 Welcome to the 32nd meeting of the local government housing and planning committee in 2022. Mark Griffin and Annie Wells join us remotely today. I remind all members and witnesses to ensure that their devices are on silent, and that all other notifications are turned off during the meeting. Yn ymgyrch ymgyrch aethau yn gweithio i wnaeth i maes ym 3, 4, 5 yn ymgyrch, rwy'n amser am gweithio'n gweithwyr. Ymgyrch gyda i. Rydw i'n gweithio i gydig i'r ymgyrch aethau, felly mae'n gweithio gwybod a goldimud ar gyfer rydwg. Rydw i'n gweithio i gael gwellwch gweithwyr ar gweithwyr. Yn gweithwyr ymgyrch, rydw i amser yn gallu cofliadau Sefmacholi Oeddiei, Collie, leader of North Ayrshire Council, Alex Nicoll, co-leader of Aberdeen City Council and James Stockin, leader of Orkney Islands Council. We are joined in the room by Councillor Ewan Jardin, leader of the Scottish Borders Council and Councillor David Ross, leader of Fife Council. I welcome our witnesses to the meeting. Many members will direct their questions to specific witnesses where possible, but if anyone else wishes to come in, please indicate your desire to do so to the clerks and for those of you participating remotely, you can do this by typing anar in the chat box in blue jeans. I would like to begin, and I am going to direct this question, this kind of a question to set the foundation of our conversation, so I will direct it to all of you. Thinking broadly about the current challenges facing local government, I'd be interested in hearing about some of the biggest challenges your local authority is facing and what you would like to see in this week's budget to help to address them and improve outcomes in your local areas. I might start with somebody who is in the room and then go to the folks online. David Ross, would you like to? You were looking like you were ready to go for it. I was hoping that you would avoid me. Just to kick off, I think that the obvious concerns are about funding and certainty and sustainability of funding. I think that our three top priorities in Fife are tackling poverty, supporting the local economy and addressing climate change. Those are obviously all affected, have been affected by the pandemic and now by the cost of living crisis, so we are having to continue to put support in place for our communities as we did over the pandemic. The funding issue is probably the key one. In the context of the discussion today, issues are around funding sustainability. We have certainty and sustainability to continue providing services and to meet new and emerging needs, which has not been the case for a number of years now. We are removing the ring fencing and the direction that we have in that regard. The other big challenge that we have is recruitment and retention in a range of areas. I am sure that we will get into it in more depth about the uncertainty and the national care service and obviously winter pressures on health and social care immediately, but the longer term future will be about that. I will stop there and let others in. Thanks very much for going first. Clearly, those issues are on our minds as well. I will move to someone online. Sean Macaulay, would you like to come in to tell us about the biggest challenges and what you would like to see in this week's budget to help address them? I imagine that they are pretty similar to what all witnesses here are going to say. That is financial uncertainty and is the biggest concern for us. It is almost like a perfect form for this budget, because there is huge rising demand and a big challenge in financial outlook. From this budget, on Thursday, we will be looking for funding to support the priorities of North Ayrshire, so ours is pretty similar to other people's, which is poverty, climate change and local democracy. We will be looking for a budget that would support us locally to meet the needs. The review has been delayed, but it is quite timely, given the situation that we are in just now and how we are all thinking about what local government is and what we will be looking for is increased financial flexibilities from the Government to allow us to meet our local needs. We would be open for a discussion. I know that the Deputy First Minister has indicated that he is willing to listen to local authorities on that, and we have certainly been in a dialogue with him surrounding some of the ideas that we might have surrounding that. I think that that is what I will be looking for on Thursday, and hopefully we can get into a bit more of the detail in that as the discussion moves on this morning. Thanks very much for that, Sean. I am going to bring in Alex Nicholl and Alex. Add new things if there are new ones, but don't feel all—go ahead. What are the challenges and what would you like to see in the budget? All the witnesses this morning are going to answer this question in an extremely similar way, because ultimately it is going to come down to budgets and the impact that it is going to have on local councils. We all agree that it is probably quite helpful to have a road map in terms of what local government financing is going to be, but unfortunately we have hit, as Councillor Macaulay pointed out, the perfect storm, where we have seen rocketing inflation, a huge increase in demand for our services, and at the time when we are actually facing real-term reductions in our funding. As councils, we all probably have very similar priorities. I think that everybody on this call will put poverty, climate change and their local economy very highly up a list of services that we need to be providing, but I do think that the actual cash crisis that we face is absolutely huge. It is at a time when councils have faced Covid. We have come into our recovery period, but we have then encountered an economic set of circumstances that we simply cannot deal with in terms of our reserves and other policies that we have in place normally. I think that the big challenge is going to be how we help local government to deliver on all the policies and procedures that we want to see in our country. I am just out of curiosity, so your priorities locally are climate poverty and I think that the local economy, obviously the north-east of Scotland, has a very energy-based economy, and that obviously impacts hugely on how we actually fit into the national economy, because obviously energy is a key factor in driving forward growth. I am going to go to Councillor James Stockin. Good morning, and thank you for giving us a chance to give some evidence from the far north. We have two of the top-risk, son-of-risk, register, but funnily enough the financial package that we get from government is only number two. Number one is the other risk that we have, and it is the sustainability of our ferry fleet. For us to replace our ferry fleet with new ferries and infrastructure, we are speaking about four times our budget, over £400 million. It is absolutely critical, because our internal ferry service is older on average than Calmax ferry service and vessels are getting holes in the bottom and they are becoming unsafe. Our biggest request to the Government this year is to start and give us a mortgage payment over the next 30 years to replace those ferries and infrastructure or else we will be in real jeopardy. Beyond that, for our, can we be in the smallest, local authority? We look at ourselves in the suite of the three island authorities that are more or less similar size, but our pay gets £375 per person less than Shetland and £698 less than the western islands this year in cash terms after all the machinations of the formulas. The other request that I have of the DFM is that something is done about that this year, because we really are the canary in the coal mine. Our services are stretched and we are at the point of failure. Thank you very much for that and thank you for raising the issue of the ferry fleet, the very important issue. Councillor Ewing and Jardine. Thank you and thanks again for the invitation to come along and speak this morning. I think that there is obviously a lot of similar themes to other councils and that won't be obviously a shock to anyone in the room there, but for the Scottish Borders we are a very rural authority with two major, Hoi, King, Gaelish Hills. Gaelish Hills is great with the train link, fantastic, really re-energised area, but the transport, public transport to other areas and the Scottish Borders is a real concern. We have piloted one in Berwickshire called Pingo where you can dial a bus. That's helping a lot of people if you were tuned into the city deal a couple of weeks ago, they were talking there how that has helped employability. However, that's Berwickshire, that's not the Scottish Borders. If you're not in Berwickshire, you really are struggling for employability and another issue is loneliness. I think that's that the Scottish Government and councils need to be looking at post-pandemic is loneliness. I read a stat, I think it was Harvard University or Stanford, one of the big ones in America had stated that loneliness can age a quicker than smoking. That is devastating in rural areas and we shouldn't be going through that in this in 2022 or 2023 or 2024 or going forward. So how do we tackle rural loneliness? Better public transport, better ways that people can get around. For us, that's a real essential and we're having to make tough decisions. Do we cut a bus or do we not cut a bus? Those are lifelines for people to get out and about into the major hamlets, because it's city towns, like Galashios, Hawick etc. That connectivity then on to Edinburgh. But also another thing is leisure trusts, the funding for leisure trusts and I'm sure every council will be the same. We're having to look at different ways of funding them, because of the energy crisis, £300,000, £500,000 that they hadn't put into their funding packages, into their budget. They have been hit very hard by that. What does that mean? Swimming pools will close, gyms will close. What does that mean? The health of the country, the health of the region will go down. What does that mean? The NHS will be even more burdened by that. So I think it's really important that we support leisure trusts, we support public transport, somebody talked on again about health and social care. Carers, there is a carer crisis. Not just in my region but the country, that really needs to be delivered and it must be given local priorities. As a rural area, there are 15 minutes at a house, that's not really giving much care, but then jumping on a car, going somewhere else, going on another place, it's very difficult for it to attract carers to that occupation. So we really need to work on that. If we had money, we had flexibility to deliver better there. So apart from copying what everyone else is saying, because everyone's made clear points on what priorities, but as from a rural area, that's vital and getting job stimulus is even more vital. Keeping people with that retention, we call it brain drain, young people leaving, going off to the city and maybe then coming back later on in life, but can we keep them there? So they grow here, they're born on the borders, they stay in the borders and they're tired in the borders. That's what we're looking for in the Scottish Forest, just creating that economy. So for us, it's that rural issue. Thank you very much for that and certainly bringing some new, and definitely as a Highlands and Islands MSP, I recognise some of those issues that you've outlined there. I'm just going to move on to talk about the new deal for local government. I'd be interested to hear what you would like to see in the new deal between the Scottish Government and the local government. Also, how could any deal help improve outcomes for individuals and communities that you represent? Maybe I'll start with someone online, so I'll start with councillor Nicolle and then I'll go to councillor Jardine. Thank you very much, convener. I think that the first thing I would say is that we need to be more involved when proposals are coming forward and are still at their formative stage. I do think that there is often a justified feeling in local government that we are being presented with a plan and we haven't necessarily fed in. Already in our discussion, we've heard from the five councillors that our areas are very different and some of our problems are very different. The solutions to those problems at times are very different. When we are involved at the beginning, we probably can contribute to a better outcome, a better policy and a better hear on where we want to go. However, if we are only being involved once plans have been essentially formulated, then A, it's very difficult to change those plans, and B, we don't necessarily come to the best outcome because what works in the borders doesn't necessarily work in Aberdeen and it doesn't necessarily work with my colleagues in the islands. Scotland is a very diverse country and the local authorities that represent the population really do at times have quite unique problems and one solution doesn't always fit for everyone. That's a really key point that we need to pick up in our movement to work more collegially together. We have to understand that what works in Glasgow doesn't necessarily work in the highlands and doesn't necessarily work in Aberdeen. We have to have flexibility built into our discussions. Thank you very much for that. Councillor Jardine, what are your thoughts on the new deal for local government? Thank you. It's very similar, because if you're in Kirkwall, in Kirkcaldy, in Kilmarnock or Kelso, you've got very different needs but you're still in Scotland. We need to remember that the 32 local authorities that make up Scotland are Scotland and Scotland's reputation comes from the local authorities. Wherever you go, it depends if you see the clean streets. I think we found out during the French festival when the streets were getting dirty, the bins were collected, the reputation of Scotland quite quickly plummeted on that international stage. You could see people from Canada on the news saying, oh, I didn't expect it to be like this, et cetera, and who looks after the bins, the local authority. I think that's what the key relationship is. Scottish Government has its place and it delivers things, but the local authorities deliver on the ground. That's part of the new deal, needs to be seen. The local authorities know what is unique to their place, so I know nothing what goes on in Kirkwall. I don't know about Kirkcaldy. I don't know about Kilmarnock, but I can tell you about Kelso. I think that's important. We know what's going on in our local authority. Everyone's got their own unique culture, so Scotland is a great country. We've got our identity as a country. We've all got our identity of where we're from. I think that's the new deal. Everybody needs to be around the table and look and say, okay, how does it work? We need that flexibility to deliver different things. As I talked earlier, the public transport for us is very different to the public transport in Edinburgh. You can get a bus every 20 minutes if you're going out to Cury, coming back into the Galashales. You might not get a bus for hours, so it's really key that we get this right in terms of every local authority as its own differences. We are Scotland, but we're very different, and that needs to be taken into it. We can't always be cookie-cutter put through the same machine. Thank you very much for that. Yes, it's certainly true that Scotland has, and it's one of our richnesses, isn't it, that we've got such a diversity across the country. I'm just going to invite anyone else who would like to comment on the new deal for local government. David. Thanks for that. I'm quite sure about the microphones. Yes, you actually don't need to touch your microphones. The broadcast we've got somebody here, a wonderful person here to operate all of that for us. Thanks very much. I think that we need to have a degree of honesty here if we are going to go forward. My view is that a good relationship between central government and local government benefits us all and benefits all our communities. I think that we need to look at this in context. We're not starting with a blank sheet, and there is huge suspicion in local government based on our experience over the past 10 years of the Scottish Government's approach to this. It does seem, I think, to many of us in local government that talk about partnership when it shoots Scottish Government, but otherwise we tend to be ignored. I think that I would look back over the last 10 years, not just the financial issues, which are huge, but what we've seen is a programme in increasing centralisation and, I would say, disempowerment of local government. You can talk about the removal of police and fire, starting there, and you can have an argument whether that was good or bad, but then we've had increasing involvement in education with establishment of regional collaboratives, bypassing councils and going straight to schools with the PEF funding, which has actually reduced the ability of councils to have strategic interventions in education. We had the Community Empowerment Act, which, to be honest, posed councils as a barrier to community engagement, which, for me, is exactly the opposite. That's what we're about, and it seemed to suggest that communities needed protecting against councils. I think that the local government's review itself almost started off with what can we take off local government and give it to the third sector, what could they do better than us? We're now seeing the debate around the national care service, which seems to be removing responsibilities and possibly significant numbers of staff and assets away from local government. The underlying premise to many of us in local government is that local government is a problem, whereas, during the pandemic, local government is a solution to a lot of these problems, and it's our delivery that people rely on in our communities to support them. We need to look at that in that long-term context. If you're asking me about what it would take to work, I think that the fiscal framework is fundamental and a decent, sustainable level of funding of core funding. Things like tourist tax and parking levy are fine, but they are no substitute for core funding. Removal of the ring fencing elements, a real joint set of priorities that are deliverable and realistic, and not just are imposed on local government. As others have said, that recognition of diversity across different solutions in different places is where I'm coming from at this point. We're not starting with a blank slate and there's huge suspicion, so obviously we need to build trust. Those three things that you outlined at the end are core funding, removal of ring fencing and the joint setting of priorities. Would that be the kind of thing that would help to ease the suspicion and move towards trust? I think that it would help that, certainly. Again, the experiences we've been talking about fiscal frameworks and things for years and it's never been delivered, so there needs to be a demonstration of that good faith that, I think, from government and part of that is the funding and the longer-term planning in that. Thank you very much. I'm now going to bring in James Stockin. Thank you very much, convener. I just want to absolutely reiterate that anything must be built on trust if we're going to get anywhere with any kind of new deal. The other big aspect is we've got to reduce bureaucracy. Being the smallest council, every single thing we do has got to be reported at the same level as large councils. It's absolutely debilitating if we want to make sure that we provide service. With the other thing, a new deal has got to be promoting success, celebrating achievements. Local government has had reduced budgets for years, but yet the number of things we do has been continuing to be done in the community and sustained in a way that the public don't know, but we must get away from always criticising when there's failure. We must make sure that we can get through times of failure, but we must actually get the message out that we are very successful in delivering services. Thanks very much for that. I agree with that. I find that when I'm talking to people locally, where I live, most people don't seem to understand what their local authority is giving them and they tend to move to conversations about the national government. In the minds of people in Scotland, we need to do some work there to gain that respect and understanding of what is delivered at a local level. Anybody else want to come in on that one? I've got another question sticking with the new deal. The recent update from the Scottish Government to the committee spoke about agreeing a new deal in advance of the next financial year. I'll just be interested to hear if you think that that's a realistic timescale and what would need to be agreed before a deal is struck. Anybody got any thoughts on that timescale? It feels quite tight, but Sean, you'd like to come in. Thanks, convener. I would welcome it within the next few months. I'd be a little bit sceptical if we could actually get there and make it meaningful. I think that it's more important, and I'm sure all colleagues across Scotland would say that we need to get this right, we need to get this new deal right. If that takes a little bit of time, then I think it will be it to be honest with you. I think that the principles are there. We've obviously had the Community Empowerment Act talking about financial flexibilities and things like that, so I think that we've got the bones of a deal there. I think that we just need to have a more open discussion. The budget right now is obviously taken. That's the priority just now locally and nationally, so I think that once that's delivered and that's done, we can then have a decision if that's going to be achieved by the end of March. I'm not too sure. I would need to see a little bit more detail in how that's going to work. Obviously, we need to go through COSLA, and we need to have that opportunity for toon and froon, and I don't know if we're going to push something through if we're going to achieve that as such, but certainly it would be welcome. I think that it's high time that we do have a new deal in place and we've got an agreement in place that we can both be comfortable with. Thanks very much for that. In a way, Councillor David Ross was talking about we've been doing this for the last 10 years. We've had this local governance review that's been going on, I think, since 2017, so maybe the conversation has been happening. As you say, we've got the pieces, the elements for the conversation, so it could be that if we can build that trust and have that dialogue that you're talking about, things could potentially move quite quickly. I'd like to bring in Alex Nicolle. Thank you very much, convener. I would agree with Councillor Macaulay. I think we are facing quite a tight timeline there, and I'm not totally convinced that that's achievable before the next financial year. Obviously, councils are now going to have to later this week go and take on board what the Deputy First Minister says in terms of the budget process. By the time we process that into our own financial profiling, that will in itself take about a time that will probably be the major thing for most council leaders to be involved in. I would be concerned that we are maybe setting an arbitrary point in time when perhaps what we should be saying is that we need to have the discussions, and if it takes slightly longer, then so be it. I'm not a great fan of sometimes saying we want to do something by a given point on a calendar, because for all sorts of reasons, there may be issues that arise that deserve and require further inquiry, further research, further input. I'm not totally convinced that simply saying by the new financial year we should be there, and I'm not convinced that it's something that all 32 local authorities will be in a position to actually say that they are content. I think that that is an important thing that we take all 32 local authorities with us on this journey. Thank you very much for that perspective. We're now going to move on to a different theme, so thanks so much for the contributions so far, and I'm going to bring in Willie Coffey, who's going to pick up on local governance review. Thank you very much, convener, and good morning to everyone, forgive my croaky voice this morning. I'll take you back to the local governance review itself, which, as I understand, kicked off in 2017, with most of the work being done in 2018-19, and then paused for obvious reasons for Covid. It's just to get a few sentences from each review about what you think has been achieved in the local governance review to date, and whether you're satisfied with, perhaps not with the timescale of the progress, but the content and delivery of what has been discussed. Can I maybe start with Councillor Ross? I think that at the start there were real concerns that it was to take things away from local government. I think that in the discussion and the case that COSLA put up, we kind of moved away from that. My own view is that, regardless of the pandemic, even before the pandemic, it was losing impetus a bit, and it was COSLA that was trying to revive it with the three empowerment—the functional, fiscal and community empowerment—and said, that's what we need. I would hope that, if we can reinvigorate it, that we will concentrate on those, because there are magnificent examples of all those kinds of things, particularly community empowerment, going on in all councils. We need to build on that. I think that it does lay the foundations for some kind of new deal going forward, if that's what we're going to achieve. For me, I think that Councillor Ross has got through a lot of the points there, and we need to remember the sort of view of governments and not government, and I think that that's a very key thing that we need to remember, how do we deliver on the ground, how do we make it more efficient? Again, I want to flip back to the trust thing. We look at the review, and we think, actually, what is this wanting to do? Is it wanting to rip everything back out, centralise everything, or is it wanting to give us more autonomy and more flexibility, more opportunity to deliver on the ground? Again, it's going back to the trust, that's just the key—maybe the key words that's going to come out of this morning's session is the trust. Are we trust in the Scottish Government? Are we going to review this appropriately, or are they going to review it, and if we just slice that away from them, they'll not notice or they don't think. I think that's really important for me as a trust. Councillor Macaulay, you just progressed since the Government's review was started. Could you share a few thoughts with us? Yeah, I think that, given the role local government played in the response to the pandemic, it's quite timely to have this discussion at this point and see the establishment of a lot of things during that time. I know that, certainly in North Ayrshire, we were probably in a really good place to deal with the pandemic, given the work that we had done previously, surrounding community empowerment. When we're talking about trust for local and national government, there's also a key element for communities to trust local and national government as well. I think that the pandemic and the response to that and how we put into communities and worked with them and co-produced a lot of the services that supported people during that time, that built a lot of that trust that we might not have had previously. I think that that's a key factor that we need to remember that trust is also with our communities as well. I think that we're at a good place for that just now. Thanks for that, Councillor Stolkin. A few comments from yourself about the Government's review from your experience. We have not a very good experience of that, because we were one of the pilots that was suggested to develop a single island authority model. We made significant progress here, with the whole of our health board agreeing, along with the council, to a different model to take that forward to government. The shutters came down when we met members of the cabinet, particularly the former health secretary, and that went off the pitch. It was in the programme for government in 2017 to develop a single island authority. We still see that as the very best way for us to promote integration, because we can't see how the national care service is going to work having another body on an island. We'll be very keen for that to be reinvigorated, but we were very disappointed with all the effort that we put in, and it came to nothing. Thanks for that, Councillor Nicolle. Lastly, to save the day, did anything positive come from the local government's review in your experience? Yes, I think it did. I think that colleagues have pointed out community empowerment, and that has been a really major area where we have made some absolutely good progress. It served as well the work that we had done in the run-up to the pandemic. Through the pandemic, I think that that did serve us very well. Now that we are facing new challenges with the economic situation that the whole country faces, I think that we are in a better place than we might have been otherwise. I think that there is a positive to be taken out from there. Thank you for that. I'll just have one more question to ask. Because of the discussion that you have had there, do you think that we gave communities the expectation that there was more power and more funding coming down the line in part of the discussion within the review? Did we give that impression during the recent years of the governance review? What direction or travel should we head in as we move towards trying to conclude this? We'll start with Councillor Nicolle, because you're on screen. I think that there is more to do, but I think that we have begun the journey. I think that communities are seeing improvements and connections with local government in terms of all sorts of things that we are now doing to empower our communities, not only in terms of speaking and seeking advice and seeking to consult more. We haven't completed the journey by any manner of means, but I think that we are on the correct road. I'm sure that different local authorities across the country are at different stages of that journey. I can only speak for Aberdeen City Council, but I think that we have begun a journey that is positive. It's engaging with our communities. I think that, although we may not have achieved everyone's expectations yet, we are certainly on the right road and we are certainly taking communities with us on that journey. Thanks for that, Councillor Nicolle. To save us going around the whole panel with the same questions, is there another view from many of our councillors this morning about that kind of expectation of more power and more funding to offer an alternative? Is that a good thing to promote and should we carry on with that line or should we be cautious about that? We recently did an admin policy plan and part of that is community empowerment and how we can utilise communities more effectively. More needs to be publicised. Communities can make a big impact. I believe that during Covid we saw the difference when resilience teams popped up all over the place in communities. They are ready, and that gave communities an appetite. We can play into the bigger system. We can be part of the wheel that goes round. Anything that can be done to help support communities. It's almost said about community trust and government. It needs to bounce back down. We need to trust communities more than they need to trust us. That's important, and it's that trust filter on down. More can be done. The journey started, but councils and what I feel for Scottish Border Council, a lot of the time when it first got them on. We don't know what direction to use it and where to utilise it and how to do it. It's a journey that's still in progress. I think that more conversation between communities, national government and local government is needed just to hit the right spot. A couple of observations on that. I think that everybody is right in terms of the pandemic. It was all hands to the pumps, as it were, and local authorities did support those communities and worked very well with them. That's something that we want to capture and continue as we get back to business as usual. In terms of both community empowerment and local governance review, I detect that there was probably an expectation in third sector and community groups that, because of the squeeze on local government, there didn't get much out of local government, and it was an opportunity that might get more from central government if there was a direct relationship there, which I would say is short-sighted. We certainly have had a culture of partnership and community involvement in Fife for many years, going back to reorganisation. One of the two other points is that it's not just about local government. If you look at the health service, for instance, it was a shock to them that they were subject to the community empowerment powers of participation in an example of closure of our service and a community that requested the right to participate in that decision. It was a shock to them that that applied to them. Let's not just concentrate on local government if we are talking about public services as a whole. We need to look at those. The other element is the participatory budgeting, which I am a great advocate of. I think that there was a mistake by the Scottish Government to impose that arbitrary target of how much, I can't remember, was it 1 per cent or 1 per cent to do it? I think that that encouraged local authorities to look at achieving a target rather than embedding the culture of participatory and actually winning the case that it is a good thing. If there had been more discussion around that and more flexibility to work there, I think that we would have got further with that. Thanks for that, David. Any final comment on that, councillor Stoke and councillor Macaulay? I'll come in first. The initial question that you had asked regarding funding and power, I think that we've always tried to be as transparent with our communities as possible. Obviously, it's difficult for us when we are uncertain and what funding lies ahead of us as well. That goes back to the trust element that sometimes communities see us as being underhand when it's not really the case. It's actually just the fact that we are trying to be as transparent as possible. We certainly have been in a journey to try and reimagine what people think of the local authority. We can't give all things to all people all the time. We sort of see ourselves as facilitators in some of the work that we do, but that becomes trust again. We've got to trust local authorities to make the decisions within the communities, even within that local authority, to make good decisions to find out whether that's work in this community centre or in this town centre. That's where we want to be in North Ayrshire. We've certainly used the community power act to establish locality partnerships and split local authority into six localities, councillors and community reps on that with funding behind it so that we can fund our own local priorities. That's out that trust locally for us. As we're looking ahead, we're trying to reimagine what locality partnerships are looking like. Hopefully, through the new deal and new powers coming to local government, we can empower locality partnerships to have some of the decisions as well, which will be a real strength for local government. Just a final point on participatory budgeting. North Ayrshire might have been the only council to achieve that target of 1 per cent, and we've done that not just through participatory budgeting, which is great and great events, but also through other mechanisms as well, allowing locality partnerships to have power over street scene budgets. It's within the local community that they can decide if they want flowers planted, trees planted, if they want extra car parking spaces or if they want to take car parking spaces away. That's real community power and powerment in action. Thank you very much for that. Last but not least, Councillor Stolkin. Thank you very much. Just a word from the islands. We're at this kind of size already that you would be thinking of us, your communities, that our authority is a little bit like the communities that you're trying to reach, but we're even more granular than that because we've got a fantastic community council system below us, which we have a great degree of parity, of steam with them, and we're reaching really into the smallest areas. When this came along, community empowerment, we kind of believe that we were doing it already on the islands, so we just want to make sure that we can show these examples because we think that we've got something that can benefit other places. Thanks very much for that, everybody. Very helpful. Convener, back to you. Thanks, Willie. We're now going to move to question from Annie Wells, who's joining us online. Hi, good morning, everyone, and thanks very much for coming. Everyone's like I've touched on community empowerment there, so I've just got a question based on that. How can all communities and people within them feel that they can influence decisions in their local area? I'm talking in particular about what impact can community empowerment efforts have on more deprived communities, and how has that worked out in recent years? Do you want to direct it to someone? Pick on someone first. Can I pick on Councillor McCaulay on that one, please? He's not mentioned the trust and transparency element to it. Councillor McCaulay. Thanks for that question. I think that that's a really important point to it. One of the things that we always say in the local authorities is that we always get the same people volunteering to do that in the next thing, but what we need to do is reach for marginalised communities, so people that are in high levels of deprivation, people with disabilities, people who don't necessarily want to come forward. That's how even when I was talking about the locality partnerships that we developed, there's 10 community reps, 10 councillors on it, so there's parity esteem that way. Even within the partnerships, we went out into communities within towns, so we went to local community centres and we invited people along to say, yes, as a town, we can come together, but even within that town there's different communities. The key point that people always come back to us and say is we're not going to come to these things, we're not going to give our opinion if you don't act on what you're going to do, so you need to show us that you're actually acting on things. That's what we've always tried to evidence that we are doing and we're listening to people. The thing is, we don't have the solutions to all the problems. The solutions need to come from people to say, this is what's going to work best for us. We can come up with these great plans, but actually if we don't have the community buy-in, then it's not going to go anywhere. A probably another example of that that we've done in North Ayrshire is when we looked at, we established a child poverty board that's scoping out now to just a wider poverty board, and in that we decided to take a thematic approach, so rather than just council services coming together, we held what we called mini inquiries, which is not exactly like a citizens assembly, but it's the same idea of it, and we invited parent councils along, we invited people from community centres along to come and tell us what do you think about accessing the council, where should the council be based. One of the things they said was we should be more best in schools, because that's where a lot of people go to. We're now doing a whole bit of work of reimagining what we can offer people in their own local community, so that's been a real help to us, and I think that co-production of services will mean longer-term better outcomes for people. Thanks for that. Anybody else want to come in on Annie's question, Councillor Durdin? Yeah, thank you, Annie, for the question. For me, I was just touched on there by Sean, Councillor Macaulay, around conversations. When I took over the leadership, I went around all 11 wards in the Scottish Borders with the chief executive, with the directors, with other ward members in that ward. We went around all 11 on a summer tour called community conversations, and from that community conversations we got feedback straight away. People were expecting us to sit on the stage and they would rant and they had a big list, but when we said, no, it's one-to-one conversations with the people who make the decisions at the council, they were shocked that that was happening, because that had never, ever happened with the council. We'd sat in, I wouldn't say, a Ryan Chamber, but we'd sat there for a long time without going out and speaking to people, and now the council on Thursday, a full council, we have a paper coming that declares the issues that need to be considered as part of the budget process and realistic prioritised plan will have to be developed and assisted in community councils and their partnerships. The feedback will be shared with area partnerships and community councils, and consultation will go with them to deliver on the aims going forward into the future 2023-2024, and we'll be doing it again in the spring 2023. I think that's important. It's like communities know we're coming, we're speaking to them, and we talk about local areas and deprived areas, and we consistently talk about areas of deprivation, areas of deprivation, but every year it's the same question, areas of deprivation, how do we help, how do we really do need to start tackling the issues in those areas of deprivation? By going into those areas of deprivation and saying what locally, what you'll find is that the communities in the areas of deprivation are more than likely the best communities in the whole region. They're together, they hold their own fairs and festivals, but sometimes they do feel disconnected from the big wheel, the big things that are going on, so it's getting into these communities, having the conversations and what we can make. We can't make the world change overnight, but bit by bit we can, and it has, having those conversations, and the people who know their community are the people who live in their community, and we need to remember that, first of all. Community conversations are the main starter point for getting into communities and listening. Thank you very much for that, and I think that Alex Nicoll would like to come in as well. Thank you very much, convener. It was very much to follow up on what some colleagues have actually said. I think that you really do have to take this down at times and at granular level, because, historically, some communities have not trusted any form of government in fairness. There has been a lot of work done in communities, but it's not even down to community councils. It's to take it beyond that. Here in Aberdeen, we've certainly progressed our local outcome improvement plan down to the point where we can go out with officers, very senior officers, into communities to walk about, to speak to people on the ground and listen to what they say they want for their street, their community. I think that some colleagues pointed out earlier—I can't remember who it was—that schools are seen as a hub in trying to use the school and the various services that can be located there to pull the community together. At times, things such as community councils are very valuable organisations. They often cover quite large areas. Within that area, the actual people who live there see themselves as a number of disparate communities within that area. That's the level that we have to pull this down to in order to get the proper feedback from the communities that we're actually seeking to serve. Across the country, I'm sure that other towns and cities and places have done the same kind of work that we've done, but you've really got to get into that level to start getting the proper feedback. Historically, there has been a barrier there that we really do need to break down. Anybody else want to come in on that? I'm happy to move. Okay. Councillor Ross. Very briefly, the experience mirrors what's been said, but it's about getting down to a fairly local level. The third largest local authority in population terms, but we have seven area committees to get down to that local level. Each of those has a different approach depending on the circumstances in their area, particularly in some of the urban areas, working with tenants and residents associations. We have housing participation officers there to support. One of the things that, again, is a function of the cutbacks that we've had to impose is a lack of real community development support in some of the communities to assist with that capacity building. One of the initiatives that we are trying now is a community social work approach. Going back to what was recreating and what was going on, I think, in the 80s in some areas, and that seems to be bearing some fruit, so we're hoping that we can scale that up and expand it. Thanks very much for that. I'm keen to move on, and I'm going to bring in Mark Griffin, who is joining us also online, and he's going to bring in the whole piece of conversation around funding and fiscal framework. Mark. Thanks. Good morning. I talked last year about the lack of fiscal empowerment of local government, and I talked about reduced-bore-budget funding to much ring-fencing. I wonder if witnesses would recognise that situation, what impact that's having on delivery of local priorities. A way of essentially moving to a system where councils can only afford to deliver their statutory functions and what they are being ring-fenced funded to do without any consideration of local priorities. I think that you touched on that in the earlier answers. Thank you for the question. The flexibility to do and what we need to do and deliver for our region is vitally important. I talked earlier about how everyone is different across the country. We are Scotland, but we are very unique local authorities. It's important that we have that flexibility to deliver. Last year, we had £100,000 spare to look on local priorities, and that £100,000 wasn't a recurring £100,000. It was only for that one year, so we could only put in a project that would work for that year and then move away. However, if we had the ability to stretch that and deliver on that continued basis where we could put in consistency, that would make a real impact. If we want to raise funding, we have to raise the council tax. If we are raising the council tax, we are impacting on people's lives. I caused a living crisis going forward, so it's really important that we have flexibility to deliver priorities. I put forward my admin policy plan. I hope that we can get a lot of that done through really good work in looking at things, being inventive, delivering on services, but it's hard to deliver priorities for the local government and local authorities that are key to our areas when we're getting tied down and hamstrung under things that we're forced to do under the Scottish Government's priorities. I think that there is a very vast difference. A 50-50 split might be fantastic, but that might be the way forward. However, we do need to have that opportunity to release and use the skillsets that we have at local government level to deliver really in the communities what people want and what they're looking for. Anybody else want to come in on that? David Ross. In terms of that overall financial picture, there are probably three aspects that I'd highlight. First of all, we have local government, as demonstrated by the Audit Scotland, and we've undergone a 4.2 per cent real terms cut in core funding since 2013-14, unlike other parts of the public sector. I think that if you go back and look back historically to what local government's share of funding has been, we'll see that that has reduced quite dramatically. Even taking out police and fire and taking out the recent social security, probably since 2012 or so, it's reduced from what was 30 per cent of the Scottish core budget to between 24 per cent. That's been the level of the cuts that we've seen. If half the budget is on education and there are limits to the savings of cuts that you can make in education, another 10 or 15 per cent is social care, which is under enough pressure. In terms of cuts, it falls on that last third or so of services. A lot of those, including statutory services, street cleaning and grounds maintenance, are cut to the bone now. The third element is that ring fencing. Not only does it constrain local authorities to put money where we feel we need to, but it increases the bureaucracy and the reporting and monitoring that goes with it. The leaders group has had to look at the distribution of over 70 different funds and small pots of money. Last year, it was over 100. There is no good reason why a lot of those couldn't be consolidated and just trust local government to deliver on those things. Thank you very much. It seems to be quite across the funding landscape. Quite a few pots of money feels like things do need to come together a bit more. We'd like to bring in James Stockham. Thank you very much. I just want to continue on from Councillor Ross, because for us, on the smallest budget, by the time that the ring-fenced or directed funding is carved up, the quantum that we get is so small that the requirement for the bureaucracy of reporting back is often completely disproportionate. We end up with more staff, particularly in areas such as ourselves, where we have single dependencies and very small teams. It takes people's attention away from delivering the services that they should be delivering for better outcomes for the public. I would absolutely concur that we need to find a new modus operanda for doing this, and I cast my mind back to the Concordat, which was decided very quickly. We were released into a place where we focused on outcomes, and we need to reinvent that or look at it as quickly as we possibly can. Thanks for that. Sean McCollie, you'd like to come in too. Thanks for that, convener. Just to go back to the original point, all local authorities have highlighted just the challenge that it's going to be to meet our objectives this year, given what we currently know and have. That obviously might change on Thursday. One of the things that we have long spoken about is the need for community local economies. I suppose that I am trying to say is to have the powers locally in order to meet our needs. Right now, we are going to struggle to do that. One of the things that I wanted to highlight was just about the context in which we are having and setting the budget. We have had record inflation. We have obviously had to then set airwards to meet the demands for our own workers, which was the absolute right thing to do. That is obviously about financial pressures on other areas of our budget and of the Scottish budget. It was the right thing to do, and when we are talking about the financial settlement, I think that it is absolutely to have a conversation with the Scottish Government and bring it in to highlight just the challenges that we are having as well. I think that other spheres of government, such as the UK Government, will come in and say that this is a context that we are in just now in Scotland. I think that we need to be reimagined how we fund all our local services from all spheres of government. The thing that strikes me with ring fencing is that we impose a set of rules that, once again, do not always fit for every single council across the nation. What I come back to from this question is something that we have covered several times already in this meeting, and that is the key word, trust. We have to trust each other that we are actually interested in delivering for our communities and the people that we have asked to be allowed to serve. That trust, I think, is a key area where we can make progress and perhaps address some of the issues that colleagues have brought up specifically in regard to this question. Thank you very much. Mark, I believe that you have got some more questions. I want to touch on how the new fiscal framework could work in practice. We have heard about principles that would sit behind it, but there is very little technical detail as to how it would operate. Perhaps you could come to David Ross first, since you talked about the proportion of the Scottish Government that is going to councils. What is the ideal financial relationship that you would like to see between national and local government? Are you looking for a fixed share of government budget? How would that fiscal framework work in practice? I am not sure that I can claim to be talking for COSLA or all local authorities, but it seems to me that if we had an arrangement where local government had a set share of the Scottish budget, that would give us certainty and would be fair and hopefully sustainable. If the Scottish budget went up, our funding would go up. If it went down, it would go down, but at the moment it just goes down whatever the budget seems to be. I personally think that that would be a good starting point for that, but the second point is that ring fencing and freeing up and giving local authorities flexibility in terms of that. I think that that proportion. I think that it was an arrangement that we had over a number of years on capital and I think that that was fixed. My recollection is that it was fixed at 26 per cent, but that has gone out the window in recent years as well. Anybody else want to come in on that question? No, it does not look like it. Mark, have you got any more questions? Just a last question briefly, Cymru. It's just to ask about the multi-year nature of this year's resource capital spending review, whether that's given any certainty to local authorities in terms of financial and workforce planning, just to see if anyone had any views on multi-year plans. I think that we all would welcome that kind of certainty going forward. The resource spending review gave us a degree of that, but events have moved on and that was looking at giving us flat cash. Given inflation, energy costs and the demands that we've seen coming from the cost of living crisis, flat cash is just not going to cut it, and local cosla has identified even to stand still requires across local government, I think, £612 million based on a survey of the budget gaps that we've got. When you add next year's pay on to that, you're looking at north of £1 billion. That's perhaps optimistic, but it gives you an idea of the scale of the challenge that we're facing. It's the three years that sounds great. It sounds wonderful, and I've been meeting with the Deputy First Minister recently. He said, well, year three is going to be really bad, so we're not going to give you as much year one, not as much year two. How do we do that? We need that stability. We need to be able to deliver. We sit there and I've just had a budget meeting yesterday, and he said, this might be what we're going to deliver, but it might change in the next few days, and in the next few days it might change after that. And you know things come down the pipeline, Covid came down, the cost of living crisis has come down, the energy crisis has dropped, and it's how are we able to jump on top of that and be on top of that for our communities if we're getting flat cash, if it's reduced, if we're looking at different venues. We need the stability, we need to, so we can plan structures and we can plan and implement. Local government is fantastic, making the most of what it gets, but it'd be really good if we had that chance to go right. Okay, we've got that flat, but you'll get this if this happens, you'll get this if that happens, but we don't get that certainty, you're getting this deal with it. If we just had that certainty, if this happens, we will throw an extra at this end, especially when we're talking about the pay concerns. We were there and it was just, we built in 2%, we always built in 2%, and then it's 5%, then it's 10%. Now we're wondering if the teachers get the 10%, that'll throw everything. The SJC then opened up the envelope and again that froze us, and we just need that certainty. If this happens, we will help you out, but we just don't have that, and I think that's it. The certainty that there will be support when support is needed probably is the most important thing for local government at the moment. Thanks very much for that, and Sean Macaulay. Thanks, convener. Just to echo again, I think for any organisation, multi-year funding is what you'd be looking for. It helps us with workforce planning, it helps us for medium and long-term financial planning. Again, the difficulty that we've got is that we had something in place, but you can't foresee challenges that come up within the year. Record inflation meant that pay awards had to be negotiated and had to be funded as well. Although we had that multi-year funding last year, that's out of sync now because we had to have those pay awards. Even if we're doing multi-year funding plans, we need to have an opportunity when things don't go as planned, that we can have a discussion and reassess our plans at the time, but they definitely were not fair sharing and they've been very welcome, and we would welcome them all in the upcoming budget. Thank you very much for that. I'm just aware of time. We've got about 20 minutes left in this conversation, and we've got a number of questions. I invite colleagues to direct your questions to specific people. If the panel can keep their answers as succinct as possible, I think that the answers have been fantastic up until now. It's very important for us to hear everything. I don't want to restrict you in any way, but we just want to make sure that we cover all the questions. I'm now going to bring in Miles Briggs. Thank you, convener. Good morning to the panel. Thank you for joining us today. We've touched on this earlier. Your comments, councillor, have stopped in with regards to national care service, but I just wanted to come back to how the new deal, potentially, in this fiscal framework could then be impacted by the creation of a national care service. I'll maybe bring you back in as I, then, join Fenni and Miles wants to come in with their view on that. Thank you very much. We have been real concerned in the islands about the national care service, because, as you know, we're small populations which just don't see the point in having an extra layer of bureaucracy or a different model here. In my own authority, we don't even have any care facilities that are not run by the council, so that the whole thing is together. We're looking for efficiency. We're looking for the very best use of the public pound coming onto the islands, and we just have some real concerns. Also, issues with regard to VAT and how that's dealt with, issues with regard to where we go with a capital build, because local authorities—I think that the Government has sometimes forgets that we have a VAT exemption, which is a huge benefit, which means that the money doesn't go back to the Treasury, but we get better value here if we use what local government already has. We have some real concerns in small areas, particularly that the national care service will make us less efficient and not provide any of the advantage that the Government sees. Does anyone else want to come in on that? Yeah, I'll be concise. I think that in local government there's a lot of fear that this is the start of the erosion of local government with the national care service, and it's just going to strip away the powers, and this is the start of the big wave that's coming, so that's the fear and the trust with that. We want to deliver social care services the best that we can, but we feel that this is the erosion of national care service. That's a good one. Thanks very much. We've certainly been taking evidence, to a great extent, on national care service, but it's good to hear those perspectives. I'm going to move on to questions from Marie McNair. Thank you, convener, and good morning, panel. I'd like to ask the panel if any comments on the contribution that community councils can make and whether our view of the role is required, given the most local tier of statutory representation in the third tier of government in Scotland, but they obviously have very limited resources and powers and influence, obviously. I know that Councillor Stockton and Nicola of Touch slightly on this already, but what is your experience of community councils and other bodies such as development trusts in terms of driving and delivering local empowerment? I'll go back to Councillor Stockton, maybe you want to add a wee bit more about the community councils in your area? Yes, very much. We have always given our community councils a budget to spend to support local things for years and years, and that's been fantastic. We have good uptake until probably the last elections. We've not quite seen so many people coming forward, but that's because we have a bit of a social issue after Covid that people have been just a bit reluctant to go and get involved in any small committee in our communities. Our community councils are very much part of the whole network of how we govern here, and we pay real attention. Every community council meeting local members actually attend that as well, right on all of our islands, and it's very much where we hear the view of the community. They are particularly useful, and I do believe that there are challenges, and that's what I was hoping local governance review would give them, would be the ability to be able to increase their powers so that you could maybe merge a development trust with the community council and have a body that even speaks more clearly for the area. There's quite a number of things in there, but they are absolutely vital for us, even in this small place. Do you believe that a review of the role is required then? I think that to give community councils additional powers is really important. We have a project of community empowerment that we would like to make sure that community councils are able to do more of the work. For the local authority here, too, we put in some link officers between the council and them so that they can take on small jobs or identify things that can be done in their community. We believe that that is one of the best ways to make community work, but you have to give community council agency, if you expect them, for people to take part in them and people to deliver for their community. Thank you. I'll pop that out to the rest of the panel, then he wants to come in. We actually have a stack. Alex Nickle, Sean Macaulay and then you and Jordan. Thank you very much, convener. I think that, in some ways, it's linked back to what we're saying earlier about community empowerment. Community councils, I think, are an excellent example of where councils are able to start feeding into communities and, from there, take it down to a more granular level that we spoke about earlier. However, it has to be a two-way street, and we have to see the community councils being able to feed back into things such as community planning partnerships that should exist in most councils in whatever form so that they can actually see how they are helping to make a difference. I think that, certainly in the city here, we've seen the number of community councils grow. At the last elections that we've just seen, we've managed to get 29 out of 30 community councils up and running. I do think that we have a role to help nurture the newer ones and help them on their journey, but the more experienced ones we certainly also have to be listening to and creating the models that allow them to feed back into our decision making because we can't leave them to be standalone organisations. They have to be part of the bigger picture. I think that that is part of the success in delivering good community partnerships, having that two-way flow between the various groups. It's Sean Macaulay. Sean Macaulay? We've lost him. We've lost Sean Macaulay. Okay, let's go to you and Jardine. Yeah, thank you. It's a very good question because community councils are probably the most important cog in the wheel in terms of grassroots and community working. I've for a long time said that local authorities, we're there to facilitate, not always innovate, and it's a community councils that can do that. I'm from Galashales and Galashales, you might have noticed recently, was named the Happiest Town in Scotland, second Happiest Town in the UK, and I wrote a column on how that wasn't down to the work that the council was doing, it was down to what the community council was doing, it was down to energise Galashales Trust, the work that they were doing. Now, when it comes to the election, I might change my tune and say that it was all down to what I was doing, but seriously it is down to their volunteers who are driving forward initiatives. A new market opened up six months ago, which has been a success every first Saturday of the month. Things like that that we wouldn't be able to facilitate at the council, we gave them funding to do it, but we weren't able to organise it and do it every Saturday. The trust in the community council working in conjunction with each other, and I think if you go around Scotland it's not the council who puts on the Christmas lights, it will be the community council or a wing of the community council or our trust. We need to remember that that is who is delivering in the community, so it's really important that they get more power, and I've put in my admin policy plan again, I keep going back to it, but more training for community councils, more empowerment for community councils, bringing them to the table, and I think the councillors here will sit at a community council and sometimes they ask us, oh, can you do this? You can do that. There's not that direct link often into the council, the feel that they have to come through the council, then to the council, but sometimes I feel we shouldn't even be in the room at the community council. They should be able to bypass us and go straight into the local authority to actually have that influence, so there's maybe some work to be done there, because councillors, we are like, say, there's 69 in the Scottish Borders and community councils, so that's a lot for us to go around, but if we can just manage it so they feel more empowered to go straight. Thank you. I've noticed that myself as my previous councillor. I'll move on to my next question, as nobody else wants to come in. Obviously, I wanted to ask, do you believe that local authorities would like to raise more of their own revenue and have so what mechanisms would they use and really what's preventing councils from raising more of their own income currently? Are there any UK or international methods or arrangements that you would like to see replicated here? I'll start with councillor David Ross, thanks. As I've said before, I don't think that some of the small schemes that are on the table, like the tourism tax or the parking levy, are a substitute for core funding. Having said that, the discussion that I've been involved in, I think that we would like to see a general competence to introduce those things rather than specific powers handed down from the Scottish Parliament, because circumstances are different in different places. For instance, there are a couple of authorities that are saying that the tourism tax won't help them, but they could have, using the cruise line, would help. There are other variations of that, so I think that it would be welcomed by those powers, but dictating specific powers from the Parliament is perhaps not the way that we would like to see it going. The flexibility to do it would be a real opportunity for local government. I think that local government has always had that mindset. We're not there to make money, we're there to deliver services, not the government, but actually we can if we give an opportunity to deliver open money and get there. We recently set up a company where we're training people across Europe on Apple products on iPads for our teachers and inspire learning, and we will be bringing in some revenue—not a vast amount, but that's an opportunity to bring in revenue. In the words of people who said, we shouldn't be doing that, that's not our job as a local authority. We need to get revenue somehow, we need to be stretching, we need to be looking at it. I think that Council Rossi is correct when he says that the parking tax levy, the tourism tax, might work for Edinburgh, that might work for Glasgow, but that won't work for Scottish borders. I'm sure that it won't work for Orkney. We need to see what local authorities can start delivering on their own, but be given that framework. I can't give you any ideas on all the ideas now, but if we had that opportunity and the chance, I'm sure we could come with something. But the core funding is the essential part. Before we even look at that, we need to get, as I said, the day job right and then we can start looking at other options. Thank you. I'll move to my last question then, just obviously. Maybe ask your question, but James would like to come in on that, but ask your question and then we'll loop him in. So the last question, obviously, I'm just asking, can you provide the examples of local authority working with other councils to deliver services? I know that in a lot of authorities, some of the smaller councils that do a lot of shared services, what impact has had this had, and what more can the Scottish Government do to encourage facility and support between councils? Anybody got any experience in that way? I think that we've lost Sean, and he might have been able to speak to that more fully. Ewan. Yeah, I think that it's important to have a shared services. So where are we on the Scottish borders? We're bordered with South Lanarkshire, Midlovia and Dumfries and Galloway, so I've set up meetings with all the leaders from these different authorities to speak to them, and I've had a chat with Councillor Joe Fagan from South Lanarkshire last week, and we're going to be setting up a working group from the cross, for rural issues. So there's a border that literally stops, and I think it's brought in in Scotland, but people work in communicating, socialising both areas. So we might fix the road till there, they fix the road, but actually can we start sharing the services, start looking at, we can look at maybe cross-border with our carers etc, so save them driving all the way and we can start working there and you've got IT services. Sometimes it doesn't work, I know we did a lot of work with Midlovia, but what you find is we might be using different systems to what they are using, and I think that's the thing, if we all had the same system or that might work better, that's the issue that we always find is the systems are always the one that pull it down we want to, but sometimes it's the way each council will run, and each council's got its own individual flair, so to speak, but I think it's important we have the conversations across boundaries and see what we can sometimes at the very basic level, doesn't need to always be the high level, I think that's important. Thank you. Emsiol, do you want to, Commissor? Alex Nicoll wants to come in on this one, and then we'll bring James Socken in to pick up the other question. Oh, and David Ross. Thank you very much, convener. I think my point would be we have to balance that we are not going down a centralisation route, but we are actually improving delivery of local services, and I think there is a balance to be struck there. I know up here we have the Northern Roads Alliance, where a group of councils actually collaborate in terms of materials and delivery in terms of road infrastructure, and that certainly does provide helpful routes for the various partners in it. I think that there are things that we can do, but I think that we have to be careful that we don't end up centralising beyond the point that we lose control, and therefore some of the services that are being delivered are actually being taken out with our own control. There is a fine balance in there, hopefully, what we are currently doing, we are getting right, but I think that we have to be careful on that one. So, sticking with this one, David Ross, you wanted to come in. Just very briefly, I think that there is limited scope for shared services. That has been a suggestion of revenue funding if you can offer services to another authority. I mean, the experience was that everybody wanted to sell their services to somebody else, but nobody wanted to buy them, so that is a problem. Although, like the Northern Alliance, I think that Tayside, we are not part of it, but Tayside has joint arrangements on roads and that. The other point that I want to make is the opportunities in the city region deals for collaboration. For instance, we are part of two, so Tay City's deal. I know that there is a lot of digital collaboration on digital access and accessibility. In terms of Edinburgh and South East Scotland city region, a joint approach to employability and training and employment engagement with employers is a regional economy. I think that there is a lot of mileage in those kind of arrangements and frameworks. Thanks. I am going to bring in James Stockin. I think that Sean McColly is not online. We had him back when he is gone. James, come on in on the previous question and this one as well. Well, thank you very much. Shared services are difficult for islands because we have got that very difficult water boundary around us. Among the islands, we share bits and pieces, but they are very limited. I want to come back on the whole thing about revenue generation, because one of the things that we must ensure is that if we have revenue generation, it is not then a position in which the Government can reduce our core funding. At present, in Orkney, we put into our budget more money from our reserves and from the harbour operation, where we generate some money, than we actually take in in council tax, which is substantial. At the same time, we get a smaller budget settlement from the Government. In other words, the extra effort that we are putting in is the Scottish Government using our money to support the rest of the country. If we are going to generate in the future, we have to make sure that that is clearly identified and that it is something extra rather than something that is a replacement for the Government. Thank you very much for your responses. It is very helpful. We have a couple more questions to go to now. We are half-passed, so I trust that it is okay that we go on for maybe five or ten minutes. Paul MacLennan Thank you, convener. I will try and answer the two at the same time, just for brevity. The first question was about the programme for government last year that was mentioned about the introduction of a local democracy bill in this Parliament. I am just wondering what your views were on that one. The Scottish Government also, on its bute house agreement with the Scottish Greens, committed to establishing a working group to oversee engagement on local government funding, including council tax, again just to see if you have been involved in that process and any initial thoughts on that one. David, you will probably come to yourself first of all and then open it up after that. I am not entirely sure what was intended with the little democracy bill and whether it subsumed the issues that were raised in the governance review. In terms of what the discussion has been about, is there anything else you would like to say in that you have not mentioned so far? I think most of it. I think that we have probably covered what was the second. The second one was about the house agreement talking about engagement on local government funding, including council tax. Have you been involved in that process and what would you like to see in the future in that regard? We know that we have looked at that issue in the past. There was a commission and there seemed to be a lot of different ideas and nothing was agreed upon, but just from your own councillor's point of view. I think that it is dragged on for a long time personally. I think that I would like to see some resolution on the non-investig rates and that more devolved, although recognising that there needs to be an equalisation process in that. You are raising finance and slightly off the beam, but take the opportunity. Going back to the issue about the certainty, and sometimes in the previous budget negotiate, you have had a budget set and then there has been a lot of negotiations on that. Although we have extra money out of that as local government, I think that it has not helped with the certainty. The other thing on the finances over the pandemic is that we have had a lot of one-off funding and I think that we are going to face a real problem if and when that is withdrawn, because that has been built into expectations of services and such like that. Is there more flexibility required for councillor to raise their own funds? We have talked about, obviously, the workplace, parking levy and the tourist levy. Is there more on the ability that you would like to see as your councillor to be able to look at other things that they would like to propose and pick those if required? Again, I will answer the same question to you and the next to give them the heads up. Is that more freedom that you would like to look at? Yes, but it is not obvious to us what we could do, so it is the general power rather than specifics. David, thank you for that. You and yourself? Yes, again, it is the general power to have that flexibility to raise it. What works for our areas, said the parking levy and the tourism, that might work for the cities, but, ruraly, it would not work. What would work for us to create opportunity and create that money? Just to clarify that, in conscious time, it is more the ability to see what you could do and raise funds. As long as it does not affect the core funding that they are doing at that level, getting additional would certainly be. Just on coming back over to the council tax and again, any other thoughts on that or regarding the local democracy bill, if there is anything that you have not mentioned in terms of what we discussed today, is there anything else that you want me to add? Yes, I think that we have mentioned most of it, and I think that it is that acceptance of difference. We deliver a very different service to what the Scottish Government has done and everybody in Scotland is different. I will come back again to the trust and respect. If you get the local government right and fund it right, your inboxes will drastically reduce, and that is an important thing. I worked at the Parliament for a while, and I know that 95 per cent of what came through that inbox was local government issues that the local councillor should be dealing with, not an MSP on that level. Will you get that right? Your mailbox comes in, and people are happier, and they are more content. I am not saying that everybody is going to be as happy as Gala Shields, but people are going to be happier, and I think that that is the truth that we need to get that right. Good, we plug there, you and well done. Probably come to yourself, James, and then Alex just to conclude. Again, James, just on the first point about anything else in the local democracy bill and any thoughts on the council tax and specifically local funding that you might yourself want to do in Orkney and Niles in general. I think that we will have opportunities where we are quite disappointed that the whole idea that the county state money through the Smith commission was going to all be going, all the revenue was going to be going to the local authorities, and that would have helped us enormously, whereas the government seemed to have retained particularly a lot of the money that has been from the Scotland leases. We think that people need to have a refreshed look at that. There are a lot of things in there, but what I would like to finish up by saying is that if we do not get the budgets in place for local government, we are the people who will be able to do the early intervention and the prevention. Those areas that go first when our funding is cut are the areas that every other part of the government services require for us to deal with. I think that just through this time, we have got to be very cognisant of the fact that if we do not have enough money, we are going to have bigger budget necessities across the other services other than local government. I do not think of anything particularly to add to the first part of your question, but the second part, I think that what we need, where we have levers to increase income generation schemes, we need flexibility because what works in Aberdeen will not work in Edinburgh. It might work partly in Glasgow and probably will not work at all in the islands or in some of the rural parts of Scotland because we are all in a slightly different position. I think that flexibility is key, but that money has to be additional. It cannot be in place of funding coming from Government because, as you will know, the City of Aberdeen has a very high take for NDR, but the consequence of that is that our grant is substantially lower than many others across the country. I think that that is an area that is a difficult circle to square, but we need to address it and we need to actually say what is fair funding for local councils because, at the end of the day, the cost of educating a child in Aberdeen is probably very similar to the cost of educating a child in many other parts of the country. Although we have flexibility in terms of things such as council tax, we are probably not able to use leavers such as that very much in the foreseeable future because of the economic situation that the country finds itself in. Families are facing hard times and people are having to make really tough decisions and some of these leavers possibly aren't open to us at this time. Alex, thank you for that. That brings us to the end of our questions. It has been a very good discussion. I am left with requests for flexibility, certainty and reduction of bureaucracy. It has been really good to hear from you about the new deal for local government in general and getting into some of the detail. It is also very helpful for us to hear when you bring in those specific details and we understand that nuance that happens across councils. It is really clear that you are working with very different circumstances. I thank our panel of witnesses for your evidence today and I now suspend the meeting for five minutes to allow for a change of witnesses. Thank you. We will now begin our second panel of witnesses this morning. On panel two, we are joined by councillor Shona Morrison, who is the president of COSLA and Sarah Waters, who is the director of membership and resources at COSLA. We are joined in the room by Clellyn Sneddon, who is the chair of Solis. I welcome our witnesses to the meeting and remind all members and witnesses to ensure that their devices are on silent and that all other notifications are turned off during the meeting. Committee members will direct their questions to a specific witness where possible, but if anyone else wishes to come in, please indicate your desire to do so to the clerks and for those who are participating remotely. You can do that by typing anar in the chat box in BlueJeans. I would like to begin our second evidence session with a few questions. I am initially thinking broadly about the progress that has been made with the new deal. I am going to direct this. Shona, I am going to give you a heads up, so I am going to direct this initially to you. Last month, the committee received a written update from the Scottish Government on the new deal. I would be interested to hear from you how COSLA feels about the progress of the new deal. The Government's update spoke about agreeing a new deal in advance of the next financial year. Do you think that this is a feasible timescale and what needs to be agreed before a deal is struck? Thank you, convener. Good morning, committee. I apologise for not being there in person, but it is currently stowing very heavily on money, so I am happy that it has gone to my warm living room. On the new deal, as everybody, I am sure, will be aware, but just for some context, the new deal was announced in the spring in resource spring review back in May 2022, and it was mentioned in the programme of government as well. The Scottish Government committed to agreeing that new deal. For us, there are two main strains in that new deal, one being the fiscal framework, which I am sure will get into a little more detail later on, and the other being the partnership agreement, which we are committed to. On that fiscal framework, we have had comment from our leaders, and many of which you have heard this morning already, and some great points have been made by my colleagues at COSLA from COSLA leaders. An agreement of principle promotes instability, certainty, transparency, affordability and sustainability in a fiscal relationship. It promotes an effective use of fiscal flexibilities. Again, that was talked at length by my colleagues this morning, and levers to address local priorities and improve outcomes and enable discussion of fiscal empowerment of local government. Lots of that work, joint work, is continuing at pace at the moment. The other area is around that partnership agreement, and our real focus on that is the partnership approach. That has not just been more and worse, but it is absolutely built on mutual respect and trust. We really want to ensure that that relationship is strong and that those priorities are agreed on before we commit to signing off on that partnership agreement. We want to underpin a mature dialogue and a mutual understanding of our priorities going forward. What I would say so far is that we are continuing to engage. We have had great access when it comes to dialogue with our ministerial colleagues, so since I have been in the presidential role and my vice-president Stephen Heddle, we have monthly relationships with Mr McPherson. That is a sort of relationship building meeting. We also have our strategic review group, which is co-chair by myself and the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice and Local Government. More recently, we had our first meeting, which we were delighted to attend. That was in the joint working group on deliberative engagements and sources for local government financing, including council tax. That is currently co-chair by Mr Arthur and Mr Harvey, and we are having some discussions on what that will look like in the future. I believe that a previous iteration was co-chair by COSLA. We are really keen if we were able to re-adopt that position, understanding that a lot of the work will have to do with the region you are using within local authorities. That is me for now, but, colleagues, I thank you very much. I will be brief on this particular point on the opening point. We welcome the focus on our renewed partnership. The local governance review feels like a bit of unfinished work. It was not a local governance review. It was a local governance review. All local authorities then engaged its communities about all the public sector bodies who were active in the area. We got some very clear feedback from communities about what they would like to see in terms of a better integration, a greater level of influence over the delivery of public services, but that includes the services that councils deliver. For us, looking at the partnership agreement, the president was correct. It is not just one word. What we want to see is that reflected in behaviours and in actions. A partnership agreement in writing a document is not the end goal. What we want is a different relationship, as I said, that is featured in the subsequent actions. I am sure that there are plenty of other questions in relation to the fiscal framework. Can I go a little bit deeper in terms of changing behaviours? Could you give us some examples or an example of a change that would build that trust? There are too many examples of announcements in issues that do not fully engage local government in their development. This morning, you have heard the evidence around the national care service. The national care service is affecting a core part of local government. The bill was given to the presiding officer before it was shared with local government. We had no input to the construction of the bill and we got it 24 hours before it was laid before Parliament. There are examples that you will find around the way that pieces of work are continually brought forward. Quite often, we get a subsequent apology and we engage with senior civil servants. However, there are too many repetitions of that type of lack of engagement. We are ending up retrofitting a number of policy announcements rather than being involved at the beginning of the policy. Working with colleagues in Scottish Government around how those can be fulfilled, how they are implemented, and generally, when we are early engaged, it makes for a better implementation. There are terrific examples of really good work between the Scottish Government and local government during the Covid period. We would want to see that replicated. Do you have any understanding why the pattern or feeling of too many examples of things being brought forward and councils not being included? Do you have a sense of why that happens? In my personal view, too often local government is viewed as being a delivery body for national government. We are not. We have a separate democratic mandate. The elected members are elected by their constituents to represent their area. That includes making decisions in respect of the priorities and how they deliver on those areas. However, we hear quite often a frustration from ministers that local government just does not simply do what they wish to do. That is not local authorities being difficult around that, but quite often the implementation of certain actions, the specialism that is set in local government, so having an aspiration in policy terms and having the clear understanding of what it takes to implement it is sometimes very different. I will move on to another question. It is still sticking with the new deal for local government. Shona, I will come to you. I know that we had the session before, and you have been watching it, but if you want to highlight or underscore or bring anything new in terms of what you would like to see in the new deal between the Scottish Government and local government? I suppose that the priorities for us, like every major convener, would be that Mr Shadden has covered incredibly well about building on that relationship and ensuring parity when it comes to decision making. Ensuring that real early discussion and co-production is key to our relationship and absolutely underpins our new deal. As Mr Shadden said, we know our communities as elected members to local authority. We know our communities incredibly well and often we have that very current experience to inform any sort of decision making, so co-production is absolutely key. The other point that I would make again is around flexibilities. That was made clear by my colleagues this morning about the need for greater flexibilities within local government spend. We currently have about 60 per cent of our budget as direct to spend. There is a clear desire and appetite for councils to have much more freedom around where that revenue goes and how it is best spent within their local communities. That would be my two points. Thanks for that, Shona. Could you go a little bit deeper there? Be interested to hear how you think a new deal would support the six outcomes set out in your new five-year plan? I suppose that would be our key point around local democracy. That goes for sustainable funding. That, again, back to the flexibility of spend, as you will be aware, our lobbying position has been very clear over the past couple of weeks. We are facing immense challenges, probably the most worrying set of challenges that we have seen in local government for many, many years. That need for us to have control over spend and ensure that public money is spent in the best way possible to ensure that the best outcomes for communities would be our clear priority. I will now bring in Paul McClellan with some questions. Thank you, convener, and good morning panel. I just want you to touch a little bit more on the new deal, particularly on the national care service and what your thoughts are on and where you think that that is going to be impacted by the national care service. Shona, I will probably come to you and then obviously come across to Clelland on that point of view, but particularly just on the new deal on the national care service. Shona, I think that we kind of lost you at the start. I do not know if you want to start again if that is okay. Of course, that is okay. I am hoping that the snow is not affecting anything too much. Thanks, Paul. My colleagues spoke to the clear position on the national care service. We absolutely support many of the recommendations in the fully report and the huge benefit of many of those recommendations. However, it is quite clear that, as a whole across-party, there are quite significant concerns when it comes to the bill as it stands just now. I know that my colleague Paul Kelly, who spoke to the person for health, has spent several days giving evidence to the committee about those concerns, and again, leaders touched on that this morning around that quite real concern about centralisation. We have so many current challenges at the moment, but leaders feel that the time taken up in the development of the bill as it stands is potentially going to cause significant issues within local authorities at a time when we could be implementing changes to try to improve people's outcomes here and now. If I was going on Mastermind, my specialist subject by the national care service, I will keep it as brief as I possibly can. The fault lines in health and social care go back and there has been literally decades of underfunding of care. What has meant is that, as the demand-outstripped resource is available, what was introduced was a prioritisation and need framework, which allowed four categories. As the resource would get tighter and tighter, assessments got more and more difficult because effectively they were only providing services to critical and substantial categories 1, 2, 3 and 4, which would have helped with supportive and preventative interventions were unaffordable. Over a long period of time, individuals going through a process of a difficult assessment at the end of which they were not getting all the care that they needed led to a huge level of dissatisfaction. Those fault lines were in place before Covid arrived when the review was undertaken by Derek Feely. What he heard was the frustration and the upset for those who were receiving services or those who were carers. The subsequent consultation saw us, COSLA and a raft of different public sector bodies responded back to saying that the consultation itself was fundamentally flawed. It set out a single model of alternative to individuals and said, do you want to stick with the status quo? Obviously they didn't. Or do you want this one single model of alternative, which was a national care service? Overwhelmingly and unsurprisingly, you've got people saying, no, I don't want to stick with the status quo. If they're given the only other option, which was a national care service, they're then opted for it. The subsequent work around an alleged co-production of a model where you've got 150 people on a team's call, half a dozen of whom might get scared. Sorry, I'm coming back and I'm trying to bring it back more to the new deal, if you know what I mean. Does it impact me? We've always taken evidence a lot in the national care service but it's more about how that would impact on the new deal in your thoughts. I'm not going back to the evidence that you've given, because I think that we've heard that from SOS as well in terms of that, but more on the new deal aspect of it. The end of that narrative is effectively to say that we've got a proposal on the table that's unaffordable, unimplementable in terms of delivery of the anticipated outcome. It's absolutely unclear as to how we would do so. What would be the effect of a proper partnership agreement around that? That would, as the president has just indicated, be an agreement between central and local government if there's investment available to put into health and social care. Let's not spend our time constructing a new bureaucratic structure to administer it at a high cost. Let's implement the investment at the front line and actually improve people's care outcomes. Sarah, I want you to come in. Sarah, come on in. Thank you. I think it's just in relation to national care service and the impact on the new deal. I think two things I would raise is when Clellan said that the LGR feels very much like unfinished business and I think if we were to take the principles of a local democracy, a local governance review and apply them up alongside the national care service, I don't think that it would fare very well in terms of community, functional and fiscal empowerment. I think that there's something that sits quite uncomfortably there. I think that the other issue, a key part of the new deal, is a fiscal framework. That is setting the fiscal rules or the funding rules between local and central Governments. Councillor Ross talked this morning about a percentage to local government. We'll clearly take care out of councils. We'll severely disrupt the funding that goes to local government and all the ancillary services that sit within local government. I think we'll really have to think really carefully about those rules if the national care service goes ahead. Finally, the types of principles that we're talking about in the partnership agreement space again don't sit comfortably with the way in which the national care service was developed. Certainly, if we develop a partnership agreement, it would definitely be local government's aspirations that the way in which the national care service was developed would not happen again if we developed clear rules and principles for working together. I think that that's really helpful. You led me into my next question, which I'll ask Shona. It really talks about the fiscal framework and what you would like to see out of it. Shona, I know that I'll come round the rest of the panel on that. You heard from the local council leaders in terms of that, but about the fiscal framework itself, what is it that you would like to see out of the fiscal framework from across the point of view and, of course, on the income to Solace. Shona, first of all. Thanks, Paul. What would we ideally like to see out of the fiscal framework? Well, I guess it would be stability, would be our main priority and that ability to meet new and emerging needs in a reactive manner. I appreciate that Colleys spoke earlier, and I think that it was an important point to reiterate around a fixed budget, but there is still the ability for people to revisit discussions with the Scottish Government. As we have seen over the past couple of years, we seem to leap from crisis to crisis. Local Government does that incredibly well and the partnership work that we have seen during Covid was commendable between the Scottish Government and local government. Sustainability, the ability to meet new and emerging needs and increased flexibilities, which I think we have covered quite considerably so far this morning. Shona, just on that, and then I will come across to Colleys. One of the key things that was mentioned by councillors was at the very start of the process. I am not saying that here is the budget at the end of it, but here is who you are can you go on with that. Is there more work being done at the start of the Scottish Government budget process in terms of more causal involvement or formal causal involvement at that stage? Can you comment on that by councillors? I do not know what your thoughts would be on that one, if that is a takeaway for us in that regard. We will always absolutely embrace any early discussion when it comes to a project, Paul, and we are really keen to have those discussions. We will do our best. Obviously, we have our lobby in position, and we had the opportunity at the parliamentary reception recently to talk to colleagues from the committee about the pressures that we are experiencing. We are always absolutely delighted to be able to have those early discussions. We have access to ministers, and I know to progress the discussions, but New Deal has been great. We have our monthly meetings with Mr McPherson, and we also have our strategic review meetings with the cabinet secretary, Shona Robison, and all that has been incredibly helpful. Absolutely, COSLA is always willing and ready for any discussions on budget. All of the elements around flexibility, stability, etc. You heard this morning from Councillor Ross when he spoke about almost shared fortunes. If local government shared the fortunes of the Scottish Government, that would include discussions about shared priorities that might come out of the partnership agreement or a review of the national performance framework. We need to think about baseling on that point. Councillor Ross indicated that everybody will be familiar with the spice graph that demonstrates 2013-14 onwards, etc., that the Scottish Government real terms increase was 4.3 per cent, and local government was 4.2 per cent. However, we asked Audit Scotland, as part of my councils audit report this year, to do something additional for us. We asked it to strip out the funding that has been given to local government for specific priorities—directed funding or ring fence funding. The cut to the core services of local government is a real terms cut of 9.6 per cent. Just to roll a couple of figures for committee today, if you took the 13-14 baseline position for local government, which was a block of £9.27 billion, I apologise, then that 9.6 reduction would be around about £890 million. It is quite close to the cosla baseline position. However, it was a swing. If we had shared the same fortunes as the Scottish Government, it would have been a 13.9 per cent swing from our current budgets, and that would be around about £1.289 million. It was just to give an illustration of that. I suppose that the question is in plain devil's advocate for that one. Obviously, there would be shared priorities in that as part of the bill, so I think that that is important to have that context as well. I want to move on to the— I want to comment—sorry—to hear my apologies. Just in relation to Mr McClellan's talk about what we would like to see in a fiscal framework, I think that for me there would be a couple of things. Yes, very much the rules around what we could expect, and I think that sometimes there is a feeling that the budget is very much done to us, I suppose, with us. There are rules about the expectations from the outset. I think that another important part would be space for structured, honest discussions about demand and pressures. If we look back to 2007-08, when a lot of funding was rolled up into—and there was a lot more flexibility—arrived through the Concordant, but I think that there is a reality that there was policy commitments baked into that that clearly now cannot be delivered in the funding quantum that was put in 2007-08. So we do need a realistic discussion on what can be delivered with that money. Finally, another point that I would like to see in the fiscal framework is a process for more speedy and constructive discussions on things like revenue raising, so a process to do it so that we do not have to go back to develop primary legislation every single time. There would be a route for that quick discussion, exploration and then do what we can within the current legislative framework or do it jointly, but I think more quickly. Thank you for that. I think that that is really helpful. My final question moved on. During the summer committee commission some research looking at how local authorities around Europe raised their own revenues. We touched upon it with council leaders talking about the work-in-place parking levy, for example, or the tourist visitor levy. How would COSLA, our company itself, first of all, show—is that something, obviously, in principle that you would support? Is it looking at a suite of measures in terms of having that principle from the Scottish Government to raise, for local authorities to raise their own taxes or fund raising opportunities around that? I just wondered what you thought on that. If that was the case, how would you like to see that proceed in terms of that? I think that one of the key things that I think for me would be given to each local authority, and that was touched upon by the local council leaders, something to do in terms of their own local context. What might work in Borders might not work in Highland might not work in Moray, but it gives them the opportunity to look at additional fund raising opportunities on top of the budget that they have at the moment. In principle, has COSLA looked at that and has any ideas how it would like to see that proceed, if that was the case? Yeah, thanks Paul. I think that you've outlined the areas that we have done some work on previously, around local tax raisins, so if it's to Levy and I'm working part in Levy. Those two areas are on-going, and we continue to pursue discussions around them. I think that that's key. The real local aspect to local revenue raisin is that we have to ensure that councils are given the powers that they need to react quite quickly and to look at what would work best for their third-owned authority. We have to place the opportunity to be able to do that. Again, that has been built into our conversations. We have had a very good conversation with the Deputy First Minister about flexibilities. I think that the joy working group that I mentioned earlier that we had an initial meeting with Mr Arthur, Mr McPherson and Mr Harvey last week was a really good space to have those discussions. That is on local government funding, and within that sits council tax as well. That is focused on measures that we can look at that aren't protracted through heavy legislation or primary legislation. We can look at moving the conversation on quite quickly and developing procedures that we can put in place so that local councils can be reactive. That feels like a really good space. We have only had an initial meeting, but it is certainly grounded within that deliberative engagement, as well. Ensuring that whatever proposals are put forward, our communities absolutely have the opportunity to co-produce because, again, they absolutely are tuned into what they need and to require in their own environments. I want to give an example of what other countries were looking at. It was, for example, like a local sales tax, and the local authorities had the ability to do that. That is not what I am opposed to, but that gives an example. From a chief executive point of view, your thoughts on the same question are looking at that ability for each local authority to look at different fundraising opportunities. How would you like to see that, or how, from a solace point of view, would you like to see that proceed to consider what Shona has mentioned? It is correct that there should be the flexibility for local authorities to act where it is appropriate. We heard this morning that TVT, for example, will work for some authorities, and that will provide some reasonable income. However, it will not work across the board. I suppose that the way that I like this is that if a fighter plane is flying along and somebody fires a missile at it, it throws out all those sparkly things at the back and distracts the missile. The conversation around things such as TVT, parking levees and so on could act as chaff. It is not appropriate for a proper funding settlement for local government. I will go back to the council tax as one of the levers. We need to be thinking about the future funding on local government—much more fundamental. We need something that is much more progressive in the public pay. I will come up on that later on in some of the questions, but I am particularly on the additional or other opportunities for raising funds, just your thoughts on that one. As I said, the council tax will come up at a later stage. The opportunities for councils to be more commercial in their outlook, to have a general competence to allow them to act within their market as appropriate, not to muscling on the private sector, but whether there is market failure, for example, or whether there is opportunities and no service delivery for the authorities to consider new revenue generating proposals. It will be different for different areas, so it needs to be a general power as opposed to a prescriptive. Has Solace done any mention about the general power, which I agree with, because it is nice to give me that local flexibility? Has Solace done anything formally in that regard, in looking at that or presenting anything to the Scottish Government in terms of that, or would it be something that it would consider? We would work in conjunction with colleagues in the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities around that rather than doing something separately or separately as a professional body, but you will find across the country that there will be examples of authorities acting in a commercial manner. Are those previous cases 15 years in the same local authority? Sometimes, very successfully, etc. We need to explore those general powers, but, as I said, it will be later in the conversation. These are enhancements, as opposed to a replacement for a more progressive way of funding local government. Thank you. I don't know if Sarah Boyle wants to come on that one. If not, that's me. Thanks, Paul. Sarah Boyle would like to come in. Sorry, yes. As well as part of the fiscal framework, if there is local revenue raising opportunities and exploration, we need to think carefully about the interaction with the local government's settlement. We wouldn't want to see an awful lot of effort going into local revenue raising that is very appropriate locally for tourism infrastructure or environmental priorities, but all that happens is that there is a deduction from the settlement. It is a bit like the Scottish Government having tax-raising powers and then seeing their block grant adjusted because they have raised more tax. You would absolutely want to be able to spend local money raised for local priorities, but that is something that we need to consider as part of the fiscal framework, because what would that interaction look like? Thanks, Sarah. Thanks, convener. We are now going to move on to questions from Willie Coffey. I would like to ask the same question as the previous panel and direct this to Councillor Morrison. You must have heard the responses from councillor colleagues on progress with the local governance review since 2017. It was hardly rosy, although there were a few glimmers of positivity near the end of it. Could you give us your own perspective, Shona, of how you think that work has gone? I might as well just roll my second question into this, convener. Did we put too much expectation to local communities about what the outcome of that review would be? First, could you give us your perspective on how the review has gone? Secondly, did we perhaps overreach and put in too many high expectations about what it might achieve? Thanks, Willie. It has been an avoidable relay that progress was postponed for the local governance review. That was undoubtedly due to a redeployment of resources, understandably, in the Ukrainian response. It is disappointing but unavoidable. We are absolutely starting to see green shoots and a movement back into meaningful discussions with the Scottish Government. I will keep the positive, I suppose, and say that some of the work that we are looking at is that we have arranged meetings in the new year with Cabinet Secretary Shona Robison to restart discussions around the single island authority and other proposals that we have for a council leader. We are moving on. I suppose that an area that I would focus on is what we could have done better, but perhaps we have experienced some really good practice during Covid is around the meaning behind the words of governance review and not government, as several of my colleagues have already pointed out. That need for change could be at all successful when it comes to good governance. It has to be cross-public sector and not just local government, not just Scottish Government. It is about engaging all of our partners to explore all the solutions that we need to empower our communities and enhance both our local and democratic accountability. Those relationships have been developed during the past two or three years. I sat on the NHS Grampian board in my last term and saw how successful we were able to work at pace together. I suppose that that is a really positive by-product of where we are and the crisis that we have gone through. We have been able to establish those relationships and, hopefully, moving forward, that cross-public sector approach will be something that we can absolutely harness and drive forward. Thank you for that, Clelland. We did the same question. Two years of work went on there in 2018-2019 before it was paused for a number of reasons. What is your own perspective and what has come out of the review so far in terms of positive direction of travel? The biggest positive is that it is back in the agenda. The consultation phase for the local governance review. I was in the Gellinbu at my previous authority and I personally fronted a roadshow that went round quite an extensive area, a lot of Ireland, and did workshops and roadshows with communities. The first thing is that there was a huge appetite for people to be involved in it. There was a real momentum around that. There was a discussion. We had a board at one point with all the public bodies who took decisions or provided service within the area. It was really interesting that half of the bodies were not known to the local community, and they were often asking who they were, what they were doing, etc. We explained how the report was, how they were accountable to us, etc. There was loads of really good feedback that was built up and fed into the process, and then, for reasons that the president has explained, it was never finalised. We deliberately set out to talk about local governance, not local government, although the council was a facilitator. With that lens on it, it started to open up discussions with communities that were much broader than the services that councils deliver. Had it concluded and produced some enabling legislation, I think that it would have produced in different locations in Scotland different solutions that reflected the local needs. We need to get away from this one-size-fits-all, where people keep using post-cord lottery and all those kinds of expressions. That is a nonsense. Scotland is a very diverse country with a lot of diverse communities. I think that it was ready to be presented. It was not necessarily an appetite—I will just cover those points, because I think that it is connected with a later question. It was not necessarily about ripping more powers out of local government tier and putting it to a further tier. It was not necessarily—what I heard in those roadshows directly from communities, they wanted an influence. They did not necessarily want to be running services. In an area like Argyllin but, which is enormous but quite a sparse population, you quite often had a single manager running a particular service across that huge geography. Discussions about it—we would like to take on our own planning functions, etc. When we want our own planning manager, there is one planning manager for the whole of Argyllin but. It was helpful in managing expectations and opening up a very honest dialogue with communities about how they wanted to input the decisions that are made on their behalf. Is that helpful? Yes, it is. I do not know if Shona has signalled. I think that local governments' expectations were raised through the local governance review. I think that there was a hope that it would be the way in which some of the ideas and work that was done through community planning partnerships could gain a bit of traction, especially in the functional and the fiscal empowerment bits. It would be the means by which you could join up budgets, look at property differently and do things that, potentially, there had been barriers to before. It is interesting now that the local governance review is part of the new deal for local government. We just need to be careful that it cannot just be confined to local government. It has to push across the different public sector partners. There was a lot in the resource spending review about public sector reform, and there was a bit in the resource spending review about local government taking a complementary approach to the public sector reform agenda. We need to join all those things up. We are thinking about how local governance is done, what is in this new deal, what can community planning partnerships achieve, and how can we make services better, using all the resources that we have, and how can we make outcomes better for people on the ground? Okay. Thanks very much for that. I'll be happy with that. Thank you. Sarah, thanks for that. I'm just underscoring the point that the noticing that the local governance review has been tucked into the new deal for local government and that we need to be mindful of that. I'm not going to move on to questions from Marie McNair. Thank you, convener, and good morning, panel. Councillor Morrison, the previous COSLA President told the committee last year that local government review pilots are all written up and ready to go. Can you tell us a bit more about these pilots and any other local projects relating to the review's three empowerment? I'm sorry. Sorry, Marie. Can you repeat that? I've just seen the start. Obviously, the previous COSLA President told the committee last year that councils have local government review pilots written up and ready to go. I just really wanted to know, can you tell us a bit more about those pilots and any other local projects? I've obviously maybe brought in Sarah. Obviously, you're just newly elected. I'm going to have to Maria McRae to say that I'll have a little bit more detail. Not a problem, Sarah. There were 11 or 12 proposals that had been put forward. I remember them being discussed at my very first and last meeting at the Scottish Parliament just before Covid. The 12 proposals have come forward. Obviously, the island authorities, single island authorities form part of that, but so too did single public authority models in some of our other areas. For example, in Scottish Borders, that was a proposal that was put forward. There were other things around data sharing. I think that we absolutely need to revisit that list and almost, I don't want to say close them off, but review them in the post-Covid context and see which ones we want to take forward or which ones have moved forward anyway because of maybe working practice during Covid or work that we've been doing, for example, with EWP and data sharing. Some of those proposals covered those areas. We need to stocktake. There's a feeling now that there's been some cabinet interest in the single island authority model, but we would like to look at the 12 proposals that came forward and assess which ones are still relevant and which ones perhaps local authorities would want to see slightly amended to take account of the current context. Very similar. There was another time. There was a set of pilot projects that were described in short order, but they never moved into proper implementation phase. We need to go back and revisit those. We need to look at them from today's lens as well. Ultimately, we need to be clear about the purpose of such pilots and how they will benefit communities and how they will deliver a set of outcomes. It looks slightly different today from the list that Sarah mentioned in 2019. Sarah is right that we should take a stocktake on that original list and refresh it and look to expand on it, but we need to do so with a view to what enabling powers might be needed to help those to get over the line. I would like to ask the same question that I asked the previous panel of councillors. I can ask him what our cause and soloist is view on community councils. Do you think that the reviews are required regarding the role? We have outstanding community councils in Scotland. High capacity, connect well with their communities, those that they represent, connect well with other community bodies such as development trusts and physically deliver a lot of services on the ground in addition to their statutory role or anything like that. However, it is very inconsistent across the country. There are not that many community councils across the country where there is a true election, a competitive election. I think that they would be the first ones to acknowledge that they are not diverse. They tend to be men of my age and upwards, very male, very much of my age bracket. Their ability to connect and represent their communities is variable as well. I hope that that explanation is understood. Therefore, we need to ensure that we empower communities, one body of which in our communities is community councils. I go back to some of the really progressive work that has been done in community planning across the country, where we are tying in representatives at the neighbourhood level, locality level and connecting them to the strategic community planning level. It is not to sideline community councils, but they are only one of a number of very progressive community bodies. It comes to the point about what do you do in legislation terms. I would be really cautious about any blanket direction to take powers from local government to put it to a fourth tier when you have such levels of variability. For me, the concern is not just about representation and accountability in communities, but one additional point. It is a generalism that those communities who have the highest capacity tend to have the highest capacity community councils. Those communities who have the greatest levels of challenge are often the communities where there is not the same engagement in community councils and there is not the same capacity to advocate for other communities and part of the role of local governments to equalise that. I am just a bit more cautious than maybe the messages that you heard earlier. Sarah Boyle and Shona, do you want to add any further? Shona? It is pretty incredibly well prepared to carry out mine as well. What he described is I would say would be that my experience of community councils in that is incredibly valuable. We have seen and leaders have waited for that during their evidence session. Some incredible work done by our community councils in our development during Covid. We have done a lot of working money in the last couple of months over resilience building within those groups. It has been fantastic to see that communities are really engaged. However, I absolutely agree with Llywydd that I would say that what we see is incredibly different throughout the country. Sarah, do you want to add anything? No, nothing is added. We are now going to move on to our final area of questions. That will be with Mark Griffin, who is joining us online. Cosla launched the budget campaign a couple of weeks ago. It is fair to say that it paints a really grim picture for local authorities if there are any changes from the spending review figures. What impact would a flat cash settlement have on local authorities? Are you able to set out a breakdown of the extra billion pounds that directors of finance have called for and do you have any suggestions as to how national government might fund that? I will certainly bring Sarah in to add some more detail, if that is all right. As you have clearly outlined, we are facing incredible pressures within local government. I also appreciate that Scottish Government is facing a lot of the same challenges. I think that Llywydd gave you a breakdown of the figures earlier on, but we are looking at pressures of over £600 million in 2020-24 due to inflation, energy and demand, as well as cutting pressures of the pay deal, which we absolutely rightly made, but that will be a definite pressure going forward for councils. All that wraps around demographic pressures, increasingly complex care needs, implications of the climate crisis, pay pressures, workforce recruitment pressures, impact of the EU exit and Covid, and we have the national care service providing us with quite an uncertain picture at present. I spend a lot of time with council leaders recently listening to some of the situations that they are facing, and we have outlined quite rightly in our lobbying position what that might look like. Through various different captions that we have taken from different leaders within different authorities, as you have also referenced, we had the letter going in from Directors of Finance, fairly unprecedented approach from them, and that plays a clear picture of how very concerned we are about our fiscal situation. I will perhaps hand over to Sarah if that is okay for just some greater detail around the ask. Just in response to Mr Griffin's question about what happens if we do not get additional money, I think that in our initial budget lobbying document, we set out the scale of the challenge, so what a billion pounds would equate to in terms of teacher numbers? It is the entire ELC delivery budget, but what we have said this year is that the scale of the challenge is such that we cannot see areas that have been previously protected, not bearing their fair share of the pressures this year. For example, where local government has looked to protect education and care in the past and the burden has fallen on areas such as roads, culture, sport, etc., that is no longer viable, given that it is a billion pounds. What we have done in subsequent releases over last week and this week is set out what would happen if all service areas took their fair share of the pressures. One that has just gone out today is an interesting one in relation to climate change, because what we are saying is that there is a climate SOS. We know that there is a huge amount of investment required if we are going to meet our net zero targets. Climate change is an interesting one for councils because there is no specific budget line for climate change, but what we are saying is that if we do not see a change in both revenue and capital, meeting those targets will be extremely challenging. It is not a service area per se, so it is difficult to set out what you would save, but we would see the inability to invest across estate, across fleet and all the things that councils need to do to meet net zero. We have been quite blunt about the reality of the current spending plans and, for all the reasons that Councillor Morrison set out, such as energy, inflation and the residual pay gap that still exists this year. Demand in areas such as Ukraine resettlement is placing significant demand on some areas such as Glasgow in relation to school transport alone. There is a significant pressure there of this year that carries into next year. Again, not to repeat, but the impact that used to go back to the original question is not just this year, but this year is different. We will get 10 years of paring away. Do not get me wrong, creating efficiencies must have been fact in the system 10 years ago for us to have survived through most of this period, but increasingly each year has got worse. The effect is almost a deliberate disinvestment in roads, bridges, leisure, culture, libraries, grounds maintenance, street clans and parks and cemeteries, etc. All the things that are not in the protected services around education or social care. The budget SOS circulars that colleagues in COSLA have been circulating and give an illustration of the kind of impact on that. Can I just put in a slight addition on this, which is in capital, because we haven't really talked about the capital impact? The capital budgets, the capital grants for local authorities now are so small that we are unable to maintain our estate anywhere near the condition that should be. We're storing up potential problems that are already starting to arise where you're seeing facilities being closed for the lack of roof repairs, boiler systems, etc. I want to just put one other nuance on this. We have shared targets and shared priorities around climate change. We did a piece of work now. South Lanarkshire Council, my council, has arguably the best and most modern school estate in Scotland. We replaced all of our schools, primary, secondary, early learning and childcare centres. Our condition of non-domestic stock is better than the average in Scotland by some considerable distance. To hit zero emissions targets by 2038, we did a piece of work on our non-domestic estate. It will cost us over £1.5 billion to get anywhere near zero emissions. Our capital grant for my authority reduced by a third recently in this year, and it's down to £21 million. That £21 million is to do everything to maintain all of our roads, estates, etc. Our ability to get anywhere near the 2038 target, far less the 2045 target around net zero, is—I'll do the math, as Americans would say—we need to get a very honest and real conversation about the targets that are set for Scottish local government and our ability to deal with them within the current financial envelope. Capital was something that I hadn't had discussed earlier, but it falls in the same bracket as the challenges around revenue. I can come back to Councillor Morrison briefly. A large part of that £1 billion was on the paydeals and the pay settlement. I just wondered if COSLA were asking on the paydeals since they were jointly negotiated. I was going to be asking for those to be baselined to alleviate some of those recurring pressures. Yes, absolutely. Thanks for that clarification. I wanted to move on to another area. The programme for government in 2021 confirmed that the Government would introduce a local democracy bill in this parliamentary session. I just wanted to ask what COSLA and Solace would like to see included in that local democracy bill, and perhaps come to Clelland first. You don't need to do that. Thanks, convener. A couple of things around us. We are aware that the European Charter for Local Self-Government has been bound up by the UK Supreme Court decision. The basic principles within the charter are fundamental to the future of local government in Scotland. Any bill that comes forward now in relation to local democracy, in my view, should be founded on the principles of that charter. We need to find a way to ensure that it is within the competence of the Parliament, but we must still keep those principles in place. Those at its core talk about the role of local government in the governance of this country. Secondly, it talks about the resources being appropriate to allow local government to discharge its functions in those terms. In terms of the flexibilities that we spoke about earlier in terms of local governance review, those should feature within the local democracy bill to enable local areas, local partnerships, community planning partnerships and local public bodies, to enact changes in function or structure. The three conferences that Sarah mentioned earlier in terms of fiscal community and functional should be flexible as an enabling piece of legislation to allow those to come forward. In my view, it should avoid any blanket direction to every area in Scotland to look alike or to be alike or to make change alike, because we have a hugely diverse country. I will just keep it short to that point. Thank you. Shona, do you want to come in on this? Thanks, convener. I will not add much more because Clylon has covered a lot of what I would have said since the European Charter and my vice-president would have given me out of that. I was not able to raise that because somebody spoke at length about the importance of going forward, and I absolutely agree with him. I guess that anything that we will like to do is to ensure that it is built upon once we are concluded with the local governance review that what we have is built upon those very principles. Thank you. Miles, I believe that you might have a supplementary on this particular topic. I can come in at the end of this. I think that you have some more questions. Thanks, convener. Just one final question on local government taxation. The Scottish Government Partnership Agreement between the SNP and the Greens committed to establishing a working group to deliver on what form local government taxation could take. I just wondered if there are any updates from COSLA and Solace to perhaps how talks are progressing on local government taxation. I think that that is more a question for my colleagues in COSLA. Shona? I can certainly come in. I had said, Mark, that we had our first meeting of the joint working group on deliberation on social and local government funding, which includes council tax last week with Mr Arthur, Mr McPherson and Mr Harvey. That was an issue that, in terms of reference, has been decided during agenda setting, etc. You will appreciate that there was some discussion points within that agenda, but we have been unable to reflect those discussions back with leaders and that people will go to leaders in January. It would be remiss of me to have that discussion just now and before I have had it with leaders. Very much a sort of initial meeting, deciding on terms of reference and agenda setting, etc. Felt very positive. There is some good discussion around the table and quite an open, honest environment. We are looking for a return next meeting once we have been able to update leaders. I am happy to update the committee. Thank you, Shona. That sounds like it was very constructive. I wonder what the regularity of the meetings will be. Do you have a sense of that? It feels like it will be quite regular, convener. We do not have any yet. Again, that will be once we have had an opportunity to delve into the terms of reference, but we have agreed that anything with you will be moving at peace. I am making the assumption that that will be a very regular meeting. Thank you very much. Sarah, you wanted to come in on that. I think that the Beat House agreement, we need to look at it in two parts. I think that there is a very immediate set of practical things that the group had started to look at next week. As Councillor Morrison said, we need to run some of those things past leaders. Those are the types of things that we could do within the current legislative framework in the short term, but we need to think about the other part of that, which is sources of local government funding. That is a very big question, or a very big area to explore, because that covers everything from the funding that we get from Scottish Government, council tax, other revenue-raising, NDR, etc. That needs to run in parallel to the work on fiscal framework, because the two are inextricably linked. Mark, are you complete with your questions? Yes, that is all the questions from me. Thank you very much. I am now going to bring in Miles Briggs. Thank you, convener. It was just following on from those questions. In the first panel, we did hear the disparity between island councils, and specifically as an Edinburgh MSP, I am acutely aware that Edinburgh receives one of the lowest shares per head of population. Many of the problems that Scotland faces, at least with regard to homelessness, 25 per cent of that is here in the capital, and the council will continuously tell me that they do not have the resource to address that. What are the plans, and maybe touched upon the conversations that you are having shown with regard to reviewing that funding formula, to look at historically councils that have lost out, like Edinburgh? Thanks, Miles. You will appreciate that those sorts of discussions have been on-going, and we have had several meetings already with Cabinet Secretary and Deputy First Minister, as well as Mr McPherson, on funding issues. We raise that continually. Leaders, when it comes to distribution and settlement, that is a decision, and that paper goes to our council leaders, and that is something that they have the ability to influence and obviously feedback to Government around. I would say that that is absolutely—I think that Mr Stockings spoke at length—about his feelings about distribution. Obviously, with discussions going forward over single-island authority and the other proposals that we need to, that is key to those discussions and how funding is distributed. I say that I might want to add a little bit more detail. I suppose that the causeless formal position is that we want to look at the fiscal framework before we start looking at distribution, because the important thing for local government is to increase the size of the pie and not to look at redistributing the pie that we already have. Leaders were absolutely clear that we really wanted to make sure that the fiscal framework was well under way, and then we would look at issues of distribution. Distribution obviously has been reviewed. The whole floor mechanism and distribution was reviewed back in 2018. As Councillor Morrison rightly says, every single funding distribution is jointly discussed with Scottish Government. All directors of finance across Scotland have an opportunity to comment, and all decisions go to leaders too frequently and too many discussions on funding. We would like to see much fewer distributions and a much simpler process and much more flexibility, but there is a very robust process at the moment. I do not want to add too much, but I have probably got a fairly unique perspective of having been chief executive in a rural and island authority in Irgerland butte and now in South Lanarkshire, which is largely urban but with a fairly large-scale rural population. It is a perennial debate about trying to get the balance between deprivation-related indicators and those that reflect rurality and particularly rurality in a declining population setting. That work is constantly reviewed by directors of finance network who look at the indicators that will reflect distribution, but the word that I wrote before I said that I came in was quantum. Before we start to talk about how we cut the pie up, we need to ensure that the pie is large enough to allow us the delivery of core public services in every area, and thereafter it is New York's. Thank you very much, and that concludes all our questions. I very much appreciate you all joining us this morning for this useful and informative discussion. Does anyone have any final, we have a little bit more time, and I just want to say that if you have anything final, you really want to make sure that we are here. I welcome that. I do so because one of my colleagues will hunt me if I don't. It has been highlighted around the extensive renewable energy infrastructure here in Scotland, the need for further investment in that infrastructure to ensure that not only can we generate power but we can get it to where it is needed. It was pointed out by my colleague who asked me today to ensure that it was referenced that there is considerable impact on, it was an island authority, considerable impact from offshore wind, et cetera, yet it kind of bypasses the authorities in terms of revenue generation. If we are looking at progressive taxation models, that is one of the items that some of my colleagues would ask us to put on the table. Thank you very much. Anything from Kozla, from Shona or Sarah? No? Okay, great. Well thank you very, very much. We agreed at the start of the meeting to take the next three items in private, so as we have no more public business today, I now close the public part of the meeting.