 Dyma'r byw representio cyfdeinmydd i ffneyd mewn Cymru yn 2014. A bod fawr yn gwneud mewn ddechrau a'r byw yn awdro-explody öğw. Mae'r rhaid i'r agenda item one. Mae ydych chi'n ddweud y gallu eu busnesau i'w decisio o ffwysig o hyd yn dioligio i'r cyfudd y confunition i'r reisio ar y bwrdd ffurth gŷngent o'r SPCB i'u cyflym y Demoladeol 12.4.3 oedd yn cael ffordd o phim achio i eu ddefnyddio i'n cyfwyr maes nhw i'r byw y byw Ffyn Scotland Bill? Agenda item 2 is a decision on whether to take our agenda item 5 today, which is consideration of the evidence of the committee that we will receive on the welfare fund Scotland bill in private at today's meeting and all future meetings where that issue is discussed. Agenda item 3 is a decision on whether to take consideration of a draft report on the welfare fund Scotland bill in private at all future meetings, has that agreed? That brings us to agenda item 4, which is the committee's first evidence session on the welfare fund Scotland bill. We hope today to gain an insight into local authority views on the bill and the other evidence sessions that the committee has planned will be used to inform our evidence sessions with the Minister for Housing and Welfare, Margaret Burgess on 4 November and, ultimately, the committee's stage 1 report on this bill. I would like to welcome Susan Donald, who is the Benefit Manager of Aberdeenshire Council, Dave Berry, who is the head of services, finance, contracts and welfare rights at Dundee City Council, our only elected representative on the panel this morning from the local authority, that is Councillor Norman MacDonald who is the convener of Western Isles Council, Alasdair MacArthur, Finance and Operations Manager of Renfrewshire Council, Helen McReevy, Scottish Welfare Fund Coordinator, South Lanarkshire Council and Nicola Reid, Team Leader of Benefits Operations and Scottish Welfare Fund at West Lothian Council. As this is a round table discussion, I hope that it can be a free and open dialogue. I might come to certain people to ask questions or to keep the thing moving forward, but please feel free, if you have a contribution to me, just indicate to me that you want to come in. If you want to ask a question yourselves, you just want to make a comment on anything that someone else has said. The freer and open the discussion, the more information we get and the better informed we'll be as we look at the bill. To kick the ball off, I'm going to show my parochial bias and go to Helen McReevy from South Lanarkshire Council, since I represent that area. Helen, your experience of the Scottish Welfare Fund and looking at the bill, how things are going to move forward, could you give us some opening comments just to start the ball rolling? Since it's moved over to local authorities, I've found that working with the variety of different organisations has been really helpful both to the customers and ourselves for building up relationships. Also, using our authority to use a furnishing service and provide goods, it's delivered to the claimants and things like that as well, which is extremely helpful. I think that the only concern that we have as an authority is that we don't have maybe as much funding at the moment to be able to investigate any fraudulent claims that we'd like to visit and officers. We do that at the moment, but in the main, we're managing our budget very well, we're processing times, are I think really quite good at the moment, it's for the last three months, it's about 93% for community care grants, 98% for crisis grants. One of the areas where our systems may fail as a wee bit is when we receive applications that are recorded on our system. For example, if they're from prisoners, they apply two months beforehand before they're released, so that knocks for timescales out. Same with crisis grants, it could be, we require some evidence so we can't make a decision within the two days, so that skews were crisis grants as well. Crisis grants, we tend to try and process within 24 hours, and it's only cases where we're looking for evidence that it's longer than that. We're aware very much about the vulnerability of the people that we're dealing with, and we're trying to process them as quickly as possible. I don't know if there's anything else. I was sort of caught in the hot this morning. Does that sort of give you a wee sort of background? Try and get some information from us. We've got yourself, councillor. You say it from a different perspective, but you want to give us your views on how things have been and looking forward to the bill, anything that you think we need to be particularly paying attention to? Thank you. Even though it is from a different perspective, from an elected member's perspective, very much the same has been said by Hillan there. We have far better and far more effective relationships at a local level than there were before in terms of engagement with the third sector and other partner agencies in terms of housing associations. I think that that has a significant benefit to the clients and the people who are affected by welfare reform. That's something that the Scottish Welfare Fund has significantly contributed to, is the building of those partnerships and being far more effective and proactive in recognising what the issues are for local people. Certainly within our local authorities, a small local authority, some of the issues are the same, but there is a big difference in scale. One of the things that has the biggest impact for us is fuel poverty in terms of people's ability to heat their homes. There's a whole range of things that affect that that are particular to our authority. Those are the things that we still will face challenges on as the bill goes through and beyond that. We would certainly be looking for things in there that will mitigate the impact of that. As things stand, supposing that we were to insulate every property in the western isles, there will still be an issue in relation to fuel poverty purely because of the cost of fuel and the climate. That will have an impact on people. There are things like that that have an impact. I also think that responsiveness is much better in terms of the targets that are set for dealing with both the crisis grant and the community care. Again, we tend to put out five times more in terms of goods to people rather than giving cash out to them through crisis care. Again, that is something that is a material thing. You know what the money is being spent on. You know that the goods that go into people's homes are going to be there for the benefit of everybody within that setting rather than giving out the money and then wondering whether it's actually being spent on what it's intended to be. It's certainly a good positive move for us as an authority. I know that that will be reflected possibly with other local authorities, but there will be local nuances as well that have to be taken into account. Talking about those local nuances, you're a rural authority. The South Lanarkshire is mixed rural and urban dundee. Is there anything specific, Mr Berry? You want to bring your attention from a city council's point of view? Yes, certainly within dundee there are high levels of deprivation and we've found the opportunity to work more closely with individuals that have applied through the Scottish Welfare Fund and actually start to build on the work that we already do with a great majority of them because a lot of those applicants are already known to social work and housing services and they get ability to work in that more holistic manner with these individuals and really to try and start to get to the root of the problem to stop repeat applications and really to try to support those individuals as best we can. We've also found that with the Scottish Welfare Fund, again following a similar theme to other local authorities, we're providing less and less cash and it's more goods and a lot of the goods that we are sourcing are providing our sourced locally so we're able to support local businesses. We're supporting a supported employment workshop through the provision of furniture. We have a social enterprise in terms of carpet fitting and through a locally based electrical distributor we're able to create employment opportunities so we've found it to be very positive. I'm not looking for conflict, I'm looking for problems but if there are problems we need to address them. I'm understanding Mr MacArthur that you're not entirely happy about the role or the potential role of SPSO. Do you want to give us a flavour of your thinking around that? Certainly in terms of our response to the committee's consultation and indeed in the draft bill we had my comment that we didn't feel the nature of our review process in terms of the dual powers that would be given to the SPSO in terms of not only reviewing a decision but having the ability to then direct a council to change its decision. We didn't feel that sat particularly well with the existing ethos of the SPSO in terms of managing and ensuring good customer service and dealing with complaints. We also had concerns with the potential volume of secondary reviews that is apparent where are being generated and I appreciate it still early days in terms of the Scottish welfare fund but when you look at the number of secondary reviews that have been incurred even in the first quarter of this financial year on a national basis I think projecting that forward and granted it is still early days I think that the overall number will be at the lower range of the numbers that have been suggested with the SPSO and some of the financial memoranda to the to the to the bill. So we again had a question about the value for money about having a separate organisation when the existing arrangements for managing secondary reviews as we've experienced over the past 18 months or so appear to have worked very well when they've been managed within each local authority area. Okay, Kevin, you and the chief, did you want to ask a question in London? Thank you, convener. I'm interested to hear about whether or not co-operation is taking place between those that are administering the crisis grants and the community care grants as part of the social welfare fund compared to those who may be doling out monies by other means through social work emergency grants etc. Is there a level of co-operation between the teams that are dealing with the social welfare fund and others? Is there a situation in some cases where these have been integrated into one team? I'd be really interested to, convener, in hearing what's happening around about that. Yes, there's certainly a very close co-operation between colleagues across social services. The emergency payments, for example, haven't been integrated with the Scottish welfare fund because there's a strong element there of care management involvement in that actual decision. An example of where we work quite closely is where care management are perhaps implementing a new housing scheme for learning disability adults. They'll work with the Scottish welfare fund to provide the community care grants for some of the furnishing items with that scheme. Mr Beattie, do you want to come back? Just to add to that, I've been able to read the reset of the scheme. It's actually an integrated scheme between the social work and a revenue department in recognition that there are different skills. The revenues are really skilled in the processing side of things, and social work brings a different dimension to that. In terms of the scheme itself, we employ two welfare rights officers that are based in social work who will assist decision makers and also liaise with various social workers and housing support officers, for instance, to assist with the decision-making process. I think that there is a great deal more co-operation, and I hasted to use the word in an informal sense because it is informal because there isn't a formal structure of integration. It's certainly something that we've started discussing in the context of health and social care integration and what remains within the local authority of the traditional social work and social work department. I think that there will undoubtedly be more formal integration across welfare reform and what used to be the social work department. It already happens in an informal way, and it's probably more so because we're a small local authority and quite compact in that sense, but I think that that's probably something that other local authorities will be looking at as well as health and social care integration in general moves forward. It's very difficult to administer the Scottish welfare fund without the support of our social work teams. They have an in-depth knowledge of some of the applicants that are presenting to Scottish welfare fund. Therefore, we can get some valuable advice on assistance that is required. I think that across councils you'll find that there is a very close work in relationship between Scottish welfare fund teams and social work departments. Is that where we're in this experience, Helen? We have the exact same way that is quite a lot with the welfare right service within the authority. We've put it in all the standard letters if they're unhappy with the decision that we've given them phone numbers to contact. We have a good work in relationship with the welfare right service as well and with social work. Again, for cases where there's mental health issues and we're looking for a wee bit more information, they're really very supportive and it helps our decision makers to come at the correct decision for the applicant. I would just echo what my colleagues have said. There is very close working between my service, which administers the welfare fund from a transactional perspective, but there is very close working with our colleagues in social work and in housing as well. I suppose that we have, similar to other authorities, employed some advice works services, which provide money advice services as part of our social work service. Also, in terms of energy advisory services, we have a courtesy of the welfare resilience fund that we were successful in securing some awards from. We have employed two energy advisory officers again to provide a more holistic service for those who find themselves in the situation where they are required to apply to the welfare fund for support. A quick follow-on question, if that's okay, convener. Before I go on to what I was wanting to ask about, it was something that Helen said earlier, which probably relates to working with not just within council departments, but with other agencies. Helen, you had said that sometimes crisis grants were held up because of evidence gathering required. I just wondered if you were having issues with particular other agencies in that, in gathering evidence, or if it was all internal, something that could be said? It tends to be that we're looking for what the class is pink slips from the police. It tends to be lost wallets, lost purses, and it's maybe where the claimants have had several lost wallets and purses. We're trying to get evidence, and that's the only way we can get it in that situation. Other areas, I think that's the only area where there's delays, but we give the applicant, as soon as they make the application, two days from that date to provide us with the evidence to enable us to process it. That's fine. The main thing that I wanted to ask about was that Alasdair said that Renfrewshire went totally pleased with the SPSO for second-tier reviews. I would be interested to know how local authorities deal with their first-tier reviews and the variations among them, because also going back to some third-sector organisations, I'm quoting Spice here, were concerned about gatekeepers refusing applications for full consideration, was given to the case. If we could link those two things about who makes that initial decision and then on to who does the first-tier review. Yes, the first-tier review is done by someone other than the officer that actually made the decision. It's usually done by the team leader, partly at the moment, because the volumes have been so low in terms of first-tier review requests, certainly in Aberdeenshire, that that's actually been a workload that's manageable. Following on from that, if a second-tier review is required, we have a panel that comprises a head of housing and a housing manager with social work involvement, the revenues manager and the head of finance, who will then re-look at that decision and I'll be there to advise that particular panel based on any new information that's come to light. Certainly from the very few reviews that we've had, some have upheld the original decision, others we have overturned it and sometimes we've actually met in the middle when it comes to those decisions. Can I ask what it is that kicks in that review? It's a request from the applicant. The letter that goes out to the applicant will explain what's been awarded, why that award has been made, what's been refused and why, and then it gives them the option to request a first-tier review. After that's taken place, they're advised of what they can do next to instigate a second-tier review. Just follow up on the issue of gatekeeping. Obviously, I speak about my own authority, but there's not anything like a gatekeeping process in place once the applications come in to the local authority. They are through the system, the kind of north gate system that we use, they're allocated out to a decision maker, so the decision maker will get that case there and then and then it would be the same process as Susan's laid out in terms of any reviews requested. I think that that person would qualify for a grant or not. The reason for that is that the holistic approach that local authorities put on that scheme is that they might not qualify for a grant but we can help them access other services should they require further assistance if we can't help them. As far as the first-tier review is concerned, as Susan said, it's dealt with by someone completely independent to the person that made the first decision and that's usually the line manager of the team. As far as the second-tier review is concerned, it's done with people completely outside the service or completely independent to the service altogether. However, our second-tier review is so low that keeping that knowledge for someone to be able to carry out a second-tier review is very difficult. On the original consultation back in February, we did say that we were in favour of the SPSO. However, on that questionnaire, there was an option should SPSOs have the ability to overturn a discretionary element of the decision. We said no to that but they could make decisions on points of law. That doesn't seem to have been reflected going forward. It would appear that they are now able to overturn decisions on any part of the decision-making process, which puts in question, depending on the numbers, our local authority budget is going to be under pressure if there are a number of second-tier reviews overturned, particularly on the discretionary element of the part of the scheme. I'd be interested in the first-tier appeals again. When people are applying for grants, a lot of them can apply through online. They are not speaking to a person on the phone and they do not put a great deal of information sometimes in the form. I have just looked at our first-tier appeals. 14 were applied in May and 11 were overturned in the applicant's favour. That is why we are getting further evidence talking to the applicant as well. A lot of them put very little information on their application or they provide information after a decision has been made. Our overturn rate that we receive from other organisations that were welfare rights service, our citizens advice, obviously supports the applicant as well. It gives us more information to overturn their original decision. Ken? There are a couple of questions that could also be covered in your opening. You suggested that most of the crisis grants were turned around within one day, although the deadline is two days. Can I just ask the other local authorities? The old crisis grant system run by the DWP had a one-day turnaround time and it is a crisis grant. Would you all be able to turn it around in one day? Why did the Scottish Government, do you think, give you a two-day deadline on the one-day deadline? First of all, when it was a DWP system, it was not a grant, it was a loan, so they did not need to meet any criteria, I do not think. It was just taken and it was processed. For crisis grants, we need to make sure that they meet the conditions, and again, if it is constant, we need to look at that, because we do have a budget and we need to take care of that budget. That, again, is weird looking at the budget and making sure that the moneys are going to the most vulnerable people, whereas the DWP took an application, paid it out, and that was it. The customer, again, had deductions off the benefit, whereas they do not get anything, they get a grant. That is how we repeat applications, I think, a lot as well. I agree with Helen there, but, in addition, one of the holistic approach that has been described, that extra time gives you a little bit extra to investigate further and potentially get to identify the route of the particular problem. Again, extra time taken to check with social workers, to check with housing support officers around the particular circumstances in which the applicant is applying. That extra time does help to provide that. Again, I think that the intention is that, given that it is a crisis grant, that grant is awarded as soon as is practically possible in terms of the tests that are there, but there is a more holistic service being delivered. It does involve speaking to other agencies, some of which are not within the council, and, ultimately, that might flag up something for them as something that they have to do, whether it is to do with somebody who is a tenant in a housing association property or whatever. The intention is to get the grant award as soon as possible, but, given the onus that it is for joint working and dealing with the issues in a collaborative way, it is inevitable that it can go into the second day. I do not think that that is a necessarily a bad thing. There are three questions about giving awards in kind rather than cash. I am just leaving to side the community care grant, but I am actually focusing on the crisis grant itself. I was wondering whether, if others agreed, the voluntary sector on giving evidence on the interim welfare scheme suggested quite strongly that, if you want to build the resilience of individuals, you are actually far better at giving them cash to allow them to make their own choices, and that by focusing on giving, one of the reasons for example about focusing on giving grants, giving support in kind, is that there is actually an element of distrust there that you are actually focusing on, perhaps on fraud rather than resilience. Do you have any views, because there is a mixture of practice across the local authority? Any other thoughts do you have using that? One of the areas that we look at, it was more so for community care grants because we use a furnishing service. We get more value for the word money and we can help more people. That was the biggest area. Also, the furnishing service employ a lot of staff, work experience, and that helps the community as well. With regard to, I can see where the third parties are coming from about people having to make their own decisions, but not everybody sometimes has the support to help them. We refer a lot of people, because a lot of the times people are applying for crisis grants is that they are finding it really difficult managing the money that they get. They get a little amount to manage over a fortnightly basis. We have budgeting teams, and we might help them out at that point, but we need to look at the problem, to try and resolve the problem for them, to enable them to be able to manage the budget, or if they have debt problems, we refer them to debt councillors as well. It is providing that extra bit of support to the applicants and I think that that is the route that we should begin down. In relation to crisis grants, which I think was your question, what we have found, and which I am quite sure other local authorities have found, is that you have to make sure that the money that we give them is being used for the purpose that it was intended for, whether that be food, fuel or whatever. To give them cash, it is right to say that it is not often used for that purpose. If local authorities are going down the route of supermarket vouchers or fuel cards, we know that the money that we are spending is going to what is needed for that family, and not as we have historically found. If we give them £30 for food over the weekend, that is being spent on alcohol or drugs or whatever if they have an addiction. That is what we have found, and we are trying to move away from a cash option for crisis grants and moving more to supermarkets, providing food etc, so that the money is hitting home and it has been used for what it is intended for. Is there any studies or any research done or any evidence to support the idea that people are misspending cash, or is it anecdotal? I certainly recognise what you are saying, but I am just wondering whether it is anecdotal or whether it is evidence-based. I think that the evidence is in the repeat applicants. We find that we give cash in face that it is going to be spent on whatever it has been asked for, and then the same applicants come back on a repeated basis, asking for money for the same item. The client group that we work with can sometimes be very honest, and they tell us that they have not spent that money on its intended purpose. There might not be any official information on that, but from an operational point of view, we can see that that is very much how things are. Aberdeenshire being a rural authority, we have particular challenges when it comes to providing goods for crisis grants, which is why, in our case, what we provide is cash or energy vouchers. There is no one predominant supermarket or outlet that we can enter into a voucher scheme, given the distances that people potentially have to travel. As Nicola said, the clients that are going to misuse them are the ones that will be repeat applicants for crisis grants, but we have equally had a couple of instances where, having provided goods, those goods have been sold in order to get the cash, rather than being used. That is after they have been packaged and everything has been removed. It is very difficult to prevent people from misusing a system that relies heavily on trust and assessing the need when they first apply. In terms of anecdotal research, it is not conformal, but when we started the Scottish Welfare Fund, we were given cash because we did not have the fulfilment options in place. When we started to introduce energy advice officers, rather than somebody getting £50 of energy, an energy advice officer would be sent out to the house to liaise with the energy company and review the tariff and negotiate lower tariffs. We found that there was quite a significant drop in the number of people who would then accept the award, so it indicated that what they were going to use that money for was not the energy costs that they stated that they needed. In a similar vein, with regard to travel costs, we started to introduce that we would buy the travel ticket, whether it was a bus ticket or a train ticket, and again a number of applicants declined the offer of that particular award. We have statistics as well about the amount of vouchers that we pay out and that are not redeemed, which amaze me when I started with the project. It tends to be energy vouchers that we award through all the process, explain it to them and they do not cash it. Is that a bus ticket? No, it is paid back into the fund. I will review that on a monthly basis and the voucher expires after a month and we pay it back into the system, but it is quite a large amount. The final question is again the voluntary sector has raised concerns about one of the powers of the bill that allows local authorities to outsource the sole process to other bodies, including to privatise it. What do local authorities think about this concern and about this power? Do any plan to outsource it or do you already outsource it? Sorry, I just need to get a final question. There is no range for sure that it has no plans to outsource current operation. We are content with having that flexibility within the bill that allows local authorities to outsource. It was not so much in terms of bringing the private sector on board but looking across local authority boundaries that is where we were coming from and potentially engaging a bit more with the very organisations that you have mentioned in terms of getting them and providing assistance in terms of administering the fund. We thought that there were potentially opportunities there. Our only concern was that in doing that, some of what has been talked about this morning in terms of the local knowledge about what local support services are available. If you were outsourcing potentially across local authority boundaries, then that local knowledge may be diluted slightly, so that was one concern. In terms of having that flexibility within the bill and the cash limited amount that local authorities have, both in terms of the overall fund size and in terms of the administration resource that we have, then having that flexibility is useful. Just on that subject, certainly my reader of the bill, that is the reason why that outsourcing clause is included. However, there are a number of key local authority areas, responsibility that are outsourced to the third sector, for example. Is this an area that would lend itself to that approach? I think that there is the potential there to do that, but it is not something that we have explored to any great extent. I think that one of the first things that, as a local authority, we would need to be content with is that the third sector has the capacity and the ability to help us in that area and that is something that we have not explored as yet. Just on that point, I do not think that there is any doubt that local authorities are engaging with the third sector in particular and working in partnership with them, including citizens advice women's aid. Maybe elements of the work that is required to be done can be outsourced, but that is something that will come through time, through having worked through the process and seeing what works best for the client and what makes it more certain that the resource is going to where it needs to go. We do not have a policy aim to outsourge, but it is important, in a local context, that we have engaged in the process agencies that have a far longer reach into communities than we have as a local authority. That involves very much the third sector. Just on a practical level, one of the benefits of local authority, particularly when it is providing goods and services, is its VAT status. In terms of affordability, the local authority can claim back VAT, so in terms of the pot that the fund itself can potentially go further than if it was being delivered by an external agency. Just continuing on that subject and perhaps looking at the subject not so much from formal outsourcing and all that that would entail, but just at the moment, to what extent are local authorities engaged with the third sector on a day-to-day basis to try to deliver for the applicants? Obviously, there seems to be a lot of capacity out there and it would be a shame in terms of also valuing for the public purse if that capacity was not being called upon. I just wonder what the current state of play is. The main link with the third sector is around the local advice services, so the citizens advice in particular. Again, working with them around whether it would be signposting applicants on to them or following up with them on some of the issues that the individuals are actually facing. We have quite a good network within Dundee and we are a way to work further with the advice sector around the issue of sanctions from the DWP and focus on them as a priority. When people present themselves to the Scottish Welfare Fund because they are being sanctioned, it is the next step from us on how we can use the wider capacity in the voluntary sector to assist individuals who have been sanctioned. I think that there is a reasonable level of engagement between authorities and the third sector already, but I think that there is always work that can be done there and that can be improved further. It is helpful in some cases where a claimant has already engaged with a charitable organisation. For example, we had a case where we had a member of ex-soldier who was already engaged with the Help for Heroes charity and we were able to engage with him and get a much clearer picture about that individual's circumstances and their family circumstances, which helped us to arrive at what we think was a better outcome for that individual in terms of the decision that we were able to make. I think that it is helpful in those cases where the third sector is already potentially involved with claimants that we can link into that, because, as Councillor McDonald says, some of those organisations have a much deeper reach into the community than the council has, so it is helpful in that context. In that regard, it seems to me from the few comments that have been made thus far that there is a recognition that there probably is more scope. What would the local authorities plan to do to determine what further scope there is and how to bring that on board, and what would be the next steps in that regard? I refer back to what I said about health and social care integration. That is going to drive that agenda forward to a large extent for us. We have already indicated to the third sector within the hybrid east that there is a challenge for them to be able to step up to the plate as it were to deliver those services. We believe that working together with them is going to provide a far better service to clients across the board, not just in terms of the social welfare reform agenda, but across the board there will be a far better service provided across the community as a whole through the mechanisms, whether that be through service-level agreements that are reviewed from time to time or through other formal processes as well. However, the intention is that it will become more formal without damaging the independence of the third sector, because that would be counterproductive. People will see that there is just another arm of the local authority, which might not be the most advantageous position to be in. However, I certainly think that that is something that is going to increase across the piece over the next two or three years. Just on that question, I just wondered if there was a general view, as Councillor McDonald said, that that would increase, in fact, over the next few years. I am aware that there are places such as advice services within councils and Citizens Advice Bureau. I wonder if there is any view as to how that might change in the future in terms of outsourcing advice services only to can. I do not think that it has to be either or. We have already outsourced, and we already have a service-level agreement with the Citizens Advice Bureau, but that does not mean that we do not have fairly senior people within the finance department. The head of service within the finance department that deals with the community services section liaises on a daily basis with the Citizens Advice Bureau. It is not as if we are panning things off to the third sector. It is a real engagement. They are welcoming the fact that they have this arrangement with the local authority. I think that the most important thing is that they see that that is a far greater benefit to their clients who are residents. They are the ones who are evidencing the benefit from doing that, but it does not have to be either or. I think that it is important that the local authority still has a degree of control over any of the services that are outsourced either informally or formally, because ultimately we will be held to account for the delivery of the services to some of the most vulnerable people in our community. In previous discussions around the implementation of the early days of the new Scottish welfare fund, there was some anecdotal evidence that one of the reasons for the poor take-up was the lack of information, the lack of knowledge about where to go. One of the issues that arose in evidence to us was that there was still a tendency for people to believe that the DWP was the place to go to secure that type of support. Although the DWP believed that they had in place systems that would signpost people to where the help would actually be, there was enough evidence from witnesses to suggest that that was not actually taking place. It appears to have improved, but the take-up of the Scottish welfare fund has improved. From your experiences, is there still a lack of knowledge out there about where people should go? Is the DWP signposting people in the way that they believe that they should? Do you have any evidence that there are still communication problems? I couldn't say in terms of evidence in terms of the signposting that the DWP does, but one of the things that we recognise in Rainfisher early on in the days of the welfare fund is that the level of knowledge out in the community and particularly amongst other stakeholder groups was not at a level that it should be. As part of the council's economic development policy, we employed three interns, and that was their role essentially to go out and act as advocates for the welfare fund across a range of stakeholder groups, whether that is the prison service, some of the local charities, local housing associations, health services and so on. Even into GP surgeries and so on to make sure that anybody who could possibly be linked with anyone who might be in a situation where they find themselves needing to make a claim from the welfare fund, that information was available. That has been reasonably successful in Rainfisher in terms of hiding the profile of the welfare fund and I am sure that other authorities will have been doing similar work. Our challenge now is to sustain that level of knowledge in the community because, certainly among some of our stakeholders, there is a reasonable amount of staff turnover and some of that knowledge can dissipate relatively quickly. That is one of the challenges for us that we find over the course of this current year is maintaining that level of knowledge out in the community, but it seems to have in terms of the number of applications that we are getting, it appears to have worked well. Is that the case elsewhere? Yes, we have done quite a lot of work to raise the profile of it, but we have also done a bit of work with the third sector and social work to actually change perceptions. For quite a while, there was a feeling that there was no point applying for it because they were prejudging it on the basis of how the DWP had administered the social fund. Now that they have got used to working with us, we are certainly seeing a significant uptake in applications. We have gone up by 24 per cent compared to the first five months of last year. We are seeing the increase in the applications, the increase in the quality of the information that we are getting and quite a lot of work ahead of time, whether it is a new housing scheme or whether it is with the homelessness strategy or that kind of thing, to see where the fund fits into that. The implications of welfare reform has been to form a partnership arrangement with our local DWP officers. We have worked quite closely on identifying some of the issues around welfare reform and trying to work together to mitigate that. There are a number of projects that the council and the partnership has been successful in obtaining funding for, which help to get the message not just around Scottish welfare fund but around what other assistance is available in response to welfare reform. For instance, through the use of volunteers in the library service, there are very particular community-based projects where there are staff based in the community that will assist. The whole profile of the Scottish welfare fund is part of that process. It is not perfect, but there are still those that I am sure are still not aware of, but we are getting better around that. The other question is—I ask the question before I ask my question. I was going to ask what the general feeling was as to the necessity and or desirability of proceeding by way of legislation. I think that one response to the Scottish Government's consultation out of the 48 or so suggested that it felt that it was not appropriate to proceed with a bill. I wonder what the general feeling was amongst the people that we have here today. I have noted that one specific response, but I have been contacted by two or three organisations beyond that. I had to say that they are not sure that putting this into legislation is the best way to go forward. They wanted to have maximum flexibility and thought that legislation would be too restrictive. Have you had any discussions around that? What the legislation would do would then give the local authority that assurance that it is out of duty is something that they will have to take forward. I think that that can only be good to continue with the development of the Scottish welfare fund. The interim scheme, which has worked well, was only two years. One of the issues that we have had is that we have not been able to employ staff on a permanent contract because it is a two-year basis, is that we have started to get turnover in staff. As Alasdair mentioned, the expertise and knowledge has taken a constant training and recruiting of new staff. To have that certainty that the Scottish welfare fund is here and it is here to stay would help with that. That is an important response. It is certainly not something that I had picked up on. I have been approached by people saying that they were a bit concerned about the legislation being too restrictive, but that is a good counterpoint. I will take that on the board. I will come to you in a minute, councillor, but I still want to do it. Sorry, just to echo that point, I think that it was picked up in a recent Audit Scotland report in terms of looking at benefits performance in 2013-14. It was one of the national reports that they had done where they were highlighting the difficulty that many councils are having in securing and retaining benefits-qualified staff or people who are experienced in making the types of decisions that we need to make in administering the welfare fund. It is an excellent point that Dave Macon makes in terms of having the statutory backing for the welfare fund and having that moving forward. It would do a lot in terms of the security of our existing staff. As I said, it is not something that we have discussed in any significant way in the context of welfare reform, but I think that it gives certainty not just to local authorities but to the clients as well about what is in place. We have noticed that the admin grant does not cover the staff time that it currently takes to work through the applications and to build relationships with the other groups in the islands. That is something that you can sustain for a couple of years, but it is not something that is sustainable long-term. Again, that is a provision that would have to be made either by the local authority or through the funding on a long-term basis. I think that the legislation would give confidence that that would be the case. I just cannot see any reason why, if the legislation is flexible enough and allows flexibility, why you would not want to be giving people certainty about something that is clearly very important. Another question that I had was that you all had a look at the bill. Is there anything that you think is missing? Is there anything that you are concerned about in terms of its content? Or is there something that you would like to comment on specifically on the bill in order to get us to focus on it as we scrutinise the bill as it moves forward? Are you all fairly content with it? If that is the answer, that is fine. I was just going to say that one of the things that I mentioned previously, one thing that we would want to see is the possibility of having some kind of loan and a loan scheme for those who do not meet the criteria for the community care grant or the DWP budgeting loan, because there are either single adults or they do not have exceptional pressure. Having a loan fund as a backstop would be something that would help a number of people. It is not a huge number of people, but again, they are more likely to be some of the people who are quite vulnerable very much on their own and whether some kind of loan can be introduced to the system as well. Previously, the bill does not specifically exclude it. I wonder if we need to pursue that a bit further. Is that certainly something that the committee could discuss with the bill team? Just one point, just in response to that, something that we are exploring in Renfrewshire is having discussion with local credit unions in terms of exactly that so that we can set up loans for small, small goods, essentially white goods and so on, so that is one way that we are exploring it within Renfrewshire. I think that that is an area that we need to start exploring about as a committee. To what extent there may be information available that would help the committee in looking at that issue, because if you say that there is a demand, what is the level of the demand? As a proportion of the total, what kind of numbers are we talking about, it would be perhaps useful to have an idea of that in order to be able to look at that issue in more detail as a committee? That is that we are still seeing some people that are falling between the stools, as it were, that could be helped. We are not talking about huge numbers, but there are people who are as worthy of support as others. I would like to explore the credit union aspect of that, convener, because I know that there are a lot of discussions going on amongst credit unions and the appropriate minister, Mr Ewing, at the moment about how credit unions can take part in this. Yes, I think that that is certainly something worth pursuing in relation to linkages between local authorities and credit unions, because I would be interested in how loans are paid back and what the power at local authorities have for that, and how that can work alongside credit unions. We are on in our agenda, Linda, but I think that the point has been made, and I think that it is something that we need to look at in terms of the bill. I certainly would not be against a loan scheme. There have been difficulties before where councils have operated loan schemes in other spheres. If we are going to explore that, we have to take a license of some of those pitfalls that have been experienced in the past. If we could get that information to you, I think that that would be useful, convener. Can we provide any evidence that they have, or even just their own perspectives on that? That would certainly inform us as we scrutinise the bill as we go forward. I think that it is something that we could contact COSLA to try to explore further. It would be useful to get a clearer picture on that. Is there anything else that anyone would like to add to the discussion this morning? Any final comments that you want to make, or anything that you want to leave us with in terms of your views on this, Helen? When we are talking about the loan scheme as well, I think that some of our customers get confused about the budgeting loans through the DWP and the crisis grants through ourselves. If we were going to consider a loan scheme, I think that that might confuse people quite a bit as well, but it was just to take that into consideration. The only other concern that we have as an authority was the people who do not have anything in the bill, as far as I am aware, about the fraudulent aspects of people misusing the budget. I was wondering whether there would be something in to account for that. I know that the DWP has a fraud section in it, and we are going on to the one-tier approach for fraud. Should that be something that we should consider in welfare reform, it does not appear to be on it at the moment. I have one last thing to add to the council that Donald had started to raise the issue about the administration grant. Within Dundee, we have been quite frustrated about the level of grant compared to the investment in the holistic approach. However, we are even stripping out what you might call the added elements to even purely process the applications where we feel were still short by around about 30 to 40 per cent in terms of the actual administration grant funding. That is something of concern going forward for Dundee. Financial memoranda would go with the legislation to see whether it is adequate. If that is a point that you want us to address, we would certainly take that board. I noted that in some of the submissions, but again, absent any analysis of how the claim is being put forward, it is just one statement. If there is evidence as to a shortfall, it would be useful to have the committee see it. If you have evidence on the administration costs and the money that is made available to you, that would be beneficial to us as we look at this hell. We are doing a benchmarking exercise, and that is one of the areas that we are looking at, how people were using their budget, how it was getting shorted up with other departments within the council. They were certainly recently sent out to survey all local authorities, and they are meeting at the moment to look at the findings. You might get some useful information from Fosla. Thank you very much to everyone for your contributions this morning. That certainly started the ball rolling for us in terms of looking at this bill, and we will give it the maximum amount of scrutiny and consideration. Obviously, if there is anything that occurs to you after this morning that you want to inform us of, that we might not have covered so far, or anything that you want to add to the points that were made, feel free to contact the clerks, and we will take on board any views that you have. Thank you very much for your contributions this morning, which have been very helpful. I will suspend the meeting for a couple of minutes to allow us to witness to depart and move into private session.