 Good morning and welcome to the eighth meeting in 2023 of the local government housing and planning committee. May I remind all members and witnesses to ensure that their devices are on silent and that all other notifications are turned off during the meeting? I would like to extend apologies from Miles Briggs, who is unable to join us today. The first item on our agenda today is to decide whether to take item 4 in private. Are members agreed? We are all agreed. The next item on our agenda is to take evidence from two panels of witnesses as part of our community planning inquiry post legislative scrutiny of the community empowerment act 2015. This is our second session in this inquiry. The inquiry is looking at the impact of the community empowerment act 2015 on community planning and how community planning partnerships respond to significant events such as the Covid-19 pandemic and the current cost of living crisis. Those partnerships are a crucial part of ensuring that communities receive the support and services that they need now more than ever. They bring organisations together to coordinate their activities and to listen and learn from each other. Today we will be hearing from a number of national and regional organisations involved in community planning and we are joined in the room on our first panel of witnesses by Mark McTear, who is the director of strategic planning, performance and communications, and Stephen Wood, who is the head of service delivery north of Scotland both from the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, and Pauline Smith, who is the chief executive director at Development Trust Association Scotland. Online, we are joined by Carolyn Warburton, who is the destination development director at Visit Scotland, and Valerie Arbuckle, who is the national partnership development manager at Police Scotland. I welcome the witnesses to the meeting. We will try to direct our questions to a specific witness where possible, but if you would like to come in, please indicate this to the clerks and Caroline and Valerie, as you can do this by typing an R in the chat function. There is no need to manually turn your microphones on and off, as we will be doing that automatically for you. Each member will be exploring a particular theme. Annie Wells, who is joining us online, will be starting our discussion this morning by asking you some questions about the challenges that communities face. Good morning, convener, and good morning, panel. I have just got a couple of questions. The first one is, we have heard that inequalities are a moving target and that a lot has changed in the last eight years. What is your organisation's role as a community planning partner in helping to tackle those inequalities? First of all, could I go to Mark, please? I suppose that, as a statutory community planning partner, our role is to support CPPs and through them communities across a whole range of outcomes, while our focus is primarily around community safety, as you can imagine, being the nature of an emergency service. We are also involved in a wide variety of work around prevention, not just in terms of fire, but in other aspects that lead to inequality within communities. That probably takes us into a wide range of areas where we work in support of partnership. We tend not to be the lead partner, but we tend to play a part in working with others. For example, in Highlands, at the moment, we are running a partnership with Home Energy Scotland, where we are looking to see where we can be, because we are one of the successful organisations at getting into people's homes and helping and supporting them. How can we work with that partnership and through the CPP to ensure that people get good access to energy, efficiency, information, and things like that? That is typically the role that we play out with the pure safety elements. It is how do we broker a relationship between communities and others, and to then, through that, help them address some of the issues of inequality. We are also involved in some employability and employment partnership working on a similar basis. Very often, we are a host organisation, particularly for young people, to help them either find a place in the workplace or to pick up some skills as part of their portfolio construction. That is, again, a very important role for us, because it is typically targeted at children or young people who are finding it difficult to get into the workplace. As you can imagine, an attractive organisation to a lot of young people defines the prospect of coming and working with us and picking up transferable skills that can then help them back into the workplace is something that is very attractive. That is the breadth of spectrum that we tend to be involved in. I am here. Although we are not a strategic partner of the community planning, we are supporting development trusts across the whole of Scotland. We have about 350 plus members and the challenges that they are facing at the moment. It is a bill that marks that the challenges are about employability, youth training, and supporting the most vulnerable people in the communities. As community anchors, they are there for the long term, and they need to overcome the challenges for all of the people in their communities. We would also say that one of the challenges is that you will know yourself how many assets are getting let go from local authorities at the moment. Community anchors and development trusts are very much at the forefront of asset transfer, so they are trying to find out how they save the assets in their community, how they would run them. There are a lot of challenges involved in there that community planning partnerships are aware of and that they can support. Thank you for that, Pauline. I believe that it is Valerie, and then Caroline would like to come in as well. Hello, panel. Yes, Police Scotland is really keen to tackle inequalities. One of the areas that we specifically see is the existence of a criminal record on someone exacerbates their ability to find work, etc. We are doing everything that we can in Police Scotland to try and tackle inequalities through diversion from prosecution and other alternatives in the community justice system. As a community planning partnership, we are very keen to develop any local diversion strategies and working alongside the community justice partnerships particularly to try and effect that. I suppose that it is a part of the tackling inequalities that people might not think about in relation to Police Scotland, but we really try to help with poverty. We have also got within our divisional teams through community planning links more opportunities to divert people to food banks and help with fuel in food in other areas too. There is an awful lot that Police Scotland is doing not only on its own but as part of the community planning, community planning structure, and an awful lot of that is facilitated through our community planning partners too. We are the national tourism organisation, so we are perhaps in a slightly different position in the fact that we are sector related. Our focus is on tourism and the visitor economy and how that can support communities. We are led by the national strategy for economic transformation as one of the economic development agencies, which is focused on a wellbeing economy. Communities and the impact that tourism can have on communities and with communities is very much part of what we are focused on. In terms of the challenges, we have seen the challenges particularly in recent years of Covid and the cost of living crisis. Within the act, there is discussion around communities but also communities of interest. From our perspective, we do much of our work with the community of interest that is the business community and the tourism industry. Tourism touches every community in Scotland. There is no part of Scotland that is not affected by the visitor economy at some level. From our perspective, we feel that, as a statutory partner, we have justification in being involved with community planning partnerships. Thanks for that. Ani, do you have any more questions? Yes, just one sort of a follow-up question, because it has kind of been touched on from the panel in the last question. The 2015 act places a duty on CPPs to tackle socio-economic inequalities. To what extent can CPPs help to prevent inequalities rather than deal with the consequences of them? I think that the first one could go to Valerie on that, because you touched about helping direct people to put banks and stuff like that, so I don't know if you can start, Valerie? Yes, no trouble. I suppose that the opportunity that we have to direct people to other sources is helped through community planning, but it can be made more difficult to because we have all got our own structures in place, we have all got our own objectives in place, and sometimes it is that decision between doing it on our own, maybe quickly, or doing it at a different pace through community planning, or sometimes even quicker through community planning. It depends where. It is all to do with the personality of the people involved and their ability to drive change, but there are definitely opportunities that we have to make tackling of inequalities more grass-root with our front-line officers. One of the comments that is regularly made is that our officers are the eyes and ears of the community because we get into people's houses when they are in a crisis situation, so there is an awful lot that we can do to try and effect change and positive change by referring people to other organisations who can provide assistance and help. Stephen, you wanted to come in. Just building on what Valerie said there about grass-roots, I think, whilst we are a national service, we are structured in such a way that we have a reach into all the communities, and I think that we have heard that there are differences across all the partners in how the issues that we face. We have been able to empower staff at a local level. There is really a push that the initiatives and the work that we do comes from the grass-roots upwards and up towards us. We have stations in all the communities, and the crews in there are really working hard at the moment to deal with the local issues. I think that there is some great work going on, which is really worth noting. We opened the stations as warm spaces in the lead-up to Christmas there. I think that we badged up as a brew with the crew, and that has evolved now. We have got coffee with the cops, Pepsi with the paramedics, and it is just about bringing in partners, bringing in the community. In some places it works, and there is a real uptake and there is a real conversation. In some places there is not, but it just demonstrates the differences across the country and the different approaches that we need to take in order to tackle the problems. Pepsi with the paramedics. I think that we are stretching it a wee bit. Pauline, you wanted to come in. I was just going to add that the social and economic disadvantage within communities has been done by communities for 40 odd years, or maybe longer. I suppose that my point would be that to be able to tackle the disadvantage, the more money you get directly within the local communities, the better. The more local it is, the more change can happen, the more direction has been taken by local people, more employment for community training, etc. The warm spots, etc. They have been created through communities throughout the pandemic, and they are still continuing, so they are adapting to whatever their local community needs. I would say that they are just more local and more directed within the local community areas. I will move on to the next theme, which is about community empowerment, fittingly, and that theme will be led by Mark Griffin. I will probably come to Stephen first at Invalid to ask how is participation with communities affecting how your organisation works with community plan partnerships? Have you got a view as to whether that has changed in the eight years since the act has passed, or are you just continuing as you were? I think that we have learnt as an organisation to listen much more. Our role has expanded, our understanding of the contribution that we can make has really expanded. The information comes to us in a grassroots level. We have lots of staff embedded in the community, as well as the local crew, which is part of the on-call crew and part of the community. There is definitely a route into us and through us, both within our internal structure and into planning partnerships. I think that there is a general awareness over the last eight years. Our prevention work in the past was always preceded by the word fire, but I think that we are now far wider than that. We understand the causes of some of the issues that we face as a service and we have been able to widen that out and look to tackle the source of some of those issues. I think that, with partners, there is a real shared understanding there that it might conclude in a fire at some point, but the solution to that is far, far before that point. Our approach as a national service has matured and changed over the last eight years. The links with partners and done through the community planning partnership has greatly strengthened. We have seen a real change. Has that been because of the reorganisation to our national service, or explicitly, because of the community empowerment act? I think that it is just a natural evolution. I think that there would be pockets of it pre-national service. I think that we have been able to harness that as a national service, put some real national direction behind it and a cultural change within the service. I suppose that we have smoothed that out and established a real direction as a service. I suppose that I would use three words to describe, deepened, broadened and localised, as sums up our approach since the act. In the early days of the service, post-2013, when ourselves and Police Scotland were created, the first couple of years were very much establishing the organisation, as you can imagine, going through such a major transformation. From that point on, it was very much about how do we embed ourselves further in community planning. Across the country, when I look at the 32 CPPs, we have certainly deepened the relationships that we have with our partners. It takes us into such a wide array of areas as Steedons are alluding to. It can arrange from things like drug and alcohol partnerships where we are very much part of the how do we get in and work and support highly vulnerable people, people coming out of perhaps a prison service into the community. We are one of the people that they will encounter and meet as part of a home fire safety visit, but it is really to touch base, build relationships and work with them right through to things like victim support safety. Again, people who have been a victim of crime, we are part of the partnership that will look to support them. Over the years, we have certainly deepened and broadened the range of partnerships, but at the same time, an important messaging that Steven said is from the corporate out has been, this is about localism, this is about how you as crews within an area work with your community, so you guide us as much as we will guide you in all of this. That localisation of it has been, I think, probably the most successful element of our internal approach to this. Allow the local people in the local areas to really, within those parameters, go and work with their community, their partners in ways of working their area, not what does it look like from an HQ perspective, but rather what does it look like in WIC, what does it look like in Dumfries, and then build it up, as Steven was saying. That has been very much driven through the organisation, and that local organic element of community planning, I think, very much encapsulates what we are now doing on a day-to-day basis. I do not know if, Valerie, if you have any views on how participation with communities changed since the act was introduced. I think that the first thing to point out is that I am probably at all organisations to degree that there is a requirement or an expectation that we consult with the public on a regular basis. Police Scotland has a police survey that has been running now for several years and has gathered a lot of information from members of the public about what they think of the police service. We also have a customer satisfaction survey for people who have had contact with us as a single organisation. However, that extends into community planning partnerships, who also seek to engage with members of the public to get information about how they are doing it, and that can risk potentially a bit of survey fatigue from members of the public, as they are expected to regularly give a view. One of the things that I always think is that it is actually not bad if somebody does not have a view about the police, because I would hope that the majority of citizens in Scotland hopefully do not need our service and are living a peaceful, happy life in their own community without any problems, but for those people who do have an issue, we would want to understand how that affects them. In relation to examples when we have taken that to empower them, we are regularly working with different communities across Scotland. I know that one of the previous sessions that she did, we were speaking about the work that was happening in Wallacetown, and I was one of the people who were out for Police Scotland doing the door-to-doors. In Wallacetown, we are also doing some work specifically in WIC to try to get people from that community, which is described as an island on the mainland. Those people think of the service, and not only our service, but it is the wider service that is being made available to them. We are doing work in Perth in relation to communities to try to understand what their needs and wants are. An awful lot of the time, what we find is that we are a connecting organisation because of our staff that are in the different areas. I suppose that sometimes the uniform helps. It encourages people to come together, because maybe a police officer is telling you, but it is a suggestion that lets come together and talk, and it really helps to bring together some members of the other agencies who are working to work together. Through that work together, it definitely helps to empower the communities, because the members of the public have an opportunity to be heard. Across all agencies, there is an impetus to encourage customer participation, if you will, in order to make sure that we are designing services. The other thing is that Police Scotland, back in 2020-21, introduced our own design team, which follows the Scottish design principles and tries to encourage participation and empowerment about how we create new services, but a lot of the services that we create are not just for us to extend to other partners within community planning. You hear that Police Scotland has got a design team, I love that. Caroline, you wanted to come in. Yes, I visited Scotland in 2003. We were not statutory partners at that point, so we have been brought in since 2015. The degree to which the act has changed how we work with communities has changed it quite significantly. As a result, we have been engaged with all of the community planning partnerships. We have been brought into the conversation around communities and how our remits and our roles and responsibilities can help to contribute towards the outcomes at that local level. During Covid, there were quite a number of issues around visitor management. In places, too many people visited the countryside and certain towns and villages. It was through our links with the community that we were able to be sensitive to how the tourism industry was responding to that, but also the key messages that we were able to do and provide that partnership approach, both at a national level but also at a local level. Directly through the community planning partnerships, there are a couple of examples. In East Lothian, we are part of the Connected Economy Group that was looking at recovery, and similarly, through West Lothian Community Planning Partnership, they had a short-life, cost-of-living emergency working group. Again, we were part of that conversation, so we can ensure that the work that we are doing is contributing in a small or a large way to tackling inequalities in communities as well. Pauline, do you want to come in? I suppose that I come from a slightly different angle. There has not been a statutory partner, but I have lots of stories of development trust or communities working with police and fire over the years. When it comes to empowerment through community planning structures, a lot of that sometimes happens direct to the police and to the fire brigade. It is not necessarily always through the community planning structures that we hear about it or how it happens in communities. It sometimes happens organically, with the police and the fire being proactive with that. I could be wrong, that could be coming through the community planning partnership structures. But I suppose that from a community side of being empowered through the community planning, yes, it has improved. We have to acknowledge that it is different across Scotland, I am sure that you have heard that many times, different regions work in different ways. But I would say that what we have heard from our members is that there needs to be more emphasis on communities around those tables. TSIs, for instance, are represented within there, but from a community anchor or other community organisations, they should be around the table as well. That still needs to be worked on. It is a work in progress, I think, but, yes, things have moved on, definitely, since the Empowerment Act, but there is still lots more to do, I would say. Thanks for that. Mark, do you have any more questions? Yes, why don't we start with you, Pauline? Just wonder how your organisation or perhaps more probably, how your membership organisations are ensuring that all voices are being heard and think about particular communities of interest or identity across the whole spectrum. How are those sometimes minority groups getting their voices heard at community planning partnership level and what your membership organisations are doing at the facility of that? I suppose that the heart of any development trust is for the whole community. It is not just a community of interests, it is for the full community. Working with young people, elderly adults, people with disabilities, additional leads, etc. They proactively do that through their community action plans, etc. They are actively engaging the community at all levels of their work. They will be very rare that you will find a development trust or a community anchor organisation that does one type of service, whether it is for whichever demographic within the community. They are constantly engaging the community within that. That is why, from a community planning perspective, the voice of those community anchor organisations needs to be listened to. It is a very strong voice of what is at the heart of their communities. I would say that they do it on a day-to-day basis of engaging the community on the wide section of that. Valerie, I do not know if you have any experience in Police Scotland and how Police Scotland is engaging with particular minority communities of interest or identity in supporting them and getting the voices heard? There is obviously an awful lot of this as Government legislation. One of the aspects that we see day and daily in relation to minority groups would be hate crime. It is very much to the fore for our organisation and feeds into an awful lot of things that we do, trying to make reporting of hate crime, for example, more accessible. That insight that we have into the problems that are affecting local communities, we can then take that to local community planning partnerships because we can see what the issues are within local communities and what the problems in relation to seldom heard voices—or, as I like to describe them sometimes, seldom listened to voices. It helps us to understand a bit more about what is happening in the ground in local areas and our representatives in community planning partnerships can take that straight into the local community planning partnerships for discussion about what needs are doing in order to help them to live safe and happy healthy lives within their own communities. Whether or not we could do more—probably undoubtedly—we could do more that our ability to engage when it is not a situation of a crime can be difficult, but across the country we have groups with local teams trying to encourage participation from a whole range of different types of organisations from people with disabilities, minority groups from other new Scots coming to the country, et cetera. We have an awful lot of involvement across the whole board about people who are not the standard wide Scottish who are other impairment, et cetera. We definitely have a key role to play in hearing those voices, but also in bringing those voices to community planning. In the final question, I will direct it to Caroline. Initially, you talked about sometimes a conflict between demand for tourism services and an impact on communities. I just wondered what role Visit Scotland has in giving communities a voice and how services are designed and how you manage sometimes a conflict between what communities want and what demand there is for tourism services, particularly when it comes to the impact on deprived or marginal communities. Obviously, we have heard before that tourism has a great economic impact in Scotland, but some communities feel the burden more than others. Do you manage that? Yes, that is a big topic, but I am happy to touch on it today. I think that it is around balance, listening and collaboration. Covid has probably changed the way that we listened to communities because the market had changed when previously we were focused on bringing people into the country, which we are now back looking to do. However, when people were not able to come into the country, it was very much a local market, so local people were out and about. We were listening to visitors, but we were also listening through the destination organisations that we work very closely with. Whether that is at a local authority level or whether it is at a destination level or whether it is at a local tourism association level, the network that we have of listening to what is happening on the ground really came to the fore. During Covid, in particular, there were particular communities that were struggling, so we made sure that we were listening, whether that was either directly, we would reach out to them directly, or whether or not it was through those networks of associations and groups. In areas where there were arguably too many visitors at times, we could work directly with those communities and we could either switch on or switch off or switch on our marketing, depending on how that worked. In terms of perhaps the less visible communities, in terms of their access to tourism and their access to having a holiday and right to having a holiday, we have done a lot of work looking at accessible and inclusive tourism. The particular projects recently around Scott Spirit was providing short breaks through care groups for low-income families and people with disabilities. We recognise that we have a role to support everybody's right to have a break, and we do what we can through projects such as Scott Spirit to find and enable them to do as well. Thanks for that, Caroline. I do not know if anyone else wants to touch on how we are supporting and marginalising our deprived communities. I know Mark, you did last week. Again, just to add a couple of things, I suppose, building on a point that Pauline made, that through community planning we have built relationships with a wide range of partners. It is very much working with aim that you then tend to work with the front line to feel like the community. We are part of the fire enforcement around HMOs. We work with the local authorities as they go about establishing the licensing arrangements for an HMO. That gets us to work with the housing partners and then you pick up intelligence and use that to reshape what we do, but you also work with communities. For example, in Glasgow, working with the HMOs, you come across the new migrants to Scotland. You build relationships primarily for us around fire safety, but you are also then about making them feel welcome, included in the community. You use the intelligence that comes from just those daily interactions with the community or the partners who work more closely with the community to get that insight. What we have said to our local officers is that you shape your local plan, our strategic plan, which is a national plan for Scotland, but you shape it around the loyp and shape it around that intelligence that you pick up through that day-to-day interaction. That is within their gift to then use the resources in that area to make sure that they are hitting the right priorities for the community, not just us sitting in headquarters and campus lying who have got responsibilities for the strategic plan. That is the balance that we are trying to work out through that. It is very much about what Stephen Steeve said, that you empower the local staff to go build the relationships and then use the insight from that to shape what they do on a day-to-day basis, working directly with those communities. It is really powerful when you see it happen and we have given you some examples in your submission where you can see the effect that building those relationships really has for us. That sounds like a really great process, quite a dynamic process of discovering what is on the ground and then feeding that into your strategy. We are going to move on to the next theme, which is the role of the third sector in communities and that is going to be led by Paul McClennan. Oliver Escobar last week from Edinburgh University mentioned about the need for community and co-organisations to be included as community partners. I mentioned the Housing Association's development trusts. I will probably come to myself first of all, Pauline, just on terms of that. To what extent is that happening now? I used to chair the community plan partnership when I was in East London and we used to bring some of the development trusts in that occasion on times. To what extent is that happening across the country now? What can be done around that to try and improve that going forward? I think the key was they get invited in and down again. What we would obviously like to see in what our development trusts are asking, as long as they're getting something out of it, there's again going back to it's different in different regions of Scotland. Do you know that some of the members have certainly got a bit fed up? I'm just getting going to the table just to get told what's happened. I'm not saying that happens everywhere, but certainly there is a feeling, do you know that if it's going to be across the board that everyone is there for a purpose and what you're going to get out of it? All very busy people in community anchor and development trusts across the board know yourself. What I would say is that it's not going to be piecemeal. It's going to be at an actual seat at the table, an equal partnership at the table. I mentioned TSIs before, and yes, there is a structure there that's been implemented and it works again. Some regions better than others. However, if we're going to be serious about it, community anchors have got a lot to give around this table. I think that our membership would like to strongly say, bring us round the table to have an equal say around that table, but also on the ground where it's worked really well with thematic groups, et cetera, from some of our membership. The operational side of things has worked well. As long as they have the power there, so it doesn't sit up here still. The decision making powers still lie here where they are sitting round the table and they feel that they have the say or that they know they have the say in what happens within their local communities. We'd say that it's improved in some areas. It's still got a way to go in some other areas. I suppose that's always going to be the way, but I think that, from our membership, we've definitely welcomed the chance to have more of a say at the table. In terms of that, I mean it, I suppose that's come back obviously at the top level of the community planning partnership board itself, but the thematic ones are really important. And I'll come on in a wee second, because Caroline, you mentioned, obviously, about East London, which is my own area and about the connected economy group, and I'll come on to that in a little second. Is it involvement, is it needs to be at the top, but also the thematic level as well, because I think that there is important, because you almost have the strategy, but we had to implement it. Yeah, absolutely. Implemented is the key thing. Absolutely. The thematic ones, the operational ones on the ground, that's where they sit, absolutely. I think there could be more of that and how would you find that involvement then with the local development trust? Again, is that mixed across here? Mixed across the board, absolutely. So again, in some regions you've said that they feel listened to, that they're actually within the thematic groups they're getting listened to. There's other regions that don't have thematic groups at all, you know, so it's very strategic and, you know, like the Leipz and the local area plans, rather than actually the community play space plans. So I think there needs to be a commonality across the road. I mean, I would also, you know, every community is different, so it's not an easy job, everyone realises that, but actually inviting the development trust to realise it's difficult, want to be around that table to help make it better as well, you know, so that they have, you know, their communities can improve while they go. Pauline, thanks for that. Caroline, I'll come across to yourself, because you mentioned around about the thematic group and the connective group particular, and about Covid, and I was part of that group when I was a council at the time and whatever, and that approach worked. I just wondered, do you find that approach across the rest of Scotland? Or again, like Pauline, do you find that that's mixed across here? Because again, I know there needs to be some variability, if you like, in different parts of the country, but one of the key lessons for us is picking up on what works and what could work in terms of that and sharing best practice. Across the rest of Scotland, where do you find your involvement in the thematic groups and at the community planning board level as well? Yeah, it's very mixed. I think it's probably the way I would put it. I think we, there are some community planning partnerships that we are not particularly involved with, and that's really around the agenda that they, or the priorities and the outcomes that they are striving for and the degree to which tourism and the visitor economy is seen as part of that. I think in Eastlodian, and I think actually during Covid there were a number of subgroups across various CPPs that were looking at recovery and tourism was part of that. On perhaps a more formal basis, I can use Dundee as an example. So there's the, sorry, excuse me, the Dundee partnership, which is the CPP for the City of Dundee. Within that there is a work in economy subgroup or a board that they, as they call them, and then the Dundee tourism leadership group feeds into that. So our involvement is through the Dundee tourism leadership group and that a report goes up to the work in economy board on a regular basis, which then feeds up to the main board. So every, there are some where we have little involvement. There are some where we are part of subgroups on a permanent basis. There are others where Argan and Bute, where we work with the local destination organisation and twice a year we provide an update. So I think it's really, it goes back to, you know, what is relevant for that particular community. So I don't think there is a one-size-fits-all approach and we are there to respond to the degree to which visitor economy and tourism can help with deliver the local outcome impact plans. Okay, thank you for that. Can you know, we're just going to move on to the next question. That's candy. Actually, sorry, Valerie wanted to come in. I think that one of the, we had an event not long ago looking at mental health and the people who were the most impactive speakers on that day were an organ, a third sector organisation, housing association and a further education college. I think that sometimes the role that other organisations play that might not necessarily pop to the front of your head as being the most appropriate to be invited actually has the most to give. And it's important that we open our ears to organisations who have a role to play within a community and, as you say, anchor organisations. The third sector interface teams are small and we, as Police Scotland, we know how much work is involved in community planning, the administration, the preparation, the involvement. And it's a huge ask, I think, for third sector interfaces to participate at the level required. I think that they require some more support because the people they are representing, the third sector that they're representing, are so crucial to the work that needs to be done, particularly in the world of earlier prevention because of the inequalities that we're seeing. So I speak highly enough of the third sector, I think, that they really need a place at that table in order to drive change and also that we need to listen to voices from other organisations, anchor organisations that are within the community planning structure. Whether that's at the executive level or the thematic level, that would be for the local teams to decide, but I definitely think that third sector needs to be involved in the executive level and possibly a couple of organisations from the, as I say, you don't understand what another organisation has to give in their involvement until you start to scratch the surface and try to understand a bit more about their role and the responsibilities that they see for themselves within a particular subject matter. That takes me on to my next question and I fully agree with the points that you're making because the next question is really just talking about the role that CPPs should have in delivering community wealth building aspirations and you kind of touched on that because it's almost these groups that hold the local community together to a certain extent and to what roles should CPPs play in helping to deliver that. So you've kind of answered that question and it was a great lead and I've probably come in to Stephen and Marker and about that as well, about the thoughts and about that in your regard. You kind of touched on that Marker and about the kind of work that you do almost handy in bed, the community, I suppose community wealth building that's kind of going on now. So I don't know if you want to touch on it a wee bit more and again with Stephen, but just build on that. I'll maybe kick off then and hand over to Stephen. Just reflecting on the Covid period, I think one of the things that comes through quite strongly is that resilient communities were able to cope better with the impacts of Covid. It's not real surprising that, but what we also saw, I think, across a period in some of the more challenging communities is people and organisations stepping up. Whether that was because, you know, we were all, not always, but many people were home working so we had time and capability and capacity that we could offer to communities through the pandemic. But it meant for organisations like us that there was a vast amount of resources to work locally with and then we would get intelligence about the most vulnerable people to make sure that we were there as partners to support them. Now, whether that was bringing shopping to people, bringing prescriptions, you name it, it gave us a capacity and a reach into communities that we'd perhaps struggled with in some areas before. How you build and sustain that out with a pandemic is a massive challenge and that goes back to, I think, Pauldyn's point. There are anchored organisations within communities that if we can get the relationships with them and through them into communities, you can build that resilience and use it for other purposes, not just an emergency response to a pandemic, but the day-to-day activities that then empower a community and that helps to address some of those other issues that we spoke about last week again as well. I think it's a really important agenda for us. Whether they should be at the CP table, whether they should be at the thematic level, I mean, I think, again, as Valerie was saying, that's really a matter for local decision making, but if they're to be a statutory partner, I mean, I would certainly welcome them because I think they'll get something to offer that the rest of us will struggle to have and Steven much closer to the local level of all of that than I am, but it's an incredibly powerful area, I think, that we've got some experience of the pandemic to now reflect and build upon. I agree wholeheartedly. I think that the CPPs are an excellent forum, an excellent network, and our local practitioners, I don't think they really see what badge people are wearing. It's about what you can bring, what your solutions are, what your ideas are. So I fully support that. The more ideas that go into that, the better. And I think capturing that momentum, building on it, with the Covid period, it did force organisations to revisit a different set of challenges. I think we demonstrated through that some really resilient communities. I'm trying to use that network, continue to build it, and then continue to support the communities as key. It's a bit of a dab, I mean, community wealth and Covid, absolutely, but community wealth building, there is development just across, our community anchor is doing it across the country at the moment. I think, does it sit with CPP? I think there's definitely an element, probably does, because asset transfers, et cetera, sit within the local authorities, usually under that community plan structure of some sort. I would say, we've not mentioned local governance review up till now, but I think that definitely goes hand in hand with community wealth building, I think, and CPP inquiry and reviews. It'll be interesting to see what comes out of that. I believe it's back on the agenda, which is great news. So, if a local governance review comes out with something and looks at each of the individual CPPs, see what the local areas are requiring, what the cities require, how local does it need to get, or how local do people want it, I think that's going to be really interesting. Ultimately, it's about whatever makes it better for communities and supports local councillors, supports the local authorities to do the job within the communities right direct within it. So, I think community wealth building is a long journey to go on with some of that to change the power, which is also where the local governance, trust within the local communities to make things happen and deliver on contracts just the way other services and other organisations can, so communities can do it. Whether it's under the community planning structure, I would say, question mark still, because I think local governance review will be able to highlight where the areas are and where it sits. Thank you. Thanks, Camilla. Thanks very much, Paul. So, I'm going to pick up on the next theme, which has been mentioned a little bit, loyps. And I think, so mark, you talked about the kind of dynamic between the loyps and it was great that you brought that in and what's going on in the ground. So, maybe I'll go to Valerie, be interested to hear how your organisation aligns priorities with those in the loyps and the locality plans. And can you do you find, and you may have touched on this already a little bit too, do you find that there might be a conflict with your own organisational priorities and how would you work with that? Like Scottish Fire and Rescue, Police Scotland try their best to align their local policing plans, which emanate from the annual policing plan for the whole force into the loyps. Obviously, there's aspects of the annual policing plan and local policing plans that community might not see as relevant to them, but it's still important. So, things in relation to radicalisation, counterterrorism, et cetera, they might not necessarily see that, but on the whole, we do try to make sure that our local local plans align with the local community planning loyp. I suppose that the only niggle with that is that, potentially with all plans coming to the same place, sometimes the main plan for the loyp can become a bit of a huge document. It's gathering too much information from too many people and then it becomes a bit difficult. And that becomes the moralising for members of the community planning partnership as they start to see that they can't necessarily achieve all the aims and objectives within the period set. So, we're trying to make sure that, yes, we're aligning our targets, our aims and objectives within the loyp, yes, but it's important that we don't put absolutely everything into that because it's unfair in the community planning partnership. I was listening to Dr Esgabar the other day's contribution. The fact that it is such a small group in some areas in relation to community planning management of the organisation can become an overburdeness if we've got too much within that. So, we have to be realistic about what we can achieve in the time set. And sometimes that means an organisation like ours will only behold stuff that's specifically ours as opposed to putting that in with the community planning loyp. Thanks very much, Hott, for that. We've got a few more minutes on loyps. Does anyone else want to comment on it? Pauline? Yeah, maybe I added that. Again, regions in different regions that work differently, but certainly where it's worked best is where community action plans are from a bottom-up approach rather than still the top-down to it. I think that it's still quite relevant to notice that community action plans from the community anchor or third sector organisations aren't always at the first step. They're sometimes just joined in. And again, it's not being at the front of the table. It's not being at the front of influencing it, and I think that could be improved on. Also, it's probably more a personal thing not right from the membership, but we talk about investment the more than improvement and just improvement. It's investment in communities, it's investment and it's not always just about improvement. It's about the long-term, the long-term planning for it. So I'd be interested to see some changes within even just the terminology of things as well. Thanks very much for that. And Caroline, you wanted to come in. Yes, just I think often that there are a lot of plans and a lot of strategies that we are all working with, and I think understanding the interlinkages between them is often a bit of a challenge, particularly at a national organisation where we have sort of strategic themes that we are working to and trying to integrate those across the 32 community planning partnerships is a challenge. From our side, we are, as I said before, are linked to the national strategy for economic transformation and within that, the national tourism strategy, which is Scotland Outlook 2030, and within that strategy, the community is very much embedded within that national tourism strategy through two particular themes, thriving places and passionate people. So I think if you're looking at it from a top down or from a bottom up approach, I would hope that the linkages between the different plans and strategies can clearly be made. We would work at an area level, so a local authority level, largely through the destination strategies. If I use the example of Fife, for example, so they have a five tourism and event strategy and which is led by the local authority, and therefore that would then link across into the loyp. So whereas there may not be a direct route into it, I suppose I just wanted to make the point that I think there are clear links that can be made between the tourism strategies that we deal with and the loyps. And one other point that I just wanted to mention was around the regional activities. So as a national agency, we're doing more work at a regional level through regional economic partnerships. And I think it's perhaps a point to note around looking forwards as the regional economic partnerships are starting to develop. What is that link between loyps community planning partnerships and then the growing amount of regional activity that is happening? And I'll know there are certain things that can be dealt with at a regional level rather than perhaps a community planning partnership level. Thanks very much for that. Interesting to hear your perspective again about the cluttered landscape of different plans and strategies and how do we get the coherence across that. And I think that's not just with the community planning partnerships, it's across the field I think. Okay, we're going to move on to the next theme which is measuring impact and Marie McNair who's joining us online will lead on that. Thank you, convener, and good morning, panel. I'll direct my first question to Evin and Valerie. We heard last week how difficult it can be for CPPs to demonstrate impact. Given your role as a statutory body, how can CPPs measure the impact of activities and how they make the connection between local activity and broad outcomes? Thank you. As I said, I'll put it to Stephen or Valerie. Stephen's coming in, that would be great. Stephen's going to come in and then we'll go Valerie. Of course, Valerie, that's okay. Yeah, I think it's a really difficult question. A lot of the works we're talking about is preventative work and how do we measure the things that haven't happened as a result of that work. A couple of examples that I could give, there's a recent initiative we've done in Aberdeen and it was related to the number of secondary fires, so there was a really clear ownership that sat with us and it was really measurable. So we've done a significant piece of work with Police Scotland, Rangers, schools, local media, and we've driven down those fires over a period and we've proven that success. But what that can't measure is the impact that's had on the local community, the impact on services, the habitual nature that people were taking, really bends away, setting them on fire in the local wildlife reserve, so it's impacting the quality of life, it's impacting on the wildlife. So there's a number of different aspects there that we couldn't measure. With that one, we had something that we could. There are other examples of safe spaces around violence against women and the stations are open and available and we can connect to different organisations. But how do we measure how that is impacting on the community? It's available and it's there, but it's not that we've got a specific number we can put against that. We do employability schemes across the country, whether they're for offenders or whether there's school age children through our youth volunteers and it's all about preparing people to go into the workplace, or preparing them to go on to positive destinations. So over a lengthy period of time we can see the outcomes, but it's very difficult to measure how much of that impact is a result of the work that we do. We do have a number of tools that we use to evaluate these initiatives. Within the service we have an initiative library where one area will detail an evaluation and we try to share that across areas, improve on it as we go. Likewise, the Scottish Community Safety Network has a case study library that we feed into and other organisations feed into. That production of those case studies and the production of the evaluation is quite time consuming. I think that some areas are much better at it than others, but it doesn't mean that other areas aren't producing the work and producing the results. So I think that we need to do some work around co-ordinating that evaluation, having a simple method to demonstrate the outcomes and probably understanding the outcomes better. As an organisation, historically, we've been quite poor at state. We're going to drive down a certain type of incident and I'm not sure that's the approach that we want to take. I think it's more about building that capacity within the community, informing people, educating them. That should be our aim, giving people tools and skills and knowledge rather than looking at the very measurable bits. So, hopefully, that answers some of your question. I've probably just clouded that slightly further. No, Mark, you were here last week, obviously. I don't know if you want to add anything else before we move on to that. Very briefly, I suppose I can wear the two hats. Last week, I was in as a representative from the community planning improvement board. I think that Stephen Touch is in something important, but how do we collate and build that information around impact? Not everything can be done on a quantitative basis. But sometimes a good case study can give you more insight and value in understanding than anything. And if you can then also, through those case studies, tease out some of the issues about replogability, how could I maybe take that learning and apply it somewhere else but in the way that it will work in that community? And I think making sure that the intelligence flows across partnerships around some of that is quite important. I think we in the CPIB have got a role in that. But as an organisation SFRS, we're also in that process that Stephen says about collating and gathering that information. So we published last year for the first time a national overview report. We'll replicate that again this year that gives up breadth and depth of what we're involved in. And then if you want, you can find some of the detail that sits beneath all of that. And I think that's the best way you can begin to show the impact rather than necessarily measure the impact. Because some of this stuff, as we said last week, was what will be decades in the making before we would truly know if some of what we're doing now has an impact. But the case studies at least give us that ability to say now what can we show. And even if it's on a qualitative, rather than a quantitative basis, that can be very, very powerful information. I think Oliver was saying something very similar last week as well. So more of that, but again, how do you share and how do you then pick it up and learn from it rather than just... It's an interesting story in itself. Absolutely. Thanks, Mark. Valerie, are you okay to make some contribution? Yep. So first of all, say prevention takes time, trust and money. And when I say trust, it's the trust that something is happening in the background. Police Scotland have an internal saying as we can't erase ourselves out of this. And it's the sticking plaster effect of doing something that will make a change. So it's really important that we take a longer term view of some of the problems. And as part of our public health approach to policing, we are encouraging our officers to think of the causes of the cause as opposed to the specific nature of the why are we here? We're here because someone has stolen something, but why did they steal something? What's going on behind the scenes that's caused that criminality to happen? So we do use a lot of data, very data-driven, not only our own, but we use the Scottish Public Health Observatory data. We use improvement service community planning data to provide that extra insight. However, one of the aspects of that is that sometimes it's quite, it might be three-yearly data, five-yearly data, 10-yearly data sometimes, and because of that it's more difficult to understand what you're doing and the effect it's having. Over the past couple of years, we've developed an opportunity to share potential suicide data. Now we're not specifically saying that person has taken their own life, but we have started to share that more quickly with public health colleagues in order that we could try to understand what's happening across. In getting that understanding that this isn't statistics, this is Mandarin information, but it's giving us a bit more real time about what the effect is. So it helps us and it helps them to do that cause-and-effect. So when you're doing, for example, a small test of change in an area, and you have to try and fail a couple of things, maybe before you hit the nail in the head with a project that you want to deliver that will make a difference. So these small tests of change can only be done through getting dynamic information from other data sources. It's taken, in 2023, 10 years down the line, this year we'll see, at the end of this year we'll see a single crime system across Scotland. It has taken us a long time to get a single system, and that will just be one of the other single systems that we're still got more to do, but we will have one single system for crime. We'll add to the single system that we have for command and control vulnerable persons, et cetera, but we're continually developing that and that takes time and money. But when I look at what's available across the 32 local authorities, they're all on different platforms, recording slightly different information, et cetera, so it makes that comparability about what works in one area and what works in another area a bit more difficult. The accessibility of that information is well, maybe not as good as it possibly could be in order to help influence decision making for other organisations, but we have to be data driven, but I would totally agree with March Point there, apart from the information that's qualitative from members of the public. Are they seeing a difference? Are they feeling a difference? And that's an important thing, but I think sometimes we can be too quick to go back and ask that question. Sometimes we have to do it on a more regular basis, and that takes you back to the question about whether we're not more engaging enough with our communities. We need to make sure that we're continually engaged and purposefully engaged to ensure that we're getting the answers that we need in order to try and mold services that we need. Thank you. That takes me nearly on to my next question and, obviously, I've been covered a bit about data sharing, but to what extent is data sharing between partners improved since 2015? And what more can we done to ensure that different bodies used local data to target interventions? And I'll pop it back to the police just now firstly and then we'll pass it on to the other stakeholders. Hallerly. Sorry, that's my problem. So there is a lot of data sharing going on. I know that an awful lot of organisations come to us and say, could you not share more information? Could you not share more data? And part of our problem has been that inability we have had up until recently of single data sources with single data rules across the whole force. But that's similar. It becomes a problem when we're looking at other data sources that are out there. That's single rule. The accessibility of a single platform which can be used for research. There are various available and Police Scotland are actively engaging with different organisations as well as Scottish Government about which platform to use to put our data on in order to do that sharing. But it's complicated. There's security issues, et cetera, that we need to consider. I'll quote information. How much information? What does it do? There's a level of ethics behind it and we're learning from organisations like the NHS and Public Health Scotland at the moment. So there's definitely things that we can do to provide more information because organisations are telling us all the time that it's really important that they have our information and we're very willing to do it. But at the same time, we need information from them too. But those single data sets, single platforms are really the barrier. It's not the lack of will. It's just the technical aspects and the hardware aspects that are possibly going to cause us a problem. What improvements have we seen since 2015, of any? Although there have been improvements because we are now aware of data that we weren't aware of before, we work closely with the improvement service. We work closely with the Public Health and we get to see that information before we were just in a bit of a Police Scotland bubble. So now we're actually looking outwards and it's through the discussions at CPPs and other meeting groups where we're able to say, do you know we've got that information, we've got that data? And that's where it really comes in so much more helpful. But it's just whether or not there's more and I'm positive there's more out there. Absolutely. I'll pop that on to the fire service and then open it up further. I'll just touch briefly on it because I agree with a lot of what we've just heard there. I think data sharing has become something that's got better over the years and I think GDPR has actually helped us in a lot of ways, clarify when's it appropriate to share data and how do you do it in a safe fashion. So without going down the rabbit hole of GDPR, I think it's actually helped. But for me, I think the key issue is not so much the data sharing, but it's the insight and the intelligence from the data. It's how do we share that with one another because just sharing data for the sake of sharing data doesn't get you anywhere. What does the data tell you and how do I then use that data as part of my organisation to target initiatives to make sure that we're getting close to the right communities and households to safeguard them and keep them safe. And I think as partnerships, I think there's more we can do in that regard about picking out from the data that's there right across all of our data sets. What's it really telling us? What is it that's giving us an issue across our community and therefore what can we do to then intervene in a way that's meaningful with that community? That's, I think, what we need to do more of, not just share the raw data. And I think having the partnerships that we've got around some of this is critical, not just across the statutory bodies, but if you look out in terms of the relationships with universities, for example, using their skill and insight and working with the research community will help us to mine that data and actually use it perhaps in a much more productive fashion rather than we've just got data and we share data, but we don't actually do much with it thereafter. It's the use of it and the insight and the intelligence from it that I'd be keen to see further developing on across the partnerships. Thank you. Thanks for that, Mark. Maria, I'm going to have to wind up and move on because we are scooting quite far past the time that we were going to close this. No, thanks, convener. Thanks very much. I'm just going to come in with some questions around the culture of public bodies and I'll direct this mark first to you and then I'll go to Valerie and Pauline and I'm going to combine two questions in the interest of time. So with your experience of working across all CPPs in what in your view makes for successful community planning and has the act led to shared budgets and a sense of collective responsibility? I think a number of things make for successful community planning. I think as we discussed last week and I'm sure you've heard from other relationships matter and I think through community planning over the years even though you see changes in personnel across different organisations it's allowed the organisations to interact much more and I think what you tend to see from that is an understanding building up that to resolve the problems that I have and Stephen gave some good examples from a fire perspective other people have got a contribution that they can make to that but in return I can make a contribution to their organisation priorities. So the relationships really matter having clear priorities for an area and their shared priorities we understand why their priorities is important and I think again post Covid what I've seen with the loyps is that there's a real sharpening of the loyps in light of the Covid experience and I think there's greater clarity in what the local priorities are and I think that's helpful. Does that lead to sharing of budgets? Not really but I think again as we touched upon last week it's not the budgets that you share that's important it's what we do with those budgets and invariable across all public bodies those budgets are employing people how do we make sure that our people are tasked in the right ways that they can work with a local community and local partners to do what's necessary to help address the issues that that community faces and I think my experience in certainly looking at it nationally you're seeing more of that across the periods since the act came into being we routinely I think are sharing more resources joining up with resources some good examples have been cited again today Wallace Town was one that's been cited in South Ayrshire really good example of where we are coming together and sharing resources across that community in ways that perhaps without community planning we wouldn't have done and I think that's probably more important than the budget side of things because the budgets are controlled through a whole variety of means that nothing to do with community planning but you can share a resource in a way that you can perhaps share a budget across public bodies. Yeah that makes sense Valerie How's it going in Police Scotland? Police Scotland yes I think that one of the things that would that obviously creates a successful community planning partnership is that it's just as Mark said the clear priorities that comes out from all our regions of Scotland who participate in community planning the other thing is partnerships in practice but not just by name so we've got an awful lot of partnerships just now we've got community planning partnerships community justice partnerships and social care partnerships committee years there's lots of partnerships but the question is have we got that shared ambition have we got the shared responsibility that requires a partnership and have we got the relationships we participated with improvement service in the collective leadership for Scotland programme and we trialled that in three areas of Scotland which proved to be successful however the people moved on and because the people moved on that was the relationship part of it it was kind of broken so there does need to be I think some consistency around about the relationships because it's the relationships that make a partnership not just an okay partnership but a really good partnership understanding your colleagues and their drivers their inhibitors in relation to progress etc what's holding them back and that's really an important part of it in relation to the clarity as well the streamlining because we see people attending partnerships but not necessarily being able to give it their all because there are so many meetings within the meeting structures definitely some necessity for some streamlining within community planning partnerships to make them successful and in relation to shared budgets as Mark said it's a it can be a bit of a frustration sometimes that we can't provide budgetary input but we do always provide resources where we possibly can and that could be in relation to sharing our design team providing access to resources that we've got not only if physical resources officers etc but services etc so we can do whatever we possibly can to try and encourage sharing without necessarily providing that budget thanks very much and Pauline with the community perspective yeah I certainly agree with the majority that's been said between Pavilion and Mark there I think clear priorities definitely but I think they always have to be reviewed I think communities the needs of communities can continually changes and I think sometimes they don't get reviewed often enough so the loyps and etc will stay as they are for whatever period of time they need to be generally reviewed regularly with communities in line same way as community action plans relationships absolutely I think there has to be a respect and a trust I think that's again goes back to the point that I made earlier regarding getting community anchors around the table and having a equal say so I'll not repeat myself but yeah I think there needs to be that sort of respect and trust between all the partners to make sure that public bodies and communities have a respect and a trust between each other so thanks very much I'm going to move on now to our final team and that's local leadership and that's being led by Willie Coffey thanks very much convener and hello to everybody I just wanted to round off this section by talking a little bit more about leadership and the value of that and what it actually is and what it looks like and so on locally I think somebody last week said it's hard to describe an elephant but you'll know it when you see it is good leadership kind of like that because I've been picking up from you all as the conversation was developing there that there are good examples of it and I think Valery you were talking about it's all to do with personalities and people's ability to drive things forward so I wonder if I could just invite a few comments from each of you to describe what you see as the key ingredients in a CPP in terms of the leadership to drive it forward maybe start with Pauline thank you I suppose I sort of led into it with the trust and respect isn't it, you know there isn't one type of leader within any community every community is different so the leaders are different you know that you know they have to be open to lots of people's views and be able to listen and then put that into practice so I think the leadership rules also come in different forms whether you know I talk of community anchors and development trusts obviously but you know housing associations there's different sector organisations within those areas that all take different slightly different approaches and also have different leadership rules within the community so yeah I mean I think it comes in all different but I think respect and trust and listening to people and being able to adapt to what the reasons are and also let go of control sometimes you know like so it's not always about you know the control that you know the councillor or government or anybody you know local people have a lot of control there and I think I said it earlier on of working together makes everyone jobs better doesn't it you know so it actually improves the community if you let go of a bit of control or a bit of power whatever you want to call it to actually make a community better so very much inclusiveness right across the board Thanks for that Stephen, Mark maybe a comment or two please Yeah I think Pauline summed up well there I think worth noting that the work of partnerships over the last few years really has been challenging through Covid you know you can come into a meeting people you've never met it can be entirely online it's a really it's quite a challenging environment to build a team and to have that leadership I think we've done it quite well so I've got quite a lot of hope that we're in a position now as we're starting to get back around the table we've been through something we're now in a position to push on from there I think we'll see that trust development the sharing of power I think that sharing of power locally it's part of the culture now I think we will see it we've done it and I think we're in a position now to really advance it is my own take and it's certainly from my own organisation at my own experience of partnerships thank you could I maybe hop to Valerie and then maybe Caroline that's all right yeah thank you just going back to my last but I think it's that first of all a good leader facilitates as opposed to instructs and directs so they facilitate that conversation keeping it online except keeping it focused um think that that ability to make sure that the community planning partnership as that clear focus however is the most important aspect of it I'll just mark comment is obviously can't eat an elephant so don't even try to it's an important aspect of what we're trying to do here there's an awful lot of work that could be done within a community planning partnership but you have to then become more focused about what can we physically do here what's going to be what can we do within we're three here five years or seven here whatever our target is what's for aspirations aspirations are one things but what are we actually going to achieve within the short of period of time with the partners and have we got everybody signed up and I think that the leadership and the leadership is the facility and has to do that some of that off table conversations building trust building relationships connecting people across different organisations in order to facilitate that better conversation I would agree with all of the points that the other panellists have made for me I think it's around it's around that skill to be able to bring people together to maintain the focus on the priorities so that the cpp is seen as being effective and arguably is effective I think the other couple of points I would make one is I think that the cpps need to be or to recognise a degree of agility as well so to be able to understand that things may other things may come in agendas may come in and to have that broad scope so that they can understand all the different positions from all the different organisations and facilitate those so that everybody feels that they're contributing and I guess the final point was there is a huge difference between the organisations that sit around community planning partnerships from national organisations to small community groups and I think the skill of the local leadership is around ensuring that everybody feels that they've got a part play in the community planning partnership whether that's at a very small level or at a significant level and that for me is the essence of whether a community planning partnership is succeeding because it's able to involve everybody no matter what they can bring to the table and that's quite a challenge I think but as we've hopefully demonstrated some community partnerships are delivering on that Thank you I might just ask one final question convener if there's time again I think I've been picking this up from your comments but I'll just ask you finally if you agree that we're seeing more shared leadership in the community planning partnerships than perhaps was originally the case when they began a long time ago and it was very much driven by the local authorities are you seeing that broadening and widening of leadership roles taking place and maybe have Mark an opportunity to come in? Yes I'm old enough long enough in the tooth to remember when community planning first came in 20 years or so ago and facilitating discussions across some CPPs and what was evident then was for the first time some of these organisations were actually coming together people didn't know one another never mind the organisations the individuals didn't know one another now there are exceptions I've heard about some bodies perhaps not being fully represented in community planning as they may well be but I couldn't envisage that scenario of 20 years ago now I think local organisations talk almost on a daily basis people know individuals I can pick up a phone and speak to Pauline because I've seen her at meetings and we'll discuss stuff and that building with the relationships over the last 20 years I think has been one of the the key strengths that's come out of community planning whether intentional or just by circumstances take your pick but I think that's given I think a platform that therefore you get that built and shared understanding of the local priorities across the leadership in communities and I think that's invaluable to me in community planning actually working and I think that's something we should have a look at and kind of learn from how do we maintain that quality of relationship at a local level and ensure those organisations are talking not just about the business stuff but out with that and building the quality of the relationships because that's what really drives things Thank you Would that be your experience as well Pauline, would you share that? Yeah, I think definitely it's improved you know so as I say again I feel like I broke record about different regions do it in different ways you know like so there's pockets definitely in the country that maybe don't do it as well and could improve but whether that's a standard tool for community plannings or something like that that's maybe needed so that they learn of that there's a learning going across the country about the ones that are doing it really really well you know like and are involved in the communities so I never want to take away from you know that I'm not going to name anything but that you know that we should learn off each other communities learn off each other all the time so so should community planning partnerships and what works well in different other areas so but yes I would say in general it's it's got there I mean the community empowerment act has definitely made a difference of communities being taken more seriously but yeah there's still a way to go I would say still though because there's more and more that communities want to do for themselves and local leadership within those being encouraged and supported and quite rightly through Scottish Government with Empowerment Acts and community wealth building bills and various other things you know so there's lots more to do but yeah I would in general it's it's moved forward just yeah we need to we need to keep talking about what else needs to be done thanks Pauli maybe a last comment Valerie Carly just to wind us up I would suggest that probably I've definitely seen Police Scotland being your officer's chair community planning partnerships across Scotland not often but regularly enough we've got 13 divisions and there are 32 local authorities so there's 32 planning partnerships trying to spread that equity across the board is difficult for any single organisation particularly the national organisation but the other thing is it's not only about the chairmanship of the community planning partnership but it's also administration of that and we know that the administration can be and will be difficult and we've just heard about what a good leadership a good leader is and be able to do that as well as your day job is a big ask of anybody within that executive team so it is a big commitment and one that does have to be shared and there's no easy way to do that but we'd always try I think there's not one organisation in community planning that would shirk away from that responsibility unless really pushed because of other demand Thanks Valerie Carly Yes and just to add again I would agree I was going to make the point that Valerie made around the administration of the community planning partnerships which I think in the main still continues to fall to the local authorities and I think that's a really essential role that they play that continuity which is important and therefore if we're able to rotate the chair side of things then I think certainly my experience through the Angus Community Planning Partnership has been that that's been the case to kind of share the load a little bit I think it has been a success bringing these what was potentially a disparate group of organisations together over the last I guess 20 years more recently for us has been a really useful exercise I think we have got more understanding of what we are doing as different organisations and how we can collectively work together but also a better understanding of what communities want and what communities need and if we can do that more efficiently and more effectively then that has to be a good thing Thanks for that Carolina I believe I'm getting another question from the convener there's a little bit more time than I thought it's probably more for the police in fire colleagues and we know that the improvement services got a checklist for community planning that includes understanding issues about governance and duties to facility community planning and so on and you have to take reasonable steps to make sure that it that it happens carefully and properly and so on how do you make sure that you comply with that kind of requirement? Well again I think if you look at us Stephen can maybe add to this that across each of the 32 areas you know we are represented at the CP board we'll also be active across a range of the partnerships that then sit under the CP be itself and I think what we do is to make sure at a national level that those arrangements are in place and I say through the planning arrangements we make sure that the LSO the local senior officer for an area has that ability to make sure that they can adapt the local plan to suit the local needs of the area so that's the kind of very much of the approach that we take mean Stephen can speak more from the say the sharp end of all of this but for us that's been a very important message throughout the time of the service that you know our strap line is a national service delivered locally well you can only do the local part if you're locally embedded through the CPP with your partners in the community itself and that's very much part of the DNA of the organisation I don't know if you want to add to that Stephen I think Valerie touched on the difficulty as a national service when you're structured in such a way we've got 14 local senior officers trying to service 32 CPPs but we have local commanders in each area that's responsible for that so it's as Mark says it's about us delegating power down the way and very much learning and listening to what we're hearing on the ground to then support it as a national body Thanks Stephen Valerie, how does the police how does Police Scotland ensure that you meet those requirements that are just outlined there? So the improvement service offers an awful lot of information to prospective members of community planning partnerships and it's important that we try to adhere to that I think however that the actual situation is that we've got people attending not necessarily the executive team but possibly within the thematic groups and that will maybe be delegated and potentially even delegated again because of the effect of the volume of meetings that our officers have to attend particularly our senior officers have to attend as I said community planning partnership is just the one partnership but of that partnership there are so many others that are equally as important such as community justice community safety children's panels et cetera there's a huge amount of other work involved but possibly preparation for officers moving into the community planning could be better but tends to be that they've all had an opportunity to dip their toe in the water as they've been promoted through the ranks because they've all been involved in locality groups thematic groups all the way up to the executive group okay thank you very much for those contributions convener thanks very much willy I'm just going to come pop back in and again direct another question to the police Scotland and the fire and rescue service so maybe to mark so section 16 of the act places a duty on the Scottish Government to promote community planning and I think we'd be interested to hear to what extent this is happening for example in ministerial letters of guidance budget decisions or national strategies do you have a sense of that so mark maybe I'll go with you and then I'll come to Valerie okay yep so as a national service we have to operate against the fire and rescue framework for Scotland so essentially Scottish Government's priorities for the service and within the national framework there's a clear direction to us about the importance of partnership working particularly through community planning but just as we're hearing from police Scotland not exclusively so so very much part of that message and that priority setting from government is the importance of partnership that in turn is then reflected in our strategic plan we have a priority an outcome set around that so we can meet the national ask and then that tears its way down through the planning frameworks of the organisation and then culturally around that as we say it's very much about how do you empower people to then act within that framework so between us and government I think it's very much part of their ambition for the fire services to be that act of partner within community planning and through that that adds to community safety and therefore to help us to achieve the outcomes that we see how to achieve so very much in partnership with what PUN's intended with government on that that this is a very very strong message from them that's very heartening to hear that there's a framework that puts that partnership work right in the centre there Valerie yes section 32 of the police and fire reform act requires us to work in partnership and to work in relation to prevention so yes it is very much part of our organisations culture within legislation and also within our wish to be that we work in partnership with other organisations and that obviously comes as I say from the initial piece of legislation that governs our acts and processes in relation to connect other aspects as I say we participate across the board we have really close links with Scottish government in a variety of different departments and I suppose the only the only fly in that ointment is the fact that it is across so many different departments and some of these issues that community planning partnerships that deal with it's not just the communities safer communities team or direct within Scottish government deals that it covers a wide range of different things from health, homelessness income and enterprise regeneration there's an awful lot involved in it and so therefore it's not just about the one department it's about the connectivity between government departments that would really helps to make that connectivity at the community planning a bit more real Thank you very much for that it's been actually very interesting I mean that brings us to the end of the session it's been very interesting to hear from all of you the different experiences of community planning working into here how embedded it is and clearly is a bit of a direction of travel and there's a challenge around how do you get everybody around the table and not have it be this thing that I think somebody said earlier that it becomes overwhelming you have an overwhelming strategy plan that people actually feel they can't actually get the action on the ground but I think it seems to be a very dynamic process and it's been really good to hear from all of you today so I'm now going to suspend the meeting to allow for a change of witnesses On our second panel we're joined by Derek Shaw who's the director of innovation and place from Scottish Enterprise Karen Jackson who's the director of strategy partnership and engagement at the South of Scotland Enterprise Sharon McIntyre who's the head of career information advice and guidance and Dave McCallum who's the head of operations south-east at Skills Development Scotland and Ian Sinclair who's the area manager at Caithness in Sutherland Highlands and Islands Enterprise now welcome our witnesses to the meeting as mentioned to the first panel we'll try to direct our questions to a specific witness where possible but if you would like to come in please indicate this to the clerks by typing an R in the chat function and Sharon and Dave just in the interest of time I'd be keen if one or other of you can pick up if you can decide in the background between yourselves who's going to come in on an answer that would be great or maybe a colleague will direct a question to one or other of you and if that's hopefully gets the response that would be good there's no need to manually turn your microphones on and off as we'll be doing that for you automatically so we're going to start with the theme of challenges facing communities with Annie Wells who's also online thank you convener good morning panel Scottish Enterprise's submission states that their customer base is the business community how well are businesses engaging with CPPs and what more can be done to ensure businesses both small and large can help identify and meet local priorities and I think I'll go to Derek for that one first please convener thank you very much indeed for the question so Scottish Enterprise is represented on 24 community partnerships as a statutory partner and rightly commented there that I think our experience is in terms of the level to which economic development and job creation within the discussions around community planning partnerships actually feature I think there's in that extending to the involvement with business organisations I think there's an opportunity for businesses that is a community of interest if you like to play a greater role in community planning partnerships and to ensure that we're can focus on those discussions that we have at CPP boards around job creation within local communities and how that then dovetails in with the plans of CPPs thank you for that Derek I don't know if anyone else wants to come in on that one but that was probably more specifically for Derek that question I'll move on to my next question can you get on? thanks Annie yep I'll go Karen, sorry Scottish Enterprise we have a slightly easier job than Scottish Enterprise cos we engage with two CPPs so that economic focus is really important I think you'll hear quite a lot from both ASEE high and ourselves about regional economic development so in the board as particularly the CPP there has agreed that the regional economic partnership should take on that area of economic development so on the regional economic partnership we have business members do you get that voice coming through that way it's slightly different in Dumfries and Galloway where there's an economic forum again picking up that big business voice so Derek's highlighting making sure that we're hearing really directly from businesses is important both we and the Highlands and Islands Enterprise do a regular business survey just to really take the pulse of businesses in our areas again we're able to feed in a good understanding of what businesses are wanting, are needing and the challenges they're facing thanks, I'll move on to my second I know there's another I think Ian wants to come in yes, thank you good morning actually building on what Karen just said we have now begun to gather quite a bit of data in terms of how we how we interact with businesses in relation to community planning we've also managed to over the last 12 months do a my life in the Highlands and Islands survey which has encompassed both businesses and communities one of the things that I noted from our Covid experience has been just how much broader and deeper that engagement has become both between us and businesses but also between businesses and community sectors so that's been a really interesting process to to observe and I think that's an on-going process that we'll learn more from that's great Ian, thanks for that my next question is is sort of a building on this as well and it's what role do enterprise agencies and Skills Development Scotland have in promoting fair work at local level and if you have any examples of where the agencies have influenced CPPs or loypes and I think we'll go to can I go to Aya Sharan or Dave on that one first please Dave, Dave we can't hear him Dave, we can't hear you Can you hear me now? Yes, brilliant Don't know what happened there, I do apologise That's all right It's something we do try and influence and obviously it's becoming a topic of significant importance I mean we influence from young people from schools we do our careers advisors talk about fair work at an early age from broad general education from S1S3 right through the senior phase and it's also when we're talking about employability and the opportunities out there that we bring up fair work and talk about fair work not just with our young people that we support but also with our adult customers as well Is it something that's been embedded within the loypes? I think it's something that's been spoken about more now and I definitely think it'll be something that will start to see more in the loypes as we move forward but I wouldn't say it's specifically there in the CPPs that I've supported so far That's me Thanks Thanks for that Dave Anybody else want to come in on that? Question Derek Yeah, so I think at the the macro level Scottish Enterprise was an early adopter of fair work first so we require businesses that are receiving our support rather to commit to fair work principles including paying the living wage with it implementing the fairer Scotland duty which asks listies public sector authorities and agencies including Scottish Enterprise to do more to tackle inequalities by social economic disadvantage and part of this is part of our wider economic impact assessments which is a way for us to check policy and projects that we are supporting and how they impact targeted groups and certainly the CPP level the colleagues from Scottish Enterprise regularly raised the importance of fair work in the context of discussions around economic development and job creation Going back to that earlier point some of those conversations can be limited over the gorgeous by the wide range in rena of the CPP Thank you for that Derek I think Ian wants to come in Yeah, I was actually going to say something similar to Derek again we were an early adopter of fair work it's a condition of all our assistance it has been met very positively I have to say by our both businesses and social enterprises it has also I think helped us in our participation in things like developing young workforce so it does show that we are walking out like we talk it And Karen as well Yeah, just to really reinforce colleagues in Scottish Enterprise and Harlan's Islands Enterprise have said fair work is central to everything we do as the newest of Scotland's economic development agencies it's embedded in our act so it's something that we live and breathe we have something that in our act is described as our workers interest committee and that's a committee that really helps us to understand what's impacting on workers across the region and again we can take that intelligence out into the conversations we're having and as colleagues have highlighted fair work is conditional on the support that we're giving to both businesses and community organisations and that conditionality is being strengthened Thank you very much for that Thank you panel and I'll hand back to yourself convener Thanks Annie We're now going to move on to our second theme of the morning still the morning which is community empowerment and that's going to be led by Mark Griffin Thanks, convener I just wanted to ask how community participation is influenced and how your organisation operates and to ask as well whether that has changed at all how it has changed in the eight years since the community empowerment act was passed and perhaps come to Shardin first and then Derek Good morning, convener Good morning, panel Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you Yes, yes, it's good So thank you for the question in terms of SDA I'm representing information advice and guidance directorate of SDS but as a whole we're a key partner across 32 CPP and play an active role in supporting both at executive level in themes and through theme groups around tackling inequalities Now we've always as an agency had a deep commitment to our communities we're an all-age service in CIEG so we support adults as well as as Dave mentioned our services in schools and we've always had a focus on supporting our communities needs and understanding them by our local presence so for us in terms of CPPs it gives us an opportunity not only to work together with partners around our communities interests but also to represent them We are in touch with customers every day adults and children and young people so we feel that we are very connected to them in the communities that they're in In fact, we have just been working for over the last two years on a new career services blueprint you might have heard of careers by design but what that piece of work is is about how we actually enhance our community presence one of the key recommendations in that is working with partners across the careers and skills ecosystem to do much more community delivery and engagement and it's not just about delivery engagement it's about how we design services with our communities and we're very aware of the areas where we feel there needs to be a focus on supporting good outcomes so those areas where we know outcomes comparably aren't as good as other communities we've got a wealth of data through our own customer service system the data hub that we share information through CPPs we bring local market intelligence but also we bring intelligence and data around what's happened what we see happening in communities through our direct engagement with customers so our new careers by design report just launched last week actually panel we're looking to bring a much closer focus to the ecosystem the skills and careers ecosystem to how we deliver services for customers and a big part of that is putting lived experience at the heart of how we operate our services and I think that's something we bring to CPPs as well is where is the community when we're talking about specific agendas around housing, poverty, skills, employability and we very much see ourselves as a driving force for the community as well as working with partners to deliver to real community needs that have changed since Covid but we are still seeing the same community challenges that we did I would even argue 20 years ago in some different shapes and form we also in CIEG as a director have a layer poverty focus because when we look at how we are delivering services some of the barriers our customers are facing now more than ever that's related to poverty so we are working with Morag trainer who's a well-known professor in children's studies to help us SES be a critical friend to us around what are we doing about how we tackle poverty as a national skills agency and how do we bring in that focus to community planning partnerships which would maybe in some ways in the past wouldn't have thought skills agency added a direct role and I could have a direct impact on that agenda but now we can definitely see the development of CPPs I would say since the community empowerment act to understanding just important our role is in that agenda and so moving from what would have been quite sector silos before CPPs and certainly before the community empowerment act it's allowed us to work across areas across agendas across priorities that affect our local community and like other organisations we are a national organisation but very much delivering locally connected to local partners I hope that answers your question Thanks Sharon Derek, do you have anything to add from Scottish Enterprise point of view? Yes, thanks very much for the question so several years ago Scottish Enterprise put in place a place team and that was in response to I guess a number of things including the community empowerment act recognising the base making and as part of that place team we put in place partnership teams in each of the seven regions in which Scottish Enterprise is ability for and those partnership teams and colleagues within them work on those 24 CPP boards that I had outlined at the start so there's about 15 colleagues in total from Scottish Enterprise attending or participating in CPP boards and subgroups so not in a significant resource from SE I think over the last 12 months in particular we've tried to ensure that the resource that we deploy on CPPs is proportionate to overall outcomes in where we really can add the most value and I think there's guidance within the act that says that the specific contribution should depend on the extent to which CPPs' local priorities reflect individual bodies including SEs roles and responsibilities and I think that's the case for us we get limited resource both from people and financial so it is important that we prioritise that scarce resource so it's going to have the greatest impact and as Karen mentioned often and increasingly so our focus has been working with regional partners through regional economic partnerships and strategies and developing approaches there and how Scottish Enterprise can deliver activity to support those ambitions at a regional level but still working very much closely with CPPs and the resource that we deploy into them. Thanks Derek I wonder if I could come to Karen and Ian just my second question just to ask about how you go about building capacity in the more deprived areas the more marginalised rural areas how do you build capacity within those communities to make sure that they then effectively contributing to getting the voice heard and how services are delivered for them Karen, do you want to come in? Yes, sorry I think I might be having problems with my R button I apologise so that listening to communities piece is really essential for us and it's how we've shaped ourselves as we've been established so our chair and chief executive last year did 23 events across south of Scotland again just to really listen to what communities wanted of us so that phrase of the south and by the south is really important to us as we've been developing our regional economic strategy similarly that listening piece has been really important so by the end of the process we've heard from over 2,000 people across the south so by online surveys by one-to-one conversations by different workshops so just different ways of gathering insight from communities I think that point you highlight about rural communities for us is really key obviously we're a predominantly rural area we've got a within SOC we have a built enterprising communities team and they're out there on the ground working with communities across the south building the capacity and capabilities so you see them involved in community asset transfers from big to small so Langham one of our biggest other areas smaller and different kinds of support and through that capacity and capability building you see communities across the south being able to engage more effectively both in community planning but in really unleashing their ambitions as well Thanks Karen Ian, do you have any insight? We've had a good story that on mute took a while to come off yes I agree with what Karen has said I think the community capacity building element to HIE's work has been there for a long time I think at the moment this is rebuilding capacity I think we saw during Covid a real resilience survival instinct kick in for a lot of our communities and a lot of the social enterprises as well we're now in that rebuilding phase moving from resilience survival and I think we've and I can speak from my own local perspective in the north of Scotland we are investing in boots on the ground to help that process because I don't think there's any substitute for that Okay, thanks Ian I had a final question but Derek covered that in his previous answer Dave wanted to come in Yes thanks panel I just wanted to come in I mean although as STS I suppose our job not just within careers information advice and guidance but also across skills is we link people of communities in local areas especially some of those most deprived and rural areas and I think it's important here just to link in the role of some of the subgroups that feed into the CPPs and the intelligence that they bring so like a local employment partnerships how ourselves and other agencies help shape kind of how that provision is being deployed to support employment opportunities and power of the community embedding in some community asset transfers but boots on the ground that helps but it's the flexibility to be able to deploy those resources I thought that that's the good thing from a national agency that we can deploy those resources flexible to where the need is that is challenging at times but key to that as well is working collaborative with partners so when STS goes down it's not just STS it's other partners as well from local employability partnerships third sector NHS fire, police, whoever to support those communities thank you thanks for that Dave thanks coming up thanks Mark we're going to now move on to our third theme which is the role of the third sector and communities with Paul McClellan thanks coming in and good morning panel I suppose that this is the next question trying to base around about what your involvement is with third sector and how you then take it into your decision making and then into the community planning partnership and Ian, I'll probably come to yourself first of all and then probably Karen after that in terms of trying to look at it from a and Karen you touched it from a you mainly deal with rural communities and Ian would be yourself the same so Karen I'll probably come to yourself in terms of how do you engage with a rural community which could be quite dispersed and how do you engage with the third sector in particular and take that into your local I suppose community planning discussions that would be to yourself Karen oh sorry thank you for that so we have really proactive relationships with the third sector interfaces particularly in Dumfries and Galloway so regular conversations with Norma Austin Austin Hart the chief executive there to really understand what the organisations she represents are experiencing as you say that rural piece is really challenging so we need to be able to understand the challenges facing rural communities across the region so particularly during cost of living crisis that's different for rural areas and through the TSI and through our other contacts that helps us understand it the borders is in a slightly different place their third sector organisations are now coming together in the TSI so some changes in the borders there again through our communities team and through other conversations we have I think close relationships with them both TSIs are represented on our regional economic partnership so they have seats around that table and other third sector organisations and social enterprises are there as well so again at that regional level the TSIs are really key Norma in the west of the region has been doing a bit of analysis about how we see the TSI and how they're engaged so that ladder engagement piece to really ensure that they are an equal partner and their voice is heard I think that was a theme coming out particularly from Pauline at your previous session about respect and equality and equality of representation so I think the TSIs on both sides of our region are there at the table and their voices are heard Ian from yourself obviously from the other part of the country and remote and high area where do you find your experience in that regard? Yeah absolutely fundamental to any progress we make in the CPPs is the presence of the third sector at the table and in a meaningful way we before Covid were collectively across the Highlands and Islands working on that principle but I think again as I've said before Covid really brought that starkly into relief and we saw how effectively the third sector stepped up when some CPP structures simply ceased because partners had other priorities third sector stepped up I'll speak briefly about my own area I chair the Cathness community planning partnership which is a sub-regional version of the Highland community planning partnership during Covid that was effectively co-chaired by myself and the local TSI and it was the resilience effort that went in there that has formed the basis of the recovery plan that we are now coming out the other end of so without that presence and without their boots on the ground that wouldn't have been possible and wouldn't have allowed us to bring in communities of interest we have a phenomenally phenomenally well developed women's health organisation up here now which came through Covid and is now up and running and delivering really positive messages and delivering visibility to conditions that weren't previously talked about that's all within a community planning structure that is inclusive rather than exclusive Ian, thanks for that Sharon Yes, hello panel I just wanted to come in on Ian's point there for that my eye myself was up in Orkney for the launch of a new employability hub and that depends on the third sector third sector partners critical to how that will serve the community and that's with us and other statutory partners but also that it's the third sector and their role deep in communities and their focus which is around customers primarily in that area and looking at what more could be done and a significant voice around customers not telling their story communities not telling their story a number of times that that being joined up and integrated and we having a duty to do that so I think you know that the third sector absolutely vital we an SDS do all we can to promote our work with third sector we've got a strategic agreement with developing young workforce but we've extended that to MCR pathways to princes trust to youth link because we cannot do what we do on our own and the value they bring as partners are incredibly powerful and we're recognising that strategically as well as locally even in Glasgow we're making some changes to our estate strategy in SDS as you know we've got a centre in livery city but we're looking at actually why can't maybe much more integrated employability hubs why do we need you know separate premises maybe not to distant from each other as well but I do and the third sector of driving that focus as well with us and of course within a quite tighter fiscal environment that we all face it is a fantastic opportunity to get back to the act and talk about actually how we are helping customers and communities help themselves and how they support the direction of services locally as well as nationally so a massive focus in the third sector for us thank you I think that's a really important point around the shared services kind of element as well so Derek just to come to yourself from the Scottish Enterprise point of view just to from your point of view obviously looking at I suppose a much broader national base how do you involve the third sector if you like and that in that regard yeah so I guess I would just echo the the point that that Sharon made it in particular I think that having the input the knowledge and experience the locality of the third sector is absolutely critical I think what's really interesting is that latter point around co-development potentially co-location so that you're bringing together partners that really know and understand each other's organisations remits and how then that we can work together benefit the local community and I think it in terms of the challenging fiscal environment that we're seeing those opportunities that are coming to the floor more and that includes working with the the third sector as well so absolutely we encourage that and support their contribution to ACPs and the kind of supports in which they operate as well correct thank you for that thanks can we now thanks paul we're now going to move on to our theme next theme which is on loypes and locality plans and I've got a couple of questions the first one's around alignment and the second one's about around prevention and just in the interest of time I'd be grateful if we can keep our answer your answers which are so great and we really want to hear from you but if we can keep them as succinct as possible I think I'll direct this first question to Derek to start just so you know it's coming to you and then we'll go to everybody else so we've heard that loypes are the foundation of community planning and I'd be interested here how your organisation aligns your priorities with those in the loypes and the locality plans and if you find that at times there might be conflict with those plans and your own organisational priorities that thanks very much for the question so it's really very much seared benefits of local loypes as allowing partners to electively assess and agree priority outcomes that can be taken forward for delivery and bringing together those partners local people community groups that will have it an important role in identifying those priority outcomes I think for us the key is ensuring that the plans are stretching but achievable and it's not a long list of activity that ultimately partners will not be able to deliver on I think for us it's ensuring that we are clear on Scottish Enterprise's strategic priorities and where we can add value at the regional and the local level being clear on our roles and responsibilities as part of that process recognising that going back to the earlier point a lot of the outcomes and the actions within loypes and CPPs more generally are out with the remit of SE but really being clear on where we can add value relative to our own strategic priorities and then being clear on how that then relates into the outcomes the prioritised outcomes that relate to loypes and how we can support potentially the love of the autumn Thanks very much for that Maybe we could go to Karen and then Ian Thanks So we have a slightly broader remit in that we cover economic, social and environment development so a remit that puts us across most of the elements of what community planning partnerships are working on I think for us and I think you heard this from other national agencies obviously the national strategy for economic transformation that's kind of what we're doing nationally regionally we have our regional economic strategy so a focus on creating a green fare and flourishing south of Scotland and then the community plans fit into that so I think somebody was describing it earlier cluttered landscape I think perhaps a complex landscape but you do see alignment through the plans and you do see how they joined together I think for us I don't think we see any conflict with what are in the loypes and the local plans I think we see ourselves contributing across the piece and I think there's a good fit to what we do as an organisation there's also a focus on place plans so again it's a kind of slightly smaller geographic area and we're involved with local authorities in developing those so some of that flows from a borderline growth deal so again lots of plans but I do think we see a link between them That's a great day here that you're managing to pull that link through Ian, how's it going in the Highlands and Islands? Yeah it's I echo most of Curran's thoughts there and I think the only thing I would add to it is in terms of the loype we are pretty much now at a halfway point and I think somebody has already in your previous session referred to the need to make sure that those are refreshed and I think that's a process that certainly from a Highlands CPP we are embarking on at the moment and that will help us in terms of Covid recovery in terms of locality plans we in several areas of the Highlands and Islands have found them less useful because of the very small communities that we deal with all of whom tend to have similar needs expressed both pre-Covid and during Covid so we are increasingly looking at area plans rather than locality plans to encompass the fragile geographies that we deal with Thanks for that Ian just for a little bit of clarity there when you talk about area plans what kind of geography would you Yeah so that would be in terms of Highland that could be Lochaber or Sutherland or an area like that that is a more coherent geographic area Great that's helpful thanks very much and Dave I think you wanted to come in It's just that I mean as STS we feed in to the the likes we support the evidence around participation measures local labour market information and focusing on some of those areas maybe where there's young people that aren't transitioning to a positive destination we will work very closely partners to try and make sure that we support them identifying and giving them the right support but also to those areas where there's maybe more employment as well and adults we will focus and deploy our services to support that and that does feed back up into our strategic plan as well that's the link to our statutory responsibility to support all ages in Scotland That's me, thank you chair Thanks very much for that I'm now going to move on to the theme of prevention and I'd be interested here and I'll Karen, I'll start with you so that you would know it's coming to you first to what extent has your organisation taken a more preventative approach since the 2015 act was passed and what role have loypes and community planning had in your organisation's consideration of prevention So if in terms of prevention I think we're about creating opportunities if that's the same kind of area of focus so as an enterprise agency as a development agency we're working with businesses and with community organisations to really help unlock their ambition and I think for us we see that creating opportunity pieces is really key so both with our funding with the direct work we're doing one to one support helping communities develop capacity and develop their expertise that helps us prevent problems downstream so although we've now what we're celebrating our third birthday at the beginning of April we're proud of the record that we've had in the south of Scotland so we've worked with businesses to safeguard jobs and to create more jobs so about 2,200 jobs safeguarded last year and over 800 new jobs created in businesses a similar kind of support within community groups so 150 jobs there safeguarded and 18 new jobs created so for us it's about creating those opportunities so that people have decent good employment to really unlock their ambitions as they move forward Thanks for that and a great work on safeguarding all those jobs that's really critical for that part of the country and Ian how's it going up in the Highlands and Islands for a preventive approach? Yeah Yeah, so I was taking a similar approach to come in there actually in terms of our ability to unlock opportunities or to help people unlock opportunities I think I mentioned before that we have geographic and demographic communities of interest in the Highlands and Islands and in terms of prevention we see a lot of food banks which are hugely important at the moment but we are lucky also to have social enterprise in our area that are talking about community growing projects which I regard as a preventative projects so we've got lots of examples of that if you if you look beneath the surface of some of the investments that we make and that's as much in social enterprise as it is in business development and so it's good to see them in both That's great and community growing is something I'm very strongly supportive so it's great to hear that that's happening there Dave, I think you wanted to come in Yes, chair Just out on prevention I mean we're in a very unique position with our data working with local authorities and education at schools that we know the aspirations of young people who are leaving school so the employment sector and the trades they want to go into so we try and feed that up with partners with DWP into the hoips into the CPPs et cetera around what our young people want to do when they leave school actually trying to pair that up with opportunities that are coming from employers because sometimes there can be a mismatch there and then it's how we try and share that with our wider partners and the employers as well and also raising the awareness of what employers can do by offering apprenticeships to young people in special and rural areas and the opportunities that apprenticeships can bring and we do have teams that go around supporting employers to talk about fair work as well so look at the opportunities about moving their bases to the North of Scotland or to more rural areas as well so we're quite, we're data rich but we share that with our partners to try and make sure that anything that's being designed impacts whole folk communities positively. Thank you. Thanks for that and yes your, the apprenticeship schemes are critical aren't they for keeping people actually locally based so good for repopulation or maintaining population. Derek, you wanted to come in. That's very much what you did just in taking a build upon the point that Karen made so I guess Covid taught us as an enterprise agency the importance of prevention in terms of working with companies around resilience so ensuring that we have foresight through the account management service of potential future challenges that companies are facing and working with them proactively to avoid situations which could ultimately lead in and then reduce employment or potentially going under so that whole piece around how we can work with companies not only on growth opportunities which was critically important in terms of preserving and creating new jobs but also resilience and looking at productivity how we can work with companies is their productivity their overall financial position to mitigate the risks of financial challenges with businesses and I think 2021 in particular we supported the creation of about 7,000 jobs paying the real living wage so it's a demonstration of how we can work with companies that exist in jobs as well but that resilience piece is important as well as the opportunities for business growth and a number of different sectors where Scotland has a competitive advantage Thanks very much for that Derek I'm really interested to hear the perspectives around prevention there and the idea of creating opportunities we're going to move forward to theme 5 which is about measuring impact and I'm going to bring in Marie McNair who's joining us online today Thank you convener and good morning panel We heard last week how difficult it can be for cpps to demonstrate impact and given your role how can cpps measure their impact and how can they make a connection between local activity and broad outcomes and I'll pop that to skills to develop at Scotland first if that's okay Daymarie Yes, I think for us impact is particularly important there is a real focus on looking at what we can do to work towards solutions so there's a big input focus but also I think for us given what Dave was saying around data rich position we're in we would like that to be a bit more outcome based so in terms of sds's role what we would like to be able to say in our annual report especially in CIG after the year and in our new strategic plan skills for a changing world we'd like to be able to translate and communicate what we have achieved in cpps and I know that that's challenging because we're in 32 of them in their run in lead and delivered in different ways but I think moving to a more outcome based accountability model is important for us and cpps going forward in line with the original intention of the act itself around community empowerment we can see real opportunities to make it clearer quantitatively where there have been results achieved but I think it's like all things where there's a programme of work there's a project and then that's completed and then we move on to the next focus because there is a lot of focus and priorities and ensuring we use people's time across the partnership effectively to deliver on those priorities but making sure we actually build in the time to assess whether those priorities and the way we handle them the solutions we designed with the community at the heart of that thinking actually had the desired outcome that us as partners wanted to see I think that's a space we would all like to grow more into especially SDS in terms of our impact and making sure we maximise our role strategically as an organisation nationally and locally we are in a very privileged position where our role is essentially prevented of building resilience in communities in terms of career advice and employer-led skills support in particular so I would particularly welcome a much more focus and maybe space to look at how we can capture outcomes more in the future Thank you for that, Shalem Derek, do you want to add in further? Yes, thank you very much so I think that a reason organisation should point on a case-by-case basis where there's been certain impacts on outcomes from the input and involvement that we've got with CPPs but I don't think that it's consistent in terms of having a framework across all of the 32 CPP boards in terms of actually what it is going back to the loyps what it is that the outcomes we're looking to achieve the accountability for different partners in terms of delivering on those ambitions and then crucially how do we measure the impact I don't think we have a consistent framework in place to allow us to assess that other than on a case-by-case almost project-by-project basis and I'm going to go back to my earlier point in terms of the SES role in terms of economic development and job creation that then brings it even down a level in terms of our input and delivery of a particular activity and the outcomes and the measure and the outcomes and the impact of that so I think there would be benefit of looking at potentially how we can have a more consistent and perhaps streamlined approach to measuring impacts and outcomes that will then get the loyps I don't know Karen, do you want to come in? I think it's really important to recognise the long-term nature of what community planning partnerships are about so that generational return that I think other members of other panels have highlighted is sometimes a risk we're reporting on process rather than on the actual impact I'm really keen as others have highlighted to explore the outcome that the community planning partnerships are having I think we've got lots of data but we don't already always have the right sort of data and there's a question about the so what of that data so in the rural areas you'll have heard the postcode data can hide deprivation because postcode areas are so large in rural areas so it's really getting behind what the data means for me there's something really powerful about case studies and telling stories and numbers hide some of that so some of the projects we've been involved in the job numbers might be very small but it has a real impact on the community on the resilience of the community of creating spaces of creating houses of creating that opportunity piece and a number just doesn't tell you that so I think we need to I think Mark Macathear in your previous session was focusing on that that storytelling piece again looking at some of the work that Scottish Government's doing as part of their regional policy review they've been highlighting the importance of intelligence hubs so bringing organisations together in regions to really get behind the data and rather than I think Derek was highlighting rather than doing it lots and lots of times we do it once and we do it well so there's an opportunity there I think there's also something in community planning partnerships about relationships so one of the real impacts there is that trust and how organisations really understand each other in a different way and again that's not a number based thing that you can measure Thanks, Karen I think that's me can we now hand it back to you? Thanks very much, Marie as always very interesting piece around the challenges of the data and the importance of it I'm going to pick up the theme culture the culture of the public bodies and I'm going to combine two questions I think I'll start with Derek so you know it's coming so as a statutory partner I'd be interested to hear how do CPPs operate in practice at a local level have you noticed if there's anything that's changed since the 2015 act and also with your experience of working across across CPPs what in your view makes for successful community planning so work in practice has it changed and successful community planning? Thanks, convener for those questions so I think what we have seen since 2015 is partners coming together and being aware of what those partners and those organisations actually do in terms of their role so building relationships I think has been key since 2015 and I think we've seen greater collaboration greater knowledge sharing greater intelligence across partners as well as local organisations as well which I think has been hugely beneficial I think in terms of what's been successful has been those those relationships the ability to share data to share insight how we use that data intelligence then to build out actually what the priorities are at a local level and engaging with community organisations to get their input into the issues the challenges and also the opportunities and then collectively working together to develop plans on how we can take action forward I think has been important so I think for me and for Scottish Enterprise the success and the change from 2015 is that ability to bring partners, organisations communities community organisations together and share information sharing knowledge and build those relationships that probably certainly within Scottish Enterprise maybe we didn't have to the extent we have now Thanks very much for that to clear that relationships that trust building is so important Ian I'd be interested to hear from you about those three questions Yeah I agree that relationships are absolutely fundamental I think there are good examples in the Highlands and Islands of CPPs that work because they have an effective leadership structure but also that they have an effective leadership structure that doesn't stand or fall on individual personalities I think that's really important and also we find that horizontal integration is sometimes easier than vertical integration which sounds a bit counterintuitive but I think we've been very good possibly across Scotland certainly in the Highlands and Islands at the kind of collaborative integration that horizontal integration where we have found more challenges has been that vertical moving from senior leadership to thematic to area geography based and I think that continues to be an issue for a number of our CPPs partially based on size partially based on geographic location but it's a work in progress Thanks very much for that insight and Karen, what about in the south of Scotland So we've seen less of that time period obviously because we've been a much newer organisation and we came into effect a week after the first lockdown so our experience of working with colleagues has been online but I think that really cemented some strong relationships right from the beginning so we came into a global pandemic that obviously nobody had experienced before and nobody was expecting but it made sure that we were really focused on one thing and that was making sure that our communities and businesses were able to survive through unprecedented circumstances so it cemented us as South Scotland Enterprise our two local authorities Visit Scotland and Skills Development Scotland we created Team South of Scotland and we're still meeting weekly just to do that really clear focus discussion about what needs to be done at the beginning we were focused very much on getting money out of the door to businesses and community groups but that has cemented and built really trusting relationships which I think has stood us in good stead as we move forward it's also enabled us to explore jointly funded projects so working with partners including third sector and development trusts to look at how we might come together to fund projects now whether that's formally bad as community planning I'm not sure but it's certainly a good demonstration of that partnership working thank you very much for that response and now Skills Development Scotland Dave I think you want to come in and then Sharon I've been quite lucky that I've sat in 10 different CPPs in my time with STS but even speaking to colleagues CPPs are different across the country now they need to be slightly to serve the communities that they're responsible to but there's got to be some consistency to support that and I think in the previous panel you had that we're talking about leadership now our CPPs have got strong leadership but it's how we share that leadership across partners that was quite hard for our national organisations because we haven't got the resource to support around the administration and that's usually down to the local authorities but I do think there's something there about sharing that leadership across but that also helps to build the relationships online but we do need to help with some of that consistency of messaging and maybe structure to make it consistent across the 32 CPPs but we still need that nuance to make sure that it's serving the communities that they're responsible to thank you thanks very much for that yes it's a bit of a balancing act isn't it there that nuanced approach but also that consistency Sharon you wanted to come in yes thanks convener and I just wanted to come in off the back of many points actually but I think for us in terms of that kind of critical recipe for success you know looking at the very complex and challenging role we have around balancing the partnership and the participation that is very challenging I do think that where they work very well it's around an ethical commitment to those communities still that experience poor outcomes or do at any one time I also think there's a collaborative culture that needs to be formed and you can see that in quite a few CPPs I do think there's also a leadership that's more facilitative and I know that's come through in your feedback and it came through this morning which is around bringing organisations together and understanding what organisations can actually do and can't around a particular priority and even thinking of the kind of different shapes and sizes and nuances there's also opportunity at this stage around looking at what those guiding principles are because when you talk about culture that's something that needs to be constantly focused on supported and it's back to the roots of why we're actually here and what we're set out to do and so something like a charter or some guiding principles I think would really help not for a one-size-fit all but bring the learning of how others are operating and helping each of them become more effective Thank you Thanks for that Of course that would come from Skills Development Scotland right? We all got to develop our skills there I'm now going to move on to the theme of local leadership and bring in Willie Coffey for that Thanks very much convener and hello to everyone it kind of leads us nicely into this question about broader issues about leadership and you'll be aware of course since the act came into force in 2015 we would expect and hope that we see more examples of shared leadership within the community planning partners and several of you have talked about that and so did the previous panel is that your experience? Is it broadening out or do you see it still largely still sitting the leadership role still sitting within the local authorities? I could maybe start with Iain cos you made some comments earlier that were quite quite appropriate I think Iain so over to you Iain Yeah okay thank you Yeah really important and my experience and our experience in the Highlands and Islands is that it is not led or seen to be led by local authorities I think some of the measures that are in place in terms of the chair of the CPP rotating on a regular basis between partners helps that that sense of shared leadership is inherent in that also on a again I'll come back to a Highland community planning partnership level it's really important that there's local leadership on the ground as well and I think we've been quite lucky in that we've managed to not only find good clear leadership but that we've been able to combine that with our aspirations to bring the third sector in where we can so relationship building has been particularly good our co-chairing during Covid with the third sector I think stood us in really good stead for where we are now and on a wider Highland and other CPPs in the Highlands and Islands level I think we are looking back to where we were in 2015 we are in a much much better place Thank you Iain I wonder Derek Scottish Enterprise could you offer a perspective on that issue Yes so I think each of the CPPs and the local authorities are different and I do think by enlarge our experience on the CPPs and the subjects to which we are involved the leadership has tended to come from local authorities so I think that going back to Iain's point where there's an opportunity for that shared leadership I think it's to be welcome I do think we need to recognise the strengths of the individual partners to the CPPs and what value they can actually bring and also recognise actually in areas of activity where we can't actually add value so I think that goes right up to the leadership as well but I think a more shared leadership approach is to be welcome ensuring that partners on the ground at the local level have the ability to shape and influence the future trajectory that we see is a good thing Thanks Derek Maybe a comment from you Dave on behalf of Skills Development Scotland Thank you Yeah I agree I think it's mixed there's some areas where it is shared leadership but it is from my experience it's mainly local authority but where I do see shared leadership is the local authorities I have community panel and officer groups where the key lead officers if you like from the local authority and partners come together to help set the agenda for CPPs I've seen that be six monthly rotations of leadership from the various organisations but I do think going forward that's something that we do need to try and do is make sure that there's that shared responsibility in the leadership of the CPP but it is challenging as well to support the resources of the minutes the agenda is organised and etc and that usually comes back to the local authorities and maybe there's a different way to look at that but that always comes back to the local authorities thank you thanks David and maybe lastly Karen on behalf of South of Scotland Enterprise thanks so I think similar to others we see different organisations picking up on different themes so some good examples of the third sector leading around digital exclusion for example excuse me so where it where it they have a strong interest and strong expertise and perspective they tend to leave there in the borders and the police were leading on a good place to grow up live it a good place to grow up live in and enjoy a full life and it was really interesting to see the reaction to the police leading that theme because it got them into just transition and climate change issues but a real demonstration of how committed they were as an organisation to the process for community planning that they picked up on that priority and I think that mixing of people leading different themes is really important I also think it's really important that that leadership works throughout the organisation they're not just at board councillor level but through officers and officials as well and that's what makes it real so you have the commitment at high level but it filters through organisations as well Thank you for that Karen my last question really I'll probably do it in reverse order section 16 of the act actually imposes a duty on the Scottish Government to promote to actually promote community planning in your view what extent is that happening in practice do we see things for example like ministerial guidance and letters do we see budget decisions directing community planning do we see national strategies and so on so it's a kind of top down leadership question I suppose I'm asking I might as well start with you Karen seeing as you're currently on screen Thank you for that so obviously we've had a slightly different experience of guidance letters with a real focus on Covid and responding to the pandemic but our last guidance letter absolutely picked up on that partnership working piece so a focus on collaboration and a focus on really driving forward our regional economic partnership so words from government coming through there I think the national strategy for economic transformation puts us in a good place around that collaboration piece so themes there that I think as others have highlighted we can't do it alone we have to work with others so we see that focus from government on collaboration and on partnership and their review of regional policy again puts us into that same that same place Okay, thank you Meway Sharon from Skills Development Scotland this time Yes, thank you very similar to Karen actually in terms of our guidance it's very strong on collaboration partnership working locality planning and national outcomes so a really good fit for us We've also got a focus through the new careers design with the ecosystem so that's us working very collaboratively and integrated with other agencies colleges universities and training providers the whole careers eco landscape together and to oversee that we will be supporting the career services so it's that it couldn't be more the topic of today in terms of of collaboration and Scottish Government's promotion and support of that and including my own interface with Scottish Government sponsor team which I do updates on partnership working PPPs and how we're really integrated with partners to maximise our role and our impact Thank you Thank you, Sharon Derek on the issue about the duty to promote community planning from government level are you seeing that in practice? Yeah, absolutely and I would just echo the points that Karen made there so in terms of our guidance letters from Scottish Government they always emphasise the importance of partnership working on collaboration stakeholders and partners and with national and regional strategies and at local level as well recognising you know that actually being connected with partners and stakeholders the sum of the the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts so absolutely in terms of our guidance letters from SG village and partnership and in collaboration working yes Thanks very much Derek and lastly Ian from your perspective in Hyland's same question Yes I'm going to say very briefly what everybody else has said and just to add to that that it's similarly reflected from our chairman and our board so it does it does come down through the organisation as well which is good to see Okay many thanks everybody thank you convener Thank you Willie and that concludes our questions for today and I just want to thank you all for joining us online and giving your time so that we could understand more fully your perspectives of community planning partnerships so thanks for that we're now going to move on to the next item the next item on our agenda for today is consideration of the following negative instruments and there's a few of them so bear with me non-domestic rates restriction of relief Scotland regulations 2023 SSI 2023 slash 28 non-domestic rates Scotland order 2023 SSI 2023 slash 29 non-domestic rates levying and miscellaneous amendment Scotland regulations 2023 SSI 2023 slash 30 non-domestic rates transitional relief Scotland regulations 2023 SSI 2023 slash 31 council tax exemption dwelling Scotland amendment order 2023 SSI 2023 slash 36 there are no requirements for the committee to take any recommendations on negative instruments do any members have any comments on the instruments nobody has any comments is the committee agreed that we do not wish to make any recommendations in relation to the instruments we're all agreed thank you we agreed at the start of the meeting to take the next two items in private so as that was the last public item on our agenda for today I now close the public part of our meeting