 Good morning, and welcome to the 15th meeting of the Economy and Fair Work Committee of 2022. Our first item of business is a decision to take item 4, which is our annual report in private. Our members are content to do so. Our second item of business continues our evidence gathering session for town centres and retail inquiry. I welcome our first panel, who is Derek Shaw, director of innovation and place from Scottish Enterprise. Douglas Cowan, director of communities and place Highlands and Islands Enterprise, and Brian McGrath, director of enterprise and place south of Scotland Enterprise. I welcome everybody this morning. As always, if members and witnesses could keep their questions and answers as concise as possible, that would be helpful. I will start with a general opening question about the town centre action plan. I have been interested in each panelist's views on how their agency will be supporting the town centre action plan and what they see their role as. I will come to Douglas first and then Brian, and then I have an additional question for Derek. I will bring Derek in at the end. I guess that Highlands and Islands Enterprise has long had a communities remit, as well as a business support and economy remit. We see town centres as really important to our economies, to our communities, underpinning much economic activity, including tourism activity. We support a number of businesses across the Highlands and Islands, many of which are located in our town centres. We work with around 130 or 140 social enterprises in a bit of depth. Many of them are place-based organisations, some from a town centre perspective, many others, more rural and island locations. We will continue to work with businesses and community organisations that are active in town centres where they are delivering economic benefit and social benefit for us. We have been involved over the years in a number of specific regeneration projects across the Highlands and Islands. I could go into a number of examples or touch on them later. I will come back later. I think that other members will be interested in some of the examples. Brian, if you can respond, can you say anything about the new action plan, which is a refresh on the 10-year, since the past 10-year point? Are there ideas or proposals on the new action plan that you think will make a difference that you welcome or need expansion? Yes, convener, from a SOZE perspective, we are really focused on places. From our inception, we have taken places as the heart of our approach, a place-based approach. Town centres as the heart of places are really important in that context. That has really helped to shape how we approach this particular topic and issue. We are also, as you know, focused on working with businesses and community organisations. That is a crucial message in that context, and it comes through strongly in the town centre action plan. In order to move forward, it is about collaborating and working in partnership. Everything that we have learned so far in the short life of SOZE has been the centrality of partnership working. Already, SOZE is working closely with councils and local authorities, particularly in terms of how we look at supporting town centres, regeneration and individual places. However, we also work with the third sector interfaces and the third sector, and we are conscious of aiming to support businesses in town centres as well. I think that we definitely come back to the thought that what we are trying to do is support the place, because if the place is prosperous, if the place has a sense of wellbeing and the community in that place has that sense of wellbeing, then the town centre will have that vibrancy and the town centre will reflect that good position. We are currently getting our heads round the new town centre action plan and how we can feed into that. SOZE itself and our chair, Professor Griggs, helped to feed directly to the town centre action plan review group. We have a sense that the action plan has a lot of really logical key steps, but at a regional level, at a local level, it is about that partnership, it is about that real partnership on the ground that can make a difference. Mr Shaw, we recognise the different role that Scottish Enterprise has in relation to the other two enterprise agencies in terms of supporting town centres in retail. It would be helpful if we had an understanding of where Scottish Enterprise would engage with the retail sector, perhaps more than town centres. Lindsay Methfin is on the retail strategy steering group from Scottish Enterprise, so we have an understanding of what support you provide to that sector and how that can support town centres. I think that my colleague Neil Francis was at the committee a couple of weeks back and outlined Scottish Enterprise's approach to retail. That has not changed me. We very much believe that there is a number of business support stakeholders at play, including business gateway, that adequately and appropriately support retail. In terms of town centre regeneration, it is about our focus on supporting businesses and supporting business growth. Often, those businesses are located in towns and cities, and the consequence of that growth leads to employment and sustainability within towns. We are very much focused on infrastructure in place, such as that of Brian. We have a dedicated place team working in partnership with regional stakeholders, community stakeholders, including community plan, planning partnerships and regional economic partnerships. We are very much focused on how we can work with stakeholders in a particular place to benefit that economy and provide solutions and opportunities for that area, which then has a positive impact on towns and local cities. The retail strategy steering group for Scottish Enterprise has a role on that. What do they bring to the table? I do not quite understand how that matches to what you have previously said. My colleague, Lindsay Edge, is on that. I do not have information at hand specifically about our role, but I would be delighted to follow up with the committee in written response as soon as possible, if that is appropriate. When we did have Community Scotland, it came to an end in 2008. We do recognise that Scottish Enterprise has a different role, but the role that South of Scotland has in hands and hands are playing in those parts of the country is playing the equivalent role in the rest of the country, because we do understand that it is not Scottish Enterprise, but it has a different remit. Who is it? Is it local authorities? Is it a combination? I will be talking about partnership working. I think that it is a combination. Local authorities and other stakeholders in the regions. As I said, we very much have a regional and partnership approach. We have dedicated senior leaders in Scottish Enterprise that are allocated to the seven regions in our area and work with partners, including local authorities and leadership groups, to identify, develop and then hopefully deliver economic opportunities specific for that area. I will hand over to Colin Smyth to be followed by Colin Beattie. Thank you very much for sharing your views today. Can I come back on that point to Derek about the different roles that Scottish Enterprise has compared to your colleagues in the Highlands and Islands in the south of Scotland? Douglas said in his opening comments that the Highlands and Islands have always had that community remit. Brian will know that I spent many, many years calling for a similar range in the south of Scotland because I was struck by the fact that a business in a town centre could receive support in Inverness, but that same business could not receive support in Dumfries. Now they can because we have the south of Scotland Enterprise. The challenge that I have now is that a business in Ayr cannot get the same support as a business in Dumfries because of the remit that Scottish Enterprise has. Do you think that put Scottish Enterprise at a disadvantage when it comes to providing support for town centre businesses? No, I do not think that it puts it at a disadvantage that there is a number of support mechanisms in play, including within Scottish Enterprise and our partners in Business Gateway, who provide a very comprehensive support to a range of businesses, including locally trade businesses and professional services businesses in the local areas. We are an economic, national economic development agencies who are very much focused on opportunity-driven strategies, place-based strategies at a national level but in a regional context. In terms of individual companies, we do not tend to support retail, but we support a number of other companies that have good growth ambitions and can contribute to town centre economies and regional economies as well. Very much from an account management perspective, we have a wrap around support, bringing expertise and financial support to the companies that we work with. What kind of businesses are Scottish Enterprise supporting on my high street? We support SMEs with employees of more than 10. We support large organisations that are both indigenous to Scotland as well as companies that are looking to locate and invest here. We are very much focused on companies that have good growth potential and are going to make a positive contribution to the economy. Significantly, we are Scottish Enterprise that can add the most value in that particular context. If there are other partners, other stakeholders and other organisations that are better placed to support companies, we view that as their role. We have to find a business support service that is an online tool that is available to all companies in Scotland that offers advice and support on all the public sector support that is available to companies. That is a quick and efficient way for companies to access information that they need when they need it. That support is available to every single part of Scotland. If you look at the projects that were supported by Hines and Islands and South of Scotland Enterprise that we visited recently, for example, the Midstiple project in Dumfries, which is a community project, it would be fair to say that that is a project that would not be able to get support if that was an error because it would be up to Scottish Enterprise to provide that support rather than South of Scotland Enterprise to have that community remit. I do not know the details of that particular project. In general, you do not support projects that have that more community-directed remit? We support, for example, through our co-operated Development Scotland, which is part of Scottish Enterprise that works with organisations and companies to look at how we can increase employee ownership. The performance of that is very good in terms of the number of companies that we have supported that is then transitioned to the new business models of employee ownership. I have some examples that I would be happy to share with the committee. That would be helpful. Brian, because of that community remit, you are able to support projects that could be argued that are not going to make huge profits but are hugely important to the regeneration of our town centres, attracting people there to support other businesses. How do you ensure that, when you provide support—if that is Brian, maybe just even about the example that I mentioned there when we visited the Municipal Court—how do you ensure that the support that you have provided is linked to ensuring that that becomes a financially viable project in years to come and it is not just a project that we will keep coming back to look for funding? That is one of the crucial challenges that are faced in relation to many or all of the type of capital projects that the committee saw in the mid-Steeple quarter. There are quite a lot of other projects across the south of Scotland that want to make similar improvements, but the real challenge, as you highlight, is the on-going viability and sustainability. One of the new things that Sosie has brought forward in the south of Scotland is the focus on what we call enterprise in communities. One of our teams is focused on working with communities, not every community group but on groups that can demonstrate and help to build their capacity to become enterprising. It is that challenge of where can a revenue stream come from and how to move that really good and ambitious idea to find a new use for a building and actually bring that forward and make it something that is viable over the longer term. With mid-Steeple quarter, as well as working closely with the council and Scottish Government and Hollywood Trust, as the key funders around the capital project, we have also been helping the organisation to think about its business plan and think about how it is viable into the future. It is a great example of a pilot project, of a demonstrator-type project because it is a test and we will have to see if it works out. That is the fundamental across all the capital projects that we want to help support that will transform towns and villages in the south of Scotland, is that it is only going to work if those projects keep on going and do not fail after they have been running for two or three years. We think that that is a shift in the thought process and a shift in the thinking of how those projects are developed. We might have to say that, no, that project will not work. We cannot see where that revenue stream is, so let us try to reshape the project and find a different end-use for that key heritage building that we are looking at. For instance, in Wittorn, the new town hall in Wittorn is another project that Sosie has been involved in. Sosie came into that project quite late on to help support and have helped that community group to reshape the project and to find some different ways of generating revenue to help to make that project more viable into the future. On that point, Douglas, Sosie is very clear that the funding is linked to working with him to make sure that it is financially viable. Is that an approach that the Highlands and Islands Enterprise take? Those projects are not obviously going to make lots of money, but you link that funding to making sure that they have a plan to deliver that financial viability. Absolutely. Long-term sustainability is a key issue in diligence around projects. I agree with much of what Brian said in approach. One of the things that we do and have done for some time is that we provide early support to communities. We are alongside Scottish Government funding around 40 local development officers in communities, and that is communities that are developing significant projects. That is almost in at the early start, so there is a paid resource to help to work on business plans and look at viability issues. Sometimes those projects will deliver the capital project, but sometimes actually the viability and sustainability is not always there, so the capital funding will not come through. Capital funding is very much related to long-term sustainability. I guess that we can never ensure that those projects will be sustainable, but before capital funding is awarded, it needs to have a good prospect of being sustainable. That applies to not just community projects, but a whole range of projects that we are involved in. I am sure that my colleagues have other questions on that, but I will be cut off by the community. I have a couple of areas that I would like to explore with you. Looking over the evidence that we have received during the particular investigation, derelict land and buildings in town centres has consistently come up as a problem. Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise have never used the compulsory purchase powers granted to them by the 1980 Enterprise and New Towns Act. I would like to ask why not. I will go to Brian first, because I would like to check that South of Scotland Enterprise also has the powers that are mentioned here. No, part of the bill process had that discussion. It was agreed at the time that that was not necessary and that SOSI would be seen to work really closely with the local authorities in its area if that compulsory purchase process was required. That would be the approach that we would take in the south of Scotland. That is different to the powers that the two other enterprise agencies have. It is good to highlight that. I will turn to Derek now and ask him that question. Why have we never used the powers? Do you think that they should be used? You are absolutely right, Deputy convener, that we have powers over compulsory purchase, but we very much view those powers as an option of last resort. We have been very fortunate over the years that we have been able to agree favourable terms for Scottish Enterprise and the taxpayer for land or buildings that we are looking to purchase. As an economic development agency, we are very much focused on delivering jobs and investment, but where that aligns to objectives around regeneration of brownfield sites in deadly land to achieve our place outcomes, that is absolutely great. We have no overarching objective to tackle vacant and deadly land, but we can absolutely make a meaningful contribution to that through the delivery of some of our strategic projects. An example is Halo in Kilmarnock or, indeed, Dundee Waterfront, where there has been significant investment. We also own a significant portfolio of land and some of that has been legacy operations. We are very much focused on looking at our strategic priorities and identifying where vacant and deadly land, on some occasions, can be brought back into economic use and regeneration in areas that absolutely need it, but aligned with wider strategic priorities, including low-carbon. It is a focus, certainly, of my team within Scottish Enterprise to ensure that we are using our portfolio of land in a strategic way, and, likewise, where there are opportunities to purchase land and where there is demand for it, that is certainly an option that we undertake through our capital funding. I will clarify a statement that you made earlier, in which you said that you had no plans around direct land and buildings. Is it that it is not on your radar unless it comes up as part of a project of that that you are looking at, or is it something that is part of your long-term strategic plan? You seem to indicate that you are not really taking it into co-consence at all. Apologies. We absolutely are taking it into co-consence in relation to the land that we, the Scottish Centre prize, own. We are looking at various different strategies in how we can bring that land back into economic use. Some of those options involve Scottish Enterprise taking forward development of our land portfolio. On other occasions, it is working with private sector partners who may be interested in purchasing land from Scottish Enterprise. There are a number of examples of the past couple of years where we have either sold vacant and derelict land, which has then gone on to be developed, or where we are in the process of looking at how we can develop it ourselves. Perhaps I can ask Douglas about how you are treating compulsory purchases and what you plan for direct land and buildings. On compulsory purchases, I am right in saying that we have never used our compulsory purchase powers either. Much like Brian has said, our approach is very much a place-based approach, which is working with communities and other partners across our geography. We have eight area teams covering our geography, which are detailed knowledge of what is happening across the patch. We have never seen the need to use compulsory purchase powers to deliver economic community development that we have been delivering. We have managed to secure any assets that are required through negotiation, through working with partners, working with other stakeholders. Yet community representatives that have come in front of us have said how important it would be for compulsory purchase powers to be used in order to bring those properties into some sort of commercial or other use. We have never seen the need to use compulsory purchase powers. There are derelict buildings in many of our towns. Our primary support is working with businesses and working with specific community organisations to deliver their social and economic outcomes. We have never seen the need to use compulsory purchase powers specifically for that. The community groups have been indicating that there is a need to use compulsory purchase as part of the regeneration of town centres. Do you have any views on that? Do you think that it is something that you should be involved in? Ultimately, the remit for Scottish Centre is the responsibility of the Scottish Government. However, where there is an alignment with our wider strategic priorities as a national economic development agency, there is a role for us to play. However, if it is in relation to perhaps retail or town centres, I would suggest that it is for other partners, including local authorities, to take that forward. Broadly speaking, you do not see a specific role for the Scottish Enterprise in regeneration of town centres, other than supporting the businesses where that is appropriate. The responsibility for town centre regeneration and sustainability moved out of Scottish Enterprise several years ago to the local authorities, so it is not currently our area of focus or remit, but it is absolutely where we can support businesses. The wider impact of supporting businesses will hopefully have a positive contribution to town centres. Let me move on to my second question, which is related to digital skills and expertise. E-commerce has become quite a big thing. There is a need for small and medium businesses to be able to be skilled in order to work in that area. Other digital skills are required as well. What is the enterprise agency's role in improving those skills and instilling confidence in those businesses to move into e-commerce and related fields? We absolutely recognise the importance of digital and e-commerce for the future of all businesses, whether they are in the high street or not, but particularly important for retail and encouraging that mix of bricks and clicks, if that is the buzz phrase. We are really early days in terms of our thinking about our actual support in this area. We are still shaping up our digital strategy and our digital approach, but skills will absolutely be part of that. However, in the south of Scotland, there is already support through business gateway and the digital boost product that is available nationally, of course. Sosie provides the business gateway service in Scottish Borders on behalf of Scottish Borders Council with a different solution in Dumfries and Galloway. Of course, it is an important role that the two colleges in the south of Scotland play Dumfries and Galloway and Borders College in terms of those digital skills. We work with the colleges and councils as part of a team south of Scotland partnership that helps to look at skills and other issues across the board. It feeds into our regional economic partnership that we have established. Perhaps I can ask Douglas what is happening in his area. There are probably two key elements to our work around digital. The first one is actually around digital infrastructure, so we delivered the DSSB broadband roll-out, which is now finished. The contract works clearing up across the highlands and islands, which is a £140 million contract that we can alled. We will continue to work with the Scottish Government on the R100 programme and the UK Government on the gigabit roll-out. The digital infrastructure is a key issue for the highlands and islands where coverage is poorer than much of the rest of Scotland in many cases. The digital infrastructure is a really important element for us. We recognise the importance of digital for our businesses and communities. In terms of the business and skills side of things, again, I will not repeat what Brian said, but in addition to what Sosia had done, when Covid hit, we recognised that digital adoption across the highlands and islands was lagging slightly against the rest of Scotland. We put in place an initial £500,000 programme to support businesses with digital adoption across a whole range of activities. That was oversubscribed very quickly. We increased it to around £1.5 million. That was also oversubscribed. We managed to get another £800,000 from the Scottish Government and we ended up with around £2.6 million project, which helped over 213 businesses with their digital adoption. The programmes are still live, although the funding has pretty much been utilised. There is now other funding in place. When we started up, there was not the digital loan. The digital boost was not quite there yet. Other programmes have come in since we entered that, but it has clearly had a big impact. Did they specifically include e-commerce? No, across a whole range of digital skills, website development, e-commerce and a whole number of strands around it. Derek, can I finally ask you to give a comment on what is happening in your patch? Absolutely. The Scottish Enterprise is absolutely focused on digital transformation and supporting companies around that, including e-commerce. We ourselves in our international arm offer e-commerce services to help SMEs both domestically and internationally. We have a digital transformation team in the Scottish Enterprise, a team of digital specialists who work with companies to offer advice and guidance on good practice and website design, and analytical tools on how they can get the best from e-commerce and their website. The digital specialist in that team is trying to bridge the gap between companies' overall objectives on what it is looking to do on revenue and sales growth and how it can achieve that through technology and digital transformation, including e-commerce. We have an international e-commerce programme that offers tools to businesses to trade internationally. That programme is open to a range of companies. From April 2020, 2,000 companies have participated in that programme. It is an intervention that works really well for companies that are looking to expand internationally. Overall, our digital transformation team helps companies both domestically and those that are looking to expand abroad. The figures that I have seen are that Scotland has about 2 per cent of the e-commerce business in the UK. How does that relate to the fact that all these companies are getting the training and so on in e-commerce? Why aren't we at a higher percentage of that? We probably need to do more in terms of business support for growth and how companies can trade internationally. We can provide support through SDI on a direct-sporting service, but we can also do more on digital transformation in e-commerce to increase and encourage more companies to trade internationally. I was not really talking internationally here. I was talking about the domestic market. I think that that equally goes for the domestic market as well in terms of looking at opportunities in the UK and identifying those markets in the UK that companies are best placed to go after and then working strategically through our account management service to build a strategy on how we can work with companies to achieve that, including through our e-commerce support. I am going to bring in Gordon Macdonald for a supplementary and then Maggie Chapman. Thank you very much, convener. I have two very quick questions that I wanted to ask in our committee, Derek. First, there are 11,000 hectares of vacant and derelict land in Scotland and over 79,000 empty properties. You have explained your views on compulsory purchase orders, but is there a need for compulsory sales orders to be introduced? Secondly, VAT arrangements on residential conversions. We want to bring our town centres back to life. We want people to be living in our town centres, much of the vacant spaces above shops. VAT on residential conversions and adaptions is at 20 per cent, whereas demolition and new build is at 0 per cent. Is there a need for the UK Government to address the VAT problem? Thank you, Mr Macdonald. Can you clarify the point about sales orders and what you mean by that? There has been suggested that there is a need for compulsory sales orders where land or a property has been lying vacant for a long number of years. There is the opportunity for an organisation or the local authority to force the owner to put that up for auction and it would be sold to the highest bidder. That is not something that we have looked into in terms of that approach. I can take that back within the SC and come back to the committee on our views on that, but it is not something that we consider to date. As I said in relation to compulsory purchase orders, we have not had to use that because ultimately we have good relationships with a number of developers and owners and we have reached a agreement on where we need to buy land or property on terms that are acceptable to Scottish Enterprise. Any views on the VAT? Apologies, I do not know. Does anybody else want to come in on those two points? I will go at both of those, if I may. I think that there may be a case for compulsory sale orders in special circumstances. There are a number of sites across our towns that are a blight. The specific mechanisms and who these powers, who acquires, are a secondary question that I do not have a view on, but I think that there are blights in our towns that those kind of powers might help to address. In terms of that, I think that to regenerate our towns and cities we need to create more diverse uses, we need to bring more people into our towns, greater footfall in our towns. Part of that is more housing, it is converting upper floors. Frequently it is also in some towns where there is far too much commercial space, it is converting ground floor space. Clearly the market is not delivering that, the costs of that development are simply higher than the end values. I think that that is possibly exacerbated by the needs around net zero and energy efficiency. Therefore, there are potential fiscal measures that could be used to balance the equation to some degree. I would have thought that that is one area that is worth looking at. There may well be others around non-domestic rates issues. There may be other issues or other mechanisms, but that would certainly be one that I think would be worth looking at to deliver the outcomes that we want to see. Brian, I know that you do not have compulsory purchase powers, but do you have any views on those two issues? I think that compulsory purchase orders are a powerful tool, and it is about the ability and capacity of local authorities to go through that complex process. That is a really important tool in the armory that probably needs to be used more often in really sticky situations. I think that Douglas could use some good language there about light and probable buildings. I want to explore in a little bit more detail some of the issues around community and social development and how they are linked to economic development and how the economic development activities that you are all engaged in can support that. How are you developing support for commercial enterprises with a full good mission, though specifically that have full good as their central cornerstone? Our remit is very much focused on delivering the Government's ambitions on the national strategy for economic transformation. We are appropriately plugged into a number of community groups. As I mentioned earlier, we are very much proactive in our regional economic partnerships that we have. We are very cognisant of the role that we need to play at a regional level, and Scottish Government encourages all the enterprise agencies to do so as part of a Team Scotland approach. Ms Chapman, can you clarify the point that you were making and the question that you have been asking about? Yes, it is businesses and commercial enterprises that have a full good mission at their heart. How is it that you are focusing on any support if you are for them to enable them to develop and be commercially successful, but with the social and community benefits that they are seeking to deliver? Thank you for that. I think that it is a really interesting model for companies and organisations to work with. We have a range of support for companies that are operating in that space to how they can develop their business models to ensure that they are commercially viable. Ultimately, through that commerciality and the profits generated, that can be reinvested into a number of good causes that are supporting. We have a financial readiness team within Scottish Enterprise that is focused on working with companies to identify funding opportunities. Part of that process or service is working with companies and organisations to look at their business plan and to develop a plan that will secure investment, whether that is grant funding or commercial investment, and to look at the best way of generating income and, ultimately, profit in companies that are focused on good causes, then reinvesting that into the good causes that they support. That is certainly an area that we are interested in and focused on. Brian, can I ask the same question of you? Support for commercial enterprises that have a full good mission? I think that I take a slightly different tack, because, as I mentioned at the start, Sosie is very focused on a place-based approach, and all of our support is framed in that context. Whether it is a business or a community organisation, a social enterprise, we are working with that client and helping them to think about their project. We are encouraging all of them to think about the economic, community and environmental impacts that they have and the benefits that flow from their work, starting to move towards that community wealth building, community wellbeing type of idea. As you would imagine, that is a challenge for my colleagues internally in the organisation to think in that really broad way, but that is something that we are working very hard to get that economic, community, environmental thought process for everything that we do, and that fits really well back into that place approach. That is our push. I suppose that some of the four good drive is also reflected in community wellbeing, reflected in wealth building and community ownership opportunities that are arising as well, community asset transfers, and that comes back to the earlier question about how can Sosie support that, whatever that entity is, to have a really viable business plan and to think about sustainable long-term revenue streams? You followed my train of thought into the community wealth building space, so thank you for that. Are there things within that space that we should be, the Scottish Government, being enterprise agencies, being all of us working together, that we should be focusing on slightly differently to maximise the benefits that social and community groups and our town centres or other communities that live in and rely on them need? I still have not got them off the top of my head properly, but the five pillars of community wealth building are a really helpful framework for that thought process. Sosie feels that we are at the early days of our thought process around that. We have appointed a dedicated officer, a strategy manager for community wealth building, to help our former thinking and help drive the agenda within the organisation. I would be really positive that, quite quickly, we will get our heads really strongly around that. Fair work was a new agenda two years ago and we have made great strides there, so I am confident that we will be able to pick up on those thought processes and help to weave them into what we do as an enterprise agency. That will support the resilience that we want to see, not only in our local town centre economies but also resilience more generally and the circularity that we are able to deliver in the Scottish economy? It has a real opportunity to add to that resilience of individual places and, as I said before, with that, the town centres resilience as well, if we can help that wider prosperity. Particularly for a rural area like the south of Scotland, being able to retain value in the economy and be able to recycle that within the economy is a really important principle that we need to aim for. Thanks, Brian. Douglas Hiff, I can come to you. I know that there is a lot in there, but for your comments on community wealth building, for good missions, circularity, resilience, the whole lot. I will give it a go. We have long had that community remit. We have supported community asset ownership, particularly for the next 20 years. We are currently delivering the Scottish land fund across Scotland nationally with the lottery fund. Assets on land assets are probably two pillars of community wealth building. There is one around the plural ownership and supporting communities and supporting local ownership. It is really helpful, really productive, and it helps to circulate that wealth. The socially productive use of land and property is another of the pillars, as I understand it. Supporting communities to deliver their own economic and social value out of that land holding. We have seen some of the biggest state purchases in particular. They are really good examples of how that has worked goals in the North of Lewis movies. It stands out as a cracking example of that, but they are not alone. They are a good one. We have supported the assets side along, and that is a critical pillar of community wealth building. It plays into community resilience. Communities owning assets deliver direct economic benefit, but it also benefits in terms of services and what have you as well. We are fully behind it, fully supported and have been active in that space for quite some time. The other angle is around the social enterprise space. Again, we have worked closely on social enterprise for many, many years. We have worked closely with the Government in terms of the social economy action plan. We have worked closely with a number of clients across our portfolio. Around a quarter to a third of our clients are social enterprises. Many community organisations and community-based, but social enterprises. We see the real economic value, but also the social and community value that they can bring, and the environmental value in many cases. Again, it is very supportive. We have worked with a lot of clients in that field. What are the barriers for that close working between yourselves and social enterprises? What are the barriers? I am not sure. We deal with social enterprises and community organisations in much the same way as we deal with our business clients. Some of the outcomes are slightly different. We adopt a place-based approach. Again, we look at some parts of the Highlands and Islands where there is a lot more social enterprise activity. Generally, there is more social enterprise activity and more social enterprises per head in the Highlands and Islands and Islands where there is Scotland. We have a deeper base and a longer time period base of social enterprises. We do not really see too many barriers there. We do not deliver the same outputs in terms of jobs and turnover, but we deliver good local economy benefits and help that circulation of wealth. Derek, can I come back to you? I realised that the conversation drifted into community wealth building and resilience. You did not give you the opportunity to pick up on those. In terms of community wealth building, we are on the Government Steering Committee. I fought for that, so I am very much contributing to the thinking around that. As I mentioned before, our Co-operative Development Scotland service is very much focused on working with organisations and companies that are looking at employee ownership as a model. That has been very successful in terms of the advice and guidance on different structures. There are great examples of distilleries that have 3,000 shareholders in the local community contributing to the success of companies. There are other models that we support in terms of co-operatives and local businesses coming together, particularly focused on that local or regional market and how we can support those projects and initiatives that are off the ground. It is interesting that the stats around co-operatives in Scotland—I think that overall, in the UK, there is about 12 per cent of new co-operatives in Scotland—compare that to a population of 8 per cent in a business space of 6 per cent. We are certainly punching above our way in terms of the approach and model of both employee ownership as well as co-operative development. I want to ask a couple of questions about women in enterprise and mindful of what you have been emphasising, Brian, in particular, in the concept of place and in their place. Of course, their place is thriving active entrepreneurial bases with an equitable number of businesses that men contribute in place. Do you have an active strategy for women in enterprise and general in your organisation? In that, what do you routinely disaggregate data by women? Do you publish that strategy and that data? How do you measure it? If you do not have a strategy, just tell me. Derek, you smile. Do you can go first? Thank you very much indeed. Approximately half of the participants in our entrepreneurship programme are female led. Most of our programmes and interventions are open to all, but this year we had dedicated three cohorts of our principally women programme focused on Aberdeen in the northeast in Ayrshire, Glasgow and Clyde respectively. We supported partners in investing in women, men, ventures and Young Enterprise Scotland. That is an area that we are absolutely focused in on in terms of our approach and our strategy and collecting data around the support that we provide particularly to female led entrepreneurs. Our flagship entrepreneur programme unlocking ambition is almost half female among its participants and it has been balanced in terms of gender since it was established several years ago. Looking at our high growth ventures, our companies that have got real significant growth potential and that we work with on a comprehensive and intensive basis, including through the provision of funding and investment, a third of those businesses are female led entrepreneurs. There is absolutely opportunity to do more in this space in terms of the work that we are doing on entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial activity, but we are very much connected within relevant partners and stakeholders that are supporting female led businesses and how we can work with them proactively to help them achieve their growth. Thank you for all of that and just a quick question before I move on to Brian and Douglas, do you have a specific strategy for women or is consideration and cognisance of women part of your overarching strategy? I would say it is the latter, so it is very much a consideration and a focus in terms of the support that we are providing. The type of companies that we are supporting and how we can do more to encourage start-up and early stage growth companies that are female led. Brian, women in place and women in their place in terms of a full contribution, what is your approach? We are really important in the south of Scotland context and definitely a relative gap that we have seen. We do not have a strategy yet but we are framing up our approach towards women in enterprise as part of our overall entrepreneurship approach, which will have a focus on women in business but also on young people as well. We think that we can bring something fresh and new to the table in the south of Scotland through that approach. We are going to use a coaching approach that will feel slightly different to standard advice but is very much driven by experience in the team that we have. We have also picked up and are working with other national partners. For instance, we have done some work with Weevolution and who are helping us to target some community-level support for women in business. Through business gateway, we are trying to create a pilot start-up programme in Newcastleton for women starting business. You can see that it is small moves at the moment but it is absolutely an important issue on our radar. We are also looking at what we can do around more specific networking events as well because we are conscious of the rural area in a sparsely populated area. How do we help to link together people with similar interests and similar ambitions to help them to move forward together and learn from each other? I do not think that we have a specific strategy around women's entrepreneurship. However, it is a consideration of what we do. If we look at our client base across the range of the clients that we engage with, I think that 45 per cent are female-led, but if we look at our significant social enterprise cohort, 54 per cent of them are female-led. We have a number of programmes. The two areas that we focus on are women into business and women into entrepreneurship. There are young people who are giving demographic challenges across the highlands and islands. One of the programmes that we have got is in the Northern Innovation programme about supporting young leaders. I think that we have worked with about 100 young leaders and of that we have worked 59 per cent for women. We have also just recently completed a transnational pilot programme around rural female entrepreneurship with partners in Sweden, Finland, Canada and Ireland. Looking at the specific support that was targeted, women only, using coaching, using online methods, I think that it was live from maybe the end of 2018 to the very end of last year. It got impacted by Covid to some degree. We have worked with around 70 women entrepreneurs in the geography. I think that it was our guy on the islands where we piloted that project and worked with about 70 women entrepreneurs. We had positive economic outcomes. It was not universally supported by the client base. Some felt that women only were not the right answer. I think that the majority felt that it was helpful. We have got to work through what the evaluation actually said and how that plays into what our strategy for support looks like going forward. There are certainly some positives coming out of that work. You have probably led me on to my next question. When we had Caroline Currie in from Women in Enterprise, she made an interesting comment that our traditional measures around what constitutes a microbusiness—for example, she was making the comment that she is aware of a number of women-led businesses that are, by their very essence, microbusinesses, but they have significant turnover. Very often the agencies will not pick up that because there is a threshold by number of employees. Of course, where their turnover is significant, they are typically using e-commerce as a mechanism to trade something else that we also want to encourage. My question is, are you aware of that fact and have you reflected, almost like back to front, how e-commerce can skew a number of employees against turnover? It breaks the usual measures that we might choose to adopt. Have you considered that in terms of women-led businesses? No, I think that that is probably the honest answer. That is a very honest answer, yes. I recognise some of what you have said. I do not think that if there was a business with significant turnover looking for support from us, we would not discount it because it was not employing enough people. We could provide additional advice and specialist advisory support in certain circumstances. I am generally aware of the kind of issues. I am aware of a social entrepreneur on an island who set up a hub for online trading that pulls together a number of small makers from across rural areas. It is providing an online e-commerce hub for that kind of activity, as an individual we have supported in the business that we are working with. I think that without leading you, it sounds like you are almost promising me that you are going to reflect on that as you develop your women's strategy. How about Brian and Derek, just to finish off? Interestingly, because of the place-based approach, we will work with any business of any size and it is about the place context that they are in. In a really small place, a business that employs two or three or four people can often be really important. That is absolutely the approach that we take. We are consciously trying to avoid thresholds, numbers of employees and turn-over levels, because we recognise that the south of Scotland economy and the challenges in the south of Scotland need to have a broad-minded approach. Like Douglas, it is probably an area that we need to look at more in terms of companies that are generating significant turnover. Perhaps I have not got the employees relative to the turnover that they are generating. For Scottish Enterprise, our focus is around job creation, safeguarding jobs, creating more jobs, better jobs and greener jobs. Where there is an opportunity to work with companies and micro companies that have growth potential—not necessarily turnover, but in terms of employee growth—that would be our focus and our priority. If there is limited scope for job creation, it is going back to the point that I made earlier about the wider support that is available to those companies. Some of that might come from Scottish Enterprise, but it might not, and it might come from other partners such as Business Gateway. However, our primary priority focus is working with companies that have growth potential and are going to increase their employee base in Scotland. One of the pressures that we have seen for our high streets is online sales. It is a number of years since Scottish Enterprise invested in Amazon. I recognise that that investment is now quite old. The focus from Scottish Enterprise on creating jobs and investment is obviously Amazon but an appropriate company to invest in, but it is one of the companies that you could argue led to pressure on high street sales. Although Scottish Enterprise's remit is different from other Enterprise agencies, you have just said that the overriding principle is still around investment and job creation. Is there any improvement in the synergy between Scottish Enterprise's remit and other things that the Government is progressing, such as the town centre retail strategy, that there is an agenda around town centres and there is a decision made by Scottish Enterprise, which is now, I do accept, send life that is eight or ten years old now. However, that could be seen as having a direct negative impact on what happens in terms of high streets. We do not look at things in isolation. Although our primary lens is job creation and economic impact, both at the regional and national level, we are looking when we provide support, whether that is advice or guidance, or whether that is funding through grants or commercial investment. We are looking at how much leverage we can get for that support and that investment. It is not solely about jobs, although that is the primary lens. We are looking at the place agenda. Where is that company investing? Is it an allocation that needs expansion and growth opportunities? We are looking at the supply chain. If we are providing support to a large company, for example, what does their supply chain in Scotland look like? How can we encourage that company to look at local suppliers here in Scotland? It is looking at an integrated approach in terms of how we get the most for the investment and the support that we are providing. We will take into account a number of factors in doing so, including international, the types of jobs that are being created, the transition to net zero, and how a company is aligning with that. Fair work principles, what is the commitment companies that we are supporting at Edithington in terms of fair work. We look at things in the round, particularly around place as well. In 2018, in response to Government's focus on place, we established a place team within the Scottish Enterprise. That is very much looking at how our interventions and support have a positive impact on local ladies. In summary, we are looking at things in a holistic way at a macro level, but through the primary lens of job creation and good jobs. For my question, that is a brief observation. The word place is mentioned a lot and bandied around a lot. Douglas, I see your director of communities in place, Brian, your director of enterprise in place and director of innovation in place. I wonder why there is no consensus of where place actually sits in organisations and responsibilities, but that might be just an observation that you might want to comment on. My question is about what you are doing to ensure that economic opportunities are available to run in our towns, including older people and people with disabilities. We took some excellent evidence last week, and I would like to ask what economic assessment you do of those particular groups and where do you think the success stories are in your organisations? Douglas, first, and Brian Minden. Equalities impact assessment is a key part of our diligence process. When we look at it from the other end, we look at it with the businesses and community organisations that we engage with and the projects that they are delivering and what the equalities impact of that activity might be. I write in the middle of our due diligence process that is there alongside our work on net net zero and fair work. It is very much a part of our process. I do not think that we look at it from the other perspective, from the perspective of those with disabilities, for example, or certainly not from a town centre perspective as well. It is very much from the client-led perspective as the way we look at it. Do you point to any particular success stories that you have funded or supported that others have short examples on the ground to direct people to? Struggling to think of any right now. Part of the cohort that we deal with is social enterprises, and many of them have a specific remit and role to provide different services. Some of those services are provided to those in the greatest need. My other thing that is worth saying is that when Covid hit, we were at the heart of that community response to Covid, so we worked with our community anchor organisations across the Highlands and Islands to ensure that that funding got down from Government through us to the anchor organisations to those in the greatest need across the region. We have done a number of things. I am not sure that I could point to one specific example right now, but we could certainly take something out and forward that if that would be helpful. I think that that is a really good question, and perhaps two parts, because as an enterprise agency, we are pushing forward helping businesses grow and provide employment opportunities, helping to attract businesses into the south of Scotland, working with colleagues in SDI around inward investment, so there is the job opportunity element to that. We also work really strongly in partnership, as I mentioned, with the two local authorities, with Skills Development Scotland and with the colleges. Those partners have a really powerful role in employability, helping up skill people and helping to provide that ability for people to go into those roles, which I think is that partnership approach that really makes the difference. As partners, we keep a close eye on universal credit claimant count, which has that tracker of people out of work, but also people with various challenges about getting back into the employment market. That is an important element. In the south of Scotland context, we are saying that the terrible impact from Covid-19 is starting to come, that the pre-COVID numbers are starting to come back around to similar numbers now, but we know that there are still lots of challenges about how we can help people into the job market. One of the businesses that we have supported recently is a call centre business that provides working-from-home posts, which is something new in that context, enabled by the changes that we have seen over Covid-19. Part of that process has been for us to specify that it is people who have been furthest from the workplace that are eligible for those roles. That is probably in the territory that you are thinking of. Would it be fair to conclude that, unless a business or an enterprise brings a project to you which improves economic opportunities for those groups, you are not actively looking for that? I think that, as a partnership, we very much have that focus on employability and those furthest from the workplace. Scottish Enterprise is very much a champion of the fair work criteria, which requires a commitment from grant recipients to reduce gender pay, gaps in improved diversity and inclusion within the workplace. We are currently working with 310 companies that are taking action to tackle gender pay and improve diversity and inclusion in their recruitment processes, and we are working with an excess of another 80 that have committed to doing so. We have also led the development of the Fair Work Employer Support Tool, which has 90 registered users across Scotland from public, private and third sectors. That is a tool that provides users with resources related to their development needs, including inclusive recruitment practices, how they can calculate gender pay and best practice in terms of inclusion. I would point to a really good example that ties in nicely with a number of the conversations that we have had this morning. That is Barclays and the new campus that they have opened up in the south of Glasgow city centre. That was an area of land that was lying vacant for a number of years. Through our colleagues in Scottish Development International, we worked comprehensively with Barclays to secure one of their main investment hubs into Glasgow. We were competing internationally with seven other countries for that. Other countries could provide a lower-cost solution, but the quality of the workforce here in Scotland won that business. Not only did we, as a consequence of support, which is up to £14 million from Scottish Enterprise, not only did we secure that facility in Glasgow and safeguarding 1,800 jobs, or the potential to create up to 1,400 jobs more. However, the key to the discussions that we were having with Barclays was their inclusion policy. They are very focused on recruiting from people with disabilities and veterans, so they are very much an inclusive approach to their recruitment. Indeed, we built that into our grant conditions. Here, we are talking about the policies of inclusion diversity and the like, but the question is whether you have done an economic assessment of what the opportunities are being missed by not including these groups, and therefore have been a strategy behind that to unlock the economic opportunities? Not that I am aware of that. Okay, thank you. I would like to thank the panel for their contributions this morning, and that has been much appreciated. I will now briefly suspend while we change over the witness panel. I would like to welcome our second panel this morning. Craig Isles, Service Lead in Planning and Building Standards at South Ayrshire Council, and Craig Isles joining us virtually. Bill Lindsay, Service Manager of Policy in Place in Planning Services with Five Council, and Steve Rogers, Head of Economy and Development on Frees and Galloway Council. Welcome. As before, if members and witnesses can keep their questions and answers as concise as possible, that will help us to get through this morning's business. If I can ask an initial opening question, I will start with Steve. During this inquiry, we are hearing about certain issues within planning that maybe presents challenges for redevelopment of town centres. As we have been interested, do you think that there is enough flexibility within the planning system that enables and supports the regeneration and investment within our town centres? Can you also comment a bit on what we have heard about pressures within planning departments about the lack of capacity or additional pressures there? The desk will operate your mic. I will try to take the first part of that question initially around the role that planning can play in terms of town centres and encouraging and promoting town centre development and whether there are any issues or constraints that might be hindered by that. Before I go into a bit more detail on the specifics, I think that there is a wider point that I would want to make, which is around the way in which planning is part of a much wider toolkit that is available to public bodies and agencies to try to address and tackle and promote issues within town centres. I do not think that the planning system has got all of the answers to those challenges. The key is the way in which the planning system supports and interacts with a lot of the other tools that are available to us. From that point of view, the planning system as an enabler has developed very strong approaches in recent years to supporting town centre development. I can point to our own local development plan, LDP2, which has some specific policies. ED5 is one of the policies that very specifically encourages and promotes and supports town centre development. There are inevitably challenges in terms of the actual delivery of development within town centres, especially within historic town centres. Challenges associated with maintaining the character and the historic appeal of town centres. There may be challenges around ground conditions that mean that there are extraordinary development costs associated with redeveloping town centre sites. There may be challenges around flooding, for example, and issues that we sometimes need to overcome in terms of dealing with SEPA or other statutory agencies that may have their own particular priorities and agendas. We have certainly had a few experiences of that in terms of trying to promote and encourage reuse of buildings within the town centre. Generally, the planning environment and the planning policy environment is very supportive and encouraging of town centre development. I do not think that the lack of investment and development in town centres is necessarily a reflection on the planning system. It is a reflection of a lot of the wider issues around how to deliver town centre development, how to fund town centre development and how to overcome a lot of the challenges around town centre development. Most developers prefer to choose easier to deliver locations and easier to deliver sites, and that is part of the role of the planning system, to try to direct development towards those more difficult sites, but recognising that that does bring with it certain challenges. I will pass over to Bill and see if Bill has anything additional to add, and if you would like to comment about capacity within planning departments. Thank you and good morning. On the capacity issue, first of all, I will touch on some of the points that Steve is making on how much this is a multi-agency, multi-council service approach. There are pressures on planning services, planning departments across the country, and those are well recorded. However, the approach to town centres is so broad that planning is part of the solution, so it might not necessarily be an issue in terms of addressing town centre issues and their future as far as resources within planning departments and services are concerned. There might be issues around possible changes to pd rights and what that might trigger in terms of particular workload and work streams for development management colleagues, but there is a development plan-led policy approach to town centres. That is one part, so I will touch on the point that Steve is making, that is a multi-agency approach, so pressures are probably spread, in my view. It is not just solely planning departments. On the flexibility, that is a really interesting point, because local development plans produced even five years ago did not anticipate where we are now. We have a global pandemic, we have a second recession in about 12 years or so, and now the effect of major European conflict. None of that was predicted. Those are plans that are meant to be looking ahead five to 10 years. None of that could be predicted. We are in the same position now. The new round of local development plans to be prepared under the new act cannot possibly anticipate everything that is going to happen. The flexibility in the planning system will come through policy. It is used in a quasi-legal way, due to its statutory status. That is part of the development management system. However, it needs to balance certainty in terms of making planning decisions with avoiding the unintentional consequences of blocking something that we might want to see happen. That flexibility has been shown over the past couple of years. I can touch on examples separately if you want, but, as an overview to address your issue about flexibility, I will leave it at that just now, but I am happy to follow up. Mr Isles, is there anything additional that you would want to add? One of the things that we have heard during the inquiry is that sometimes frustration around planning will not be restricted because of the noise levels or other conditions. It is the case that, as Mr Lindsay has said, some of this is statutory and it is not possible for planners to make decisions that are counter to what the statutory position is. In terms of the capacity of the service, there is a national crisis in terms of planers coming into the system. I believe that there are only two universities in Scotland that do the planning forces. There is a shortage across the country in regard to whether we are working hard to bring through graduates or grow our own. That is obvious with staff retiring off the other end of the conveyor belt from the earth. There are definitely challenges there. We need more planners in the system coming through universities. In terms of the flexibility of the planning system itself, I would suggest that the policies that are there to be able to reflect will not allow development to go ahead. I do not think that there is necessarily any policies in our LDPs that we would say if we just took that out or ignored that policy, everything would be fine from there. I think that the key issue really is the viability of the development industry, the property industry in terms of around the town centres. As a great parler here, I think that the vacant and delta land issues for industrial land are constrained by contamination issues in old buildings. Town centres are in danger of falling into a very similar scenario where we have short units that are costly to convert into anything else, particularly moving them over into housing, and you get multiple ownership issues that make it complicated and each unit has a size that makes it very difficult for any builder of a scale to go in and actually decide to try to do anything with those properties. Everything is dealt with in a very small piecemeal element of it. I would suggest that the industry that requires the support rather than the challenges from the planning side in terms of what we can do. We try to be as flexible as possible to allow the rights of development in our town centres, but they are not necessarily being brought through because of the financial side. They are businesses that need to make a profit. They are looking at those schemes and they are not seeing them as viable in terms of delivering enough money, which is why they are not coming forward in my opinion. Thank you, Mr Iles. You are not here as a VAT expert, so if you do not know the answer to that, I understand that there is zero VAT for new builds, but I thought that there would be a rebate for commercial buildings in residential buildings. I am not aware of that, so I would not be able to comment on that. Anything that financially helps would take things forward. Good morning to the panel. I turn to the issue that has been raised extensively with the committee, and that is the challenge of derelict buildings in our town centres. The committee visited the Midstipal quarter and, of course, recently coincided on the day that a certain street in the town was closed because a building was deemed to be dangerous. A building that had been derelict for some years has become so dangerous that the street had to be closed off. Craig would not need me to tell him about a certain building in the centre of air. The former station hotel, which was closed because of the danger and disrupted rail services in the town for months. Something has clearly gone wrong when it comes to the action that we are able to take to stop buildings in our town centres falling into such a state of disrepair. Can I ask the panel—maybe snap me thyself, Mr Rhodes—what do you think has gone wrong? Is it because councils do not have the powers, they do not have the funding, or are councils too slow to use powers at an early stage to avoid town centre buildings getting to the point where they are being closed because of them being dangerous and all the disruption that goes with that? There are a number of different dimensions to that. First of all, in terms of powers, there are a whole range of statutory powers available. However, they tend to focus on crisis situations. The example that you have just referred to there in English Street in Dumfries, which I believe the committee visited and experienced the inconvenience of the associated road closure was necessitated through the building standards system, where that building had become so derelict that it was now creating a danger to the public. On further inspection, it was actually at risk of collapse in part and working eventually managing to work with the owner to take responsibility. That is one of the key things. The challenge that we always face is that the responsibility for the maintenance and upkeep of buildings is the owners. It is only in situations where the owners are failing to take that responsibility that public bodies are able to step in and ensure that public safety is not being compromised. That was the process that we followed there through in engaging with the owner and eventually using our statutory powers and cooperating with the owner to facilitate the demolition of that building, which we accepted was the only solution to secure public safety in that situation. What that does not do is address issues that are probably more commonplace than that, which are issues where buildings have fallen into disrepair and have become unsightly, and essentially a blot on the townscape. We have various powers available to us there through listed building legislation and planning legislation. Again, it is always trying to strike that balance between trying to work with owners and encouraging building owners and property owners to take the responsibility. That is perhaps where the resources issue also comes in, because what we need to have and make sure that we have available to us is a range of positive incentives, rather than focusing on the big-stick approach so that we are able to offer support and help to address some of the issues that Craig mentioned about viability. One of the reasons that people do not invest in the buildings is because they cannot make a return on it. That is particularly the case in some of our rural communities where we have essentially low demand and low property values that do not generate the financial returns that you might get in the likes of Edinburgh, for example. There has to be a role to play for public sector in terms of either providing gap finance or providing some other incentives and incentivising building owners and developers and investors to start to invest in town centres. One example of that that we have put into place is our town centre living fund. Every year, the council has determined that it will set aside £1 million from our second home's council tax income and use that as a fund to support town centre living projects. Over the course of the last five years, we have supported a number of RSLs, as well as private landlords, to invest in either new-builds property or refurbishment of existing properties in order to make them available to support the supply of affordable housing in town centres. That is one example where probably more could be done to incentivise investment and perhaps having to resort to using those enforcement powers would be the last resort. We have heard that the living fund before is obviously a good idea and it has a huge benefit. Can I just ask Mr Lindsay? Do you think that the powers go far enough at the moment? You can take action when a building is basically dangerous, but when there are trees growing through the windows or the windows are not even there for that matter, there is not a great deal that it sounds to me that you can actually deal with unless it is a listed building. Would that be fair and do you think that the powers should be strengthened? The powers are probably sufficient. Again, it has come down to the resources to be able to implement them and follow through, in my opinion. Similar issues have come up in the local government housing and planning committee's hearings into draft NPF 4, but there was also a discussion around derelict and vacant land. Those are the same discussions that were coming up, so again there are resources issues around the funding to follow through, perhaps the personnel to follow through. Do you think that the council is reluctant to use the powers because, frankly, once you start, it is going to start to draw on your resources? It will vary across the country, but if there is no capacity there to do a piece of work, Mr Rogers has talked about enforcement officers across the country have been diminishing over the years. They are dealing with everything from unauthorised felling of trees through to some serious breaches of use in buildings. The powers are there, and as in many discussions we have, we have the resources to finance and personnel to follow through. Obviously, the high-profile case of the station of telling air is an example of a very absent landlord. It is all very well that we are talking about working with landlords, but if the landlord is not willing, how do you make sure that action is being taken? Specifically about the station of telling, given that it is a live case and on-going just now, but in general, I think that there are definitely challenges where we have either, as you said, an absentee landlord in order of the building or whether we have people who show no interest or have no financial ability to be able to engage in the process. It presents us with the situation in which the council has limited powers. I probably disagree with some of my colleagues that the expectation of the powers is greater than what the powers themselves are. That is probably what I would like to say. Under the actions that the council took in South Ayrshire in the telelocation of Donham, it was under the Bill in Scotland, and that was about making the building safe and preventing the danger. That is as far as you can go. You cannot go and actually go and do any more than that. You then have to move into other legislation. From the planning legislation, if you are wishing to do to take work on either that building or any other building, you then have to be able to demonstrate that you actually have a plan of what you are going to do going forward and that it is in the public interest. You also have to be able to demonstrate that you are able to pay for the proposals that you are bringing forward. You cannot just acquire a building because it is in a poor state of repair unless you have a clear plan to follow that through and to demonstrate that to the court and to the due process for the compulsory purchase as you go forward. It becomes a very complicated process where you have to almost front load the whole system to be able to demonstrate what you intend to do with that piece of land or that building at the end of the day before you can then start the compulsory purchase process, and you also have to be demonstrating that you actually have the funds in place for it. It becomes a very complex situation there in relation to how the council can take that forward. As my colleagues will say, there are obviously issues in terms of resource and expertise in being able to take some of those matters forward. We try our best to work with the property owners in all circumstances to deliver the solutions on it, but quite often those people are either absentee landlords or their investment funds who have no interest in the property other than just being a line in a balance sheet somewhere. It makes it very difficult to engage with it because generally speaking, they are not locals with an interest in the town and they want to see a betterment in the town. They are actually just having an investment opportunity, shall we say? How would you change those powers? You say that there is a need to maybe look at those powers, as well as the resource issue, but how would you change those powers? Across the board, we tend to focus on those big buildings, whether it is in Dumfrieser, in Aire or in Kilmarnock or whatever, but our town centres are full of lots of small buildings, which are in post-state repair. The former butchers and things that are going to shops above them are units above them that are drawing the streets generally speaking down into a lower standard than we would like. I would like to see if it was possible. There was a local development company opportunity to set up something of that, and I think that there was a reference in the New Future for Scotland's town centres document as a strategic acquisition fund. Something along those lines where councils can actually get a body together where we can draw and have funding available there to be able to go to landowners and actually look to acquire the properties or assist them in doing detiment for their properties in line with a greater master plan. The three of us are planners here. We would like to see those things planned out in a proper manner to take it forward. There is some sort of master planning approach to that, which allows us through a strategic view of your street, of how you are going to develop it and how you join up your, as I say, in the smaller scale stuff where you have the butcher whose shop is shutting down. They still get the unit, but it cannot do anything with it because it is too expensive to convert it into a residential unit along with a chap upstairs who has got the one bedroom flat that he bought as a small return for a private let situation. How do you join them together so that we can get a reasonable conversion of that into a townhouse? If you can do that and replicate that along your streets, you then start to bring people back into those areas and you get it joined up. At the moment, there is no connection between those people. There are also situations where those properties are justificated in the fall into people who have perhaps died and it falls to relatives who have no interest in it and there is just a debt to them. The councils are trying to follow those matters through. We see it from the building standards side, but we go after. We are looking at the dangerous buildings for chimneys and such, which are common place for those problems. You do that paper chase and you find that there are various multiple owners of relatively small buildings. When you start to scale that up to larger buildings, it becomes very difficult to co-ordinate it. Beyond the resources that we have at the moment, we have teams that deal with the planning applications, teams that deal with local development plan production. We do not have teams in there that can go and do that research and acquisition and that sort of master planning. I think that, for me, in an area where the real benefit we get powers around about that side, you can then start to see from there. Again, it ties back in, as I mentioned earlier, on how they can industrial land. You know, there are reasons there why that is not brought forward and sometimes that is due to land acquisition and different people not wanting to work together as well as contamination issues, which are the blight of those areas. I want to ask you about change of use and the classification system for class 1 shops, class 7 hotels, etc. When we had a visit to Dumfries, we were showing a number of examples in High Street. One was a men's retailer shop that was closed and was wanting to be converted into a restaurant, but the local development plan has the main street as all class 1. We saw another couple of units that had lain empty for 20-plus years if the information that we were given was correct. I am just wondering if, in this rapidly changing situation where we have got the pandemic, where we want to bring in 20-minute neighbourhoods, we have got e-commerce, is the classification system flexible enough to accommodate change of use and are there any changes that are required in the system itself? Since I mentioned Dumfries, I better come to you, Steve Foster. First off, the planning policy in the town centre was changed some four or five years ago. What you have just described is, if you like, the traditional approach that used to be taken to planning policy in town centres, where you would have what was usually referred to as a core retail zone, where there were restrictions in place to protect the core retail offer of the town centre. However, when we reviewed that five years ago when we were producing the current local development plan, LDP2, members were keen and we were keen to get that changed and introduce a lot more flexibility. That whole retail protection zone has gone. We now have a much more flexible policy that encourages and promotes different uses and different mixes of uses within the town centre. The two main caveats are, first of all, uses that will add to the vitality of the town centre and, secondly, uses that are not going to introduce an amenity issue for existing residents. Subject to those, possibly when you were visiting the high street, you might have noticed that there are more cafes, restaurants now in the high street than there ever used to be, which was a consequence of that stricter regime that used to be in place, but that absolutely has been changed. Given that you are encouraging more mixed use, is there a need for a general town centre use classification that would cover some of these classes, so you would not need to apply it for planning permission to change the use? It is certainly an interesting proposal and I am aware that that is out for consultation at the moment. I have a view that the use classes order itself is out of date and when you look at the classifications, they do relate to the economy as it used to be 20 to 30 years ago and probably the time is right for an overhaul of all of the classifications. Whether it is a good idea to introduce a town centre use is another matter because what you are trying to do there is to introduce a spatial element into something that is only intended to determine whether planning permission is needed for a use change anywhere, so there could be unintended consequences from taking that approach because I am not sure I understand how you could limit it to high streets or designated town centres. In other words, there would be situations outwith town centres, in neighbourhood centres, in villages, in smaller communities, where the ability to, for example, to suddenly change to being a hot food takeaway could introduce a whole lot of new problems and issues into that community, so that could be an unintended consequence. I would say that we need to think long and hard and I would prefer the onus to be on a complete overhaul of the actual use classes system. Bill, is there anything new that you see changing the classification system? I would underline the point that Steve has made about the unintended consequences if you are changing the use classes that is going to apply everywhere, not just going to town centres, so we need to make that distinguish between what use class order is for and what permitted development rights would be there for identifying where planning permission is not needed, as opposed to the planning policy-led approach that will be identified by facilitating and enabling mechanisms to encourage and promote what we would like to see happen. I go back to my earlier point about we do not necessarily know what will happen in the future. The policy needs to be flexible enough to allow change to happen. That might involve requiring planning permission and so be it, so that is the nature of it. I think that the unintended consequences are opening up amenity issues to introducing problems into an area. If we look at another aim and objective of both NPF and wider discussions around town centres about reintroducing a resident population, many benefits and advantages in that, but it does bring with it problems and potential conflicts, so I think that we have to be quite careful about that. I would say that the use class order was written at an entirely different age, but we should not rush into these changes. We have to look at the whole package as a package rather than just individual parts of it. Craig, if the use class orders were written for a different age 20 years ago, what changes would you like to see happen to them? I do not know, I am not giving that a consideration. The guys are right that there is a need for them. We need to make sure that they are applicable across the range of the communities that we have, not just at a larger high streets, but that they are suitable for the towns and villages that we have, because that is where the challenges can come in as well, where there is close proximity to residential units. That is one of the things that we need to make sure that we protect from them. However, I do not think that there is any significant change that I would look for in terms of just maybe an updating of them in terms of how they are brought forward. The other point that I wanted to ask was about building standards. Clearly, they are designed to promote sustainable development and protect the public, but are there any aspects of the building standards system that need to be changed to encourage redevelopment of our town centres? The system is in good shape and it is a very rigorous thing that is required to ensure that we actually deliver the sustainable goals. If we start to try to water it down in any way to facilitate development, it is going in the wrong direction. Again, what we do require in the building standards side is actual resource. There is a distinct shortage in terms of surveyors coming through the universities and colleges to come in to service all of the councils. I know that that is one of the challenges that we have the labs that we are working on just now. However, overall process is a sound process and I think that it is vital to protect consumers as well that we have that in place and that people get what they are expecting at the end of the day. To drive forward that net zero aim, the regulations are very good at doing that, as well as issues such as accessibility, which are vital to ensure that all members of our communities can actually get about, which is an important thing from there. I think that that is something that can sometimes be seen by developers as not necessarily a higher priority, and that is where the regulations are vital to ensure that those things are brought forward. Bill, is there anything that needs to change in building standards? Not anything that I have considered and that we want to put to the committee. In terms of sustainability, it is probably building standards more than planning. I cannot deliver that because it is black and white that you meet that standard or you do not. Planning policy is too open and flexible in that way, so it is hard to deliver and implement. I have nothing really to add specifically in building standards. The issue really is partly around the application of the system and in order to support particularly some of the challenges within town centres, re-use of upper floors, for example conversions of older buildings require probably a flexible approach to be adopted. Yes, there are regulations and building standards to be followed, but there also needs to be an element of discretion involved and flexibility to ensure that they are being applied in a proportionate fashion, so that they do not act as a barrier to that kind of safe redevelopment and reuse of older buildings in town centres. I think that it is there in the system at the moment. There is that opportunity in some circumstances for flexibilities to be applied, which is why I was suggesting that it really comes down to how you approach and how you implement the current system, rather than necessarily having to make any legislative or statutory changes. Good morning to the panel. Thank you for joining us and thank you for your comments so far. Bill, you have spoken a couple of times about flexibility in planning policy, and both the need for it, but the problems potentially that some of that flexibility can cause in not directing enough or not being directive enough. I am wondering what your thoughts are around the town centre first principle. I know it is a principle rather than a specific policy, but that principle is designed to support town centre development and regeneration, and yet we still see planning departments giving permission to out-of-town developments that take social and economic capital away from town centres. Can you comment on that? First thing is that you see planning authorities giving consent to out-of-town centres, not planning departments. There is a strong and consistent thread of planning policies supporting town centres first. Fife's current local development plan was possibly the first just to produce a town centre first policy, so it clearly advocates and promotes that. The difficulty is always going to be on implementation. For the reasons that we have heard already, we have heard from Stephen, from Craig, that there are development economics and viability issues that come into this. We also have a situation in which the older model—and it now seems quite an aged model—of retailing has continued to promote out-of-town locations because they will rest on an argument that that is what the consumers wanted. There has been an employment benefit in some areas as well, so it is quite a difficult issue. Elected members have to juggle all of those things and decide whether they are going to stick with their recommendation or otherwise. On the town centre first principle, I think that it is something that we should be sticking to. We should be promoting it, because it is the first port of call. We have learned anything over the past couple of years that people started to be heard the term rediscover local. It might not be a local in terms of having the same major stores or the same size of operation, the same mix in your high streets. All high streets are different, all town centres are different sizes, but neighbourhoods within cities are all entirely different. It is finding something that works for those individual locations so that you can promote and encourage local businesses and entrepreneurship local services. Attract people back into town centres where we have the upper floor spaces vacant just now and worded up for financial reasons and so on. Where you have people in, you have activity, but you have activity. There is opportunity for services and businesses to be created. You also provide a much healthier environment and a more attractive environment, but that is part of the only one of the steps to get there. There are so many other things involved. Town centre first is not just a planning policy, it has to be something that is agreed and managed through economic development and through working across the council services and community planning partners. We have health services in vacant shop units, for example, but we are talking about 29 neighbourhoods. Let's start from the centre. Let's start from where many people would go to congregate for a series of activities. A lot of those activities no longer exist because of the changes that we have had in recent years, structural economic changes and so on, but there is an opportunity to try and reverse that. You said in answer to another question earlier about one of the roles that you have is to facilitate and enable the implementation of the vision that you are wanting to see. That really follows on from that point. How do we make sure that the vision for the town centre, taking account of the town centre first principle, actually does pull in all the connections and resources? How do we make sure that those processes are actually supported and sustained to create the blueprint for the town centre that actually does provide a livable space for everyone? That involves that wider corporate and interagency working. It requires money. Some of it will be public sector to pump prime and take the initial risk and steps where the private sector can come in and invest. There is some leverage in there. It takes an approach where economic development agencies housing agencies are involved to identify opportunities within town centres. Again, something other authorities are looking at as well, but certainly Fife is looking at that opportunity to do so. Again, there are resources and implications in there. Where you have people, you also need the services. Services will be attracted in some cases because of an attractive proposition. There is a client base or a customer base for commercial activities to come in, but for other services it has to be a more planned investment to make sure that public services are available and social services as well. It is all going to come back to the resources both from the private sector and the public sector to deliver those. Steve, in one of your earlier answers, you talked also about the focus of the local development plan being having a town centre regeneration development principle at its heart. How can we make sure that that is sustained in decision making, in planning and in that vision that we have been talking about? To come back on one of the points that you made there in terms of the application of planning policy and what has happened in the past around out-of-town retail, so do not take this the wrong way, but we have historically tried to resist about being overturned on appeal by the Scottish Government Reporters Unit. Two of the three developments in Dumfries were as a result of planning appeals, and that emphasises the need to have a really robust policy framework that is resilient and capable of resisting development pressures in inappropriate locations. My concern about the draft NPF4 is that it does not quite do that. I do not think that the policy wording that has been put forward currently is robust enough to withstand planning appeals and potentially court of session processes, so I think that is something that, and certainly I think that the heads of planning Scotland have reached out to the Scottish Government to say that it would be good to have some practitioner input to the refinement of those policies. The policy intent is very good. However, how that is translated into actual robust policy wording is another matter, and there is an art to it, and I think that needs some further input from some colleagues to help with that. Having said that, the role that planning policy can play is evidenced in our current local development plan. I mentioned the policy that we have around encouraging and promoting town centre uses and mixed use development and other uses within town centres, but in order to support that, we have also got another policy ED6 in our LDP, which requires a sequential testing approach. When developers come forward with development proposals that are out with the town centre, they have to evidence that they have gone through a sequential test, starting with the town centre and then working their way to edge of centre and finally out of centre, so they have to evidence that there is no other suitable site or no other suitable location for their development before their proposal will even be considered. That is a really important way in which the town centre first principle can be put into practice. One of the reasons that I am mentioning is that it was quite recently put to a fairly intense examination when we had a situation in Dumfries where next wished to relocate from the town centre out to one of the retail parks that has a restriction attached to it, limiting it to the sale of bulky goods, white goods, electrical goods, but expressly prohibiting retail activity and the owner of the retail park was extremely keen to attract next to come and locate there, so their application to have that condition lifted was refused by us. We required them to go through that sequential test and obviously they found it quite hard to discount next current store in the town centre. However, that went through appeal. We were supported on appeal and it then went to the court of session where again we were supported, so that policy actually helped to prevent that out-of-town drift that you are talking about. It is really important that those policies are robust enough to withstand those judicial and quasi-judicial processes. Thank you, Steve. That is a really helpful example. Craig, if I can come to you. You have spoken about working with landlords and developers and I am wondering whether one of the missing pieces in some of us is direct engagement and work with communities themselves who either want to be or are already in town centres to ensure that there is better understanding of things like the town centre first principle. The policy points that have already been made notwithstanding, they can actually be delivery on that. Obviously, communities are a really important part of what we do and we try to engage with them wherever we can and bring them into all those decision making processes. The key thing for driving this forward is that they will have their ideas of what they want from it and whether it is through local place plans that they are coming in where they will cover those town centres and the various levels of what they see for it. For me, there is an element here where we need to change what our town centres are and how we can actually get people into them. I think that something that has not been mentioned is the sustainable transport and being able to get people into the communities and actually get them into the hearts of their town centres, which will then encourage your retailers to try to stay there, because that is where people want to go because they have a good public transport system that will take them into the hearts of their community, rally and jump in their car and go to the out-of-town centre elements. By drawing more communities into these and setting them up with those plans, I think that it is an important thing to help them to shape what is wanted from their areas. Back to the points of compulsory purchase that we talked about earlier, it is part of that. You need to be able to demonstrate that you have a final plan for the building that you wish to purchase. You will be able to do that and generate that head of steam, if you like, behind that project and try to get funding. It is vital to have the communities on board, because through the different channels that are now available to them, you may be able to go and get additional funding that are available to councils to carry some of those schemes forward. It is really important for us to ensure that we engage with the community councils. The community is on a different level, because not everybody is involved in their community councils, but it is really important. I have three members left who wish to ask questions, so if I asked people to be brief and as direct as possible in their questions and answers, that would be helpful. Colin Beattie to be followed by Fiona Hyslop. I have a couple of areas that I would like to explore a little bit with the panel. We are all familiar with the term agent of change and the principle that is behind that. Do you think that there has been any significant change or effect on town centre development as a result of that concept? I will ask Craig to come in first on that. It is resolved now, Mr Beattie. This time it is not my fault, convener, as somebody else is controlling me. I think that the changes that have taken place in our town centres have been as a result of the changes to all our methods of shopping and how we have changed that and that has not been sustainable for these units to be sustained in those areas. That is why we are getting all those vacant units within our town centres. I am saying that that is the biggest agent of change that has impacted on the communities from the popular answers. As I understand it, the principle of agent of change is that if there is a development within a town centre, whoever is the principal mover in that is responsible for mitigating any aspects that might impact on the public, for example, noise and so on. Have we had any negative impact on town centre regeneration? I have not seen anything coming through the system as yet. I would like the majority of retail units or whatever coming into town centres are not going to have a significant impact on those existing users, where night clubs or whatever might have that factor from there. I am not sure how many of those and how much difference they would make to the town centres, but I suggest that the majority of things that are coming in will not have a change, but it is not something that I have had to come across a great deal of experience of at the moment. Steve, have you got a view on that? Currently, we are in a position where there is not a huge amount of developer interest or proposals coming forward within our town centres. Most of the town centre development activity, certainly in very recent years, has largely been driven by RSLs who tend in my experience to already have those wider community outlooks in any event, in the way that they conduct their business. Any issues that arise from the development of affordable housing within some of our town centres have been addressed through the use of planning conditions or section 75 agreements working with RSLs, so we do not have a great deal of experience of developers or private sector developers and any issues that are similar to ones that you have flagged up there. Bill, have you had any experience in your area of this? I am not familiar with any particular examples. I would say that it is a relatively new term, but it is something that has applied for years. Many years ago, when I worked in this city, just along the road from here, we had an area of quite established industrial use when flats were first introduced in there. It is the same issue. What is the impact of introducing residential premises or residential developments within areas where they might be affected by long-established businesses? It is the same principle here. We have a real balancing act to try and achieve here for town centres. I think that particularly cities as well, perhaps more than town centres, I may be wrong in that. We are trying to create a night-time economy, a vibrancy, at the same time as bringing people back in. There will be those conflicts. They have to be addressed and considered quite carefully. We also have to understand the expectations of people who are moving into particularly established town centres where there is a lot of activity and noise that they might find detrimental to their living standards. We find that it is just applied to town centres. We see the same thing applied in the countryside. People moved into the countryside finding that hens and cows are moving in early hours in the morning, disturbing their sleep. Those are not at all unusual. They are planning immunity issues. If they are town centres, they are particularly acute because we are trying to achieve quite a number of things in relatively small areas. I do not have any examples to quote, but I think that a lot of the potential issues are there to be seen and maybe bring us back into how we are going to deal with a policy-led approach to changing our town centres and how they are going to be in the future. Your responses have been informative on that. Can I just move into a slightly different angle now? During Covid, there was obviously a big change in working practices and there was a huge increase in home and hybrid working. That has continued, has it not? We have not gone back to fully being in the offices again. Consequently, there is going to be an impact on our high streets if only from the sandwich shops and the little retailers that would have staff popping in from time to time. What might that mean for future planning policy? How might that impact on future planning policy? I will come back to you, Craig. There are two elements to this. There is the work that people are doing at home and how that impacts on their neighbours and what they are doing in the activity that they have in the street. People are running a business from home more and more, which is becoming much more acceptable from their activities to see. On the high streets themselves, I think that they will evolve. I think that with people working from home, you may see that it has been reported that people are rediscovering their local towns and areas where previously there were commuters that were just jumping in a train and going somewhere else, but they are now discovering their own communities. If that could be embellished further and built upon, we would be able to build good local communities. If we could get people sustaining the local shops, that might be a positive from there. While it might have a detrimental impact on your high streets and your principal shopping areas, there is potential that it could improve your smaller villages and your more rural residential areas where you have shopping parades and such, which are getting more support because people are popping down the local shops to get things rather than elsewhere. Now, planning policies would need to reflect that as we go forward. I think that the flexibility that we have spoken of all morning for the town centres is vital to that. To get people in and out and to bring it back to the touch on the other, that is sustainable transport. Speaking of people in and out of towns on electric buses or whatever, easily they will go and use that if it is convenient to them from there. That will drive that whole agenda, which in turn will have an impact on out-of-town areas. If they can be seen at the town centres or places where people can happily jump in a bus and get to town centres, the retailers will come back to those areas because they will see them as where people want to spend their money rather than in their cars. One of the difficulties here is that, if you are looking ahead, you do not know whether home-working and hybrid working will continue at what level. It is a bit difficult if you are on the planning side to look ahead on that. Craig, were you coming back in? I was just going to say that if the councils are anything to judge by, many councils are pushing towards hybrid and home-working and agile in order to reduce their zero-carbon agenda to reduce that forward. If that mirrors with elsewhere, you will look to plan for that as we go forward. Steve. I think that this is possibly likely to have more impact on cities and city centres, which are focal points for a wide range of office activity. What I would say from my perspective in Dumfries and Galloway is that we need to be careful not to make too many assumptions here, because if you look at the staff within my service, within the council, for example, 80% of them have continued to work front-line, not in offices, right the way through the pandemic. We are talking about a minority of our staff that are office-based, all the folk that are delivering front-line services, whether it is empty bins, whether it is keeping our streets and our parks and our urban areas clean and safe. They have all been out there working right the way through, and that will continue. Any impact of the move towards home-working or hybrid working needs to be seen in that context. We are only talking about a minority of staff that are able to do that and are going to be doing that into the future. The impact on our town centres is relatively limited. I would also suggest that there is a positive here, which is that, for once, the location that has traditionally been seen as a disadvantage of places such as Dumfries and Galloway has suddenly become an advantage and a selling point, and what we are seeing is people relocating because one of the consequences of being able to work remotely from anywhere is that you could be sitting in somewhere like Castle Douglas or Gatehouse Affleet or in the countryside down in South West Scotland and working for a company based in London or Manchester or Edinburgh. We are seeing increasing examples of people doing that, and that in itself is a boost to some of our communities and to some of our towns and villages because they are bringing in new activity, visitors and disposable income. Whether the flexibilities are there in our planning policies to sustain that is something that we need to look at through MPF4 and the review of future LDPs, but I am pretty sure that the policies are already in place to support home-working. The other point to make is that we are already seeing the development industry responding and reacting to those changes because when you now look at show houses, for example, they inevitably contain an additional room or a study that has been set aside for home-working, so those things are already being adopted and built into future developments by the house-building industry, for example. I think that the flexibilities are already there. Thank you. I have two members left and we are running out of time, so if you want to close up to follow by Alexander Burnett. It is still good morning. The national planning framework for encourages time-centre living, including the reuse of vacant upper floors of commercial property and redevelopment of redundant retail units, so I think that that will probably have to be quite brief. However, how have your authorities worked to support such development? Is there anything that the Scottish Government can do to help to support such properties for housing? It might be helpful if you can give us a sense of how much of your high street, for example, has vacant upper properties. We are very conscious of that from our dimfries visit, but maybe if I can come to Bill first, if you can give a reply to that. In terms of practical work that has taken place, Fife Council has a well-established and affordable housing programme. The latest phase of that includes promoting town centre living. Again, it comes back to resources by making sure that it is viable, that it works, so that we can work with owners who can see a sense in co-operating with the council or other housing agencies to live with that housing. It brings with it the issues that I mentioned earlier on about the supporting services that are required. I would expect that through our review of our local outcome improvement plan, I would expect to see more of a discussion in line with that, so we are speaking with the health services. We have education support to try to bolster the opportunity for residential accommodation. We have a long list of sites, but we are finding sites that are ready to deliver and can be achieved in the short term. There are quite a few and far between without the need for additional funding, so that would be the resources. Craig, is there anything from South Asia on that? No, I think that the council is always looking to try and develop in the town centre and bring people back into it. There are no specifics that I could bring to answering that question, just in terms of your question of how many units. I am afraid that I do not have that figure available from there. Sorry about that. Anything from you, Steve? It depends on how long we have, because there is quite a lot that I could talk about, but I will be brief and conscious of the time. First of all, having a look at the way in which RSLs are funded to deliver and difficult to develop sites, including reuse of vacant and empty properties, there needs to be a waiting and a gearing towards the way in which the funding of those developments is currently supported. We are having to use the place-based investment programme, for example, as well as our town centre living fund, just to try to help RSLs to make some of those difficult sites deliverable. That is one aspect. The other one that I was going to mention is, and you have seen for yourself first-hand, the work of the Mid-Steple Quarter. We have been working very closely with the Mid-Steple Quarter to help them to develop that master plan for that part of the town centre, which includes a good high street frontage. As part of that work, when you look at their master plan document in terms of what they are trying to achieve, there were four residents in our high street when they prepared that, and they have a target of increasing that to something like 66 or 70 as a result of their development. However, we are hoping that once developers understand what can be achieved in town centres by applying that master plan approach, there will be other developments, particularly from RSLs, coming forward to help to address some of those issues that you have mentioned. If there is anything practical that you can suggest after this that you want to let us know about, please do all three of you. Finally, with local place plans being important for community involvement in supporting town centre regeneration, what can you provide to communities? Yes, you are experts in your profession, but the communities are experts in their local place, so how do you make the most of that and give them the skills and the expertise that they need to realise their own expertise about their own communities? I will keep to the convener how much we can go on this bill. Briefly on that, last week, we opened an invitation to community bodies to consider preparing local place plans. We have a website that we have already established with FFA for people who want to ask questions and some advice and pointing towards resources. One of the points that we are making here is that because the communities are preparing this, they will need resources. We are not in a position necessarily to provide all the resources and support that they would need because they are going to be community led place plans, but we can provide signposts to the information that they need. We are also working through our Fife as seven areas for community planning purposes. Each of those are reviewing their local neighbourhood plans, local community plans for a better term. That involves gathering information on how they see their communities. All of that will feed into our work. My role over the next year will be to prepare a new local development plan, which we have said quite openly just now. It is going to be place-based, so we have to tap into that information. As you say, the people who know their place best are the people who live there, so we want to try to tap into that and see what we can do. National planning policy for sets of policies, we should not have to repeat that. What we want to do is to look from the ground up and see how we tie into that and synchronise both the policy and the place-based approach. Is there anything additional to what Bill said? In addition to that, I would suggest that resource is the key thing for us to be able to support the communities. I think that for local place plans, the better-off areas will quite happily prepare their own local place plans. They will have retired professionals who will happily be involved in that process. It is those communities who are not as well-resourced within them that are going to need the support, and that is where the council will need to support them without trying to lead them too much, because, as you say, they are plans that are meant to be coming forward. Steve, is that more community development that might be needed for support, not just access to planning offices, etc? I think that it is about capacity building and capability building within the community. That is certainly something that we are working on at the moment. We have started a programme using the web part of the borderlands inclusive growth deal. Within the borderlands deal, there is a place programme. In delivering that place programme, we have started work across five different communities in Dumfries and Galloway to help to facilitate them to prepare place plans and one of the benefits of doing it through the borderlands process is that, ultimately, those place plans can generate investment in projects within those places. There is a tangible end result and end product. What we are trying to be careful to do is to align that with the new approach in the planning system with LPPs so that those place plans are also capable of being adopted as LPPs, because it is an important principle that there should only be one plan for one place. That is very helpful. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Alexander Burnett. Thank you. I am just very briefly and maybe just to Steve, if you are able to answer. Is converting unused commercial property in town centres into new homes commercially attractive and technically possible? Secondly, do you have any challenges with identifying owners or complex ownership structures of unused buildings? The answer to the second question first is simple. Yes, there are a lot of challenges in terms of identifying absentee, landlords and property owners, and that can take up a large amount of resource, because that has to always be the first port of call to ensure that they are held to account for their ownership of that property. In terms of commercial development viability, I think that it has been many, many years since we have seen any evidence of, particularly, commercial house building activity anywhere near our town centres. The challenge is really around some of the extraordinary development costs that are often associated with trying to redevelop town centre sites. How that can be overcome by the private sector alone, I think, is very challenging, given that their driver has to remain making a return on their investment. However, I still believe that there is a continued role for the public sector in terms of gap funding in particular to support that development. If we are trying to achieve wider societal benefits from those investments, then that is something that I think arguably would support continued public investment in providing that sort of gap funding. Thank you. On the second point of identifying ownership, do you have any solutions there, or do you see where the fork might lie? I am not sure that I have any specific solutions. I would like to see progress made with. I think that one of the proposals that was floated in the previous town centres review was around compulsory sales orders. That might be something that might help to address some of the other issues that the committee has raised this morning, but I am not sure that it addresses the specific issue about tracing absentee landowners. Thank you. Unless the others have come in, I have no further questions. Mr Iles, do you wish to comment on that at all? No, I would just agree with Steve that it is very difficult to trace the owners of these buildings, especially when they are into companies that are offshore and such like. That can be only very challenging. Can I just ask a final question? I apologise if I have already addressed that. There are a number of areas in which councils can carry out work and then reclaim the work from the owner. On paper, that sounds very simple. Do you know how many times that is difficult to recoup the expenses that councils have paid out in terms of defective properties, etc? Steve, do you want to… You are absolutely right. We do do that. There is a default power there available to us. We have used it particularly in situations with dangerous buildings where, frankly, we cannot stand by and watch just for the sake of having to spend money in order to address a public safety issue. We have examples where we have, in the absence of an owner and the absence of co-operation of an owner, entered premises and carried out partial demolitions or boardings up and made premises safe. The main emphasis there is probably tried to recoup the outlay from the property owner, but, as you can appreciate, there is a whole debt recovery process that has to be followed ultimately ending up in the courts. Taking out charging orders is another way in which we can try to at least get some security over the premises that we have been into. It would be the case that the council would really only take on the work if it was a public safety. It would have to reach that point because there is uncertainty in being able to recoup the funds and to have the owner be responsible. I do not think that it would be fair to say that it is only in public safety cases because I am talking mainly about the building standards enforcement system. In the planning enforcement system, again, if there are situations where, for example, there is a non-compliance with a planning condition or there is a breach of planning controls, then, depending on having a proportionate view about the damage and impact that is causing to the wider public, we also have the same default powers to go in and carry out works and ultimately seek recovery of those costs from the owner. I thank all three witnesses for their contribution this morning.