some of them are quite serious. There was an unadjusted error of £2.6 million in one area. Board member expense claims about supporting documentation and agency staff disclosure, which is what we are speaking about here. That was an adjustment that you forced, because they had concealed that away in staff costs as opposed to being put into agency costs. That is an area of interest to the committee, but had you not done your audit, we would never have seen that. Can you give us some comment on what went on there? Certainly, I will ask Stephen to talk you through that as the Audit Director. Good morning. Certainly, our analysis of the disclosure in the council is a key part of our roles and responsibilities. We pay particularly close attention to consultancy costs, agency costs and how they are categorised. As Pauline mentioned, particularly for next year, the SPA has recognised that it needs to strengthen its arrangements. It is now in place that the chief finance officer for Police Scotland is overseeing procurement. That is a good step. It gives an increased rigour to overall arrangements, but it has increased focus on how that is captured in the annual reporting accounts. By way of the audit adjustment, it is a key part of our role to take a view on the adequacy of the disclosures. What is not in doubt is the quantum of the sum. It is the split between agency or consultancy, and our work led us to the assessment that those were better categorised as consultancy and hence the change in the disclosure. For once, I am not concerned about what you found. It is more the underlying situation that we have a body that is not capable of analysing out key numbers. Do you have to come along and find them and tell them to do it? I think that we would say that the quality and capacity of the finance department has increased significantly during the past year. The committee has previously heard about doubts about the financial capacity and capability of the finance team and its own use of considerable amounts of consultancy support. In the past 12 months, they have gone through large-scale recruitment programmes and recruited quality finance professionals. What we will see is probably the tale of legacy arrangements. The quantum and the scale of issues that we encountered during the audit of the financial statements were significantly reduced this year. What we would expect to see when we come back to 2018 and any further reporting to the committee is an on-going reduction in the extent of audit issues that we encountered during the financial statements work. Thank you, convener. I think that the number of those significant adjustments should give us a cause to discuss perhaps later. Thank you, Bill Bowman. Willie Coffey Thank you very much, convener. Good morning, order to general. I am pleased to hear what you said in your opening remarks about the improvements that have been seen in leadership, governance and financial management. That is to be welcome. I wanted to ask you about the ICT section of your reporting paragraph 12 and on. If you could tell us a wee bit more about the experience of the previous committee on the I6 project, the estimate for the delivery of that was about £46 million. We are reading today that this one is estimated to be about £298 million, which is a significantly bigger number than before, so could you give us some kind of indication of what we are getting for that or hoping to get for that kind of investment, please? I will ask Stephen to come in in a moment, but I think that the first thing to say is that we have recognised from the beginning that Police Scotland would need to make a significant investment in ICT, not just to bring together the legacy systems of the eight predecessor forces, which were all creaking a bit themselves, but really to take that step forward to enable policing to be delivered in a new way for the 21st century responding to what technology can do, but also to the differing shape and feel of crime across the country. I am pleased to see that there is now a comprehensive digital data and ICT strategy for taking that forward, and you are right that nearly £300 million is a very significant sum. Stephen, can you say a bit more about the content of the strategy and why it is looking that expensive at this stage? Of course. I think that history is important, as the committee knows that there has not been much investment in ICT within Police Scotland after many, many years. A larger reflection of the quantum sum that is being put forward is a reflection of really that delay in making progress in the early years of the national police service. In terms of the components, in developing the strategy and in arriving at the number and the proposed way forward, it is broken down across a range of requirements. Some of that is mobile technology solutions for officers when they are out in communities, others are back-office solutions. What Police Scotland has been really clear in developing the strategy is that there is a sense that this can be itemised and it is not a single delivery that will be experienced one day and not before that, but it can be broken down and delivered in various chunks, as required to meet business needs and probably more importantly, funding requirements at the same time. Are you seeing any parallels with the process that has been applied here, compared to the previous attempt to procure and deliver the IE6? Surely you would be interested in whether your view is that we are falling on the same pathway as we did previously. I think that it is probably too early to say whether there are parallels. What we would expect of SPA Police Scotland and any public body is that it learns from previous challenges. They are not yet at the procurement stage for the strategy and that will be a key part of the learning from the IE6 of old. The main point that we make in the report on the digital data and ICT strategy is that, although the strategy itself is now in place, there remains uncertainty about how the strategy will be funded and the extent to which the clarity for that needs to come through, given the importance of the strategy. You have said that the SPA has approved the strategy and that is to be welcome, but will we see some more details about this and how soon might we see the detail behind the whole strategy? We are planning a piece of work next year on digital transformation of public services and one of the programmes that we will be likely looking at as part of that is this one, partly because of its scale and importance and partly because of its history. I think that the preliminary view of our digital team is that this is a more realistic, a more measured approach to what is required and that the principles that we have set out for good management of IT programmes have been followed so far and it is clearly very early days. I think that the programme is available if the committee wants to explore it further, but we will be having a look at it as part of that performance audit next year. Last question. Is there any sense at this stage that you know about post-Brexit relationships with European police forces like Europe and so on in terms of the IT and communication and data sharing? Is there any semblance of that within the proposal on the strategies to how we will take that forward? We are not sited through our work, Mr Coffey, on what that means in terms of European relationships. More generally, we know that there has been considerable planning within Police Scotland and the SPA on the potential scenarios and implications around Brexit, both around general business and policing operations and potential financial implications associated with it. The Auditor General noted fairly that the one-hand SPA is making progress on issues that were previously identified by Audit Scotland. There have been changes in leadership, strengthening of governance, the annual review of police and say that there is a good level of service. What I am keen to establish is that we are now building on strong foundations. Given that there are financial challenges, the Scottish Government continues to pick up the deficit. How far has the organisation still to go? Where would you put them between 1 to 10 if the journeys between Edinburgh and Glasgow have reached Livingston yet? It is certainly fair to say that we are seeing much stronger foundations for the change that needs to happen now than we have seen at any point since the SPA and Police Scotland were established back in 2013. I put particular focus on the leadership capacity that has been built in both organisations and the much stronger governance that is in place to make sure that important decisions are taken properly and well, which were not always in place in the past, and an understanding of the overall vision for policing, policing 2026, and some of the key things that underpin that, particularly the financial strategy and the IT strategy that we have been talking about. I think that there are two caveats. One is early days for all of that. We have really only seen new people in post over the last six months or so, and the teams, the relationships, the ways of working are all still forming and coming into place. Secondly, the challenges themselves are really significant. There is an exhibit in my report that shows the scale of the financial challenge over the next 10 years or so. That is significant. Reshaping policing in line with the vision 2026 is a very big job. It would be for any police service, let alone one that has had the difficult start that Police Scotland has. I am not sure that I want to give you a sort of geographical metaphor for where it might be, but I genuinely encourage those foundations that are much stronger, and I do not underestimate the challenges that are still to come. Okay, so to Paddyffries, you encouraged that a new chapter has been started? Yes. When I was interviewed about the report when it was published, I said that Police Scotland and the SPA have turned a corner. I think that that is a good way of putting it. They have had a very difficult birth, and I think that they are now a much better place to do what they need to do. In terms of the 10-year financial strategy, I wonder if you could say a bit about that in terms of the forecasts and the assumptions that have been made. Forecasts are just that. I want to know how robust the assumptions and forecasts are. I am also conscious that I do not think that anybody in the public sector, let alone the Government, knows what their overall envelope is going to be between now and another 10 years. So, can you know how robust it is in terms of what we can reasonably expect to know right now and the processes for which that 10-year financial strategy will be reviewed? You are right that any forecast is only that. It is never going to be exactly right. It should be a range of possibilities based on clear assumptions. Some public bodies use that uncertainty as a reason for not doing it. I think that that is entirely the wrong response. I think that the uncertainty is the most important reason for doing that, planning ahead. I genuinely welcome the fact that the SPA now has that 10-year strategy in place for the first time. Stephen can give you a bit more detail in a moment about the assumptions that underlie it and what we think about the strengths of it. I just stress that the two gaps that I think need to be filled to give us as much confidence as we can have in it are the development of a proper workforce strategy and estate strategy, both big parts of the expenditure and big parts of the ability to change the way that policing is delivered. There is not yet enough detail to be certain that the numbers are robust. You asked specifically about the assumptions that have come to that. First of all, the key assumption that is made in the financial plan is around a 2 per cent increase in funding annually. That feels broadly in the right place for the organisation. They have tested it internally, they have tested it through the work of the finance committee and the board. From our sense, and having seen those committees in operation since that, that was sufficiently challenged in terms of governance terms. As the auditor general mentions, the key to the durability of the financial plan will be the extent of transformation that the SPA is able to achieve. In addition to that, they keep it under regular review as well. At least six months annually, there is an on-going review, particularly given the uncertainty that exists around the potential future availability of public funds to the SPA. We think that that is appropriate that they keep it under regular review as they go forward. My final question is very conscious that, in your report, you indicated that the financial strategy is underpinned by a number of programmes of change, such as the ICT, estates and workforce. Do you describe those programmes of change as very complex? I am keen to give you an insight into how complex they are, or is it just that there are a lot of programmes of change that are interrelated and it is more about volume than complexity? How does complexity compare to other parts of the public sector in which there are many programmes of change setting up a new social security agency and getting the right payments to the right folk at the right time is complex? What learning will Police Scotland rest on from elsewhere? Given that things to do with workforce estates and ICT, in many ways there is a path well trodden, and there is a great and insightful report from the Institute of Government on the history of universal credit that is valuable for reading for anybody who is interested in managing programmes of change well. In a Scottish Government context, there is trodden pass down NHS 24, cap futures and so on. How complex are their programmes of change and where are they going to learn from not to repeat perhaps less than optimal experiences elsewhere in the public sector? It is a really good question, and it is not one that has a short or easy answer, but I will do my best, and colleagues may want to chip in. Two things make this programme particularly complex. One is that it is trying to bring together eight predecessor forces from around Scotland that existed just over five years ago into one service for the whole of Scotland. For a period before the merger, the establishment of Police Scotland, there were very different ways of working, different levels of investment, different strengths in different parts of the country and different areas that were not as good as they could be. Bringing that together for a very strongly and professionally led service was always going to be a challenge. Looking beyond that, the underlying concept behind policing 2026 is that what we all expect of policing in the 21st century is different from what we needed in the 20th century. We have much more in the way of cybercrime, for example. People tend not to go and rob banks with shotguns any more. They rob bank accounts and financial transactions through computers and digital transactions. All of that requires different skills and a different way of policing. We have a big surge in historical sexual abuse crimes and different expectations around harassment of different groups. All of that is changing what we expect of policing. Both of those need to happen at the same time against a context of tight finances and government policy, which in the past has focused very clearly on the number of police officers as police officers rather than on what policing as a whole can do. The policy is seen as being the right way forward, but bringing all of that together with a budget of £1 billion a year and much more investment needed to get us to where we need to be was never going to be easy. You mentioned Social Security Scotland. We have reported on that and found that that programme is being managed very well in terms of clarity about what has achieved good risk management, good engagement with partners around the place against still a way to go, but good starting points. The work that we have done on digital has identified some really clear principles. So far, I am encouraged that the approach to the new strategy in Police Scotland takes account of those principles. I think that there is learning going on and that does not make making change happen on this scale easy. It is always going to be difficult. Stephen, is there anything that you want to add to that? Just very briefly, I think that the complexity has increased because of the very clear interconnections between the strategies in terms of the estates workforce and how those requirements may or may not change with whatever technology changes are introduced through digital data and ICT, such as the type of staff that the Auditor General mentioned, and then where services will be provided from across Scotland. All of that increases the scale of the challenge and the complexity. The one thing that we have seen of Police Scotland and the SPA is in terms of learning and access to other advice. We know that they are in close contact with the Scottish Government and the Office of the Chief Information Officer to test the development of the strategy. That is an important part of their considerations. Are you confident that all the risks are identified, given that it is sometimes what we do not know that is the problem? I do not think that I can give you that category of assurance that all the risks are known. I think that what is very important is that it is closely monitored and kept under review both by Police Scotland and the SPA and then the assurance arrangements that they have in place. Before I move on to workforce planning and things, can I take you back to Willie Coffey's line of questioning around the ICT strategy for me? In the report, you talked about the lack of clarity. What do you mean when you say in your report that there are risks to the future financial sustainability of the SPA if the ICT strategy is not fully funded? The delivery of police in 2026 clearly states that it depends on investment to change the IT underpinnings of Police Scotland, the way that police officers and police staff are able to use IT to carry out their jobs day to day, just as a way example for police officers who are attending an incident to be able to record the details where they are without having to go back to a police station to record them for people in custody suites to be able to refer to that, for that to work all the way through the criminal justice system. There are other linkages across the piece that all are necessary if the vision is able to be delivered, both in terms of the quality of policing that we all experience but also the number of police officers and police staff who are required to do it. The progress that has been made is that there is now this much clearer digital data and IT strategy for how that will be done, but it is not clear yet whether 298 million estimated costs of that will come from. We understand that the Cabinet Secretary is due to address that as part of the Scottish budget next week or that future funding will be addressed, but if the investment that is required to deliver the IT strategy is not available, then all of the planning about the vision and how it will be delivered will need to be revisited. That means that the costs that are currently being incurred continue with the trajectory that they currently have, and that gives you the graph that we have in Exhibit 2 that takes you back into a deficit after 2020-21. Presumably, the risk is that the SPA takes great steps to clear a significant deficit, but then, as part of this programme, it re-encurs almost as a result of lack of funding at this end. Is that correct? Achieving financial sustainability and delivering the vision more importantly depends on that investment to achieve an IT system, which is quite different from what it has at the moment. The source of that funding is not yet clear. Do you get any sense of—let's say, for example, in the next budget, the Scottish Government says, okay, we'll partially fund the 298 million. What happens then? Do the police either make cuts elsewhere to cross-fund or do they cut the 298 million programme? I think that that's more of a question for the Government and the Scottish Police Authority than for us. What I'm doing is highlighting the risk that, without that investment, the financial sustainability of the SPA is significantly unclear, much more than it is at the moment. I understand. I think that Willie Coffey would like to come in on this point. Yes. Thanks, convener, again. It's a supplement. Caroline, in the report that you did in March 2017 about I6, there's a paragraph in here that says that over the 10-year period we could expect efficiency savings of around £200 million. Is there any semblance of that element within the new strategy and the new estimate, what the 10-year forecast for efficiency savings might be to offset the concerns from the convener? I'll ask Stephen to pick that up as I make. The scale of efficiency savings is captured in the digital data and ICT contract. We've not formally undertaken an audit of the strategy yet. It's something that's absolutely clear in our plans for 18-19 to assess very importantly the connections between the financial strategy, the financial planning and the strategy itself and something that we would capture in future reports. Is there a figure in there though? I would need to come back to the committee on that. On that point, Alex Neil. A couple of factual questions. First of all, over what period of time is it intended to implement the strategy for IT? Secondly, the funding, would that be on top of the existing capital deal and the capital for the reform funding? Until your second question first, Mr Neil, the expectation is that it would be on top of the existing capital deal provisions. The delivery of the programme is predicated on the delivery of policing 2026. That's mapped out over the next six years of the next decade to deliver the implementation of the strategy, the connections with the financial plan and then, of course, the other point that's key to this is what that means for transformation in the round about how that impacts upon workforce and the states. I think that it's probably, we have an expectation that all of these strategies once implemented will have a considerable impact upon the financial projections of Police Scotland and SPU. The numbers that appear today, we expect, will have to change again as time scales and funding become clearer. Do you have any information on what potential methods of funding are being considered by the Government? Is it SFT-type, PDP-type funding or is it using their own capital or a combination or whatever? We don't have any awareness of how that's planned to be funded at this stage. We understand that the SPA's request is that they have commitment around the quantum of the capital that is required as opposed to the vehicles that we use to produce it. I wanted to focus just a bit on the specific amount of workforce. Obviously, the report makes clear that there's insufficient progress in developing a workforce strategy. It also raises concerns about only monitoring headcount, a need for improved reporting, more co-ordination that's required with stakeholders. I wonder if you can outline just some of the reasons why you think there has been a delay in developing a workforce strategy and whether you have any idea of whether that stakeholder engagement has gone forward and made any progress since the report? I think that the first thing to say is that we recognise that workforce planning is absolutely central to doing this. Policing is a service that's delivered through people, through police officers and police staff, working with partners across the public sector and the third sector every day. Most of the budget is spent on people and the way that we're planning for that, developing people for the future, thinking about how people are used, is key to being able to deliver policing. There have been early steps in delivering a workforce strategy, but it's not yet detailed enough to underpin the sort of planning that Stephen's been outlining for the committee. I think that there are probably a couple of reasons for that. One is that, as Stephen said, all of the different elements of the strategies that underpin the vision are interdependent. If you spend more on IT and get a system that's very flexible, you can probably deliver the same service with fewer people, so those things work together. I think that the SPA and Police Scotland have been working through with Government the implications of the minimum number of police officers at 17, 2, 3, 4, the room for flexing that as it becomes clearer how policing can be delivered differently. For example, using specialists in cyber security who may not be police officers, but are very much involved in delivering policing, all of that's taken time. The changes that have been in the leadership teams of both the SPA and Police Scotland have also had an effect. Stephen, I think, can give you a bit more of a sense of the way that it's developing now and what the priorities are. I think that one of the things that I would maybe bring the committee's attention to is that there has been some progress over the past year. I think that one of the key steps that Police Scotland has identified to us is the harmonisation of police terms and conditions across the country. That has been a significant milestone for the organisation and the financial implications of that have been captured in the annual report and accounts. Not terribly much more to the point that the Auditor General makes. Essentially, they now have the platform and the capability and capacity to do so, but as ever, with transformation, it's not one thing in its own. It's the interconnected nature of the strategies and the knock-on implication of what transformation might mean for what's required from workforce played off against the States and the timing and cost of technology progress. Has there been any assessment of the fact that we had eight police authorities down to one, whether there's been some geographical challenges in particular around workforce planning and workforce strategies? If so, where are those geographical challenges? It's not something that we're close enough to brief the committee on in terms of what it means for the workforce. Clearly, it's a national service and they understand that what workforce requirements are in one area will not be the same as what they will be in another. It's something that we keep a close eye on through our work and more report back to the committee as necessary. Alternatively, if it's something particularly interesting, it might be worth exploring further with the SPA or Police Scotland. The Auditor General made clear quite rightly about how crimes are changing, how the need for policing is changing. Is there any analysis in terms of the workforce strategies that are in place or being developed that is looking at what new skills are required in terms of recruitment or what level of retraining is required for the existing workforce to modernise in terms of the kinds of crimes and policing that we're dealing with today? That's exactly the sort of detail that we'd expect to see in the workforce strategy that underpins the vision. The vision recognises those sorts of changes that fully recognise that it will need different types of police officers and police staff potentially in different places. It's the detail beneath that that would let you start recruiting or training or doing the financial planning for that we don't yet have. A general question on workforce planning. If you look at all the Audit Scotland reports around, for example, the national health service makes clear about workforce challenges around the police authority and police Scotland makes clear about workforce challenges, do we have a workforce planning issue in Scotland around one of the strategies and how we pull them together? Secondly, if you look at the vacancy rates that we have on workforce planning issues that we have across the country and a whole host of public services, surely there's a connection around we have a people problem and what I mean by that is not our skills of our people but actually the numbers of our people. We have so many vacancies in so many different areas. Do we have to be more realistic about what we can achieve and what we can get based upon our population and our ability to attract people, either train them quick enough in Scotland or attract them from other parts of the UK, the EU or abroad? Do we need to ask politicians to be much more alive about the people issue that we have? That's a really interesting question. In response to the first part of the question, I don't think that what we need is a Scottish public services workforce plan that covers everything. I think that that would be too high a level and we probably wouldn't add anything useful to what we have got. When we start to look at individual public services like health and care, like policing, the workforce planning that we do see tends to be quite supply led. In the NHS, we're tending to see people saying we expect, for example, I'm plucking numbers from the air, 20% of nurses to retire over the next 10 years, therefore we need to be recruiting and training this many nurses to fill the pipeline at the other end. In a world that's changing as fast as we are at the moment where health and care is changing, we need to be thinking more about what work needs to be done and how that's done rather than thinking about supply chains of professionals in isolation. I think that there's room for us to be thinking about, in fact, I think that we need to be doing that much more given the scale of uncertainty that's coming with the new financial powers, the volatility and the opportunities and risks that they bring with them and, obviously, with the uncertainty around EU withdrawal as well. I think that there's room for all public services to be thinking more radically about how we use people to deliver public services, both as public servants, doctors and nurses, teachers, police officers and people themselves playing their part in all of that, along with the third sector. That's a huge question and beyond what we've got today. I think that it's a really, really important area, because you're right around what roles and what different responsibilities people can have, what skills we have. An example of the national health service is where 3,500 nurses are short. If you add the nurses, the midwives, the consultants, that alone would need about 5,000 people in Scotland right now to try to make up just those vacancies. We simply won't find those people and that's why it's a real… Do you think that there needs to be a much stronger drive towards service reform and not, I don't mean in the cuts or overdraw services, I mean in terms of a modernisation programme that involves heavy investment around our IT infrastructure, technology and better informing our citizens around what more they can do to support and be part of that public service in partnership with the third sector as well. Does that reform agenda need to be much more in focus across all our public services in Scotland? I think I'd approach it from a different angle. We've been thinking in Audit Scotland about the new refresh national performance framework and the outcomes in there. I'm on record of saying that the outcomes approach is a really good thing. I think it has to be right to think about what you want to achieve with public services and public spending and I think the new national performance framework is a great opportunity for saying how do we go about improving those outcomes and that almost certainly won't be in the traditional public services, the traditional roles that we've got. There's much more room to be thinking way upstream about prevention. Colleagues and I from Audit Scotland spent some time yesterday with the Wheatley Group thinking about, hearing about how housing officers can meet the needs of their customers in the properties that they manage in much more flexible ways working with other public bodies. That's just one example of how we can think more flexibly about what prevention means and how we can improve outcomes that move us on from the way public services have worked in the past. I will define a question just in that. Do you think that there's an acceptance of that point from Government, from political parties across the board, from public services themselves? Is there a programme that you see to deliver that? Do you think that that plan or strategy exists? I think that the commitment to the national performance framework and its establishment in legislation now both demonstrate that that approach is accepted across the board in this Parliament. I think that what we haven't seen yet is the detailed hard work of thinking, so what does that mean for how we change the way that we work? With a full recognition that that's hard to do at a time when public services are under pressure because they're both rising demand and really tight financial pressures, but we're in that catch-22 situation where the solution to those pressures is to make that time and step back and think how we do things differently, and unless we can break that cycle of running to keep up, we won't be able to do it. I'm just going to ask about the British Chancellor of Police. It's a really interesting line of questioning. Can I quickly ask about the chief executive post? Auditor General, you recall that last summer the former chief executive was made redundant on a justification that the role had shrunk, and therefore there was a redundancy situation. An interim chief executive came in on a lower salary, which stacks up if the role had been smaller. My understanding is that the new chief executive that I think came in in August is back on the original salary, which seems rather strange to me. Is it the case that the chief executive role has now re-expanded to what it was before, and if not, why are we paying more? In any event, the Scottish Government signed off on that. Do you have any oversight on the Scottish Government's thinking in that regard? You're absolutely right that the justification for making the former chief executive redundant was a reduction in the size of the role due to the removal of forensic services from his reporting responsibilities. That was part of the business case, which enabled a redundancy situation to occur and a settlement to be reached with the former post holder. The new chair of the board and the refreshed board that's in place since then has reviewed what support the SPA needs in terms of its chief executive capacity and the system that goes with that. The factual position is that the forensic reporting lines remain outside the new chief executive's role, but the SPA evaluated the role and fixed a salary for it, which is commensurate with that paid to the previous chief executive, and both of those sets of decisions were agreed with the Scottish Government. So, just to clarify, just to reflect that back, there was a redundancy situation, a smaller role, which merited a smaller remuneration, but it has now been decided that that smaller role merits the increased, the larger salary that was in place before. Is that correct? That's a factually correct description of the situation. I think it's fair for me to say that my concern is not about the salary that's being paid to the current chief executive. I think it's a very significant job with significant responsibilities as a countable officer for more than a billion pounds worth of public money. I think my concerns are about this decision making process, which was taken place around the former chief executive, which I reported to the committee last year. Are you able to provide us with any more detail on the current arrangements? The committee has obviously been very concerned about similar sort of situations. If you were able to give us more detail after this session, I think we'd appreciate it. Would that be possible? I'm not sure there's very much we can add to what I said now. I think my concern, as I say, was about the options that were considered by the chair of the board and the board generally in 2017 around the departure of the previous chief executive. I reported that at the time. I think that the remuneration for the current chief executive has been agreed with the Scottish Government after a proper process, and it doesn't seem to me disproportionate for a job of this scale. Stephen, I'm not sure if there's anything that you want to add to that. I'm not clear what additional responsibilities that the new chief executive has, as far as insects are still out with it. I realise that this is not your primary responsibility. I suggest, convener, that we write to the chair of the board asking for more detail as to why this was agreed, because this committee was very, very clear last year that we thought that the chief executive's position was well overpaid. Can we include a request to confirm what the actual salary of the new chief executive is, and why the public audit committee's recommendations in this were ignored? I think that that would be very sensible. Let's talk about that later, shall we? There's no point in us making decisions and then having them ignored by quangots. Indeed. You had some further questions, Alex, or shall I move to BTP? You mentioned, in your opening remarks about BTP and the impact that that could have on the policing strategy 2026. Do you have any sense on whether that delay will have an impact, and if so, what that impact might be? Obviously, the Parliament is very divided on the British Transport Police and the integration with Police Scotland. Any view might be more a political situation than one for yourselves, but is the delay in making a decision part of the problem? If we just had a decision either way to either have the integration or not of the integration, would that have an impact on that strategy? Are your views and thoughts on that? You're absolutely right. It's not my role to comment on policy decisions. That's a matter for the Government and for this Parliament. I recognise that the Smith commission agreed the devolution of policing to Scotland. We now have legislation in place to give effect to that. I think that it became clear during the process of considering how that might happen, that it was more complicated and potentially much more costly than was originally expected, and the Cabinet Secretary has announced that he's reviewing the options that are available. I think that the concern that I express in here is more that the level of change that the SPO and Police Scotland need to manage in any case is very significant. The continuing uncertainty about how the devolution of transport policing might happen is another element of uncertainty that, as to the things that the committee has already been discussing this morning. Is that a workforce uncertainty, a financial uncertainty, a service delivery uncertainty or all three? I think that it's all of the above. I think that, above all, it has the potential to distract the capacity of the leaders of the SPO and of Police Scotland from the things that they need to be doing to transform policing while still thinking about what might be required to devolve transport policing as well. What actions or steps are required to avoid that situation? What is your recommendation? I think that the best outcome would be an early decision about the way forward and a decision that takes account of the capacity within the SPO and Police Scotland to make further changes. A lack of an early decision or a delayed decision will mean workforce challenges, service delivery challenges and financial challenges? No, I say in the report quite carefully that there is a risk that those things happen, but I think that, while the question is still open, it does inevitably distract some attention, some focus from the things that we no need to happen whatever decision is taken about transport policing. Thank you. Just staying with that is an important point. In your report you say there is a risk that the on-going uncertainty continues to absorb resources at the expense of wider strategic observers' objectives. Can you specify what resources are being tied up by that uncertainty at the moment? Perhaps from that, notwithstanding a decision, how long do you consider that that could continue? I think that we are probably currently in a position where it is taking less time and attention than it was before the cabinet secretary's announcement earlier in the year. I will ask Pauline to talk you through what we saw through the audit as being the consequences of it until that point. Our concern is mainly around the amount of staff time and energy and leadership time that is being spent on the project to date. Until there is clarity about what the future plans are and the timescales of those, we are concerned that that continues in the future. The organisation is obviously in a period of great transformation and lots of projects are underway and our concern is that attention has been diverted away from those projects on to this. So, effectively, until there is a decision, like Mr Sauer says, there will be a cost in terms of the human resource that is required, because even though we have postponed the decision, there is still presumably something going on, and then that has a cost attached as well to the detriment of other projects. Is that correct? Yes, the SPA and Police Scotland staff are still engaging with BTP and the Scottish Government on future plans, so there is still some staff time that has been expended on the project. Just to move on a topic slightly, your report expresses concern about the performance management arrangements and says that it is vital that improvements are made in order for the SPA to hold Police Scotland to account sufficiently. What is your view on that? Are sufficient steps being taken to get a new performance management process in place? Is that being done with sufficient urgency in your view? I will start by restating that I think that it is critical. We have heard over the last five years a range of views about SPA's role in holding Police Scotland to account. Those views are now much more widely understood, the roles are, and I think that the new teams in the SPA and Police Scotland are working much better together to make that happen in practice, but it cannot happen, as envisaged in the legislation, unless the SPA has the information that it needs about how well policing is performing and the current performance framework is not good enough to support that. There is work that is under way, but it is not progressing fast enough to mean that the SPA can now sit down at its public board meetings and demonstrate that it is holding Police Scotland to account for the delivery of policing right across Scotland. Stephen, you want to say a bit more about what you see in that? Just briefly, in addition to that, both the SPA and Police Scotland are very clear that this is a key priority for the short term. As the report mentioned, it undermines the SPA's ability to discharge its responsibilities in holding Police Scotland to account, given the depth and extent of the performance management arrangements that are currently in place. The plans and the new chief executive of the SPA has this very clearly in his focus as one of his first targets. He is keen to expand the range of sources that SPA is considering and to take a wider view of the performance of policing in Scotland. To date, that is largely focused on information derived from Police Scotland systems, provided to the SPA to take a view on what his plan is to broaden that out, to consider academic research and so forth, to take a wider assessment. I am back to the point that the Auditor General makes about not just about the numbers that are presented to him, but what the outcomes are being achieved for the large scale of public expenditure in this area. Thank you. Just to go back to the Auditor General's point, though you said that the Auditor General is not progressing fast enough, on whom is the onus to expedite the process? I think that Stephen Devane, the new chief executive, is very much focused on this. He has been in post since October, so it is very early days for him to be demonstrating progress with it. It is something that has not made enough progress at all in the first five years of Police Scotland's SPA's existence. In terms of the new teams, it is very early days. It is now five years since the SPA and Police Scotland were established, and because of its importance, I think that it needs to progress as quickly as it can at this point. I am very grateful. Do members have any further questions on this topic? No. In which case, I thank the Auditor General and team for their evidence this morning, and I will suspend until 10 o'clock for a change over of witnesses. Good morning, and welcome back to the Public Audit and Post Legislative Scrutiny Committee. Item 3 on our agenda this morning is a section 22 report on the 2017-18 audit of Community Justice Scotland. I would like to welcome our witnesses for the next item on our agenda this morning, Caroline Gardner, the Auditor General for Scotland, Mark Roberts, Senior Manager of Audit Scotland and Joe Brown, director of Grant Thornton. Again, I would like to invite the Auditor General to make a short opening statement. Thank you, convener. This brief report results from the first annual audit of Community Justice Scotland, a small central Government body that began work on 1 April 2017. It is critical to the Scottish Government's justice strategy and its ambition to shift the balance away from custodial sentences toward more community-based sentences. It spent £1.2 million in its first year and the auditor gave an unqualified opinion on the annual report on accounts. Community Justice Scotland started work with a board consisting of a chair and four members appointed by Scottish ministers. This make-up did not comply with the Community Justice Scotland Act 2016, which specifies a minimum of five members in addition to the chair. Between October 2017 and October 2018, the chair of the board was absent. Three of the remaining four non-executive directors agreed to take turns to chair board meetings until April 2018, when the board agreed to appoint one of its members to be interim chair. The Scottish Government subsequently approved the arrangement. During 2017-18, the board's Audit and Risk Committee met just twice, and its human resources and remuneration committee did not meet at all. The chair resigned in November this year, and the Scottish Government is planning to recruit a new chair. In addition, the Government appointed four new members to the board in October, bringing the total number to eight, one of whom is currently acting as interim chair. Convener, effective governance is critical to the work of all public bodies, irrespective of their size. We will monitor Community Justice Scotland's progress through the 2018-19 Audit, and my performance audit programme contains a proposal to look at community justice in 2020-21. I am accompanied by Joanne Brown, who is the appointed auditor for Community Justice Scotland, Mark Roberts from Audit Scotland, and we will do our best together to answer the committee's questions. Thank you very much. We will start with Anas Sarwar. Good morning again. Obviously, a key part of the report is around the number of members of the board. Have you had any explanation from the Government about why it did not appoint the appropriate number of people right at the start of the process, what the barriers were, what the challenges were and any explanation at all? Mark, can I ask you to pick that one up? Our understanding was that, given that it was in the very early stages of Community Justice Scotland, discussions were had between the organisation and the Scottish Government about how many board members it needed. I am afraid that I am still not clear as to why it was a chair plus five non-executive members as opposed to that which was specified within the act. There were discussions that a small number of board members were appropriate to the early stages, but in terms of the actual number, I think that question would be better directed to the Scottish Government. What are the sanctions on Government or challenges in Government if it does not comply with an act of Parliament? That is part of the role of Parliament and its committee to think what is appropriate in individual circumstances. It is my role to bring it to your attention that, in this case, the size of the board did not comply with the legislation that was approved by Parliament. As far as the board is concerned, either at the early stages or where it is now, a much bigger consideration for me is not whether we have the right numbers of people on the board but whether we have the right skills on the board. Did we have the right skills on the board at the outset when we had the one plus four? Do we have the right set of skills on the board now? I think that our view is that the appointment of the new members is a really important opportunity to broaden the skills and make sure that they are what the organisation means. Joe, I think that you might want to comment on that. Yes, one of the things that we are looking at just now now that we have got the additional four non-executive members is to undertake a skills matrix to look at the skills of that board and identify where there may be potential areas of gaps or areas where training is required. From speaking to the accountable officer, for example, there are plans in place to do training for the members of the Audit Committee to strengthen their understanding of how they discharge their role in the Audit Committee. That is something that we will look at as part of the 18-19 external audit. So who was the chair and who is the chair now? There currently isn't a chair. The chair resigned in October 2018 and the Government hasn't yet, I think, advertised for a new chair. The chair for the first period of the organisation's existence was Jean Cooper. How often does a board now meet and do they draw lots of it? Who chairs the meeting? Joe, you can pick that up in terms of frequency. So just as well, just to clarify in that transition period where the chair was absent, the three of the non-executive members rotated that chair. A decision was taken in April 2018 when the position around the chair at the time became a bit clearer that they would appoint an interim chair and that was Glynis Watt and Glynis continues to act in the interim chair of the board capacity. So she chairs the board meetings. As a relatively new organisation, they made the decision to meet monthly. That's something as a board they're continuing to look at. I think in terms of frequency they're now meeting 10 times over the 12 months of the year and that's something again they continue to look at and think about the business that is there for going to the board and the amount of decisions that need to be taken by the board and whether that is appropriate. Can you say just a bit about the make-up of the current board now in terms of its diversity and skills base and whether it is accurate reflective of the skills that are required of such a board and also of the diverse make-up of Scotland? So I suppose just in terms of commenting around the skills that are now on that board what we can see is the external auditors. There's a very strong focus of experience on that board related to community justice and the community justice background in the arena. The four new appointments that were made in October 2018 strengthen that community justice knowledge and experience of the board. They all have a relatively differing experience of working across public sector organisations, not-for-profit third sector organisations, and within that they've got a diverse experience around that. One of the things that we'll continue to look at from an 18-19 perspective is the financial understanding of the board, so how financial management is taken into account as a skillset within the board and the wider governance experience of the board, and that's something that should come through the skills matrix and be picked up as part of the training. Is there gender balance on the board and is there any ethuminority representation on the eight-member board? In terms of gender balance, the four new appointments were male, however a number of the non-exex previously were female, so I think it's just shy of the 50-50 in terms of gender balance, but I couldn't comment on wider diversity, but I'm sure we could get that information. That would be great. Given the fact that we had one chair and four board members and didn't comply with the act for a large part of almost all of its existence, given the fact that we don't currently have a chair, it doesn't seem like this has got a great deal of government oversight or interest. Was there just a creation of a body because it sounded like the right thing to do? Do you get a sense that this is a strategic priority for the Government and they're investing the time and energy that is needed to make it a success? I think that community justice for Scotland is a priority, and I think that the board needs to be playing a really important role as it moves into the second year of its life in making that change happen. I think that Mark can give you a better sense of the oversight that the Government was exercising during this period. Government officials were represented at a number of the board meetings throughout the course of the year that they were aware of the process of establishing the organisation prior to April 2017 and how it was operating subsequent to that, so I think there was a reasonable level of Government awareness as to how the board was operating during the course of the year. I'll pick up that question and comment it from a slightly different angle. If the board is appointed by the Scottish ministers, there's no chair, there's no deputy, and for at least some of this existence it's been a very small board appointed by the Scottish Government. Some people watching might wonder if it's understandable that the Scottish Government isn't in a tearing hurry to find more people to be on this board on the basis that they have greater control over it in this way. I don't think that that was our conclusion at all. I think it's important to remind ourselves that when the chair was first absent, nobody on the board or in government knew how long that absence would last. With hindsight we know it lasted for 12 months from October 2017 to 2018, but when she was first absent that was an open-ended process with no end point in sight. As Jo has said, the board members for the first period rotated the chair between the other members and then after six months agreed to appoint one of their members as the interim chair. I think by the end of the 12 months it was an appropriate question to ask about whether the arrangements in place were operating as effectively as they needed to be and government has now appointed an additional four members. The chair resigned and the Government is planning to appoint a new chair. I think that my concern is the effect on the basic governance arrangements for this new body. A broader question about the extent to which there is a consistent approach to setting up new bodies, which even for small ones isn't a trivial task to work through, and the opportunity cost for making sure that the body can play its important role in delivering more community justice services and more effective services across Scotland. Can I ask Auditor General, if the board was abolished at five o'clock this afternoon, would anybody in Scotland notice? I think that that is not entirely a fair question for a brand new body. It is certainly the case that it has not yet been able to establish itself to carry out the important function that it has. I hope that, when it is up and running and carrying out that function, it will be, as the Government and Parliament envisaged when they established it, a key part of community justice and there is an opportunity cost to not being there yet. But it has now been up and running for a year and three quarters. What has it achieved in that period? Its achievements have been focused very much on getting itself established and, as I have reported to the committee today, that has taken longer than it should have done. They haven't entirely been successful in doing that, have they? Which is why my reports are in front of the committee today. Are there not a number of lessons in here? One of the obvious lessons I would have thought is that boards should appoint a deputy chair because, if, through illness or whatever, a chair has to be absent for whatever length of time, you then have a deputy chair who can step in and to allow members to rotate the chair. I mean, it's not, I would have thought, good governance in itself apart from the lack of consistency you get. Obviously, you don't know if the right people have got the skills to chair a board meeting. The other thing that strikes me is that they're doing the matrix of skills now. Surely you look at the skills as you appoint people to the board, not after you've appointed them. I mean, once you've appointed them, you're landed with the set of skills you've got, whether it's the right set of skills or not. Surely you actually do that before you make the appointment? You're absolutely right. There are lessons to be learned, and that's one of the reasons I report to this committee. I think the first one is that appointments need to comply with the legislation that sets up the body, which didn't happen in this case. I think, as the committee has discussed before, there is real merit in having a deputy chair who can step in when required and can play that important role, where, for example, there are differences within the board in helping them to resolve that and move forward. I think being clear about the make-up of the board both in terms of the skills that are required and the compliance with things like the Government's diversity legislation and its policies are all important things. This is a small body that potentially plays an important part in the justice system in Scotland, and I've reported to the committee because I think it's important that those lessons are learned. I think that there's lots of lessons in here, and I think that this is something obvious that we need to discuss later, but I think that we need to follow up on this. I mean, this is shambolic. Thanks, convener. Given that this actually is a very important public body, and I speak here as a former prison social worker, and given that, in our earlier session, we spoke of the importance of public sector reform, and the reason that detrae of this particular organisation is to shift the balance from short-term custodial sentences that are costly and ineffective into robust community disposals that will rehabilitate offenders and make our communities safer. This is an important organisation, and we also know from experience that the early years in any organisation is crucial in terms of getting the right start, the best start, and those strong foundations being laid. If I've picked the panel up correctly, deeply concerned and regrettable that this organisation has been without a chair for one year, that is a long time for any organisation, even if it was a well-established organisation, never mind a new one. I don't want to, I'm not expecting you to breach any personal information about any of the individuals involved, but I would be interested to know the impact on people taking turns to chair a meeting, given Alec Neill's issues about consistency, and is there anything that could have been done earlier to resolve the situation and how proactively involved are the sponsorship teams? Lots of questions in there, and I'll ask Mark to pick up the question. I think that the broader point that you're making, Ms Constance, is the one that I'd agree with, that it's really important that a public body that's set up to fulfil a major policy priority for the Government has got that fair wind and support behind it. It's not a trivial matter to set up a new public body and it needs to be done in the way that gives it the best chance of fulfilling its objectives. Mark. Thank you. Just to pick up on the situation for a deputy chair, the act makes, as we say in the report, explicit provision that a deputy chair can be appointed then board explicitly should decide not to do that during its early stages of work. In terms of the role of the sponsoring part of the Scottish Government, as I said previously in my answer to Mr Sawa, I think that the sponsoring team were fairly actively involved in seeing how work was going on, were attending board meetings and so forth, so I think that there was understanding and oversight of what was going on. Certainly in recent months, in terms of the expansion in the number of board members, there's been a large amount of engagement between CJS and the sponsoring part of the Scottish Government, so I think that it is there, it is very much seen as a priority for the Scottish Government policy. I suspect that there's probably questions that committee will want to follow up with the accountable officers within the organisation and within the sponsorship team. I also wanted to pick up on Anna Sarwar's point that diversity is strength. There is oodles of evidence that gender balance and wider diversity isn't just the right thing to do, it's actually the smart thing to do to tap into all the talents that are available. Given that we have legislation, the gender representation public board Scotland that has passed to this Parliament has to be fully implemented by the early 2020s. What assurance can this committee seek that the law in this instance will actually be complied with? If the four new appointees were all men, does that mean that all the existing appointees were women or are women? I think that Joe said that a number of the previous board members are women and the chair who's resigned was a woman. We don't yet know who the new chair will be, so that balance is not yet fixed, but I think that your wider point is a really important one. How does the Government make sure that the intentions that were enshrined in the legislation are being given effect to, as appointments are being made, to make sure that we are getting the right people on boards and that 50 per cent of those board members are women by the target date in the legislation? Given that there is an underrepresentation of women who take up the positions of chairs in these public bodies, I wonder if the panel has had any insight or assurance to the efforts that are being made to engage our community in the widest sense about encouraging applicants from women or from a BME background or people with a disability, and if you could give some sense more broadly about what are the top three priorities for this organisation over the next 12 months? On the first question, we haven't yet looked directly at the measures that the Government is taking to encourage more diverse applicants for board membership and board chairs in general. This is an example of where there's an opportunity to do that, but we haven't looked at it, so I can't give you that assurance, and the committee may want to explore it with Government. In terms of the priorities for this board, I think for me that the starting point is to establish the basics of good governance, to have a board that complies with the legislation, to have a chair in place and to come together around what their priorities are, and then to start the important work of working with their partners around the justice system and with wider stakeholders to make a reality of that policy commitment that you started your questioning with. It's a really important part of public service reform. All the evidence suggests that it is both better for Scotland and better value for money, which is why this board is such an important part of the process of doing that. Before I move on, has the way that the board has been constituted impacted on its services as far as you are aware over the last year or 18 months? 2017-18 was always going to be the first year of it starting its operations, so there is no doubt about that. In my view, there probably is an opportunity cost in slowing down its ability to move into the next stage of actually starting to have an impact on justice services. It is hard to quantify that, but it is hard to see how these problems could not have had that effect. Before I just go on to financial capacity, which is the main thrust of my next question, we are all signed up absolutely to the objective. There is no doubt about that. That is what makes this a greater tragedy because, by now, we would have expected this board to be well racing ahead because of the urgency and the priority that has been given to this policy. It worries me that it is a sensible suggestion that we need to slow down a bit to get it into shape before we move to the next phase, as it were. Can I just ask before I go on to financial capacity to confirm that the current chair resigned three months ago? October 2018. And the job still has not been advertised? Mark Trekkin was Government very recently. It has certainly not been placed on the Scottish Government's appointed for Scotland website where most public appointments are placed. Coupled with Angela's point about deliberately trying to use the appointment of a chair to improve the diversity of the board, I think that something that maybe we want to raise directly with the Government about treating this a bit more urgently, given the importance of what we are trying to achieve here. In terms of financial capacity, which is another internal issue, have you satisfied that the board now has internally the financial capacity that it requires to do the job when it is fully up and running? I will ask Joe to pick that question up for you. As an organisation, it is very small. As the report sets out, there are only 26 employees. It is something that we are going to look very closely at as part of our 2018-19 audit, and I know that the accountable officer continues to have a number of conversations with Scottish Government and the sponsored department. They do make use of the Scottish Government finance systems, they make use of the payroll and financial ledger. However, she does recognise that the financial capacity and capability within our team at the moment is limited outwith that Scottish Government arrangement, and she has got a post that she is looking to recruit to strengthen her financial team, but that again is something that we will look at as part of 2018-19. Right, but there is not also a lesson in here. Last week, we heard about IGBs and the fact that some of them do not have a full-time financial officer and they are dealing with hundreds, if in some cases put potentially over a billion pounds a year. Is there a lesson in here about numerically small organisations having to share a central financial resource, for example, so that they can get the level of expertise that they require without having to build in a huge overhead that might not be justifiable for the size of organisation? Do we not need to be a bit more imaginative about how we address these issues? Joan, you might want to come in a moment. My sense is that it is horses for courses, so what we have seen with this body is that it has a service level agreement with the Scottish Government to prepare its financial accounts. It uses the Scottish Government's central finance systems like SEAS, and at this stage that is entirely appropriate. I think that you are right. I think that as it develops and plays more of a role, perhaps like the IGBs of working with the Scottish Prison Service, with local authority community justice services, with others to be changing the way in which sentencing works, then its scale and the complexity of what it needs to manage will also change. It would be appropriate to review what capacity it needs itself, not to do the transactions processing but to really do the strategic financial management about how funds need to flow through the system and how they may need to move from one place to another to make that change happen. Does the board have agreed a business plan? Has it agreed its own strategy? It knows its general outcomes, but has it agreed a performance monitoring system for its own added value in the system? In terms of strategic priorities and setting its strategy, that is set out in a document that is agreed. There is, effectively, a one-year financial plan that supports a business plan. They are working at looking at that over the next three years, recognising that from 1819 there will be a larger budget for community justice Scotland and it will start doing more commissioning, so it is looking at creating a wider three-year financial plan. When will that be ready? That is something that they are looking at just now and they are committed to having in place when they are looking at the budget for 1920, so February 19 is the timescale they are working to. As part of their strategy, they have a broad outline around the outcomes that they want to achieve and they are starting to look at the performance management framework and how they report against those outcomes. However, as you would expect, for a relatively new organisation, a number of those areas are still in development. When you say that they use the Scottish Government's systems, are they inputting to a computer system or is there someone in the Scottish Government who is responsible, who is the accountant, who prepares the accounts, and understands what community justice does and understands the business when putting together the financials? It is probably a combination of both. They have a team in Community Justice Scotland that can input directly into the financial ledger and process transactions in terms of the financial statements support for the 1718 audit. Those were prepared by somebody within the finance team of the Scottish Government who were understanding the accounting transactions of CGS. They preferred the set of accounts. They then also liaised with us from an audit perspective around the underlying supporting information for those transactions. When you signed off the accounts, or in the process of doing that, did you deal with somebody at the community justice? Did you deal with somebody at the Scottish Government who took responsibility for the financials? In terms of our facilitation, it was with somebody within Community Justice Scotland. However, when we were doing our audit work, there were wider questions around the financial statements and how they were prepared and how the accounting treatment for certain aspects were picked up. We liaised with Community Justice Scotland but ultimately spoke to somebody within the Scottish Government finance team around the accounting and the preparation of the financial statements. At the moment, there is a gap in community justice and understanding the financial statements. Willie, are you coming in on that topic? Just briefly following on from that, the annual audit report says that there was a lack of clarity at the Audit and Risk Committee in July because no one from the Scottish Government who I think had prepared the accounts turned up to talk about the accounts. Why was that? Why did the Scottish Government not show up? From that perspective, there was a misunderstanding between Community Justice Scotland and the individual within the finance team at the Scottish Government around the preparation of the accounts. Generally, one of the challenges that they have had as an organisation is understanding the role and remit of the Audit and Risk Committee but also of the individuals that attend the Audit and Risk Committee. There was a misunderstanding that, as the external auditors, I was preparing and presenting their financial statements rather than auditing their financial statements. As part of that misunderstanding, there was nobody at that meeting to present the accounts. That is something that they weren't aware of and they have learned from. I would expect to see that much improved in 1819. Thank you. Willie Coffey. It was really the same area, convener. It was about the Audit and Risk Committee. You said that it met twice in 1718. Is it meeting at the moment? Do they have an internal audit programme and plan in place? Is that being carried through? They have an internal audit programme. The internal audit is provided by the Scottish Government internal audit service. They have an annual plan for 1819. As an audit and risk committee, they met in July. They have just recently met at the start of November and the next meeting scheduled for early January. They have started to do a forward schedule. They just need to continue to project that through and agree effectively what the schedule of business for that audit and risk committee is going forward. Do members have any further questions? No. In which case, thank you very much to the Auditor General and colleagues for evidence this morning. I now close the public part of this meeting as we move into private session.