 Felly, rydw i ddim yn fwy o'r 15 ymgyrch gynnwys y cyfnod ddechrau a'r Sgritany Poses o'r Yddydd Cymru yn 2018. Felly, ddim yn gwneud hynny oeddwn yn cyfnod i Eungreyd ysgrifennu. 1. Byddwn i'w ddweud am ganddiadau i'r bynnag, maen nhw'n gwneud am ddysgu 3 i'r bynnag. Item 2 is post-legislative scrutiny, biodiversity and biodiversity reporting duties. I would like to welcome our participants this morning and thank them for coming along. The purpose of the evidence session is to hear directly from stakeholders on the extent to which they consider that the biodiversity and reporting duties that are placed on public bodies have been successful and what, if any, improvements could be made. We would like the discussion to be free-flowing and you are welcome to ask questions of each other. However, we still want some structure, so please indicate to me or the clerks here if you would like to contribute. When you speak, your microphone will be activated automatically so there is no need for you to touch it. Can I ask all MSPs and participants to very briefly introduce themselves before we begin? I'll start. I am Jenny Marra, member of the Scottish Parliament for North East Scotland and convener of this committee. I'm Craig McCarren, vice-chair of Scottish Environment, Lincoln, convener of their wildlife subgroup. Liam Kerr, I'm also a member for the North East Scotland and deputy convener of this committee. I'm Sally Thomas. I'm director of People in Nature for Scottish Natural Heritage. I like Neil MSP for air-drain shots and I give my apologies in advance. I need to leave at 10.30 for not already finished by then, convener. I'm Fiona Stewart. I'm director of Estates and Facilities at National Museums Scotland. Colin Beattie, MSP for Midlothian North and Musselborough. Alison Anderson, green-spice team leader for Dundee City Council. Bill Bowman, member for the North East of Scotland also. Alasdor Keithner, I'm Willie Coffey, MSP for Cymarock and Irving Valley. I'm Lloyd Austin. I'm head of conservation policy for RSBB Scotland. Thank you very much indeed. The first theme is how we believe public bodies understand the biodiversity and reporting duties placed on them. I want to ask Colin Beattie to kick off. I think that this whole scrutiny started because of a perception that came forward that perhaps public bodies were not understanding the role, were not carrying out the reporting that was a duty that was placed on them. Do you think that public bodies value and understand this reporting process, given the fact that only 44 per cent of public bodies actually respond, which means that 56 per cent don't bother for one reason or another? What's your take on that? Do you think that they actually understand what they're supposed to do to understand the importance? Who of our witnesses would like to kick off? Is the duty understood? Lloyd Austin? I think that the honest answer would be that it's mixed. I think that the figures that you quoted in terms of the number of respondees and obviously the reports on the substance of each of the reports that have been done suggest that it's mixed. I think that that probably does highlight one kind of flaw in the process, rather than the understanding of the individual public bodies, and that is that there's a kind of assumption that every public body should do exactly the same thing. I think that that's one of the problems in terms of what we and the NGOs view as the missing stage in the biodiversity duty and strategy process, in a sense, that we have a strategy and we have a duty to report on the implementation of that strategy, but the strategy isn't converted into clear actions as to who does what when. Therefore, it's very difficult for the public bodies to know what they are expected to do, what, when and how. If those actions were slightly clearer, it would be easier for the responsible bodies to report clearly on the actions that had been assigned to them. Do you believe that there's no clarity on how the reporting should take place? No, I think that there is guidance on how the reporting takes place, but I think that it's linking the actions to the overall priority species and habitats that are on the biodiversity list and so on, and the actions that are needed for the conservation of those species, as opposed to just general good practice for biodiversity. That's the area that's the challenge, I think. Sally Thomas. I would just comment in response to that. The Scottish Government, as I show you all where, undertook an evaluation after the first round of reporting, and in response to that, one of the things that they are stressed and asked to do is to develop some further guidance and information, reporting templates and case studies to help public bodies, and stressing that it isn't necessary that every public body needs to report in the same way, and that there are a whole range of activities that bodies undertake that can contribute to their duty. Certainly, anecdotally, we have feedback that that has been very helpful to public bodies in terms of the way they report, so there has been a lot of work done in the last couple of years to try and make it easier for bodies to understand what it is that they're required to report against, and how the work that they undertake as part of their day-to-day running of their organisation can contribute and help to contribute to delivering the duty. Craig McAdam. I think that, though, that if you look at some of the reports that are coming in for this round of reporting, there's still some confusion over what the outcome that they're meant to be reporting against is, because some of the reports are heavily into sustainability and very little biodiversity. I think that, as Lloyd said, defining the outcome that you want from the biodiversity duty, and then reporting against that, would clarify things. Fiona Stewart. I concur with what has been said in terms of defining the outcome, and in our response, we said in general that we felt that there's an uneven level of understanding of the duties across the bodies. I think that it comes down to what we're saying about the outcomes, making them a bit more clear for the different types of organisations and sizes of organisations to be able to respond more appropriately. Fiona Stewart. I think that your submission said that the biodiversity duty or biodiversity wasn't a core function of what you do at the National Museums of Scotland. Shouldn't there be this duty on public bodies to report? I think that there's a benefit to raising the profile of biodiversity and obviously improving what we do. We did say that it's not necessarily our core business, but we did do a report and we collated information from our learning and programmes and our natural science colleagues to show what we do in terms of biodiversity. Alison Anderson. I'd just like to agree with Lloyd. I can only speak for Dundee City Council and I can't speak for local authorities, but in our area, I'm sure you'll be aware that it's a very urban area, it's a really tight administrative boundary. We have lots of different competing priorities to deal with. We don't have a biodiversity officer and we're not part of a local biodiversity partnership. We would welcome some tailored guidance for Dundee about where we fit in the national scheme of things. If you ask Dundonians what significant biodiversity is, they'll come up with robins, blue-tits and, to be honest, in the national scheme of things, they are important, but they're not of national significance. We have invasive species, but looking at the Scottish biodiversity strategy, there are other things that we don't have influence on. It would be really nice to have a link between what we are locally and what we can do nationally and really be tailored to Dundee, so I'd appreciate some guidance. That's useful. How do you feel as an individual local authority about the duty to report? You'll be aware that we haven't reported in the first round, but we actually have done for a second report, which is not on the website. We said the link in December, but it still hasn't been put off on the website, so I assumed that it had been. I looked last week and it wasn't there, so I sent an email and it has been confirmed that it received the link, but it's not up on the website. This is submitted to the Scottish Government, so you feel from the local authority's point of view that you've done the work on this, you've submitted the information, but nothing has been done with it. That's useful to know. Any further points here? Do anyone like to—I think that my question was what is the duty to report? Lloyd Austin. Yes, I think that it is useful. I entirely take Sally's point about the guidance and the work that the Scottish Government has done to make it easier, but I think that there's more that can be done in that direction and I think that there's more to be done, I think, as Alison said, to give a clearer steer in a sense as to what are the national priorities that the Scottish Government is trying to achieve in the national interest. It's the sort of national commitment to the significant species and habitats that we should be focusing our attention on and identifying what needs to be done for those priority species and habitats and therefore the attention should more be identifying which public bodies are the key ones for those key actions and focusing the reporting and the delivery on those ones rather than encouraging reporting on lots of good but not necessarily those key things delivering the national priorities, if that makes sense. I mean, I don't think that we should discourage activity in other areas, but in terms of the national policy priorities, it's to reverse the decline in the state of nature and focusing on the key actions that can do that is the key issue in my view. On what Lloyd has just said, at the moment, there is a long list of public organisations that are required to provide those reports on a statutory basis. The danger is that there are so many organisations reporting that nobody is looking at this across the piece. As you say, not actually pursuing the national priorities but perhaps getting diverted into all sorts of cul-de-sacs that are not adding a great deal to biodiversity. Is there a need to streamline the number of public authorities who do those reports on a statutory basis? That doesn't stop people doing it on a non-statutory basis, but around the national priorities, is there a need to give a body such as SNH or the Department of the Environment under Rosanna Cunningham the statutory duty to, as it were, pull the thing together at a national level, which I don't think really happens just now? Well, if I may, I'm sorry to hug, but what Mr Niels described is what I described earlier as the missing link in the steps of the implementation of the biodiversity strategy, and that is pulling together at a national level the action plan of what needs to be done by whom for the key national priorities. I think that putting that on a statutory basis and then flexing the reporting procedures so that it focuses on those national actions would be absolutely the right way of focusing resources and effort on the key priorities. I think that that's maybe a recommendation that could come out of our report possibly. Okay, possibly indeed. Thank you, Mr Neil. Alison Anderson. Having said what I've said, I think that it is really important locally and for Dundee City Council to have some kind of reporting mechanism, because I think that we could do more for biodiversity locally, and to get that buy-in is really, really important, so I don't know how you square that one. Let me ask you, Alison, just before I bring Liam Kerr in. Are public bodies adequately resourced to comply with these reporting duties? I mean, I'm very aware of the pressures on your local authority in terms of social work education and all the key things we expect local authorities to do. Are we expecting too much of local authorities to ask them to do this report as well in the current climate and financial climate? Is it adequately resourced? In one level, I think that it is. I mean, we can pull together a report about what we're doing for biodiversity relatively easily, but I think that the information underpinning that reporting is certainly missing in Dundee. We haven't had a wildlife survey carried out in Dundee since the year 2000, so we're talking about information that's 18 years old. Fortunately, we've been able to rectify that, and we're getting quotes back actually tomorrow about getting every survey of our local wildlife sites. We're doing actions, but I don't think that we really understand whether we're impacting positively on biodiversity anecdotally, but we've got red squirrels, grey squirrel control and that sort of stuff, but I don't actually know how many red squirrels are there. Just out of interest, why is there that 18-year gap since that kind of survey has been done? Priorities. Okay, fair enough. Liam Kerr. A couple of questions are rising from what's been said. First of all, the cost of producing a report. How are public bodies actually resourcing this in terms of, I would have thought, if you have a statutory obligation to produce a report, you'll probably need some specialist employee. Or some training for current employees to produce whatever it is that you're supposed to produce. That begs a question. Is there a template? How much detail does one have to go into? Is that mandated? Before I ask something else, could someone tell me that? How do you resource this as a public body? Alison Johnston. As I said before, we don't have a local biodiversity partnership, we don't have a biodiversity officer per se, but 30 years ago I was employed as Dundee Abermawr Life Project Officer by the then Nature Conservancy Council of Scotland. Although my role has changed significantly in that, people always come to me about biodiversity because they assume that I still know. Presumably, you have to stop whatever it is that you're doing on a day-to-day level to produce a report. To be honest, that's happening more and more. As the staff complement shrinks, we become multifunctional. How much time does production of one of those reports take, your organisation? How much time did the report that we've done? To be honest, I can't remember, but we have a lot of it in our heads, so we just sit down and write. Can I throw that same question into Fiona Stewart? In the great scheme of things, you don't necessarily have so much biodiversity going on within your organisation, so how much time is your organisation spending resourcing? It's difficult to say a specific amount of hours, days and such. It's the staff resource time and the expertise to pull together the aspects. We pull together a range of things that are done across the organisation to form our biodiversity report. We don't have a biodiversity officer, we don't have that expertise and specialist in writing this report. Through a sustainable development group, we have added that to one of the actions that we do to pull together the information to form the report. We have stopped doing other things to enable us to have the time to do this. You produce a report, Alison. You've produced a thing, you put it in. If I may be blunt, who reads it? Who gets it and what happens if you don't further conservation? Who checks it? Who decides that Dundee Council, RSPB, are not sufficiently doing whatever you're supposed to be doing? What are the sanctions? It's not being posted by the Scottish Government, is that correct? But it's on our website. Right, it's on your website. If you did a biodiversity report, Dundee, it would come up, hopefully. Who sanctions it? Obviously, that has gone through our elected members and through our committees and seen by chief officers and stuff. No, but what happens if you don't do it? Let's say you just don't produce the report. To be honest, we didn't produce the first report. And what happened? Nothing. No, it was noticed by our community who actually said, you haven't done this. And I think that was great from my perspective because it actually got us together and started just thinking about how we could get the next one together. That helped, to be honest. We were brought to task by our community. Do you see community groups with a specific interest in the environment? Yes. Lloyd Austin? Just very briefly, first of all RSPB is not a public body, so we don't do one of those reports. We are a very active partner in a lot of biodiversity projects around the country, both nationally and locally. From a non-public body perspective, I think the issues you're raising really underline this issue about ensuring that whatever resources are expended on these things are expended on the most important actions and activities. There is some form of feedback loop that checks whether or not the actions that are necessary to deliver biodiversity are done. I think that applies equally to the Scottish Government as it does to the other public bodies, if you see what I mean. The duty applies to ministers as well as to public bodies. The ministers produce a three-yearly report that it submits to Parliament as well. Parliament is the one that should be responsible for scrutinising and checking up that ministerial report. It is again something that hasn't had much attention. I think that the Environment Committee did once have a brief session on looking at one of those reports, but not much more than that has happened. Identifying the priority actions and then checking up on whether those priority actions have happened is an important issue that I think scrutiny of this kind could encourage more of. I would like to bring in Alasdair Cay to tell us about his public body and the impact of the reporting duty on NHS Ayrshire and Arran. I will bring in Willie Coffey, but I will come back to you, Liam, if you would like. I will echo the fact that we have little to no resource for the reporting requirement. Unfortunately, it is managed, and we complete the reports. From the goodwill of the people who take keen interest in the organisation to improve mainly public health and our sustainable management steering group take it on board as part of our sustainability policy. In terms of resource, we do not have any assistance or anything within the organisation to help. We feel that we should be more of a greater commitment nationally to help mainstream this and give resourcing to the boards, the NHS boards accordingly to help to transform our outdoor estate and to help to fully meet the requirements of the biodiversity duty. You would need more money from the Scottish Government to properly meet those duties? We would definitely need resource to assist. The good thing about the reporting is that it shows what can be done with absolutely no resource. We have not spent any capital expenditure in the NHS on our programme of works. We have all done or achievements have been done with funding externally to the organisation. We are going to demonstrate our projects around our green space initiatives in biodiversity across the estate. It has all been carried out without funding from the actual capital. It is not seen as a core business for us in any way whatsoever, so it is very difficult. Mr Key, your energy manager for NHS Ayrshire and Arran is under a lot of pressure to reduce electricity bills and all that to get costs down. Does biodiversity duty fall to you and your team to manage that? I am just one person. I look after sustainability and the environment and it falls on the sustainability remit. I assist where I can to try and pull the reports together. Willie Coffey. It is just to remind friends and colleagues that the purpose of the thing is to try to integrate nature conservation within the public processes. I suppose that the reporting is at the tail end of that, how the public bodies have or have not achieved that. I am looking at the submission from a colleague from NHS Ayrshire, Annika, who could not attend today. She is citing a couple of examples where it is becoming more embedded in practice within NHS Ayrshire. For example, to consider protection through planning and building standards, they are already doing that. They also have to maintain a protected species service, a European Union guidance on that when they are considering maintenance and capital programmes. I think that that is probably where the value of the process is, rather than who reads the report. I would quite like to read the report. I think that there is a sense that it is becoming embedded, it is becoming certainly in East Ayrshire. It was just to ask a colleague if he gets that sense across the rest of Scotland. Is that taking place, if not the reporting itself? Craig McAdam would like to come in on that. I was going to say just before you started speaking that the whole idea of this is about mainstreaming biodiversity and getting your everyday activities to be thinking about how you can help biodiversity. It does not necessarily have to cost much to do that. It could be about reducing your mowing regime on your green space or your road verges. That is potentially a cost saving. It is about how you can adjust what you are doing and make sure that biodiversity is taking into consideration in the same way that our impact on the climate or energy is being taken into consideration in decision making. Alison Anderson I was just going to say that. The evaluation of the first report says that just because public bodies are not producing reports does not mean that they are not doing anything for biodiversity. One of the reasons why I brought the report together so quickly is because we are doing such a lot. We have done for a number of years. The local development plan has a couple of policies that protect local wildlife sites and wildlife corridors. We have green network guidance. We have a number of operations and sites. Just because we did not produce a report the first time around did not mean that we were not doing anything. It is relatively well embedded. We could do more, obviously. Bill Bowman I was sitting next to Alison and I could have a quick look at the Dundee plan, which she says on the website. There are just a couple of things. You say that Tayside as a whole does not have a formal biological recording centre, unlike Fife and Aberdeen. You also say that the new Tayside biodiversity action plan excludes Dundee. Is that just a mosaic, but it is not joined up? Yes. Traditionally, we have not had a local record centre. There have been a number of attempts to set one up. That is why I was relatively reticent in bringing a report forward. I think that we need more information. I know that that is going to be a resource cost for sure. More guidance on what is required in the report. Is that what you mean? More information? Sorry. You say that you need more information. Is that more guidance on what should be in the report? Biological information, sorry. A local record centre would collect together biological records for a certain area. We do not have that kind of baseline information there, which Fife does and Aberdeen does. Tayside, if I am right, still does not have a central repository for local records. As I said before, it is difficult to tell whether you are going in the right direction or not, because you do not have that baseline information. Getting those biological records together is resource intensive, and that is why it has never been established. I am going to bring in one of the policy people on that point, Craig McAdam. A number of years ago, I was involved with biological recording in Scotland and brought a petition to the Parliament, which ended up with the establishment of the Scottish Biodiversity Information Forum. That has now been going for four or five years and has just put together the business case for how we deal with biological recording across Scotland to make sure that we have that coverage. When we put the petition together, we saw that there was this patchwork of different types of record centres. The museum in Dundee collects records, but it is not a functioning record centre. It does not do that all the services such as planning searches and things like that. The idea is that the Scottish Biodiversity Information Forum's business plan, if you like, will record record centres of a type across Scotland. Is there anyone else who would like to come in on that point? No, I just want to make sure that everyone... Alison? Can I just respond to Craig? Yes, McManus collects records, but they do not put them on any kind of system. If you ask a question, can I have some information about X? There will be quite old records rather than what has gone in since. There is an information point there. Alex Neil? There is also a recommendation in there that we should make it that whichever national body is charged with putting all this together should actually try and get a national... pull all the local databases together to try to get a national picture because it seems as though a lot of information, maybe raw data, may be getting collected that is not being used as effectively as it could be. I am glad that we teased that out because we are putting all this evidence to the Cabinet Secretary next week and it is a good example of the difficulties that public bodies are having in fulfilling the reporting requirements. Colin Beattie? Thank you. We have heard quite a few bits and pieces about where there are weaknesses in the system and things can be done differently and so on. What could the Scottish Government do that would make it all work better? Is it the Scottish Government that could take action to make this work better? Sally Thomas? I cannot speak on behalf of the Scottish Government. No, I think that he is asking your opinion as to how this could work better, who needs to take action. We work very closely with the Government so I am not really in a position to go into detail on some of the work that is already under way. Certainly we recognise after the first round of reporting in 2015 that there were some difficulties for public bodies' understanding and that is why we put in place the work on the evaluation and the guidance and the templates and so forth. There are a number of glitches in the system that we could look at to see whether they would work better. Currently, by diversity duty reports, it is not a requirement to submit them to Government. It is advised. We could look at the scope whether that should become mandatory or should it come directly to SNH, for example, for us to publish on the website. We currently do that, but they are forwarded on from the Scottish Government. There are those process issues that we could certainly look at within Government. I cannot comment on what Government should or shouldn't do because we are too close to the process of working with Government. Does anyone else like to answer Lloyd Austin? I think that there are a few things that I would say that Government could do. First of all, on the information question that was discussed earlier, Government could give backing to the ideas from the Scottish Biodiversity Information Forum about how that information can be better collected and managed. I think that a reconsideration of the priority action planning process that I spoke about earlier comes steer to other departments within Government as well as public bodies would be a useful step that the Scottish Government could take. I think that the Scottish Government also needs to recognise that it itself is a public body in this kind of discussion and that some better co-ordination or integration and embedding was the phrase that was used earlier of biodiversity across different Government functions, agriculture, planning, transport, et cetera. It might be another thing that the Scottish Government could do. In terms of the contribution to the global picture, we need to recognise that this duty stems from the Convention of Conservation of Biodiversity that began at Rio in 1992. Currently, everybody is working towards what is called the HE targets for 2020, which were agreed at the conference of the parties in Japan in 2010. They are going to be reviewed at the next conference of parties in 2020. Sorry, just for the official report, Mr Austin. The what targets? HE targets are called... HE targets are called... HE targets are called... HE targets are called... HE targets are called... HE targets are called... HE targets are called... HE targets are called... HE targets are called... HE targets are called... HE targets are called... HE targets are called... HE targets are called... HE targets are called... HE targets are called... HE targets are called... HE targets are called... HE targets are called... HE targets are called... HE targets are called... HE targets are called... HE targets are called... HE targets are called... HE targets are called... HE targets are called... HE targets are called... HE targets are called... HE targets are called... HE targets are called... HE targets are called... HE targets are called... HE targets are called... HE targets are called... Felly ddaeth hwnnw ddim fel gweld i drwy'r brif, yn cael ei fod yn cael ei fuysgawr. Felly, fy gwybod wedi cyfle mernhinol i ddweud i ddaeth eu functionu i ddweud i ddyliadirio gallu ar gyfer gwaith y gyrtiwnol. Roedd nhw'n defnyddio ar gyfer gwrs niol iawn. Y ffordd maen nhw wedi ddaeth i ddylen niol iawn o ddweud i ddyluadurol ar gyfer gwrs niol i ddechreuwch i gyrtiwnol. edrych yn gweithio gaelытyn ni, a that will be and is reflected in their biodiversity duty reports, because that's a large proportion of the activity that they're currently undertaking, working with us to do that. We just need to be careful, we don't conflate a number of different things which are set up for different purposes. It's not to say I don't agree on the need to prioritise action. As a part of the Biodiversity Strategy delivery S&H has set up a number of delivery agreements with some of the key public bodies that are delivering with us on a whole range of partnerships, projects that many of which contribute to those international IHE targets. Those have been very helpful for those bodies in terms of how they frame their duty reports, because it gives them a clear set of priorities that they are working to and which they are committed to and which they can then feed through into the way that they are performing when they come to produce their report. Craig McAdam. Just before you started that second part of your point there, I was going to say that the IHE targets are important because they should be what is driving our national targets and then down to the local targets. I am not saying that they are not important, but I think that they are really important. They are important in the context of the Biodiversity duty, because if a public body does not know what they need to do, as Alison has said, about what we have to do to help with the national targets, if those national targets are based on what we need to do to meet the IHE targets, then that should all flow through there. The key bit that is missing is what does a public body have to do to meet those targets. I am going to bring in Alison Anderson and then I am going to try and pull this discussion together a bit so that people can think about any final points that they need to raise or want to raise. Alison Anderson. Just to follow up on what Sally was just saying, Dundee City Council would very much welcome some help with a delivery agreement from SNH. I was going to bring that up because I want to write your evidence to help to link things together. I am happy to do that. Alex Neil. Just to emphasise the point that Craig just made, because I think that that is a very important point. I think that what Craig Cregman, if I am wrong, was saying that what matters here are outcomes, not what you are doing or how you are doing it, but actually what the outcomes are vis-à-vis the targets. Maybe one of the recommendations that we should consider, depending on what we hear from the Cabinet Secretary next week, is that the duty should relate directly to achieving the targets rather than just a list of what you are doing and so on, because in a sense that is almost irrelevant to what matters is achieving the targets. It seems to me that we should shift the emphasis completely in terms of the reporting towards the outcomes rather than the internal processes. Lloyd Austin. I am going to agree with Mr Neil again very firmly because I think that the link to the national targets, which are drawn from the international targets and the actions that are necessary to meet those national targets, whether that is by national public bodies or local public bodies or by other departments of government, that is the focus. Those are the actions that we need to see and we need to ensure that the reporting is on actions that deliver outcomes. If we look at our national data on our biodiversity, we see that we are not meeting those national biodiversity outcomes. The need therefore is to, in a sense, reduce the effort on reporting on process and increase the effort on delivering actions that deliver outcomes and focus on the reporting and the scrutiny on whether those actions that deliver outcomes are being taken. I think that that is quite a good note to bring our discussion together, but Liam Kerr. All right, I will try to bring it together. On outcomes that we can take and the reporting cycles, East Dunbartonshire Council talked about a reporting duty or to report to be published on 1 January that covers the previous three years. I did not quite see where that came from, but I guess that it will be accurate. East Dunbartonshire was suggesting that that is problematic, because it is on 1 January and there will be time off. That means that the report is not that it will be front-loaded so that it will not capture what has been done in perhaps the last six months. Is that a reasonable concern? If so, would it be better not to have a reporting duty on 1 January and have it pushed back? Is that something that would benefit? Mr Kerr, can I take that question and add a little bit to it, because my final question was if any changes would you like to see in the statutory requirements, i.e. the reporting duty, inclusive of the deadline, as Liam Kerr raised, but are there any other changes that you would like to see and do you agree with Dunbartonshire's point that that deadline should be changed? Can I ask maybe the public bodies, Fiona Stewart? I mean, we'd said in our response that we thought it'd be appropriate for the list of public bodies to whom the duties apply to be reconsidered, to focus on the bodies to whom the duties are more directly relevant. If the list of bodies were to remain as it present, we'd suggested that it be beneficial for the reporting requirement and guidance to be on a much more proportionate basis, appropriate for the different types and sizes of organisations. In terms of a deadline, yes, 1 January, it's maybe not the easiest date to achieve, so something mid-year, not financial year-end, would be beneficial, certainly. Thank you, Fiona. Alison Anderson. The deadlines for the reporting, when we sent our report, it actually missed off a few months, to be honest, because we had to get through committee and we had to prepare it in advance with timescales staff as well, so you are missing a few months, but I would presume that I could tack it on to the next one, and it would be relatively flexible. But I was also going to say just out of Fiona, what's Fiona said, I think the duty has to be proportionate. I mean, not all local authorities are the same. As you know, Dundee has a really tight administrative boundary, it's very, very urban, and yet Highlands Island is completely different, with a completely set of biodiversity and different priorities, so I think that there has to be some kind of proportionality. Of course, if the public bodies are mentioning, I assume for Alistair Cain, for Fiona Stewart, for the National Museums and for NHS, it's a matter of getting the report ready and getting it passed to the chief executive. Whereas for councils, it's a different kettle of fish, because you've got to take it to committee. That takes weeks for papers to be tabled and all that process, so maybe that needs to be considered as well. Alistair Cain, would you like to say if there's any changes, certainly to the first of January deadline or any other changes that you'd like to see to the statutory requirements that would help you with this? I think that in terms of the first of January deadline, it would be good to maybe tie it into the end of November along with the climate change reporting, that would help, because the papers could go through the governance procedures, which can take up to three months to go through the various board groups, so maybe bringing it forward would be beneficial. It would also be good to capture within the reports the impacts of the interventions on the natural environment that have been carried out, and perhaps with the review and the identity of the good practice across the public bodies, with the view of sharing and also the learning and promoting collaboration between boards. With the realisation of the NHS, it could be the fact that even the four regions do their own biodiversity report and do regional working. That might be a possibility as well. I was just hoping to bring up the issue of public engagement in the whole process and where it sits, if anywhere. How does the public get involved in the process? Do they notice that reports aren't posted? Is that when they come in, or do they get involved at early stages? Lloyd, when I was talking to him earlier, was talking about a lovely project in the Garmac Valley, so I was just wondering how does the public engage with the process and shape what it becomes? Should they be much more involved in the process looking forward? Would any of the public bodies like to comment, or shall I bring in one of the policy people? Who would like to answer? Lloyd Austin, do you look like you want to speak? I'll come on to Mr Coffey's question, because I was going to say something about the previous things. I'm not sure where the date came from, to be honest. The statue actually says that the base date is the date when the Wildlife and Natural Environment Scotland Act came into force, so it probably stems from that. It's January reporting deadline that you're talking about. I see no reason why we would object to ministers trying to change that date if it makes things more practical and deliverable in terms of the cycle of public body process. I think the one thing I would change about the duty is the issue about focusing on priorities and actions that deliver outcomes, as we discussed earlier. I think that that may be where one of the issues about the public may be getting involved, because many of the priority actions, the biodiversity strategy at the moment is in the form of a Scottish Government called the RootMap, which has a series of priority projects, and each of those projects has a series of partners, RSPB is a partner in many of them, as are other voluntary organisations. The public are very involved through those different individual projects, and I think that that is the way that the public can most benefit and be involved in those projects. I think that that is an example of that RootMap and the projects in there. It's not, in my view, complete as an action plan of priorities, but it's a step towards that. Yet that isn't part of the reporting process. Do you see what I mean? Okay, thank you. Alison? A couple of points. I referred to, when I spoke earlier, about the kind of tension between the national significance and the local significance. I think that it's really important to bring your community along with you, so we don't have seagulls or Cape Caley or significant biodiversity like that. We do have seagulls that fly over Dundee, so that's good. So it's trying to relate biodiversity to the things that our community finds important in Dundee, as well as trying to satisfy the national targets as well, and it's that kind of balancing thing, because people get very passionate about trees being cut down in Dundee, but where do they figure nationally, but they're very, very important in Dundee? Equally, there are a same number of people who don't want trees, so we have to balance that as well. I think that community needs to be involved, because if they're not on our side then. How would you do that, Alison? You raised an interesting point on Willie Coffey's question earlier, because you said that community groups had been in touch with you and the fact that the council hadn't produced the previous years report and was encouraging you to do so. Do you think that more could be done to engage the community in that? Yes. How would you do that? It's a resource issue. We work in partnership with a lot of groups in Dundee. We help to support them and we help them to achieve what they want to achieve in biodiversity and green space, so we do work in partnership with a lot, and I think that's the way that we're going, because we're reducing resources and we need to have our community to help to maintain our biodiversity, but obviously we don't always make the right decisions in their eyes. Does anyone else have any further points that they would like to make? Sally Thomas? Just to clarify on Lloyd's point, the date is set out in terms of the legislation. That's where that date comes from. In terms of SNH's duty report, because we're required to produce a report as well, we've very much reported on the outcomes and the activities and the work that's happening rather than on the process, and that's very much what the guidance that's out there and the templates encourage public bodies to do. On the local engagement point, I think that there's a strong role for the local biodiversity action partnerships who work with a whole range of different organisations locally and work on the ground with communities, with school groups, with local action volunteers and so forth, and in the majority of cases are very well plugged into the local authorities in their areas, and I think that they do a fantastic job in terms of that wider community engagement on biodiversity on people's local patch. In terms of how that is taken forward, there were some good suggestions earlier from Alex Neil and Lloyd Austin who elaborated on those, but they will be in the official report, and all your points and evidence will be put to Roseanna Cunningham, the Cabinet Secretary for the Environment, who is giving us evidence on that topic next week. I thank you all very much indeed for your contributions and for your time this morning. Your evidence is very much appreciated, and I now close the public session of this meeting.