 I welcome everyone to this, the ninth meeting of the Public Audit Committee and this the sixth session of the Parliament. Before we begin, can I remind members, witnesses and members of staff that the Parliament's social distancing rules are in force and also if you are moving around the room or leaving the room or entering the room if you can wear a face covering. The first item of business that we've got to consider is to agree to take items three and four in private. Are we all agreed? Thank you very much. The principal item that we've got on our agenda this morning is to look at community empowerment during Covid-19. There was a report produced by Audit Scotland and the Accounts Commission back in 2019, which was Principles for Community Empowerment, which provides a foundation stone for our discussion this morning. A briefing was prepared and published late October by Audit Scotland and the Accounts Commission jointly, which looked at how community empowerment had been affected or changed by Covid-19. This morning, I'm delighted that we've got a round-table discussion of participants with knowledge and experience of how community empowerment has looked over the course of the last 18 months, two years. To those witnesses who join us online, thank you very much for taking the time to give us your insights this morning. There will be, as you would expect, some questions from members of the committee, but it's also quite a discursive session where you can, if you like, ask questions of each other and it will be a bit more conversational and hopefully not at all like an interrogation. I'm keen to encourage a free flow of discussion. By that token, if there are questions that are asked or parts of the discussion that you don't really have any strong views on or there's nothing that you particularly wish to put on the record, then don't feel obliged to answer every question or take part in every area of the discussion. If you are joining us virtually, the best way to attract our attention that you want to come in and take part is by putting an hour in the chat box. Your microphone will be activated for you, so you don't need to press unmute on your screens. What I'd like to do is again welcome you all here, welcome Stephen Boyle, the Auditor General, who joins us in person in the committee. What I'd like to do, because this is a roundtable, is to go around and introduce ourselves and perhaps you can say a little bit about the organisation that you are here representing this morning. However, I want to begin by inviting members of the committee here to introduce themselves before I go on to ask the witnesses. Good morning, everyone. I'm Sean Dewey. I'm the MSP for South of Scotland. Colin Beattie, I'm the MSP for Midlothian North and Musselborough. Craig Hoy, one of the MSPs for the South of Scotland and just for the record, if I could also just draw attention to my register of interests, because I'll refer to it later, that I'm an East Lothian councillor. Can I ask perhaps Stephen Boyle if you just want to introduce yourself? Many thanks, convener. Good morning, everybody. My name is Stephen Boyle. I'm the Auditor General for Scotland. As the convener says, together with the Accounts Commission, we produced this update briefing for discussion this morning, and along with the Accounts Commission, we audit around 200-plus public bodies across the public sector in Scotland. David Allan, do you want to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about the organisation that you represent? Good morning, everybody, and thanks for inviting me to present evidence to the committee this morning. I'm David Allan from the Scottish Community Development Centre. Scottish Community Development Centre is a body for community development in Scotland. We're good practice in community engagement, community research, community capacity building across Scotland, working at a range of levels from policy through practice to working directly with communities and community organisations. Thanks, David. Pippa, can I invite you to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about the organisation that you work for? Yes, thank you. Thanks for having me here this morning. I'm Pippa Coots. I work with Carnegie UK. We are an endowment. We work across the UK and Ireland to promote wellbeing. We've got a particular focus on community wellbeing, and though we're a policy organisation, we have strong links into communities and a desire to promote a neighbouring state where communities are further empowered. Thank you. Thanks, Pippa. Anna, can I ask you to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your organisation? Hi, thank you very much for having me. I'm Anna Fowley. I'm the chief exec of the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations, the way that the national membership body for charities, community organisations and social enterprises. Thanks, Anna. Ewan, can I ask you to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your organisation? Good morning. Thank you very much for having me too. I'm Ian Leitch. I'm the chief executive of search spots regeneration forum. We're a network organisation of over 300 members ranging from local authorities to housing associations to community groups that focus on the regeneration of deprived communities in a holistic way, making sure that the community lead on that regeneration process. Thanks, Ewan. Finally, Ryan, do you want to introduce yourself, Ryan, and tell us a little bit about the organisation that you're involved with? Thank you very much. I'm Ryan Smart. I'm the centre manager for a charity, a scale, based in Glenrothes in Fife. We're a small charity or community centre that runs in one of the most deprived areas in Glenrothes, very much at the coalface, working way, families, the community and individuals on a number of projects and initiatives in Glenrothes North. Thanks, Ryan. Ryan, you're here, not least because the Collidine community centre was one of the feature case studies in the briefing paper that was produced, so we thought it would be good to have somebody with that on the ground experience joining us. The themes that we want to cover this morning are largely grouped into three areas. We want to begin by looking at key factors that lie behind what has worked well during the pandemic. Secondly, we want to reflect a little bit and get your views on what you perceive as the risks, perhaps being, about how we might go back to the old ways and what we need to do to embed some of the good practices that have been experienced through the cost of the last 18 months, two years. In the third section, we want to concentrate on what can be done to strengthen community empowerment and participation across the public sector, building on any lessons that you have learned over the course of this last period of time. I want to begin by looking at what your experience has been and what your reflections are. It seems to me that, because of the urgency of the situation facing some of our communities, that there has been a degree of agility, flexibility and an extent to which the public sector has supported community bodies and placed trust in community bodies to deliver services and support to communities in a way that perhaps has not been seen previously. It has been put to me that some of the old red tape and bureaucracy has been set aside in order to make sure that things are delivered with speed. I just want to get your views on whether that is a fair summary of the picture. Hasn't that not been the case everywhere? Has it been uneven? To get your reflections on how things might have differed over the course of the last 18 months or so, compared to how things were pre-pandemic? I do not know whether, David, you want to come in first to kick us off on that, and then, if others want to indicate that you want to come in, we will take you one by one. David? I managed to get a fairly good impression over the course of the last 18 of how the responses developed from the community level. We have been involved in a number of collaborative initiatives to try to learn from the experience of community organising. Particularly, we were involved in evaluating the triple R fund, the response recovery resilience fund, which was administered by Foundation Scotland over three phases. The first phase was a very rapid response phase immediately after the pandemic hit, and then the evaluation of phases two and three, which took over the subsequent six to twelve months. That was very small amounts of funding that went to community organisations to help them with their response initially to the pandemic, and then the recovery from that. What we found from that, and this was quite consistent across the board, was that small community organisations were very fleet of foot and very agile, as you said, in terms of being able to respond very quickly to this hugely changing situation. The fact that they were able to do that was supported through funders being willing just to trust them with applications that came in and were responded to and were paid out almost immediately was a real credit to the funders, but also a credit to community organising in terms of what they were able to do with that money. We also looked at the impact that they had with relatively small amounts of funding. We are talking about less than £5,000, in many cases, around £1,000 in terms of immediate response. What they were able to do with that was not only provide the immediate response but connect up with other people and bring in other sources of funding to deliver on to meet the needs of their local communities. Ryan Colladine was one of those organisations that stepped up to that. I think that what has been most significant for us in looking at the evaluation of phases 2 and 3 of the funding, which is more about how they supported that recovery out of the pandemic, was the extent to which local and quite small community organisations had taken a lead in the areas in terms of the pandemic response and wanted to continue to be involved in taking a lead in developing community resilience and community regeneration in the areas. That is something that is still a bit of a gap for us, because we are conscious that all local organisations need resources to be able to participate on an equal basis with public authorities and bodies who are set up to do that. However, the strength of the local community lead and community organisation lead in terms of those things cannot be overemphasised. Very strongly, not just through that but through the work on evaluating the triple R fund but also through other things such as cross-sector collaborations that are led by others including at the view also. I would be happy to leave that out just now, but those are kind of main impressions. Thanks, David. That is a very useful introduction to the conversation that we are going to have. I know that Anna Fowley and Peckoox both want to come in. Ryan was mentioned by David, so I am going to bring him in whether he likes it or not. I am going to go to Anna first of all if you want to give us your reflections from an SCVO perspective. I agree with what David said and I would build on that. I am based on two things. We have been doing some longitudinal research with some academics and various other organisations about the impact of the pandemic on the sector. I would also commend to you a report called Together We Help. I emailed it to the clerk yesterday, but it was done by the collective and it looked at what made social action work during the pandemic and what we should hang on to it and what was maybe more tricky. I would say that one of the things that we need to remember was that we were in a crisis response. People mobilise, they have energy, they get together and they go for the right thing at the time, but you cannot sustain that and you cannot rely on that. We have to look at longer-term ways, as David said, of supporting communities to continue to participate in a way that is sustainable and is not just going to be exhausting or doing things that fill in gaps at the public sector because the public sector was quite slow to build on what happened in communities. The other thing about funders was that public and independent funders did not just move quickly on new funding, as David described. They also were really good at recognising that things that they had already put in place were not going to work and were not going to be sustainable. Organisations were able to flex and change what they were doing to meet the immediate need. That is quite unusual. Normally, there will be lots of hoops to go through to do things like that because people are very focused on what was in their original terms. There was a lot of flexibility with existing funding, and it is important to remember and to hand on to that. The original outcome that was intended is not always what is fit for purpose as we progress, not just in a crisis situation, but you can learn as you go along and think that this could be a bit different and could be better, just to recognise that. I am going to go to Pippa before I ask Ryan to give his thoughts. I think that you and wants to come in as well, but Pippa, you are next up. Thanks. As one of the organisations involved in setting up Together We Help with Quora and others, I would definitely recommend it because they use community researchers during the pandemic, so it is a good way to get new voices. In terms of what worked, I think that partnership works. I know that has come across in your reports, but one of the key things I think was, in some places, whether they knew or not, a degree of disaster preparedness, for example, where there were existing resilience groups which had been set up previously because of floods or snow, but having that kind of existing partnership, and of course in some places, where community planning is stronger, or at least the local aspect, the local community planning groups are stronger, that was also an existing partnership. Having that bed of existing partnerships is really important and we talk about it so often, but it is quite difficult to realise. During the pandemic, for one of the reasons that Anna gave there, it was realised. It was also realised because there was trust that people had to come together. I think that the public sector trusted the local organisations and they were given some control, and there was a degree of burgeoning kind of understanding between different sectors. Partially, in some places, public sector front-line staff were redeployed and they went to the front line. I think that, again, that built trust. There is something about moving towards more of a relational date, increasing the relations between individuals across different sectors that really built stronger partnerships and enabled the community to respond quickly. I just urge you to continue to focus on the hyperlocal going forward, because that is what really works, enabling the hyperlocal response. I will come back to a couple of points that you made in a moment, but I want to bring in Ryan before I ask Ewan to give us his perspective from the regeneration forum. Ryan, as I mentioned earlier on, you are the lead person in one of the projects that was mentioned as a case study in the report. Do you want to give us your take on how things have been and what you saw emerging? Yes, certainly. What I would say for the committee's information that I came in as the centre manager at the latter end of the process before me was Rose Duncan, but I am very much aware of what happened up until that point. I think that one of the big things that has been mentioned is that empty silo working, as we would call it, is that people working in isolation, especially in smaller charities, where we would be referers on, but we would not be as integrated as we needed to be. We saw that happening in England. I know that that is a question for later on, but one of the positive outcomes of that is that we are looking at a number of different forums that have now been set up in the glen of this area, such as food resilience and all those things, which I think is absolutely fantastic. When we are talking about community empowerment in my opinion, in the purest sense of the word, were we doing that as much as we could have? I think that no, but we could not have, because we cannot empower people if people are hungry, if people are starving, if people do not have gas, if they do not have electric. We need to put in the basic principles of making sure that people have what these needs are. That is what we did. As well as the local authority was very good for us, Fife voluntary action was very good in taking the lead across the local authority along with the council. One of the things that we did struggle with was that we were very good at the initial response of somebody in crisis, and they have not got food or they have not got whatever the need was to be able to act to that very quickly. However, we struggled with the follow-up process because we were an anchor organisation and a crisis centre. We did that as much as we could, but maybe a house officer who would go out and speak to somebody for the council was not able to do that because of the restrictions and the rules that were put in place. That was one of the barriers. As we got on through the pandemic, we were able to rectify those. In the very early days, it was very scary, and what rose the previous manager did at the very start, was to ask the staff in the centre, is that something that we want to do, or do we go and close the doors? It was very much the staff and it was at the time that went, no, we need to keep the centre open because people in this community need us. That is the time that they need us, so they stepped up. There was a lot of fear at that time because people, even Governments, did not know what were going to be the effects when, back in March 2020, a few weeks of what we were doing here and how we mobilised, if that makes sense. That makes perfect sense. We will return to some of the themes as the morning goes on, but I want to bring to you and Leitch from surf to give us his perspective on some of the challenges and how the challenges have been risen to. I joined surf in May, so I am drawing on the work that my colleagues Emma and Delane who formerly worked for surf did during a big pandemic or in the early stages of it. They did a lot of research with our network drawing on the experience of about 150 organisations to find out what they were doing in the early stages, followed up by some regional research looking at where there are differences across Scotland in the experience of it. I am not going to repeat what everyone else has said, but collaboration, the reduction of risk aversion from funders and public authorities were the dramatic things that happened. It reflects the fact that it was seen as an immediate crisis to some really basic human needs access to food that made that happen. Where brings the question is, are we viewing some of the other things around poverty as immediate and as important as the ones that we faced during the pandemic? It was because of that real crisis situation that there was a response. The response was slow to begin with from some public authorities and it was the fact that community groups were so close to the communities that they were able to identify where help was needed. One of the things that came out in our research, because of what happened, surf runs as an annual award process for a generation and there was a specific award related to organisations response to the pandemic. That went to the community network, because it is now called. Their good work was based on the fact that there was a community plan undertaken just before the pandemic hit in 2019, which meant that they had about 34,000 interactions with the community. They had already begun to do some work, so where have those community networks been beginning to happen? They then had access to people that they had already interacted with. Places that were in a slightly better position—somebody else referred to disaster preparedness—were able to step in really fast to that point. I think that one of their feedback to funders and it happened during Covid was a big need for core funding. Most funding is project-based, but the organisation is funding nearly just to exist, not just to do specific projects. That ties into, during the pandemic, funding became responsive to community need. The community is saying that this is what we need to spend the money on, rather than saying that funders have certain criteria that they would like to see certain agendas delivered to their preference. That switched to what the communities were saying they knew and were able to identify locally. That is one of the things that happened during the pandemic, which we would hope would carry on beyond the pandemic. We are in a liminal stage because the pandemic has gone all over. Funders are reviewing their processes that remain to be seen as to whether they will continue. That will be a recurring theme in our discussions this morning, the extent to which Pippa talks about a shift in control. Has there been a shift in control and power? Has there been a decentralisation? Has there been greater community empowerment is something that is of interest to us and whether that is temporary, was temporary or is permanent? We are the Public Audit Committee and I want to ask the Auditor General to give us his view, and not least perhaps because one of the things that is important that we do cover is the extent to which there has been an evaluation of this experience, the extent to which this has been measured, the extent to which any good practice has been disseminated, the extent to which lessons that have been learned as we go along are being embedded into the way that we are going to look at things in the future. If you want to do your best to help us to understand the extent to which there has been an evaluation of the times that we have been living through in the context of the community empowerment agenda. Many thanks, convener. The first thing that I would say is that in terms of the themes that colleagues have mentioned this morning, I think that we recognise that there was very clearly from the five principles of successful community empowerment from the 2019 report and the update that came through last month and the strength of pre-existing relationships variation in culture that is needed to respond to different contexts. I think that the point that Pippa clearly makes, and you and likewise, is that it took a crisis for much of the change to happen for communities to be empowered to take some of the decision making. There was that they know best as to the needs of individual communities across the country, but what is the sustainability model as we move forward is a fundamentally important point. You ask about evaluation. I am keen to say a word on it. I know that it is one of your themes for later on about the sense of red tape or bureaucracy that inhibits some of the risk taking and the decisions happening where they needed to happen and the actions taking. We recognise that a lot, and colleagues have mentioned that some of those criteria that existed before the pandemic were stripped right back, so that the pace of action that needed to happen took place much more quickly. That was essential, but it matters now as to whether the state that is going to remain or will be going to revert back to probably a more constrained environment. You would expect me, convener, to advocate for the need for some degree of evaluation controls, a sense of following the public pound. It is important now that, when we go through the valuation model and that funders have a sense of what was actually necessary to ensure value for money, audit trails and so forth, and what really wasn't. One last thing that I would say, and I am happy to say a bit more about our programme of forward work, is that we recognise as an audit role in here, convener. We are part of this ecosystem and culture, and we often hear back the comment that we need to do this because the auditors will expect it or demand it. I think that we are keen to push back against that somewhat, is that the valuation most fundamentally matters about what were the outcomes that were achieved for this, as opposed to having an audit trail or bureaucracy for the sake of it. Auditors, we are part of that conversation and are doing so across the 200 plus public bodies that we audit. Plenty of evaluation to come in our own work programme continues to build upon how well Covid money has been spent over the course of next year. I can say a word or two about that later, if you wish. That is great, thank you very much. The emphasis on outcomes is right because we were living in unprecedented times with people at risk of hunger, isolation and all the things that go along with that. We have already heard of some of the experiences of communities rallying round and coming together and making sure that people do not fall between the cracks. We have a large number of questions and areas for discussion this morning, so I want to move things on and ask Sharon Dowie to get the next part of the conversation going. As I have touched on some of the subjects, we worked differently during the pandemic. We definitely worked at peace. We had to change our ways of working. David had said that people were fleet of foot and agile. There are a couple of comments about the public bodies being slower, but it is certainly recognised that the third sector certainly worked at peace and changed the ways of working as they were going through. I would like to ask the extent to which the new ways of working are being sustained and what were the enablers in the barriers during the pandemic? I do not know if Anna wants to go in that one first. I think that some things are being sustained, particularly with independent funders. They have been keen to learn and we have been doing quite a lot of work with independent funders about how we can maintain some of that joint working, collaborative working and a more proportionate approach to monitoring and evaluation and the application of funding. I think that the sense that Pippa talked about, and we have talked about that collective approach in local areas, is that now that the relationships are there, it will be more difficult to back off from that. That is really positive. However, for me, there is something about parity of esteem. David referred to this at the very start, where we are in a situation that we have been in for many years, where we see the public sector, the private sector and the third sector, which becomes as if there is a kind of, you know, the extras on the edge. What we saw through the pandemic was the voluntary sector, voluntary organisations, community organisations, large and small, whatever their function. We are absolutely at the heart of that and we are really, really important. What I would like to see is holding on to that visibility and recognition that we have seen across local and national politicians, even in the media with the public. I would really like to see that being held on to and recognising the expertise that is in the sector, the trust, because the public trust, community organisations and charities more than the trust in the public or the private sector. Whether that is right or wrong, it does not matter at the moment, but we should be building on that and building on that kind of full focus on what people need and what works, rather than what organisational turf we are on or whose budget it is coming out of. That is all important, but the primary thing should be the outcomes and the impact on individuals and communities. To follow up on what the Auditor General was saying, I think that the work that the Accounts Commission and Audit Scotland are doing to embed the voice of the voluntary sector and of communities in their work and in their forward strategies is really inspiring. You can feel that commitment and scrutiny does drive behaviour, so I am hoping with that leadership that they are showing that that will help to drive change in the future. David Allan, do you want to come in next, David? Yes, thanks. To echo what Hannah has just said, the work that the Audit Scotland and the other company bodies have done around community empowerment has been hugely important over the past few years, and we have been involved in that along with other third sector organisations in a series on that. I just want to come back to a couple of things. There have been a couple of mentions made of local authorities being a bit behind the game in terms of the Covid response. I think that, unsurprisingly, considering bigger the organisation, the longer it takes to turn around, if you like, and to shift things, and the smaller and more local and hyper-local, as Pippa mentioned earlier on, the easier it is for those organisations to flex and respond quickly. However, I think that the other main thing was the importance of communities coming together in collaboration. Somebody mentioned to me quite early on in the pandemic that there has been an outbreak of peace in the community with community organisations who may be traditionally being used to competing with each other for funding, actually coming together for the common good. That was supported by the way funders approached it as well as supporting the most strategic approaches to how money is spent and used in allocating, particularly through the likes of community anchor organisations. I think that that is a worthwhile thing to follow up on. I think that something about local authority response needs to be acknowledged that there are staff in local authorities whose role is in supporting community empowerment and community development. They are normally in community learning and development teams or similar teams within local authority. High and large, at the start of the pandemic, they were shifted to emergency response. They were taken out of their traditional role, if you like, and shifted to the emergency response, which was a perfectly natural and obvious thing to do. I think that what we need to see now and hopefully that is developing is that those staff are now coming back into the role that they are used to in supporting communities and community response. They should be around things such as developing community resilience, community empowerment and local community influencing roles. They can be strengthened to continue to support those developments, if you like, so that we do not waste all that kind of energy and enthusiasm and the steps that have been made by communities themselves. I agree with what has been said so far in regard to how it is looking on the ground. One of the things that we have seen is that, as we are coming out this side of the pandemic, as we have seen, there has been less focus on the council being the lead on projects that are happening within an area. We are waiting for the council to come in and do something, and we are seeing more and more whether it is in my area, whether it is us, or Fife-Wall Jackson, or whoever it is locally, taking the lead and being the lead partner in that rather than waiting on the council, which I think is very, very good. As has been said, such as my organisation, my board of management are all people who live within a five-minute walk of the centre, so they are from the communities that need it the most. I think that that is where we have seen that change rather than things being run by the council or because whatever political parties in charge of that are at a local government level or at a national level, we have seen that sort of change, which we think is very, very, very good as well. The ability for funders to be able to be very, very flexible and what we are trying to achieve, because, again, when we look at, for example, Colleen, we had a neighbourhood plan that was researched in 2019 and came out in January, February 2020. By April 2020, a lot of it was obsolete because there was no talk in there about social isolation and things like that. So, again, when we are talking about how that will be maintained, it is about that recognition that local area plans have been as flexible as they possibly can be. That will help that and not be as stringent because, again, anything pre-March 2020 for local area plans is very, very different now. Actually, when we are looking at local area plans, we need specific local area plans in regards to that sort of Covid recovery, because I think that it is very, very different to how other local area plans have been done if that makes sense. Hi. It is really interesting to hear what is happening now. I think that, in answer to your question about the enablers, I think that there are two points to make. One was very much as Anna was saying, this point about parity of esteem. I think that, although we have talked about partnership and I am a big fan of Christian, I think that I want to see it enacted, we are not going to achieve it until there is neutral respect between different partners. I know perhaps something of the past, but for a while there was always this kind of issue. If previously worked in the NHS, if you were working in the public sector, you are always kind of asking who is the third sector, how can I connect with the third sector? We have got to realise that it is a very disparate group. There are the big NGOs, there are the SAMHs and the Alzheimer's Scotland, etc., but what we saw during the pandemic was the vitality of the hyperlocal agencies. Many of them were not agencies, they were just a street, where perhaps there was a volunteer group that was already acting, but they had no constitution, they were not necessarily part of any umbrella body, no particular financial accounting, and they may have got, as was described at the beginning, less than £5,000 during the pandemic, and that really helped because it enabled them to pay for really basic stuff, whether that was just to pay for knacks or to pay for people's out-of-pocket expenses, etc. I think that we have got to understand and live with that complexity, and it has come up a lot as we have thought about how we are going to support and hear from people who are more diverse. I think that is something that we have really got to think about going forward, is how to involve people, no matter the difficulties around that or the complexity around that. The other thing that we have got really going for us and enabler is our policy. If you look at the piece of cross-UK workers involved in the end of 2021, the shift in the balance of power with new local, when we looked at the relationship between the third sector and the local authorities across the UK, Scotland and to a certain extent Wales come out strongly because of our community empowerment act, because of the community planning structures. We have got the policy there, and I think that we can really need to build on that to enable it to actually work out in practice. I would also repeat what Anna said. The feedback that we got from particular groups was that they were now equal partners at a table, where people felt that, as the third sector, there was a higher archiver and they felt that that had totally shifted in the service condition that they were giving during the pandemic. I think that it reflects what people just said about their places where things happened faster and where there was a good record or register of community groups, which sometimes some third sector interface organisations hold. Where that existed, it meant that it was easy to access a range of groups, but where that didn't exist, it was hard to reach into those community groups from the public sector perspective. As David said, there was a higher degree of working across community groups who had previously been at war, which was also something beneficial that came out of it. I suppose that the thing that I had written down after the other general school was Christy, because some of the things that were needed to happen were about behaviour change. My predecessor, Andy Milne, would say that we have policies coming out of our ears and the policies are great, but it is the fact that it is not happening consistently enough yet on the ground. It is really looking at behaviour change within people who have permanent, pretty secure jobs dealing with people who are in more precarious positions. I suppose that it is until we see Christy rolling out, which is inherent within Christy, that there are tensions around localising things, but we have to then accept a higher degree of risk. However, going back to what David said at the beginning, looking over what has happened over the past 18 months, we have seen colossal sums of money going to private sector organisations. I am not necessarily in a Scottish perspective, which has been quite shocking in the degree of scrutiny that has not been applied to them, but it is quite small amounts of money that are going to community groups that make significant differences. Yes, there are potentially risks of having less red tape around them, but the benefits of those small amounts of money go much, much further in making a difference to the communities that need a difference made to them. Thank you. I have lots of really good points here, sorry. I have Steven to come in now. I am really struck by the number of constitutions that we may have, in that sense of clearly pandemic has reframed who we think of as our key workers in this country. You clearly see that just about the incredible impact that Scotland's voluntary sector has played in sustaining communities in the crisis that we were in. I have heard, as I am sure many of us have, about the competitive environment that exists within communities for funding and recognising also that the vast scale of additional money has come through over the course of the pandemic and whether that will be sustained as and when we move out of the pandemic environment. One of the keys will be about longer-term financial sustainability, certainty and long-term financial planning. If all that we are operating in is a 12-month funding environment, that inevitably leads to poorer decisions and poorer longer-term outcomes. One of the enablers that you have asked about is what we would like to see is that there is a longer-term environment that allows organisations to plan better for the impact of their work and to be able to see that in a more efficient and effective set of proposals that come through. Not really really good comments here. I think that it was Pip who had said about the partnership in mutual respect and who is the third sector, but I think that after the pandemic I don't think anybody's in any doubt who the third sector is. I don't think that we would have got through it without yous. Moving on to the next section, it's similar themes in my questions about the risks around losing good practical and going back to the old ways of working. There is a risk of losing the improvement in more efficient ways of working that have developed through the pandemic. I would like to ask the extent to which public bodies are embedding the new approaches to community engagement in delivering public services. I don't know who wants to come in. It's been touched on in the last question there, but let's see any hands. David Allen. I'm not sure at the moment to what extent new approaches to community engagement are becoming embedded. Part of the difficulty with that is that we're still on that phase of some people getting back into face-to-face working. Anyway, that seems to be more the case in key settings, where local authorities largely are still working remotely in those kinds of areas. It's still a bit tentative about what extent public authorities are taking on board the learning from the pandemic and how that can be turned into better practice. I'm not saying that it's not happening at all, but it's quite early stages at the moment. We've quite a focus on SCDC on supporting participatory budgeting, for example, and AB has been supported by the Scottish Government and has also been supported by local authorities. Obviously, local authorities have a 1 per cent mainstream commitment now as well, but I think that they are still not struggling necessarily, but finding that challenging to see how they can make their processes more participatory and genuinely involve people in influencing how budgets are spent and decisions are made as well. There are ways to go on that yet, but there are doors opening on that. The main concern is that learning from the pandemic needs to be fed into that. If we don't learn from that and the role of communities in making a lead and influencing decision making and doing all the things that you mentioned about community action planning and stuff like that, then we're just going to go back to communities being done to in terms of the way decisions are made and taking forward as well. Encouraging learning from the pandemic in terms of the hyperlocal is going to be really useful. The local governance review, which started before the pandemic hit, kind of stuttered a bit. It would be really useful to see that coming through quite strongly over the next period, because I think that people have got an appetite for being involved in that discussion about local governance now, which maybe they didn't have so much beforehand. Hi, I'm also not sure. I think that what the pandemic has reinforced is that we need more of a local and relational public sector. Many of the anecdotal stories that we heard about the partnership working during the pandemic were that employees in the public sector, particularly those perhaps who were seconded to the front line, felt a real sense of achievement, but it was a positive thing for them to feel more local and engaged and to engage in these very local partnerships. There's a real barrier to that, and that's the ongoing siloed nature of our public sector. As we know, it's definitely not only a Scottish disease, it's probably across the world. I think that we could just achieve a lot more if our performance management systems were changed and the operating incentives and the career reward structures, which at the moment seem to be very much of a siloed approach. I think that we need to develop, alongside the fantastic work of all that Scotland talked about earlier, develop structures that reward people for giving back some control to hyperlocal organisations and reward people for developing strong and mutually respectful partnerships. Thank you. Anna, you want to come back in? Just a couple of short points, I hope, to say thank you very much to the Auditor General for meeting the point that I usually have to speak about sustainable funding, which is much appreciated. It kind of builds on what Pippa said about how the public sector works with the voluntary sector and the third sector, and this is about how the public sector works together. That's what we saw during the pandemic. We've all talked about councils throughout this session, and they are the closest to their communities, of the public bodies. They are doing great stuff and could be better. What about all the rest? What about the NHS? What about the enterprise and skills agencies? What about all the rest of the public sector? What are they doing to build community empowerment? Councils might take a lead role on that, and I would say that the voluntary sector takes a key role in delivering that and working in partnership. What about the rest of the public sector? What role is it playing in that? I think that, in terms of making things happen, Ewn said that we've got so many reports and recommendations going back for decades. We've got great policy and legislation around community empowerment. We need to implement some of those recommendations. I would say that the social renewal advisory board and the report that I mentioned earlier together will help. We've got great things in there that will all support that, so could we not have any more commissioners talking about stuff? Could we just do the things we know already? That would be nice. Thank you. Thank you. I totally agree with you on that point. Could I ask Ryan Smart to come in? Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree with you on that. I'm sure it will come as a surprise. I think that this is a great question, but it's a question that we need to continue to ask, but it's very early in the stages. One of the issues that we've got is when we're looking at whether it be the NHS or even Police Scotland or the council, I think that the people that work in these organisations that are on the coface of such want to do this work and want to continue working in that way, but when it comes to targets or service managers, sometimes they have a different view because they're no base within the communities, they're based within HQ, they're based within the management blocky, wherever that is. We need to change that top-down approach to that more grass-roots approach that we've seen during the pandemic as well, because like I said, my board of management are all local people that live in the local community, but are the service managers for those bigger organisations that are most at need? Are they based in communities that are in the top 10 per cent of the areas that are more affluent? When we're looking at the hardest-hit areas, we are looking at those areas that we're colleagues based, but how many of the service managers and those people have come from those areas and have lived that life that a single parent is coming in at that point of crisis and need help? I think that those are things that we need to look at and how do we maintain that going forward. I agree with what has been said, and a number of points to emphasise for me about performance measures are too narrow. There is still a lack of breadth across performance measures for public bodies that encourages collaboration, shared working, commitment to working across the traditional boundaries to lead to better outcomes, because ultimately users of public services care much less about the boundaries than those of us who are working in public bodies, and that needs to shift. I wanted to pick up the point that I made about absolutely local authorities that are closest to their communities, but there are many national bodies who have very clear obligations under the Legislation, the Community Empowerment Act for the two to play an important part in that, and that's often forgotten and not given enough emphasis. It's interesting that, even a feature very clearly before the pandemic about the progress in implementing the Community Empowerment Act, and a couple of points about emphasis. One is about participation requests about not being strong enough and even being seen as an indication that Community Empowerment hadn't worked well enough, which feels quite a strange conclusion to each. The other thing is that, as public bodies emerge from the pandemic about the community control of assets, there will be many public bodies evaluating working practice arrangements, their use of their estate. We can expect, as people's habits have changed, whether it's the offices for workers or other assets that are widely held across the public sector, how those will be used in future and whether they will be better used by community organisations. There will be a significant opportunity for community organisations and public bodies to progress with that part of the legislation for community benefit. I think that the sense of it feels like it's too early to be definitive to say about the practices and the progress that we've seen over the pandemic is yet embedded, but there's a huge opportunity now just to continue some of that learning as and when we emerge from the pandemic. Thank you, Stephen. I can ask Ewan Leitch to come in now, as well. I agree with what's already been said, but as an example, we work directly in two communities, and the response to having things changed is variable. We have two communities that are looking at and that have a direct interest in publicly owned assets. One local authority is vending over backwards, not marketing a property and has provided funding for a feasibility study for future community ownership and use. Another one just wanted access to a building just to use it for a weekend, but they were told no, because it might conflict with the decorating scheme that they maybe had planned. It wasn't definite. It was a bit of a computer that said no. A might line says that it's very often that community development workers at the front line who are responsive, but more senior management or maybe more risk avertising what just doesn't fit in with other things or what if it goes wrong and so they're less likely to be flexible because they're not actually working and seeing what the needs of the community are, but picking up on what Steven said, Scottish Features Trust yesterday launched a new report called Living Well Locally. It ties into the neighbourhood type stuff, but it reflects on how we use public assets. Looking back at the pandemic, we know that in some of the communities our members were working in where food was a need. Schools have been—the school kitchen, the catering opportunity that lay within those buildings was great but was inaccessible. It ended up development trusts, museums, et cetera, and there were community owned them opening their kitchens up. It could have been that we used that better. I suppose thinking about how we actually used our public assets such as schools and making them multifunctional so that they're used not just during the day but they are accessible to the communities in the evening is something that Scottish Features Trust has a lot of money in that organisation. They are looking at the principles that would make these things of much wider benefit than just for the very narrow uses. We're still waiting to see those things being enacted consistently in practice. To be fair to the public authorities, whether they're local authorities or national agencies, they're also in a state of shock and have also been extremely stressed. They may not be individually in some of the financially precarious positions that some of the communities are, but nonetheless they have been through a very stressful period. They are also exhausted. We're having to go through this liminal stage where we're waiting to see what the fallout is, and we're still waiting to understand what the economic fallout is in a much wider sense as well. I want to move things along a bit, and I'm conscious of time as well. We're exploring some really important areas that we are keen to get your views on and your experience of and perhaps some lessons that can be drawn from what's been happening. I want to ask Colin Beattie to come in and he's got a series of questions. Colin Beattie, I'm very pleased that in the course of this discussion we're recognising and highlighting the contribution that communities are making during the Covid pandemic. Just to pick up on something that the Auditor General said about funding and funding is all too often on an annual basis, I suppose. The problem with that is that the Scottish Government is funded on an annual basis. It doesn't have a certainty as to what its budget is going to be and that kind of trickles down to other organisations that get funded by the Government. It makes it a bit harder. I think that it's fairly common in the public sector these days, everything's short term. However, I'd like to look at our community groups and look forward a wee bit from this, because it's important that we don't lose the momentum that we've gained. Are public bodies now actually seeking feedback from communities on what's been learned from the pandemic? How are they doing this? Maybe I can ask you in to comment first. Are they asking for it some are? Funders, particularly private sector funders and some of the philanthropic funders, are asking for that feedback. We are not being approached for direct feedback from other public authorities, but they don't need to ask for it because Carnegie, Cora, SEDC, we're all providing evidence. We're all providing examples and case studies on that report. Some are, but not consistently so. I suppose that it comes back to what we were talking about in response. The last question is, are they yet in the position to be asking for that while they're still dealing with the consequences of the fallout? I'd say not consistently no. Can we ask Devran to comment on that? I just wanted to reinforce what you and I just said. Some have been through the pandemic. I think we've run one example that's mentioned in the Scotland report, which we've highlighted through our contact with them, as our Game View Council, who could have worked throughout the pandemic in conjunction with local community organisations. We tried to keep on top of what the response was and where they could best deploy their efforts for that kind of collaboration as well. It has been happening in various areas, but I agree with you and it's not quite across the board yet, so it's still a bit patchy. It's quite important that we learn those lessons. Is this the right time to be engaging to try and learn those lessons, or are we too early? Should we be doing this in six months or a year after the pandemic, hopefully, is adequately under control? I think that it is the right time. People are engaging online, and in some instances now face-to-face meetings safely. I think that there's a danger if we leave it six to twelve months down the line, if we lose the momentum—any momentum—that was established during the pandemic and if we lose that kind of energy. As was mentioned by a couple of people before, people are tired, but they do want to see something good come out of the other side of the experience that we've had over the past 18 months. I think that we should not engage with people and find ways of engaging innovatively with people—the number of examples around the way that we know about and can highlight. Everybody on the ground knows that there are opportunities now to engage more public bodies about how we can develop more resilient our own community responses. The time is right now over the next few months, otherwise we'll be face-losing momentum around it. Given that it's fairly limited so far, the number of public bodies that are seeking this sort of engagement and feedback, is there any indication that those that are seeking this feedback are actually making use of it in a positive way? I don't have any information on that at the moment. It's the next phase of our long continual research, and we're just launching it next week. That's what we'll be looking at over that, so I'm afraid that I don't have anything to add. I think that you and David are probably closer to it. If I could just push back slightly, since you gave me the mic on what you said about annual funding, is that when it's Scottish Government and local Government, there's what the uncertainty is around the quantum. It's about how much you're going to get. It's not about whether, whereas for most voluntary and community organisations, it's whether or not they're going to get any funding that's the issue. Councils and Government are not issuing annual redundancy notices. There's not that same precariousness around it, so it's a fair point, but it's not quite to the same extent as it is in the voluntary sector. Thank you. Maybe I could ask the auditor general here, presumably you're looking at this sort of community engagement about how public bodies are engaging with the community. The public bodies that are, is it mainly the council, whichever expected would be perhaps, and if so, are you seeing any sign that the feedback that's being obtained is actually being used positively? So you're right, it is predominantly local authorities who take a lead role in community engagement. And there are other bodies too, so the enterprise bodies, NHS Police, Creative Scotland have been in the bracket of being the funders over the course of the pandemic. In the sense of, I think, your question about the kind of lessons learned and is now the right time, have you seen that? I think that in pockets is the answer, Mr Beattie, probably, and I think that that's probably a reasonable thing up to a point that we are still in the midst of the pandemic, the public bodies are still fulfilling their core purpose, of which community empowerment is one in a different way than they would have been before the pandemic. What we look to do through this report and will continue to do through our work is to highlight the importance that we don't miss the opportunity to learn the lessons of what's worked well in terms of community empowerment and community engagement during the course of the pandemic, reverting back to practices that would have been in place beforehand, as in when people tend to go back to offices, maybe fall back into the way things happened. I think that some of the earlier conversation this morning that things weren't perfect in terms of community empowerment before the pandemic, with the extent to which the community empowerment act had been implemented, there was still a way to go across all parts of the public sector, local government and other public bodies. What we look to do through this report that we were talking about this morning is to say that there are some terrific examples of where partnership working between public bodies and community groups have had that impact, to share that good practice, to share that knowledge and to continue making further progress in community empowerment. We will keep doing that through our work in reports that we have and papers produced during 2022 and, of course, through our annual audit work where we, in local government context, look at the statutory duty of best value of which we convert community empowerment, but also the wider duty that exists on all accountable officers of public bodies to implement the principles of best value. Maybe I can just ask a slightly different question in terms of approach. A lot of the changes that have been made during the pandemic have been, by the very nature, temporary. Are public bodies consulting specifically on those temporary changes in terms of how they take that forward, whether that is going to fall away, whether that is going to remain in place? Ryan, you are at the coalface. Have you been asked about that? It is not something that I have been asked directly. I think that it has been more about people reacting to the need. I think that when we are looking at the evidence and stats, I can give you evidence of how many food parcels I gave out and more about how many people we engage with during the pandemic for different things, but I think that a lot of the evidence that is coming forward for colleagues and other public bodies is anecdotal evidence that we are working on just now, just because we have not had that time to collate and bring evidence together. We have tried our best to keep numbers there, and I can tell you how many food parcels that they gave out during the pandemic, but in regard to that finer detail in the longer-term impact, what did that food parcel mean? I do not think that that is there, but it is not something that has really been discussed. I think that, as I said, it is sporadic, depending on who you are asking for funding from, if that makes sense. That is good. Pippa, have you seen any signs of good consultation on temporary changes? No, not necessarily, but perhaps I would hope that people would not be coming to us because we are a UK policy organisation. I would hope that consultation would be happening at a local level. In answer to your question about whether this is the right time, I suppose, taking into account what people have said around the degree of exhaustion, I think that it is very much the right time because, for others, there is now an opportunity. I remember about a year or nine months ago, I spoke to some people in local areas working for third sector organisations who very much wanted to see the changes embedded. They were fearful about it, reverting to how it was before more of a top-down management approach. I think that it is the right time also because, as others have said, it is much of what we saw in terms of underlying issues. Ryan said that, right at the beginning, the degree of poverty, deprivation, people's access or lack of access to food, for example, food insecurity that was revealed during the pandemic, was actually there already. That is also true with regard to inequality and the access of people with disabilities from ethnic diverse groups, etc., to policymaking, and the lack of access that was there already. It came to a fore during the pandemic. We have a responsibility to try to right those wrongs, some of which would really be helped by much more of a preventative approach. Again, it is something that Christie talks about. We are back to the idea of, can we more effectively enact the good policies and previous recommendations of very strong commissions? Can we get on and act those? I will bring David Alam back in to comment on the question of public bodies consulting on temporary changes to determine whether they are going to fall away, whether they are going to stay there, whether they are just temporary for the pandemic and so forth. Again, we do not have any regular examples of that. Again, we are not working directly on the ground in local areas. We tend to work through programmes and get in, as Ryan says, more panic total evidence or examples of that. However, I am not aware of the major consultations around temporary changes to the way public services are delivered and delivered. I know that there are authorities that have done that on an on-going basis, but they are not particularly in relation to any kind of temporary changes. One thing that I wanted to ask more than anything else, rather than to comment on was that we are talking about local authorities a lot while there are plenty of other public bodies out there. What is the role of community planning in all of that? For me, there is a bit of a question here about where has community planning been in terms of the response, collaboration and co-ordination of efforts? I thought that that had to be quite a natural role for community planning partnerships. I get the feeling that it has not been across the board, although I might be wrong. I do not have other opinions about that. You make a good point. Thank you very much. I think that there is a broader discussion there, David, about the extent to which we have got any kind of participatory democracy beyond participatory budgets in local authorities, for example. What is the engagement on that broader spectrum, which I know that Anna has spoken about? It is not just about local government. What is the rest of the public sector doing about community empowerment? I think that those are strong themes that have really come out of this morning's session so far. We are into the final part of the session that we have. I am going to invite Craig Hoy to ask a few questions and steer us through this final section. Craig? Thank you, convener, and welcome everyone. Perhaps one question that has not been answered. I might want to use the closing stages just to look forward to see how we can strengthen community empowerment moving forward, because there are clearly still some challenges, despite the huge and at times heroic efforts, particularly in the third sector during Covid. At this point in time, it might just be worth asking this question. Maybe if David Allan, from a national perspective and then perhaps Ryan, from a local perspective, is to what extent, despite all the progress that we have made, is there still a hard-to-reach group that we did not manage to engage with during the pandemic? What can we do on the basis of the learning that we have of the progress that we have made to move forward and perhaps reach those marginalised groups for whatever the underlying reason is? How can we finally move forward and make sure that the legacy of this is that we do reach them in the future? That is an interesting one. We have probably made more progress in engaging with the hard-to-reach, I would say, less-heard groups through the pandemic. Primarily, that was working through those people of contact, or those organisations that do have the contact with those less-heard voices, whether it be community organisations with a lot of areas of the community in section. There is well, and supporting them to do that work much better and to help them to engage with their community, their wider community. That was something that I was struck with when we looked at the evaluation of the Triple R fund. For example, just a range of different kinds of meeting group and organisations were involved with that. Although one or two did reflect to us that they found parts of their community that they did not know really existed and that they did not engage with them prior to the pandemic and highlighted the levels of need that were even greater than they originally envisaged. There is still a bit of work to be done on that, but it will definitely work through those organisations that have those networks in contact locally and make use of the community networks that exist, because they are strong and useful. That came out through the work in the pandemic. On how we strengthen community empowerment moving forward, we need to build on the work that has already been done. We need to build support for the Hynker organisations and networks in local areas. We are already beginning a bit of work in looking at how resilience partnerships can be strengthened, as well. I think that there is one area that we thought might be the existing resilience partnerships that are around. We did not quite connect with wider community networks at times and in certain areas, so it would be really useful to look to strengthen those and their air links across wider communities. As has been mentioned already in the session, we are developing our approach to local governance and hyper-local approaches, really good, strong and flexible community action planning and led action planning, things such as participatory budgeting and increased focus on more local control and more local influence and things that affect people. Ryan, just from a local perspective, you are making the point that your board lives within five minutes away, but sometimes the most extreme problems are the ones that are nearest to us and we do not see them. Do you feel that you have made progress on the ground in reaching people that you have not engaged with before? Yes, I think that we have. One of the things that I worry about to a certain extent is that we have a huge amount of volunteers coming forward during the pandemic to help, but we are at a point that, even to my staffer, COVID-19 volunteered fatigue because we are now going into the end of year 2. How do we sustain that? A lot of the work that we have done and the work that those people have done to empower themselves to come forward has been very intense over the past two years, so how do we keep that up and keep the community's expectations of what they have received in the past two years to where it should be? It has always been there, but we have seen it highlighted as that we have not just got a Covid pandemic going on, but a mental health pandemic because of the social isolation that has happened. People are still scared to come out of their house because they are still scared to interact. How do we engage with those people who will not leave their house? That is a huge thing that we have to look at and go. How do we overcome that barrier? If those people are not going to open the door, how do we deal with that? How do we get work with partners in our NHS that, when those people are going to the doctors and saying that they have anxiety and depression and that they are waiting the last two years to see a psychologist or a psychiatrist, what is the community support there? Is it going to places such as Andy's Man Club? Is it going to community groups? How do we marry that up a bit better and make our public sector colleagues more aware of what is happening in the community to help with those people? That is one of the huge things when we like that into a game that we like to see earlier on in regards to community empowerment. In regards to my management committee and volunteers, I have been very empowered to work with individuals at that crisis mode. It is just feeding them, but how do we take that on and give them the tools to empower themselves? The same goes with mental health. When we are looking at how we achieve that, I spoke earlier about the funding. One of the things for me, as a certain manager, I think particularly hard is that, if I wanted to apply for funding to employee to youth workers to run a mental health tot and cafe on a colleague, which I do, it is relatively easy to find that funding. The funding to employ the admin assistant to make sure that all the admins done in the background and the caretakers there open the centre and make sure that it is clean and all the Covid regulations are ticked. That is extremely difficult. For me, that is where I am struggling. I can get funding relatively easy to do project work and do this and do that, but the core costs of switching the lights on and giving a caretaker the admin assistant there, who are just as key in the process, are particularly hard to do. It goes on to what was said earlier on about that longer-term funding. I could have my mental health tot and cafe for a year, but I do not know if I am going to have it next year. When we go back to funders' funders, we will go to work with outcomes. A lot of the time we struggle because it is the long-term outcomes, it is the outcomes that, if you are working with a young person at 13 with mental health issues, you will see small things straight away, but the longer-term effects say that we are not going to see for three, four or five years. How do we capture that and explain that to funders? As I said earlier, local community plans need to be flexible, but a great deal of work needs to be looked at again. A lot of them need to be put in the bin and started completely for scratch, because we are in a completely different world, whether that is nationally or locally. Pippa, from a national or perhaps international policy perspective, to move that forward to the next phase, it will be the political will and the public bodies that really set the framework that allows community empowerment to thrive. To what extent do you think all parts of the public sector in Scotland today are supporting and empowering communities? Is there any international best practice or any policy that we could be drawing on as already made template to try to embed that within Scotland to improve that empowerment and engagement? As I said, we have some very good policies in Scotland. We are often given as an example of good practice, particularly around the more holistic purpose of government that we have within the national performance framework, which is a wellbeing framework. I think that a severe challenge for us is supporting the public sector to be comfortable with complexity, as I have made the point. We have a real challenge in the siloed nature of the public sector and the target-driven nature of the public sector, which I think makes it much more difficult for managers and senior managers to be able to, as I say, take on the complexity, even within building strong partnerships with a hyper-local level and even the complexity of understanding the third sector, which is a very disparate group and requires, I suppose, patience and a degree of relational management, which is very difficult to do if you are in a system that requires you to deliver to deliver. As I know, many people work at a senior level currently in the public sector feel extremely stressed. That may be because they have fewer people working in their teams than they have previously. It may be because of lack of funding, which means that they are very much thinking, how can I have these homeless people rather than, I think, give them much more holistic approach around people's wider needs? I think that there is very much a need to support the public sector to try to think differently and to tackle these problems differently in much more of a future-focused longer-term way. I think that we have the answers. It is just how we can overcome the barriers that really stop people from acting in a relational and kind way, which would lead to a huge difference. Can I just ask the same question, perhaps, of you and you, and you talked about the fact that your predecessor said, we don't need any more policy, we just need practice? How can we move that forward from taking the policy to, in practical terms, actually doing what Pippa was talking about there, which strikes me very much about moving away from firefighting and actually starting to plan long-term? That was a pick-up on your question and on Convity's question coming back to that as well. Everything that needs to happen has already been said, so the things that we were saying before the pandemic became heightened during the pandemic and behaviour did change during the pandemic, and we need that to continue equal parity at the table, collaboration, all those things, long-term funding, core funding. We were all saying that five years ago, I was saying it in my previous talk, we are continuing to say that it should become more important. Your question to Pippa is initially one of international comparisons. We often look at Scandinavian countries as a good example, and it is to do with how close local governments take place the principle of subsidiarity for decisions that are made. Those are also high-tax states, and that is not by accident that those two things happen together. The local government's review, the outcome of that, we are particularly interested in that. One of the interesting things about the local government's review, one of the final reports for that, was that community councils were made to be mentioned once in it. There is a layer of governance there that we could be utilising if funding for it was there, basically. There are all sorts of things that could happen. We have all recommended that they have happened. I got in touch with Anais after she wrote a blog saying that she would not be contributing to any more advisory groups. The SRAD, the citizens assembly, all sorts of recommendations have been made. They are consistent with what has been made for the past 10 years. It is changing behaviours within the local authorities and other public bodies. To a degree, there is, because of the mass resignations, the changes that are happening around employment. There may now be an opportunity for things as staff are changing, so new work practices and refreshed work practices are becoming maybe more embedded within public bodies, but it is taking far longer than is desirable. I want to close by turning to the audit function, I suppose, and turning to Stephen. Before I do that, I want to bring Anna Fowley in briefly. The Auditor General earlier said that audit performs for far more function than a tick box exercise. It is about learning, evaluating and assessing outcomes within your members. I think that you have about 2,700 members. Is there still a view that perhaps that audit and evaluation process comes at the end and is very much the tick box to close the project or to reapply for the funding? Is there enough learning taking place within the sector to make sure that we evaluate, assess the outcomes and then collectively learn from what has been achieved or what has not been achieved? There are two parts to that question. One is about the public audit function, which is quite far removed from most of our members who are generally a small community organisation, and it is absolutely vital to be happening behind the scenes. I think that that collective accountability and making sure that our accountability frameworks in Scotland really look at outcomes, look at the NPF, process is important, all of that is important. However, looking at outcomes and really bringing the national performance framework into the four and what all the student organisations do, it is really important. I was thinking, as you and I was speaking there, that there is a really important point here about learning within our sector as well. There is a lot of learning to be had from that and especially that kind of managing to get away from the competitive environment, which of course, when you get back into competitive tendering or grant funding and even public fundraising, where there is a kilt walk and those kind of things, there is obviously an element of competition. However, to try and park the competition that we can share learning, that is something that we are looking at and others such as the third sector interfaces, for example, and the UNS organisation are doing. I think that it is really important that we do that because when you are an organisation like Ryan, you are on the ground, you are delivering really good services, so it should not be incumbent on you to add an extra layer on to that. The rest of us who have got national infrastructure or local infrastructure should be facilitating that and helping it, rather than expecting everybody to do everything themselves. To close with the Auditor General, the convener mentioned two words that I was going to bring up, which are participatory budgeting, which is obviously one of the very concrete examples of community engagement and empowerment. Taking that the local government budgets £11,108 million, by my maths it is about £111 million is being spent through some degree of direction of community engagement. To what extent do you think more should be being done to audit that expenditure, if not through any mandatory sense, to ensure that we are not just making sure that the public pound is being well spent, but to make sure, more importantly, that the audit function is evaluating outcomes so that we can all learn and share that best practice that would allow us to accelerate the work that we have heard of today? I think that we are starting from a strong place in Scotland and not one of complacency. Maybe I say a word about the, as we have made no secret of, we are supporters of the national performance framework, which has that connection between public spending and the outcomes. More needs to be done to move beyond the framework and better translate what has actually been spent and what the longer-term outcomes for public spending of taxpayers' money. In terms of the audit model that we have in Scotland, we already operate a wider scope model of auditing. As well as auditing the annual accounts, we also look at the value for money best value arrangements of how well that money has been spent and what is actually being achieved from it. In our paper, one of the case studies that you have seen is on participatory budgeting and the success of that in Renfisher. Beyond that, there is a clear need for yes for following the pandemic pound of which participatory budgeting is an aspect of, but that communities closest to the delivery of service will know best for what is being achieved. I think that there is a kind of two strands. One is that auditors recognise and accept that, but so do the accountable officers of public bodies that they know what they are achieving, that they create the right culture, the right conditions for service delivery to happen by communities who best understand. As I mentioned earlier, auditors have a clear role to play in that. We rise to the challenge and challenge back where necessary that we are inhibitors of innovation and risk-taking. I think that for all the things that we have seen over the pandemic, we can respond as a country in a crisis, but that innovation now needs to be sustained. The last thing that I want for public audit is to thwart some of the innovation that is clearly so necessary to continue across public service in Scotland. We are very clear that we have an important role to support accountability but to be enablers of some of the innovation and change that still needs to happen. Thank you very much. I know that we have just got a few minutes left and one of our members, Willie Coffey, is joining us virtually this morning. I am keen to bring in Willie Coffey, because I know that he has got some questions and some reflections on this morning's conversation. Willie, over to you. You will probably get the final word this morning. Thank you very much, convener. I have really enjoyed the contributions made by our colleagues. It has been absolutely fascinating. Most of the questions have been asked. I was hoping to give our colleagues a final chance, convener, to offer a final thought about what their key wish would be going forward now. We are the Audit Committee of the Scottish Parliament, and as I just discussed there, we have to, with the Auditor General's help, follow the public pound. I was struck by some of Ryan's contributions in saying things like, when you are giving good parcels to the families that are desperate for them, is that an audit function? How in the earth do we audit things like that and the outcomes that flow from things like that? I wonder if I could just give our colleagues a wee chance to offer a final thought about what a key ask would be going forward to protect and enhance and retain the good things and the good practices that have come through Covid and how we will be able to gain that into the future. I would really be obliged for maybe a short contribution from each of the panellists on that, convener, if that is possible. Yes, of course it is. Ryan, perhaps, to start this part of the session. Ryan? For me it is about listening to the communities. We need to continue to listen to their communities more than ever before. We need to listen to them, but, again, the third sector, we need the funding to be able to do it. That sort of course funding that goes around the infrastructure for me is a huge thing that we need going forward. We need the money. Essentially, for the purposes of the Audit Cymru, we need that money to be able to look at that. We have the Covid recovery grants that are coming in. I am in the process of applying for one just now, but I think that that is for the next year. We need some sort of commitment that that will be there for maybe the next two or three years, because we are still here. Covid is still here, and that is still affecting the most vulnerable people in our society, and we need that to continue. We need the flexibility funders to continue as well. For all funders, we need not just Government money to continue with that and allow us to be at the end of a phone call and be able to make decisions relatively quickly. However, I have applied for £10,000 today. However, we have quickly realised that that is now a priority. That can be used for the money for this and for that trust to continue to use the money, because at the end of the day, we are helping the most vulnerable people in our society. Thank you for that, line. Anna, perhaps? Thank you to Ryan for saying the thing that I was thinking about. Given Ryan has said all that, I will say something about focusing on success and outcomes. The fear of failure is a big factor for public authorities, especially. The fear of being hauled up in front of whether it is a daily record, whether it is indeed the Public Order Committee, or that sense of being cooled up for a procedural infringement can really get in the way, so that risk averseness, if we could be more enabling and trusting and see it as a collective effort. Rather than focusing on individual targets and really seeing that collective effort to outcomes, that would make a big difference. That is great. Anna, thank you for that. Bippa, perhaps? Yes. To change our systems, we continue to hear from people who are less seldom heard, so that might mean more to participators and mobsy, for example. I think to really support the development of performance management systems that enact the raison d'etro of the national performance framework. That is well-being for all, so that means holistic management, holistic funding and performance management systems that support real partnership working and devolution of power to local communities. I think that one of the main things for me is to learn from the emergency that we have lived through over the past. To apply that to the on-going emergency that is in our community of poverty and inequality. If we do not learn from how we have responded to that and apply that to the on-going emergency, we will be failing. Thanks, David. Do you have a final key ask from yourself? Stop looking for new things, fund things that already exist and continue long-term support, but more fundamentally, and this is maybe something for the MSPs, prioritise the places that really need the funding. There are communities that really need it. There are communities that want it and are really loud about wanting it. Within your constituencies, you will have both. It is quite difficult for you because you are representing both communities to support the ones that need it most. For some people to accept that they are currently not going to be the beneficiary of public funding in the short term when there are people with much more fundamental needs that they have met. Prioritisation is something that I would strongly advocate in long-term funding. Thanks very much indeed, and I would certainly echo loudly Ewan's final comments there. I really want to thank each of the panellists for your contributions this morning. It has both been instructive and insightful and has given us lots to think over about what we can do as the Public Audit Committee of the Scottish Parliament in ensuring that the harsh lessons that we have been forced to learn because of circumstances beyond our control are ones that are embedded into our public institutions, including in this Parliament, but also find a ready echo in the communities that you all serve and that we seek to serve as well. I am going to have to draw the session to a close. I do want to emphasise to those people who have been kind enough to join us this morning. If there are further things that you want to get across that you have not had time because of the time pressures this morning, please do not hesitate to put in a written submission. It does not have to be an omnibus piece of work. It can be short, sharp and pithy, but if there are points that you have not felt you have had the opportunity to raise or on reflection from this morning's session, you think are important for us to consider, then please put something in writing to us and we will consider that in our deliberations. Once again, thanks to all of you online, thanks to the Auditor General for joining us in the committee room this morning and I now draw the public part of today's committee meeting to a close.