 Good morning and welcome to the 17th meeting in 2023 of the local government housing and planning committee, and we've received apologies from Annie Wells and Mèreone McNair. The mayor reminds all members and witnesses to ensure that their devices are on silent and that all other notifications are turned off during the meeting. The first item on our agenda today is to decide whether to take items 4, 5, 6 and 7 in private. Our members agreed. We're all agreed. We turn to agenda item 2, to take evidence on the recent Accounts Commission report Local Government in Scotland overview 2023. We are joined today by members of the Accounts Commission, Andrew Burns, who is a member of team Makae, interim deputy chair.� Also from Audit Scotland, we are joined by Carol Calder, who is the Audit Director. Anthony Clark, director of performance audit and best value, and Lucy Jones, who is the audit manager. I now invite Tim Mackay to make a short opening statement before I open to questions from members. On behalf of the Accounts Commission, thank you committee for inviting us here to discuss the overview report. Councils have never faced such a challenging situation. Their finances are under severe strain with cost pressures increasing and funding increasingly ring-fenced. They've had to make significant savings to balance their budgets and they're still facing difficult choices about spending priorities and service provision. The pandemic adversely affected performance across all service areas and their signs of growing backlogs and declining performance in some areas, including adult social care, housing and homelessness. Councils have a clear focus on tackling inequalities, but the extent and impact of their citizens' needs not being met are unclear. Some communities are facing crisis, experiencing persistently high levels of poverty and increasing financial hardship at a time when councils have less capacity to support them. Workforce pressures have deepened with record levels of sickness absence and increasing recruitment challenges due to the competitive labour market. The scale of the challenges with funding forecasts to reduce in real terms and demographic and workforce pressures growing mean that Scotland's councils must radically change how they operate, particularly how they collaborate with their partners if services to communities are to be maintained and national priorities tackled. During the pandemic, many councils showed strong collaborative leadership and demonstrated the benefits of a place-based approach and of working closely with partners and communities, focusing on the vulnerable, reducing bureaucracy and using the workforce in flexible ways. Those experiences must be consolidated and built upon. In our report, we are clear that leaders must take urgent action, but we recognise that this is not going to be easy. The level of uncertainty and immediate financial pressures make planning and delivering sustainable change much more difficult. In our best value reports in individual councils, we have seen that the quality of leadership and the pace and appetite for change varies. The current challenges may reinforce this gap with the risk that some councils will be left behind. Shared services and shared administrative functions offer efficiencies and can help to manage recruitment pressures and skills shortages, but councils have made limited progress in providing them to date. Tensions with central government and delays to agreeing the new deal create risks to councils' ability to make fundamental changes at the pace needed. Reform will have a huge impact on communities and the workforce. Councils must be open and clear with both groups about the need for change, what that means for future service delivery and involved communities in making these difficult decisions. The recommendations in our report are directed to both councillors and senior officers who must set the tone, make the difficult decisions and implement radical change. I would like to draw out just one key recommendation to enable that change, which is for COSLA and the Scottish Government as part of the new deal to agree a fiscal framework. That is long overdue and doing this should give councils long-term financial stability and flexibility to support them in making their difficult decisions and making the fundamental changes urgently needed. Thank you and my colleagues and I are very happy to answer any questions. Thanks very much for that. I was going to ask you if the overview shared any significant changes in local government situation both in finance and performance, but in a way you have laid that out already. I will ask another supplementary question to that and then in response you can pull out anything else that you want to highlight beyond the recommendation on the fiscal framework. Given that the Scottish Government has allocated a total of £13.5 billion to local government this financial year, that is up 3.5 per cent in real terms, since 2013 to 2014, could you set out why council budgets are now under such severe strain? Yes, the settlement that you referenced is increasing slightly in real terms, but if you look further forward, the funding settlement is flat, essentially, and with the cost of living crisis and the high inflation that we are experiencing just now, that is going to mean real-term decline in council funding. Thanks for that. I do not know if anyone else wants to come in on any highlights around the significant changes before I move on. I do not have to. I will make the point that Tim is quite right about the impact of inflation and the pressures that creates for local authorities on both the revenue funding and the capital funding. We also need to see this alongside the increasing demand for local government services as well. The Covid-19 pandemic is not behind us entirely and there is still having to do with quite significant pressures on services associated with that. We know that through a cost of living crisis for local authorities, the community demands on local government services and other services are increasing as well. All that is piling pressure on local authority finances. Thanks for highlighting that. There are so many bits to this and there to keep track of. I would be interested to hear. As you are aware, and some of you were there, maybe all of you were there, we held a great event with the futures forum on local and government relationships. A number of people there told us that local government is often seen as the delivery arm of central government rather than its true partner and I would be interested to hear your thoughts on how a new deal could change this and support a relationship based on trust. What could a new deal mean for the communities that local government serves? I was at that event and I agree that it was a very worthwhile event and I enjoyed it in the morning. I look forward to future work coming out of the Scottish Futures Forum on the issue. I would draw his attention to page 30 of our overview report this year, where we have some detailed information about the potential new deal, which is a partnership agreement that should include a fiscal framework. Collectively, the commission and Audit Scotland will have heard us both individually and collectively go on about this at quite some length on various visits to this committee and other committees. It was mentioned during the session that you just referenced convener. The partnership framework has been discussed for several years now and it builds on further reviews of local governance frameworks and so on. It is imperative that we sense, as a commission in Audit Scotland, that the partnership agreement is delivered. What it could do if it is delivered in accordance with what you see being the anticipated three elements on page 30 of our report is that it could outline a complete change in tone, which might sound like a minor thing, but it could be quite significant if the language changes from levels of government to spheres of government and if there is parity of esteem. We have all heard that statement and that phrase endlessly over the years, but making it a reality has been a bit elusive. Frankly, we sense, as a commission, the evidence that we get from our best value convener shows that parity of esteem is often not there in reality on the ground. The partnership agreement, which we understand—you will be as close to this as possible—could provide a change in tone and a change in language and set the scene for more aspects of spheres of government being the language that is used as opposed to levels of government. It has to be followed up, I would suggest, very quickly by a fiscal framework that addresses the funding arrangements and settlements for local government. Again, just draw your attention before I finish, convener, on back to page 30. You will see that we were anticipating, as well as the partnership agreement and the fiscal framework, that there would be a working group set up to look at the funding arrangements for local government. I do not know about you, but I sigh internally when I hear the talk of another working group, because there has been so much work done on this over the years. I guess we would make a play from the commission audit Scotland's perspective that whatever comes out of the partnership agreement and, hopefully, a fiscal framework thereafter, any funding arrangements that I looked at extremely quickly and we do not reinvent the wheel, because there have been numerous studies on that that show that there are ways fairly quickly that the level of funding that is available to local government could be significantly raised from the 15 to 18 per cent of revenue that is responsible for raising itself just now through the council tax. Again, without repeating evidence that we have given before, Scotland and the UK are an outlier in this regard. Most local authority levels or spheres of government, I should say, on the continent raise between 40 to 50 per cent of their own revenue. That is certainly an aspiration that is not just an aspiration that is achievable here in Scotland as well quite quickly. Previous reports show how it could be done. I hope that helps. That is super. I do not think that we should be concerned about repeating anything in this committee. I think that we just need to repeat it until it comes through. I really appreciate your response, and I think that highlighting the fact that we are an outlier in the EU, we have got this 40 to 50 per cent ability for local authorities to raise revenue. However, I do think that the message is getting through on spheres. I asked a question of the First Minister at the convener group question time. He did use the word spheres in his response. It is that bit, though. I think that, as you say, it sets the tone, but how do we move to that point where we actually put the action in under the tone? When I think about spheres, it is something about getting real clarity. I think that this again came through at the event, the New Deal event, was real clarity around who is responsible for what areas and who has that power and that fiscal responsibility there. That is something else that we will be looking for. I think that page 30 of your report is going to get re-scrut nice heavily now. That is good to hear. I wonder if I could pick your brains and get your thoughts on the importance of financial planning information and how that supports decision making. It is often discussed with my colleagues at the Audit Scotland Committee, but it is playing an increasingly important part in the work that we do. It was just to tease out with you what you mean by more detailed financial information to support the councils. Could you perhaps exemplify for the committee what we mean by that? I might start with Tim and Andrew and then ask my Audit Scotland colleagues to continue. Well, there are two elements to the detail. One is having a longer term financial horizon so that councils, instead of getting a definite figure just for one year, can have a three-year series of settlements so that they know exactly what they are getting over three years. The other element is a transparent funding model. Not only do they know what they are getting, but they know on what basis it is being calculated so that they are able to plan ahead, bearing in mind that, say, some element of funding is based on population growth, they can at least have some idea of what they are going to get based on their own estimates of population growth or the number of children or whatever many factors are put into the funding model. Thank you, Tim. Andrew. I think the only thing that I would highly willy briefly just before I hand over to Carol is to emphasise the point that Tim has just made about longer term horizon for planning. We have got to break out collectively that nation from the cycle of saying, we cannot give you a three-year budget framework because we do not get it from the next sphere or the next level of government. All the evidence that we have seen over the years indicates to us that that type of blame game has to stop and that local authorities have to be given three-year settlements, whether the Scottish Government gets a three-year settlement or not, frankly, because it would allow very significant certainty, much more certainty now, around detailed financial planning that often is not possible at the moment. Many local authorities in their best value reports show that many local authorities produce three-year, five-year, I think there is one or two produced, a 10-year budget plan. It is just a forward plan, but it does that in receiving a one-year settlement from the Scottish Government. I guess that I would really stress that if we can break the cycle of, we cannot deliver a three-year budget horizon because we do not get it from the level of government above us or next to us, it would make a huge difference if we could just let go a bit and commit a three to five-year horizon in terms of planning. Carol and others may want to add to that. Just before, Carol, would that be indicative of budgets, Andrew? Would that be guaranteed? How do they do this? If something was to happen and you could not deliver the second or the third year, what harm is there? What most local authorities are doing is to the ones that have got three, five, and I think there are one or two that have got 10. They do it at the moment. They obviously set a hard and fast budget for the year ahead, but the other budgets are potentially just indicative, that might be the wrong detailed phrase, but they are indicative. They can flex, so they can flex in years two, three, four or five. Obviously, they do and have to flex in years eight, nine and ten for the odd one or two authorities, commendable local authorities who have got 10-year frameworks, but that really does help for future forward planning if that framework, even if it is indicative, is there. Carol, what is that more detail that we need to discuss? I was going to say that councils need to be planning on three different horizons, dealing with the here and now, the shorter term priorities and then the longer term priorities. You asked why it is important if they have not got the information to allow them to plan for a longer term horizon, they will never shift to a prevention early intervention approach. That is why it is really important. As others have said, it is about having certainty over a longer time period, but it is also about not having funding coming in in year. There is an awful lot of fragmented funding that comes into councils, all of which have responsibilities for monitoring and reporting to, which take up a lot of office time, which is not a very efficient way of doing it. If it was clearer and less fragmented, we would see that councils were better able to forward plan around prevention and early intervention. We could start to see a shift from that reaction focus to prevention focus. What about the resource spending review itself? Does that help? It did not have a lot of detail in it. The medium-term financial strategy that came out last month was indicating that the figures in the resource spending review will be refreshed, so we do not know what change there is going to be across the different budget groups because of that. However, it did not provide sufficient information for councils to know how much I am getting, so what can I do with that? I think that it is a step forward, but it still needs a bit more detail to allow councils to do what I have described, which is to look forward, to invest, to save. At the moment, they are frustrated or limited in their ability to do that. I wanted to build briefly on the question around the medium-term financial plan and the strategy. It did operate at a level above that that would be required to give councils confidence about different policy commitment areas and levels of funding for local authorities. The consequence of the short-term budget setting process, the annual funding, means that councils find it very difficult, as you will know from evidence previously given to the committee, to fund others as well. It means that if you are trying to support the third sector, which is a really important partner for local government, one-year funding for the third sector makes it very difficult to employ staff to invest in new services. The committee will know that local government and their partners are committed to long-term outcomes. The prevention agenda that Carol mentioned by definition requires long-term investment and long-term planning. Therefore, the failure to have a system that gives people a higher degree of certainty about the future makes it much more difficult to deliver those new services, transformation and planning for long-term outcomes. A favourite question that I have when I have audit Scotland colleagues in the room is about how we ever know that your comments, suggestions and recommendations are otherwise are implemented and successful. If we are sitting here again next year or the year after, I will look back at those recommendations. What would we expect to see for you to say, that they took that to the board and carried that through? What would you expect? Number one would be a fiscal framework. With longer-term figures, with more certainty, to allow the long-term planning and all the things that my colleagues have talked about. More of the detail, Carol, within the spending reduce that gives up a bit more clarity. We expect to see that to evidence the recommendations that you are suggesting have been carried forward. I hope that next year there will be a new deal that we can refer to. I think that there are other things that we need to think about as well. When we do an annual overview, it is every year. Some of the problems that are faced in local government are societal problems that are not going to shift markedly over the period of 12 months. Sometimes we have to look at impact over that longer term as well. However, what we would hope to see is the mechanics of managing and planning. Looking at different ways to deliver services will be visible over the shorter term. Last question from me is an important one. It is about something called service rationing. Are you seeing any evidence of that? Will that mean things like unmet demand increasing, perhaps, or the eligibility criteria to get certain services being changed because of the budget situation? Are you seeing any evidence of that or shifting budgets to push them towards other priorities and lessen other matters? Are you seeing any examples of that, Tim? We are. Antoni might have some more detail. Yes, Mr Coffey, that is not a new issue. The issue of the tightening of eligibility criteria for some important local government services has been happening for quite some time, given the financial pressure facing local authorities. The commission wrote a report on social work services in Scotland several years ago now. As part of that report, we looked at the eligibility criteria across all 32 local authorities. At that time, to access social care services, people had to present with the highest level of need. We were asking questions about the extent to which the eligibility criteria are in place for many social care services, whether they were supportive of the prevention agenda. If you have to present in largely a crisis situation, that clearly runs counter to the prevention agenda. That is one example where fiscal and financial pressures have tightened the eligibility for an important service. We know that in some other important services, levels of access in terms of opening hours, patterns of provision have been changing. In the other report that we talked about, there is uncertainty about what that means across all local government services. It is certainly something that the Accounts Commission of Northern Scotland is looking at quite closely, because we want to make sure that, when councils make these important decisions about prioritisation and choices, that there is a sense of understanding what that impact will be on communities. It is a really important question, Mr Coffey. Paragraph 23 references a Solace survey, which identifies some of the services that are most under pressure. We are always banging the drum, but we will bang it again. It is the need for data. We have anecdotal evidence from councils, services and chief executives that they have it on met need in their service areas. However, there is difficulty in quantifying that and being transparent about that. That is one of the recommendations of the report that councils develop better information so that they can be clearer and open with their communities about what the on met need is and where backlogs lie. Any time scale on that that we could look forward to reading in perhaps next year to have a full impact assessment of that on met need? We will certainly be looking at it again. It is one of the recommendations, so we will be following up on the recommendations. Thank you very much for answering those questions. Thank you, Willie. Now we are going to move to questions from Miles. Thank you, convener. Good morning to the panel. Thank you for joining us today. I wanted to ask a couple of questions with regards to some of the spending that you put within the report. What stood out for me was significant reductions in council spending on planning, culture, leisure services and environmental services over the last decade. I just wondered what impact those have had on local communities and local businesses, but also some of the changes that we have seen, for example the use of alios, has that actually helped or has that been a way of just trying to transfer this money off of council budgets? I wanted to start on that and move on to a few other things. You are referencing Exhibit 1, which identifies the individual areas that you are talking about. I do not know, Carol, if you want to give some evidence on what that means specifically for specific services. Yes, the trends are really quite stark and they are not overnight. This has been a long-term trend, so some of those services are almost or over 30 per cent reduction in funding and reductions in staff. What that means for communities is that your planning applications might take a bit longer because your planning department is cut to the bone. Internally, your workforce planning and looking to manage your workforce into the future may be inhibited by the fact that you have cut your core central services and you have not got the capacity in HR and OD to do that kind of forward planning about what kind of skills you need in the future. It inhibits councils and the ability to deliver services in those areas because there are less people to deliver them. In planning, the income from planning does not come anywhere near to the costs. It is impacting on performance in those service areas. The other thing that you asked about was allios. Allios have been greatly affected by the pandemic and we still do not know what the recovery of that is. We did a piece of work on how councils work around allios, which talks about the governance of allios and the importance of monitoring and making sure that we are getting value for money through those arms-length organisations. However, the impact on leisure and cultural services, for instance, has been immense over the pandemic. I think that there are a lot of unknowns in that area. Thank you for that. Looking at those, those have been low-hanging fruit where councils have been able to cut them. We have just completed some work with regard to the national planning framework 4. A big part of that was the planning department not functioning properly and not having the workforce in place. That is potentially now changing, but we have seen that decade of people lost to a very important part of our local government planning system. Has this just been an area where councils have been forced to target because key statutory services maybe are needed and funded instead? If I kick off now, I think that Antony and Calomite will come in with some more detail. I think that you raised an important point about the link to what you have asked to ring fencing and the directive nature of the core budgets for local authorities. I cannot remember the exact figure. Colleys will tell me, but it is about two thirds. It is huge for education and social care of most local authorities' budgets. It is soaked up by those two services. All of the ones that you have just asked about are outside of that and form a smaller part of any of the 32 overall local authorities' budgets. There has been more and more direction on those two central services and education and social care, and that has led, undoubtedly, indirectly to significant pressure on the remaining 30-odd percent of services, all of the ones that you have just listed. I am not sure that it has been low-hanging fruit. It has almost been a result of the increasing amount of direction on ring fencing, and I know that we debated this last time that we were hearing about the actual percentage of ring fencing. I would not want to be down that rabbit hole, but I hope that we can all agree that there is an increasing amount of ring fencing. The specific figure really should not overly trouble us. It is just that there is more and more of it happening. If that decreased, it would free up local authorities' ability to be much more flexible on the services that you have just referenced, which you are right around our significant pressure. I am afraid that Andrew May has made the point that I was just going to make, so I do not want to repeat it if that is okay. No, not at all. On the flip side of that is looking at what the report states with regard to adult social care, you say, being specifically in crisis. The report also shows that spend by councils on adult social care has risen real terms by 25 per cent since 2012. I just wondered again looking at some of the reforms that we have seen, such as integration of health and social care, and what is record amounts of money going into the sector? Why performance is going in the wrong direction? I am a free member of this committee now who has always raised the Edinburgh issue, but we now have 25 per cent of all delayed discharge here in the capital, so something is clearly not working beyond workforce issues. I just wondered if you had more detail of where you think what is a 25 per cent increase is actually not delivering any better outcome. Lucy? You are absolutely right that spending has increased, but at the same time demand has increased. It is not just demand in terms of numbers, it is an ageing population. The percentage of those who are over 65 has increased as well as the complexity of cases, so it is that aspect. Adult social care in terms of home care is delivering more hours than it ever has before. I think what you may be seeing is that in terms of the performance indicators, it is a system that is probably at capacity and has been at capacity for quite a while. It is increasing as much as it can. You have got a workforce that really struggles with recruitment and retention problems and probably feels undervalued. There have been increases in terms of their wages, but I think there are still issues there around a workforce feeling undervalued. We see that satisfaction has declined, so although there is a huge amount of effort and work put into delivering and during the pandemic maintaining those services, overall what you are really seeing is a system hugely under pressure and probably at crisis point. I just wanted to make a connection, if I may, with the Feli report in terms of the analysis and the critique of what has or hasn't worked well in terms of health and social care integration. The Feli report clearly indicates that despite all the efforts that have taken place with IJBs, councils and the health service, we haven't yet in Scotland been able to make that system a shift towards community-based preventative services. There is more activity going on. However, we haven't got the full range of preventative services that are taking place. I think that if we look at the local authority funding, it probably doesn't necessarily give the overall picture of the pattern of how funding works and operates or needs to shift across the health and social care system. There is clearly an awful lot of work still to do to get the shift of some of the NHS services to support community-based provision, so there is a broader issue than just local authorities here. Thank you for that. I know that you don't go into that in the report as such, but it would be helpful to have a specific almost ring-fenced preventative budget, because most I don't see that many opportunities currently for spend to go directly toward preventative projects because we are managing crisis, be it in social services or in homelessness services or mental health services. What kind of your recommendation would be then towards that shift towards preventative, because if the resource is not there, then the projects don't happen? I think that you're right, Miles. We don't reference that directly. I don't think in the report, but my instinct based on the evidence that we've seen across the last few years from the commission in all that Scotland's work is that I wouldn't necessarily say a specific pot for preventative work, but just linking it to the freeing up and letting go of the overall funding envelope for local authorities would give them the ability to choose whether they wanted to spend on preventative, because at the minute there's so much directive control over spend across the wider piece, not just education and social care but elsewhere as well, but primarily focused on education and social care. If there was that freeing up or letting go, then that would give local authorities the ability to choose whether they wanted to spend significant sums on prevention. If they choose not to, they choose not to. That's the difficult conundrum in position that we are about to potentially come into with a partnership agreement and a new fiscal framework, but I think that's from the evidence that we've seen over the last recent years. That's what local authorities want, and I get a sense that the Scottish Government is moving there slowly as well and that we might see a change in that regard quite soon. I think that there's little doubt that greater flexibility would give local authorities more scope to invest in preventative services. I think that the other point that I'd just like to say is that sometimes it isn't as clear-cut as prevention or failure. Services meet lots of different needs, so I think that it's just a bit of a complexity about the terminology that we use here that we just don't need to be conscious of. I think that it's hugely important to follow up on that last point. I'm talking about that social care spending and preventive spending in the context of local government, but of course it's the health service that fuels the pain from that. I don't know if you want to comment on how that could work, because clearly all of that right back to ambulance queues is a function of social care not delivering. One of the messages in the overview report is the importance of local authorities working with partners, both public sector partners and third sector communities, to deliver change. I think that what we're seeing in our work evidence gathering for the overview report is many local authority chief executives and their health partners and their partners in enterprise agencies and others see the only way forward in terms of delivering sustainable public services about working together. More seamless approaches to the use of funding, more place-based focus in focus models of service innovation and transformation, so I think that whole systems approach, if I can use that term Mr McKee, does seem to be the way forward. We know that that's not easy and we know that the level of trust, the level of shared understanding, the level of shared priorities vary enormously across different parts of the country, but if we take an optimistic view of the world, we've also sought during the Covid-19 pandemic that local authorities and their partners could do fantastic things where they had a shared vision and they were working towards a common enterprise. Obviously we don't want to go back to the difficult days of the Covid-19 pandemic, but if we can maintain some of that energy and focus, one would have some hope that some of the change that we know is needed, that transformation of change will happen. It ain't going to be easy straightforward, they've got to keep the show on the road, they've got to empty the bins, they've got to keep educating kids, they've got to continue providing social care services whilst making change happen, but I think in the better and more progressive local authorities with their partners, I think we are seeing some quite interesting thinking. I think we referenced in the overview report the work that was done by the Improvement Service and SOLIS on a new operating model for local government. There are some very radical ideas there. I think it's fair to say that almost all the things that were in that report are being done to some degree in different bits of Scotland, but in no part of Scotland is anybody doing all of it at the level that's required. So there's a real need there, I think, Mr McKee, to see this not just as a local government challenge but as a public sector community and third sector challenge. Okay, I suppose that brings us nicely on to the things that I was going to ask about, which was exactly that on embracing radical change. What does that look like? You might want to get some examples of that. How does that play out in terms of councils working more closely together and with other public sector partners through shared services, back office, sharing premises, et cetera? Certainly when I was in government getting Scottish Government to talk to local authorities about sharing space with something that was an interesting challenge at times in both directions. Then I suppose that it's fallen on from that, the implications of that for workforce, but maybe I'll just start to talk about the radical ideas, what's out there, what needs to happen, what can happen and how we move it forward. Sure. Well it's interesting because we just recently had an event, a joint event with the Improvement Service, where we got some relatively newly elected councillors in and we asked that question, you know, what's the barrier to that sort of change, that radical change. Mostly the answer was political, sometimes with a small P, but if there was no political alignment across different local authorities or, as I say, with a small P, sort of clashes with those in another authority area, then it just didn't seem to happen. There are occasional examples of co-operation to the Ayrshire councils, co-operating roads, there's been economic development, co-operation between Borders and Dumfries and Galloway, but there isn't just that more radical wholesale kind of change that would provide efficiencies. Just joining up a couple of areas we've talked about, it's interesting that a lot of the staff shortages are in highly professional areas and quite often what happens is somebody might get poached from one authority to another. If there was a more joint together approach with some of these shared professional services, there might be an opportunity to, if you like, take that poaching pressure off and allow all authorities to have access to those specialist resources, whereas at the moment sometimes the smaller authorities really struggle to attract those highly skilled professionals. Sorry, did anyone else want to? You're asking for examples of where we see innovation and I think we probably need to look a bit beyond the shores of Scotland if you'd like to see that. If we look in other parts of the UK and beyond perhaps into Europe, we see examples of shared leadership, shared governance and combined authorities, which provide greater flexibility for the planning and deployment of resources. We haven't really seen that yet in Scotland and I know that you're taking evidence from Reform Scotland later, I'm sure that we'll have a lot to say about this in terms of different models of configuring planning and delivering public services. These things aren't straightforward, they do require political and managerial leadership. We also require a burning platform for change and it seems to us that that burning for platform is perhaps now there, so we may see more of this happening in the future. Yeah, I might be naive but I would have thought the fact that local governments are short of money and we know they're short of money because they never miss an opportunity to tell us they're short of money would be the burning platform that would persuade people to talk to their neighbour about how they can do things better. What you're saying is you're seeing very little evidence of that on the ground. I think what we're seeing is an increasingly lively conversation about the need for change but plans to make that change happen and what that might look like in practice perhaps is less well developed. We see lots of examples of very good innovation transformation at local level but I think to use a sort of the off repeated cliche not necessarily a scale so it's a scaling up of these things that perhaps is a challenge at the moment. Is there a role for Scottish Government not to mandate but to guide and direct and help share best examples on that and indicate what the art of the possible might be? I think there's a role for the government improvement service here, there's a role for local government itself to be better at sharing, challenging and driving the change that they require. I would think that there is a role for the Scottish Government to be an advocate for this type of change for sure without wishing to contradict the discussion we just had about releasing some levels of direction around funding. I don't think it is contradictory to make that case and to see the evidence we've gathered over the years around that case but in the same breath to say that yes why shouldn't the government be an advocate for that type of change you've just been discussing with Antony and colleagues. I think that there needs to be a caution about not financially directing it because then that would be a contradiction to the rest of the tenor of what we've been debating but certainly in terms of advocating that type of change along with other partners like the improvement service and many of the lobby groups then all of that would be helpful. On shared IT systems, on shared services, on sharing estates etc. Some of the evidence we took from Jackie Weaver about the role of community councils down south was interesting because one of the points she made was that with more empowered community councils and parish councils in England they were taking on services at a very local level then they could deliver those much more effectively and cost effectively than local authorities could and I say in my own constituency with community groups taking on community halls etc etc making them work whereas the council couldn't. Is that an area where you see scope as well? It's already happening. I mean I think we see countless examples of asset transfers taking place under the community empowerment legislation and I think it's generally accepted that the notion of making decisions closer to the people that use services is a good thing so the community empowerment legislation provides for some of this and we are seeing that happening in practice. I think it's an extension of the principle we're arguing for local authorities for decision making and money to be put there. It's a further extension of that down to it or sorry not down wherever the correct word is non pejorative word up to the local community council level. Consentially perhaps. So the last point on workforce and the commitment in the RSR or the intent in the RSR to get back to the size of the public sector workforce back to pre-covid levels implications of that for local government so just in terms of how that's playing out but also I suppose specifically to understand the extent to which this is looked at through the lens of I suppose comparing different councils in terms of how efficient they are using the headcount they've got how they deliver with a given headcount and a given cost certain services and I suppose also the balance between what you might call front line and what you might call back office or management supervisory type roles and is there any work happening to compare which councils are most effective in that regard? I think over the long term the best value reports are where you get that information because that's what we look at performance and if you like value for money although that phrase isn't used best value is what we call it but basically how well are they doing given the resources they're employing but Carol may want to. Yeah I was going to come in on that so the public sector reform agenda was to reduce the public sector wage bill to reduce the headcount I think that's been moderated slightly now and it's now about slower growth in the workforce what we're interested in is how councils are using their existing workforce to best effect so they haven't got the money to recruit the competitive market out there means it's difficult to recruit the pay differential between the senior officers and council and the private sector is such that it's not an attractive option so if you can't recruit your way out of the problem what can you do what you can do is to make sure that you're using your workforce to best effect and you're innovating around that. The council commissioner has asked Audit Scotland to do some work over the next year to collect information from every single council about how they are innovating to use their workforce, how they're increasing productivity, how they're increasing wellbeing, reducing sickness, how they are engaging with communities about what services need to be provided, how they are increasing training and development and generic roles, we saw how fleet of foot the councils were at the beginning of the pandemic with the workforce being deployed in very different ways, how's that being built on now and what does that look like so we will be speaking to all 32 councils to get some information around that and pre-producing a national report but that won't be until the end of 2024 so many things on the work programme working out when they're going to come to fruition but that is certainly something that we are very interested in because the recruitment challenge is a kind of a macro challenge, there are market pressures, labour pressures, there are funding pressures on individual councils, the cost of the workforce has gone up, the inflation increase on the workforce bill so it's what do we do with what we've got rather than get more? Yes and the labour market isn't going to get any less tight, average public sector wages are still higher than average private sector wages but it is absolutely going to continue to be a challenge. Thank you very much. Thanks Ivan, Mark. Thanks, convener. Good morning. In the accounts commissions local government over you 10 years ago talked about council involvement and performance, improvement and governance is crucial but I just wanted to ask on the experience of leadership in councils by councillors whether that is actually driving councils to improve performance, become more efficient and effective because whenever I talk to councillors, particularly longer serve councillors, they talk with real regret about their councils being more officer led than councillor led so just ask your reflections on elected members leadership in councils. Thanks, I think that's very pertinent because it's an issue we've been focusing on more and more and when we do our best value reports it's one of the areas we look at and in fact we're starting a new cycle of best value reports and as part of that new process we're producing a thematic report so Carol talked about a workforce thematic report we're doing before we do that we're actually doing one on leadership so the next cycle of best value reporting will very specifically include a look at that leadership and by the leadership we're talking about the elected member leadership as much as officers so we'll be looking at that question. My own feeling is that scrutiny has improved over the last 10 years but I'll defer to colleagues who might want to give more detail. I think if we look across the suite of best value reporting over the last 10 or 15 years Mr Mackay is absolutely right we have seen improvements in scrutiny but it's also true and I think Tim said this in his introduction that we see variability in the leadership of elected members of local authorities and there are risks we think given that variability amongst whether or not local authorities will have that drive to transform and deliver sustainable public services so it's something we will be looking at very closely in the next cycle of best value assurance reports. There is that degree of variability and I think we mentioned that in the introduction Mr Griffin. Do you have any indication about why that variability exists? Is that structural issues or purely personnel issues? I don't think there's any evidence that's a structural issue. I think it's more the evidence would suggest I think is to do with the individuals concerned, the level of support and training that they have, the culture that develops with individual local authorities and the ability of the local authority to regulate itself and improve itself. I think Mark there is something if you look at his references over the last sort of 10 I mean I've been on the commission for five and a half years so I've only seen sort of in detail five and a half years of these best value reports for individual local authorities but looking back further but certainly over those last five and a half years there is a huge amount of discrepancy between the quality of elected member training across local authorities that's on offer to not just on offer to local elected members but then the volume of which is taken up. I mean often the offer can be good and there's very little take-up and sometimes the offer's not so good and there's good take-ups but it's very very variable and certainly just from my understanding and knowledge of the last five and a half years of reports I've seen across the 32 authorities there could be a big improvement in consistency in terms of the offer as regards elected member training which she would sense would be of help in improving leadership qualities across local authorities. I'm interested in the kind of lack of take-up that you sometimes mentioned and where the training could be good you know is that down to the pressure that councillors are under you know they're often managing second jobs fairly high committee burden in case work to the councillors have time to take up the offer of training while that training offer might be very good. It's a very valid point and it's a really difficult conundrum. There's a couple of ex-elected members sitting in front of me just now and you know we understand those pressures you know many elected members do have other jobs and you know without wishing to go into the detail of the argument that makes the incredibly difficult political capital P political argument to have but there is an argument in a debate to be had about whether local elected members are renumerated highly enough but it's a really difficult avenue to go down but you know when you compare and contrast their salary did I say with your salary or the convener's salary there is a huge difference and that does have an impact on what people can do when they're elected members at a local level. Yeah I would echo that and I understand that Angela Leitch is doing some work on a review of councillors conditions but I would echo Andrew's point it's a really really difficult job being a councillor and if you're also expected to be a leader and your remuneration really is only half perhaps of what you need to live on it's it's incredibly difficult to attract people. I'm amazed when we had this event I was talking about a couple of months ago I was amazed at the talent of the people that we were talking to and I thought goodness thank goodness you've put yourself up for that but if we really want to continue to attract that kind of leadership I do you think we need to we the government needs to think about the remuneration that they they get. Okay thanks to that to move on to another area and Carol you touched on absence as well and you know I know you talked about that that planned work I just wonder if there's any indication already at the sickness absence level in 2021-22 I think was the highest on record whether that is purely pandemic driven whether that's driven by you know the burden that we're putting on council staff asking them to do more with our diminishing resources if there's any early indication before we start that detailed work on why the sickness absence level is at that level and whether you expect that to come down as we ease out of the pandemic. Well we're easing out of the pandemic but we're also dealing with the cost of living crisis and as you've said issues around vacancy rates and recruitment of staff so staff are under more and more pressure staff we've been told through the improvement service is are burnt out they're exhausted and it's there hasn't been a pause since the pandemic so I think that is part of the issue the other issue is the pressure on staff when resources into those smaller services are cut so there are fewer people doing more work and I think one of the other things that the improvement service raised was that there's some sometimes that sickness absence level is affected by the waiting times for treatment in the NHS so some people are off longer term for longer than they used to be because of that but I think that we've seen over the pandemic and and since is that there is there are more people retiring earlier so there's more economic inactivity in the population than we've seen before so that means that the people who are working in councils are under more pressure if you have those recruitment challenges and you're falling up that's falling on fewer shoulders to to undertake that work and they're exhausted shoulders following the pandemic no break before we're into a cost of living crisis and the difficulties in that and also some of the workforce will have been pushed into poverty through the cost of living crisis as well so the pandemic doesn't didn't affect the population and not the workforce the workforce are absolutely affected by the cost of living crisis and the pandemic is everyone else so I think it's the multiple factors that have built up to that we would hope to see that that comes down in time councils have got a very clear focus on wellbeing initiatives to try and support people back into work to support people not to go off sick in the first place and more flexible working options around hybrid working and so on to enable people to have better work life balance so there's a lot of activity going on in that area but I did come back to a point I made earlier which is that the HR and OD functions in councils have been cut because of those services the back office services are the first to to be cut but they are the people that will be training the workforce of the future planning what that workforce looks like and supporting people to be well in the workforce as well in the workplace is it even going to be possible to deliver some of the changes that we're talking about with a sickness absence level you know at the level it is as it is right now it's difficult and we recognise that in the report we said that this radical change is not easy and particularly not easy with an exhausted workforce and asking that workforce to think differently and do things differently so it is going to be really difficult my colleague Leigh Steele is wanting to comment on some more of the detail I was just going to say around the sickness absence levels Carol's touching all the reasons the high at the moment but actually that's a continuation of a long-term trend that's it's slowly been creeping up for at least well close to a decade so there was a dip during the pandemic which was probably a reflection of different ways that was recorded and sickness was recorded but actually it's higher now than it was pre-pandemic okay thank you thank you thanks very much mark I just wanted to I've got a number of kind of mop-up questions here but I just wanted on the wellbeing part Carol what is there any consideration around a four-day work week has there been any looking at that some councils are looking at that and other met and other ways to kind of up skill retrain generic roles all sorts of things and that's why we're particularly interested in the commissioner particularly interested in that we do some work to actually understand what councils are doing what innovative approaches they're taking to try and improve the workforce to yet that watch this space will be producing some more on that good brilliant and then I wanted to come back to I think it was a when you were responding to some of Ivan McKee's questions one of the things that kind of came up for me was you mentioned about the opportunities for community empowerment act and how that's really brought about communities doing asset transfers but I also wondered if our upcoming community wealth building bill could bring in more opportunities for that collaboration you're talking about around procurement of goods and services across local authorities I wonder what you thought about that Anthony you're nodding I'm nodding in agreement there's certainly potential opportunities there for that to be quite a force for good if it's planned and implemented effectively I think the community wealth building bill also ties into the broader agenda that many local authorities are focusing on around things like 30-minute neighbourhoods and more sustainable approaches to not just procurement planning service delivery I think these things are all interconnected I wonder if this might be a radical idea for reform but I was in conversation with somebody about forestry and every time we spoke at length and I would say several times during that conversation it came back to local government reform that's what this person said and one so one of the things was a piece around local authorities owning more land and the idea that again tying into community wealth building agenda that if community if local authorities own land say perhaps for forestry or agriculture which is it may be a radical idea because I don't think we do that we tend to kind of look at that more national level but we've been talking here today about the need for a more local nuanced approach so they kept coming back to that's an opportunity for certainly forestry if a local heard your own forestry that could be an income generator for a local authority it could also be the timber that goes into building the housing I wonder if there's been any thoughts around that kind of approach I know we've got the common goodland but I think that's kind of evolved in a slightly different way certainly locally to me it's a golf course a lot of it's a golf course rather than other things we're not aware of any specific discussions or activity taking place around forestry or land purchase or land use by local authorities but I think what we do detect from our discussions with chief executives and others is a strong interest in the kind of the wellbeing economy and that's that desire to understand what the needs are of individual communities understand and connect with local businesses in ways that are more sustainable so I guess land use might form one part of that but I'm not I'm not aware of any specific activity between that space at the moment anybody else want to come in on that Andrew just briefly to add convener I think it's an interesting idea you've just raised that I'm also not aware of any of the rural authorities that are significant landowners in terms of potential for forestry but I do know that several of the urban authorities are significant landowners and have mainly through the economic development functions have gone through quite protracted programmes of developing land but not as regards forestry but if it can and it does occasionally happen in urban authorities why not in rural authorities going forward it's an interesting idea and one of the things that I'm aware of being on the rural affairs committee is that there are these regional land use partnerships where certainly in my region the island council is involved in that regional land use partnerships it feels like it's another another step in that direction of looking at that land use I think given the English experience of some councils basically investing in businesses but then getting their fingers burnt I think there is some caution still out there because of those examples I think that's very good to highlight that I mean one of the things speaking of English councils that I'm aware of is that we've got these inshore fisheries and conservation associations I think they're called I'm not sure what the A stands for but in England there's actually the kind of overview of the inshore water is managed at that more council based level and I think that's a really interesting model and something that we're struggling with probably here in Scotland around that kind of local stakeholder input into our our inshore marine space and certainly that it's not just about fishing it's also many many other people are involved in the inshore waters and that's quite interesting that approach in England and that it's tied to a local authority maybe not again I think it's not necessarily appropriate to take models from England and kind of just sticking plaster them over over what's going on in Scotland because we have different a different structure to begin with but just interesting to look at that. I was just going to make a point that I intended to make when I was responding to Mr McKee early which is I think one of the things we're all very aware of around the transformation and reform agenda is that the model that will work in one part of Scotland will not necessarily work in the part of Scotland so the notion of trying to apply a unified or identical model across Scotland probably isn't the way forward I think that's well accepted I think the downside of that is it can lead to variability it can lead to concerns about postcode lotteries for the better phrase and different models but it feels it's one of those inherent tensions in the reform agenda and when you're talking convener around roles and responses to local authorities I guess part of that conversation around the new deal might be what's appropriate for one local authority area or one region maybe different from another. Yeah I think I totally take on board that idea that we need a nuanced approach I think some of it I think is to do with the fact that we've got many many islands a lot of coastline a lot of big rural areas and then we've got a high concentration pattern in the central belt so there's definitely a nuanced approach and I get a sense that that's different from other parts of the UK there's not so many islands just for a start so we have a very very different set of issues just right there off the bat okay I've got one more question which is around housing so your report expresses a significant concern about the record numbers of children trapped in temporary accommodation failing homelessness services and chronic shortage of social housing across the country and we'd be interested here how can local authorities respond to these immense challenges anybody want to pick that up how can councils respond to this we're going to be doing some work around homelessness for the commission in the next couple of years so we might be able to answer that question more fully at that point but I guess the issue with the capital programme and the impact of the pandemic on the building of new affordable housing there is a new affordable housing target we did a piece of work on the last affordable housing target we did a performance audit was joint with the commission and the auditor general and that looked at the the meeting of the of that target which was met in time the pandemic kind of took them off track a wee bit towards the end but the main thrust of that report was about it's not just about a numbers game it's about what's needed and where and how how is that housing being built that reflects other policy objectives around poverty around disability and access around heat and homes and energy and fuel poverty so the interconnectedness of those policies was was largely absent in that last strategy to to build more affordable housing the new strategy does pull some of those things together and I suppose the councils have a role along with other rsls in ensuring that they know what the housing need in their area is and that they can build in a way that is meeting that need so it's the type the size the location and looking forward to net zero and changing and you know not having gas boilers and maybe having charging points for cars and all of those things looking forward rather than developers being able to produce identical houses very quickly on an estate now there's lots of barriers for councils to be able to do that because there are barriers in terms of land availability there's barriers in terms of the infrastructure that's required and the services that are required around housing and there's barriers about the availability of developers who want to work in those areas but the capital projects have all been impacted by the pandemic but there's a lot going on and we will be keeping a close eye on monitoring whether that target is going to be met but as I said the commission are quite interested in looking at something around homelessness because we know that homelessness figures have increased since the pandemic and the number of children there was a blog that was done by the auditor general and the accounts commission recently on homelessness and the impact of people and the numbers of people in temporary accommodation the numbers of children in temporary accommodation so there's a lot of information out there so we'll be monitoring all of that that happens and then trying to to see where we can fit in with something that helps shine a light on where does the spend go in all of this so a lot of money is tied up in keeping people in temporary accommodation but and that's not for because councils want to do that it's because of their lack of available suitable accommodation so yeah it's certainly on our agenda thanks for that that's really helpful and we'll keep an eye out for for that work that you do and you know it's it's clear that it's more than just housing it's the full kind of support package to help people one of the things that I have been has been flagged up to me certainly in my region and conversations about housing and if I talk to people about affordable housing and they turn back to me and say actually we need housing that people can afford so I think it'd be good to have a look at that you know what do we mean between and we discuss at the committee too I think that's something we're looking at what is affordable housing but what is really housing that people can afford at a local level where salaries may be very different across the board in our income and I think the other thing that we've been looking at is the housing need and demand assessment and you know is that fit for purpose and I think you pointed there that the importance of councils really understanding the need in their local area to be able to bring forward the right type of housing so thanks very much that it's been I think it's been really super morning really really helpful for us really appreciate that I now briefly suspend the meeting to allow a change of our witnesses well we now turn to agenda item 3 which is to take evidence from reform Scotland on its Devolving Scotland initiative the attention is that this session will allow the committee to further explore issues relating to the on-going review of local governance and we'll build on the success of our recent joint event with Scotland Futures Forum on the future relationship between local and central government in Scotland and we're joined for this item by Alison Payne who's the research director at reform Scotland and I welcome you to the committee thank you and I'll start with a few questions and they'll bring in colleagues so at some point you previously said that Scotland is unusual internationally in the weakness of its local authorities and I'd be interested to hear why you said that and how Scotland's local democracy compares to other parts of UK and Europe thanks I think we've previously sort of commented about and was referenced earlier that sort of the finance powers of our local authorities in Scotland are considerably weak I think as was mentioned this morning sort of on the continent 40 to 50 percent of the revenue raised is raised by the local authorities I think we don't have complete control over any of our revenue streams whether it's council tax or non-domestic rates and indeed the 2002 local government committee actually recommended devolving and full non-domestic rates the rents fees and charges is about the only area of finance where local authorities do have that degree of flexibility and then you end up with a sort of the huge variation that we see where whether it's to do with music tuition or other issues that become more contentious because those are the only opportunities that local authorities have to try and raise some revenue I think we also have a sort of strange system where there's often a lot of discussion about the number of local authorities in Scotland where we either have too many or we have too few depending on who you speak to but nobody seems to agree that 32 is the right number so for example Highlands council is quite often put as a you know a ridiculous setup where it's hugely different what's going on in Nairn versus what's going on in Inverness at the same time Clackmannanshire is often used as another example of an area where it's very very small but if you were to look to the continent there are far smaller local authorities elsewhere with multiple tiers or spheres of authorities where they're raising more revenue and it's just seems to be part of more of the what has been and has been the case and part of the culture of having that kind of mutual partnership working the powers are passed down the powers are respected and the idea that things can be done differently one of the things that I was really struck with from the the futures forum report was that the comment about accepting and respecting the decisions that are made that they might be the decisions you disagree with but they're made and they're democratically accountable and I think I also thought it was particularly interesting the report mentioned that that's as much for opposition politicians as it is for central government to respect those decisions and I think what we have seen perhaps in Steve Lucian is that this sucking everything up whether it's to do with workplace parking or or city entry charges or whatever the issue is it's kind of been viewed as a national level rather than views it what is right as a local level so the latest one being the workplace parking how you fund it or pay for parking in its city centre in Glasgow versus rural Murray is completely different and it should be allowed to be completely different and having that ability and I think it's that sort of taking a step back and allowing those decisions that we've not quite got there yet. Thanks very much for that one of the things that strikes me you mentioned non-domestic rates as something that had been recommended to be default but my understanding is that it would be concerned if you got variation for businesses that maybe had businesses in lots of different councils that that would be a maybe a difficult one for them. But then equally there will be companies that work across the border and might be in Carlyle and in Dumfries and Galloway and they're looking at the Scottish and the English business rate poundage so it can be done yes companies are always going to say that they want simplicity and only want one and I think the business rate review made that point and how it would be better if it was simplified but if you took it to its logical conclusion you would have one rate for the whole of the UK so I think there is variation and it's also accepting the differences about what's going on in our different local authority areas and the different economies of our different local authority areas. Thanks for that that's really useful insight so we've been doing quite a bit of work around understanding the barriers to local elected officers and I'd be interested to hear reforms perspective on what more could be done to help Scotland's councils be more representative of the diverse communities they represent and what role could be what could what needs to be done to improve council or enumeration pay had a hard time getting that out I absolutely agree it needs to be improved I'm not sure why I stumbled on that question we would totally agree with that as well I think as we've pointed it before you can have people that are running our cities that are earning less than than an MSP and it's not to say that there's one is better or worse than the other but it's more about that parity of steam that we already spoke about if you're running a major city and you're not well ruminated and you're thinking about your own pension or your future and you're having to juggle something else we're not necessarily attracting the best people and then even if we kind of start beginning to attract a more diverse group of people to stand for and get elected to local authorities what we're often finding is that they'll only do one term because the actual reality of juggling this is that they leave and so I think that there is an awful lot that we do need to look at about the terms and conditions of of councillors I think when the sort of the last reforms around the voting system were brought in and there was an increase in enumeration then but it's still considered a part-time job and I think it in reality isn't I mean speaking to councillors from years ago where you didn't have emails you didn't have the same amount of correspondence on issues to deal with they don't have the support staff there's a whole load of issues around say pensions and other elements that aren't there how do we build up those expertise if people are finding it's simply not a sustainable option thank you for that yeah so I think definitely something needs to be done and I know that the Slark is busy also reviewing the enumeration piece too so hopefully that we'll see some progress on that because it absolutely what you say you know the fact that somebody is responsible for the city of Edinburgh for example and is being paid and considered as a part-time level that that is concerning it's a difficult issue of course because obviously then going to the electorate and saying you know politicians need to be paid more is never a popular manifesto pledge but I think there needs to be a broader understanding of what our councils are responsible for and actually if you increase awareness and understanding of the importance of our councils and increase the the understanding of you know the responsibility of your schools for your roads for that people would want to have those expertise and I think it there does need to be some work done to try and explain and help people understand why yes we are talking about paying politicians more but it's important I would say also probably most people don't understand I don't know what the salary is at the moment I think it's an around 19 000 pounds a year or something like that and and I don't think most people really understand that that's how much a councillor a straight up councillor gets as their salary I'd be interested to hear what reform Scotland would like to see in the forthcoming legislation we've got the local democracy bill and also I mentioned the previous session the community wealth building bill what do you think are the opportunities there I think certainly the a lot of the issues that were discussed already this morning in terms of the the fiscal framework and the the sort of longer term financial planning are key I think him actually properly reviewing our system of local government in terms of the boundaries in terms of the the numbers the functions there was a discussion earlier as well about the sort of the financial powers there needs to be far greater discussion about and acceptance that what we're going to do it's not simply a case of yes we've talked about replacing council tax then we've talked about a local income tax then we talked about whether we'll have a citizens assembly to replace the council tax but actually instead of replacing one centrally dictated tax with another centrally dictated tax why can't we allow local authorities to develop their own local taxation what works and what is the best way for dealing whether it's second homes in the highlands or a land value tax somewhere else or what works in the different areas and I think it's certainly around about definitely there needs to be if we're going to reform local taxation but bringing local authorities into that so they have that power to reform themselves there are different issues that we have referred to in the past in terms of as I mentioned that the sort of finance side of things whether there are things around looking at directly elected mayors or provis an issue that we've also spoken about that we would like to see and again there was reference made to the Australian council of local government in the fiscal four fiscal futures paper but something we've talked about they would like to see as a sort of quarterly meeting between the sort of first minister and leaders of our councils a public kind of gathering where there is that sort of parity and you can talk through the delivery and the different options so if if central government is setting out what they want the outcomes to be there can be that public discussion about well how it's delivered in one area isn't going to work elsewhere and learning from each other and I think that would also be a very positive you'd helping the public see our local authorities in action so I think there's there's a range of the sort of structural bits but them looking at the powers are there ways that we can pilot certain things to give more responsibility local authority areas looking at areas where there's determinist boundaries and we're seeing the mess that is the national care service around what centralised what's not what's going back and forward at the moment but are there ways where we could look at where there's determinist boundaries between health and health boards and local authority areas to try and improve joined up working can we give local authorities say responsibility for for health in places like Fife where you have those determinist boundaries where we can try and actually better join up the the issues around social care and health and bring those in I think ultimately a lot is going to come down to the financial arrangements and it was very telling is the council commission in audit Scotland said earlier that if you really want to look at the the preventative agenda it is about that longer term financial planning and I think the prevention agenda is so key and that we do need to start looking beyond you know we can't fix something in six months we can't fix something in 12 months but the reality is we're not going to fix something over an electoral cycle and actually start looking at those longer term issues you know how do we start fixing and looking at the longer term thanks for that I was good to hear you had talked about boundaries before but then you unpacked that piece around the coterminous nature of some in some places and again that brings back that whole nuanced approach that we need to be looking at I'm not going to bring in Ivan McKee thanks very much and thanks for coming along this morning just to touch back on something you mentioned earlier before I go into the questions I've got you mentioned the workplace parking levy and I just want to pick that up a wee bit in the context of government should let local authorities get on with stuff so I suppose and I'm wrong I'm pretty sure that's an enabling piece of legislation that allows local authorities to do that so as a point you're making that we need more of that to allow local authority okay right okay yeah because the discussion on that the narrative on that ends up being a narrative at Scottish government level between the different parties about whether it's a good thing or a bad thing rather than local authorities taking that for sure that's the point you're making just wanted to clarify on that yeah I think I think that's across the board I think it's across all parties that that instead of it being the Scottish Parliament shouldn't been discussing the workplace parking levy it should have just been done as an enabling piece of legislation which everybody seemed to accept that they want more enabling legislation it was then up to 32 local authorities to argue it out as to whether they introduced it and as I say what was right in Glasgow is going to be different to Murray yeah real quality gets in the way unfortunately so yeah I mean just get into the substance of this stuff and obviously you've opened up this debate with jack mcconnell heading that off in terms of the the system structure and that was pointed very much into the space of are the current boundaries in that kind of structure effective so just to explore that a wee bit and any of your thinking on that you've mentioned interface between local government and for example health boards but then that opens up another question is the health board structure correct or not which is another another whole subject clearly the stuff that can be done at a more regional level if you like with either restructuring or local authorities co-operate with each other but also we've taken evidence on what happens at a more local level community planning partnerships and community councils and clearly an issue about is there more that can be done at a very local level so what's your kind of thinking on that is there a need for a multi-sphere system in local government or can it be done in the existing kind of structure but with more flexibility around about how things are done absolutely i just to go back a bit and to give a bit of background on the the our devolving scotland forum at the moment is because we're wanting to try and attract in as wide a range of individuals to kind of think about these and get so there will quite possibly be conflicting ideas about wanting to have those discussions on those debates around what it is we should do but one of the things is as Jack McConnell mentions in his opening piece is the fact that it's you know we haven't really reviewed the boundaries we've never really looked at what was done in 1993 and indeed the original white paper called for 28 local authorities and we ended up with 32 we've never really looked at are those the right boundaries and we've never really considered what was the reason we went from two two tiers or two spheres to one sphere but then we've created all these differences where some things are too local some things are too big and there's so much in that and i think that the key thing is the enabling different areas to do things differently is key because undoubtedly, particularly in the central belt, you've got your economic regional areas where there there's so many overlapping things when you're looking at economic development but in places like highlands where you have the very rural and the city and how do you ensure that each voice is as well represented but then equally in somewhere like Aberdeenshire where you've got the rural areas but you've still got the more urban and so what we're sort of seeing is we want to be discussing this we haven't reviewed it it hasn't been looked at it's happened you know 30 years have gone past we've had the constitutional reform in terms of the Scottish Parliament we've left the European Union there's a whole load of things but nothing has changed in local government terms and i think looking at well are these the right boundaries could we do things better are the things that voluntarily councils can come together and the sort of discussion earlier about shared services and how can we encourage things to be done on a more shared service basis equally how can we ensure that things are done on a more local level and as i said earlier that the discussions nobody seems to think 32 is the right number plenty people think it's too many and plenty people think it's not enough but yet to kind of we'll say well if nobody agrees we'll just stick with it and we'll not review it and we'll not consider if things could be done differently and i think that's what we're trying to encourage that debate and get tease out what what are the different things what could be done and and then also enable that sort of step backing so it's we move away from the discussions of postcode lotteries and we we begin to realise well it's local accountability there's difference there but it's accountable and it's it's local accountability that's driven it yeah i'm old enough to remember when the politics of that period and i was on yeah i don't want to go into too much but it was done for perhaps reasons other than what was an optimal solution to local government boundaries i think make you want to talk about us a wee bit more so i don't want to dump too much in that space but i suppose is that there's a number of kind of tensions here between um yeah what happens um what's done at a more macro level than a micro level um what is postcode lottery versus local control and how you navigate that but also i suppose is a big question everybody looks at this thinks yeah maybe it's not the right answer but frankly the amount of work and cost involved in restructuring it is potentially a bit scary and kind of backs off and i suppose is that there's a question about how much can be done in the existing structure um but i think we're going to put that up later okay so i'll stop there okay thanks very much i'm willing thanks very much good morning allison it's really interesting to hear your thoughts and views on a number of issues um what would the new deal could you give us some thoughts and reflections about what you think may should be in there and could you maybe offer us a suggestion or two about how how we get the flexibility argument how we improve that so that local needs can properly be served and given paying regard to national structures and national directions that very much drive it you're not alone in being asked this question over many committee meetings but i'd be obliged if you would give some of your thoughts on it please i think the new deal in terms of the new deal i think is um it would be fantastic if it actually began reflecting some of the things that have been set out in previous reports like the christie report or previous local government committee reports or the blueprint for local government some of the reforms that have that are there and explaining you know how do we enable the the prevention agenda to be developed and i think key to that is finance and i think the drip feeding in terms of little bits of finance won't work it actually needs us to empower our local authorities to enable them to to have the financial powers to look at what works for them we can't be doing things like we're saying well you've got council tax but we're going to cap it and we're going to ring fence your budget and we're going to create an absolute headache and then expect you to deliver how we say we deliver and i think the starting point has to be that sort of partnership that it's about um to quote Derek Mitchell who has written our piece for devolving scotland forum today who said the symmetry of outcomes not delivery and i think that sort of if we're starting from scratch and having a new deal for local government it's about looking at outcomes and not the delivery mechanism mechanism and enabling councils to deliver different in different ways to reflect those local circumstances to find what works in their area to not be afraid of not not failure but things won't always work and that's okay because the only way that we're going to find what works in different areas is is trying and what works in Dumfries and Galloway might not work in Murray and so you can't just pick up and say right well that works there so we're going to roll out but actually allowing the local authorities themselves to develop their own pilots to develop their own delivery mechanisms to say right well if we want to reduce homelessness for example and set that as the outcome there will need to be different you know 32 different approaches to delivery i think certainly that the fiscal framework though in the in the new deal is key and i think that sets the tone if you are really trusting the local authorities then you are giving them the financial powers to maybe it's the beginnings of a journey but to looking towards that 40 to 50 percent of raising their own revenue and how they can then encourage growth in their area they can encourage economic development they can encourage scaling deep in terms of the entrepreneurialism but then looking at what are the issues in their area whether it's they have an issue with homelessness or have a different education reform they're wanting to tackle but something that is is more precedent in in in those areas because the country is really diverse it's facing huge demographic challenges but they vary hugely across the country i mean Edinburgh's demographs are going to be demographics are going to be okay but it's ever quite it's a huge problem and it's enabling them to therefore address those and i think it is it's enabling i think just like the workplace parking it's enabling legislation that allows local authorities to rather than having to keep come for mission and say well we've thought of this we've thought of this but to develop their own strategies and not always kind of have to come cap in hand and ask permission of the Scottish government fascinating how local should it be to devolve power let's say take my constituency come on at Northern Valley something like 16 towns or villages in there including come on of course but none of them have any powers whatsoever for the town or village absolutely none should it go to that level i mean the only the only structure i can think of allison is the community councils basically represent villages and towns small towns and villages but have very little powers so are you talking about an agenda that really breeds new life new power at the local level for at the town and village level is that something that you're definitely but i would say it could be done in across different areas differently so somewhere like you're talking about in villages developing the community council system there might be more appropriate than it might be in some of the other areas i think there's definitely issues around community councils where in some areas they're very active they hold regular elections they're well understood and there's good participation there's other areas where not only do they not have elections there's not enough people standing there's not enough people wanting to get involved and i certainly think there's something around about well how do you generate that interest how do you ensure people have an understanding of what's going on at that very very local sphere quite often it's a local issue in a small area will kick off that kind of interest but then that can get elsewhere but i think it can be done in an isometric way just because it works in one area you know the growth in somewhere like comarnate might work whereas other areas there's less interest but that's okay i think that would be the way to look at it thank you for that just switching to non-domestic rates council tax trying to fully devolve them to local authorities there have been some attempts in the past that have never came to fruition haven't there i was certainly part of a review and i think it was two parliaments ago that was looking to replace the council tax it just didn't happen we couldn't get agreement around the table for a model that we might we felt might work so how realistic is it is it too complex is it beyond us or is it something we should keep working at i think we need to keep working at it i think just a bit like the number of local authorities we have we have them only because nobody wants to we don't want to deal with a difficult decision so we've still got council tax still based on 1994 kind of house values there's so many issues and problems around it there was you know as you say going way back the discussions about local income tax but i do think there's an issue around one centrally imposed local tax being replaced by another centrally imposed local tax which doesn't really fit anybody and i think that's why we would like to see local authorities having the ability to set their own local tax so that you could have one local authority keeping a council tax whereas another one decides to develop a land value tax and building that system that works for their local area so that they properly fully have the full powers devolved down to them and they have full control so you don't end up then having introductions of things like council tax caps and all the issues that we've had and seen around about those the different times that they've been done and i think it's giving that full responsibility to the local authorities to so yes you might then end up with 32 headaches but then you might end up that some start developing their own system and it gradually it's a gradually slow process but others will take that opportunity and say right okay this doesn't work for us as our area we're going to develop um the Highlands going to look at a land value tax and it's going to work and they start doing it and then you begin to see reform and others learn because councils can then learn from each other and see well that worked for them it might not work for us but we could look at um what's happening elsewhere and just having that variation i think is important okay thank you for that um you talked about the 32 councils kind of pin you down what does reform Scotland think should it be higher or lower and how do we get i mean honestly how do we get that transformational change that you're talking about can we get it within that 32 council structure does it need to fundamentally change to help deliver that i think um i think we can get transformational change i don't think it will take uh i don't think it can be delivered tomorrow i do think it will take more than one election cycle and i do think it is key on that that sort of preventative agenda and kind of looking at implementing christy um in terms of the the size and structure of the local authorities um reform scotland has often argued over our our years that we would like to see more powers devolved down and one of the criticisms that we we got so for example before the police were murdered we wanted to see the policing powers devolved down to local authorities and the responsibles we can't do that with 32 um so then we did one point publish a report that said look if 32 is too many we made a suggestion um that if you had 19 you could get coterminus boundaries with police with healthcare um with looking at a whole load of sort of strategic areas um i'm working on that basis but then it goes back to where is the right sphere and i think what we do need is we do need the boundary commission and we do need more of a kind of investigation as to well what powers we want and how we going to have that managed i mean it was alluded to that the the 1993 settlement was largely down to politics there's the discussion about you know why the boundaries were drawn and what the reasons behind them were it makes it more even ludicrous that despite that being the reason that those boundaries were created we still have some sort of 30 years later so why is it we've got a sort of a very small clerk manager and we have a huge highlands or we have the sort of Dumfries and Galloway and Fife and some massive areas and very small areas Angus and Dundee um so i think it's actually having looking at the boundary commission looking at what powers we want what do we where do we want powers to settle so could we look at um bringing in healthcare powers to our local authorities could we instead of having the health boards and our local authorities could we look at bringing those things together so it's a case of starting with what powers you want to have and then what's the most the best way a boundary commission review could also consider well did we properly look at why we had two tiers of authorities prior to 1994 and the reasons for when we went to unitary authorities are there certain things that you know we would rather have a sort of higher level and some at a lower level do we want to have two tiers again of local government is there some elements of that now again that creates other problems because if we're trying to attract councillors and we want to pay them more you're then creating more councillors but i think it's having having these discussions and involving the public in those discussions um how they see their local authorities what they want um how what do they identify as their local authority area um even sort of some areas like uh East Lothian which is quite small but has various different sort of bits whether it's Haddington or North Berwick they're sort of individual communities that don't really join into it they're just a boundary that's been set there so i think having that conversation and part of what we're wanting to do with the um Devolving Scotland um discussion is trying to tease those those discussions out and kind of have more of a public hearing and and sort of get the ball rolling so that we can move to to actually reforming what we have so that was 19 then was it um it would depend on whether i think we we have never sort of said because i think there's a lot of powers that we would want devolved down and i think almost sort of starting in the position of like it should be devolved unless there's a reason for it to be reserved to hollywood hollywood rather but um i i i would favour the the and i think we have certainly favoured um smaller number of local authority a a larger number of smaller local authorities um but we gave the 19 as an example of here's one way to do it if you don't if you think 32 is too many if you think more than 32 is too many this is another way of doing it where you could get rid of the health board boundaries um we have not sort of said this is the ideal number i mean that it's the reason behind it the number in itself doesn't matter it's the reason behind it it's something like too big too small too much power not enough power that's the argument the dynamic that's going on here isn't it and it's somewhere in there there is an argument about how we localise power to the greatest effect to the benefit of the communities we serve and all of that and that's why i mentioned the the villages in town level in comarant northern valley there's no power whatsoever in any of those units and it would seem for everybody's constituency none of the towns and villages have any power whatsoever the act has an authority in regard to just about everything they do so so thank you very much for your your comments it's much appreciated thank you thanks for the i just wanted to pick up before i bring in miles with another layer of complexity in it with his questions a few things one struck me while you were talking you mentioned actually at the beginning and also was mentioned in the in the previous session around the fact that in the EU local municipalities or they have they can raise 40 to 50 percent of their revenue at a local level but i just wondered you were describing quite a picture of potential scotland with a lot of diversity and is there that level of nuance in in other countries in france like i realize i've got a bit of a fixed picture of all that it's 250 people around a mayor or whatever but is it quite diverse of it depending on the geography and the local issues yeah i think there's there's quite a lot of the sort of the differences and i think spain for example where you've got the autonomous communities and the what goes below them and the asymmetric level of devolution of powers the there are differences and i think it's just it's always been the case that there have been that sort of the very very lower i'm particularly in france with very low level local mayors and how you you sort of there it's just expected that in certain areas as well you'll have elections for a lot of sort of public office that is that is the norm in a lot of the sort of Scandinavian countries again you've got some that have got smaller levels some who have shrunk down the number of local authorities some who have increased the number of local authorities but it's the sort of what has worked for those areas and i think again it's the the geography can come into play as well and i think that's the thing in scotland we're not looking at kind of a a sort of an area of that can be easily the same one size fits always not going to work i think as you mentioned earlier about the islands and things there's very very different solutions that can be brought into bear and i don't think we do need to find a this is how we're going to work and it's going to be exactly the same across the country i do think we need to kind of be more nuanced and developing solutions that it's going to be okay it might be really really local in one area it might be more strategic in another area if it's right for the area if it's right for the population it's how people identify so if people identify that you know they're from Glasgow or they're from a small village in Kilmarnock that identification is also an important part to to bring into it as well you're bringing in a kind of an element of belonging in a way isn't it i was interested to hear from Jackie Weaver when she came to our session a few weeks ago about the fact that community councils in England have that they're incorporated and they have that revenue raising power that ours don't and i wonder it kind of comes back to also the conversation of remuneration and how do we engage more people how do we get our community council you know what would be the incentive for people to come to a community council and it would seem to me that well actually if you you know if you're a thoughtful person who wants to participate in shaping that place that you belong to you identify with that actually having some power to to do something could attract people you know and the same with at the council level having that remuneration piece because then we would attract people who have the kind of skill sets i mean we do we already do and they take a massive cut and then struggle financially but and as you said earlier tend to do one term and then have to move on which is a shame because then you've got tremendous amount of experience over that five-year period that goes out the door again undoubtedly and i think in particular when it comes to community councils ensuring representation is so vital because there is a danger that you end up in some of the areas where they're not that you don't have elections and there it tends to be people that are perhaps retired or have more time on their hands are not necessarily representative of the community that are there for managing community councils and it may only be that when an issue creeps up that there is a divergence between perhaps local opinion in the community council that there's more interest but i think that's another layer of problems because you know within a cost of living crisis and all the other issues that we've had about money we can't there's so many spheres of government that to keep increasing remuneration for increasing levels of politicians is not going to be a popular policy i mean we met last week i had a very useful meeting with our counterpart committee from wales and they were telling us that there they've got what they called joint committees corporate joint committees i've got four of them and they kind of have a bit of a regional approach now they were saying that it don't quickly adopt that but it was an interesting thing that they've got obviously smaller smaller size but they've got that regional approach for some aspects of decision making it does seem to me that it comes to where we put it you know what needs to be decided at a bigger level and what needs to be decided at a more local level and that you know starting to decide what what's the decision making domains that we're going to that comes back to that clarity i think that was called for our new deal event with the futures forum and so that clarity of what decisions are going to be made about what things and what makes sense to do it at a bigger level because we need a regional approach for that maybe roads for example and then a more nuanced approach at a more local level yeah i think the thing is that the problem at the moment is that we're not really got anything down at the local or the very local level everything's kind of centralized and i think we need to shift away so yes there are a lot of decisions and discussions that we need to have about how how local is local and how far down we go but we need to shift away from everything being centralized and i think to to address the the cost of living crisis to address the demographic challenges to address all the things that coming down the line to shift to that preventative agenda we have to first deal with everything being centralized and i think that that needs the new deal is the opportunity to address this to sort of saying like you know we're taking a stand off we are shifting from telling you how to deliver things giving you the money ring fencing it and saying how you have to deliver our the central government's priorities we have to shift to these are the outcomes and then in the same way that central government needs to release the hands then it'll be up to local authorities to say well what's appropriate and what can we evolve further beyond that but local authorities can't evolve anything at the moment until it's been devolved from the centre something that always comes back to me in terms of the the issue around how do we get more people to engage with the community council i made a note how local is local we need to have that conversation i think we maybe have a talk about that here in the committee but universal basic income it's not necessarily ideal but i do wonder if that's a way through in terms of getting more diversity at that very local level in a community council because people would actually have some foundational income to then be able to serve their community from absolutely reform scotland's published on a universal basic income we've argued and set out it's certainly expensive but we have recommended and sort of said that it is something that should be considered and indeed all welfare power has been already devolved to northern ireland so there's no reason why it couldn't be devolved to scotland which would then give us more of a situation i think at the moment with the powers that rest in scotland one of the things that we found is whilst it could perhaps be piloted in scotland and working in partnership with the uk government that without the full welfare powers it would it's difficult to do on a Scottish basis alone but then if you were to if those powers were devolved then there would be opportunities to develop those things i do you think though with the the community council level that it's not just the money it's the time constraints and if you're wanting to get in a diverse selection people at that level people will be also be working they will also have care responsibilities and even with a basic income it's how do you ensure how do you get a diverse selection of people and one of the things that's happened in some councils recently is council meetings used to happen in the evening which of course removed a lot of people from being able to participate community councils tend to be in the evening so that is a barrier so it's looking at the time element as well not not just the financial issues i think that's a really important one to point out but i think also helpful to hear that you know maybe the need for some powers that have already been devolved elsewhere that could come to scotland to help us with that okay now going to bring in miles thank you convener good morning alley thanks for joining us today i wanted to discuss and we've all touched upon another set of politicians to be introduced but elected mayors and provists and just to get more of your thoughts on that and just wondered if there was evidence around elected mayors actually increasing accountability improving community engagement and actually delivering better outcomes for people and just your thoughts on on what reform said around these suggestions thanks i think we we sort of used the phrase mayors directly elected mayors simply to distinguish between the sort of largely ceremonial provis that we have but provis mayors as you say interchangeable i think it's about the sort of the clear identity of who's in charge and that sort of person for the area now the the model that we suggested in our report was very much using the existing council boundaries and having somebody directly elected across the council area so not it's not really the same sort of system this is the sort of different areas where we've got down south where Andy Burnham it's across the larger Manchester area but just having that sort of understanding of the identity and somebody who can represent is a voice for their area but is also a voice locally nationally across the UK but as a sort of ambassador internationally as well whether it's for Edinburgh but equally for Murray which might not always have the the loudest voice because it's drowned out by the central belt but actually giving a bit more of a attention to some of the areas that perhaps overlooked it's also about that kind of connecting up individuals at the moment we have most local authorities are run by coalitions there's not always great understanding as to who is in charge some councils have had two leaders just to reflect the the nature of the coalition partners there's not always great i am name recognition with the leaders of the council and of course a councillor is just elected from one ward not necessarily having that link to the full area and so part of our thinking as well was to ensure this move towards that kind of the parity that was spoken about earlier how do you raise the profile and the understanding and the voice of local authorities now whilst the structures might be different down south i think what we have seen with the likes of Andy Burnham is that name recognition that kind of fighting for their area and the city can and others where they are a voice for their area against the the a sort of a stronger central government and i think that's what we're trying to do is kind of increase the voice of civic scotland increase the voices that are out there and have that sort of identifiable individual that can argue for for for their area i think we saw during during the pandemic when local authorities kind of came on there was a bit of a better understanding because you could only move within your local authority area and you know the the which local authority was in which level for the covid restrictions i think we saw in those points some of the arguments that were going on as to were local authorities sticking up for their area or were they going along with their national party and i think the key there is it's a directly elected mayor or provost is also somebody who's the people's voice rather than potentially a party's voice for the people or the party's voice in Glasgow or Edinburgh or wherever as opposed to a strong local champion because if you just from whichever party if you just bout party lines and stick very rigidly to what your party is saying you're going to get kicked out you're going to get voted out by the electorate and it's about building that that link so it is about what is right locally and we've not always seen a kind of a disagreement between local authorities and their the sort of Scottish central parties and i think we should be having more of that discussion because it's obvious surely that what is right in one local area won't be what what a party leader wants to say and i think that some of the discussions that i've gone round about coalitions for example at local authority levels where we've had parties saying oh well you can't go into coalition with this party or another thing or you can't go into party but we have a voting system that's designed to encourage coalitions so it's kind of that sort of when the politics comes into play so this is also a way of kind of stripping back a wee bit of the politics and giving voice to a local authority area yeah and in terms of powers you would envisage them having what what powers would you centralise to elected mayors or provis or civic leaders and one of the things and this is a leading question i i do think kind of hasn't been well managed is around who's responsible for delivery of the city growth deals which the UK government Scottish government and collections of councils have signed up to because we've had big bang moments big numbers for these but then key infrastructure projects have not far from here there is a whole roundabout which is still progressing like snail's pace huge key project for the Lothian region no one's the lead minister on it or lead politician so just wondered if it's more of that economic development you'd envisage or powers actually around health policing sitting with this individual i would say definitely also health and policing and another rate policing would also looking to the reforming the decentralisation of the police but yes there should be more powers and those would be passed down to we would still envisage there being the council and the council would hold the the directly elected mayor to account but the powers that they currently have plus the enhanced powers that we've sort of spoken about and i do think that there is then issues such as say the sheriff hall roundabout which is then covering more than one council area and i think that is a sort of example of other issues where there are the different spheres of government and who's to blame what is happening and it's not clear where accountability lies and i think that this could be slightly separate from the mayor's because even on that situation unless you had a different boundary you'd have potentially three mayors it's still not clear who is responsible for for delivering that and i think that is perhaps something that needs to be looked at with the sort of the the city growth deals as to who who is responsible where does responsibility lie because as far as the public is concerned who do who do they hold to account isn't the UK government is the Scottish government is at the local authority it's not clear and i think that requires some sort of clarity from politicians themselves to sort of say well this is the responsibility we'll back off and but we'll hold you to account yeah and and do you think it would improve the relationship between local and central government to have that additional tier or are we just going to create another voice in that who either will be elected let's face it by a party which is in government or not in government for these areas and political cycles might then actually dictate who's doing these sorts of roles and and like we see with Andy Burnham you know he'll happily and so he can take on UK government we would maybe have conservatives elected taking on Scottish government here at this point in time and and so it's quite easy to have a dissenting voice if you're not in the the government of the day you're not necessarily progressing on the agenda but then i think there's also been conservative mayors that have taken on the UK government and i think that's actually what we need a bit more of is that i mean i think there was it was actually really good to see the discussion between Adam McVay the former leader of Edinburgh City Council with the Scottish government over the tourism levy and more of those discussions we should be having where it's clear that there's a local versus national debate there should be disagreement there should be that sort of public discourse i don't see the the the mayors as a an additional tier of government because it's simply looking at the structure of the existing councils and how do we give greater voice to them so that they can then yeah i kind of have more of that sort of parity inequality with the Scottish government and i go back to one of one of the other recommendations that we've made before is about this idea of having these quarterly meetings where now it could be then if we have mayors for everywhere that it's the mayors and that the Scottish government they could alternate between them first minister or different ministers with different responsibilities but actually talking and discussing and debating the different issues of delivery of the national objectives that they're saying right we want you to deliver x well how are we going to do this and enabling those differences to be discussed and people learning from each other but you've got that that platform where people are hearing the different voices and you know you have 32 local champions but yes i would want there to be that difference and yeah obviously a a conservative mayor is going to find it very easy to disagree with a national Scottish government but it's the key bits are actually really interesting is where it's within the same party and that will happen and but it should happen more regularly and and just finally back to sort of willy's questioning around council numbers 32 elected mayors like elected mayor of Edinburgh for example the amount of resource they would potentially have compared to elected mayor of clack manager and the voice you know i think in terms of the cities these would work well in terms of that real kind of economic driving opportunity to to promote an area but just wondered where that having 32 had come from and not looking at potentially where we do operate more regionally like in terms of hollywood with loathian region for example and where councils would come together and have an individual rather than 32 and and people being lost in kind of 32 voices instead of eight what i think on that basis then it's just that's adding a different tier of government and so you're potentially then looking at two tiers of local government i think what we had been proposing is it's also giving voice to so west loathian gets quite often overlooked when it comes to discussions because edinburgh is the focus that that how do you increase the voice and the recognition of the issues that are affecting places like middle loathian and west loathian which are kind of swept up into the sort of edinburgh economic area and if you have one person representing these sort of larger areas Glasgow becomes the focus edinburgh remains the focus the big cities remain the focus and those hinterlands still don't have their voice and we have they have the council so that's why we were saying well how can we amplify the voice how can we make sure that there's a local champion for for livingston and covering west loathian so that they are the issues that they are facing which will be different to edinburgh aren't overlooked and i think that's part of the issue there is if you if you just make it round the big cities then the focus will be the big cities but we do know where the the issues on the demographs and the housing and a whole load of issues are in these other areas so how do we amplify those those discussions so i think with the 32 is what we have at the moment so i think working with the 32 back to the previous discussions about whether we need the boundary commission and whether we look at what is appropriate if should our starting point be something that was allegedly done to ensure that the conservatives could hold on to some councils in 1993 it seems a bit of a strange situation to be in 2023 still sitting with that being our starting point but i think certainly we felt that the mayors were not an additional tier of government they were working with the councils thank you it's an area i think kind of is a lot more discussion gonna happen across parties so thanks yeah thanks for that that was very interesting discussion and i kind of like i have a greater understanding now what you're thinking behind that mark you wanted to come in thank thanks i mean it i just wanted to ask about essentially government and parliament's ability to deliver you know a new local government set on a new local government landscape now we've talked already about essentially a public acceptance that the system have just now as a result of political gerrymandran 30 years ago and so you wonder how can such a system have lasted for 30 years and you think well one that's because nobody agrees what should replace it two that there is an inbuilt resistance you know you have 32 leaders you have 32 chief execs finance directors education directors who will be thinking well you know if there's a change here is there a space for me and also the the political makeup of of parliament and the entire history of parliament we have had minority or very small majority governments with limited political capital looking at an item that's probably not very high up the priority list of the public so basically my question is with all of that in mind can parliament can government ever deliver the change that we've all probably agreed principle maybe not at the detail level and we should be pushing for so i think as as we mentioned in our sort of submission you know we point to the local government committee of 2002 we wanted the local government committee of 2014 where a lot of these issues have kind of been raised before and there's kind of calls for for change yeah it is it is difficult and it can seem like it's not a priority but i think it's seen as not as a priority because it's not linked to change how if we actually empower local authorities they can they can be the vehicle that delivers the better outcomes for our people that they can be there where the empowerment agenda that christie set out can happen and so if we want to you know deliver on christie it's still talked about if we actually want to deliver on that we need local government form to enable it and i think it's it perhaps requires a sort of cross party agreement to take it on and sort of accept that you know the current situation doesn't work we need to move forward it's politically contentious but then that requires kind of whether it's whether it's the government setting up a commission slightly outside of parliament so that it can go beyond an electoral cycle so that you can get the buy-in from the different parties if everybody accepts the current situation is unsustainable then it surely is not beyond the weight of politicians and civic scotland to fix it but i think it has to have that that buy-in and it has to sort of say that well we will you know have a commission that looks at this that will we will work out and get some sort of agreement whether it's something models around like the smith commission or something where you had the different agendas coming in but coming out with some sort of solution and then that can be that that way forward but it is really important we'd need to our local authorities are the ones that can deliver the change that we require constantly delivering one side of its all positions from the centre hasn't worked and so i think it's a comment on all of us to try and fix that to move forward to change and say right this is to explain to people why it's important it does seem like you know talking about more councillors or councillors wages or these things seem very detached from improving the cost of living crisis but if we can enable and empower our local authorities to deliver the early interventions that we need to look into the the longer term solution so they're not working on one-year budgets to look at and take on all these challenges that we face and then i would like to think that it can be done okay thank you thanks very much mark i think that's you know interesting and thanks for that positive positive response there i just wanted to pick up on one piece because you were talking about coterminous boundaries and we're going to be going at the end of june to orcney which is a single island authority and i just wondered if you had done any looking at you know what's going on there because we also heard from councillor heddle at one point that they've actually given budgets to their community councils that are island you know in the kind of surrounding islands so that they can actually make decisions at local level with some financial backing we haven't looked specifically orcney but then but that sort of coterminous boundaries exactly the sort of thing we would say is you know could be piloted and looking at instead of having the you know at the orcney council and then having the orcney health board but kind of can we bring them together can we pilot different things where we can bring more powers into different areas it would make sense to give the islands a lot more powers and certainly they've been calling out for them and pilot certain things if that if it is politically difficult to change the things well the islands and other areas sort of FIFT and Frees and Galloway where you have coterminous boundaries is an opportunity to pilot to try and experiment i think that rather than it being a big bang thing try it in those areas gradual reform rather than if that's what it takes it all up the other thing i wondered about is a Scottish land commission came out recently with a report i don't know if you've seen it around around forms of tax so not necessarily land value tax but tax different kind of ideas around tax on land and one of the things that was flagged up to me was the fact that you have a situation in FIFT where you've got amazon with their regional delivery i can't remember what the name is but anyway they've got all their stuff and they get sent out to not only scotland but the north of england and they pay i think it's a million pounds in would be non-domestic rates and the neighbouring Tesco pays two million pounds so there's something there where the you know amazon is generating tremendous income but not really you know paying for it so i'm interested in exploring those things i think it's something that we will look at as a committee in terms of giving more power or you're generating more income for local authorities but i just wondered if you had looked at that at all it's not something that we've looked at we've certainly hosted some ideas about you know annual ground rents and other types of land taxes and land value taxes i think it's the sort of thing is what works in one area doesn't work in another area and allowing that kind of more nuanced system to develop and i think it is interesting to kind of encourage different ideas and how do we ensure that things are competitive but they're also fair and there's definitely issues around land banking and some other issues that can happen which can stifle development in an area if you were reforming the sort of taxation system is there are things that you could do around about there but again it's sort of looking at and giving the local authority the powers to develop those systems for themselves thanks for that that's really helpful and so it's been a really useful session i think we could go on a bit longer certainly got more questions but i've put a big box around my note here how local is local maybe that's another bit of a conversation because it seems to be that that's a piece that how do we if we want to take that forward the 19 the 32 more local that seems to be something that needs to and maybe that exists in some of the local government reports you've pointed us to the the work of the 2002 or the 2014 but it seems that that's another piece of what do we want to devolve across to more local levels and i certainly feel that's important as we face a climate and nature emergency and there are going to be very different sets of issues flooding wildfires whatever that are going to be facing communities and that they're going to need that kind of pandemic level speed of response to those issues so you know what's that local level that needs that power to be able to do that quickly so that kind of opens something else up but i won't go there thank you thank you so much allison for joining us this morning it's been tremendously helpful and uh as we agreed it started the meeting to take the next items on the agenda in private uh and as that was the last public item for today i'll now close the public part of the meeting