 Oni i gyd ddod, sy'n gwybod i gynnwys i'r mewn gwaith gwirionedd i'r Cymru oedd aur mae'r gweithio y fflaennau i adneud i gael ei dosiwnod yn ddod meddwl yn gweithio. Mae'r fflaennau oherwydd yn ddau'r mewn gweithio i sefydliad bridegau ystafelloedd yno i gynnwys yma i gyd-greifio'r erdillodau a'r meddwl ei ddiddordeb, a oedd gan gwrdd agwedd yn gwneud. Rydym yn gweithio'r gweithio. A gynnwch i ymddianydd oedai גנwch ar gyfer y syniadau 35, ac mae'rmaewch erioedd y cyflennidd yn prynynigol i gwyfnol i ddarparu ar gyfer rhoi yn siwr syniadau. S Backendol yn ethawr Thomas Arthur, yng nghymru ar gyfer rai gyda'r方yf, gan cyflengwch, yn wneud yn gweithio, a aeth ddwyllwr Arthyr yn ei gwisig byddai Tom Winter, yng nghymru i dda'r drafod o'r gweithio at ac yn y gwrthog ac rwy'n meddwl i gydag hwnnw i'i wneud. I'm grateful for the opportunity to be here to provide some clarification about what we're doing around PDR and new SEO. As you will be aware, the Government is carrying out a substantial review of permitted development rights as part of its wider planning reform programme. The review has been taking forward on a phase basis, with each phase focusing on new and extended permitted development rights for specific types of development. The Town and Country Planning General Permitted Development Scotland Order 1992 grants planning permission for certain types of development. Those are known as permitted development rights. Permitted development rights, or PDR, help to provide certainty and save the time and expense associated with applying for planning permission. Phase 2 of the review has focused on new permitted development rights and changes to the use class order related to electric vehicle charging infrastructure, town centre change reviews and ports. A 12-week public consultation on proposed changes was carried out between May and August of last year. The statutory instrument would bring into force a package of measures stemming from that consultation. The measures that it contains will help to support the roll-out of EV charging infrastructure across Scotland, including modern high-powered chargers, promote the resilience and recovery of Scotland's tenders and provide greater flexibility to Scotland's poor operators. I understand that the committee is seeking some clarification in relation to the provisions that are intended to support our city, town and local centres. In summary, we provide greater flexibility to change the use of certain buildings and place furniture outside specified hospitality premises. Taken together, those changes are intended to meet a number of aims, to make places more vibrant and welcoming by encouraging the use of outdoor spaces and the reuse of vacant shops and other premises, to promote diverse and mixed uses in our centres, to help them to become more responsive to changing circumstances and to encourage local enterprise, entrepreneurship and innovation, as well as the establishment of 20-minute neighbourhoods. The PDR, allowing hospitality businesses to place furniture on the pavement adjacent to their premises without applying amplification, will simplify the process by reducing the number of separate consents that need to be sought. At present, placing furniture on the public road would require the consent of the roads authority under the Road Scotland Act 1984, if it would cause an obstruction. Planning permission might be required if the works are taken to involve development. Local authority licensing may also apply. Although the new regulations grant planning permission for furniture on pavements, they do not withdraw other controls addressing safety or access issues using roads legislation and local licensing requirements. The new PDR makes clear of its consent from the local council and its capacity as a road authority continues to be required if placing furniture on the road under the PDR would cause an obstruction. Section 59 of the Road Scotland Act 1984 states that the consent of the roads authority is required before anything such as furniture is placed on the road if it would cause an obstruction, and this definition of roads includes the pavement. A roads authority can refuse consent or impose conditions if it thinks an obstruction has an unacceptable impact on access or safety. Placing something in a road that causes an obstruction without the relevant consent is an offence, and roads authorities have powers to remove obstructions and recover the cost of doing so. The potential for furniture located in the public realm to cause obstruction and for this to adversely impact on accessibility is something that we have been keenly aware of throughout this phase of the programme. Public spaces should be as accessible as possible and we recognise that street furniture, if located insensitively, can create difficulties for disabled people. That is why accessibility considerations were explicitly highlighted through the public consultation process and we specifically sought views on those points. It is important to reiterate that other existing controls will continue to reply. Those insurer authorities can continue to restrict and remove furniture that has an unacceptable impact on safety or access. The measures strike a sensible balance between supporting hospitality by removing overlapping consenting processes while retaining proportionate controls over obstructions that block pavements and the public realm. On that, I will conclude and we will be happy to take any questions. Thank you very much for that opening statement. I am sure that we have a number of questions to go a little bit deeper in there. In one B on centres, during the pandemic, we saw when we were coming back from that the great work around the spaces for people and the idea of moving towards a more European approach with outdoor spaces and creating that interaction between people and outdoor activity. It is commendable in that way but we have a number of concerns and you will be aware of the concerns that have been raised by RNIB and Living Streets around how do those communities, if there is a problem, find a way to have the changes made. I know that you laid it out there but how would that work in effect if there was a problem if somebody who was blind found it difficult to move around the street furniture needed something changed? How would they go about that? Under the provisions of the Road Scotland Act 1984, there is a means for local authorities as the roads authority to ensure that the public realm is not being blocked or made less accessible and they have enforcement powers to ensure that they can take action where appropriate. For anyone experiencing a set of circumstances where a furniture was placed in an insensitive way that impacted upon accessibility, they would be able to raise that directly with the local authority who, through the existing statutory provisions, would be able to take action to ensure that any obstruction is removed. Anyone else have any questions? Mark Willey? I am just wondering about how the public get the opportunity to object or not to the propratness of an outdoor hospitality area. If you move into a town or a village centre where you are near a pub or a restaurant, you know what you are going to and you know if the scope of that community is going to change, that generally you will get the opportunity to object or not to a planning application. There will be many families who live around, especially in small towns and villages, a local pub in who would not necessarily want to see outdoor city areas just because of the general noise associated with that and living with young families. How would those people get the opportunity to have a say in how their immediate vicinity of their house was going to change? I touched on the points previously with regard to concerns around obstructions, but it is also important to bear in mind that many hospitality establishments will be subject to local licensing requirements as well, which I appreciate for my council. You are familiar with the established processes for achieving that. There is an opportunity through direct engagement with the local authority to engage in issues. Clearly, there are other provisions that any hospitality establishment would be subject to in and around levels of noise, impact upon immunity, environmental health, etc. There is a range of existing mechanisms in place. What we have at the moment is overlapping consenting mechanisms, and it is also important to recognise that it is not always necessarily the case that outdoor furniture would constitute development for planning purposes. There can be instances where there could be outdoor furniture that would not be captured by the planning system as it exists at the moment, so there are other means of addressing any particular concerns that a local community should have, whether that be around obstruction or, indeed, whether it should be things that perhaps impinge upon existing licence and arrangements. Tom, do not know if you want to add anything. No, I think that that covers it well. I think that the other thing to note is that it is open to local authorities through the roads consenting process to seek the views of stakeholders or the public if they saw fit to do so, even though it is not necessarily a statutory consultation process in the way that it is under planning. I appreciate that the roads authority would look at it, but they would look at it on a very technical basis in terms of access and safety, and I am more concerned about the noise and nuisance impact of families who live in the vicinity. Can you clarify that any outdoor seating area would require an amended licence and application, and that would give local families, local residents the opportunity to feed in their views to the licence and authority? Those matters are decisions for local authority to take as a licence and authority will be based on specific circumstances there, but I have confidence and trust local authorities to apply the existing legislative provisions and to do so in a way that is proportionate and takes account of concerns raised by local people. However, the important point to remember here is that what we are seeking to do is removing overlapping consenting regimes that exist, so this does not impact as we have touched on roads, it does not impact upon any existing licensing requirements, so any development at the moment that would come into the scope of licensing issues, that is not impacted by the change around planning, so those existing provisions would continue as they are. On the specific issue of noise, that is, as the minister has said, the subject of environmental health and nuisance controls, which again are unaffected by those changes. I will ask two questions. Has the right of the public to participate in the decision making process effectively being removed here to grant street furniture outside hospitality and so on? Is that right to be part of that consideration being withdrawn? The important thing to bear in mind is It is not necessarily the case, but street furniture would constitute development under planning, so it is not necessarily the case that decisions would be taken either by delegated authority to officers or by a planning committee or a local review body within a local authority, as things stand at the moment. What is important to recognise is the views of the community—I would of course be taken in to account by a local authority and so where issues arise whether that be around obstruction or impact upon areas pertaining to licensing and environmental health that existing opportunity to make representations to the local authority and for the local authority to be able to take action under these separate statute provisions which are unaffected by the changes to permitting development rights they still exist. Applications coming forward that the roads department are about to consider because otherwise the public won't know. Local authorities, this will be characterised differently in different local authorities but it could be cafe permits, outdoor seating permits, things like that, or how different local authorities characterise it and so as Tom touched on there's not a statutory requirement for local authorities as roads authorities to consult on this particular issue they are outliverted to do so and clearly where issues are impacting upon accessibility are identified by members of the public they can make representations to local authorities through the usual channels and local authorities are empowered to take action to address these issues should they choose to do so. Another question is should an issue arise where the public after a facility has been installed and is operational and the public still have issues and complaints with that and you've made clear to him that people can raise a complaint with the local authority about it but supposing that is still a subject of dispute what's the criteria that would apply there if the roads team on the one hand say it meets the specifications and the distancing and so on and so forth but the public still have an issue with that particularly people with disabilities how is that to be resolved? We ultimately of course are going to be decisions for local authorities to take just as decisions around planning applications will the decisions around planning for example have to be taken in the context of the existing legislative framework you know does it accord with the development plan then it should go ahead unless material circumstances suggest otherwise and vice versa so ultimately there is a is incumbent upon you know local authorities so any public body to take into account the representations that are made but it is still for them as the relevant body to determine what decision they want to take we want to comment on just another point on that is that local authorities typically will grant consent under section 59 for a time limited time limited period so if you look on local authority websites under the kind of road permitting section others Mr Arthur has touched on it sometimes referred to in different ways by local authorities as things like street cafe permitting in almost all the examples I've looked at it says this is granted for a temporary period and that would allow you know if issues arose the the consent would be time limited the other thing is the pdr only applies to public roads so that is roads owned by the roads authority so you ultimately have the control of the authority owning the land itself and so you know in extremist could withdraw it's it's consent as the landowner to use that land in that way okay thank you thanks official um I want to ask a couple of specific questions because I do think for for many blind individually impaired scots they are concerned about this and certainly the charities have raised their concerns and the fact there's no specific guidance attached to this I think is an issue especially when you think of my own city here in Edinburgh during the festival what that will look like for businesses potentially setting up just roped areas and that's one of their main concerns so I wondered why specific guidance hadn't been developed to go along with this so that councils would be able to to really look at that in more detail of before this rolls out especially in Edinburgh during the festival for example well two points in responding to that Mr Briggs first of all we have sought to provide a significant amount of detail through the policy note but secondly to specifically address the point that you raised ultimately the way in which street furniture is situated will be highly site specific and it will be determined by the local context so as such guidance if guidance is deemed to be something that would be desirable would be better produced by a local authority reflecting this particular circumstances of their place I believe that there's one local authority where he has existing guidance at Aberdeen city so there is that opportunity there for local authorities to with their local place based knowledge and understanding of particular circumstances for example the impact of the festival has in Edinburgh to ensure that suitable advice or guidance is provided if that is something that the local authority deems appropriate and proportionate and ultimately that is a decision for the local authority okay thanks thanks for that I think one of the things in my time as MSP it's what street furniture then starts to look like in a boards things like that especially during the festival whether or not this relaxes that in in many businesses views as well and how that will change and I think you know people want to see assurance over how that will be enforced by the council at what could be an incredibly busy time with things going on and my other question was with regards to the electric vehicle charging infrastructure and wondered what consultation had taken place with stakeholders specifically Scottish fire service and stakeholder groups around cladding on this specifically in terms of consultation a reference d 12 week consultation it we ran over the spring and summer of last year with the gas to any further details in the consultation you want to pick up on tom I didn't believe they responded to the consultation what's the specific concern in respect of cladding is it cladding in respect to his wide issue of attaching of electric charging points to buildings and I wondered where consultation had taken place on them being freestanding under the changes or whether or not this has actually been discussed with the Scottish fire service and stakeholder groups who are still currently undertaking significant work around cladding issues in Scotland I'm afraid I don't quite understand the connection to to cladding I mean I think the point to make is there's already permitted development rights for freestanding EV chargers located in in carparks across Scotland what the changes do is allow larger equipment including higher power EV chargers to be installed under the pdr so increased the height limit from the current which is 1.6 meters to I think it's 2.7 and allows that pdr to apply in a sort of wider range of carparks so my specific issue and you know where I think stakeholder groups would want to have been involved is around proximity to buildings for these being installed and relaxed roles around that and I'm not sure if that works taking place from what I'm hearing well there has been a say there's been a 12 week consultation this is but this speaks to existing pdr being being enhanced it's also important just to address these some of the other points that have been raised is that local authorities can subject to confirmation by ministers use an article 4 process through the general permitted development order which can restrict or exempt particular areas from permitted development rights I think that's an important thing to get on the record because beyond the other consenting regimes I've referred to in extremism it can be if a local authority deems it is something that it would is required because of unintended consequences there is a means there under existing provisions as I say subject to ministerial confirmation to exempt a particular area from permitted development rights and Victor I think it may be so but if you can maybe just go over what it is to pdr that we're proposing do specific to EV charging infrastructure short yet so there are existing permitted development rights at the moment they've been in place since 2014 they allow for wall mounted kind of plug socket style chargers and EV charging up stands the changes were at present the pdi only apply in car parks but not car parks located in certain designated areas including kind of national parks which when you're thinking about sort of the range of electric vehicles is a is a key consideration the changes get rid of those restrictions where the car parks are in designated areas and they allow larger equipment and they also make clear that the pdr cover the kind of supporting bits of equipment and kind of cabling and things like that because I think from speaking to certain EV providers there is a sort of aspect of doubt as to whether that kind of supporting kit that's actually necessary for the EV charges to function there's some doubt as to whether that was covered and we've also introduced a new pdr for kind of solar canopies that would provide power to chargers I guess further increasing the kind of sustainability of the overall package and so that's the kind of summary of the changes is that you know the wall mounted charging specifically is the issue I'm concerned around in what this now presents if I live in the block of flats and I have an electric car can I then attach a charger without having any sort of proper pre-planning to that building I think that's already the case and in on I can recheck I'm not aware that any concerns were raised through the consultation process about the sort of fire risks presented by wall mounted chargers I support the principle of what government's trying to achieve I just think in terms of safety and the work of the fire and rescue service and the stake stakeholder group around cladding at the minute and high-rise buildings I'm not quite sure where direct engagement has taken place with them them knowing about this and responding is one thing whether or not they did I don't you suggest they haven't I think but it's difficult to interject I think this is straining to the territory around you know equipment standards and it's in a different sphere from what we're discussing here around planning we have a long established PD right now nine years old with regards to wall mounted EV charging infrastructure the majority of this is actually focusing more on established parking areas and expanding capacity to reflect increased demand but clearly with regards to the installation on bit commonly on buildings there's other aspect you know factors that come into play in a decision making process around that for example regarding ownership of the building et cetera and as regards to the actual stability or not of particular kit that's something that is not within the within the safety of particular kit rather it's clearly it's different you know regulatory regimes that cover that I think it's an important clarification to be made except that I think some of the work though which the stakeholder group on cladding has been doing is specifically around proximity to buildings for electric charging points and and that is something which I am concerned about and not sure this necessarily captures or has specifically been considered as I would reiterate the point that I made earlier we have had a 12 week consultation there's been that opportunity for engagement throughout the process and we have not had any to the best of my knowledge speaking here this morning any specific concerns raised with regards to what has been proposed here we have certainly I'm not aware of if I had any specific concerns raised around the long established PD rights that exist for EV infrastructure clearly any stakeholders who would wish to engage with us we are more than happy to do that and to consider any changes that would be required coming out of that but we have had no concerns expressed to us directly to the best of my knowledge regarding the existing PD rights nothing through the consultation to the best of my knowledge has come up with the proposals around expanding PD rights for EV infrastructure as I say there are means by which should would be a need to exempt any particular area of a planning authority from PD rights there's a means to do that through an article for direction of course we continue to keep all legislation under review and should any specific concerns be raised with us about planning provisions then that is something that of course we would take very take on board very seriously and engage closely with but as I say it is not something that's been directly brought to my attention okay thank you thanks Miles a couple of things I just want to come back to the centres 1b and just to add into the mix that we obviously we've got our fantastic national planning framework for and and that's kind of pointing us towards more town centre regeneration and I think that's just something to keep an eye on that as we try to retrofit houses and create more housing within town centres we're going to add additional pressures and Mark talked about Mark Griffin talked about you know families living nearby so I think that's something just to keep an eye on that if we move in that direction of travel in terms of how we want our town centres to regenerate we're going to have more population and more activity in the streets but I I take on board your the mechanisms that you described in terms of being able to offer people a way to you know bring things to our awareness I wanted to pick up on the 1c on port developments and I've got some concern there because the our papers mentioned green ports specifically and those green ports are not in like discreetly defined areas there there's a number of ports that come under certainly Edinburgh ports and I'd be interested to understand a little bit more detail there the the order of kind of what's actually happening there and again it comes from a concern around the potential loss of community voice both communities of interest but communities of place and how if something starts to happen a development starts to happen that's affecting them how do they actually have the recourse the ability to to raise that concern so i'd be interested to know so that so the order provides for development to be undertaken by the statutory undertaken at takers agents could you tell us a bit more about who these agents are yeah i'll ask tom to come in a moment i've just said generally this is our these are fairly minor amendments and they apply to all ports not just if we're mentioning green ports and they're really seeking to bring about around parity with the PD rights regime that exists in england but i'll ask tom to respond to the detail i mean yeah as the minister has said these are sort of minor and technical changes that kind of are really about ensuring parity kind of a level playing field between english and scottish ports that the point around agent is really again to clarify that effectively it doesn't have to necessarily be the port operator itself carrying out the development it could be a kind of contract or agent working on its behalf potentially a kind of tenant of the port operator that's very helpful and i understand the desire is to have parity with what's going on in england but we're also aware that there's some things going on in england that maybe we don't want to want to have parity on so i think it's important to look at this i'd be interested and also interested to hear about what what's going to happen if so this is kind of is this expanding the ability to actually create non-port infrastructure the development has to be kind of operational development so kind of connected to kind of port operations so the the works that could be carried out under the amended pdr are not especially significant but would be things we you know we spoke to kind of port operators and airport operators airports being relevant here because effectively the permitted development rights for airports and ports were are very similar and this kind of brings the wording into line and therefore kind of engaging with some of the airport operators to kind of understand what this language around services and facilities what kinds of development falls under that scope and it's you know things like bus stops within the airport and it's those kind of things that enable works that the undertaker is kind of its statutory powers cover okay thanks for that so you described something very specific there bus stops but what else could be brought in under this i mean it's it's not defined it's it's kind of services and facilities would cover a range of different things i mean something like bus stops something like a toilet block those kinds of operational facilities but not kind of substantive new kind of development that as you say if it falls outside the permitted development rights would be subject to a planning application in the in the normal way that's very helpful thank you for that i just wonder if you know if there's something that's hap taking place in a green port but also quite rightly in any port in a town or a village even that kind of starts to encroach on public interest and it sits within what this SSI is offering this pdr that's right what's the recourse there for community of place to have a voice i think that situations arise where this this happened with existing pd rights whereby there's a view that perhaps the immunity of an area has been impacted negatively or their unintended consequences or perhaps just given the nature of a particular area an existing set of pd rights is not appropriate there is with the usual channels in mind the means by which members of the public can make representations towards their local authorities and i would bring it back as i did previously with regards to the article four direction there is a an opportunity for local authorities with that confirmation from ministers to restrict or indeed remove pd rights for a particular area so that that opportunity is there it's not a case of we legislate for pd rights in parliament and that's set in stone and cannot be changed other than through repeal of pd rights in our amended instruments there is that means there and so that is that is just in terms of reflection of how the how the planning system operates and how pd rights have operated for the number of years so there is that means there but one of the thing advantages with pd rights next step they can be a bit of a upland instrument and there has to be consideration around however you use which is why we're taking this methodical phased approach to pd rights but what they can do is free up capacity within the planning system where routine cases are no longer having to go through the planning system which i recognise at the committee will have a keen interest in particularly given the committee's keen interest on the issues around the sourcing of a planning system which is going to be absolutely vital for delivering on the ambitions of npf4s and the preparation of the new style local development plans which we'll see over the next five years so we always seek to take a balanced proportionate approach to permitted development rights that's why we're taking the phased approach and we will continue to take a phased approach with pd rights and indeed later on this year we are aiming to move forward with the master plan consent area provisions within the 2019 planning act which will create other bespoke opportunities to ensure that there's proportionate flexibilities to incentivise development and redevelopment that we want to see in not just our town centres but in a range of settings and which will be absolutely essential for realising the ambition behind npf4 just one more thing on the on the kind of the port pdr i think reflecting the fact that it is quite a broad permitted development right there is a notification requirement that so that the operator needs to notify the authority before carrying out development which provides a mechanism for the authority if it was concerned that actually either that the works proposed didn't constitute development that was covered by the pdr then they could say planning application was required or even indeed could say that the development was eia development and in which case the eia environmental impact assessment provisions apply which i think is again another important point with with permitted development rights that's anything that's within scope of the environmental impact assessment regulations doesn't have pdr okay thanks very much for that um i think that's been helpful and clearly got some pathways back in case things start to go awry i mean again it's the i totally take on board the the need to relieve pressure from local planning authorities and and nice to see that these measures do that but i think we also need to make sure that we're keeping communities in mind at the same time um i don't think anyone's got any more question oh mark just a quick question if that's okay thanks come in i just to ask not through the planning process you have neighbour notification so people would be affected by a change would be proactively notified but the other regimes that would remain in place whether that's licensing or roads there is no neighbour notification in those processes are there so we have a danger where people need to proactively seek out any changes that would be made rather than an authority notifying them is that the case well i think what is i take the point you're making um what there will still be what would come back to and stressing as well it may be the case that through the process of um obtaining a permit for example for um through the the roads act revisions um is distinct from what would normally take place through the planning process it's important to remind member that it is not necessarily the case i think speaking to the point about street furniture which would always constitute development sort of could be scenarios taking place where street furniture which is not constituting development would not be subject to going through the planning system as things stand at the moment but i'd want to just stress and reiterate that there is um other consenting regimes there they have to be adhered to those existing enforcement powers and it is the means for people members of the public where they do think that an obstruction is taking place or that the immunity has been impacted through noise or nuisance to seek remedy via the local authority via these other regimes i don't know if there's anything you want to add Tom i think that's right and you know if and in the case of permitted development rights as you've already touched on the ability to use an article four direction if permitted development rights were causing causing issues then that's a mechanism to withdraw or restrict permitted development rights in particular locations i think that this is i think and i would hope that committee's all agreed about what the intent behind this is and wanting to create an environment that is supportive for our hospitality sector and i would know that the strong welcome that these proposals have had but i recognise that there may be deemed by local authorities based upon engagement with their communities but the application of these periods to a particular area is not compatible with wider aims and concerns around the well-being and immunity of people living in a particular area so these other mechanisms are there both retrospectively you know through raising issues which can then be enforced through our regimes but also for local authorities as Tom says to take a decision that actually it may be the application of periods for that particular area is not important and they can speak to amend restrict remove the PD right entirely for a particular area through that article four order so i would just want to stress that this will ultimately as we introduce this local authorities will monitor and they will be able to we will be best placed to make decisions based upon the impact and where issues do arise we've got a number of means by which to address them okay thanks for that i'm not going to briefly suspend thank you minister for your patience with us we've we've committee has discussed the various issues and i think the two concerns that are we want to seek assurance a reassurance from you are on a couple of points so one on on in one a on the electric charging points we're aware that there's a hundred and five buildings that are part of the cladding review process and there's concerns about the wall mounted EV charging points if they are interacting with any of those buildings are you aware of that and would how can we how can we handle that situation okay i'm happy to go and take that way and look at it but that speaks to existing pd rights which have been in place for the better part of a decade um this is a you know primarily focused on existing parking spaces um enhancing capability there's something that um industry in the sector has been calling for but as regards to being able to identify the existing number of uh EV uh pieces of EV infrastructure and charges that are installed and you're all having close proximity to buildings with cladding i'm happy to take that away um and ask relevant ministerial colleague to write back with the specific information if we hold that information on that so if we if you find that there's potentially going to be wall mounted EVs on one or some of these a hundred and five buildings we can then look at maybe an amending order there so i think there's great concern about concern for safety the point of making is it if there is it's because of the pd right that's been in place for nine years um so it would be for if there's a concern there the local authority could seek for an article for exemption and that would be the means to go and do that or we could look at um potentially beyond that if there is a need but that would have to be again we've consulted length we've had no specific correspondence you know to knowledge on this we've had nothing come up in the consultation so we would need to go and look at the evidence base for why this should not be the case and i'm conscious as well there's other aspects building standards product safety all pertain um in this particular set of circumstances so i'm happy to go away and look if there is anything around existing pd rights but obviously the concern here today is with a package of pd rights of which EV infrastructure is a part it's not introducing a new right around wall mounted chargers it hasn't already been in existence i say for the better part of a decade but this package also includes a number of our measures as well but as to whether or not we hold any specific information around a number of EV pieces of EV kit that are mounted on having proximity to buildings with cladding i'm some hack to go away and see if we hold that information if we do to write back to the committee or ask the relevant minister to do so. Thank you very much for that and then on the town centre part 1b i think there's again there's this concern around the ability for the public to participate in anything that you know might affect their their lives and the removal of the neighborhood notification so could you give the committee some reassurance about how people could participate i mean i know we talked about i think the concern is that if a if a business brought forward the move to set up an outdoor seating area that it's actually quite difficult for the public to find out that that's happening on their doorstep is it a lot of quite a number of different scenarios of what we you know we could we would think of in these circumstances some some table and chairs etc which we associate with these permitted development rights already would not be captured as development so such the appropriate regulatory provisions would be found within the roads act in which case if there's a prenover of requirements for a permit local authorities will define that permit in different terms capy permit payment permit and there's a means through that particular process to for a decision to be made and indeed for enforcement action to be taken so again there is that means through if issues around accessibility and obstruction identified there's remedy available for the local authority to do that and of course local authorities are democratic bodies accountable to the people within their authority area so i can give that reassurance to those means there and as i've said before should any issues arise in any particular area it's a consequence of these regulations coming into force through the article for provision specifically there is the means for local authorities with approval by ministers to exempt or restrict pd rights to restrict pd rights in particular areas or indeed to remove pd rights entirely for particular areas so this is not something where if a local authority finds itself in a situation where it is seen development take place it would have required planning permission but it's not acquiring planning permission or planning application because of pd rights if they would have no recourse as in something it would be centrally mandated and they couldn't change notwithstanding the provisions under the roads act there would be the means to seek an article for direction which could remedy the situation for them with the agreement of ministers okay thanks very much for laying that out and actually again i mean i think you touched on some of those things in your previous in the earlier evidence session but it's good to hear things again said in a slightly different way so the clarity starts to come through i think we're also interested in hearing when you would be looking at reviewing this SSI or how would you keep it under review and you know if problems did start to arise you know what's the process for that well if the SSI comes into effect it does so for me end of this month i think we're approaching the end of the 40 day period we will be continuing our faced approach to pd rights we're hoping to commence phase 3 later on in the spring but it's part of our pivot to implementation and delivery post adoption of npf4 we're going to be having far closer engagement with planning authorities and a range of other stakeholders so it's part of the monitoring process for the implementation of npf4 that will in itself also capture sort of broader monitoring of the implementation of a number of aspects of planning reform of which pd rights is just one aspect i touched earlier on that we're we're looking to commence other provisions within the planning act later this year including around master plan consent areas so there will be that continuous close engagement with planning authorities and that will really build on the collaborative approach would got us to the situation we were able to command such overwhelming support for npf4 and with the division pivoting into that collaborative approach to bords implementation monitoring will be a key part of that as well so as i say that through a delivery programme for npf4 which of course will be revised after six months and then yearly through the various bodies that we engage with in the groups that we convene or co convene on planning performance and indeed in the planning infrastructure and place advisory group there will be a number of forums through which issues can be raised more widely on planning but more generally just that culture of close engagement and partnership working with our planning authorities will mean that should any issues arise they can be brought to the attention in short notice and we will of course where problems identified seek to remedy these problems and whether that is can be done through for example article four directions or amending to the order with 92 order overall then of course we will consider that but things have to of course be proportionate and evidence based and we'll be able to establish any evidence based through that continued engagement okay thank you very much for that it's good to hear the the approach of continuous monitoring certainly with npf4 coming forward there's going to be lots of changes lots of moving parts to be keeping track of and how they interact with each other so other members have any questions want to raise miles i welcome the constructive points you've suggested in terms of writing to the committee but i'm still concerned with regards to electric charging points and specifically 105 buildings which still have to be surveyed i was looking at the terms of reference for the cladding stick holder group but i don't believe they have a responsibility to take part in government consultations so that's something which i think maybe the minister needs to take away and consider a conversation with them and the fire service and whether or not he could commit to taking forward maybe an amending order on this to exempt these buildings during this period of time where they are still to be surveyed i what i'm happy to give is an undertaking is to take away and to engage with food advisory group and relevant ministerial colleagues on this matter to identify if there are any issues of concern that have not been identified through the existing consultation with regards to an amending order i certainly do not rule that out but i would clearly want to establish an evidence base in the first instance to do so but i say i'm happy to ensure that we undertake that work and to write back to the committee to update and of course any further action that emerges out of that process up to and including any changes to legislation or of course can be considered in that process that's helpful thank you thanks camina okay mark i just wanted to put on record it i'm still concerned that there is a danger that you know a young family could essentially see an outdoor drinking area pop-up outside a child's bedroom without the gold standard of a neighbourhood notification plan there is no responsibility on a local authority to even consult when it comes to an application to a roads authority so for me there is still a real danger that things pop-up in local communities that have a real impact on particularly young families that they have no prior awareness of for me that that's still a concern when it comes to this instrument okay do members have any other comments on the instrument? is the committee agreed that we do not wish to make any recommendations in relation to the instrument? obviously we were seeking the reassurances that we've discussed yes okay and now to spend the meeting and to allow for a change of witnesses thank you very much for spending this time with us and giving like allowing us to go into detail in our scrutiny the next item on our agenda today is an evidence session on community planning hearing about the experiences of health and education community planning partners this is the fifth session in our post legislative scrutiny of the community empowerment act 2015 the inquiry is looking at the impact of the act on community planning and how community planning partnerships respond to significant events such as Covid-19 pandemic and the current cost of living crisis and I just want to extend many thanks to our panel for joining us today and we're joined by Craig MacArthur who's the director of health and social care from east Ayrshire health and social care partnership, Alison McGrory who is the associate director of public health at Argyll and Bute health and social care partnership and online we're joined by Alison McCloud who's the strategy and transformation lead from from Aberdeen City health and social care partnership and Alison you can let the clerks know if you'd like to join a reply to a question by typing R in the chat function and for Craig and Alison McGrory you can just indicate to myself or a clerks there's no need for you to operate your microphones as we'll do that for you and Annie Wells is going to begin our discussion today with some questions about the challenges that communities are currently facing thank you computer and good morning good morning panel I would like to specifically look at the health and educational inequalities that are faced in communities and just to ask what would you believe the community planning partnerships role is in tackling these issues and I think if I could go to Craig first maybe on this one please absolutely so we have a I believe into a real strength round about the education inequalities so through the community planning partnership but also through our children young person strategic partnership which brings together a number of leaders from across those different sectors to consider and really understand some of the challenges that faces there in the first instance but then put really good robust plans in place to start to deliver against it one of our main priorities round about particularly in the education part of it is about positive destinations so as our young people work through school to ensure that as they do leave school they do have a really good strong positive destination we've seen that increase percentage wise year on year for the last probably five or six years we're seeing some significant increases in there to the point where we're now one of the best performing areas round about positive destinations and that isn't necessarily young people going on to college or university is making them ready for the world of work and I think in terms of the health inequalities how that education part then feeds into health inequalities it's very much recognising that if we can get our young people into the world of work and sustain them there the opportunities that that brings round about actually reducing the health and other inequalities into to later life is absolutely the key to that success going forward so we've a broad range of programmes associated with what business caring for Ayrshire which is about reducing health inequalities over the longer term and that's not about investment just in traditional health and social care services is recognising the impact of good housing the impact of education the impact of employment etc and how that can then flow through into improving health inequalities inequalities into later life as well so the work that we do around about that is absolutely key to this so I think what we've seen is the partnership working and bringing the key public sector partners together round the table has been really really effective in doing that a number of the key players in terms of the Ayrshire college the council the health board but also our other partners in terms of fire and police who have a real strength round about pathways into employment but that be apprenticeships or graduate interns and again that real opportunity to encourage and support our young people through school and into the world of work thanks thanks very much for that Kate I don't know if you get anything to add on that yeah I certainly would and clearly all all community planning partnerships have to have local plans and health and education are visible within hours so we've got six outcomes in our Gaelin but I think it's challenging in terms of impact and inequalities because of the range of issues that we have and I think looking through the community planning lens it's about what difference do we achieve by coming together as community planning partnerships and a lot of the work that we do not necessarily in those two topics health and education but a lot of the work that we're doing we would do regardless of my my specialty in public health is health improvement and you can't do health improvement without working with other agencies and across agencies so suicide prevention and child poverty action planning are really good examples of that where there is added value from the community planning partnership but that's work that we would do regardless in terms of improving outcomes so I think there are challenges in terms of choosing some things that are achievable within a community planning setting and actually doing those well enough so that you can see a difference and there's lots of really fundamental things that I hope I'll get the opportunity to come back and talk about in terms of how community planning partnerships could be strengthened and improved so yeah I would completely agree with Craig that there's lots that we do in terms of impacting on education and health but I think there's more more that we could achieve perfect I don't know if Alison McLeod is going to add to that yeah thanks absolutely I would agree with the previous two speakers in Aberdeen City we have 11 stretch outcomes in our local outcome improvement plan and the various partners work together to deliver these the outcome improvement group that I chair is around resilient included and supported so it's adult health outcomes in the mean we're looking at reducing or improving healthy life expectancy and each of the the projects within the stretch outcome is led by a community planning partner so for instance our project around about suicide prevention is led by the police we have our project that's around about carer support which is led by quarriers who are commissioned carer support service so it's all about that collaborative working and you know it's all about the priorities and the challenges that are common and shared to us all because obviously there's a lot of inequality that is the impacts on health and there's so many aspects to that that we need to work together to improve so yeah I think that you know the collaborative approach that joins up working that community planning brings is absolutely key to that success and I would agree with Alice and whilst we are doing a lot and we're achieving a lot I think there's you know there are improvements that could be made and there's more that could be done thank you very much for that community I've just got one more more question I was looking at the submission from Glasgow Clyde college where they said that previously staff from the cpp would visit community projects but this no longer happens and I was just wondering in your respective areas whether you think cpps are ensuring that all voices in the community are heard and in particular including the communities of interest as well and I don't know whether Agotie Alison McLeod first online if I may Alison yep that's absolutely fine and that was exactly one of the improvements that I was talking about that that that you know I think in our those who are participating in our community planning particularly from the communities themselves tend to be a restricted group they tend to be older perhaps retired professionals in the main and we are definitely missing the voices particularly of younger people and particularly from those seldom heard groups and we are looking at the way we're doing things at the minute thinking rather than expecting people we have locality empowerment groups which we had originally intended to be the focus for all our engagement and participation but we've realised that that's only one method that we can use now and that we have to perhaps go out into those groups of you know the communities of interest rather than asking them to come and participate in another group you know we need to go to them and we need to find some way to link in with the existing groups that are already out there and try and maximise the opportunity that's there thank you I don't know if Alison you want to come in next this is huge challenging and I think the way they're set up the bureaucracy round about how committees are run because of the locus of control with local government having that responsibility to deliver them that brings with it that that bureaucracy into how our meetings are run and delivered and even by having meetings in the evening and at different times of the day I agree with Alison in terms of it does tend to be people who've got time on their hands so retired people older people in our communities who are really valid in terms of being at community planning structures but they aren't always representative of the whole community and we don't necessarily ask our representatives to canvas their wider community and we don't have the structures in place so that they can canvas the views of other people so I think this is this is a really really important point in terms of how we agree what the outcomes are going to be and how we then invest in delivering those outcomes if we don't have that that democracy in terms of who all attends and participates in community planning structures I feel our meetings are really formal I only really got the experience in my own board area in NHS Highland so I can't really comment on other areas but we do we try our best so we bring in some of our community groups and we bring in our MSYPs but we still have the formality in terms of agendas and minutes and you know how our meetings are recorded so I am a real advocate in terms of a health improver about you know how we build capacity and invest in our local structures and free the reins and you know they probably wouldn't understand community planning in terms of what the act requires of it but they understand and get what it means to be you know able to come together and make their communities better and be empowered to to to take things forward and make a difference in their local community so I think we do need to cut away some of that bureaucracy. Thank you, thanks Alison Craig if you would like to come in on that one as well please. Absolutely yeah thank you very much so I think for us in terms of the the formality around about the community planning meetings I would agree that there is a certain formality around about them as there probably has to be but I think in terms of the engagement to get to that point we're really keen that we do meet with some of the groups that are not necessarily part of the community planning partnership board. I'm thinking about taking the round about young people so we have a joint session every year where we meet with our children and young persons cabinet and the MSPs as well so that they'll come along and take that opportunity to really have a really good strong engagement with them around about their priorities what ways a community planning partnership board can do to support delivery of them together alongside them. Our community plans get three themes around about it so I'm responsible for delivering the wellbeing delivery aspect of it in terms of how that sits across health and social care. We've just recently finished some local conversations we've actually went out into our communities and met with people so we have three local conversations across different community areas and those are really fascinating sessions so one of them the good fortune is actually on a Friday part of a long weekend where the schools were off so there's lots of mums but young kids had come along as well which totally changed the dynamic of how that event went compared to the next week where it was all people who the typical the great shoots the folk who normally engage in the feedback from each of those sessions was fascinating it would be very very different but just taking those opportunities to engage in a different way I think for me is key about how we start to really hear those voices and make sure we can take those different agendas forward in a different way. The other set of groups that we do have on our community planning partnership board so we have four representatives from the community sector sit on our board two from community councils and two from community led action plan steering groups so we do hear the voice of communities in there and we also have two representatives from the voluntary sector as well as two from the chamber of commerce so we get the business voices in there as well so we do get quite a wide range of voices at the community planning partnership board but the big gap I think in there is the voice of the young person and those other range that we have in place very much allows us to fill that gap. Thank you very much for that thank you very much convener. Thank you thanks for that and yeah good to hear like actually different approaches there and I keep wondering if we need to a way to include young people is to actually make this kind of community planning something that's actually in the school curriculum so that young people who are studying maybe a higher could be part of a community planning partnership and weighing in on that thing but I'm kind of digressy I'm going to bring in Mark Griffin who's going to who's got the theme of community empowerment. Thanks convener. We're considering a review of the community empowerment act and for me at the most basic level the question I have is since the introduction of the act in 2015 has community participation improved at all has that had any meaningful impact on community participation and do you have anything to the evidence any increased levels of participation come to the Alison McRory first? Yeah I think it would be quite hard I mean again I'm talking from my own personal experience as a public health professional so you know if you were to ask somebody else in my community planning partnership in Ireland they might have a different view but I'm not entirely sure that we're making a difference and it's it's not just about legislation in terms of community empowerment although that is clearly really important and there's a clear rationale in terms of the Christie commission and then before that you know some of the the seminal work that grounds us in public health which is the Ottawa charter for health promotion which is about empowering and enabling people so that that then improves their health and well-being outcomes so that that's really robust and really clear but there needs to be to support that there needs to be a rebalance in terms of power and how we redistribute investment and I don't think that's necessarily there and that there you know there's a lot of bravery that's required in terms of going down that route but if you want communities to come together meaningfully to make a difference it needs to be more than the goodwill of a partnership where there isn't any money and there isn't any accountability so that the locals of control in terms of health and social care is through health and social care partnerships the statutory bodies and the parent bodies of NHS boards and local authorities so it's quite a difficult one in terms of what difference does it make because of that accountability resting with the statutory bodies and the goodwill of community planning partners and there is a lot of goodwill and a lot of really good work that comes but I think for me personally it's about how we move shift that locus of control into communities if we really want to see a difference in terms of empowering communities to improve all of the outcomes. Okay thanks Greg. Thank you very much so I think we have seen significant changes in terms of what we see working in these days or since the act came into being so maybe three specific examples round about community asset transfer and some of the assets from the council transferring across into community ownership or lease arrangements etc so I think we as of last week have probably about almost 60 effective community asset transfers that have now taken place. I think one was returned back to the council and very quickly was re-transfered again so I think the initial concerns where community asset transfers might go out but they've very quickly come back as the community would fail round about it. We've not seen that at all and the one that came back wasn't a failure it was just a change of circumstance that caused it to be reconsidered so I think that those community asset transfers are almost 60 of them really really effective. We also have community led action plans across 23 never communities so this is where people come together as a community to set out their own aims objectives and actions and what they want to see improved within their own community so this isn't led or driven by the council it's very much facilitated by us but the communities themselves coming together to deliver that requires a 40% uptake so the communities are asked, there's questionnaires, surveys issued and the only way they can actually take this forward is if they get a 40% return rate so there is real buy-in from the local communities to take that forward and the final example in there is just round about participatory budgeting and we've done several of those events. The last one of which was through my own services in terms of wellbeing ran last September this time a number of events it took place across different areas over a thousand participants people coming together to vote on what they've seen as the priorities for spending that money was around 250,000 pound of wellbeing monies to be spent in local areas as I say over a thousand participants which again was just brilliant and the feedback from that is that when will the next one be because people are absolutely enthused by it not just because it's an opportunity to get some money but I think that actually they're coming together the sharing stories with people as the feedback we're getting was absolutely priceless so some really good success stories for us. Okay thanks Craig and Alison McLeod I don't know if you've got anything to add? Yeah absolutely so I would say participation did sort of ramp up over the years since the community empowerment act was introduced and I think prior to the pandemic we had roughly 300 community members participating in our locality empowerment groups but I don't think we can underestimate the impact of the pandemic over the last three years in that participation so I would say that that kind of has paused and halted the progress that we were making and we're now in the process of trying to recover from that but it will take us time I think to get back up to the participation levels that we had before but I think we shouldn't underestimate that the communities are being asked to do a lot you know we often hear about that consultation fatigue you know and some people are telling us years don't come and ask us again what we want because we're fed up telling you so what we are trying to do in Aberdeen is be more joined up so we have joined up our community or our locality planning arrangements between the health and social care partnership and the local authority so that the locality empowerment groups cover the whole range not just the health agenda but the whole range of the local authority priorities as well so we're trying to coincide those priorities and streamline the processes and the means for people to come forward and engage make it as easy as possible for them okay thanks for that my second question is just on level of awareness in the community of community planning community planning partnerships I suppose I'll come to you first Craig just ask do you think the community is broadly aware are they aware that community planning exists are they aware what it does and are they aware how to get involved I suspect the answer to that would be no in terms of if you couch the question that way in terms of do you know what community planning partnership is and I think the answer will probably from the vast majority would be no I think if you described it around about community led action plans participated in the budget and some of the good stuff that we have seen happening around about community empowerment and how the communities can be involved I think most of our communities would absolutely recognise that I think they do see the opportunities to get involved in it and to really make a difference within their own communities but I think if you couch it in those statutory terms around about what the community empowerment act talks about I don't think people would recognise that in there so I think that's some of the challenges for us is about how do you actually have those conversations in a different way so that our communities do understand what we're trying to achieve and what contribution they can make to that so I think that language is really important here to how we couch the terms that we use is absolutely critical but I think in terms of your specific question if we asked our communities those specific questions I suspect the answer for the majority would be no they don't understand that they don't think it happens here and they really don't see how they can take it forward but when you get into the detail around about it I think you get a very different response okay thanks for that come to it Alison McLeod and then Alison McLeod it yeah I would agree that the there will be limited awareness of the structure of community planning but I think if you were to ask our communities they would say that yes we do come and we engage with them we ask them to participate in various things such as you know some of the commissioning that we do so yeah it is about semantics it is about language and I guess again a lot of our community representatives are really not interested in the structure or the framework that's around it what they're most interested in is that we come out and speak to them and that we listen to them and and deliver what they're looking for thanks I don't have enough a lot to add to that I suppose engagement goes to the heart of public health and it is a challenge in terms of the common voices and the seldom heard voices and we have to work harder to engage the seldom heard voices yesterday for example I had an event in Danone round about the model getting it right for everyone which is an aspirational model for adults modelled on girfec for children and so we had 20 people that turned up so these are generally people are fairly engaged in terms of local community activity and I did a bit of canvassing in terms of their understanding of community planning in advance of coming here today and there was a good level just in that small cohort but conversely I had a family party on Saturday and again told friends and family that I was coming here and really there was a very low level of understanding about community planning so you know I think generally that is probably more representative than the people who I was engaging with yesterday for the purposes of health and social care so I think that's a challenge and I completely agree with you Craig in terms of so they understand people understand about what makes their community strong and vibrant and how it can be better but you know when we talk about community impairment legislation they don't get that okay thank you thanks human thanks Mark I'm just going to say that we're a bit short in time because of previous business going over so colleagues if you can roll your questions into one where that makes sense and possible and I'd invite our guests to I definitely want to hear from you but if you're if something's already been said you get the point thanks very much it's a challenging morning here so we're now going to move on to the theme of the role of the third sector and communities of Paul McClellan thanks convener yes just talking about the role of the third sector and communities and it's around about the experience of local organisations primarily and I suppose in your remit and looking at probably the strategic planning board but also at themed levels and you know what what you feel their involvement is at this stage and I'm probably going to come to us in the cloud first of all because as many key things you'd said in your response to the evidence was you would like to see a strategic shift to embrace community led action so how would you almost get the community's involvement if you like or a third sector involvement in the discussions to make it relevant and move towards that strategic shift that you mentioned in your evidence so Alison McClellan will come to yourself first of all on that one yep thank you so first of all just to say that our third sector interface organisation Aberdeen council for voluntary organisations is very involved in all of the work that we do and what we are we try and go through them and use them as much as we can to interface with community organisations and the voluntary sector in particular and they are engaged in a lot of our groups so they are on our strategic planning group and they're on our strategic commissioning procurement board and we just try and link in as much as possible we also have community representatives on our strategic planning group and when we undertake commissioning etc we involve people there so that we are really looking at that co-design and co-production and I would say in terms of achieving that strategic shift that we're looking at that as a long game you know we're looking at it we're we're chipping away at it we're doing bits where and when we can and I think we certainly have some some evidence around about what we've achieved but there's a long way to go and it's hard work and we just need to keep at it and keep trying. Just a really quick response, we work very closely with the third sector interface and they sit around the table and there are community members in our area community planning groups and on the management committee. Again in terms of how representative they are if we think about the challenges within the third sector in terms of delivering their services and all of the on-going fundraising that they have to do and very often these are services that have year-to-year funding streams so that's a real challenge for them and that doesn't always allow them capacity to do what they may be seeing as a bit of an add-on and a nice to do in terms of coming and participating in community planning. I think that's a real important point Alison. Thanks for that Craig. Thank you very much so some of the others we'd be doing that representation I mentioned before actually on the community planning partnership board so we do get the voice of the third sector both at that and at our executive officer group as well and through our strategic plan and the wellbeing delivery group that's co-chaired by myself and the vice chair of the IJB again third sector interface representation in all of these groups. A year ago from now March last year we created what we called a partner provider statement that all of the local bodies that deliver services now we have signed up to that's about collaborative commissioning and it's a range or a set a suite of collective beliefs that talks about how we celebrate success together in terms of what we're delivering and it also identifies those opportunities to improve and work together in partnership and collaboration and it's to try and to move away from having the third sector almost in competition with each other because there's lots of bodies there all fighting for the same pots of money so it's to try and really encourage them to work together to deliver services together for the benefit of our communities in terms of what we're trying to do as a health and social care partnership and that to me has been really really effective. Thanks Paul. I'm now going to bring in the local outcome improvement plans and locality plans theme and I was interested here Alison McLeod about your awareness in Aberdeenshire around the consultation fatigue and that you've joined up locality plans so that you've got coinciding priorities and streamline processes and because we're also aware of the issue of the potentially cluttered landscapes of so many plans and I'd be interested to hear about from all of you about the loypes and the locality plans how they're working and in particular I think CPPs have been set up to take that preventative approach so are they are these plans these strategic plans helping us get to achieve that outcome so maybe I'll start with Alison McLeod. Yeah so in Aberdeen city the local outcome improvement plan is the paramount plan so our strategic plan for instance for the health and social care partnership is linked absolutely linked directly to that and any projects that we have within the stretch outcomes of the local outcome improvement plan is are totally reflected in our strategic plan so we're not duplicating resource we're not duplicating effort and we're seeing that full alignment and one of our strategic aims in our strategic plan is prevention and a lot of the projects within the local outcome improvement plan are around about that prevention agenda and NHS campaign are around about that as well with their plan for the future. The various planners and each of the organisations we have joint meetings we discuss our approaches we discuss we try and do a joined up consultation where we can to inform our planning processes so we're we're it's a bit of a journey I have to say we're we're at the beginning of that journey and I think you know our most recent plans are probably quite reflective of of that joined up and collaborative working but we've still got some way to go but we've started that snowball now and hopefully that will keep rolling along and getting bigger and and trying to to bring all these strands together and and and you know just have that one landscape. Thanks very much for that yeah sounds like clarity is really important Alison McGorrie how's it going in our Garland butte in terms of the loypes and the locality plans? Yeah I feel I've got a lot to say about this and maybe the time won't do it justice. Again I think in our Garland butte community planning partnership we do what the legislation and the guidance tells us to do so the guidance tells us that we have to have loypes these loypes are needs based so these needs are deficit driven so what is the problem what is our response to addressing that problem and if you flip that around I'm not sure if all the panel members will be familiar with the term assets based community development so that's good yeah so that's where we know in terms of what is strong in a community and how can we make that stronger and empower and build from the strength rather than from that that deficit so that's quite a flip and that that doesn't assets based community development we can do it and do it to the best of our abilities but it doesn't fit within what the guidance for community planning is asking us to do so I think that's that's that's a paradigm shift and probably a big meaty one for this panel to consider there's another aspect in terms of so Christy recognised we needed to be better at performance now 12 years on the industry that we have round about performance I can honestly say often for my team in public health we're doing the performance reporting to the detriment of doing the work that we should be reporting on and you know again I think just some common sense round about that in terms of how we can simplify that so yes we clearly have to ensure that we're justifying that we're doing the right things and what is the output and we're seeing the difference of that but not to the point of generating this huge complexity of performance outcome matrices and frameworks and all of the rest of it that you'll be very familiar with thank you very much that's very helpful craig yeah without repeating everything that the 12s have already said but we're just building on that last point round about having to produce the data the stats we know that we need to produce that in terms of the legislation so the loyp has to contain particular things I think what we've deliberately have tried to do is to go into storytelling mode use key studies and actually describe what's happening describe the outcomes and actually show what difference this is happening in real life to people and to communities so the narrative is I think is that almost to going back to the picture tells a thousand stories etc I think those those stories for us are much more important than the stats and I'm really keen that for all of our performance reporting that that's very much a direction of travel for us so it's to tell the stories the real life the love the loving experience and the impact of what we're doing is actually having on people so I think that's how we're trying to address some of those challenges round about probably quite a rigid system round about this is what you need to report against but recognising that the wee bit of flexibility we do have round about the edges is where we can start to make a real difference in terms of that story telling and really again if we're talking about our community is not recognising community planning but you start to tell those stories that's we can really engage our communities and have them understand the impact in the work that is actually taking place and how it's delivering change within the local areas thanks for that yes storytelling makes things so much more accessible doesn't it Alison McRoy I just wanted to come back to you on that assets based versus deficit based so it the the you were talking about about the community empowerment act provides guidelines on on the approach is there not flexibility within my understanding of guidelines is that they're guidelines and they're not a kind of like you must do it this way so do you not feel that there's flexibility within those guidelines to actually move to an assets based approach because you know I think that's a really good point of building building on what's already working so I'm just wondering if there's any scope there or do you feel like it actually needs to be something in legislation that needs to be reviewed I was thinking about this a lot yesterday I'm not sure it is quite a fundamental shift and we do it as best we can within that paradigm of health and social care services are there to provide services for people who need them and we know that if we get upstream we can do lots to prevent services but we're funded and resourced to do the delivery in the here and the now so it's almost like in parallel you need to build up that prevention response and you know we're really we're really clamoring for that just now in terms of the impacts both of Covid and all of the social determinants of health and the sustainability of services and for example where I am in Argyll and Bute it's not just simply about money it's about how we can bring people in to fill jobs that we want to appoint to so the assets based approach it's a paradigm shift and I think there needs to be something clear expectations so whether it's legislation or whether it's guidance I'm not entirely sure but I think to enable that paradigm shift there needs to be something fundamental that changes to enable us to to go down that route because it's it's just so easy to do and needs assessment so what is the date the qualitative sorry the quantitative date to tell us in terms of what the problem is what does the evidence say in terms of what the response is what do we then do and then continue continue to measure that problem to see if it's reduced very often it doesn't reduce because it's within the context of demographic demographic change or other factors so mental health improvement is is a prime example of that where the traditional response is about delivering more services some more of the same in terms of counselling services or that type of response to what the problem is rather than the preventative what keeps people mentally well within communities so we know that in terms of all of the social determinants of health so a good income good housing good jobs all of those social determinants of health are protective in terms of mental health improvement rather than that downstream response so when people are in distress what we need to do in terms of counselling or whatever other services okay thanks very much for that it's helpful i'm going to move on to marie mcnair with the theme of measuring impact thank you convener and good morning panel i'll start with us and mcloud online do you feel that cpps are making a able to demonstrate the impact they have and do you feel that cpps are making a difference and if they are what examples would you highlight as their success so i think it's um first of all to say it's it's probably difficult to to measure some of the the differences that that is being made um i would say we are making a difference um i'll just go back to um you know the projects that we have against each of our direct outcome each of these projects start with a project charter which lays out the aims um and it lays out how we're we're going to measure so we start with our baseline measures where we are um and we date our intention as to to where we we want to be so um the uh you know for the suicide prevention we've got you know the the number of suicides that we we had in our area last year um and we set a target to reduce that and we monitor those numbers and we report on those numbers so we can measure differences but some of the the the changes that we're trying to make is to say our long-term goals you know in in terms of changing behaviors in terms of making an impact on on healthy life expectancy so um you know that's not something that we can measure over the very short term of a project um but we will keep those measures and you know we we have our um outcome measures that we will continue to monitor as the years go go by and we'll be able to to demonstrate the the difference that's being but we do we employ a improvement methodology um and we do small tests of change and only if those small tests of change work um then we scale that up um due to the wider areas so um I think the approach that we've got sets out uh a means of us being able to demonstrate what we what we do and a means of um being able to identify those projects that are or that activity that is worth um taken forward and committing resource to and scaling up to make that bigger difference. Thanks for that Craig would you like to think? Yeah I suppose I can answered the the last question round about storytelling I think again for us I think some of that is round about this question as well um tell those stories and really describe to people what it means in terms and um it's a key study type of approaches in ways that they would understand. I think for us the key in here to actually demonstrate success going forward is making the good use of data um so that we are becoming increasingly data informed um the intelligence that we have round about that is really really crucial. I think has become more effective in terms of partnership working across agencies the ability to share data across agencies has become more and more critical as well that can sometimes be quite challenging so we share data for particular circumstances for particular reasons sometimes but we want to do it for different reasons you need to go through a whole new approach in terms of that information sharing protocols etc so the the GDPR impact round about information and data sharing can sometimes be quite challenging um but the opportunities round about are endless and if we can if we can get that nut cracked there are some real things real real opportunities to do things in a different way um by better um use of data and ensuring that information. In terms of making a difference in some specific examples we've got some good examples round about suicide as well as Alison describes so I won't I won't talk about that but we recently developed a what we've called our heart well-being model so heart stands for help everyone at the right time this is about children's well-being services and again it goes right across a whole range a different statutory um in third sector partners um and that that's proven to be really really effective we've done some really good work round about addiction support so our rapid access to drug treatment 24 48 hours called radar and also some peer recovery workers that will manage to deploy into some key areas as well again some real success stories round about that probably the most recent one round about cost of living in response to cost of living crisis and the use of our financial inclusion resources so we've grown that in recent years we now have financial inclusion support working within our secondary schools but supporting the broader cluster we've got financial inclusion support within our deep end GP practices funding through the scottish government but again that's having a real impact and those same financial inclusion teams working within the court working with closely by mcmillan for people suffering from cancer in terms of the impact we can have in there and also quite recently starting to deploy financial inclusion resources within our health visiting teams so actually going into families at a very early stage when I just get young children and start to make a real difference in there so that's having a huge impact in terms of what we do as a service but it's also putting a lot of money into people's pockets which is allowing them to be much more resilient and respond to challenges themselves as well so some real good successes in there for us. Thank you Alison, do you want to start? Yeah just one or two I think we've got really strong cohesion in terms of partnership working and that brings itself to how we then have leadership round about delivering certain strategies so we talked about the the child poverty plan I'm really proud of the work that we have with the child poverty plan also the children and families strategy that I'm not sure if it's the same cycle but we're in the process of updating our children and families strategy in our Gaelin butte and also our living well strategy which is about supporting people with long-term health conditions and also the primary prevention aims in terms of preventing the occurrence of long-term health conditions so lots of strengths in that and I think a couple of particular things in terms of some of our aspirations round about joint engagement approaches so health and social care has got statutory responsibilities to engage effectively with communities and there's lots of cross fertilisation and cross learning and I'm going out collectively to communities so rather than parallel and asking lots of different questions about different things so I think there's synergies and successes there and one last one round about our community sorry our equality impact assessment where we now have a unified impact assessment process for equalities and that includes the island impacts because we've got 23 inhabited islands in our Gaelin butte so that's now routinely used in terms of impacting or reducing the impact of equalities. Thanks Alison. Thanks Marie. I'm now going to bring in Miles Briggs with the theme of culture of public bodies. Thank you convener. Good morning thank you for joining us today. I think it's been quite refreshing and honest what we've heard in terms of where you think the public are in this but I wanted to ask a few questions with regards to how this has changed organisations and bodies itself and in answer to my colleague Mary MacNeill and you've touched on that already in working with third sector and outside organisations but I wanted to ask specifically with regards to resources and budget allocation how that's potentially changed and you've seen because I think for most groups who've spoken to it comes down to who then pays for the delivery and if you have any examples of what that's looked like and how cpp's helped change that resource allocation. Craig, I'm going to start with you. Thank you very much so that's the convention to start within our community plan we have three specific themes around about it so around about wellbeing around about economy and skills and the third one around about safer communities and as a lead officer assigned to each of those so I'll lead the wellbeing part of it from within health and social care our chief education officer leads the economy and skills one and one of the local senior police officers leads the safer community so we do have a real strength in terms of who's taking the work forward so it's already deployed out to community planning partners. We come together regularly in terms of an executive officer group just to discuss resources etc and what decisions we are taking and how that might impact on partner bodies as well just to have that really close understanding and once a year which happened just a few weeks ago we come together to have a closed door budget session where we really have a kind of what's in all discussion around about where we are as individual organisations in terms of budget settlements savings we might need to make this year and making sure there's no adverse impact so there's almost that consequential impact of a decision that's taken over here might make a saving for you but it might actually push more work further downstream or upstream so we're really really careful around about those those consequences in there so that's proven to be really really effective i've probably had that for the last five or six years now having those really detailed budget discussions and from that that then sometimes helps to inform different decisions that you'd then presented to cabinet or to council in terms of a council position in terms of the budget decision making. I think we've had a few new members join the executive officer group recently so a new member's coming that perhaps got experience of other community planning partnerships and I think albeit very new in the door I think they do recognise the strength and maturity that we have as an executive officer group particularly in terms of that really good robust decision making process particularly around about resources and finances so why we won't necessarily pull budgets and do things in a really joined up way by putting money together what we make sure we don't do is take decisions that only impacts on one partner there's a real joined up a real synergy around about the decision making at every step along the way so that that is really helpful for us. Alison, do you have anything you want to add? Yeah I'm quite thoughtful about this again I think it comes back to the limitation of community planning partnerships and there's not really that locus of control in terms of the governance that community planning partnerships don't have a say in how statutory bodies allocate their resources so there may well be and it's really interesting to hear what you're saying Craig I think that comes from the goodwill from the strength of the partnership working rather than from the guidance of what community planning should achieve so I'm really really unsure about that one and if I can give you the example of climate emergency where in our CPP like everybody we're recognising the importance of considering what our response is round about that what influence we can have what we can deliver on that and we've been looking for a really small pot of money and it's been really hard to get that together in terms of employing one development officer to take us forward over the next two or three years we've put a bit in from public health but it's a hard one and in parallel I think it's important to flag up the work that is happening in relation to community wealth building legislation so a lot of things come out for me in an operational capacity they come out in parallel so maybe for people in Parliament or within the government they are joined up but it doesn't always feel like that when it reaches me in terms of how I then put that into practice and in terms of delivering what I need to do with my team and then reporting back and I think we should be having really important conversations round about community wealth building and what I did for the response for this committee was form a focus group in December and that is my intention that I'll do a focus group with similar people round about our response for community wealth building and it overlaps with this. That's helpful thank you and online Alison did you want to come in on this or? Yeah just briefly just similar to Craig the structure that we have in Aberdeen lends itself to encouraging participation and resource in terms of personnel staff coming forward and getting involved in the projects and leading the projects we try to make sure that those who are achieving the outcome improvement groups and vice chair etc come from a spread across the the the partners so the structure certainly lends itself to encouraging that participation and that resource in terms of people as I say but in terms of budget in terms of money that it's not really the same you know we it's just that resource in terms of people that is allocated to that but what I would say is some of the outcomes from some of the projects that have taken place have helped inform some budget decisions for some of the partners because that evidence is there that if we put in a bit of resource to make that difference then you know in order to scale that up that might need some investment so it's helping to inform budget decisions rather than us pulling budgets to deliver things. Yeah that's helpful and I think you know capturing resource in kind is quite difficult sometimes as well to then quantify a financial figure to that but thanks very much thanks Camila. Thanks Miles I'm now going to move on to our final theme which is local and national leadership with Willie Coffey. Thanks very much convener and good morning to you to you all we've heard a contrasting evidence at the committee about the success or otherwise of the cpps right across Scotland and probably the key role that the leadership plays in driving the cpps forward so just a couple of questions I'll roll them all into one if I can for you do you recognise leadership as a key driver in your local authority area in taking the cpps making the cpps succeed is that leadership shared amongst the partners in the cpp or is it very much still driven by the local authority officials do you think and maybe lastly have you any recommendations or comments on the national guidance in the statutory bodies that actually participate in the cpps but principally what do you think does leadership look like and what makes a successful cpp I'll start with you Craig since you're hysteria. Thank you very much so as leadership important absolutely I think it has to be for all that we do leadership it's always going to be important so it remains I think of critical importance and I think in terms of the community aspect around about this I think if we are serious however we couch it whether it's about the the formality around the community planning or the the reality of what people actually recognise by it I think having really strong leadership around about it is key to making that successful for us we know that the council has a statutory role in about taking the lead role in terms of community planning but at a very local level that is not left to the council just to get on with it so while the the council leader will chair the community planning partnership board and that's fine that that always happens there is really good engagement from from all the other statutory bodies around the table and all the other members of the community planning partnership board at an officer level in terms of the engagement there and leadership there really good strong engagement again from chief executive levels across all of those partner organisations in the executive officer group the chair rolls round about those different groups as well so our local fire commander has just recently demitted the chair I've taken it on and next year it'll move on to the local police commander so we do see that the partnership leadership role absolutely being to the fore in there and it is really really important so I think I don't underestimate the importance of leadership and I think we are very fortunate in certainly East Asia that the local leadership roundabout are very very keen to take it forward I think everybody recognises the community plan is almost a sovereign plan that sits above all of the individual partner local plans as well so we're all we're all sort of singing to the same tune there and it's absolutely apparent in all the meetings that we do attend in terms of statutory bodies and whether or not we want to see that changing in terms of the the legislation I think the flexibility that we've currently got in there so I think we go beyond so the statutory requirements are certain people have to be involved in it there's a flexibility to engage beyond that as well which we do we take that opportunity to engage beyond it which I think is helpful I think to specify and be really rigid around about who should be on a community planning partnership board wouldn't be helpful I think the local flexibility is something that we absolutely welcome and recognise it by bringing on the right people but we do see the merits and the benefits from that but to start to prescribe it within legislation I don't think would be helpful beyond what we've already got in there I think about being driven by local authorities that's a no in a yes and I already answered that question in relationship to the bureaucracy that local authorities lend to like Craig we've got really good leadership from police fire health local authority and we have had our rotating chair we don't have coterminous boundaries with the police and the fire service so that sometimes means that it's somebody from out with our gaelin but that's in the chair and you know they're good and strong leaders but I think there is something about living and working in a community and understanding that in terms of driving it forward but I think as an aside and you've probably got this impression from my other answers that is about shifting that locus from the statutory bodies to the communities so should it really be a fire commander or a police commander that's in the chair of really important work in terms of improving community wellbeing so I don't know again there needs to be governance round about that but you know some of our community members our community leaders and lots of the really organic work that happens alongside community planning and we haven't necessarily had a chance to talk about that yet but there's a raft of work that happens because community members mobilise and they see something that they want to do and they do that and they achieve that and they make a difference and that's not as a result of community planning sometimes community planning maybe takes a bit of the credit for that but this is because people who fundamentally want to make their communities better so I think maybe if that is my finishing point it's about putting the community really at the heart of community planning and really empowering our community members yeah absolutely I would agree with craig in particular in terms of the leadership that we we get from the local authority and there is absolutely a will from all of the community planning partners to be around and about it but we rely very heavily on the local authority to to make that happen you know to to you drive make sure the meetings happen make sure the project charters are completed make sure the reports are in et cetera so I do feel that there probably is one partner that needs to be there and really take a grasp of that and I would agree with craig as well in terms of the you know allowing us the flexibility you know to to have the membership of of the community planning appropriate to the the area and appropriate to needs as well because that you know there will be times when we need more input from from from certain organisations cost a living crisis is a very good example of that and also I would echo Alison's comments around about it it does tend to be quite top-heavy if you like in terms of commanders and very people at a senior level but you know but I keep going back to to that journey that we're on and that perhaps you would need to start that way and that eventually hopefully we'll we'll be able to achieve that local led vision that that Alison has okay thank you very much the three of you for your contributions thank you thank you for your contributions and I think that's that I loved your metaphor we often use it the journey that we're on the direction of travel and hopefully the work that we're doing in the committee taking all this evidence will help us move in that direction of putting communities even more into the heart of the work that's being done so thank you so much for joining us today and to members as we agreed at the start of the meeting to take the next item in private that as that was the last public item on our agenda and now close the public part of the meeting