 Good morning and welcome to the first meeting in 2024 of the local government housing and planning committee and I'd like to wish members and all of those participating are watching a happy new year and I remind members and witnesses to ensure that all their devices are on silent. The first item of our agenda today is to decide whether to take item 3 in private. Are members agreed? At this time I'd like to invite members who wish to declare an interest. I thank you, convener, just to declare that up until 2022 I was a local councillor in Western Bartonshire. Thank you, convener, just declaring that until 2022 I was a local councillor in South Lanarkshire. Thank you very much. Great. We now turn to agenda item 2, which is to take evidence on the Scottish Government's budget 2024-25, and that's from Martin Booth, who's the Executive Director of Finance at Glasgow City Council, Kirsty Flanagan, who's the Director of Finance at Argyll and Bute Council, Sarah Fortune, who's the Executive Director for Council Resources at East Lothian Council, and Jamie Robertson, who's the Chief Finance Officer at East Dunbartonshire Council. I'll start with an initial question. I'd be interested to get a sense of any assessment that you've made on how the Scottish budget 2024-25 will impact your local authorities. What is the estimated gap that you require and what you are likely to receive from the Scottish Government in 2024-25? There are a few questions in that. Will you have the necessary funds to fill statutory duties, and if there are gaps, what approach will you take to fill them? It's difficult to be very prescriptive at the moment on the settlement. We've only got the settlement the day before Christmas, but the headlines are that it's not a good settlement for local government. The headline figures of 5 per cent real terms increases aren't really accurate because that's taking into account significant elements of funding over the last couple of years, particularly for pay awards. If you compared our budget at the end of the year to what our budget will be at the start of the year, we think that there's a reduction. The floor mechanism has been set at half a per cent below the average settlement, and the average settlement is minus 0.54, so the floor has been set at minus 1.04 per cent. That shows that the average is a negative figure. The inflation that we all face individually and as households is equally being felt by local government, pay inflation, food inflation, construction cost inflation—I think that we all understand the massive pressures that's placing. How will we deal with that? I think that it does put pressure on all the services that we deliver, with the amount of directed spend in our budget, where at the moment we have to maintain teacher numbers, we have to maintain our contribution to our IJIBs. The areas where the budget pressure falls are a very limited part of our budgets. I think that I've used the term before—it's bins in libraries—are the areas that are left. I think that there is pressure on our statutory services. There's pressure particularly across the country, but certainly in Glasgow on homelessness and the pressure that that's creating. The UK Government's policy on fast-tracking asylum seekers is exacerbating that problem, probably particularly in the cities, but that will spread wider than the cities as well. We will go through the normal process that we've gone through now for a number of years, where we have to make cuts year on year. That becomes more and more difficult every year. I think that it's probably fair to say that what would have started out 15 or 20 years ago as efficiencies aren't efficiencies anymore, they are cuts. It's a very challenging budget across the board. I don't think that any of us are sitting and expecting an easy time as part of our budget process that will take place over the next couple of months, and for some authorities it's really difficult. Thank you very much for painting that picture. Does anyone else want to come in on that, Sarah? I'm happy to come in. From East Lothian's perspective, absolutely concur everything that Martin has indicated. This is a hugely difficult kind of time. Certainly for us in our authority and probably one of the fastest growing authorities across Scotland, we've got huge population growth and significant challenges at both ends of the spectrum with significant increase in number of children and also elderly population. This is hugely difficult for us in terms of the settlement at the moment. I absolutely concur with what Martin has indicated. We are now facing probably the most significant funding gap that we have ever experienced coming through here. It is now looking at service cuts. There are in terms of your question whether there is enough funds to meet statutory services. I think that that's questionable at the moment. Where we are trying to target our focus on the discretionary services at the moment, but equally, as we all know, many of those discretionary services are absolutely the ones that support the holistic early intervention and prevention. Things are hugely difficult, and this is probably the most difficult financial settlement that I think we've ever experienced in our time. I think that it's also about where does this mean if we're going forward as well. I think that the financial sustainability is critical for us. We focused a wee bit on revenue, but in terms of capital as well, there is a cut to capital too, and that has put in significant pressures. The capital has been fairly static for the last few years, and that's been really challenging to meet all our sustain our assets. Now, it has been cut, and there are challenges with RAC, as you'll be familiar with. It's different across the country, but we are facing RAC. We've got costs in Argyll and Bute as a result of a weather incident that we had in October that are going to create significant pressure. Some of us are now looking at LEAP, and we really have to consider whether LEAP is now affordable in line with the revenue and the capital settlement that is putting real challenges on the infrastructure in our communities. Thanks very much for bringing in that perspective in Jamie. Oh, sorry, you don't need to. We will take care of the microphone for you. Oh, that's right, thank you. Sorry, apologies for that. I think probably without wanting to kind of paraphrase anything that my colleagues have said, and I absolutely agree with everything that has been said by the directors of finance, I think there continues to be a significant element of financial risk around all of this. I think there's a lot of uncertainty within the system still. There's a lot of checking processes that need to happen. As Martin said, this settlement was given to us, the detail was given to us immediately before the Christmas break, and we continue to kind of work through that detail with a view to setting budgets in February, which is a significant amount of work in a very short period of time to kind of cover that. So there's a huge amount of financial risk within that system, and there's a huge amount of areas still to be fully quantified, which leads to a level of risk as well. Thanks. Willie Coffey, you wanted to come in on a supplementary. Thanks very much. Good morning to the panel. Martin, your opening remarks there about the 5 per cent real terms increase, where you said it's not that it's actually had an option. I wonder if you have figures that you could provide the committee to support that, because the spice briefing that we have for today's meeting, which is independent of the Government, clearly shows a 5 per cent increase in real terms. It goes on to say that this is one of the largest year-on-year increases to the local government settlement seen over the past decade, so there's quite a difference there in what you said and what the independent briefing is telling us. So could you provide the committee with something that would allow us to explore a little bit more about what you've said there? Certainly, yes. The spice figures are comparing our budget at this time last year to the budget at this time this year. They've not taken account of any of your commitments, where funding has been provided principally around pay both for teachers and for non-teaching staff, but there's also an adjustment so two years ago, as part of the pay award, there was capital provided that we could convert to revenue to fund pay. That's now being converted back, so that's part of the reason why there's such a big reduction in capital. From memory, that was £110 million. So that's all being added on to the revenue. To give a comparison, it's as if if I was working on a job for 20 years a week and, let's say, I was earning £20,000 and I changed my hours to work for 40 years a week and I was paid £40,000 and then got a 5% pay increase, so I had a £42,000. It's like saying, oh, you had a 110% pay increase because last year you only got £20,000 and this year you got £42,000. You're not really comparing like for like. You're comparing additional commitments that the Scottish Government have agreed to and have been part of that process, but it's not giving us any additional money to deal with inflationary pressures. It's not giving us any additional money to deal with the quite significant demand pressures that Sarah touched on. So there's a whole series of additional funding that's not being included, so it's a reduction. I haven't got the figures with me to actually do an analysis of that, but we can get that provided. That's useful. Thank you. Yeah, I think when we were at this committee probably this time last year and we were talking about the new deal, one of the things we'd hoped for that would be one version of the truth and so it's disappointing that we're seeing that 5% increase and certainly my members, I was briefing my leader yesterday in our budget position and he said that the members are thinking that it's a good settlement because they've been reading that in the press, but for us it's not a good settlement and it's just a pity that there is different versions of what's the reality. Okay, and I can have a long with that. So in Caes's response to the budget, it was stated that the budget, as it stands, leave not a single penny for transformational public service reform and I'd be interested to hear, I mean obviously you've painted quite a tight picture of it and a very difficult situation and we also have this agenda around transformation and I wonder if you see any scope for that in this context. Anyone want to take that? I think with the current budget figures we've been trying to reform and we have been reforming for a number of years and it's something we'll continue to do, chip away at it as and when we can do it, but I think the financial settlement that we've got makes it really challenging to do that. Martin's already mentioned the directed spend over social care and teachers, so it leaves you very limited areas where you can make savings and therefore it's limited areas of where you can put in that preventative expenditure because you've just not got the money to do it and certainly not on the capital side either. Okay, thanks. Anybody else? I think we understand that there's pressures across the system but it feels as if we're investing in solving the downstream problems rather than upstream prevention and that's challenging and we understand that that's really difficult. It does feel as if there needs to be a very honest conversation about public services more generally and how we work that all together but at the moment it feels as if local governments kind of got a little bit of their off end of the stick and is being squeezed with resources but having more problems falling their way with the demand basis that are sometimes coming because of failures elsewhere. Okay, Jamie. Just to reinforce that, I think from an Eastern Bartonshire point of view, we have an established hierarchy through which we kind of move to look at transformation, ending with services cessation and service cuts and those really are the tail end of the options that we would look to exercise and I think historically we have worked through service transformations, redesign, co-design, all these different options to try and reduce the financial envelope through which the council works. I think as the director of finance have said, the scale and scope of the challenges and the speed at which we need to make those services to reduce the financial envelope now is such that it becomes more challenging and there is an imperative to move to those more challenging cuts rather than the work that we have been doing historically which the opportunity is much reduced. Okay, great. I'm going to move on and bring in Pam Gosaw who's got a couple of questions. Thank you, convener and good morning and happy new year everybody. I have been speaking to councils right across Scotland and I've spoke to all four of your councils as well. The general sentiment around the Verity House agreement is that it's definitely needed, something like that, while all the councils do welcome it, the agreement being there, but not one of the councils believe that it has been working. One of the councils actually said that I can't think of a single initiative in which the principles of the Verity House agreement have been applied. Can any of the panel point out an example where you think that the Verity House agreement has applied and, if so, how that might be replicated in future practices? A very hard question. I think that the last time I appeared at this committee there was a question and we were probably slightly earlier on the process of the Verity House agreement. I think that, from memory, I said that, as you've said that it's an important thing, it's important that we get that relationship between local government and Scottish government right but that actions would speak louder than words. At that stage, we hadn't really seen a great deal of actions to support that. I think that it would be fair to say that the position is probably marginally better than that but we still haven't really seen the action so there's been some early discussions around things so there's been some early discussions around the fiscal framework but they've not come to fruition yet. I think that there's some early positive signs but, again, it's actions that will matter. Just to supplement what Martin has indicated, we're all signed up to the principles of the Verity House agreement and what it's hoping to try and do. I think that we are definitely at the start of a journey rather than all the way through that journey. A good example of that is that there has been some elements of funding that has been baselined within the local government finance settlement. I think that that is always welcomed. However, it's not just baselining unless you start looking at Martin and some of my colleagues have already indicated the level of directed spend. We've probably got about three quarters of our overall budget which is wrapped up within directed spend. If you reduce ring fencing, that is just one part but if you've still got all of the policy commitments to still deal with, that's not giving you any flexibility. I think that we're very much at the start of a journey rather than actually all the way through. However, the principles of the Verity House agreement and what it is there are definitely something that, certainly for me, I would hold on to. It's now about how we try and move that forward. I can concur with them comments. For me, it's disappointing what has happened in the past six months since the Verity House agreement was signed, but we remain hopeful, as Sarah has indicated, because the principles are sound. We're not seeing that action from that. I'm struggling to think of the positives, the examples of it just now. There's been a bit of press about the unring fencing of some moneys in the settlement, and there has been some moneys, no longer specific grant, but we have been clearly told that we must continue to spend them on the same purpose. They're not really unring fenced, so we really need to see much more flexibility along that sort of line. Jamie, do you want to see Anthony? I think it's really just to concur with that, which my colleagues have stated there. I think there's a really strong willingness to engage, and I think we've seen that through some of the work within the directors of finance to discuss these issues and to continue to raise these issues. I think the principles of ring fencing, opening up discretion to counter councils, will serve local residents well. I think that it's just seeing through those commitments and making sure that there's an outcome at the end of it, which is positive for all. I think that that's something that we're keen to work through too, but I think that the evidence is yet to show. One of the areas that were highlighted when it was being to local authorities was declining school roles, but still face penalties if they attempt to make savings on teacher numbers. What impact does the requirement have on the physical flexibility within your local authority on that, but also on the flip side of it, because I know that East Lothian has got different challenges, whereas Argyll and Bute will have a different challenge. You've got more challenges with East Lothian, with growth happening there, so what does that mean to yourself? What does it mean to the flexibility that the areas of funds are ring fenced? How does that allow you to innovate, rather than just looking at teacher numbers, but not looking at the innovation side? I think that both sides are declining and obviously gross. Gwstel has growing school numbers. The profile is changing to our secondary. Population is growing quite significantly. Primary is much more of a flat line, but we have on average almost 400 children joining our school system every month, quite often where English isn't the first language, and that brings challenges. The teacher numbers challenge is an input measure, and we should be focusing on what we deliver, and teachers aren't necessarily the right answer. I'm sure that you've spoken in the past to our colleagues from ADES and education professionals who could provide the technical reasons for that, but education is not just about teaching, it's about a much broader thing, and what is happening is that this is restricting this. We're also measuring a census day. There are all sorts of other factors that come into play on census day. It's who's off sick that day, how that impacts and things, how many people have you gotten maternity leave, or on long-term sick, or all sorts of other factors. I know that our figures are significantly higher than the census figures were. We seem to have had a blip this year with our census data. The reality is that the resources to maintain those teacher numbers are all the resources that have been talked about, whether that's for 1140 hours or whether it's the £145 million that was to maintain teacher numbers. Those figures haven't changed for a number of years, but the cost of employing a teacher has changed quite substantially over the last two years, so we're kind of been held to account for funding that isn't keeping pace with the costs. A number of our teachers are employed through attainment challenge resources, whether that's peff or whatever. Again, the cost of each of those teachers goes up, but the volume of funding that goes down. Maintaining teacher numbers when the resources to support those teachers isn't increasing, which means that something else has to give. The pressure of that to give is quite significant. If it falls on different councils, one or two departments, then the level of cuts—if we had to take all of our cuts, for example, from cultural leisure, it would devastate cultural leisure. It would be something like a 55 per cent cut to our leisure budget, and that's not sustainable if you're going to have any sort of service in that area. There needs to be a bit of realism and a bit of honesty as to what's actually achievable and what's the best way to achieve it, but imposing an input-based control isn't sustainable. Absolutely. I can 100 per cent concur with what Martin has said here. Certainly, for me, with any slothian, we have a significant pressure in terms of our growing school roles. We've got five new primary schools that we are having to build, and we've got one new secondary school. That is huge and significant. I think that, in terms of your question about how does it impact in terms of innovation, I absolutely concur with what Martin has indicated. It doesn't just take a teacher to raise attainment. We've got to look at outcomes in its much more holistic sense, and looking at that through a very input- and narrow focus lens prevents some of that innovative approach to what we're doing and how we can try to look at outcomes and local outcomes and align with national outcomes in its much more holistic sense. We're forgetting what that does. For us, our education budget is half of our overall budget, and that's not untypical for most local authorities. If you're taking that input approach rather than focusing on outcomes, you'll never get the desired approach that we're actually needing to try and look for. Everything that Martin has said there absolutely 100 per cent can concur with this. This is not the way to go about looking at how we support our communities to the best that we can do. Clining school role in our Gail and Bute. The input measure of maintaining the teacher numbers is not helpful at all, because what that means is that if you're going to have to keep teachers that you don't have to keep due to the role, you're going to have to have deeper cuts elsewhere across the council services, and that's not helpful either. I mean, I'm not, I don't work in the education side of the business, but I'm sure it probably does not help with innovation, because in our smaller area we may have looked at innovating to sharing headships or doing things, video links, to ensure that the students get a wide range of curriculum, and that you probably don't allow that to happen the same way because you know that you can't reduce your teacher numbers, so it's not helpful. I think that attainment, I understand, has improved, and I think that's what we need to be looking at. I know that at the end of last calendar year we weren't one of the councils, but the councils that had teacher numbers had gone down. They are in conversations now as to whether someone will be clawed back, and that's not a great situation for anyone to be in at the end of a financial year, particularly when we've got a settlement as such we have, and there's still uncertainty of whether we have to maintain the teacher numbers next year. We haven't had that, I don't think we've had it in writing yet, as part of the settlement. We're assuming that that is the case, but that's uncertainty for coming forward with proposals to balance the budget as well as we don't know whether we're going to maintain teacher numbers and if there'll be sanctions like there are in the current year. Jamie, your area is an area of growth in East Dunbartonshire. It is, yes. It's an area of significant demand, and I think that significant pressure on East Dunbartonshire Council has done an awful lot to manage that demand, but it remains exceptionally challenging. I think that we've performed well historically in terms of closing the attainment gap in addition to that, and we've done a number of things such as amalgamating our additional support needs schools, and there's a fantastic new school that's been developed to support those in our community. I think that probably one of the things that's important to reflect on is that that comes at a significant cost, and for us our earlier budget is of the order of £9.8 million, and we commit significantly in excess of that. And like all others around the table, education is one of our most significant budgets, and that additional cost comes at a cost to our core services, so the overspend on the additional commitments within our 1140 will quite likely be highly in excess of the costs for our finance team as a whole. So, those are the sorts of decisions that are being taken to commit additional resources across our kind of estate, but obviously that comes at a significant cost elsewhere within the council. I'd just like to probe a bit more the difference between the rhetoric from Government about the uplift to local government funding and the pretty bleak picture that you guys are painting from the coal face, essentially. The Accounts Commission has said that from 2013-14 to now that over the course of that 10 years local government has had a 2.6 per cent real terms increase, but I think that Martin has pointed out that when you look at that increase you can compare that to working 20 hours to go into 40 hours and seeing that increase as an increase in budget, so you could say that mathematically that figure is correct. So I just wonder if you're able to drill down deeper into that and can I outline in cash terms but also policy what those extra 20 hours a week mean? We know about 1140 hours, we know about free school meals, IJB contributions, teacher numbers, are you able to set out what services you are providing over and above those that you are providing in 2013-14 and what they are costing you and how you compare that to that 2.6 per cent uplift that the Accounts Commission talk about? I think that that would be challenging to do without having pre-warning about that, very technical. I'm more than happy to get that in writing, if that's easier for a member. I think that that would be, it's difficult to do because it's a kind of moving feast all the time and you have highlighted the significant different areas, so 1140 hours which I think the total funding for that is now 900 and something million including the 591 that was baseline this year but that funding hasn't increased over those years but the costs have and in fact the bit that isn't the 591 million wasn't protected prior to this but that's a significant additional service, a growth in a service that was brought in, free school meals again is another additional significant additional cost, also in education we've got much smaller but free music tuition and the removal of curricular charges, all of these things have all made a difference to that but there would be quite a significant piece of work that we would need to go in and to try to come back with a kind of reconciliation of that. I think that it would be really helpful for us you know when we look at budgets year on year and even trying to compare from 1314 when police and fire were taking out the budgets to actually know that you're comparing apples with apples rather than what it seems like we do every year, comparing apples with pears to give us a real understanding to try and maybe if the committee in Parliament are able to provide assistance in cutting through the disparity sometimes in the projection of figures between local and national government that would be really helpful so it would be good to get anything you can provide on that. My second question was on a particular area of pressure within local government and the local government information unit and their survey had said that the biggest short term and long term pressure for budgets was adult social care. I wonder if you're able to set out what is the driver of that pressure, whether it's purely population growth amongst our earlier residents or whether it's a different reason and what you feel government should be doing in the budget settlement for this year to address that pressure? So I think probably that the demographics are definitely a significant part of that, not only do we have a higher number of people in the various elderly age categories but particularly in the older age categories but people are also presenting with far more complex care needs than they would have done. People are surviving things, they wouldn't have survived in the past with much greater care needs. I think that we introduced IGIBs or HACPs a few years ago but not a massive number of years ago now and my personal view is that we've not really allowed them time to bed in and start to make a difference. I think they are starting to make a difference. I think that integration between health and social care is a positive move forward and actually now trying to change that again without having given time to bed in properly isn't helpful and is actually adding to the workload on a group of staff that are very very busy to begin with. So I think that the proposals around national care service have not helped and actually removing that threat would, and that's a personal opinion, it's not a opinion of Sifa necessarily, would help but yeah the pressures are well known. I absolutely concur with what Martin has said there. I mean it's a lot of it is to do with obviously a growing demographic population but also the fact that people's needs are much more complex than what they ever can have before. Obviously I would wholeheartedly concur. I think we all want to improve the outcomes within social care that's there. There are huge pressures that we have got within our social care sector. Certainly within my own authority they're facing a significant financial pressure next year and across the next four years more than they have ever ever seen and that is going to be hugely difficult for them to be able to try and deliver. I think the national care service and the assertion is a real distraction away from what the actual problem is. The problem is that there isn't enough funding to actually go in and support what it is that we're wanting to try to achieve. I think that often to have that is certainly causing a number of distractions both locally and within all of our staff and across the health and social care partnerships as a whole where the focus needs to be about driving the outcomes and what we can actually do. I think it's very difficult and equally again it's often a distraction from public sector reform where the issue is about there isn't enough resources relative to the demands and pressures that are actually in that whole scale system. Again just personally from me there are a lot of things which have been very positive as part of that integration agenda. I think what we're forgetting so sometimes is that again it takes a much more holistic approach to improve all of these outcomes. Local government often has if you don't have good housing, if you don't have good health and that early intervention it can't just be met through from the health and social care system and I think that holistic approach does need to be considered and sometimes the ring fencing by stealth often prohibits that much more greater emphasis in terms of that integrated outcomes that we're hoping to try and achieve. I absolutely concur with everything that's been said there. I think probably what we have seen over recent years is a higher level of economic activity as people move through different ages and get older and I think that's a measure of long-term health and potentially mental health issues as well and I think local authorities councils have a significant role to play within education, housing and employment as social determinants of this to help improve as we move forward. I think we need to be kind of mindful of all those different factors in the roles that local government can apply as part of that whole system approach and investment in health and education to help manage those as we go forward. Thanks very much, convener, and thanks for all the information that you've given us already panel. We've already heard about some fundamental disagreements around levels of funding, ring fencing etc. I'm wondering how confident you're feeling around agreeing a fiscal framework over the next few months between Scottish Government and councils. I could start with you, Kirsty. I've not been heavily involved in that. One of our other director of finance colleagues takes a lead in the fiscal framework, but the thing that we have a focus on is the visitor levy for Argyll and Bute because that would be something that would be a real benefit to us. As Martin had said earlier, there seems to be quite slow progress on the fiscal framework, so I'm not seeing a lot of it at the moment. I hope that the visitor levy bill will go through in a couple of months, but then we have a long lead-in time for that as well. I'm not sure how confident I am in the progress of that. I'm happy for any of those to come in. I think more generally about the fiscal framework rather than the individual tax-raising powers. It's getting to the position where we have a greed position as to how local government's funded. Earlier on, it was referred to the LGIU work, the survey that they carried out in Scotland recently. They're carrying out these surveys across the world and they are working on some information as to where local authorities are more effective in the world. I think that Italy is coming forward as an example. It's going to produce a report in the near-term future, and it's about the legislative position of services that are delivered by local authorities. The countries where local government seems to work better are where there's a very clear fiscal role for local government, and the funding is provided to deliver those services, so that funding model and how that works within our general system is really interesting, and that's what I would hope we start to take forward and to learn from how other systems work and how we can come up with a framework where the funding for local government is much more determined by a formula and determined by need rather than a kind of, from not being rude, kind of horse-trading that happens just now. The only other kind of thing that I would probably add to that, I mean I'm not being quite as heavily engaged with the national fiscal framework agenda as well. Obviously, the focus at the moment is individually for councils to be setting a balanced budget, which is within our legislative requirement. Anything that we can do through the fiscal framework will be really important as part of our future financial sustainability. I think that Martin mentioned the LGIU, and as part of that survey that came through from LGIU, there was a very clear start warning that the issue of financial sustainability is absolutely much more critical and acute than things have ever been. The fiscal framework for me is really important in setting the framework and going forward as to how we try to deal with it, but we are obviously still trying to deal with the here and now. I think that financial position and the financial sustainability and the cuteness of that across all the local authorities at the moment is really quite fundamental. I think that it's going to be really important as to how we drive forward within that context of ensuring that on-going financial sustainability for the sector is going forward, because I think that it is hugely difficult and a very key and critical turning point for me, and that was backed up by LGIU as well. It's really critical to have that framework at this point in time, too. The Verity of House agreement then was looking at multi-year certainty, that was something that was really, really strong in it there, and we don't see that in this budget and financial circular. On this lack of multi-year funding, what's the impact of that for local authorities and their partners? How does it impact workforce and how does it impact service delivery? I think that we've talked about this on a number of occasions. It's not logical or common sense to have a one-year settlement for an organisation the size of a local authority and to only be planning one year ahead. We're not only planning one year ahead, we've all got medium-term financial strategies. We're all looking at that, but I have quite a lot of sympathy and I should probably stress that this is my opinion. I would rather have a one-year settlement with some certainty than—because if the Scottish Government is only getting a one-year settlement from the UK Government, then to try to do a three-year settlement, there would be quite a lot of guesdemats in that. If people have lack of certainty, then they tend to be more prudent. Therefore, I think that the danger would be that we would get a really bad three-year settlement and that may lead to behaviour that led to us putting in place deeper cuts than would be required. When you make a cut, it's difficult, but we then have to roll back on it. We've still created that level of upset both for our communities and for our staff. I understand why we're in one-year settlements and I'd rather have certainty rather than speculative multi-year settlements, but it should be coming all the way through the system that we have rolling through your settlements. That needs to come from the UK Government. It is really challenging because we are an onward provider of funding, particularly for voluntary and third sector organisations. Without budget certainty, that is really challenging. In Glasgow, we made a decision about 18 months ago to commit to a three-year Glasgow Communities Fund project. We have provided them with that level of sustainability, but that was an incredibly difficult thing to do when you don't know what your budget is going to be. However, it is incredibly difficult for the voluntary and third sector to constantly be... The reality is that they come to the end of December every year, and if they haven't got guaranteed funding for the following year, they need to give staff notice. Doing that every year is very difficult to retain good staff when that's the kind of sustainability position they're in. We really understand how difficult it is throughout the supply chain, but we need that to be built into the national system. Martin has made a lot of the points that I probably would have made as well. I think that it's easier for our members to focus on multi-year budgets if there was multi-year settlements. It's hard to get them to not just focus on the year ahead and set that budget, so it would be wholly helpful if we had multi-year settlements. We did have discussions last year about what level that would be. If it's too high a level, it's not helpful either, because the devil is always in the detail of the settlement, so it would need to be a level that would be helpful to councils. Martin had picked up a point that I was going to pick up about organisations, and we certainly have some organisations that we don't give them their funding—know what their funding is—until the end of February. That's wholly unhelpful for them, and we've had a couple of organisations that have had to issue redundancy notices in advance of knowing their funding. We're going to look at that in advance and see whether we can commit a year in advance, but we're taking a risk on that because we only have single-year settlements. For me, some certainty would be helpful for our decision makers and our local authority. It sounds like there's quite a bit of discussion going forward to be had between local government and national government to sort this out and find a solution that works for everyone. Thanks very much, Stephanie. I'm now going to bring in Willie Coffey. Thanks again, convener. Two questions from me—one of workforce challenges and one on the council tax freeze announcement. First, in the workforce challenges issue, could you give us a little flavour of how you see that panning out? We know, and we've mentioned already, that there's been a switch from capital to revenue to help support staff to pay claims, £121 million, I think. The figure is in—I think that was repeated last year, too—but is that the way to do this kind of thing? Are you confident that the local authorities can meet the pay demands that you might anticipate coming forward next year with this kind of mechanism in place, or do we need something else? Start with you, Martin. You mentioned it. We're all suffering inflation across the board, and paying inflation is such a significant element of our cost base. Workforce is about 65 per cent of our total spend, so it's a significant cost. Our workforce across the board work hard. They're not the best paid people in society. We have a significant element of lower-paid staff. The driving up of the living wage is something that we're all very, very supportive of. We want our staff to be paid a wage where they can afford to live, but that brings challenges from a financial point of view and funding. That needs joint working and Scottish Government, local government, to work together with us on that, because of the scale of those workforce pressures. Recruiting staff continues to be really challenging. Recruiting social care staff, recruiting our lowest-paid staff, is challenging, because whether you want to work in hospitality, retail or in social care, they now all pay pretty well the same amount. I think that working in social care is quite a hard job for lots of people, so paying at a higher level is important, but we have to be able to afford that. Recruiting at the senior and professional level is virtually impossible. I told the committee before that two years ago we just couldn't recruit, so we went to the market and tried to recruit. We got no suitable applicants, so we took on lots and lots of trainees, both graduate trainees and apprentices, to do. That's for accountancy, surveyors are the same, lawyers are the same. We can't retain easily our first-level professionals because the private sector will pay more. We have recruitment challenges and retention challenges across the board, and it is incredibly difficult. Again, we probably need to go back to that. We need to have a much wider discussion about how we are going to deliver public services going forward, because the financial challenges are at a level in which sustainability is a significant issue. In the LGIU survey in Scotland, I think of 43 people that were surveyed, 42 had serious concerns about the future of financial sustainability of their organisation, and not to be flippant, but I think the other one we didn't understand the question, because I think that every single local authority, I think that most public bodies in Scotland are in the same position that our long-term financial sustainability is at a significant risk. I would be happy to supplement a few things from what Martin has said. The workforce challenges and recruitment retention are huge across all-scale and all-side. Is this the right way to support pay negotiations in my own personal view? No. Obviously, we have just secured the local government pay deal for £23.24. That creates significant uncertainty and adds to all of the challenges that Martin has absolutely set out about recruitment retention. Many of our staff are of the lowest kind of paid, and the demands are absolutely huge. To have that level of uncertainty during the year is not appropriate for our highly valued workforce. How all of the pay settlements that have come through—I suppose that they haven't fully funded the pay awards within teachers and the local government staff—created significant pressures that have come through there. However, the mechanism and the complexities of the funding and the flexibilities that I have done within pay is very difficult, and it diverts attention away from that very real issue of the on-going financial sustainability, which is where we need to be focusing our attention on. Just the last couple of things for me, we have been innovative, similar to what Martin has said. We have had to grow our own because of all the recruitment issues, and that has been great. It creates innovation, and I think that that has been really good. What is difficult is to try and balance that innovation within the funding envelope, because, although we need trainees to be progressing, we also need people who can support trainees through all of that. We have been very good, and we have been having to try and create much more apprenticeship schemes, which is great. It is growing your workforce in a very different way, but equally it can create challenges. I suppose that, from my own perspective, from a relatively small authority, the current pay negotiations are putting a huge amount of pressure not on just the cost of the public sector, but equally on our pay and grading structures, which are hugely difficult and hugely complicated around it. There are a lot of lessons to be learned, I would probably say, in terms of how we can look at that going forward. It is probably worthwhile saying that, for local government as a whole, I think that the percentage growth of staff has been fairly static, and that is quite different from what we see elsewhere within the public sector. As colleagues have said, the model is suboptimal. I do not think that it provides a level of clarity. In terms of the capital elements, obviously there are ways to manage that. My professional view would be that capital funding remains for capital projects and revenue funding remains for the day-to-day running costs of an organisation, but I recognise the pressures that all spheres of government are under. Obviously, local government has suffered detrimentally and disproportionately. That is a view backed up by the statistics in terms of the overall percentage growth within the area. That is detailed underlying movements, so there are quite significant variances in, as Martin said, the professional grades, as well as those providing essential front-line services. Jamie said that, because if you look at the figures of local government workforce over the last few years, there has been an increase again, but that increase is as a result of the 1140 hours of free school meals, but also a number of authorities, Glasgow probably being the main one, have transferred a number of what were former allios back into the council family, so in Glasgow Cordia, which was the best part of, I think, 9,000 staff, transferred back into the council. If you look at those stats, it looks like that, but we are not comparing like with like. Anything on that workforce issue, Kirsty Arlaw, move to the council tax. My other question, colleagues, is basically on the council tax freeze announcement that you are well aware of, £144 million, equivalent to a 5 per cent figure. The big question is, is it enough, and if it's not, what should it be? I would say it's not enough. I think it's well known that the 144 that's been offered as 5 per cent is not equivalent to 5 per cent. For us in Argyllunbut, it equates to 4.5 per cent, not 5 per cent. There was a recent LGIU survey on 83 per cent of councils, we're looking at a minimum increase of 5 per cent, so that's 83 per cent of councils looking at a minimum increase of 5 per cent, so although 5 per cent has been offered, that is not going to be enough for many, many councils. In Argyllunbut, our planning assumptions were 5 per cent, but I have to say that. That was my planning assumptions as a director of finance. That was not in discussion with members and it's members that set the council tax. One of the things we would always look at once we get our settlement is we would then look at what council tax needs to be, so in light of the settlement that we've now had, I certainly would have been looking as a director of finance at applying a higher percentage than what I had in my planning assumptions based on the settlement and I think there'll be a number of other councils in that position. What should it be? That's a really difficult question because we're all in a different place and I think there are a few councils that had gone public. I think it was Orkney, it was at 10 per cent. For me, I think the figure needed to be somewhere up towards about 8 per cent to be realistic, but I appreciate that there isn't the funding there to provide that. I do question whether the council tax freeze announcement was the right thing to do. If we allowed councils to raise their own council tax set our rates and then give us the £144 million, that would be ideal. We should push for that, but I know that that's not going to happen. It was also to protect families and the cost of living. I question those who can afford it. You're not raising it for those people. For me, 5 per cent is not enough. It's a discussion that all our councils will currently be having. I'm not sure whether there is scope for that figure to be revisited with Scottish Government, but it's not enough for probably most councils. Thanks, Custi. We'll just go along the line and come to yourself. Obviously, there's a cut to the core revenue budget of about £62 million, so it takes that £144 down to 80-something, which is 2.8 per cent. Remember, that's an average. If you're at the floor where you're going to lose minus 1.04 per cent, with the multiplier effect on council tax, that's taken away all of that 5 per cent, even without the cut. For some councils, we'll take them back to zero, so with no growth from council tax at all. We haven't worked all the figures through, because we're still working on the settlement, but on a minus 1.04 per cent floor with the multiplier effect for council tax, that 5 per cent will be taken up by that for lots of councils. I concur with everything that's been said. I think it's an important statutory lever that, obviously, council tax is set with reference to affordability and also the residual financial gap, so I think it's a really important local democratic lever that should be exercised with reference to individual circumstances, and I know, Custi said about cost of living, and councils will have been providing cost of living support to those of most need within our kind of communities, and that will vary across the piece. For me, I undertook a range of planning assumptions in excess of 5 per cent to provide a level of assurance that we could set a balanced budget, and to a certain extent, that option is now not within my hands in totality. That's an important consideration, but also £144 million, when you look at the shortfall within the budget as well, it doesn't equate to a 5 per cent, and brief calculations that are something along the lines of 2.8 per cent would be a kind of closer figure, but that's not sufficient for us in terms of setting a balanced budget. I absolutely concur with what my colleagues have said. It's definitely not enough to be able to support, and it's not equivalent to 5 per cent for us. Within East Lothian, we've been pretty vocal to be saying that we had a funding gap equivalent to a 32 per cent increase in council tax. Whether or not we would have ever got there politically is a very different kind of story, but that was the scale of our funding gap and aligned to what Jamie had said. You should only use, you shouldn't tax in advance of need, and your council tax should really kind of be your closing arena. I suppose there's a couple of additional things. We're obviously looking at this as a one-year position, but there is a bit about this financial sustainability. If we had the ability to set our taxes locally and possibly most would go well in excess of 5 per cent, that increases your tax base for the next year, and you've got less cuts that need to be had. There is something here about your on-going financial sustainability, and this limits and certainly adds additional pressure and risk in terms of our on-going horizon. Lastly, in terms of protecting those families that our cost of living everyone is facing, obviously continued on-going financial pressures, but the council tax reduction scheme is there, and it should support most of those that are facing the most extreme circumstances. Obviously, it's a national choice, as colleagues have said. That, as council tax is raised locally, it is for councils in legislation to set the level of council tax, and that flexibility has been taken away from us largely at a time when financial sustainability is at such a crucial point. Do you ever get the opportunity or consider asking your own public what their views are about increases to things like the council tax? We could probably guess the answer, but have you ever tried to do it following me? I'm an elected member for a number of years now, and I remember the screaming and shouting about the increases to the council tax year on year. It's a disgrace, get rid of it, and then the Scottish Government froze it for nine years. There's a history in both sides of huge increases, then flat settlements and so on. Where do you see us going with this? Can you give us a glimpse of whether you've asked the public and your own authorities how they see this tax and should they expect an increased year on year? That would be happy with that. What's the perception in your own area? We certainly do an annual public consultation on our budget process to get a public feel for what they want to do. The public are very protective of services and they understand the need to charge more both from user charges and from council tax, but if you speak to them about council tax, the thing that people understand the least is why are we based on 1991 values. It doesn't really make any sense to a layperson how council tax works from that point of view. They also have a perception that council tax pays for a much higher percentage of local government services than it does. They're quite shocked when I tell them. I'm glad that it's only about 14 per cent. It'll be higher than other authorities, maybe up to the kind of high teens, but people are shocked about how little of a council's budget comes from council tax. The revaluation thing is a much bigger issue from an understanding about how it's calculated and what not. Any views on what the public perception of all that is, Sarah? I'm happy to come in. Similar to others, we go out annually and plan with a consultation. We've got a majority response back that they would rather see an increase in council tax rather than a cut to services. We can equate it to pounds per week. As Martin has said, I think that the public can often be misconstrued in terms of what does that mean, what is it buying? We can certainly set within a range of what does that mean. There was certainly an overwhelming majority that came through in our response that they would rather see council tax rises up to five pounds per week, which could equate to around about 10 per cent. They would rather see that, rather than a reduction in core services, where the response came through. I would say that that's probably not from everyone, but in terms of the responses that came through, there was certainly a majority in a favour in terms of that. You didn't mention the 32 per cent, though. The 32 per cent has definitely been within the public domain. It's been set within our council chamber and through all of our financial reports and planning. The public are well aware in terms of the challenges within the custodian sector. I think that, like others, it's a standing tenet of good governance. It's a conversation that we've been having with the Accounts Commission in terms of best value to demonstrate that we consult broadly and as broad as possible in terms of not just council tax but all the options. Probably one of the things that we and others are more minded to do is not just gather information and evidence, but it's that kind of reflecting back to our local communities in terms of you said we did. It's actively closing that circle in terms of good governance. For us, we would take the statistical analysis of what our residents have said alongside our budget papers. We have and continue to go so far as to put unabridged comments that the communities have put. In terms of Martin's reflection, I think that our communities are protective and pragmatic about the services that we're delivering. I think that speaks well to an effective engagement with our communities. I think that there's always scope to enhance those. We've moved from the call, click, come in, we're putting these in the digital domain, we're advertising on Facebook and Instagram to get as many people to consult with us as we possibly can. I think that's given us the good data and good engagement that we need to make sustainable decisions that are consistent with our long-term strategies. Many thanks for that, Kirsty. We had gone out and consulted in that last year. Again, like others, the public generally want to protect the services that we deliver because they value the services. Therefore, if there had to be a council tax rise, they were open to that. I think that local government has been putting a really difficult situation this year with that announcement of the council tax phrase. I think that it's going to be really challenging for councils what they're going to do there. If we don't accept a council tax phrase as a council, we're not going to get the money. I don't know what's then going to happen with that money, how it's going to be used or re-diverted. It's going to be a really difficult situation because the public will now have the perception that the council tax has to be frozen, and if the local government come along and don't freeze that, that's going to be challenging for our constituents, even though they have that view of protecting their services. Thanks, Willie. I'm now going to bring in Miles Briggs. Good morning to the panel. Thank you for joining us today. I've got a few questions on different topics. My first one is with regard to the three shared priorities in Verity House and specifically around the net zero priority. Given what we've heard and what Kirsty Youve outlined in some detail around cuts to capital budget, given that, what impact do you think that will have on realising your net zero commitments? Maybe bring yourself and Kirsty to start. I think that it's really challenging to realise some of the net zero commitments because we don't have the funding in place a lot, and there is uncertainty over some funding. Also, there's the infrastructure required. Take for example electric vehicles, there's maybe not the infrastructure across the country for that sort of thing either. Net zero, I feel linked to climate change as well. We had a significant weather incident in Argyll and Buton in the beginning of October, and we had three bridges that were damaged and a road that was taken out as well. We're having to do a lot more mitigation measures due to climate change as well, so we're having to use funding for that too. It's really challenging to do. We totally agree with the policy of moving in that direction, but it's more expensive to put some of those measures in place. It's really challenging for us in Argyll and Buton as well. We have a waste PPP contract that runs until after the biodegradibone and the simple waste ban, and that will give us increased costs as well. It's all coming with a pound sign to deliver on net zero. It's a very challenging area. Lots of the things that we need to do, and we try to look at it as a city rather than as a council, but a lot of the things that we need to do—there's not a business case that stacks up—we estimate that the average cost to retrofit every house or every living unit within Glasgow is about £40,000 to save somewhere between £500,000 a year in the energy bill, so that's not an investment that really stacks up to save £500 to spend £40,000. That needs big external money to really make a difference to net zero. What those cuts have done is stopped the council's ability to start to do some of the kind of in-house things, so decarbonising your fleet is expensive. An electric bin lorry is about double the price of a diesel and a hydrogen bin lorry, which the technology is not really there for them to work yet, but that's coming in about three times the price of a diesel. There's real challenges in managing that cost base as we go forward and making those investments, but it needs a much broader view to look at that bigger picture, but certainly our ability internally. Business cases work for something, but there's a whole host of things when the business case doesn't stack up and it needs public sector funding. Jamie Hepburn? There's a lot of really good work that's going on across all spheres of government to understand the costs that are associated with housing, fleet, embedded carbon. I think that there's work that councils are doing in terms of, rather than building new buildings and revenue refurbishing them, so there's an incremental kind of process with that kind of general awareness. I think that, as Martin says and Kirsty has said, our capital grant from the Scottish Government is the order of £7 million per year. Our ability to achieve net carbon zero within that financial envelope is significantly curtailed and there will need to be additional capital resources allocated to enable that to happen. I think that that's part of an on-going conversation. I'm aware that there's a lot of funding out there, a lot of its kind of piecemeal, a lot of its bid-in kind of funding and I think it's the consolidation of all those individual elements to provide a level of certainty and a level of funding that will enable that to happen in an effective way in alignment with our kind of joint aspirations. Just one more thing, from me absolutely. I think that we've all got that aspiration in terms of net zero. It absolutely has to be there and I think that the public sector does need to lead by example. I think that, as others have set out, the funding constraints means that that's much more difficult and I think that just the only additional kind of thing that I would say is that obviously there are a number of grant elements of funding, it's not just the capital kind of funding, we've had our regeneration capital grant fund, it's been cut by 27 per cent. So at a time where we're saying net zero is a priority, that doesn't actually back up through a reduction in something which is quite an enabler to try and help and support the move to net zero, so that's just one additional example. That's helpful and I think that links into my next question with regards to both Argyll and Buton Glasgow have declared housing emergencies and as it stands Fraser Velland Institute suggests about 37 per cent cut over the past two years to the housing budget. So I just wondered what decision making is taking place around the housing and homelessness emergency and where that will be prioritised given both councils have declared an emergency around housing? We are prioritising housing but we're obviously having to allocate funds for that ourselves and we're having to look at interventions. The issue within Argyll and Bute is that we don't have a lot of house builders wishing to come beyond Helmsbury area to build, it's just too expensive so in some areas to build a house on an island it could be £400,000 to build a house and it's just not affordable so you know we're then struggling to recruit people because there is just not the housing for them to live in, there's not the housing for locals either and we also have a number of second homes as well so that's really the challenge in Argyll and Bute so we're trying to look and see how we can innovate and break down some barriers to attract people to come to the area or maybe supplement the cost of housings in order to create more housing so it's we haven't fixed the problem yet but it's something that we are working on. Did anyone else want to touch on that? Glasgow is a very different proposition from Argyll and Bute geographically if nothing else. We're not a housing provider so there's some extra challenges there but we're working very closely with all of our RSLs and other housing providers working very hard to try to free up land wherever possible also start to look at you know is there other buildings that can be I suppose retrofitted in lots of Glasgow areas that used to be housing that became offices I think they'll be moved back to housing that won't necessarily help directly with the homelessness but it will have a knock-on effect and a knock-on benefit and that no matter what housing we provide it will help the situation but yeah it's a massive challenge and it's been exacerbated in Glasgow with this island issue. Just by means of context from a probably a different kind of perspective obviously from where Kirsty's sitting from Argyll and Bute obviously East Lothian I've mentioned before we are a growing population significant kind of house building which is actually going on we've got acute kind of housing kind of challenges and at a time where there is such a lot of kind of pressure across kind of the housing sector kind of per se the reduction in available kind of funding we're now looking at our capital kind of programme and whether or not we can actually can afford to build out kind of the affordable kind of housing in the same kind of way so that's had a massive kind of impact on a different kind of scale as I say and for us it is important to try and stimulate the economy to try and get that growth in to try and provide additional kind of houses but at the same time because of all this reduction coming through we're now having to try and kind of see whether or not we can kind of slow down kind of that and indeed kind of looking at all of our kind of programmes we're trying to be innovative we've got a mid-market kind of homes model where we're trying to kind of look at it but this is not easy and I think that at a time where we need drastically kind of the housing that's there this reduction is is actually acting as a deterrent rather than an enabler to try and help and support what we're supposed to be doing yeah thanks for that I know from some since the budget was announced I've had a number of emails from community groups and the third sector who are concerned and I know in previous meetings and inquiries we've done to look at you know the amazing response which they brought to help support the pandemic so just wondered where the third sector sits within your your planning to to try to see where those partnerships can be protected as much as possible and the funding which is handed down to those isn't where councils inevitably start by protecting their own organisation and then taking that money in-house I think I mentioned this earlier we committed a year and a half ago to a three-year budget so so they've got another year of funding still so it's not it's not a short term issue in Glasgow but it is an ongoing issue as to how you manage that for the very reasons you've said coming in kind of from my own perspective and when we work very closely across our community planning partners partnership including kind of with the third with the third sector similar to others we try and give them as much kind of certainty as where they can I suppose just back to some of the conversations that we've had though given the you know about three quarters of our budget is directed kind of areas of spend naturally kind of that places kind of significant pressure on some of these kind of areas of kind of discretionary kind of elements of spend so it's not easy we're trying to do kind of what we can we're trying to kind of work in partnership but I think it is that whole scale kind of challenge that we've got there that's helpful thank you and my only other question was with regard to the impact of rack and I know that's something all council been working on and that's maybe something you could provide us in written evidence and unless there's anything specific you wanted to put on record today but otherwise thanks very much thanks. We do have a bit of time if anyone wants to talk about rack and the challenges that you're facing. Of course it's very varied across the the country it's we've in Glasgow we've only got a couple of instances so it's not a significant issue but I know for other councils it's it's very significant I don't know if I said that once. Yeah we've had very significant kind of issue on rack on one of our secondary schools in Preston Lodge high school pleased to say we've got a solution that we're actually kind of working working through it's taken significant amount of officer time it's taken significant additional kind of costs and we've surveyed all of our public buildings and we've got rack it's not just within our school estate it's across kind of our other public buildings and we're being prioritised in kind of the school estate so this is a massive kind of issue which is kind of there and I think it's I would suspect across kind of the public sector and how we deal with it I think we're needing to kind of look at much more kind of holistic approaches to kind of how we can we can support this and I would probably say a much more swifter kind of intervention as to how we can try and kind of support also as well. Okay thanks and now I'm going to bring in Marie McNair. Thank you. Good morning panel happy new year. Councils across Scotland continue to pay for capital programmes and projects funded by various PPI agreements and some of them are negotiated in a number of decades ago. Can you say how much of this debt your local authorities are saddled with and whether these schemes have provided good value for money? I'll start with yourself Martin. We certainly have quite a significant PPP estate. The majority of all of our secondary schools in one primary school were refurbished or rebuilt on that basis. The contract has been running for a number of years in fact we're now starting to plan for the end of that contract so we are starting to carry out surveys and whatnot because the conditions of the contract are that the buildings have to be left with a certain life so that the boilers the roofs have to be in a certain condition so we're starting to work on that to make sure that the PFI contractor does the work that they are required to do so that when the builds are handed back they've still got a life. I suppose at the time that it was the only game in town that was our only way of funding so I don't think we've in the past we have looked at was there opportunities to refinance or to reduce costs and there wasn't we're now getting towards the end so we're now really planning for the future and we will have a school estate that still has a significant life left and we'll have finished paying off the contract. The end is obviously the cost increase as well can anyone else hear their comments on PFI? Did you just clarify that when the contract ends? Obviously you know the PPI like obviously the cost you know painting it back increased as you kind of got to the end of the contract each year. So we're getting into quite a technical area so the legislation at the time said that we had to write off the contract over the length right off the building cost over the length of the contract. There was a service concession two years ago that allowed us to alter that to write it off over the length of the life of the building so that created quite a significant benefit to local government finances. Scottish Government have closed that again I don't really understand why because it's good accounting practice to write assets off over their useful life and not over a notional contract but we're still paying so from a cash point of view we'll be in a better position when we finish the contracts but we'll still be like depreciating them over a longer period of time. That's something we can take back though to the minister. Anyone else want to comment about the PPI? I mean I'm just concur kind of what Martin has said we're planning towards kind of now we've got all of our school our secondary school estate largely kind of was through PPP contracts I think similar to Martin it was the only game in town at that point in time and we significantly needed to be investing in our school estate. If we had to take that decision now would we still go down that? I'm not sure kind of that we probably would but I think it was appropriate at that point in time and I think now we are kind of planning towards kind of the end of the contract. Naturally every year we get the same questions from elected members as well because obviously we are locked in currently as part of the contract a time where there's high inflation obviously kind of that often kind of raises questions but it is about looking at kind of that much more kind of holistic kind of sense and I think certainly kind of for us it is about planning now towards how can we try and manage kind of our school estate going forward towards kind of the end of the contract so nothing much more kind of to add to what Martin has indicated. Thanks for that and obviously just in the issue of council tax fees obviously touching on it a bit already but have you made any kind of assessment of how many people have been managing to pay their council tax during the cost of living crisis and you know how arrears have been impacted and have you considered like how the fees will actually prevent some families getting into arrears again? Certainly from our point of view we we've continued to work with with all residents and encouraged to pay through a variety of different mechanisms to ensure collection throughout the cost of living crisis. We did see during Covid a slight dip in our overall collection levels but it was of the order of half a percent and we held collection through sheriff officers in abeyance for a period of time to allow residents to continue to pay and make payment arrangements and to support them through those kind of sustained arrangements. So I think and I know there's different views on council tax collection in terms of you know where your demographic may be. You know we've continued to sustain high levels of collection because a lot of our a lot of our payments are through direct debits which gives us a level of overall certainty in terms of collections and that varies across the piece I would say but certainly from our perspective we've continued to support and to ensure collection to safeguard the public purse. Apart from the sort of first year of Covid where we had a slight dip in collection rates our collection rates have been pretty consistent in fact we're ahead of target for this year. Similar to us we've managed to sustain relatively high levels of council tax we've built and we've tried to supplement a financial inclusion service so a lot of the time we're as Jamie indicated we're also trying to really support people and being able to pay and being able to maximise kind of their benefits and kind of signposting them so we've not kind of seen a significant reduction in fact it's been an area that you know we've managed to kind of largely kind of sustain during the course of the pandemic. It's really interesting given you everyone's struggling doesn't really matter your income now do you mean obviously with the cost of living crises that we're facing? Yeah I've got time for a very brief supplementary from Willie Coffey. Thanks again convener it's just back to the capital allocations issue if I may and I've got another spice table here in front of me I'm scared to ask Martin this question so I'm going to ask Sarah instead because it shows east Lothian's capital allocations here are going up from seven million last year to 25 million that's a standout change in the table that we have here most of the authorities are shown a reduction it was just to ask if you know why that is is it we think it might be flooding allocation next refund if finances for flooding but even if you take that into account east Lothian's allocation is actually going up? I'd need to come back to you in specifically in relation to our capital allocation our general capital grant this year has reduced from last year by about a quarter of a million pounds we have got we are part of as part of the flood prevention scheme we've got two schemes on go and we've got significant funding for Musselborough flood prevention scheme which is going through dual process and also for Haddington flood prevention scheme which has seen very significant increases but as part of our overall general capital grant we're seen a reduction of about a quarter of a million so i'm more than happy to come back to you kind of specifically in relation to the spice question and certainly it's an area that we'll be looking but that's not aligned through to kind of our intelligence as to kind of what we're kind of seeing through the information but more than happy to kind of provide some supplementary information through to you okay many thanks for that again thank you okay great thanks for that so thank you very much for giving your perspectives on the picture of the budget for local government the settlement today and as we previously agreed to take the next item in private and that was the last public item on our agenda today i now close the public part of the meeting