 Thank you very much, everybody, for coming along today. On behalf of Disability, Equality Scotland and the MSPs, I would like to welcome you to the Scottish Parliament. I would also like to take this opportunity right at the very beginning to pay thanks to the Scottish Parliament events team for the fantastic support that they have given us throughout this process. It really has been amazing. As well as the broadcasting team, we have been able to ensure that disabled people up and down Scotland can take part today, even though they are not here. Lastly, to Monica Lennon and MSP as well. Thank you very much. This event is off the back of our access panel conference from last year, where Monica gave the keynote address. With us running out of time on that day, we decided to hold a follow-up event today, and this is it. Today is about you. It is an opportunity for access panels to ask the questions that they have been looking to ask for a long time. We are very privileged to be here today, but time is limited, unfortunately. We only have an hour and 15 minutes—an hour and 10 minutes now, actually. I would ask that everyone remains conscious of this fact and that we do not speak over each other and that we do not go off on a tangent. We are at access panel conferences and we like to discuss the wider issues, but today is meant to be very focused as possible. As far as I am aware, there is not a fire alarm planned for today. If the alarm goes off, there will be Scottish Parliament events team on hand to escort us out of the building. Everybody should have a briefing paper in front of them in their little pink folders. It contains some background information about disability equality Scotland, as well as all the questions that have been submitted for today. As I said previously, we are limited for time. I will do my best to make sure that we get through as many questions as possible. If we do run out of time, I am sure that members will be happy to take up any further questions that you have at a later date. Our plan is to create a final summary document after today, summarising all the points that were raised, and that will be emailed out to everybody. Our first topic today will be transport, and we will be going to the Ross and Cromity access panel, Sheila and Jonah, down there at the end, for question number one, please. Do I have to push this? No, no, you are live. My question is about accessible public transport, because it is essential to enable people to participate in an active life, and that includes participating in the access panels. Highland coaches are used in many of our local bus services. They comply with regulations that state that they are wheelchair accessible, but because they have several steps at the entrance, they cannot be used by many people who have mobility issues. What measures is the Scottish Government taking to ensure that all people in Scotland have access to accessible and affordable public transport? That is a really interesting question. We hear about a lot across our events that we hold, our accessible travel events especially. Do any access panel members or MSPs have any ideas around how accessible travel in Scotland can be made easier for disabled people? I am keen to open that up to access panels rather than having me sit here and talk away for the next hour or this is all about it. Yes, Charles Lister down there. Right, Charles Lister from Disabilities 5. We came over today, we parked the car at the parking ride in the Keven ferry toll. Very fortunately, the bus we got on was a next 55, it was a coach. Dave designed the coach so that the first level of the coach is lower down, but the other bit of the coach at the back is higher up. Stagecoach designed that particular coach for themselves to introduce all those services. How would you suggest that for busses that all the other coach companies follow that example? We also hear a lot around rural routes where ordinary buses that you might see in Glasgow or Edinburgh are not used and they tend to use more coach-like vehicles. This has been a real issue that we know for disabled people in terms of being able to get wheelchairs on board or even those with mobility issues that do not necessarily use a wheelchair. Does anybody else have any other thoughts on this, anything that you would like to input? Arthur Carey. Ian, as you are well aware, we held a meeting in this building last year about accessible legislation and all the operators and politicians at the moment hide behind the legislation. It is a legislation that we need reviewed and changed. It is not only on vehicles, it is the infrastructure for transport facilities, hotels as well. Many times we will have members travelling to stay overnight. The room that is shown has been accessible once they book in and most certainly has not. It is the whole legislation that we need to review. Until we do that, the operators and elected members will still hide behind the current legislation. You made an interesting and important point. One of the issues that we have at the moment is that we have a transport bill going through the Scottish Parliament just in stage 1. I have had a number of discussions with different charities and I would be interested to get a bit more from yourself and others about what we can do at the transport bill. Both are at a high level, so policy is right, but also at a practical level. I do recognise that there is greater difficulties for those who live within rural and have court services compared with those who live within the central belt of Scotland. I will be very happy for you and others about the whole issue of transport, to feed in practical suggestions that we can look at in regard to putting into the transport bill. This is one of the issues where we can try to get cross-party support, where we can work, hopefully, with other parties to get things within legislation, which will then deflect—I think that it is right to feel the comment that you make—that politicians just say, we cannot do anything because the legislation says that. This is our opportunity in Scotland to have a look at the transport bill and see what can be done to make life easier for those with disabilities. Without repeating that through every question, please do come back to me and to Monica and others, Michelle and others who are here today, with practical suggestions around the transport bill. I am certainly happy to work with others from other parties on that to see what we can get down. I am Michelle Ballantyne. I am almost one of the MSPs. Can I just pick up on something that you said about hotel access? You said that when people book and they arrive there thinking that it is going to be accessible and then it isn't. What are the kind of things that are not accessible? Quite often they cannot access the shower because there will be a lip on the shower for the bowl. Sockets for things like kettles are quite often in below a desk, and it is things like that. There are some hotels that have deep shag carpets, which means that a wheelchair finds it very difficult to negotiate. It is on doorway. That should all be covered in building standards, being honest. Too often architects, designers and everything else will work to the regulations, but they will work to the minimum standard because they are doing the client's brief trying to keep costs down, whereas they should be looking to build best practice where we could be using that facility for the next 40 years. The wheelchairs have got bigger, increased massively over the last 10 years, and we can only expect them to continue going that way. I am going to move on to question 2. We are so pressed for time and I know it's... Collette, do you have a point? I just wanted to say the accessibility for the likes of hotels and infrastructure. A lot of the time we are talking about wheelchair accessibility and mobility accessibility, but there are also things like visual impairment and other sensory impairments such as even this building or new builds. A lot of it is to do with the lighting that is poor and inadequate for visual impaired people, colour contrasting, signages that are totally unacceptable for visual impaired or blind users, but the colour contrasting is a major factor to people that have visual impairment, but then you have the sound acoustics for people that have sensory impairments such as people that are on the autistic spectrum. So when we talk about accessibility, we are really going to have to start thinking about overall that it is not just mobility or wheelchair users. There are so many different issues to do with accessibility that we are really going to have to start bringing that into regulation standards for all buildings now. Just quickly, lastly, more on books. Absolutely. I completely agree and thank for the support in any private members' bills and the support with any current bills that are going through to improve the legislation on accessibility. Just to sum up or to summarise, for the last year we received a grant from the big lottery to take forward a feasibility study to look at investing in access quality standards. Now we know that this does not change legislation, but what we want to do, the feasibility study and the findings from this study does tell us that premises out there and employers do need further education and the awareness of accessibility does need to be raised amongst them. Now investing in people, investing in volunteer standards works, so why not have an investment in access standard that, again, it is raising that awareness and it is encouraging and it is offering an incentive for premises, hotels, employers to actually think about their accessibility for visitors, guests, employers, employees rather. We are currently going through that stage at the moment. It will probably be another year or so if I am being honest and realistic and when those standards will be actually developed. Depending on funding as well, that is a huge issue as well. Again, any support that we can get from MSPs on tackling accessibility in legislations and bills would be most welcome. I will take us on to question 2. Before I do quickly, I would just like to mention that we have Scotland's first youth access panel with us today from Alvaro Academy. We have two of the students sitting down in the front. This is something that we have been working on with the young people from Alvaro Academy for the past year or so and we have just managed to get the access panel off the ground so that they are here today to take part and listen in on the discussion as well. Question 2, centre of inclusive living, Perth and Kinross. We will go over to Gillian. Our question was along similar lines, but regarding trains and how we can make an impact at a national level on trains, a lot of it was that there were some kind of simple solutions that came up there in terms of the booking process, access to trains on day, ramps and signage, staff awareness, that sort of thing, but even simple changes seem to be quite difficult to make and how we go about trying to do that. Does anybody want to add to that? Hi, Alex from Falkirk Access panel. We had a meeting last month on transport and we had the bus company, taxi company, leader of the council, all the councillors there and Egmore rail were the only ones that failed to turn up. I think that's across the board that they're not interested. We were asking them as well about ramps and about stations, but we got nothing back from them. Obviously we're aware that the rail infrastructure in this country, a lot of it is Victorian and it's suitability for not just disabled people, for regular travellers from day to day. We see that with trains and station infrastructure can be extremely difficult to navigate. So what suggestions do access panels have possibly in terms of if this were to be fed back to Network Rail and Transport Scotland? What suggestions? Linda, sorry. Hi, I'm not sure what happened here for answering this question. I'm the convener of Disability Quality Scotland. I'm also the convener of the Mobility and Access Committee for Scotland, who is a public body that offers advice to Scottish ministers on accessible transport for disabled people. What we have found with MACS and what we've really been pushing for is good disability awareness training and for that to be developed with and delivered by disabled people. If we get the training right for the front-facing staff, for the customer-facing staff, then that will assist with a lot of the issues that are there. There are some other things under the rail accessibility fund and I'm aware that some of it is still reserved, but we are questioning the criteria for accessibility just now because accessibility has been deemed in the stations being step-free and there's a lot more than just step-free to a station being accessibility, such as wayfinding, lighting and acoustics. We are actively pushing to get the accessibility criteria changed to include some of the other factors over a range of disabilities. The key thing is training the staff. If we get disabled people to design the training or what they need and how they need to help, what works for them, what makes them confident to travel and if we get disabled people involved in delivering that training to the staff, then I think that will make quite an inroads into it. About 18 months ago, I attended the launch of the Accessible Travel Framework. I think it was September 2017 and it was launched by the then Transport Minister. I'm just wondering whether I'm right to be disappointed that these questions are still coming up in isolation from the framework. Aren't they things that should have been covered by the framework? That's the first point. The second point I'd like to make is that in the Edinburgh Paddle, we're consulted by Network Rail, Scott Rail very frequently. They keep us very busy, especially about passenger assistance. We took part in a very big consultation a few months ago run by the Office of Road and Rail, the OOR, I don't know whether anybody else replied to that one, but that's symptomatic. That's fairly typical of the sort of heavy-duty consultations that we find they're doing. So whether they're just coming to us and not to the other panels in different geographies, I don't know, but we are being consulted in a very sort of enthusiastic way by Network Rail and the other rail authorities. It could well be that some panels are possibly not being consulted as much by Network Rail or Scott Rail, and that's possibly something for us to take forward in terms of engagement training and working out who all the regional contacts are for a panel. I know that we do have a regional community contacts list, but that probably needs to be updated. That's a good point, Robin. One last point, Arthur. I'm equally as disappointed as Robin, because the 156 is running on the West Highland line from Queen Street to Malig. A journey of five and a half hours were never accessible, even though they were listed as being accessible. In the last six months, Network Rail Transport Scotland has introduced refurbish sets, which took us back 50 years on accessibility. They're shocking. Linda is aware that I had a meeting with Transport Scotland last week about this very subject. To go back to the very first point I made, Scott Rail just hid behind and Transport Scotland. They meet the act of 1998. We were never consulted. Up until those trains were introduced, I was the chairman of the Scottish Accessible Transport Alliance. After the introduction of those, I had to resign, because I could not honestly sit round a table with them and speak about improvements when they go and do that. Are those the trains with the doors where you have to put your hand out of the window and open the door on the other side? To open the doors, they're still pushpads, but they used to be the size of that coffee cup. Now they're the size of 50 Ben's piece. They are shopping. They've taken this backwards. I'll just bring Robin in. I forgot to introduce myself when I first started talking, so I'm Marvin Brookeson and I'm the CEO from Disability Quality Scotland. With the answer to your first question, Robin, the Accessible Travel Framework is a 10-year plan. It probably does feel like slow progress or no progress, but progress is being made in the background. I can only provide assurances that from Disability Quality Scotland, where we receive funding from Transport Scotland, we are meeting all our objectives with the framework. They continue to take place. As you can understand a lot of the work that we have to talk about, it takes a lot of planning to take place before that implementation starts to feed down and you start seeing changes with any sort of project plan that that happens. I can only provide assurances from our point that we are working in the background to take those issues forward. We've recently joined the ScotRail stakeholder equality group and Emma Scott, my colleague, has co-chairs that group now. We've got a big opportunity to work with Access panels to make sure that their voice is heard on this group. Please contact us as well as MSPs in the room here today. Their support and any time that they come across the opportunity for engagement with ScotRail Network, any transport operator, support on working together, essentially. That's what we're asking everybody to do in this room today. Start working together to start making these changes happen and start getting our voices heard. Our voices are being heard, but we actually need to come up with practical solutions, as Jeremy said. We do actually need to propose what those practical solutions are. Nobody around the table are all going to agree them all at once, but we have to start thinking about what are the practical elements in making these changes and actually make those suggestions. Yes, the issues are there. We can go on about those issues long enough, but we actually have to start saying what has to change and to make that happen. That's where we're at with that just now. That brings us on to question 3, which is from the Tweeddale access panel. Hello, hi. Good afternoon. I'm Frank Drummond. I'm the Secretary of Tweeddale access panel, and our question relates to planning. I'll read out the question and then tell you the reasoning behind it. Until such time as panels are sufficiently trained and resourced to become statutory consultees in relation to all planning applications, might they be made statutory consultees in relation to any planning applications where it becomes apparent in the course of the application process that the proposals appear to have an adverse impact on disabled people residing in the neighbourhood. This question arises as a result of a planning application by a housing association in Pables to build six flats on a garage site in parking area, which belongs to the association. The parking area is bounded on one side by a small development of six houses occupied by elderly and disabled people. These houses are surrounded by other houses on three sides. There's a pavement in front of them, then there's a parking area, then there's the garage site. Of these six houses, four householders are car owners. There are ten blue badge holders. Four car owners are blue badge holders, and six others residing with them are blue badge holders. At the moment, they are able to park on this parking area outside their houses. The development proposed by the Housing Association will put back the people who park their cars at the moment in the houses. The parking being provided for the new development and the existing householders will be on the far side of the flats from the current parking area. The nearest householder to the new proposed parking area, the distance front door to the nearest disabled space is 35 metres, and the furthest away one will be about twice that distance. The reason that the panel has put forward this question is that the application was lodged on 2 July. The first objection relating to disability and mentioning blue badge holders was lodged on 31 July. Another one on 3 August. The Community Council also raised disabled issues on 3 August. Another one on 28 August. Another one on 30 October. Our panel maybe says something about our profile in the area, although we are known to the Community Council and the local authority. Only came to know of this issue. I am casually by chance as a result of a social engagement of a member over the Christmas holiday period when one of the tenants was present and the issue was raised. Then the panel got involved. The panel has since lodged an objection to the planning application. The Housing Association has been in touch and they say that they want to reach a solution that will satisfy their current tenants as well as their new tenants and will hope to improve the parking situation for them. Whatever the result of the application, the fact remains that this has been on the go for more than six months already. It would have been quite possible for this to have slipped through without the panel having heard anything about it. Monica Lennon wants to come in here. I am itching to say something, Frank, but everyone who has come along is a pleasure to be hosting the event. There are a number of MSPs here. We have Jackie Baillie, Michelle Ballantyne and Jeremy Balfour, who have heard from Mark McDonald and Maurice Corry from across different parts of Scotland. In going back to the earlier questions, which were about transport, but led us into building standards as well, planning is really important. We have to get it right at the very beginning. Once you get to the planning application stage, if you do not have the right policy framework and the right principles in place, you are going to get it wrong for people and especially for people with disabilities. I think that your example is a really good illustration of why we need to get it right with the planning bill that is working its way through Parliament at the moment. I will be honest and I can speak for my party, Scottish Labour, on this issue. The planning bill is a disappointment because it is just trying to refresh and update previous legislation, which was a bit of a refresh of the previous legislation. You end up knitting together a bill that does not really work. We have tried to step back and take a first principle approach. What is the purpose of planning? Why do we have a planning system? It should not be as difficult to navigate your way around it. If that application had been dealt with quickly, your contact at Christmas would have been completely cut off because it could have been dealt with a lot sooner. What we are trying to do is embed into the planning legislation because we cannot leave those things to guidance. People's rights, people's human rights have to be embedded into the system. We have to have good assessments of policy before they get into the plan so that we are not going to increase health inequalities and cut off people's opportunities to be part of their community, to be active in their community. In terms of a practical solution, because you are all experts in this room, we would want building standards officers to hear first hand your knowledge and expertise and experiences. That is why we proposed at stage 2 of the planning bill that disability access panels should be statutory consultees. We have gone even further and said that young people should have rights to be consulted. Most often, you get a neighbour notification, you might see a notice in the local paper, you might be on a community council where you are a statutory consultee, but young people tend not to be engaged in that way. We think that a lot of planning decisions do not have an immediate impact. They can have an impact for a very long time, and it is young people who are friends here at the academy who have to grow up and live with the consequences. I see that as someone who is still a paid-up member of the Royal Town Planning Institute. Planers have to let go a little bit and let people into the system, because that is how we are going to get better decisions. Hopefully, and our amendment did pass at stage 2, but with cross-party support, we will get that on at stage 3. In the meantime, if people have examples like the one that Frank's outlined, you can tell your local MSPs to let us know about it, and that will make it easier for us at stage 3 on the planning bill to try to get the far-reaching changes that we need, and a bit about young people as well. I think that that did get across part of support, but we just need to make sure that at stage 3 that we get all these things into the bill. I am going to echo a lot of what Monica has just said, because to be honest, the planning bill is a bit of a mess at the moment, but there are potentially some important things in there, and we certainly will be supporting getting those through. Speaking of somebody who used to be on the planning committee for the Tweeddale area, one of the important things is that we do get well informed. Planning committee members often have quite a small amount of time to make decisions on planning issues. Certainly, speaking from myself and my own colleagues, we did used to read everything that went on there, particularly objections, so it is important that you do object to where there is a problem, but I absolutely agree. I think that there is a statutory consultation with people who know what they are talking about, and I know that there are several going through the borders at the moment that I have had issues with and I have written in about, and it is something that we really need to get a grip on. We really do not need to wait an axe here. I am from the Lochaber Disability Access panel, and a Highland region planning office sends us the weekly list of every planning application that is submitted to them, and we go through it. I am really disappointed that you had to hear about that. If you contact your planning office in your region and say that we want a copy of the list, they should provide it with you. We do not have to wait an axe. For Disability Equality Scotland, that is fantastic. Some access panels have that resource where they will be able to get in touch with their local planning officer, receive plans on a regular basis. Obviously, not all access panels are identical and not all are up to the standard that the Lochaber Access panel is. For us, it is about embedding access panels within a statutory framework and allowing them the opportunity to influence without having access as a tick box, as a, oh, we haven't asked the access panel, we better go and ask them just in case, you know that sort of thing. I am going to bring in Isabella and then I'll come back to you, Michelle, thank you. Isabella Gorska from Stirling area access panel. We are actually recognised consultees along with the community council, with our local planning department. We've done it for a number of years and we actually find it does not work. Why doesn't it work? Simply because planning is a public forum. The next stage where a lot of the finer details on access issues is at building control level. That is private. We are allowed no access to that and that's where it falls down. We've currently changed our agreement with the council and we're now involved with the architects at a pre-planning stage, which is actually having a lot more success. Also, whenever a planning application is put in, it says on our council website that they have to engage with Stirling area access panel, they have to do an access statement. That gives us a bit of comfort, but it's not enough. Why? You've got planning for new builds, you've got planning for change of use of buildings. Where you have change of use of building, they come under, as all planning does, the equality 2010 act. We do not have enough case law to support the equality act. I can give an example in the Stirling area that a change of use of building for a rape crisis centre. Disabled people could not get into the building because of steps, the toilets were upstairs, all the meeting rooms were upstairs, but that was passed. Why? Because under the equality 2010 act, they made reasonable adjustment. They could go and see somebody in their own home. That was deemed acceptable. What I would put to you is that with any building, you need to have human rights being adhered to. The basic human right for any individual to be able to enter a building, unaided and without asking for assistance. By that, you don't need to ring a doorbell, you don't need to have a ramp brought out to you to allow you to enter that building. You should be able to enter it without having any assistance whatsoever. That would maintain independence and dignity, but it needs to be throughout the whole building that people can navigate through a building without having to ask for assistance. We are just not saying that. It is a very sad fact that we have now got case law on first bus with wheelchair users. We have another one coming up with Fry's law with changing places, but until we get proper case law where we see the equality act being enforced, I don't think that we are going to see much change in planning. Thank you. Thank you very much, Isabelle. Just back to Michelle Ballantyne. It has been covered because I was going to say that it is not always at that first point. The planning department operates slightly differently, and you need quite a large resource to be going through every planning application to decide whether you need to consult. I think that there needs to be a targeted notification, otherwise you are going to drown in paperwork. At the moment, it is on the owners of the access panel to go looking for those plans, whereas the statutory consultee status would shift it back to the local authority and it would be up to them to come to the access panel. Quickly bring in John Leddingham, and then we will move on to the next question. John Leddingham is an access panel co-ordinator for Aberdeenshire Council. The four access panels in Aberdeenshire will make contact with me on a monthly basis to say how many applications they want to review. I will download the plans and take them along to their meeting on a monthly basis. For this year, we have reviewed over 70 planning applications and have sent back over 35 letters to architects. That is really where you work. It is a fantastic resource that the Aberdeenshire Council has with you. We are moving on to question 4. We are going to be talking about accessible toilets. We are going back to the Centre for Inclusive Living, Perth and Gynros. That was just about changing place toilets from what a good resource they are. We have a lot of events in Perth that the events team are trying to make as accessible as possible. They are getting people into the town, but a lot of people will not come because there are not the toilet facilities for them. It is how we get that in the legislation, in the planning to encourage people to put changing place toilets in and not just smaller accessible toilets. Jeremy Balfour. I think that there has definitely been, even in the last 12 months, a massive move around this. I wrote to 20 of the large areas such as the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh and Zew, places like that. I was expecting a fairly negative response, but the response has been so far very positive. The Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh has now said that when we do the next development, which has now just gone into planning, it will have a change in place toilet. The Gael shopping centre is now going to be put in one in. There has been movement. The other thing, and I was grateful for the cross-party support from all parties on this, is that within the new planning bill there is an amendment down that says any new development over a certain size, whether that is a football stadium or a leisure centre or anything like that, will have to have a change in place toilet within it. That will obviously take time to work through, but I think that it is important that both the Scottish Government and all the other parties have at least signed up to that course of direction. I think that the one thing that we probably just need to think through, meeting with change in place toilets that we were in the Parliament a couple of weeks ago, is how many do we need per area. I think that we don't need one in every department store, and actually they would say that that would be almost counterproductive. I think that we do need a bit of more strategic thinking, but on rural areas that's harder, but of where do we put these toilets and how do we make sure they open 24-7 as well, which is, again, within a King Mawson person area, quite a big issue. I mean, I think that the final thing is, and again, I've been pleased, I did a local article for the local paper here in Edinburgh on access day, which is happening on Saturday, that there is an issue around the purple pound, that if this is not just being kind to disabled people, you can use that patronising language, there is economic benefit. Glasgow shopping centre has particularly shown that if you live in central Scotland, people with disabilities and older people are going to Glasgow, not Edinburgh, because there's far more change in place toilets. I do think that there's an economic argument to have as well to say that if you want people to come to your venue etc, you need to have this, but I think it's a great question. Would anybody else like to come in on that? I'll bring in Linda, I'll bring in Monica. Thanks, Linda Bamford. Just to say as well, with the accessible travel framework, one of the pushes that are coming from the framework and the work of the team there is that with the main or all where we can, the transport term and I, that when they've been refurbished or if there's room that's changing place toilets go in there as well, and there's quite a big push for that as well. But just picking up on one of the other things that Jeremy said, one of the struggles we have progressing things is good research and information. We get research and information about low income, about various categories, but when we actually try to drill down to things like the travel patterns of disabled people, the number of disabled people that we'd want to but can't use public transport, we always seem to come up against this block that we don't have enough good data and enough good research on that, so I suppose my plea would be that we need improved, to be collect and improve data and research and the needs of disabled people and where the barriers are for them living independent lives. Thank you. Monica Lennon. Thank you. Again, it's a really important question and I think we have made good progress with the Scottish Government and Kevin Stewart, who's leading on the planning bill. I know he was really receptive to both Jeremy and my own colleague Mary Fee on the West of Scotland, and as a result of their amendments, we'll see change in place toilets in places like stadiums and motorway service stations, museums, but I think more widely we do have a problem in Scotland with access to public toilets. Public toilets are like an endangered species, they're disappearing, I've seen it in my own area, we have some councils now in Scotland who have no public toilets, so when we look at the cuts to council budgets, public toilets have not been given priority when councils are having to make difficult choices. I know there's been some hope in some areas like the Highlands and perhaps in Edinburgh that if the tourist tax is brought in those areas, that could be a source of revenue to start to put back basic facilities like public toilets, which clearly are important for everyone, particularly people with disabilities, but if we want Scotland to be attractive to visitors and to have a buoyant tourist industry, we really need that to happen. Again, I'm quite obsessive about toilets because I do a lot of campaigning around period poverty and access to period products and spending a lot of time looking at toilets and what they have and what they don't have, but in Edinburgh Waverly, as many of you will know, you currently have to pay and there's a barrier you have to get through and it's 30 pence or 40 pence. I can never remember because it's a different price in Glasgow. I wrote to Network Rail about the cost of their sanitary products because it's £3 to buy two or three tampons, which is ridiculous, and you have to pay to get in and go to the toilet as well. They committed to remove those charges although they haven't done it yet because I was fighting to get a pound coin in their change machine last week and it kept spitting it out and there's a queue of people. For people who are desperately waiting to get into a toilet, if you haven't even messed about trying to get the right change to get in, it's really not good. I think that there's been some discussion, there's lots of cross-party groups in the Parliament particularly looking at different health conditions in biodiseas. My own mum, who's recently been recovering from biocancers, she had to have an operation and she had a stoma and she was waiting to get that reversed on the NHS and it took about 42 weeks, but she had to think constantly about toilets and the cleanliness of those toilets and the accessibility and having a mirror and so on. Those things are really, really important. Accessible toilets are not a nice thing to have. They're absolutely essential. I think that when we talk about cuts to councils, we talk about that in quite an abstract way. We're talking about people being stuck in their homes because they know if they go out to their local town centre they can't get to a toilet. So there's things that we're doing that are having some impact but we need to do much, much more. Last point, I'm just going to bring in Lucy MacDonald of Harris Access panel. Hi. I just want to put a point about the planning. When we get the planning applications, when a guest asks the plans that have already been formed, the problem we are discussing with architects is to make changes that those architects do not have that little to no training on access as part of their university degree course and is something that we've been trying to find out how that's happened. In terms of changing places of toilets, we've managed to get one into the new very terminal waiting room in Tarpa, but we missed the port and the new community centre in West Nall, Wyrrung Island. It's very rural. On the problem we have with the changing places was it was too late for them because of the extra flunking and cost to put in a changing places toilet. So if there was any way that you have small places to get some new communities to apply for funding to get new more changing places, we've got none in West Nall, a place in Tarpa will be the first one as far as we're aware, but the public will not have access to it outside of opening hours. We've got to ask that as well. That's a really common theme that we find across a lot of access panels is that when they're trying to engage with architects, if they're making changes to any plans or anything like that, architects have often overlooked the very fundamentals of accessibility when incorporating that into design. I'm going to move on to the next question. We are going to be looking at funding and support. I know that the Aberdeenshire panels have submitted a fantastic number of questions, but I am conscious of time. It's 10 to 2 already. I could possibly ask John if you could pick one that you think is the most salient for today and maybe on a topic that we've not covered yet. If I could ask you a little bit about the funding, can the Scottish Government promise to continue to commit to the access panel and support through funding, recognition of our skills and knowledge and providing technical support where needed? That relates to the access panel grant, which access panels currently receive from the Scottish Government. The fund at the moment stands at about £45,000, so that's a fund that is roughly equally split across all access panels in the region of about £1,000. It works at about £1,000 per panel. It can use that for things that will keep their access panel going in terms of expenses, room hire, phone costs, email, that sort of thing. It can use its access panel grant, which it claims from us as the upper body, and we reimburse it on receipts. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The history of the access panel grant has decreased over the last three years from the Scottish Government. The reason being that we have just under 40 access panels across Scotland. They all vary in the number of size of members that they have. They all vary in the capabilities that they have to take work forward and progress in that engagement. They all differ in shapes and sizes, essentially. What's happening is that there's been fewer and fewer access panels over the years applying for the access panel grant over the years. Obviously, when we report back to the Scottish Government, there's no need for that huge amount of money that was initially provided. Of course, it's our job to make sure that access panels are supported in that process, to make sure that they are applying for their access panel grant and how they should be spending it within their local communities and improving access. We have been successful with our next round of funding with section 10, where we are supporting the access panel network. This next year has now given us the opportunity to upskill the skills of the access panel network across Scotland. We have a training programme that we will be working on in the next few months. You will all be receiving communications around that training. What's important for us is that you are all well supported as the access panel members and the work that you do as the experts in your communities. We are here to support you doing that well and better as much as you can. By doing that, your activity and your membership is going to increase. I'm being positive about that. Of course, you will be applying for more money to improve access in your communities. There will be a demand and need to ask for more money, essentially, from the Scottish Government, to continue to support the access panel network. Of course, it's our role as the umbrella body for the access panel network to advocate the work that access panels do. We very much do that every single day of our daily lives. My plea to the MSPs in the room is to continue to support the network in that way. All of us coming together, I sound like I repeated record at times, but it's about us all working together. Any opportunities that come up, that get flagged up, we take them forward together. Does that help answer that? I'm delighted to hear about the funding situation and the commitment to training, because there's an urgent need for Aberdeen to have a fully effective functioning access panel. Given the changes that there are in infrastructure in Aberdeen City, we're really welcome that. We're going to move on to question 9 on the question paper, which is from Harris Access panel. Yes, we are set for real life on the island and we're just wondering if your additional funding could be made available for panels like ours to have additional costs you could cover. An example of this gift to this making today would cost our panel around 400 pounds. If we were to go to an additional main land, that would be our budget gone. There's also the issue that I need to have a care with me, so that means I can pay twice. So it's good. I do feel like it's not an understanding that this gift to an island panel of travelling to and from the main land, even within the island it's a walk. You get going when you're on the main land, you're on the off, you get to the main land, you can ferry or cure a flight. It costs a walk. I completely agree. Have the conversation with us. That's all I ask. Start this two-way communication between access panels as your umbrella body for the access panel network. There is a set budget there on a yearly basis from the Scottish Government, £45,000. We've got to split that across under 40 access panels. Again, access panels are not claiming nearly enough that we would have expected them to claim, and access panels are claiming more because their activities are more. Have the conversation with us because we will help to support accessibility as much as we can for any access panel. We are also working and trying to educate others, as well as ministers and MSPs on different ways of communicating as well. It's nice to see people face-to-face at coming to events like this. We have livestreamed this event today with the hope that we can try and get people more engaged in the work that we are doing with the opportunity to hopefully engage through Twitter. We are looking at that up after this today. Webinars is an area that we are going to look into going forward with a lot of our events. We do run a lot of events across our transport events, engagement events that we do, and general roadshow events that we do across Scotland. We do hear feedback that we are not getting across everywhere in Scotland. We are only six people in our organisation, and it's difficult to get across the whole of Scotland in one year. Every year, we try and map out different areas of Scotland that we have not been to. We all want our attention, we all want it now. We do try and split ourselves up quite evenly and give you the support that you greatly need. We also look at other ways of communicating through our BSL videos that we have been doing in partnership with Deaf Scotland. Easy read work to make sure that the information that we are communicating is accessible as well. Again, suggestions and working together tell us what you need. We'll do our best to provide that. Linda? It was just to come in in the back of what Morvan is saying. The Board of Disability Quality Scotland had quite a bit of discussion recently about revamping the communication strategy. This year's communication strategy is just about to be signed off and one of the underpinning actions to it is about using the opportunity from this year's access panel conference to focus the day on how we improve two-way communications and how we just get that dialogue going about how disability quality Scotland is the umbrella organisation that can support the access panels just now and moving forward in their growth. Thank you. Thank you very much. We have 15 minutes left and we have more than, I think, probably about five questions to go. First, I'll move on to Edinburgh access panel question number 11. After that, East Renfrewshire access panel question number 12 and then one of either question 13 or 14 I will leave that down to Arthur Carey to decide which one he wishes to choose. Just reminding everybody to keep discussions as brief as possible and we can get to the end of the questions in 15 minutes. Robin Wickes. Thanks very much, Ian. Taxi the question, because we've covered quite a lot of the question already. As Ian and Morvin said, our income has reduced. I reckon it's about 40% since 2017. As well as income reducing, though, let's think about costs in addition because costs are increasing. Taxi fares are increasing year by year. Our website fees have increased by more than 100% in the last two years. One is the income and the other is the cost that we need to manage. To be honest, it's becoming more and more of a challenge to manage the budget each year. I know in practice you often have money left over. I'm grateful for that at the end of the year but we can't assume, at least I don't think we can assume that that's always going to be the case. Can you answer this? We've had discussions on a number of occasions around things that the access panel can and can't apply for. There are very little things that access panels can't use their grant for in that sense. It's fundraising, political activities, that sort of thing. Like Morvin said, if there's something that you need, have that two-way conversation with us. I know you do, but to all access panels, if there's something that you've identified as a need for your panel, have that conversation with us, you're not going to bite your head off. Robin Wood says, we often have access panels that don't claim their grant so this will have a knock-on effect across the entire network because those panels that don't claim their grant will then mean that we have a reduced grant the following year. I'll bring Morvin in here. Just to remind you again to work collectively as a network, let us know if your costs are increasing and if you're struggling to manage that budget. As a collective, we could look at getting a special deal for a website provider, for example, to provide websites. We already do have that offering in place but if you're not aware of it or you were quite happy with using what you've got, talk to us again, that's what we're here for. Tell us what your issues are, what your problems are and we'll help you to go through that and go forward. That's what we're here for and again, going back to that whole two-way communication through our communication strategy, that's what we want to encourage. Again, by working collectively we come up with the solutions together. We're then communicating to MSPs and ministers what those solutions are and the practical solutions and it works for us all and at the end of the day we all want to improve accessibility in Scotland. I'll just bring in Charles Lister very quickly. Since the Equalities Act in Fife, our funding has dropped dramatically so Fife Council, for instance, cut us to zero. Our only Government funding then was coming from the Actress panel income and that's been dropping that's dropped down to £1,000. We are getting funding from other sources but it's a pain. It's a struggle and it's very difficult to actually continue and be sustainable because we aren't getting the income that we are used to and it's very difficult for disabled people to do some of the things that people who are able can do so we need funding to pay people to actually do work for us. So somebody should be really looking at that otherwise there could be no Actress panel in Fife and that might actually go all around the country so people need to put on the thinking caps of how we can be funded. Lastly Monica Lennon. Not to be too gloomy but in the outside world planning departments the act has fallen on name pretty sharply so in the last few years about a quarter of local authority planners including the national parks have gone, those jobs no longer exist and I think spending overall in those departments is down by just under a third so that's pretty serious and that means there's a lot of expertise and experience has gone as well I think that makes the work that you do in Actress panels even more important because ultimately it's about the outcomes it's not about plans and bits of paper and ticking boxes, it's about what are the outcomes for our communities so I think if we want to get better planning decisions we have to support and properly resource access panels now I'll leave the internal politics of who's claiming what to Ian and Mordvin and their team to sort out but what I would say is that attached to the planning bill is some extra money for planning but it's for something very specific and it's for local place plans now some of you in the room might think local place plans are a good idea I'm quite sceptical about them what I think we should be doing is investing in what we know works just now and we know that Access panels do work they're really important, they're really effective others have touched on the fact that we have professionals like architects, engineers, planners building standards people and others who all have a role in the planning system who get a little bit of training or like no training and maybe we've missed a trick today we should have invited some of those professional bodies to come and hear what we all have to say so we can do that, I'm sure, at a future date but it has to start in the lecture rooms when people are on site, when they're doing their training and their professional development but of course there's on-going continued professional development opportunities too so what I would say, you might want to look at the financial memorandum attached to the planning bill because I think there's about a million pounds there which would go towards local place plans which I think are actually going to get in the way of how we do development planning but let's make sure we've got community councils and access panels working together where they exist and that they're all properly resourced and that's why, I think you've been quite clever about this, if you get statutory recognition then there should be resources that follow with that Thanks very much Monica Okay question 12 is from East Renfrewshire access panel, Collette Walker Do you want me to read it out Collette or UK reading out? Go on East Renfrewshire access panel is a fairly new panel that launched in November What I'm wanting to know is how can we ensure that access panels are being consulted fully by council and private developers so that all indoor and outdoor spaces are consulted on from the get-go because I have spoken to quite a lot of architects and engineers at different meetings and even local councillors and they actually don't even know what an access panel is so that's quite worrying to me that they're maybe looking at building regulation standards and they're thinking they're ticking a box but then when we come forward and we say that's completely inaccessible and they don't understand the reasons why but they don't even know what an access panel is so is there anything that MSPs can do to ensure that there's legislation there that access panels are completely affiliated and they know what an access panel is through the building regulation standards? Possibly, yeah. I mean this is probably something for disability equality Scotland to take forward when with our role as the umbrella body in terms of awareness raising for access panels across Scotland Exactly how we do that will be I suppose a consultative process with the access panels you know we're not going to make a decision and run with it without talking to the access panels first especially if it's an awareness raising campaign for the access panels we would want to make sure that it's you know anything for the access panels involves them too two minutes in terms of this question does anybody have any ideas with regard to... I would say that one of the things that access panels themselves could do is to invite their local politicians to come and meet them and speak to them whether that's local elected councillors who have specific remits or whether that's MSPs and MPs in order to make them aware that you're there the issues that you're raising and how we as politicians can best work together with you to raise your concerns at a local level so that you become essentially the go-to people that's coming up in the time period between just now and hopefully access panels becoming statutory consultees although that would apply to planning it wouldn't necessarily apply to other areas that politicians are aware that they can make contact with you and say what are your thoughts in relation to this are you aware of this change that we're considering what would be your views I can then feed them into the process so I think that's a proactive step because if you don't think your local politicians know who you are or what you're about write to them and let them know and invite them to come and meet you you might not get 100% uptake but you'll at least get some politicians who will come and see you and who will then be able to be your advocates within the local authority within the parliaments in order to advance the points that you want to raise OK, so we have five minutes left one question to go for the carver access panel but it might be interesting if we hear about the egress from a building we've heard a lot because that is the most important in regard of safety as Isabel said earlier there is access statements should be provided with every planning application sadly that's not the case but egress is never included in a planning access statement now that should we think should be a mandatory requirement because emergency evacuation out of a building is equally as important is getting into the building in fact I would say it's more important and we've also got to take into consideration your lifts because there's conflict and information regarding lifts some people say don't lose a lift in the case of a fire but I know you use a lift and it's down to the proprietor of the building now to provide his evacuation strategy so that should be included in the planning application thank you OK does anybody else have any thoughts about egress from a building As well I thank you I think you've raised an extremely important point here because whenever we go out to have a look around buildings the first thing we always ask for is the emergency evacuation plan and it's quite amazing how many buildings will flap about and you're lucky if you actually get it they may well have one but people don't actually know where it's located so I think safety on exit is not important and I think you've raised an extremely important thing that should be in planning does anybody else maybe bring in one last speaker before we close can I just say I don't know if anyone from the Government was invited to speak I know everyone's got busy diaries but a number of the MSPs have been here today I know some have had to leave now but I'm sure we've all been taking notes and what we can do if we don't know the exact answers we can submit written parliamentary questions to the minister and in our own areas we can contact the local authority so I represent Central Scotland and that covers North Lanarkshire South Lanarkshire and Falkirk so we can take these issues up locally as well I don't want anyone to leave today thinking you didn't get an answer to your question or that's the end of it as I say there's a number of MSPs here but we'll speak to colleagues and if there's things that you want MSPs to raise we can do that because much of what we've talked about today here is not party political we have to work on a cross-party basis and that's why we've talked about Jeremy and Mary having amendments that were quite similar that's the kind of stuff where we get the business done in the Parliament because it's a Parliament of minorities and I think today has been really useful but I wanted to make that point thanks OK, so if anybody doesn't have any more questions I think that brings us to the end of all the businesses that were submitted by Access Panels and we've managed to finish two minutes just ahead of schedule so that was great thank you very much to everybody for attending today I hope you found it useful if you did, let us know your thoughts if you didn't, let us know so that we can do better next time but we're never perfect we're always aiming to do better another Access Panel Conference this year this obviously isn't the Access Panel Conference there will be the ordinary Access Panel Conference so if any MSPs are interested in attending you're more than welcome to come along again I hope he means it Monica was there last year and it was thoroughly enjoyable so thank you very much again for everybody coming along thank you to Alva Academy for taking time out of the school today thank you to the broadcasting team thank you to the events team at the Parliament thank you