 Ie. Good morning and welcome everyone to the 17th meeting of the Local Government and Communities Committee in 2018. Can I remind everyone present the turn of mobile phones and his meeting papers are provided in digital format? Tablets may be used by members during the meeting. No apologies have been received, so hopefully we'll have a full house shortly. We move to agenda item 1, which is alcohol licensing in Scotland. The committee will hold a roundtable 11 disgusting sounds of our life from that. It is building a thousand people vamos to the thing. It's focusing on self self self self selfself self self self self self self self self self self self self self self self self self self self self self self self self self self self self self self self self yourself yourself yourself of being think- swimming entities in that. Perhaps we might start off going around the table and maybe just introducing yourself and see what organisation you are from and during the MSPs can introduce The MSPs can introduce themselves as well, so I'll start off. I'm Bob Doris MSP, the convener of the committee. I'm Laura Mahon, deputy chief executive of Alcohol Focus Scotland. Good morning, I'm Moni Collennan MSP and I'm the deputy convener of the committee. Good morning, I'm Mary Miller, I'm Clark at Glasgow licensing board. I'm Andy Wightman MSP. I'm Fiona Stewart, deputy clerk to the North Aberdeenshire licensing board. I'm Graham Simpson MSP and I sat on a licensing board for 10 years when I was a councillor. I'm John Shearer, president of the Licence Trade Association. I'm Stuart Wilson, nine chair of the Licencing Forum for East Asia. Good morning, Alison Kennedy. I'm Police Scotland and I'm from safer communities. Good morning, I'm Jenny Goldruth MSP. Hello, I'm Roger Kolkatt from Tocos Community Cancer. Hello, I'm Alexander Stewart MSP and I sat on licensing boards for my 18 years as a councillor. Good morning, I'm Susan Elliott and I'm the Scottish Borders Licence Forum member. I'm John Lee from the Scottish Crossroads Federation. I should of course say that we've also got to my left official report researchers and clerks who are really vital in pulling this kind of event together. I'll just give my thanks to them before we open up. I'll maybe start with just a very general question to get discussions going. We've got two representatives from local licensing forums here, and one of the things we want to establish as a committee is, I mean this with absolute respect, what does the licensing forums actually do? Is it consistent with what they do in different parts of the country? Indeed, we did our call for evidence, we didn't get a reply back from every part of the country in relation to licensing forums, and two areas come back to us and said, well, they don't exist in our country. It's a statutory duty to seek to establish them, and I understand every area is doing that. So we're quite keen to hear what's happening in practice, whether they do exist, whether it's going well, what's not going so well, and why is it patching in different parts of the country. So I don't know who would want to start off in relation to that. I'm happy to start off. Thanks Susan, Susan Elliott. So I'm from Scottish Borders Licensing Forum, and as you're aware, the licensing forums came in on board when the new legislation came in place. I'm probably one of the fortunate members that I've been around since the start, so at that time there was training provided for licensing forums, and the role of the forum is really to oversee and scrutinise the licensing boards and the operation of the act in their area. But it's very difficult because members are coming on board, and at the start we had training, but since then there's no training, so there's no national guidance, if you like, for licensing forums. The guidance that was provided at the time was all about the setting up of the forums, and since then there's been no guidance. So as a core member, I'm able to hold the focus of the forum, along with the LSO and the good relationships that we have there. But it is a real challenge, I feel, for forums, in keeping up-to-date with legislation and regulations, and keeping their knowledge base on-going. Locally we have developed some, we did a survey of our licensing forums to look at the focus and make sure that we had a shared understanding around our role, and from then we worked with Alcohol Focus Scotland and we had some training developed, which was rolled out, and we opened that up to the licensing board as well, because we're all about the same thing about making sure that we have safe environments, so it makes sense to have joint CPD training as well. Okay, thank you. Stuart Wilson, I don't know if you want to add to that. Yeah, I echo a lot what the previous speaker has said. I've been around the forum probably for around 10 years, and there has always been a big difficulty in attracting young people, almost impossible to get young people representatives, and that's a very important target audience. We, in East Ayrshire, have a very good working relationship with the board. There's no tensions between us at all. The LSOs have a crucial role to play in the LSOs, and there are two in East Ayrshire who are very, very helpful, both to the trade and to the board and to the forum. We issued a questionnaire to the 32 authorities in Scotland about their views on the forum and a national body. Like your chair, we found it hard to get responses from some authorities. We got 20-odd replies from the 32 authorities, 18 of whom were very keen on some kind of national coordination with the forums and national sharing of good practice, training, all of those things. See, just before we move out, Laura, I'll take you in a second, but can I just get on the record for where they are working? I mean, I could just see what I think they do, what is it they're doing, identify what the problems and the challenges are, but could you just say a little bit about what you're actually doing? In the Scottish Borders, a lot of our work is taken up in terms of developing an alcohol profile, so the evidence base, information data from health police as well as the national statistics to pull into a resource that licensing boards can use when they're making their decisions so that it's evidence-based and they also consider that in their licensing policy statements. That's quite a big piece of work that the forum's involved and we've also had engagement from our communities through using the likes of social media and Facebook to gather some views from the communities to build into that profile. Stuart, do you want to add anything to that before I bring over? Our main meet, I suppose, is what the legislation says. We oversee the actions of the board. We receive in advance the agendas for board meetings. We look at the applications, but we're restricted a wee bit because the legislation says we cannot comment on individual applications so we can only address the board on very broad issues. At the moment, we're fairly heavily involved in the creation of the policy, the board policy for the next five years, so that's the main thrust of it. We have had several presentations from alcohol focus, and again they have proved very helpful. Lack of training is a problem and I know you didn't want to focus on the negative, but when someone comes on to the board, they're starting from quite a low level and there's a need for some kind of training. The board members all require training. You can walk on to a forum unless you tell me otherwise with no background whatsoever. That's very helpful. Laura, do you want to come? Just to echo what Stuart and Susan are saying, AFS's role with regard to licensing as a whole is to try and have a national overview of how the system is operating and licensing forums. The function of licensing forums has been a concern for us for some time now because of the inconsistency. As Susan has highlighted, where you have long-standing members that have been there right from the start and received the early training, they can provide a bit of continuity and understanding for new people, but there are other forums and the fact that you didn't receive responses from some areas is of no surprise to me at all because we have tried several times to try and do a information gathering exercise to identify what the needs are, and it's really difficult to get a picture across the country because in some cases there isn't a forum there. In other cases there aren't any paid members of staff providing support to that forum. From our point of view, where forums are functioning well, it tends to be where the local authority has invested quite a lot of staff resources and other resources to help them and keep them up-to-date and to help them to engage in some areas that are just not there. In other witnesses, we want to add to their experience of local licensing forums. Thank you very much for your interest. We have just disbanded our three existing divisional licensing forums in Aberdeenshire to explain that we have three divisional boards. When the act came on board, we set up a forum for each board area and we were struggling to have members turn up. We were struggling to develop strategies and actions to follow. So Aberdeenshire Council disbanded it in January this year and set up a brand new licensing forum to cover the whole of Aberdeenshire. It's had one meeting. I delivered the training because, as has been said, there is no training for forum members and they're actually meeting today to start looking at what their strategy is going to be to be action focused and to start considering what they need to do in terms of our licensing policy review. We are doing our best to keep them on track, but the three previous ones just fell into a wrap. They didn't know where they were going and what they were doing. We also found that the police, the LSOs, were having to deliver to three agencies rather than the one and it was a waste of resources for some of our partners. So we're trying to streamline it a little. My apologies for terminologies. Licensing standards officers, my apologies. Thank you very much. I'm sure the rest of the MSPs knew that, but I'm happy to publicise my ignorance in relation to it. I don't believe you, Mr Simpson. Any other comments in relation to that? Chief Inspector Kennedy. Thank you. Obviously, I've got the lead in relation to licensing. However, I've spoken to the licensing departments within each territorial division, which obviously covers the whole of Scotland and the general feedback. There's some that work very well. Our dean, obviously, is one of the ones that has been in Glasgow, particularly our very favourable, but some of the comments that I would echo that the feedback that I'm getting from licensing staff is that the numbers in some forums are very small, so small that sometimes when they meet they can't actually deliver anything because it's police, NHS, and maybe an elected member is present. Also, a lack of young people and young persons representative, which, obviously, if you look at the licensing objectives, is about protecting young people. The other one is probably a lack of consistency in relation to what the expectation is to what is to be delivered. The final one, which was a common theme from the feedback that I got, was in relation to who actually chairs them. I think that the differences are that it was looked at by the police to chair it and whether that's the right argument or agreement as to whether it should be. I think that emphasising is that if there's no local authority input and support, they seem to not achieve the same across the board, so that's a general... Do I sound like that the statutory agency is talking to statutory agencies rather than this big public feed-in? Mary Miller, can you explain? Just very briefly, I was just to give what has been a fairly positive experience in Glasgow with the local licensing forum. Our meetings are very well attended and it's a really good cross-section of different aspects of the licence trade that are represented. It's also community representatives as well as those statutory agencies, health, police and representatives from the licensing board and licensing standards officers as well. What is a practical issue that we found is very helpful to the work of the forum is to develop at the start of each year a work plan where we set out the areas that we want to look at a year ahead and to have regular reports from the likes of police, health, licensing standards officers. It gives a bit of focus to the discussions and then we also have that opportunity to keep members up-to-date with things like the most recent discussion on compliance and enforcement around the new minimum pricing requirements. Having that work plan in place does help to maintain the focus of the discussions and keeps the interest in it going. Okay, thank you. I will take you back in a second. I promise, but I'm just wondering if John Leif will get anything that you want to add. Yes, thanks, convener. SGF has membership of two licensing forums. My colleague attends one and generally I attend the other. We think that it's important that retail, particularly small retail has some kind of representation of licensing forums. About 80 per cent of our members will have alcohol licences, so it's an important issue for them. Alcohol as a category contributes to about 14 per cent of the total turnover of an independent convenience store. Those are important issues for our members, so we think that it's important that retail is represented on the licensing forums. The licensing forum that I attend is well represented in terms of community councils, the NHS and the licence trade generally. From that point of view, it is quite representative. If there is one criticism that I would make of the licensing forum that I attend, it has become obsessed with a single issue that is over provision to the exclusion of all others. There is not really any other subject of conversation, which is a pity because, as boards and as forums have to take a wider cognisance of alcohol-related harm and health, I think that there are other issues that they could be looking at. There are very interesting things happening within the board area of the forum that I sit on in terms of community-based projects that are trying to reduce alcohol-related harm, but the forum takes no interest in them whatsoever because the only topic of discussion is over provision. It is becoming inhibiting the forum from developing a wider, more useful role. Can I hold on to that thought in a moment? I will go to MSPs and explore that further. I mentioned industry, so over provision to one side I promise that we will come back to it because we are going to ask a question on it in a second. Mr Shearer, do you want to add anything? Yes, I would argue against joining over provision. I will discuss it later. We are on most of the forums and so on. I suppose that the only comment that we have made is a fantastic thing because it brings together the police, all the various community bodies, alcohol, focus, the whole thing together. One of the areas that we, if you look around a country, and I have been in a few right-rounder countries, we would like to see something more nationalised, more together, more co-ordinated because there are various things being discussed. I always think that people will fall off these things if it is just discussion, discussion, discussion, there is nothing going on, there are no decisions being made, there are no influencing areas where there are concerns etc. There needs to be a co-ordination nationally of it. Laura Mann, can you give them some MSP that takes on the next topic of conversation? Laura? I just wanted to highlight that the Scottish Government commissioned an evaluation to accompany the alcohol strategy and part of that evaluation was an evaluation of the implementation of the licensing act, the MISAS evaluation that people might be familiar with and that evaluation was concerned about licensing forums and they had interviewed numerous stakeholders within licensing about how the licensing act was being operationalised and licensing forums consistently came out as a point of concern. Alcohol Focus Scotland then held a series of regional events at the end of 2016 with a wide range of different licensing stakeholders and the functioning of forums was one of the key topics of discussion at those meetings where we sought to try and formulate recommendations about the situation. There were a number of recommendations including the establishment of some kind of national forum or national umbrella body. We also had the calls for mandatory training for licensing forum members in line with other licensing stakeholders, the opportunity to share a network and learn from the good practice of some of the forums that you are hearing about here today. When it came to the national forum issue, one of the problems that we identified with that recommendation was that different interpretations of what a national forum would be for and what it would do. Some people talk about it being a national body where representatives of all of the forums could come together to share good practice. Other people talk about it being a kind of umbrella body that delivers guidance and support downwards into the licensing forum system. The recommendation that we ended up publishing on the back of those events was that there needed to be a review of licensing forums because it is so difficult to get a handle on how they are functioning and why some of them are doing well and others are not. It needs a bit of resource behind it because it would involve somebody having to go and meet with them, because it is so difficult to contact them and get the information provided that way. Before we move to Graham Simpson, I apologise because I have heard from the various stakeholders around the table, but the only person that I have not given the opportunity to speak to is Roger Colquith, who is representing the community in which he stays. Roger, do you want to add anything before we move to the next line of questioning? No, not really at this stage. I am not a member of a licensing forum. I do attend the Edinburgh licensing forum fairly regularly as a member of the public. It is a difficult situation there because, at the moment, I do not know whether you know that there is a current review of the licensing forum in Edinburgh being conducted by the Governance Risk and Best Value Committee of Edinburgh City Council. I think the report is probably due in a month or two, but, depending on that, things are a bit up in the air. Okay. I should say to all witnesses yourself as well, Roger. If you do not catch my eye clearly, I will just... I don't do subtle to write to make sure that you catch my eye if you want. Move on to our line of questioning. Graham Simpson, MSP. Thanks. Before I talk in any detail about overprovision, John, you mentioned a particular forum that you sit on that seems to be obsessed by it. I just wonder what the make-up of that forum is. As I say, it seems to be quite well represented by community council representatives, the police, NHS and the licence... the on-trades. We are the only retail... small retail representative on it. So, I guess all the main stakeholders are there. The police, NHS, community councils, so that... I think that the representation is fairly good. However, the main, the only topic of conversation really, and it has been for the past two or three years that I've been involved in the forum has been overprovision. There's a constant going round of circles. The mantra is there are too many licences, something has to be done about this. It just constantly goes round and round in that loop. It really is like Groundhog Day going to one of these meetings. Increasingly, that's becoming a pity because there are other things happening that I think that the forum could look at. However, this is acting as a sort of inhibitor, I think, and giving the forum a very narrow focus and stopping it having any kind of wider influence. The licensing board that the forum connects to is interested in the area of overprovision. It has legally obliged it to take an interest in. However, the board takes a pragmatic view towards overprovision and it constantly keeps it under review. However, the only thing that it ever hears from the licensing forum is that you've got to do something about overprovision. There's too many licences. Something's got to be done. The areas of overprovision have to be increased. That just becomes this circular, self-referencing process. As an attendee, I find frustrating. To go back to one of my earlier points, why do we attend? We show that it's important that smaller retails have some kind of representation on those potentially very important bodies. Okay. When I sat on the licensing board and it was East Kilbride in South Lanarkshire and we a bit like Aberdeenshire split South Lanarkshire up into four areas. Of course, one of our jobs was to split East Kilbride up as we saw fit and decide where there was or wasn't overprovision. I found that one of the difficulties was actually getting any evidence for that from stakeholders, health service, police, whatever because you have to provide some evidence and very often there wasn't any so you ended up as a board member just taking a view and our view was there was no overprovision in East Kilbride but somebody else could easily take a contrary view so it was a difficulty and I just wonder what the experience around the country is. You've got a lot of interest in that question so we'll take it a few people. Roger Colquith? Yes, this question of overprovision is a next question. What is enough provision? There isn't any sort of standard there's no indication of there should be at least this many or not more than this. In Edinburgh there was an attempt to look at the harms arising in different areas but that was based on intermediate areas I'm not sure if that's the right term but they're sort of census areas and they're very small numbers of people just a few thousand and the trouble is in a highly populated area like the centre of Edinburgh that means you're looking at very small districts and trying to decide is this somewhere there's a lot of harm is this somewhere that's less harm comparing it with the overall statistics for Edinburgh and the other issue is where do people buy their alcohol? I mean it's increasingly the case that most alcohol is sold through off licences rather than on licence premises they don't necessarily buy within their local district so the fact that harm may arise in one place doesn't mean that's where the alcohol is bought so it's very difficult to say certainly where I live there are enormous numbers of pubs and bars and clubs and so on but then it's a central area so a lot of people come in from outside to do their drinking if you like so where you place the over provisioning areas is a very different thing for people to decide The issue of over provision has been one of the topics not the only topic in the forum but we're concerned about the patterns of purchasing that are changing much much more online purchasing how do you measure over provision in East Ayrshire when people are purchasing from somebody who shall remain nameless a long distance away should that be included in your provision it's no longer, in our opinion the small corner off licence it's the much bigger organisation it's the global organisations nowadays and I think we need to take on board that pattern is changing but we're aware that over provision is very subjective what data should we be using to measure you pull a figure out of here there and I suspect that that was going to be some of the follow-ups John Shearer Yes, it's interesting we've been talking about this since 1880 and various times throughout the ages I have been here since 1880 but the various times throughout the ages has been decisions made and so on it's very difficult to to refuse a licence on over provision because the act is very weak it's very difficult to take it through but if you look at alcohol sales it's not so much the small, the gross association and so on it's the big supermarkets obviously and you're 70% I remember it again through time the days when it was 70% of alcohol was sold through pubs etc just 30% of sales and supermarkets now it's the other way around so we would you can see the way it's going and that's actually getting more and more and more so that's going 80-20 even it's going that much so we would always argue we try and represent the whole of the trade we don't try and just represent pubs and hotels and so on and these days and we're very keen obviously on having food and alcohol outlets where it's not just alcohol but we try and represent the whole trade personal licence holders is a big thing but the act I think the act opposite to what I think the act has to be strengthened and I think if you look at Ireland there's a great example there's been no new licences in Ireland since 1902 and the other thing a licence does if you have a limited number of licences of people selling alcohol the value of the licence and it becomes an item of borrowing against increasing your business etc etc it's a big thing in Ireland so I think we've gone way the other way and I think we have to come back again I'd love to say support the pubs and hotels etc and give us more advantage in getting if you get people into a pub hotel into controlled environment with alcohol you have a much better system but we're not saying there shouldn't be obviously other ways of selling alcohol but I think it has gone too far the other way in supermarkets again I don't know if everyone's aware but in supermarkets went for licensing they basically licensed to hold premises and that was another thing that we probably missed in Scotland was in other countries when you go to a supermarket they have an area for alcohol so you have a different section and so on but we would argue actually for more for over provision to be a major item I'm just going to come in there because when a supermarket or any shop comes in for a licence they have to put a plan in and show where the alcohol is going to be that's right and the board would approve or approve something that would be on that basis I think in the early days it was it wasn't seen as an issue to sell the alcohol and the whole premises it was just easier I think I think it was easier to do just to license all premises nowadays we're probably looking at that a bit more and saying well hold on a second you shouldn't be selling the alcohol in the way out with the sweets and the chocolates and so on but the fact of life is that 70% of alcohol is a supermarket a minimum unit pricing we've been arguing with we've been arguing about for years as well coming in and that will have an effect it will have an effect ok now just for SOMSPs Graham, if you want to focus on this a little bit shortly in Monica, I know you want to come in at some point in relation to this but I'm going to say we're witnesses first a few people have indicated the wish to speak further on this Susan Elliott I just wanted to say that when we're considering over provision we need to be clear that it's not about reducing the number of licence premises in the area the alcohol availability and alcohol related harm and over provision allows the opportunity to put a cap or stop more licence premises and more availability of alcohol coming in in relation to your question about what data there has been recent data published to local areas by AFS and Creshing and I'll have to refer to my notes to get the abbreviations so centre for research and environment society and health so the universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow local area profiles have been developed for areas to look at the availability of alcohol in the area and what it does is it takes it from the centre population and if you walk 10 minutes basically how much access do you have to alcohol both on sales and off sales and it breaks that data down so we can look at the different areas so for example in Scottish Borders we are below the average in terms of alcohol outlet as a whole but when you drill down deeper into the data 25 per cent of our neighbourhoods are much higher and one particular area is four times higher in terms of on sale availability of alcohol than the Scottish average so that data is available but what we do need is guidance and people who can understand it and drill down it and there are expertise out there within Alcohol Focus Scotland in local areas that we can pull up on to make sure that licence and boards and then they can make evidence decisions around over provision Mary Miller? Just to pick up on that point about evidence-based decisions which was part of Mr Simpson's opening comments on the topic there is often concern expressed around the current statutory guidance requiring a causal link for the development of over provision policies between the numbers of licence premises and the harm that is seen to be caused and there is some suggestion that that reference to causal link should be removed however removing the reference and the guidance is still going to require licence boards to have an evidence-based approach to its decision making and its policies that is implicit in the way in which licensing case law has developed over the years I think you do have to have evidence and certainly the way that we approach this in Glasgow is we do get very good evidence from our colleagues in public health and from the police and in terms of establishing a causal link my personal view is that it is not terribly difficult for example if you have a convenience store by which its very nature is intending to sell alcohol to the local area and there is evidence that there is alcohol related harm existing already in that area then it is fairly easy to draw that causal link between adding further provision is not the only way in which its not the only ground for refusal we've had examples where we've got particularly bad public health figures but there's no existing licences in the area and we've been able to successfully refuse a new licence not on over provision but on public health making alcohol actually available in the area already has alcohol related harm that that is sufficient to justify that other ground for refusal not being consistent with that licensing objective Okay, Laura Mann Do you want to go? Yeah, I would just pick up on Mary's point there I think that the causal link issue has been an area of much discussion and contention within the licensing system for a good 10 years and it's not so much about the need to remove the idea of causal link from the legislation or from the guidance but about clarifying what we're actually talking about with regard to a causal link and I think in the guidance that's being updated at the moment there's been an attempt to clarify that you can look at the collective impact of alcohol licences in an area and the harm and look at a causal link about the collective influence that those licences have on rates of alcohol harm so rather than it being about trying to prove that an individual premises is causing X harm it's about accepting that this collection of licence premises and the availability of alcohol overall could potentially be creating problems the research that Susan refers to at a Scotland-wide level that research shows that areas with the highest rates of alcohol outlet availability compared to the lowest rates of alcohol outlet availability have double the alcohol-related death rate almost double the alcohol-related hospitalisation rate and four times the crime rate so the evidence base around the link between availability and harm has been something that academics have been trying to enhance and develop with a view to making it easier for licensing boards there's been calls for some time to try and get this evidence down to a local level that people can use within the licensing boards and I think we're constantly trying to add to that evidence base but in my view the evidence is there there's over 50 studies that show that association between availability and harm and as Marry says there are licensing boards that are being very proactive and trying to put that cap in place it's not about reducing provision it's simply about preventing any increases where there's concern about the impact that's having on communities so just to clarify it's about withdrawing licences from existing so an over provision a board is required to undertake an over provision assessment if the board finds that it's concerned about over provision in a particular area it can make a statement that that area is over provided for that over provision statement creates what they call a rebuttable presumption against the granting of further licences so it actually in my view and the clerks can maybe talk to this it actually provides what I would say is an easier route for objecting to alcohol licences cos there is a presumption to grant licences inherent within the system and the over provision statement creates this rebuttable presumption against granting it licencing boards still have to take every application on their own merit so it doesn't result in an outright ban they still have to consider every application and there is an opportunity for the applicants to present evidence that would demonstrate that they are not going to contribute to further harm so a licencing board can still grant new licences but it's a tool to enable them to put a kind of cap in place if they have concerns about the impact in that area Okay, Roger Colcott Yes, I'd like to pick up on some of the things that Laura's just said First of all I think the biggest issue really now regarding alcohol consumption is the public health issue I mean it's really really serious I think the last statistics of the whole of Scotland that I've seen show that the amount of alcohol sold in Scotland was enough for every adult to consume 20 units a week every week now that can't be good for the health of Scotland but coming back to this point about the overall harm to an area and then the point about each case being judged on its own merits in my experience of quite often attending the Edinburgh Licencing Board admittedly this is mainly of the previous board the new board might be slightly different but they always focus on this question of judging the individual case and its own merits and when it comes to public health it seems to me that's almost like saying to a person trying to give up smoking to judge each cigarette on its own merits on that basis you'd never give up so there has to be something that says that there's some sort of provision that ensures an overall increase in the provision within the area and what I would suggest and my local community council wants to see is that the whole of Edinburgh should be regarded as an area of overprovision of the sort of premises where alcohol is sold alongside food and other normal household purchases for two reasons first of all there's this continuing normalisation of alcohol now alcohol isn't normal otherwise we wouldn't have a licensing act and for generations now small children have been going to supermarkets with their parents and seeing alcohol sold just like bread potatoes milk whatever and the other thing is that these premises encourage impulse buying I don't know whether they set out to do so but that's the impact you go in for your what you're going to have for tea tonight or you must nip into the local Tesco express or whatever and there you see there's that nice red wine we had a little while ago and it's a pound off oh well we'll get a couple of those now you may think you're going to put them aside when you get home but you get home and your partner says oh you're a lifesaver you wouldn't believe the day I've had opens a bottle and there it goes and there's another few units that are being consumed that wouldn't otherwise are being consumed so I think something along those lines is definitely needed I think there's a lot of knowing nods when you said that Mr Colquitt, thanks for saying that I want to give MSPs a chance to come in I did say that Mr Simpson could follow up on some of this but I wonder if what we could do if you could meet any observations or questions of Mr Simpson and then demonically the industry after that and we'll go back to our witness so they can chew over that and see that you weren't in at some point yes, everyone was in at some point but I have to give priority to the witnesses where I can Mr Simpson, do you want to add anything? I'll be really brief because of what other people want in I just wanted to say I've actually seen the alcohol focus and creche studies for the areas I represent North Lanarkshire and South Lanarkshire really interesting stuff it'll be good and maybe it does but I haven't seen it maybe but it's drilled down to a bit more more local within those areas I think that'll be you can do that you probably need to provide lessons to people on how to do that but that's part of our plan for the next few months to go out to help people very interesting I mean in North Lanarkshire crime rates in the neighbourhoods with the most alcohol outlets with 2.7 times higher with the least and in South Lanarkshire alcohol related death rates in the neighbourhoods with the most off sales outlets were 80% higher than in neighbourhoods with the least so really interesting statistics there I think that there has been some advantage to being on this committee Mr Simpson I suspect that MSPs around this table their constituencies and communities would quite like a discussion at some point with Alcohol Focus Scotland to understand those statistics for our own community if we're going to do some further work on this it would certainly bring home to us what that means in our local area so I'm not trying to bounce it into that Laura but I think we'd appreciate a more granular look at those statistics if that offers there yes we've managed to secure that Monica Lennon The discussions moved on quite a bit from when I indicated that I had a question but if I can go back to John Lee who prompted my signal your comments John about the forum that you attend being obsessed about over provision and I remember that Susan Elliott earlier on said in your evidence that your forum is working on the alcohol profile for your area and that's a big piece of work I wondered if that's something that John, I don't know which board or which forum you are talking about but is that something that your forum has that provides some context because Graham Simpson's mentions the stats for Lanarkshire, I've got South Lanarkshire in front of me, that's where I'm based and that's where I was a councillor before coming here and when I look at the stats and the levels of alcohol harm in communities I can well understand why people are obsessed talking about over provision and frustrations but John, you also said that about public health and I just wondered is public health not at the heart of these discussions about over provision just wondered where you think the tensions are and we've heard about some of the data available I just wondered how much data and evidence space your forum has I'm not totally sure I mean it will have access to the alcohol focus Scotland data and crash data that we've heard about and I think there is some attempt at local neighbourhood level particularly based on community service and things to bring more evidence to the forum which I'm sure will be helpful although the strong impression I have is the underlying purpose of that is to strengthen the boards over provision policy and generate more discussion about over provision and what I meant about the wider the wider context is in the board area whose forum I sit on for example we helped to set up the first community alcohol partnership in Scotland and that has now been replicated across the city we were involved in a very innovative and very successful project to clamp down a proxy purchase which was piloted in the board area and we're now looking at a national roll out of that so these are all community based initiatives which are aimed at reducing alcohol related harm which I think have been successful in the wider range of stakeholders the forum shows absolutely no interest in looking at these other projects which I think it should take a nice and soft and should be more and more interested in as a way of reducing alcohol related harm and engaging communities on the whole process but the obsession with over provision acts as an inhibitor to that I feel and that's not looked at those wider initiatives but they're not on the agenda that's helpful when preparing for today it struck me that there isn't really a clear definition of over provision so I just wondered what does over provision mean to you and is there a situation where you could say this area clearly has over provision my understanding is that there's no template formula benchmark really for over provision I think that the board just has to make an assessment of is there harm and then is that related to crime, alcohol related disorder and premises that doesn't seem to be an accepted formula or benchmark for it so it's difficult to know what the decisions are based on and I suppose that ambiguity means that everyone is kind of searching for a new and more effective way to make assessments of over provision and make assessments of where there should be which again is feeding into this constant iterative discussion about it so there doesn't seem to be a board level an accepted benchmark or formula for looking at over provision but I'm aware of Laura Mann, do you want to go on? I think it's important to be clear about what the role of a local licensing forum is while a local licensing forum can and potentially should take a broad interest in harm and efforts to reduce alcohol harm across its area, that should always be with a view to providing the licensing board with intelligence and information that's one of the functions of a licensing forum but at the end of the day the purpose of the licensing forum is to keep the operation of the licensing act under review in their area so there are examples from other areas where actually a licensing forum has ended up diverting all of its attention to promoting and supporting community-based initiatives to reduce alcohol harm and actually that isn't what the function of a licensing forum is and I think that that just speaks to some of the confusion about why are they there, what are they intended to do and the need for the provision of clear guidance and support to that effect so that they remain focused on their role within the act. John Lee, do you want to come back on that? Just very quickly, just that I don't disagree with what Laura said but I think increasingly the problem is that licensing boards are being asked to in a way take on too wide a remit and to back to something that I think Mary said a board is really just there to look at an application and make a decision on its merits. If the grounds are met then the application is successful and if they're not then it's rejected but increasingly boards are being asked to look at these big issues about crime, disorder, alcohol related harm, public health which makes the role very very difficult but if they're going to be asked to do that then I think they and forums have to start taking a wider look at a lot of these type of community initiatives that are feeding into these policy agendas. Laura, to come back in and then Susan Elliott after that. Obviously part of the day-to-day business of a licensing board is the scrutiny of applications and decisions on individual applications but the entire licensing act is underpinned by the five licensing objectives which are the promotion and protection of public health, preventing crime and disorder, protecting children and young people from harm. Boards are required to produce a statement of licensing policy that for now will be in place for five years and that statement of licensing policy is to set out how the board intends to seek to promote five licensing objectives so that they do have that bigger responsibility. It's not just about processing applications it's processing applications in the context of those five licensing objectives. I've all let you back in John before we go back to MSPs but other witnesses want in, Susan Elliott. It was just to highlight the role of other partnerships in local authorities so you have the alcohol and drug partnerships who oversee the national drug strategies are responsible for reducing that harm in their areas so there are other partnerships out there that have that role and we have our licensing board chair sitting on our ADP which again is a good link to make sure that they have a wider understanding of the implications it's not necessarily the role of the forum to look at that or the licensing board but they have an understanding so whilst we may have presentations on wider pieces of work there are other partnerships that we can be linking into for that and one of the things that we've started to do locally is bring in other stakeholders so the Children and Young People's Leadership Group have a role considering licence applications where children are involved in family events so considering that Children and Young People's licensing objective so thinking about other planning committees other structures that can be linking in influencing licensing as well. Stuart Wilson Laura was talking about the work done by alcohol focus and I think alcohol focus are doing sterling work but I think they're letting Scottish Government off the hooker but they're doing some of the work that should perhaps be done centrally by Scottish Government. The act created the forum and the input from Scottish Government since 2005 has not been massive shall we say and I think there's a a desire for some kind of steer, guidance, support handling statistics is quite a technical requirement and many of the forums don't have the training or the expertise alcohol focus doing are very helpful but I think there is a need for the Government to take over some of the work that they are doing. I appreciate that point and one of the things that the committee does after this evidence session is to review the evidence and discuss what steps we take next. I don't think that you should have said that and we're not directly following up on it just means we haven't heard you we have heard you. Mr Leith, I did say I'd give you the opportunity to come back in before we're back to MSPs. Do you want to add anything? Thank you very, very briefly on the difference in the remit of the board to take a nice sense of all those different factors. The objectives and themselves make the board's task more difficult in that it's got to take a much wider view of all those issues. We're going to go back to MSPs and I know there's a frustration for MSPs but it's not a normal evidence session so the conversation quite often moves on as other witnesses want to come in and have their say so my apologies to MSPs for that but that is the dynamic. Monica, I want to get a chance to come back in because it was your question but Alexander, I want to go straight after this to allow you just to question me I've changed but it gives you the opportunity to come in at this point. I was looking to come back in. No, I'm happy with it. That's great, Alexander. I mean, I think this is very useful because what we have seen already today is the quality that's happening within licensing boards which we've been aware of but also the quality that's happening within the forums in place but I still get a sense there's a bit of tension there between the two as to how they can achieve both of their objectives. The licensing board are working to the law and working to that process and the forum has a role to play but at the same time the forum doesn't have the power and that seems to be one of the problems we're facing here today. I know there's been quite a lot of consultation happening in Glasgow and you've gone out there and done a lot of consultation with lots of organisations and individuals but in my experience with the provision in the past sometimes there was an anxiety there was a fear of tackling the provision because of the legal challenge that could happen and boards fell into that trap in some way so I'd like to try and tease that out because I do think that that has an influence on where we actually are. Support the decisions that licensing boards take one of the points I was trying to make in my paper was there's often a frustration amongst communities when they think that issues aren't taken into account but licensing boards do have to legally be able to justify the decisions that they take and that's why the over provision assessment is so important and the evidence that sits behind that enabling licensing boards to take decisions which have a fair chance of being upheld within the courts because every time that a licensing board takes a decision and there's not a good evidential basis for it and that decision is overturned it almost sort of tightens the noose around all licensing boards because every time the courts make a decision it almost places more restrictions on the ways in which the licensing boards can exercise decisions in future so I really can't emphasise enough about having a process for collecting information views, evidence as part of the development of licensing policy statements that will help decisions taken by the board and make them as robust as possible to be able to withstand legal challenges. Certainly in Glasgow we're not afraid to take difficult decisions and we have been challenged in the past and we've been successful in defending decisions taken on the grounds of over provision and particularly one against a national retailer that challenged the decision to refuse one of their applications on the grounds of over provision. Without doubt they are barriers to the whole process forward and I think that you've identified what is required and to have the courage to manage that process is very important but I think that the comment that was made earlier about the Government now trying to take a role to try and come in to support the mechanism I think that that's quite important convener because it's quite obvious that people feel that they need that back up and they need that support and that mechanism isn't necessarily being adhered to as we state at the moment. Okay now another witness were asking to come in on that specific point now can I check with MSPs a few indications to speak Mr Whiteman is the next on my list but and specifically in relation to courts and enforcement and decisions been overturned any other MSPs have indicated to speak was that the area that we're going to cover? Yeah Mr Simpson On that issue I just wonder if anyone around the table has any evidence of where boards have refused applications let's say provision grounds it's then gone to court and been overturned Laura seems to have the answer There's been a couple of fairly high profile appeal cases just in the last couple of years one involving Dundee licensing board and another involving Aberdeen licensing board where licensed applications were refused on the grounds of over provision and an appeal went to court and the sheriff found in favour of the applicant in both of those cases where the licensing board fell down was on the process that they had followed with regards to establishing their over provision position and it just echoes what Mary is saying about needing to follow a really robust and clear evidence gathering process and show reasoned arguments from that evidence to the position that you're taking I think one of the bits that the Scottish Government have been called upon by ourselves and I think most other parts of the licensing system for a number of years now that would help with this situation is to update the guidance the statutory guidance that accompanies the licensing act with a particular view to clarifying the process for establishing an over provision position the Scottish Government have recently undertaken an exercise to begin to update that guidance AFS has got some concerns about the process that that has been following to date in that the two chapters that were focused on initially were the over provision chapter and the statements of licensing policy chapter and that was with a view to clarifying those processes in particular what they called an expert advisory group was established to inform that update we were part of that advisory group but I don't think that all of the licensing stakeholders that should have been represented on that group were there it was also a very short timescale within which to review what is very detailed and complex guidance it was established at the start that that advisory group was probably not going to reach consensus on some of the most contentious issues and we agreed to that and we didn't reach consensus the notes would be taken in full and would be returned to the Scottish Government so that they could take a decision on what would make it into that guidance the problem from my perspective with that is that that's what happened but then the final draft of that guidance was never returned to the advisory group for sight before it was issued to licensing boards so what's been issued to licensing boards is two draft chapters of the guidance I'm not clear on what status those chapters have at this point in time and I think it has the potential to add to the confusion and this is at a critical point where licensing boards are currently developing their statements licensing policy for publication in November I'm still not clear on which guidance they're to follow because right now the existing statutory guidance is the legal instrument and those two draft chapters as far as I can see have no legal standing so that's a problem I'm sure that's something our committee will want to clarity on as soon as possible as well if you're on a shirt my other hat is chair of the solar licensing forum which represents clerks all across Scotland I was also involved in the advisory group I share Laura's concerns as far as we are concerned as the deputy clerk of the north licensing board it's been rushed it's not being done properly they are draft they've not been approved by the Scottish Parliament therefore they don't have the weight of law behind them therefore licensing boards at the moment are still bound to follow the 2007 guidance which means we're missing out on this policy review and it will be for the licensing boards after the next local government election where that guidance will take effect two years down the line and that guidance is already going to be out of date so I echo Laura's concerns we've been calling for this since 2007 that guidance was written before the 2005 act even went live in 2009 it was well intentioned but we've moved on a long way since then it's no longer fit for purpose and I still don't think it's fit for purpose that's now all on the official record because we're not following up on it just now doesn't mean we're not going to follow up on it Mr Colcott, do you still wish to come in? Yes, I just want to go back to the question of evidence because I'm not sure if I'm correct in this but from what I gather the big retail chains refuse to disclose the quantity of alcohol they sell on grounds of commercial confidentiality and I don't know what can be done about that but it seems unless something can be done to override that we'll always have difficulty in gathering the necessary evidence particularly as we've seen that they provide 70% or more of the alcohol that's bought in Scotland Okay, thank you that's on the record now as well we might not explore that at this point but thanks for that attention we'll move on to the next line of questioning Andy Wightman for the Scottish Parliament a couple of questions licensing standards officers were introduced in the 2005 act what difference if any have they made has that been a useful intervention and secondly if folk have any comments about the scale of resources available to local authorities to run licensing boards to deliver their statutory functions and also to support local licensing forums and to gather the kind wider evidences needed to be able to buttress some of the decisions you need to make Laura Mann Just in response to the LSO question that the evaluation that I was referring to earlier that the MISAS team at NHS Health Scotland undertook about the implementation of the licensing act the establishment of licensing standards officers came out of that evaluation as being one of the most positive aspects of the new act and I think generally all licensing stakeholders agree that those posts have really enhanced things particularly in relation to the relationship between the trade and licensing boards and facilitating communication and enhancing understanding our regional events that I mentioned again LSOs and the function of LSOs was highlighted by the vast majority of participants and we had over 200 participants at those events as being very positive We do in licensing and obviously from this morning we talk a lot about over provision and we talk a lot about public health but what I increasingly find is that the issues that are raised with me by local residents, by community councils is about the operation of existing licence premises and it tends to be from the on trade because in terms of things like public nuisance which is also a licensing objective it's potentially on sales premises that can have an impact on people living within that area in terms of noise nuisance potential for antisocial behaviour and that's where licensing standards officers have been absolutely key in almost mediating on those issues between local residents and the operational licence premises meeting with licence holders to remind them about their responsibilities particularly in terms of either licence conditions or operating in terms of the licensing objectives and the vast majority of complaints about licence premises are able to be dealt with on an informal basis without having to be referred to the licensing board and sometimes it is just that approach being made by a licensing standards officer speaking to the management of the premises that just gives them that bit of a reminder about having a bit more regard to the local residents within the area and how they manage the premises that prevents an escalation of issues so licensing standards officers are very good at potentially nipping things before they develop into a stage where it would have to be more formal action before a licensing board I'd like to echo what the previous speakers have said the LSOs are a vital part of all this setup they are the people on the ground, they are the link between the community and the board they are the link between the licence holders and the board they can diffuse potential situations before they develop they do a tremendous amount of good work they are very supportive of the licence trade in East Asia there is a scheme which I'm sure some of you know called pub watch and that has the great support of the LSOs there is also another scheme, best bar none and the LSOs have a big part to play in that so they have been very very successful in terms of the act a very positive contribution to me Just before I bring other witnesses in and I apologize for cutting across Mr Whitman's line of questioning but we've got about 20 minutes left and there's other MSPs wanting to come in as well so I'm going to bring other witnesses in in a second but the core of the question was about maybe even how this is financed by local authorities how local authorities take their approach I apologise for my ignorance how many LSOs there is in each area is it set out or does it vary so any information on that because it's part of the new budget scrutiny process that this Parliament has we want an on-going look at how budgets are used for outcomes on the grounds anything that you could say would be helpful and I will take you back into that on that point Mr Wilson As far as budgets are concerned there is no budget line to support the forum we have a good relationship with the local authority and with the board but we are at the mercy if we wish to do something then we have to go and request funding but there is no separate budget line for forums as far as the funding for the whole operate the LSOs are members of the local council there's sometimes a conflict of interest the LSOs by law must sit on the forum who are monitoring the board but the LSOs are also employees of the local authority up till now there has been no conflict of interest but there is a potential conflict of interest in the future John Shearer The LSOs we agree with what's been said as well as it's working very well it did get off in a very shaky start however especially in Glasgow I think the understanding of what an LSO was what his role was and so on caused some confusion but now it's working very well but it's interesting to know with licensing fees etc all going up up up up as usual everything goes up we believe that some areas are from licensing and I think again in the act I don't think it's meant to be a non-profit so that's just under control I would expect to put it on the record Laura Mann Not talking about the fees but about LSOs one of the concerns that was raised in the context of talking about the positive impact of the LSOs at the events we held was anecdotal accounts of the resource being reduced and part of austerity measures I think where LSO roles in some cases have been expanded to incorporate other aspects of trading standards and things and there have also been reductions in numbers of LSOs in some areas so there's quite a bit of concern being expressed at the end of 2016 about that and then with the introduction of the minimum unit pricing legislation it's LSOs that are going to be responsible for monitoring the compliance of that legislation so we are already hearing some anecdotal information from LSOs about the pressure that that's going to put on them and we're anticipating that we are going to see a bit of a resource problem coming What sort of witnesses want to come back in? I did say I would give preference to witnesses when name check them all and then irrespective of how fascinating your comments are we're going to move to Jenny Gilruth after that for the next line of questioning we'll get Fiona Stewart and we'll get Mary Miller so I will come to the three of you, John It was just to echo John's point he's absolutely right the level of fees that are charged for licensees are supposed to provide funds for LSOs and that's the boards and local authorities are not supposed to make a surplus but yet the number of LSOs I have is the number of LSOs that are going down all the time I'd be interested to know how many LSOs there are in Glasgow for example in relation to the amount of licence premises so our members have got big concerns that the local authorities now must be in surplus with the money they're collecting from licence fees and yet they don't go down and there's certainly no rebate of them We have four LSOs we work very well not just with the trade but also with the police and they're also now working with the security industry authority but that would echo Laura's concerns because our four LSOs are now also the four civic standards officers for our civic government licensing as well so half of their time now is devoted to nonlicker licensing work plus they have smoking duties it's an awful lot to take on resources are very tight I would say that the money is not lacking from the premises licence fees but it's from the personal licence fees and particularly occasional licences and the amount of work that boards have to do in conjunction with the fee that we get back or don't get back as the case would be Chief Inspector the official report doesn't show you nodding your head so I don't know if you want to just make a very brief comment on that I would re-emphasise that across again local police and areas the LSOs and the relationship between police and LSOs has been compounded in relation to the work that's been done it's a two tiered approach and we have joined operations but I would emphasise that the feedback I'm getting from local divisions is that over recent years the duties of the LSOs has stopped for instance we used to do operations on Friday and Saturday nights when it was busy and obviously that's the best time you're choosing is that those LSOs are no longer available all the time to do the particular operations in various divisions because of the expansion of their roles but obviously that's from a policing point of view Really just actually to make that very point I think you're all aware there's been a huge amount of new licensing legislation in recent years much of which has resulted in a substantial increase in the work that licensing boards have to do but also licensing standards officers the introduction of the requirements for licensing standards officers to be consulted on personal licence applications is quite significant the minimum unit pricing is going to have a much greater compliance role with immigration changes that are going to require additional work to be carried out by licence sections and reviewing applications we've got the soon to be the licence a personal licence holder renewal scheme which will be a major impact next year all of these new requirements are being introduced but without any additional income being generated from all of this extra work and that does obviously place difficulties on the resources that are available if there's no additional income coming in to support that additional work and scrutiny which licensing boards and licensing standards officers are required to carry out. In Glasgow we've remained consistent with four licensing standards officers however they are supported by colleagues across different enforcement teams in the council whether it's noise officers, public health officers or environmental health officers and they do work very closely with their colleagues in Police Scotland to provide I think I don't have the exact figure here it's just under 2000 I think It's got for 2000 premises Yes but as I say they're supported by officers in other aspects depending on what the issue of concern is but yes their role has expanded in terms of recent changes to legislation That would be quite helpful maybe but not just now but maybe a note back to the committee because some local authority areas have got a small number of LSOs and they're working in isolation and other local authority areas have got a small number of LSOs but they're working in a network of others who provide that assistance we need to make sure we're comparing apples with apples when we look at the number of LSOs that there are so anyone's got information on that not just now but that would be quite helpful I think to the committee A very patient Jenny Gilruth next Thank you convener not often called that With regard to the involvement of the committee structure both in the beginning you mentioned it was a difficulty that you faced and I think chief inspector you alluded to that as well and a note Roger Cawke in your submission in terms of public accessibility you say in theory meetings of the Edinburgh licensing forum are held in public in practice its meetings are always held during the working day and are not webcasts so excluding anyone who has a full time job with normal hours I wonder then what the panel's view is with regard to getting greater community engagement in the licensing process more broadly but also particularly in terms of tackling that public health causal link and actually I suppose tackling behaviour change how you get the views of young people involved in the system particularly with regard to being the year of young people We start with Mr Cawke in that and then we'll widen it out because you mentioned it Mr Cawke It's something I'm very aware of because quite often I'm called on to deputise for somebody on the licensing forum who can't attend because he's working or unavailable and I never see I think we have a we do have a named person on the licensing forum a young person I can't remember the last time I was there that that person was in attendance so yeah that's a problem not just for young people but yeah everybody Okay so it resonates with yourself that comment Mary Miller On the local licensing forum in Glasgow we have the NUS student representative but in terms of policy development our licensing board actually went out to meet with secondary school pupils to hear their views directly on a licensing policy because obviously with the licensing objective being extended from children to include young persons it's important for the development of this policy that we actually take into account the views of young people so the licensing board met with 5th and 6th year modern studies pupils to hear their views and there's been some really interesting suggestions put forward that I know the board are going to take into account when it develops its new policy statement so we've actually gone out to them rather than waiting for them to come into us Thank you Susan Elliott We echo the problems that we've had in terms of getting young people representation and we've had various different organisations so community learning and development represent young people's views We also did a separate piece of work, community engagement work around alcohol and impact in an area that was deprived and had high levels of alcohol related hospital and death rates and from that work the young people were saying that they had particular concerns around an event, a community event that happened annually so based on those community engagement events they were able the young people to actually put forward some views to the licensing board about the layout and operation of that event and it changed the following year alongside some work around proxy purchase and particularly with the new legislation around supply to young people so it is difficult and it's interesting the work that you're doing around modern studies and I'll take that back to our local area and it's not just young people's views as well, there's other areas I think community engagement and public participation in the licensing system has been one of the top priority concerns for us for a long time and for many of the partners involved in licensing and efforts are being made there's some really interesting examples of innovative practice on the part of boards but it's a double edged sword because on the one hand communities are not in receipt of the mandatory training and members of the licensing community are so their ability to engage in a meaningful way is somewhat limited AFS has tried over the last few years working with communities in Edinburgh to produce a community toolkit that explains the licensing system and hopefully straightforward terms to help people engage but the other side of that sword is that the feedback that we get from communities in some cases, not all cases but certainly in the bigger cities can be seen to be very intimidating for members of the community meetings are often held in very formal rooms of the council chambers and there's a very formalised process to the hearings that for some people they just really struggle to participate in that, I know myself having been to visit a few of them that I do quite a lot of public speaking but I find it quite intimidating on a community committee or a licensing forum I can imagine that that is very difficult to engage in so we have been providing some information and guidance to boards about things that they can do and the exercise that Mary is describing is exactly the kind of thing where trying to encourage boards and forums to do is that proactive less formal engagement to try and gather the views of the different constituent as far as possible but again that talks to the resources of the teams and of the boards and you know it's another pressure for them Jenny, go riff to follow up Thank you, it's very helpful The final line of questioning from Kenneth Gibson MSP First of all apologies for being late on arrival this morning I think one of the things that everyone would agree on is that we need definitive objective criteria as to what overprovision is so I think that that is something that has definitely come out this morning but the point that I was wanting to mention was the issue that Mr Shearer and Mr Kolkett brought earlier on which was really about supermarkets I mean I have been to a number of countries over the years where they have completely separate check-outs for alcohol and that stops the kind of whatever on-spec that they hadn't thought of people actually have to buy all their goods or their non-alcoholic goods at one set of tills and then they have to literally go back into the shop and then go through another set of tills and a lot of people just say do you know what I'll do next week and the impact on consumption is quite considerable it doesn't impact on the issue of overprovision you're still the same with other outlets but you actually reduce consumption quite considerably and that's something I think that should be looked at smaller retailers clearly that might not be possible for but certainly for larger supermarkets it's worked on a sweth of countries across Europe and also places like Canada and Australia and I think it's something that we should be looking at delivering here because I think we can get all the health benefits and all the alcohol reduction benefits but without having to argue about provision in a way ironically because you're not actually taking the provision it just means that people have to make more effort if they want to buy alcohol and that itself reduces consumption I think I'm going to take comments on that I think that's really important can we wrap that up with a couple of other things and we'll get some finishing comments as well from witnesses Claire just drew to her attention that it probably would be remiss if it's not to ask a question of the road touristy things up together I wouldn't ignore all of these, that's up to you but you can make a final comment as well and that will take us home One of the biggest aspects of alienation from communities in relation to the licensing process is quite often a lot of objections come in but they're not necessarily relevant to the licensing objectives so there's a mismatch there and that can disillusion a lot of people and they withdraw from that level of participation so I'll leave that sitting there so if that's something that we're trying to say in the comments, please do that I'm not trying to dialogue the comments of Mr Gibson, I'm just trying to make sure that people get the opportunity to look at the completeness of the lines of questions we had and Mr Leah was talking about the licensing forum and the balance in relation to over-provision and other things he mentioned a few things that he'd quite like them to do and we've got some comments to say that might not necessarily be in line with the five licensing objectives that the licensing forum has because I would have thought things like talking about test purchase in a bottle tracking and all that kind of thing or public disorder would fit in for example with protecting and proving public health or protecting young children young people from harm so does that bring us back to definitions again and guidance in relation to what do those objectives actually mean in practice and there's three things there and I think at the core of it was Mr Gibson talking about other tools we have in the box to reduce consumption and to separate it from over-provision as well so we've got about five minutes left before we close this session I know there's a lot in that but this will be your final opportunity to come in Laura Mann Responding to Mr Gibson's comments I think we would completely agree that there needs to be a wider look at availability and everybody should be clear that over-provision and the licensing system is not the only answer to the issue of availability what the licensing system can achieve at this time is relatively limited we are simply talking about through over-provision assessments potentially placing a cap on licences in particular areas what the licensing system does very well is put the controls in place around the operation of those premises so it's a significant contributor but it shouldn't be seen as the answer to all alcohol availability problems certainly things like separate check-outs and other measures to try and we talk about limiting accessibility because I think when you're talking about making people make a more conscious decision about going to buy alcohol it's not about making it less available it's just changing the access but there is good evidence to show that that does make a positive contribution to reducing harm so we would agree with that and we have actually made recommendations on that with this new alcohol strategy refresh we would really like to see the availability section of that strategy looking more widely at what else can be done around availability at the same time as strengthening the ability of the licensing system to do what it is there on paper with regards to the objections from community members needing to be linked to the objectives again completely agree and that is partly what our community took that we developed with the Edinburgh community councils was about trying to help communities understand that that if you're going to make an objection there are certain rules about when an objection can be taken into account so there is an attempt there to try and inform people and again it is about the information clear and making it accessible and understandable to anybody that has an interest in this area the last thing I wanted to shine a light on is the forthcoming production of the first set of annual functions reports so this was a new requirement brought in under the Air Weapons and Licensing Act and Alcohol Focus Scotland did a lot of lobbying around ensuring that this annual functions report was included in that legislation which is essentially an annual report from the licensing boards on how they are fulfilling their responsibility for promoting the licensing objectives and the reason we argued for that was to try and increase the information available to communities and to licensing forums to enable them to do their scrutinising role so at the moment the boards produced their policy statement which are forward looking five year plans essentially about what they are going to do what the annual functions report should do is provide a yearly opportunity to look back at what has happened during that year and assess themselves against their policy again unfortunately there hasn't been guidance provided to licensing boards on how those annual functions reports should be developed what should be contained there's information in the act about what it should cover there has been no guidance to flesh that out at all and as I say the first ones are during this year so we would be making a call for the Scottish Government to really scrutinise those first published statements and engage with the communities and the forums who are the audiences essentially for that report to ensure that what is coming out is useful we don't want anybody producing something that's just and is not going to be of use to anyone so that's the other tool in the toolbox but again it needs some clear guidance I'm now going to go around to everyone and give you a final opportunity you can answer all those three questions you can ignore the three of them and give your final comment if it's something else that's relevant to you but we'll just go around so marry mella just to pick up on the points you were talking about the community engagement and the licensing process and I think that there is a great deal of frustration when members of the public do put in objections to licensing applications and they perhaps don't have that background knowledge of what the licensing objectives are and unfortunately it tends to be that there's a number of letters that are sent in that the licensing board really can't attach any weight to because it wouldn't be sufficient to stand up to to legal challenge but still when there's a great sense that there's an overwhelming desire not to have a new premises in the area but there's not actually the evidential basis or the objections haven't been set out in such a way that they really can't attach weight to it so with all that frustration I really see that the key is to work with our community councils and our local elected members they're really the gatekeepers to representing the views of local communities and rather than trying to yes it's important that the local residents understand the licensing process but they're not really going to become involved until there's maybe something in their particular area so the timing of when you provide information to them can be difficult so really trying to focus in on the community councils, local elected members giving them the skills and knowledge so that they can represent their local residents when concerns are expressed to them about a new application or the operation of existing license premises and I feel we all have a role in ensuring that there's sufficient information tool kits or whatever available so that they can properly represent their local residents in putting forward the necessary evidence views or whatever that license boards can then act on that information Thank you and Fiona Short Thank you chair I would agree with Mary there it's about managing expectations the board does have a role to play there in raising awareness of what the law is, what the boards can and cannot do we're also in a position where often members of the public who do objector up against lawyers that know a lot more than they do we're in a position as clerks that our jobs to legally advise the board LSOs can't offer legal advice so often there's a floundering there so it's about managing the expectations raising awareness for example part of our policy consultation survey monkey became very apparent that members of the public don't understand that licensing boards don't set the restriction and off sale trading hours that's set under the act there's not an understanding of a licensing system at all and I think that does have to be raised John Shearer Just to mention from a business point of view the value of a licence is very important the more valuable the licence the better run the premises so by just keeping issuing licences all the time of course you dilute the value of the licence in other countries again this has been seen even in taxis etc to improve service improve quality etc we've been working very hard also on training there's been a lot of change in the approach to training within the licensing industry in general and I think that's improved a long way and that needs again a lot more work required in that but I think that's helping especially in licensing etc so the person now serving across the bar maybe has a personal licence to figure it out and they know a fair bit about what they should do and shouldn't do so I think that's a big improvement but we're really we haven't really touched on that yet but if you just keep issuing licences of course it dilutes the value that you have has the obvious thing would be the premises it's going to be a better run because he doesn't want to lose a licence okay thank you Stuart Roxton I'd like to pick up on the raising awareness and I would echo that and specifically with the reference to local licensing forums with the exception of the MSPs present I would suspect the level of awareness within the Scottish Parliament of forums is not desperately high but in society nationally the level of awareness is quite low and there is a job to be done to make aware within society that they do exist and that they are a vehicle that local involvement can happen and it is a route to decision making within local government okay thank you chief inspector just a final part on something that was mentioned earlier about whether a formation of a national forum I think it's key from a recent perspective particularly and I'm sure that other members will agree that we absolutely need to keep the localism aspect and I'm not sure if the national forum what focus it would have we absolutely need to remember that local communities will get different requirements in relation to their needs okay thank you and Roger Colquith yes well with regard to public engagement and public participation I can then speak for Edinburgh there are certainly problems there in terms of the availability of information in fact as in so many other examples there there's no enforcement really I mean the requirement that information should be made available to local communities when a licensing application is received we just get a very summary statement of what's required we don't get any copy of the layout plan or the operating plan so we can't really see what's going to be going on and it's fairly easy for me because I happen to live near the city chamber so I can go down there and ask to see these documents they're not available online they're supposed to be provided according to the regulations but they aren't and there is no easily available register of existing premises now I think that's probably something specific to Edinburgh I dare say in other areas it is available but it isn't there and the other thing is the intimidating format of the licensing board meetings it's not just as was said you know that they occur in sort of rather overwhelming circumstances like the council and that sort of thing but also that I don't know whether this is required by the act or whether it's just the way it operates in Edinburgh but the applicant has a copy of the objections the objectors don't have a copy of what the applicant is going to say the objector has to speak first and then the applicant's representative who is usually a professional lawyer or something like that who's used to this sort of thing demolishes all that the objector has said and the objector has no opportunity to reply and that seems to be sort of in defiance of natural justice but I'd be interested to know what other people find in their own areas okay thank you Mr Colker Susan Elliott I would just make a plea again for forums to be reviewed because of the variance across the country just to bring that back to the attention of the committee and hopefully the guidance to be properly updated and consulted with the relevant stakeholders and make sure that everyone's aware of that guidance okay thank you and finally John Lee thank you convener and thanks very much for today's opportunity it's been really worthwhile engagement just to say briefly I think in the overall debate about availability as it relates to over provision I think there's a danger particularly in messaging that we hear from organisations like Alcohol Focus Scotland about the availability of alcohol given that alcohol is a legal product it's actually quite quite closely controlled it can only be sold from a licence premises it can only be sold at particular hours of the day the sales area has to be very specifically lined in the operating plan and that's very difficult for a convenience store to change that there has to be a designated premises manager that manager has to have a personal licence in Scotland unlike the rest of the UK there are restrictions on the advertising on the promotion of alcohol in store staff in Scotland again unlike the rest of the UK have to undergo mandatory training before they can sell alcohol premises must have an age verification policy in place and now I think we're the first country in the world to implement a national minimum unit pricing policy so there are already a really wide range of measures to ensure that alcohol is sold responsibly and it's controlled it's almost as if we've lost the faith in ourselves to implement them fully and the search is constantly for other remedies I think we should perhaps focus on making sure that all the existing measures are actually being implemented and being enforced effectively I suspect that that could stimulate further debate you have the advantage Mr Lear has been the last witness to speak in this round table the first thing I think we'll unanimously agree that he said there was this really worthwhile round table discussion it's been educational and informative for MSPs particularly those who work at local council beforehand it's been very, very useful I suspect I'm not giving any secrets away if I say there's a number of points that the committee will be acting on and I suspect we'll return to this again so thank you very much for everyone involved in this round table it's been really, really good value and useful to committee members so that ends agenda item 1 and we'll suspend to 11.15 where we'll start agenda item 2 okay, welcome back which is accessing green spaces in Scotland and the committee will hold its second round table evidence session of the day and this time it's with a number of interesting stakeholders on the impact of accessing green spaces on communities and related issues can I welcome everyone here today who's going to give evidence and perhaps we could ground the table and introduce ourselves, MSPs included of course I'll start Bob Doris MSP and I'm the convener of the committee I'm Julie Proctor Executive of Greenspace Scotland Hello, Monica Lennon MSP and the deputy convener of the committee Hello, my name is Matt Leather I'm the head of place and equity for NHS Health Scotland Andy Wightman MSP Colin Rennie, Scottish manager of Fields and Trust Graham Simpson MSP Good morning, Jenny Gilruth MSP Bruce Wilson, acting head of policy Scottish Wildlife Trust speaking on behalf of the Scottish Environment Link Good morning, Alexander Stewart MSP Kevin O'Kenn, Greenspace Service for Life Council and I'm Kenneth Gibson MSP Good morning, I'm John Kerr the chair of the Edinburgh Greenspaces Forum representing the volunteer groups in the city of Edinburgh Good morning everyone and thank you everyone for coming along as you reflected in the previous session we'll maximise the amount of time for witnesses to speak and for MSPs not so much but we'll hopefully stimulate debate in certain directions along the way and can we go to Graham Simpson MSP for the first question Thanks very much, convener I think what probably sparked this session today was the report from Greenspace Scotland on the state of Scotland's green spaces I think what came out for me and I'll just throw this out for general comment to get us started was that the issue doesn't seem to be so much the amount of green spaces the number of parks but the quality of those parks which appears to have gone down according to that report so I just wonder just to get us going what people's experiences and thoughts were on that I think it would wrong be fear giving you a mention give me space Scotland to start with a Julie Proctor at this point, Julie That's the third state of Scotland's green space report that we've produced and I think it is really important on what does our green space look like because we know green space is really important for our quality of life our quality of place in terms of health play, physical activity and what we find is we'd worked with Orden and Survey so we've now got a very comprehensive record of every area of green space in urban Scotland most of the publicly accessible green space in the rest of Scotland has now been mapped so we know absolutely how much green space we have for those interested in numbers so it's 1,593 square kilometres put that into perspective 22 times the area of Loch Lomond a third of the Cairngombs national park in urban Scotland we are more green than grey over 50% of our urban area is green when we look at access to green space we actually have very good quality access to green space most of us live within a five minute walk but what we found when we did the state of Scotland's green space report was the real challenge is declining quality from 2009 to 2017 we've seen a real fall in the quality of our green space 40% of people now say their green space has deteriorated in the last five years and that's having an impact on use as well so what we saw in 2017 was the lowest weekly frequency of using green space that we've seen at any time in the past and that is really important if we think about tackling issues around quality, health and wellbeing having access to green space that feels safe and accessible and welcoming place is important and that's the challenge we've seen cut backs through local authorities cut backs in other forms of management and we're now seeing the quality of the space deteriorate and that means we're at risk of losing those benefits okay yes Mr Louder I suppose just on the point of quality from a health perspective that the quality of the green space is particularly important for health outcomes my organisation NHSL Scotland is particularly interested in the health and equality so reducing the gap between those who are best off and worst off in our societies and we know from a quality perspective that people in the most deprived areas have the least amount of access to green space and particularly the quality of those green spaces is much lower than the rest of comparable communities so the quality of green space particularly from a health and the health and equality perspective is pretty significant okay Bruce Wilson yes certainly just a tour around the Scottish Environment Link organisations, definitely the strongest feeling that I had back was that the quality again was of high importance and the distinction between functionless green desert and high quality biodiverse space that provides a whole range of benefits, your health benefits but also sometimes overlooked benefits like flood murelation or mental health benefits as well and obviously the biodiversity side of things that is very important to our membership okay, any additional comments from witnesses before we go back to Mr Simpson Mr Rennie, yes just to mention that we have recently commissioned a major study on revaluing parks in green spaces it's referred to in the submission we made and put an economic value on green spaces it could put a wellbeing value and it looks at the estimated savings to the NHS for those who use green spaces regularly so I would commend that to you and I really invites everyone to look at parks and green spaces in a completely different way okay, thank you no one else, yes Mr Kerr just one point to reinforce on that from the community side the quality side of it is really the most important part because it's all very well having a green space very close to someone's front door but if they don't want to go there it's of no value whatsoever it could be 10 minutes away it could be half an hour away it could be a car journey away but they have to go to somewhere that they actually want to try and visit and get some benefit from the green spaces that we have and there are many for so many different reasons and they are a tremendous benefit to health both physical and mental but they have to want to go there so we've got to try and improve the quality if we can okay, Mr O'Kane certainly in five years we measured the quantity of green space and provision most places had a good amount of space and even places like Glenrothes had very high amounts of space and two and a half minutes walk of a green space the big issue is the quality and certainly with five there's been basically 25% reduction and the amount of money going to maintain the green spaces so it's having an add-on effect in terms of staff so the maintenance staff but also just we call the back room staff the staff that do the improvements so what's happening is we've reduced some respects reduced the nice things like the flowers and shrubbeds and a lot of things now have gone down to maintenance intensively managed grass and litter picking so there is evidence that we are we are reducing the quality okay, thank you yes, Dr Llywyddour I think it's important to understand when we talk about the quality of the green space it's not just about making sure the grass is a certain height or we've got a certain amount of shrubs it's about making sure the green space is right for the right communities so I think it's just important to understand that we talk about quality, it's not just about grass length and other things okay, Mr Simpson, do you want to follow up on some of that? yeah, thanks very much it was you Kevin mentioned Glenrothes I live in East Kilbride and I live in a new town and of course they were designed with specific green spaces and what I'm seeing in East Kilbride is that some of those original green spaces are getting run down they're not having council money spent on them and one or two of them, one in particular is at risk the council may hold on it so I think that there is a risk if the money going into green spaces is being cut then they could get sold off or develop something else and that of course impacts on people's health and wellbeing I think it's a real concern so when we look at the submission from Greenspace Scotland one of the ideas is that councils should have a green space strategy I'm quite surprised that all of them don't and there should be a Scottish green space innovation and transformation fund so maybe throw that one out before we move on lookal authorities were at one point required to produce open space strategies many of them have them but they're coming up for renewal and at the moment the wording is should so I think there's something here with the scrutiny you've been doing on the planning bill to make sure that we do ensure that local authorities have an open space strategy it's not just about parks it's a green network strategy it looks at a green infrastructure perspective and so that we are evaluating across the spaces and looking at how each is managed for the functions it needs to deliver I think in terms of the resourcing side of things one of the challenges you find if you look on local authority balance sheets and look on their asset register you probably won't find their parks and green spaces if you do it might have a token value of a pound and that's because they're measured in terms of what it costs to maintain them rather than the many benefits they deliver so I think work like fields in trust work that was done here in Edinburgh on a social return on investment study which shows for every pound invested you're getting 12-16 pound return on investment we need to start looking at how do we value as an asset, a natural capital asset rather than as a liability I think what we've seen across Scotland is local authorities are facing challenging times not just in green space across every area of budget and what we've seen is people really rise to the challenge of doing more with less I think we've reached a challenge where they can't do that much more but what we have seen is it's very important to find new ways of working in partnership with communities with other organisations here in Edinburgh the partnership with the Scottish Wildlife Trust on living landscapes so how do we manage the parks to deliver benefits for people and for wildlife so I think that's what we'd like to see with the transformation fund so for instance work we did in Aberdeenshire looking at how do we manage parks to mitigate and adapt to climate change it takes a little bit of additional resource a bit of capacity to start looking at things from a new perspective and to free up some opportunities and think a little bit differently about how we manage our parks in green space Colin Rennie, your organisation was mentioned in that... Yes, mentioned earlier we've commissioned a study the findings have just been published in the Welsh Assembly today and we have a Scottish launch plan but the document is available now and I think it is taking a completely different view in parks should not be and green space should not be viewed but really I must have if we are to tackle some of the health and other problems that we have in Scotland and we know that from the research that we conducted that people who use parks in green spaces regularly live healthier lives and we can put a price on that which again allows us to view parks in green spaces in a completely different way OK, any other comments and the points that Mr Simpson was making Mr, OK Say that it is not just councils that own public green space there is a lot of landowners that own it as well and we have had instances one of the five towns where there was a housing development and a no cricket pitch and they put in a bit of green space as part of the planning conditions and it was managed by a factor and the factors now sold it on to a individual who has stopped maintaining it so it has now become a blight on the community I do not know whether this private landowner wants to sell it on for housing but it is not just a council issue there are other landowners certainly in five we have got large states that own public land as well so there are issues with not seeing it just as a council thing and I think of course as you say even within some of the new towns where there was quite a lot of green space but once it is lost there is a big issue protecting it as well Bruce Wilson One of those landowners that has a lot of land around communities we view our reserves in different ways some are reserves that are exclusively for biodiversity maybe in some remote Scottish islands for example for public engagement we have been finding a lot of pressure placed on our resource and it is the same across other NGOs and it must be the same for councils spread of development quite often the green space is viewed by the developer that they do not own and manage as an asset because people want to move to areas so they can play with their kids what dogs that kind of thing but it does put a lot of strain on us having to maintain infrastructure try and make sure boundaries aren't eroded creep of back gardens that kind of thing so there are definitely there are huge reasons to encourage good access but responsible access and possibly thinking about what developers that are benefiting from housing development can do to help to maintain that asset Okay, thank you Yes, Dr Llywydd Thank you and just on the back of that there is no land on it and I think on the back of what Dr Llywydd is saying I think there needs to be a shift in attitudes towards our land, particularly green spaces so seeing them as real assets so seeing things that can really be of value as opposed to just things that are deficits that are costing the money and I think that goes for the NHS as well as local authorities as well as other land owns There have been lots of opportunities for witnesses to come back in anything else specific on this point before we move to our next question from MSPs No, Jenny Corrath I'd just like to follow on from Graeme Simpson really as the constituency MSP for Glenrothes and I'm sure that Kevin Kenyl will not be surprised to hear it I really was interested in Dr Matt Louther's point at the beginning when he spoke about the link to deprivation and access to green space particularly because Glenrothes faces huge problems in terms of child poverty but it's a good news story in terms of access to green space because when the town was first built there was this great utopian vision that Glenrothes would be a garden town and the good air quality was used as a selling point to get people to come to the town and to settle and they did in great numbers but I know from the Fife Council audit that it was conducted 45 out of the 95 green spaces needed to be improved 45 are still considered to be improving I just wondered if you could tell us a wee bit about the other fifth day, are they okay in terms of the Fife Council audit and also with regard to Dr Matt Louther's second point which was making sure that land is right in the community I know that within the Fife Council audit you looked at quality How has that assessed the quality of the green space that you looked at? We did a very detailed survey 10 years ago and we're trying to get funds to get it again and we looked at the amount of land and access to land Glenrothes was very interesting to me about East Kilbride I think because they were so well planned they actually had a lot of space and why we are finding it with the map and all this is that people have two and a half minutes walk to a green space in Glenrothes probably somewhere in East Kilbride and the other new towns so there is this high degree of access and certainly in the new towns there was big budgets when they first put in they had very good budgets to maintain and certainly it's changed now and even 10 years ago there was still a high budget in Glenrothes to keep it very well looked after so you have that so we did a survey about 460 green spaces in Fife and we found about half of them needed to be improved and in terms of quality Green Space Scotland did a very good work about 10 years ago defining what quality is so it's about how attractive it is about how you can get into the green space the wildlife, the community and the health and wellbeing so there's about six or seven different factors we looked at in terms of quality in terms of the green space but in terms of the Fife green spaces some of these need a lot of money to improve and it takes time to improve them and there's other ones when they aren't done by the council it takes longer in the case of one of the towns where there's a private individual in this green space now and trying to get that changed is difficult so yeah so we're obviously trying to improve it and in terms of deprivation in terms of we found clear links in Levenmouth where there's whole communities where the quality of the green space was poor and in Buckhaven there's a community group that are working there and they're working there and the council's working there but I think in post industrial areas the quality was a lot poor because they didn't have these town parks and also with budget cuts now it is a challenge to improve the quality and the other thing is certainly councils are capital budgets have all been slashed so improving things is a challenge and then thrown out with public we have a great reliance on trying to apply for grants so some of these grant processes can be quite hard to do and take like a month there was one I was doing it and there was 50 documents had to be put into the application form and also the other funding now is that they only fund the funding upfront capital costs and the Scottish Development Department 20 years ago had established funding for them when they were setting up a green space project so there would be a 10 year funding to just get it established so I think there's quite a lot of challenges Any other comments on that? Just a comment in relation to access to green space and deprivation what you'll often find if you look on a quantity basis is the more deprived communities have very large areas of green space but when you look at it it's often functionless, boring green deserts, high rise standing in the middle of grass it's not very welcoming not somewhere you'd want to take your kids out to play and it's not doing much for biodiversity either and what we find in our surveys we ask people about their expectations for green space as good places for children to play for relaxation, physical activity in deprived areas people often have higher expectations that green space should be those things but when we ask about the local reality of their green space, the ratings are much lower so I think we've got a huge gap between expectations and reality in more deprived communities and there is an awful lot more that we could do I think one of the worrying things we're seeing with our survey just now is that in terms of satisfaction levels for the very first time we've closed the opportunity gap we've now brought the figures together between all of Scotland and the 15 per cent most deprived communities and that's not because we've improved quality in the more deprived areas it's because the quality is deteriorated across the pace Dr Llywydd, are you wanting to come in now? Yes, please. It's just on the point of deprivation and health and the role of green space so there's pretty good evidence now that actually if we can get this right and we can improve the quality of green spaces particularly in deprived areas it can actually help reduce health and equality so it has a bigger impact on the more deprived areas so it is something that can make a significant contribution to health and equality Okay, the other MSPs want to go in but Jenny, go do what you want to follow up on that Thank you. I'll let them in so I'll just take the MSPs in order that I saw them and it was actually Mr Gibson first I said very much Mr O'Kane talked at the beginning about the reduction in budgets and he talked about how the council has to spend a lot of the resources that it has on keeping cutting grass and stuff like that and de-littering pretty much of it in terms of the submissions the impact of things like dogfouling and littering when I was a councillor in Glasgow for example the city council had at that time a radical idea of allowing a lot of areas to become re-wild effectively to attract animals birds insects and of course wildflowers to grow and all that happened frankly was that people began to object to it because it became a magnet for litter and the areas became quite unsightly and obviously that affects all parts of Scotland pretty badly to one degree or another it's a thing I think it's a bit of a shame it's shaming on the country actually when I see how much litter there is everywhere but what impact does that having on our green spaces because you're talking about people's attitude to it like being more dissatisfaction than a few years ago people less willing to use it do these issues for dogfouling and littering have that kind of impact very quickly come back on the sort of re-wilding aspect that you call it there I think what we've realised through our work with the Edinburgh Living Landscape and the Cumbernail Living Landscape and various other kind of urban initiatives that we've got is we were in the past previously not so good at explaining the rationale behind that sort of thing so people didn't get it and they thought it was neglect so when we now spend a lot of time interpretation that kind of thing taking community groups out and then also working with friends of groups particularly in Cumbernail there's 12 different friends of parks that we work with to explain the rationale behind that kind of decision it saves money but also things like flooding biodiversity it helps to ward so we have made some quite big strides ahead in that sort of area and just on your point about kind of other pressures on urban areas dogfiling is certainly one but increasingly industrial dumping asbestos, horses you name it we're going to get it on reserves so it's definitely a pressure It's just on you're talking about the re-wilding you can't just leave things alone because actually you need to maintain all the public green space so some councils have tried to just stop cutting the grass but you still need to do the litter and also if you want to make it better for wildlife you actually have to cut the grass about two or three times so there's even an aspect that doesn't need money to maintain, you just can't abandon it if you abandon it then it just becomes a blight so I think that's the main part of that okay I think just to commend work like the living landscapes project because there have been a lot of places where they tried to change the grass cutting regime as Bruce says without any communication and it was just interpreted as money saving but it needs to be a planned approach and so a lot of the experience from Edinburgh has been shared in other places if we're up in Fife and we went to Dunfermline you'd see in Dunfermline Public Park where our young place changers, young people working with the community councillor that's changed the management regime but what they do is there are a wilder areas left but there are always paths cut through the grass the edges is always managed so it looks as though it's a managed space so it's delivering benefits for people and biodiversity as well and I think that's important and one of the things I was going to say is there's a lot of opportunities now to share practice across different local authorities so we have a part managers forum and local authorities together because I think that each council is facing these very similar challenges and there's a lot they can learn from each other OK, any additional comments on that before I go to the other members Allie's understood We've touched on funding and expenditure and there's a vast variation across Scotland depending on what local council's priorities are but what has happened in recent years is that the partnership working I'd like to expand a little bit on that because you have the bloom committees or you have communities that take on ownership or you've even got trusts that now look after parks or look after space that is seemingly the way forward to try and fill that gap that you have ensuring that there is still some ownership of the organisation within the community but also the funding is looked at of a different stream how has that improved the situation Who would like to go first on that We've certainly there's been some of our parks and green spaces have been taken over by some trusts and community groups What I would say is I suppose it helps but I suppose it's not addressing everything because it's just the scale of the cuts of change the whole you say the landscape and then sometimes you can get a situation where the trust can't we've had to take back parks We have 60m bloom groups and 5 and they're very important and there's a lot of community capacity building and improving the towns and villages but I think it's one aspect and certainly in 5 we're very active in doing it but I think because of the amount of public green space we have on the need for it it's one element of the equation Any other Julie Proctor? John will probably want to have some comment on this around the role of friends groups but I think what we saw from the survey that we did in 2017 was a significant increase in people wanting to have more of a say about what happens in their green space and to get actively involved in physical activities tasks within the site to improve it but what we didn't find was any significant appetite in terms of ownership of title land and the heritage lottery fund found something very similar when they did their state of parks report fewer than 10% of the friends groups who were actively involved in managing sites wanted to take on a lease or a more formal arrangement and there were concerns about liabilities and insurance and so on that went alongside that and I think what we have seen although there is a strong focus at the moment on community empowerment we haven't seen the scale in community buyouts and transfers in urban Scotland that we've seen in more rural and highland areas and one of the biggest challenges we've seen is groups, green space groups who've looked at that they haven't been able to find any way of developing a sustainable income stream from parks and green spaces so they don't have any way of resourcing those costs on an ongoing basis it's something we're actively looking at and I would hope that transformation and innovation fund could assist with so we're looking now at opportunities to generate heat and energy from our parks and green spaces so are there ways that they can start to generate income so that that could then come back into a community fund energy generated locally, used locally the funding coming back into the community groups to resource improvements in the site so a virtuous circle but I think John's got a lot of practical experience from the friends groups You've got lots of interest there including from myself but I'll restrain myself particularly on friends I really want to ask a specific question Friends groups are invaluable for being our communication from an NGO who can sometimes seem quite faceless to a local community to have local staff on the ground that can speak to these friends groups so they are completely invaluable from getting messages out to the community that grass is a great example but there are numerous other things as well Thank you, and John Kerr? Yeah, as the representative of friends groups I've never felt so loved as I do at present I think that a lot of the people in friends groups started off thinking that they could do something about tidying up their park and making it a better place to visit and so on and now they've also become experts in public liability insurance risk assessments, health and safety currently wrestling the GDPR becoming a registered charity to encourage funding how to apply for funding so many things that you're doing now in addition to the basic things that you thought you might be doing as a friend of your park the thought of taking on ownership as well is, I think, for a lot of groups just a step too far it's a big responsibility to take on many of the representatives in friends groups aren't exactly the youngest people on the planet many of them are, and apologies to them they're older and to take on that extra work is just not something that they're prepared to consider at this time I'll make a back to you on that Colin Rennie I follow in from John's point our charity takes the view that local authorities will always have the most important central role in providing and maintaining green spaces and we take the view that not all transfers are good let me give you one example or it happens rather often where football teams successfully take over a pitch the problem is if the ground on which the pitch sits isn't a lot bigger than the pitch they want to fence the pitch off so it excludes everyone else and unfortunately sometimes football teams only see the pitch as a pitch but it's often the place where kids learn to kick a ball, hit a ball with a bat learn to ride a bike so it works enormously well where pitches are not fenced off when there's a game on no one walks a dog across the pitch so there are as we see it sometimes difficulties with transfer where it takes a large space on quite a small area I'm dull slightly here because I'd mentioned I'd wanted to come in as well in relation to friends-off groups so my constituency they're invaluable and thank goodness they exist but I would look at friends-off groups and the role they do is going way beyond austerity of the last few years and friends of Maryhill park have not won a ship, they've got direct use of much of the park but it's a long time now before austerity when the tennis courts and the park closed when the bowling green closed when the athletics park fell into a ban so there appears to be a long-term managed decline of some of these assets and friends of Maryhill park have stepped in during difficult financial times and are doing amazing work there and there are other initiatives in the local area as well I mentioned friends of Springburn park who their new community village is going to open up within the park in the 2nd and 3rd of June wonderful initiative I have to see in partnership with local authority I'm not trying to criticise local authorities but there has been a long-term managed decline of many parks sad to see of that in Glasgow given that's a real jewel in the crown of Glasgow particularly the parks the more affluent areas have certainly seen a run down and the friends of groups in my constituency are doing invaluable roles so when we're talking about how we support parks in open spaces I'm just wondering whether any innovation fund for example is it to support community resilience with friends of organisations is it to stop the decline elsewhere out with an urban setting where inequalities have only closed because I feel like nicer assets are now starting to deteriorate as well where would we spend if there was money to spend supporting community resilience to access to open spaces my money would be in supporting the friends of groups because that's a volunteer led groups in my constituency who do a wonderful job we can spend money everywhere so if you had a priority what would you support Mr Kerr it's only fair to come to yourself first I think just to sort of pick up on that I would support trying to encourage new groups there are a lot of very well established groups throughout Scotland within the less wealthy areas there are fewer friends of groups and it's how you get more of these groups starting up how do you encourage that community interest thank you Julie Proctor taking a second to hear me out Julie Proctor I think that the missing voice missing member of with our group here today is young people we've been working in Dunfermlyn with a group of young place changers and they wanted to be here today but exams unfortunately took priority of attending a committee but I think that's another strand when you look at friends of groups they are generally of an older generation and what we found is that young people are often invisible in place consultations working with Youth Scotland and a young place changers programme with young people and now with heritage lottery funding we're rolling that out and this is about putting young people in the lead so they're leading consultations in their communities, in their parks and in their streets and bringing forward place visions and action plans and that as we've seen in Dunfermlyn is really invigorating some of the friends groups and bringing in fresh ideas so that we're involving people in using and managing our parks who are not the usual suspects who are not the people using them now Other things that you want to comment on that I should point out my friends of groups are not old but that's woodlicks I'm going to show in footage of this particular evidence session any other comments on that before I go to Mr Simpson, Kevin O'Kane We're just certainly friends groups that do need support too and it does take council officers a lot of friends groups fill out the forms, application forms even get constituted so if there was a fund there's a need to have the supports to do that but the other thing with friends groups is a lot of them burn out because they're volunteers so the challenge is we can rely more on the friends groups there's only so many volunteers a lot of these people are doing are in committees and maybe five committees so it's a part of that money would be supporting them and helping them with the everyday things Okay Mr Kerr As the resource reduction started to bite in Edinburgh council it was around the time that the Edinburgh green spaces forum set up to help each other my group was relatively new at the time and we had basically invented a lot of things ourselves and we thought it was really stupid so we'll get all of the friends of parts groups beginning to talk to one another and help one another so that with things like constitutions or so on we can share that knowledge and make it easier for a new group starting up Children and young people again it's just important to point out that the evidence is fairly strong that kids who use green spaces grow up to be adults who use green space so getting involvement of kids at a young age in green spaces is essential I think so there is a life course approach Now staying on this theme the next line of questioning could be on this as well, it's from Mr Whiteman but a supplementary I think from Graham Simpson relation to this He's sticking to friends groups really I'm just thinking out loud because I mentioned earlier this sort of park in Bride which was a couple of football pitches they haven't been used for that for years definitely under threat council wants to build on it so one thought I'd had was well could we do an asset transfer but listening to you and reading the papers we've got that seems like it might be a bit too much for people to take on so what if we formed a friends group that sounds good but our friends groups and I don't know the answer to this perhaps you could help me John are friends groups able to apply for funds themselves so maybe they could fund improvements to this park? Yes they can and that's one of the reasons why they become registered charities because it's then easier to get the funds so yes they can do it and in certain instances I think that is a good way to go it just depends on the area and the enthusiasm of the group That's useful Any more in relation to this specific area before we move on? Andy Wightman I'm not sure we're going to move on I should note from the Greenpeace Scotland report that came out a couple of months ago that of the green space in Scotland only 4% is public parks and gardens 37% well 28% is private gardens so put them to one side because they're not accessible 37% is immunity green space presumably that's the land outside offices and things like that so I mean the focus of attention on 4% of public parks there's 37% of that green space and I'm interested in people's views on what we could do about that and the other important aspect here is that we're setting some community groups out at Airdrie, Woodhall and Fasgin which is a big bit of green belt and with an old canal and stuff and in there there are lots of children playing that's where they go they don't go to any of the bits of land covered in formal green space they literally go to the land that is actually just a minute's walk from them but is in the countryside and the challenges facing the management of that are around but it appears that that's the kind of places where as I said in this case young people were finding a lot of fun and enjoyment because it's full of woods and burns and they can go fishing and all the rest of it so is there a danger in focusing on green space that we neglect the green belt and what can we do about immunity green space OK, I'll present the discussion about I think, Airdrie Proctor that brings us into the thorny definition of what is green space and I can honestly say that this was one of the longest discussion items that Greenspace Scotland board ever had and our definition of green space is all vegetated land and water in the urban environment so from our perspective when I'm talking green space here I'm not just talking about parks I am talking very much about the immunity spaces, the allotments the community gardens, the woodlands and it's that whole plethora of different green space which meets people's needs some days it might be a formal playing field to play a game of football a park for a picnic with friends but other times it is a walk in the woodland it's a walk down a canal towpath so that immunity space is important and you're right the definition of that is it's the spaces, the incidental grass spaces that might be around buildings it could be quite large swathes of grass it could be the areas around offices, roadside verges as well it's a potential role some of it does actually have play equipment, path seat so it actually functions more as a park and so I do think we need to be looking across that whole type of different green space and that's where some of the challenges come in about one size fits all in terms of quality because the type of management that you need in a woodland area a wild woodland area is slightly different to what you would want in a formal park so I think we need to encourage people to look at all of those and then when we start to look at green networks and from an ecological perspective it's that diversity that comes in and at that point even private gardens are important because if we're looking at how we're managing flooding and air quality that green fabric is important as well Scotland we often talk about this concept of nature deficit disorder in children and really not growing up in natural spaces because there is sometimes a problem with when they do have green spaces available that they're not necessarily the wildest places they can visit so I'm really pleased to hear you saying that we're playing in the place nearby the other thing that makes me happy about is I'm really conscious of this kind of concept sometimes we have in Scotland that wild spaces are a place to be driven to maybe at the weekend you might go up to the campsies or something like that rather than having it on your doorstep so that disconnect I think we're really keen to try and break and our definition certainly includes kind of that wilder aspect for green space as well just to be clear I mean the place I was talking about the children were playing was not green spaces defined by the agenda we've got here it was green built on the edge of the settlement so we would definitely... it was far more valuable to them than anything to agree with that I think it's value increases immensely when it is including those kind of wilder aspects and sometimes that means that it's not managed as intensively I think definition has been a big problem because in terms of green space certainly with new housing developments they can put in some land that's not accessible to people and when we came up with a definition of publicly usable green space it was the land for communities and then the other types of green space like the verges and business states was functional green space just to sort of clarify that we need to protect a publicly usable green space and I think the whole thing about children's play I mean we we have 450 play parks and five council managers and a lot of them are in not great position and quality and you're trying to say to communities that really if we we take out a couple of the play parks and improve one of the play parks you know that would be better for the community but the community has sort of fixated thinking that plays to do with you know a play park where as you say the natural spaces can be as highly valuable as was the other thing with the natural spaces then you find that they're not as maintained as well and they can be they can be litter and you know is litter in those sort of spaces so the other thing is we have developed green networks in terms of the land use planning system and looking at green space and the natural space and how these networks are in and around the towns and that's quite valuable in terms of protection and looking at the links because I think the big issue is actually is about like in a college called Fragmentation but if you can have an interconnected network of green spaces it's really valuable then and it can then have a big massive impact then if you want in cycling and walking and even for flooding so I think you know the countryside around towns can be as valuable but I think the green I think the other thing, the big point is that if you closer they are the more space you'll use if you're sort of the World Health Organization says if you're within less than 10 minutes walk you will use a green space more regularly but as you're going back to quality different ages use green spaces in different ways Colin Rennie here I think the type of green space where you're talking about kids playing shouldn't be that concept is easily easily createable in an urban setting in a big park the nature of the play areas for children reflect up I mean I think no longer is it recognised in play sector that things like swings around about and a shoot fill the criteria they're much more reflective of the sort of thing you'd explain you find on the edge of towns and I think that's increasingly recognised and increasingly more attractive it's more challenging for kids and it's something that seems to be rolled out but again as a consequence of the financial challenges that local authorities have it's being rolled out at a very slow pace I'm sure that's something we want to go on to as well it's part of our budget scrutiny which we're trying to embed in all the evidence sessions that we do that Julie Proctor did you work in oh right excellent now I'll take you in Mr Simpson but it was Mr Whiteman's line of inquiry is that a supplementary in relation to this? Now I'll let Mr Whiteman continue I've got nothing further to add I mean it's just it just strikes me if we are and I think we should be improving the planning environment resourcing how and who manages these spaces a lot to get more out of them and improve the quality I'm just merely observing that in an area I visited it wasn't any of these designated the nearest they had was the countryside which was on the edge of the village and that countryside is under threat of producing a much higher quality environment as green belt for folk to play and walk and recreate in than anything that's embedded within the definition of the urban footprint so in a sense if we're looking at quality green space and the countryside is green space there's maybe an argument for having a slightly more integrated approach than just drawing a hard line and saying everything inside has a particular approach and the countryside has a slightly different approach that's really proctored I think I was just keen to introduce the concept of outdoor nurseries into the conversation as well and potential opportunities that might be coming forward with the commitment to increase the number of childcare hours we're doing some work with Inspiring Scotland and held a round table back in February and again that was looking at opportunities that nursery provision doesn't have to be in a built environment as Graham was talking around about putting a building on a park but we've seen the Scandinavian model there's a number of nature kindergarten and actually wouldn't that be quite interesting if a large proportion of the extra hours childcare provision could be met with outdoor nurseries and again there's quite an element of documented research in terms of the health benefits children's future behaviours of that so we could actually be making our parks and our green spaces work much harder as an outdoor nursery I apologise to committee members and witnesses but now that you've said that Julie Proctor I can't not mention Merell Mobile Cres which is a wonderful and absolutely wonderful outdoor nursery which has gone through a period of expansion partly because of the reasons you made and just that mindset the kids go there prepared to go outside unless it's unsafe and they bring clothes accordingly and they love it and there's huge demand for it so I'm really glad you raised that point and apologies again for indulging Monica Lennon I wanted to pick up on planning this committee spent a lot of time in recent weeks and months scrutinising the planning bill and some of you I think have made submissions to that so Julie just to open up to witnesses what could the planning system do differently oh we've got a show of hands already what could the planning system do differently to make sure that we do have equality green space and more of it and is there anything in the particular in the planning bill in front of the Parliament that you'd maybe like to see amendments coming forward and I think Bruce Wilson is keen to get started I am not unsurprised that Bruce Wilson wants to answer this question I'll come to you first Bruce 29th of this month is our stage 1 debate for the Parliament so just to make people aware of that and I suspect that the subject of extending the meeting to about 5pm this afternoon but it's only right that you take your opportunity so Mr Wilson I'll be really brief then, Daphne's already supplied various amendments that he actually told me about the next stage this morning so that's fantastic I think we could simplify a lot of it by saying a lot of statements made within planning to do with green space green infrastructure, green networks are very often shoulds so it quite often gets left at the end of a process developer should pay due attention to connected green networks that kind of thing and not must you've got our amendments that we've suggested on the planning bill but specifically we're very worried about loss of supplementary guidance in this respect so that's probably the main thing I'd say in regard to this Thank you I would just completely echo Bruce's comments about the concern around loss of supplementary planning guidance that's certainly what most local authorities and friends groups have been talking to us about we'd be looking for a duty to produce an open space strategy we welcome the references to green infrastructure in there but most of the guidance the policy that's happening at a local level is in those supplementary planning guidance and it's essential that that isn't lost within the new planning bill Any comments specific to planning The planning system has a statutory consultation process in terms of playing fields with Sportscotland and I think that in itself has quite a lot of limitations because when a playing field is threatened in the development Sportscotland will only look at it from the perspective of its sports use you know whether it's a football pitch or rugby or cricket pitch you know do we need this site as a cricket pitch there is no look at how the site is used beyond that so but we do have that statutory process and I beg the question might it be useful to have a statutory process for other green spaces to engage with interested organisations before a site is developed because we generally take the view that it's far too easy for local authorities to develop spaces of their own that are zone for green space in breach of their own local development plan and in breach of Scottish planning policy which has presumption I think that the spirit and intentions good application is slightly different I think that as Bruce said too many shoulds are not enough musts because there is a presumption against development if you develop you should replace that rarely happens Kevin O'Kane I would say certainly in my experience of the planning system and development planning and FIFE that it is actually quite good and you know it has I would say that the quantity would need to do more but the quantity hasn't dramatically gone down in terms of FIFE said that it's the quality is a big issue I suppose one of the things is a lot of the plans are very much based on sites and if you take go back to the way of the new towns which is the great thing about new pounds was that we planned the whole new town and the spaces in the town integrated network of spaces whereas certainly the way planning is now it's very much on the site and the site within the red boundary and not what's outside the site and linking it to other green spaces so certainly there's if you could take a better approach where we are integrating and looking at networking connections it helps and I think in terms of green spaces the quantity is quite important in terms of public health so having large spaces is better for people's health than if they're connected so the problem with a lot of social housing and private housing is that every space is important for a house and there is problems actually providing green space and a lot of new housing developments so I suppose again back to the supplementary planning guidance is really essential for laying out a lot of this in terms of quantity and then it's a development system in terms of actually structuring the network somewhere because there's a lot of fragmentation and if we can actually get more connections then it's better for walking and cycling Members of the public who maybe haven't engaged with this to the level that the committee has and what this around here has much of that is in the committee's stage 1 report which is available on the committee's webpage as well any additional comments in relation to planning before Maureen Cymru comes back in maybe ask a supplementary on that sorry Bruce introduced the concept of the national ecological network that we've also alluded to the importance of connectivity but specifically for biodiversity that's absolutely vital so some overarching strategy that gives the same level strategic planning to our green and blue infrastructure as we already have for our other networks like motorways or digital networks would be enormously helpful Maureen Cymru comes back in that Just to pick up with Julie and Kevin because you both mentioned supplementary guidance if supplementary guidance doesn't survive in its current form do you see a way to include that into local development plans which could be going to a 10-year cycle if it disappears where else would you do that that kind of work Julie, don't come first it's also looking at what can be included in the planning bill so it's setting that as the national framework so that that feeds down and influences locally Kevin is probably closer to the local authority side in terms of what you would do without supplementary planning guidance I'm not a planner so I can't totally say but certainly in our local development plan we've got supplementary guidance making advice places and that's been really good at setting out not just looking at sites but looking at networks and I suppose if it's not nationally then I suppose it's on the local authority to keep planning guidance but certainly it's been very important in terms of green space much more of that in our report Graham Simpson, do you want to come in? Yeah, it was really a couple of questions for yourself Colin so Fields and Trust have a legal agreement with Glasgow City Council with most local authorities, yes most local authorities as well that's interesting it says here that you've got an agreement to protect 27 of the parks in Glasgow that's Fields and Trust having an agreement to secure those areas for recreation are you saying you've got an agreement with we've got agreements all across Scotland with all local authorities except one it's a kind of nebulous concept it's a legal agreement we have that protects the site in perpetuity I guess if I were to draw a parallel that kind of explains what we do for parks, green spaces and playing fields what the listed building process does for architecturally important and historic buildings we don't own them, there is a legal agreement that protects them and they cannot be developed and occasionally local authorities come to us where we've protected a site maybe for decades and say we need to widen the road we do have a process for dealing with that how we deal with it is strictly in line with Scottish planning policy except where it says that it should be replaced with us it must be so there's never any less quality or less space than there was before but yes we roll out legal agreements all across Scotland the main thing we do is protect green spaces for the benefit of the user group is it easy to find out where these yes it is simply put in a postcode of any part of the country and it will throw up on our website when you open the page it's got a postcode site locator that we protect simply put in a postcode and the dozen or so sites nearest that postcode will come up and is it easy to get new new parks put under one of these we'd like it to be easier but yes we work in partnership with most local authorities in a very productive way and we've had different programmes at different times we currently have one this is a scenery of world war one and we've got a programme with sites linked to that currently the other question was also in your evidence but others may want to comment on it you've mentioned that down south there's a parks action group and you're calling for that here I wonder if you could explain why that is right the Westminster Parliament which has responsibility for green spaces in England only they had an inquiry into the future of parks and following on from that they established the parks action group and I guess although a lot of good and important things have been said today is today sufficient time to look at the challenges of parks that we have with parks and green spaces to fully assess their importance in terms of links to health and wellbeing I suspect not so it may be for the committee to consider whether there is a it would be a good thing to have a wider more time allocated to this whole process and to make a decision arising from that whether a parallel organisation group ought to be settled for Scotland others think Julie Proctor We would certainly encourage the committee after today to take a longer look at the whole issue of access to quality parks and green spaces and how we can actually make sure they do deliver on the rhetoric I think if we look at in Scotland we've probably got a better national policy framework for green space than anywhere else in the UK there is though a gap between what happens and how it gets lost in translation between the aspirations the ambition of national policy the aspirations of local communities and what people experience on the ground and I think we do see this really as a strong area of preventative spend where spending money on green space is delivering huge benefits in terms of our health in terms of our children's education and play and future so I think there is an opportunity to look at are we doing this right in Scotland and I think also an opportunity to get ahead of what's happening in England and Wales I mean if we see what's happening down there we're seeing councils such as proposing selling off 19 of their parks and trying to reinvest the fund to maintain parks for the future they had a longer more in-depth inquiry through their communities and local government committee and they've then set up a parks action group that's also involving civil servants across a range of different departments as well as the range of organisations and they're looking at particular topics around financial models around community involvement around communication and I think there would be a really good opportunity to take a deeper and a broader look at what we need to do to make our green space assets for Scotland That's a very powerful sales pitch for further work for this committee it's maybe worth just putting on the record the purpose of these roundtables is just to kind of tease out if and when or where we would do a further more detailed piece of work sometimes a large piece of work sometimes we'll pick one aspect of it and the committee will have to will have to obviously consider that we've got about 10 minutes or so left I'm kind of looking at MSPs there was a few questions that we had prepared but thought it would be good to get some information on the record so we might just do that for the last 5, 10 minutes or so it was pointed out to me I should know it because I'm speaking in the chamber tomorrow in relation to the national performance framework on national outcomes that the revised national outcome is access to green and blue space now it was not very well intentioned and might be mentioned by some members in the chamber tomorrow but a sports important thing is once you've got the national outcome is how you would monitor that national outcome so any suggestions in relation to how that should be monitored I think would be quite you'd have to have it just now you can write back to the committee but I think that would be quite helpful how would you monitor that national outcome as it's measured at the moment it's from the Scottish household survey which asks people about do you live within a 5 minute or a 10 minute walk we already see there's a difference between we ask a very similar question in the green space survey only of urban residents and we find they have less access than rural residents through the Scottish household survey we're looking now, we're working at the moment with colleagues in Scottish government on the ordinance survey green space map so we can use GIS geographic information systems digital analysis to do network analysis what we think we're going to find is that actually we probably have even better access to green space so more of us will live within a 5 minute walk if we're just doing that physical measuring so that's where we'd really be putting in a plea to say that that national indicator should be saying it's access to quality green and blue space and then we actually get something useful because as we've heard from Matt Lauder it's not just about the quantity and the access, it's about the quality of the spaces that has an impact on our health so we'd really be encouraging this committee to say quality needs to be in the national indicator as well and then we'd be very keen to look at how we measure that with the spirit of sitting below that we're looking at a series of criteria by which we'd flesh that out and I think the government was trying to make is as short as possible the actual outcomes but there's a whole layer below that even access to quality green space doesn't mean it's being used so it should be access to quality green space that is then used because you're the best green space in the world but if it's not used it just kind of sits there so any other ideas on how some of that might be monitored or you can contact the committee at a later date in relation to that if you've got any any comments on that I think that by remiss if it's not to ask given the fact that Julie Proctor mentioned a transformation innovation fund that means money we will be looking at budget scrutiny the first question I would ask in relation to that is some of the evidence we have is that despite the fact that all local authorities appear to have been impacted by very tight budgets at a local level some local authorities spend a lot more than others in relation to access to green space through the manage all that any suggestions of why some local authorities seem to do significantly better than others in the first instance before we got attached to the pounds and pens itself any thoughts on that, Julie Proctor? The Pat Managers Forum has had a really good look at the figures that come from the improvement service on spend and I have to say sometimes individual local authority colleagues didn't recognise those figures so I think there maybe isn't a standardised approach and it's a challenge in terms of when you're looking at the definition of green space, what has people included have they included cleansing and so on as well, so I think there is quite a variety but it sometimes does reflect the amount of green space they have, the distribution of those spaces but it's also what is recorded on the green space account. That's helpful, Bruce Boggson did you want to add to that? Figures but I wonder if local authorities that have less provision for biodiversity expertise within that local authority possibly wouldn't be as inclined to spend as much money on that area because they don't have people internally making those arguments and again that area has been cut quite heavily. So it could be a workforce issue as well Mr Boggson would say so in terms of that, that's interesting so the picture's there, let's have this transformation and innovation fund earlier on we were talking about should this build resilience with friends of groups, should it create new groups where there's gaps, should it be for community transfers and a variety of things that it could be for so we'll leave that sitting but there's a joint obligation there in relation to Government at a local level and Scottish Government so we are clear in relation to what the call is for would this be a stand-alone fund that would be created by the Scottish Government that individual groups would bid for or local authorities would bid for would it be partnership funding between Scottish Government and local authorities by COSLA where they both put in moneys, would it be disputed at a local authority level just at some point we will be doing budget scrutiny, there's an ask there so any information you want to give in relation to that ask I think we would find helpful it's probably come to yourself to the production again We'd be very keen to come back with a fleshed out proposal in terms of the thinking around the innovation fund currently running at the moment with Nesta the National Agency for Innovation and Heritage Lottery Fund and Big Lottery Fund they have a rethinking parks programme which is UK wide which is 2 million for looking at new models for parks Scottish authorities Scottish partnerships can apply it's only 2 million the amount of money that's going to come to Scotland from that is probably quite limited but there's a lot of good practice that could come from that innovation fund on our experience of working with local authorities and with friends groups on what we call pioneer projects it's ways of doing things differently with the resources and capacity that you've got but finding a bit of space to think about different ways of doing that so for instance we did it in Aberdeen looking at what would this management look like if we thought about how we're going to manage to mitigate and adapt to climate change we've looked in other areas at how could we increase the amount of local food growing through managing our green space in different ways so I think it is to start pioneering some of those new approaches and particularly around energy that we're looking at at the moment which has the potential to bring income back into our green spaces but critically I think for community and friends groups as well because it's something when Greenspace Scotland was a core funded charity core funded by Scottish Government we used to run networking and training activities for community groups so what you're seeing is there are small umbrellas coming together in Edinburgh where they bring the friends or group together Glasgow's just starting to do something similar but there isn't really that support group out there for friends and community groups so again that would be something we'd look at but we'll take the invitation to come back to you with more detail Other MSPs can come in but this is just in relation to budget scrutiny we've had a lot of public health we've got intricate health and social care and joint boards across the country that's a different budget line this committee doesn't necessarily scrutinise that budget line although we give reference to it in terms of money that transfers from health into effectively local authority directed spend in terms of care but are we missing a trick in how we look at some of those monies as well so any Dr Lowther I don't know if you've got a comment to make in relation to that That whole debate about the preventative spend is is pretty fundamental to this so people like my organisation who work in public health will obviously argue that if we can move the money away from or move money into prevention then obviously that's going to have longer term benefits which will save the NHS money in the long term getting the evidence around that is quite difficult sometimes and that's a challenge for us I think there are some things that the NHS can do so for example we are part of a programme called green exercise partnership so it's a partnership between the NHS Scottish National Heritage and Forestry Commission Scotland where we are trying to bring together funding from the NHS Scottish Government and those other organisations to basically green the NHS the NHS estate for a whole range of outcomes I think there are different things that we can do that's helpful Julie Proctor I know when the environment committee was scrutinising the budget they did look and see that the environment delivers a wide range of benefits which create cost savings for other areas health obviously was one that was mentioned and they were looking to make that budget connection so I think that's something we'd be keen to encourage you to do I think in terms of the health service there are some good practice happening out there we're just working at the moment with NHS Lothian to produce what will be the first green space and health strategic framework and that is again something that we should be looking to encourage so not only is this around how do we use existing green spaces to improve people's health but also the role of the health services state we talked about the fact that local authorities weren't the only managers of land so how do we use the NHS estate to deliver health benefits and health services I've got a lot of indications of various witnesses wanting to speak so I'll roll to her the last budget-related point and then you can choose to answer it ignore it but effectively it's your opportunity for a final comment before we close the session if you choose to have it Mr Gibson mentioned real basic things about green space irrespective of how it's defined and that's in relation to whether grass is cut whether the litter is picked up whether you go and look at a variety of other things so in Glasgow that would be the budget given to land and environmental services for example should we be looking at something across over in relation to how local authorities prioritise those kind of things and satisfaction with access to green and blue space and see if there's a connectivity there in relation to budget lines to see if there's a strong evidence base to say well local authority X surprisingly satisfaction has dipped and so we can look at the budget numbers based on outcomes for our constituents rather than argue over whether what the number is itself but actually the outcomes for people so that was my final cut at how we embed a budget scrutiny into the process you can answer that ignore all of that, that's up to you I think we'll go round the table but I think we'll start with Mr Wilson on the clear committee and their statements on the budget also just add in to that health side of things not just quantity of life but quality of life we had a little chat beforehand and I definitely agree that you might just be prolonging someone's life but if you can actually improve mental, physical health through green space as well as saving money a better overall outcome I think when it comes to budgets and how we define success obviously constituents are hugely important but we've got to look at other indicators as well so look at our biodiversity metrics look at the amount of run-off that's coming off look at the urban heat island effect all those things as measures of success of our green space and not just public perception because those things are hard to see with the public everyone has the final opportunity to make a comment we'll just go round Mr O'Kane it's just really the potential of budgets I mean we've got a green space in Farnham where we've had money from one council department for a cycle way which has been put into the green space and we're getting money from the Scottish Environment Protection Agency for river restoration so I suppose again it's back to saying that those are multi-functional assets we should see our green spaces as and for something like the transport system we're just flooding so I think if we can see them more than just recreation spaces then become really vital in the communities yep, a theme we're similar to Mr Wilson was saying as well, age on care two points to make if I can one of them is picking up on the point that Mr Gibson made that it's not just green spaces it's not just about all the things that make them good but what is it that stops people using them is it litter, is it dogfowling what are the things that can be improved to try and make them more interesting for people to go to the second point is the plea from the friends of groups there are a lot of community volunteers out there really willing and keen to help but they don't know how to do it in a lot of ways they need the links within the councils to provide them in the right direction to give them advice and so on so we need to have the resources there and make sure that the funding is there to be able to provide that across all of the urban areas and beyond but not just in the areas where there are currently friends groups but going beyond that as well to get more groups set up okay, that's helpful to me Proctor I think encouraging an asset-based approach to our green space so that we're valuing them in terms of the services they deliver whether that's services for people and health whether it's services in terms of the environmental element reducing flooding climate change and so on and putting them onto local authority books as an asset based on those services rather than as a liability based on cost of maintenance and then focus on quality and looking at what is the return on investment the benefit of preventative spend through investing in green space thank you clearly there's a robust amount of evidence that shows that green space is a good for health so we're particularly concerned with the evidence that shows that green space quality is declining particularly in the most deprived areas as I said we are particularly concerned with health inequalities so we're really interested in things that can widen that can narrow health inequalities because Scotland has some of the widest health inequalities in western Europe the good news is that green space is evidence that green space can actually help deliver that so I think it's a pretty significant area in respect to health inequalities so what you were saying, convener, about this committee perhaps scrutinising one particular aspect I would encourage you to look at how you increase or improve the quality of green spaces, not just green spaces but places in the most deprived areas because as I said there's a significant evidence to say that that can really have a potential impact on health inequalities just a final point of a may I think as the committee might expect we dealt with many of the challenges today but notwithstanding that I during the course of my work across Scotland do get the opportunity to visit many parks we have wonderful wonderful assets they're underused it's a challenge to encourage far greater use of that but in terms of the budget thing that we're focusing on last I would again commend our research to look at the value of them in a completely different way both economic and in terms of health and wellbeing Thank you Mr Rennie that's the last word on behalf of witnesses I have to say a lot of crossover there at least two other committees will be looking at very similar things so I'm sure we will do well work on this we're going to have to think very carefully how we position ourselves in relation to that work I think another really useful round table thank you everyone for taking part I think we get good value for money from those discussions so I'm going to move to agenda item 3 which I think we've previously agreed to taking private so I'm going to move into private session