 I would like to begin by welcoming the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government. Oh, I missed a bit. Apologies, we are going to start again. I would like to welcome you to the third meeting of the Local Government Housing and Planning Committee in session 6. Our first item this morning is consideration of whether to take item 3 in private. Item 3 will be an opportunity for members to reflect on the evidence that they have heard earlier in the meeting. Do members agree to take item 3 in private? Agenda item is an opportunity for the committee to take evidence to inform its understanding of what its key priority should be for this session. It is also an opportunity for the committee to inform its pre-budget scrutiny. The committee will be taking evidence from the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government, and then evidence from COSLA. Both of these sessions will take place virtually. I would like to begin by warmly welcoming the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government to the committee for the first time in this session. I would also like to welcome her officials, Catriona McKean, deputy director for better homes, Carolyn Dicks, head of affordable housing supply programme and Stephen Garvin, deputy director for building standards. I would like to invite the cabinet secretary to make some opening remarks. I really welcome the opportunity to engage with the committee this morning. I am sure that it will be the first of a number of engagements around the very important issues that we will touch on today. I am sure that you are aware that my new portfolio is very wide-ranging. While it is challenging, it offers a great opportunity to address the issues at the heart of achieving a fairer Scotland. As part of that, housing must be a key part of the recovery. Housing to 2040, Scotland's first-ever long-term housing strategy, sets out our vision for Scotland's homes and communities in our approach to improving Scotland's housing over the next two decades. The strategy shows how integral housing is to our objectives to tackle poverty and inequality, date and support jobs, meet energy efficiency and decarbonisation aims and fuel poverty and child poverty targets and create connected cohesive communities. We have an increased ambition to deliver 110,000 affordable homes by 2032, with at least 70 per cent for social rent and 10 per cent in our remote rural and island communities. We have also been concentrating on the first 100-day commitments. One such commitment was to begin cladding assessments, and we have agreed to fund assessment and remediation where the need is identified and to do that to use all of the available consequential funding. A further important 100-day commitment has been to develop a new rented sector strategy. The forthcoming strategy will deliver a new deal for tenants, giving them more secure, stable affordable tenancies with improved standards of accommodation, new controls on rent and more flexibility to personalise homes. We will also introduce a new housing regulator for the private rented sector. We will consult on a draft strategy in early 2022, helping to inform a housing bill in the second year of the Parliament to bring in some of the legislative elements that are required to meet those challenges. We are working at PACE to develop a £10 million tenant grant fund to provide support for renters who have been financially impacted by the pandemic, including how the fund will interact with the existing tenant hardship loan fund, which has provided over £500,000 of loans so far. Also to be established as the short-term licensing legislation, we consider that to be vital in balancing the needs and concerns of residents and communities with wider economic and tourism interests. We intend to lay the legislation in Parliament in November. Our ongoing work to meet our climate change targets is also critical by 2030 at least 1 million Scottish homes and around 50,000 non-domestic buildings will need to change their heating systems for a zero-carbon one, not an easy challenge. Our draft heat and building strategy sets out actions to transform Scotland's building stock over the next 24 years, playing a key role to meet emissions targets and removing poor energy efficiencies or driver of fuel poverty. We are stepping up our investment over the next five years and have allocated £1.8 billion to support the accelerated deployment of heat and energy efficiency measures in homes and buildings across Scotland, working alongside the Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero, Energy and Transport will do all we can to support a just transition as we decarbonise housing across Scotland. I want to conclude my opening remarks with a brief focus on child poverty, which we are very aware that meeting the statutory targets set by the Child Poverty Act will be challenging, particularly without full powers to tackle the drivers of poverty. We see ending child poverty as a national mission and are concentrating our efforts in this area to deliver real change last year. We invested around £2.5 billion to support low-income households, including nearly £1 billion to directly support children. We will outline further measures to tackle child poverty in our next delivery plan to be published in March of next year, and that will set out the further action at pace and scale required to deliver further progress. I hope that the brief overview of some of our key priority areas is helpful, and I am happy to answer any questions that the committee may have. Thank you, cabinet secretary. I really appreciate your opening remarks. It points us in a good direction for asking our questions. I want to comment on the fact that we have a great opportunity, as you said, to oversee a wide-ranging area, but that is something that we have been talking about in the committee. It is the fact that our committee is local government, housing and planning, and it is very important that we hold that all together and see how those aspects of how we design Scotland work. We have the opportunity now to do that. We have some questions for you, and I will start with... I would be interested to hear what you think are the biggest challenges facing local authorities, and would you agree with the Accounts Commission that tackling inequalities and addressing the effects of poverty are some of the biggest challenges facing local authorities? I did hear you say that this is one of the most important things tackling child poverty, but if you could just share a little bit more about that, that would be great. Thanks very much, convener. I agree with your remarks earlier about the opportunities that joining up all those areas provides. As a committee, I think that you have a great opportunity to pull together the various strands and to look at how we work as a Government. Not just in my portfolio, I should be facing to add, that it is important across the whole of Government. That is why, on child poverty, I have tasked my Cabinet colleagues to tell me what more they can do within their portfolios to leave no stone unturned to look at game-changing policies that they can deliver within their own portfolio areas to make sure that that is across Government effort. Not just across Government, it has to be with local Government, third sector. All of us have to work together if we are going to get anywhere near those interim child poverty targets, which, as I said in my opening remarks, are very challenging. I agree with the Accounts Commission that there is still a significant amount of progress to be made in reducing inequalities and protecting human rights. We have agreed, as I said earlier, a national mission to tackle child poverty and remain firmly committed to that, and it will take all of us working together to do that. We are working particularly with COSLA, Public Health Scotland and the third sector to identify how we can support and embed positive changes made as a result of the crisis, and some changes that we want to make permanent. We do not want to go back to some of the old ways of working, and we need to deliver further progress on our fairer Scotland ambition. I meet with COSLA on a regular basis, and we are working with the Deputy First Minister around the Covid recovery plan, which local Government is at the heart of. I hope that that gives you a flavour of the key elements that they are working on to take forward. Thank you very much. I would like to call my colleague, Eleanor Wittam, for the next question. Thank you very much, convener, and good morning, Cabinet Secretary and colleagues. I would just like to refer members to my register of interests. I am still currently a Serving Counselor at the East Ayrshire Council. Good morning, Cabinet Secretary. Can I ask you your views on the role of local government in Scotland's economic recovery from the pandemic? What actions are required and how can these be done in such a way that it does not further impact on inequalities? We know that there has been a heavily gendered impact from the pandemic, so your views on that would be welcome. First of all, I absolutely agree that the pandemic has impacted on everyone, but not everyone equally. We know that those who were most impacted by poverty before the pandemic have been the hardest hit. Of course, you point out a gendered analysis of the pandemic, as well as a lot of evidence to show that that has been the case. We need to take all of that into account in terms of the Covid recovery plan. We see local government as a key part of the economic recovery. We provided local government with an additional £1.5 billion in direct support through the local government finance settlement over and above the regular grant payments for Covid recovery. It is important that we deliver a bold and ambitious recovery plan within government. The priority is to work collectively to ensure that that is the case. The Deputy First Minister is leading engagement to strengthen our partnership with local government to support that recovery and to maximise the benefit for our citizens. In discussions with local government and partners, we have stressed the importance of learning from and encouraging on-going participation from local communities. Listening to people, one of the things that struck me most of all was the local community resilience that we have seen. People really supporting one another. We want to harness that going forward. Working with partners in COSLA and local government more widely is going to be an important focus of our work with communities as part of the Covid recovery plan. I am sure that the Deputy First Minister will keep the committee furnished with the detail of that going forward. Thank you very much for your response. I have a wee further question on that. If we think about local economies and the huge spending power that councils have, how can the Government support councils to be enabled to have community wealth building locally? Could that be done through reforms to procurement? There is a huge amount of spend in local authorities budgets. Can you talk a little bit about that for us, please? You are absolutely right. Community wealth building has become a very strong concept. It has been tried in other countries, but we are very committed to doing it. The spending power of local government is huge. That is important for local communities. It is important for local jobs and local services. The way that we have pushed ourselves in the agreement is that we will be well aware that we have gone a bit further than previously on the issue of procurement. That is quite right. The issue of conditionality in terms of making sure that there is as much local benefit from procurement and making sure that there are conditions placed around the fair work agenda, for example, in terms of contracts that are let. All that will help to ensure that, where possible, wealth is kept within communities and that is something that, as the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, I am keen to work with my Government colleagues to make happen. Thank you, Cabinet Secretary, for your responses to those questions. I will now call on Megan Gallagher. Thank you very much, convener. Good morning, Cabinet Secretary and colleagues. Before I ask my question this morning, I would also like to refer to my register of interests, as I am a serving councillor in North Lanarkshire Council. Cabinet Secretary, councils, community groups and third party organisations went above and beyond during the pandemic and over the last 18 months. I think that there were many examples throughout Scotland in terms of good collegiate working between them all. That is where my question relates to this morning. How can the Scottish Government help to ensure the spirit of partnership and innovation that is shown by local authorities and community groups over the past year is built upon and that public bodies do not simply resort to business as usual? That is a really important question. There is a danger that we all go back into silos and that would be a really negative thing. We have to work hard to make sure that we do not. We have to do that in government and lead by example and make sure that we are working as much as we can across Government. I spoke earlier about the way we are working across Government to tackle child poverty. It is not just my job to do that, it is everybody's job, so leading by example is important. Building on the recommendations of the social renewal advisory board, we are looking to ensure that going forward the lessons from the pandemic are not lost, but rather inform our approach going forward. I met with the board last week and talked through with them how many of their recommendations have now found their way into Government policy ambition. That is really good because their recommendations were challenging but quite rightly challenging. In our work with local government, we want to focus on a community-based approach to Covid recovery and sustain many of the good examples of community initiatives that arose during the pandemic and which can support individuals in our communities. That is what we envisaged when the Community Empowerment Scotland Act 2015 was passed to enable much greater community participation and engagement, and it will be central to the Government's response and supporting organisations to make a meaningful impact on their communities. We have the opportunity to do that, but we need to work at it to make sure that that happens. It is not going to happen on its own. My discussions with COSLA feel the same, that we have to really work that can-do mentality where things that seem to take a long time to achieve previously and barriers were swept away. That can-do attitude was really to the fore. We really want to maintain that to make sure that we can make progress in the recovery phase. Thank you for that, cabinet secretary. I am actually minded to ask a little supplementary question on that. What kinds of things, you talked about, the barriers to things were swept away and that we need to make sure that that can-do attitude stays in place but that it is going to take work? What kinds of things do you think we could do to make sure that we keep that partnership working and that we support the can-do attitude at a community level? I think that it is recognising if silos begin to emerge again or bureaucracy and barriers begin to emerge that we challenge that. It is really easy just to fall back into old ways of working. We need to be open about that. We need to, as a committee, I am sure that you have a role in doing that as well as to be in government and local government. We need to do a check-on ourselves and really try to make sure that we do not. Communities want to lead and do stuff for themselves. There is a lot of legislation and policy in place to help to make that happen. Sometimes letting go of power can be quite a difficult thing for all of us but when you look at what communities have achieved when they have taken over assets and buildings and things like that, they have managed to turn around things that, with the best will in the world, sometimes statutory agencies just were not able to do something very special about that community ownership and model that is inspiring. I think that we need to see more of that. Where communities want to do that? They should not be forced, obviously, but whether it is a desire for communities to do that, they should be empowered to do that and we should support them. Thank you for that. I am going to move on to a question from Paul McClellan. Thank you, convener. Welcome, Cabinet Secretary and colleagues. Can I also refer to my ideas to my interests? I am an existing councillor in East Lothian. Cabinet Secretary, you mentioned, obviously, around local government's role in economic recovery in building community resilience, which, of course, is vitally important. Can I ask you about the Scottish Government's response to causes blueprint for local government, which was published last year, in particular in longer term certainty in relation to budgets to focus on early intervention? Early intervention and prevention is always better than trying to deal with the consequences of poverty or homelessness further down the line. You will see early intervention and prevention built into all our policies. However, we need to get better at it. I think that we have been talking for a long time about investing upstream. It is the best way to invest to prevent problems and everything, but it is quite hard to do that because you are, at the same time, clearly trying to keep services running while you are trying to change services and transform them into different ways. We look back at the Christie recommendations. It was very clear from that that the recommendation, one of the key recommendations, was to invest in prevention and early intervention and upstream. We need to work out ways of making that easier. At the moment, we are in discussions with COSLA and local government to look at how we can help services to make that transition. It is an easy thing to say and a harder thing to do. One of the areas that we are looking to continue to fund is the Tom Hunter Foundation, where they have been looking at some quite exciting transformational change. They bring funding to the table, which is always welcome. We have been partnering with them with some of our funding. It is really to oil the wheels of change to help to get from A to B to make that service change. You cannot do that overnight and you have to invest in some of that bridging, if you like, to transform a service. I am keen to see more of that. To tackle child poverty, we absolutely need to tackle the causes of child poverty. Some of that is systemic. There is not one single solution. We need to do all of that. Early intervention is absolutely key. We need to, where possible, try to push the spend in that direction. As I say, it is easy to say that it is a lot harder to do when you are also trying to keep services going on a day-to-day basis while you make that transition. Can I just ask one quick supplementary? I am out with Edas yesterday, who represent economic development professionals. One of the things that we are talking about is the role of economic development units within local authorities. I wonder if you can say about how we can enhance their roles because they are big facilitators in economic recovery. I would like to look at that in a bit more detail. If you want to write to me with some of the detail around that, I would be happy to look specifically at whether or not there is more we can do around that support for Edas. Local government has always had a key economic development role. In the Covid recovery, that role is going to be even more important. If there is more we can do to support the capacity and those on the front line who have that expertise in local government, I am certainly happy to look at that along with my cabinet colleagues. Perhaps if you want to drop me an email about that, I can look at it in more detail. I would like to move over to Willie Coffey with another question. Thank you very much, convener. Good morning, Cabinet Secretary. I wonder if you could share a few words with the committee, Cabinet Secretary, on the national care service consultation that is going on. As you know, Scotland's councils will implement the national care services, to their president, who we will hear from shortly, saying that this really means that it will lose substantial autonomy locally. In fact, she has described it as an attack on localism. Could you address some of those concerns for the committee, please, and explain how you would propose to resolve some of those concerns going forward? Thanks for the question. The lead minister on this is Kevin Stewart, and he will be able to engage with you a bit more about that, but let me address some of the key points. I feel quite close to that personally, given my previous role in Government, but I used to be a home care manager working within a local authority for many years. I have to say that it is a system that is badly needing reforms. Reforms have been tried in terms of the integration agenda, and good things have happened from that in terms of the work between local government and the NHS and the third sector, becoming far closer. Without a doubt, if you speak to stakeholders, they are very clear about the weaknesses in the current system. The creation of the national care service shall be aware that it is one of the most significant public service reforms that has been rooted for decades. The independent review of adult social care recommended the creation of a national care service with Scottish ministers being accountable for adult social care support. That is not something that has been dreamt up by the Scottish Government. That has come from a series of discussions and reports. At the end of the day, what is important is the outcomes. We want a system that supports people not just to survive but to be empowered to thrive. We want a national care service that can oversee the consistency of delivery of care to improve standards, ensure enhanced paying conditions for workers. That is not insignificant given the recruitment and retention issues that are within social care. We have established a social covenants steering group that is made up of people with lived experience, which is very important in itself, to ensure that new services are designed around the needs of care users and supports the needs of care workers. It is important that the national care service defines the strategic direction and quality standards for social care in Scotland. It will have local delivery boards that will work with NHS, local authorities, the third and independent sectors to plan, mission and deliver the support. The consultation that was launched on 9 August remains open until the beginning of November. It is vital that we hear the views of as many people as possible, including local government. Local government will be a key partner in making this happen. I am aware of COSLA's position on that. I guess that it is one where we may not ever agree on the principle of it. I do not know. I hope that we might get to a position of that, but I certainly hope that we can work together on the implementation. That is incredibly popular with stakeholders and many of those working on the front line of social care as well. I cannot continue with the system that we have at the moment. I feel personally very strongly about that. We need something different that ensures consistency of standards and makes sure that delivery delivers for people and that the system delivers for people rather than the other people having to fit into a system. Those are a few observations that I hope to give you a flavour of the Government's position, but we have work to do with COSLA to try and, as far as we can, overcome any concerns that it has. Do you see there being a possibility of extending the consultative period? COSLA is saying that it is a pretty short timescale to introduce the idea and the consultation process has been a little bit narrow. Is it possible that the Government might consider extending the consultation deadline? That will be a judgment for Kevin Stewart, who is the minister leading on that rather than for me. I think that what is important is that people do get not just COSLA but stakeholders and those who receive social care are voices that we absolutely want to hear from. We are not starting from scratch. We have had lots of discussion on this. There have been a lot of parliamentary debates over the years about this. There was a lot of consensus in the manifestos leading up to the election that businesses, and the current models of social care, were just not going to cut the mustard, so we needed to do something different. There is a level of consensus. The detail is important on how this has taken forward and how this has implemented matters. It has to be got right, but I do feel that if we get this right, it could be one of the most important reforms that this Parliament has ever supported and implemented. Okay, thanks for that. Thank you for that. I'm just going to invite Miles Briggs with a supplementary question on that. Thank you, convener. Good morning, Cabinet Secretary, and to your officials as well. I just wanted to follow in a line of questioning, which Willie Coffey took forward there. As the Cabinet Secretary responsible for local government around the Cabinet table, is it your principle that, during this Parliament, local government will have more powers, not fewer, and that local government will also have more control over budgets? Or is that something that you're willing to see centralised to the Scottish Parliament? Well, at the end of the day, for me, what matters is outcomes and where power lies and how that's exercised is about what the best outcomes are. My Cabinet colleagues, particularly Kate Forbes, is the finance cabinet secretary in very detailed discussions with COSLA about whether there are ways of making their lives easier when it comes to ring-fence budgets, for example, or are there ways that local government, some of their asks around revenue-raising, all of those things will be under consideration to make sure that local government can exercise its functions in the way that it wants to. Local autonomy is important, but it does strike me that sometimes in Parliament, and I've been asked this as well quite often, I'll have demands to me that we should have a national approach to things that currently 32 local authorities decide upon. Other times it will be criticism that local government should be given the autonomy to make decisions. These are not always easy things to balance. I think that though we should focus on the outcomes and what the best outcomes for communities and people that are served and wherever the power lies to deliver that, that probably should be our guiding principle, I think. Thank you for that. We're going to change themes a little bit and move to housing, and I'm going to invite Megan Gallagher with a first question. Thank you, convener. With your permission, I'd like to ask two questions on the Scottish Government's housing plans and the route map to housing to 2040 strategy. The first question relates to communities and the active role they can play on the development of their area. How will the Scottish Government ensure that that happens? That relates to short-term lets as various organisations have raised concerns in relation to proposed regulation and the impact that that could have on rural and urban economy, tourism and additional pressures that businesses will experience. I would be interested to hear the cabinet secretary's views on the concerns that have been raised and if an update can be provided to the committee on the Scottish Government's engagement with stakeholders. OK. Well, thanks for those questions. The first question about housing to 2040 is important. I must say that when I came in to post one of the first documents I looked at was housing to 2040. I knew the high-level elements of it, but reading it in detail is a really, really good long-term housing strategy that gives us the route map to some very significant changes over a longer period. It does not do the kind of five-year parliamentary terms. It really takes that longer-term approach and that is really critical if we are going to deliver the housing needs of Scotland. Our aim is to help create places. It is not just about bricks and mortar, it is about creating places that people want to live in but also where people can work, bring up families, have their leisure time. We know from our work with communities that things like good design really matters. We are committed to the community-led design work, the design version of the play standard that we are launching this new tool later this year to help that to happen. We are also establishing the place-based investment programme this year. It is a £325 million investment over five years that will contribute to our ambitions in community-led regeneration, community wealth building, town centre revitalisation and the concept of 20-minute neighbourhoods where you will be able to get to your leisure facilities, shopping facilities and where possible places of work to be able to access those rather than having to go to travel long distances. Your second question was on short-term lets. We have been consulting for quite some time on this and that is important that we continue to do that. We have been trying to make sure that we listen to stakeholders' views as much as possible. The working group, although we lost some members of the working group, was unfortunate. I have had a series of discussions with those stakeholders since then and I have had very productive discussions with them. They have said that they will continue to work with us around the detail and the implementation issues, not that they will necessarily agree with us on everything. Those who left the working group were mainly proponents of a registration scheme rather than a licensing scheme. Nevertheless, I had the signal that they wanted to continue to work with us, even if they do not agree with some of the key elements of the proposals. They want to make sure that the implementation is right. I welcome that. At the end of the day, the important element of the short-term lets is to make sure that there is a consistent approach to safety standards across short-term lets. That has been important. The issue was raised initially by concerns of residents and communities across Scotland and members of the Scottish Parliament. At the heart of our licensing scheme is a set of mandatory standards that will help to protect the safety of guests and neighbours in all types of short-term lets across Scotland. I wrote to the committee saying that we would come to Parliament with the legislation in November because we had more than 1,000 responses to the latest consultation. It is important that we give those due consideration. At the beginning of my long answer to you, I want to listen to stakeholders, but we will stick by our principle of a licensing system. If there are changes that we can make about the implementation and we have already done, for example, on the energy efficiency requirements, we removed that because we thought that it might be onerous and listened to stakeholders on that. We want to go ahead with that, but we also want to make sure that it is not onerous or not difficult for people who will have to implement those changes to do so. Thank you for that, cabinet secretary. We will keep the housing theme with some questions from Elena Whitham. Thank you very much, convener. I would like to shift now on to the affordable housing supply programme. We know that Scottish councils share in the ambitious target of delivering 50,000 affordable homes over the next five-year term. We know that they are very warmly welcomed the five-year resource planning assumptions that give them certainty over their plans. What evidence does the Scottish Government have about the increasing costs of building new homes and the extent to which that might affect the progress of the programme? How will that be monitored and reviewed across the next five years? Thank you for the welcome of the recent allocation of the five-year resource planning assumptions. That gives confidence to partners and strengthens the certainty of delivering future affordable homes commitments and allows the sector of the time to build the necessary capacity to plan and deliver what is an ambitious number of affordable homes. We will continue to work with partners in doing that. In terms of materials, you make an important point about that. Essentially, we are aware, as you would expect, of the concerns around price increases and supply shortages of construction materials. We are working closely with the construction industry through the Construction Leadership Forum, chaired by Ivan McKee, the Minister for Business, Trade, Tourism and Enterprise. We want to fully understand the current supply chain issues and where possible we can put in place mitigating actions to address the issues that are being identified. I am getting very close, as you would expect, in relation to material cost increases and availability and the impact on the affordable housing supply programme. I meet regularly with local authorities and RSLs to discuss those matters and to make sure that we support them in delivering what is very ambitious targets. I am confident that we can work through those issues and make sure that we continue to deliver 110,000 affordable homes. Thank you very much for that answer. I would like to ask what progress has been made with the review of grant subsidy benchmarks and whether there will still be a differential between councils and RSLs. Are we confident that the revised benchmarks will allow councils to meet our shared ambitions between the Scottish Government and local authorities to tackle poverty, inequality and homelessness and climate change? Obviously, there has been on-going discussion around that. First of all, it is important to recognise that the affordable housing benchmark assumptions are used only to determine the appraisal route that an application for grant funding follows. They are not grant rates or grant ceilings and therefore they should not have any impact on council events or RSL events setting processes. It is important to say that. Also, when determining the level of grant funding that they need to apply for in order to deliver projects, the councils and RSLs need to be comfortable with the level of borrowing that they plan to take on as well as being satisfied that tenants' rents remain affordable. I very much acknowledge the issues that have been raised during the review and the most recent proposal is resulting in a significant closing of the gap between council and RSL-based benchmark assumptions with the same additional benchmarks being proposed for the elements of higher quality that are being phased into the programme. For example, on zero-emission heating systems. However, I intend to hold firm and maintain a baseline differential between councils and RSL benchmarks primarily because of the different borrowing opportunities that are open to councils and RSLs when delivering affordable housing through the programme. It is important to recognise that. Finally, I will consider COSLA's overall feedback on the group's work when deciding the outcome of the review and will be considering that in due course. I hope that that gives you a flavour and gives you an answer to your question. Thank you very much for that, cabinet secretary. I am not really a supplementary question, but because of the interests of time, I am just going to flag up a bit because I have the Highlands and Islands perspective. I am really aware that having travelled to the islands over the recess, there are massive issues with housing there. I am just going to flag it up and at some point we will raise that with you because it is clearly much more expensive to build housing there. Then there are also issues around land and skills and labour. I am deeply concerned that we need to make sure that the 11,000 affordable housing that we have earmarked for the islands is that we put good consideration into how those come about. I would like to move on. I was just going to say that I would be happy to write to the committee with more detail on that. Obviously, the agreement had additional moneys of £45 million in addition to the affordable housing as my programme. A commitment to 10 per cent of the 110,000 homes being located within remote and rural communities plus a plan that is dedicated to remote and rural housing. I would be happy to come back and discuss that in detail with the committee if you would find that helpful. Thank you very much for that. I will move on to still sticking with housing and bringing in the theme of homelessness as well. My colleague Miles Briggs. I wanted to raise a couple of specific questions. I am waiting for my mic to come on. Third time lucky. I wanted to raise a couple of specific questions to what all of us would welcome which was around the emergency response during the pandemic to rough sleeping and homelessness and specifically what considerations around the proposals for legislative changes to improve homelessness. The Scottish Government is looking at what might be brought forward during this session of Parliament as set out in the final report of the prevention review group. You make a good point that one of the aspects of the pandemic that is referred to quite a lot was the ability for us to respond and agencies to respond to tackle rough sleeping during the pandemic and make sure that people were kept safe. That was a very important thing, particularly at the height of the pandemic. The action plan commits to placing greater emphasis on the prevention of homelessness, accelerating the shift to rapid rehousing and ending the use of night shelters and dormitory-style provision. We pledged an extra £50 million to end homelessness and rough sleeping. As you referred to, we introduced legislation that strengthens people's housing rights and ensures that the public bodies have a duty to prevent homelessness. The issue of temporary accommodation is worth mentioning here because I know that you have had an interest and I am sure that the committee has had an interest in that. Tempray accommodation was used a lot during the pandemic to keep people safe. There has been a bit of a lag with landlords being able to move people through temporary accommodation to settle accommodation because of the ability to turn houses around. There was a delay in that. We are working closely with local authorities and supporting them individually to try to make sure that where temporary accommodation is used, it is always suitable for temporary accommodation. We know that, for some local authorities, that is quite a challenge, but we are working with them to look at how we tackle that. I am happy to write to the committee again with more detail on all that, if that would be helpful. Thank you for that answer. Shelter Scotland put forward a pledge around annual housing and social justice reporting. I wonder whether the Scottish Government is looking at that to look to produce a report to Parliament for us to be able to benchmark how progress around social house buildings is taking place across Scotland. For that to be wider, to include marginalised groups as well. Specifically, I wanted to ask what assessments and benchmarking the Government will be taking forward and how can the committee play a role in that? I am happy to consider the reporting in addition to all the reports and the statistics that come out. There is no lack of information, but if the committee would find it helpful for us to pull that together in a way that gives a single place for the key points, I am happy to do that. I wonder if Caroline might want to come in at this point or if you would be the most appropriate person to talk a little bit about the benchmarks. Sure. Thank you, cabinet secretary. There is already, as you have said, a wide range of evidence that is collected. The Scottish Government's Centre for Housing and Market Analysis supports local authorities in looking at housing need and demand assessments. There is also a range of other publications such as social tenants in Scotland statistics. There is also information that comes in from the annual reports from the Scottish Household Survey. As the cabinet secretary has said, we can provide the committee with more details on some of those data sources if that would be helpful. In terms of housing to 2040, the strategy that has been discussed earlier, there is also a consideration of the governance process and reporting and monitoring framework that will sit alongside that strategy. It will be established later this year after there has been a discussion with key stakeholders. If the report that has been mentioned is something that stakeholders would like to take into account, that can be added in. The strategy itself sets out the need to respond to emerging challenges in changing context and identify what changes might be needed. Mark Griffin. I draw members' attention to my register of interest as I know of a rented property in North Lanarkshire Council area. Good morning, cabinet secretary. If you are able to give a flavour of what might be included in the new rented sector strategy consultation in a kind of indicative timetable of when we might see legislation in Parliament. Yes, so happy to do that. The rented sector strategy will build on what is, hopefully, would also agree some significant progress in improving standards and tenants rights over the years that have been really quite a collective endeavour by Parliament over some time. We are committed to a public consultation early next year, which will include plans for a new housing regulator for the private rented sector, for new and strengthened tenants rights, greater restrictions on evictions over winter and additional penalties for illegal evictions. We want to make sure that we can deliver enhanced tenants rights but we want to consult stakeholders on the detail of that. Any legislative issues emerging from the rented sector strategy will then be able to be picked up by a housing bill in the second year of this parliamentary session. It seemed to me a kind of logical way to do it, so we'll consult on the strategy, of the final strategy published later in 2022 and thereafter looking at any legislative changes that would be required through a housing bill. I don't know whether you want me to say something on rent controls. Clearly, that has been an issue that is part of the agreement by the Scottish Green Party and we want to consult on what a system of rent controls would look like and ensure sufficient local flexibility in terms of taking that forward. That in itself is quite a big piece of work and we will be taking that forward as well. I know that your colleagues have been quite interested in that. I appreciate that answer. I wonder if you will to set out the level of work that is going on to develop a data set of one of the big frustrations when it comes to policy particularly private rented sectors around rent levels, rent level increases, length of tenancies data. What work is going on to establish a comprehensive data set that is regularly updated to inform that policy work? You are absolutely right. In terms of looking at the issue of rent controls you need to have a starting point on better data in the private rented sector to be able to deliver an effective system. We are going to set out our intentions about how we are going to do this by the end of this year. This work is going to be taking forward in step in tandem with the new rented sector strategy with both elements being consulted on in early 2022. There are various options to look at in terms of how that data is gathered. It is a big piece of work, not easy. I am not sure that we can rely on the current sources of data that are available, but it is a key priority in order to have an effective system of rent controls. You need the data to be able to do that. Officials are working very hard on this. Again, I am happy to provide the committee with a more detailed answer as a follow-up to this session. I can just ask about affordability. There does not seem to be an agreed definition of what an affordable home is in almost all sectors of housing. Can the cabinet secretary set out what work is going on to have a common agreed definition of what an affordable home is? You are absolutely right. It is probably more complex than simply in terms of ratio to income and costs. That work is going on to try to agree across the system an agreed definition of affordability to give it more sophistication than it currently has. That work is on-going. Again, I am happy to furnish the committee with more details as that work progresses. We want to try to get an agreed position across all the RSLs and local authorities going forward. Work in progress. Thank you. Thank you very much for that, cabinet secretary. We have other questions but in the interest of time I am going to close now and we will put a letter to you of the remaining ones. Some very important issues around reducing emissions around home building for example and how local authorities will be affected by the levelling up schemes. We will put that in writing to you in the next few days. Thank you so much for coming and giving evidence today. It has been very helpful to get a baseline of understanding what your priorities are for us to carry on our scrutiny in the coming session. Thank you very much for the opportunity and I look forward to meeting with you again. I am going to briefly suspend the meeting before we move to the next panel. Let's get back in. We will now move to our second panel of witnesses this morning and we will be hearing from COSLA. I would like to warmly welcome Councillor Allison Evanson President and Sarah Waters director of membership and resources. I would like to invite Councillor Everson to give us some opening remarks. Thank you very much, convener. I am glad to be here in front of the committee today. I am delighted to have this opportunity to follow up on COSLA's recent written response to the local government's housing planning committee's request for views on those COSLA priorities that sit within the committee's remit. I understand that the breadth of the committee's remit and COSLA's response has considered that in its whole. Just a quick word on COSLA itself. Obviously, COSLA is a membership organisation including all 32 local councils. We are organised into boards which are represented by spokespeople covering all aspects of local government's work. The spokespeople and the presidential team of COSLA are mandated by these boards and by our leaders on behalf of local government on our agreed policy, priorities and positions. Local government, obviously, then covers a huge range of services many of which are covered more specifically by other Scottish parliamentary committees than your own so you will appreciate that in the interests of joining up working much of the input that we share, our review, has been or maybe also shared with other committees upon request various times. Central to the work that lies ahead for us all are COSLA's priorities for the recovery period. These are set out in COSLA's blueprint for local government which I'm glad to have also already heard referenced this morning. But just to refresh, the blueprint is framed around six key themes. Strengthening local democracy, funding services and communities, wellbeing including health and social care, education and children and young people, economy in the environment and supporting vulnerable communities. COSLA and our councils have an integral role in Scotland's recovery moving forward and are ready to work as partners with the Scottish Government as part of that essential recovery work. Local government is the anchor in our communities. However, to underpin the work that the councils want to do, proper funding will be paramount and I'm looking forward to discussing our thoughts on this fundamental issue during our discussion today. I am pleased to have with me today my colleague, COSLA's director for membership and resources, Sarah Waters who will help to convey our position on the financial issues between us, we will add to the information you have on other specific areas of interest as far as we are able. Thank you. Thank you very much for that. We do have a range of questions and I'll start by asking given COSLA's role in representing the interests of local government in Scotland, what would you like to see this committee focus on over the parliamentary session and also we are keen as a committee to play a role in helping people to understand and appreciate local government. Anything that you would like to add in to support us in thinking well about how we can do that would be very much appreciated. Thank you, convener. COSLA is the voice of local government across Scotland. As I said, we have all 32 council members and we work on a democratic basis so we represent the views of local government and we have that voice across Scotland and obviously a key aspect as we move forward is recovery and our vision for moving forward is set out very clearly in our blueprint and it shows the need to have that local democratically empowered voice to deliver that recovery. Scotland's recovery is what we need to address moving forward. We have already worked to define through the local government's review what is essential components of that and we've talked about fiscal empowerment, we've talked about community empowerment and we've talked about functional empowerment as three key aspects of working together to deliver a recovery across our communities. That is the focus of what we're looking at. The fiscal empowerment has to be absolutely key in what we're doing because none of these services, none of the prevention work we've been talking about can be delivered. We can't value the workforce we want to value in the way that they deserve to be valued unless we have that fiscal empowerment of what we're doing. As a committee my ask of the committee itself would be to help us to develop that partnership work with the Scottish Government because we do need to work together if we are going to achieve these things and to help us to achieve that standing between us which is so important. Just a final comment as well what's important is that councillors work directly within their local communities. They step up and are part of their communities. You've obviously got on your committee people all know exactly what I'm talking about there because they serve as councillors as well. They are part of their communities. They live in those communities. They represent the communities and they are the voice for their community on the local council as well. Just to emphasise that point we are closest to our communities and we represent that voice and that experience is so important. Thank you for that and I'm going to move on to questions around the election from Miles Briggs. Thank you convener. Good morning councillor Everson and Miss Waters as well. I wanted to start by putting on record our committee's thanks to councillors across Scotland during the pandemic at the additional work and support which they have provided to their communities. I think it's important to recognise. As we look towards next year's council elections I wanted to ask what additional things you think the Scottish Government or the Scottish Parliament could be doing to help to encourage higher voter turnout and specifically to encourage other people to take up the challenge of becoming a local councillor. Thank you very much for that question and I'm very grateful for your remarks about our local councillors because you're right they have councillors and council staff and together gone beyond over the recent pandemic months to serve their communities and work within their communities. I think two things moving towards next election are really important. That role for local government as that democratic local voice is key and too often I think probably other aspects of spheres of government across Scotland across the UK as a whole even will recognise this that you get publicity on things that aren't going well things that are going on actually ignored and I think that's something we can all help to promote. You might have seen that on Fridays for example we have in which we're putting out different messages each week about the kind of work that the Government is doing, the breadth of our services last week there was reference to the work done to support violence against women partnerships for example and all this work is crucial parts of local government's work and together to help emphasise that is really important and I think that is one way going forward. Something else has been very important part of my work and any support given from the committee to encourage this would also help is to encourage diversity of people standing forward to represent their communities. We have a situation at the moment where only 29 per cent of councillors across Scotland are women we have a very poor representation from disabled, from ethnic minorities and the Scottish Parliament itself has taken steps forward since their election this year to do things like that but we need to work on this as well to make sure that we have every sector of our communities represented at the decision making table because when we've got that we really see the difference it can make. Two things I think are important publicise the work that local government does how integral it is to the services essential services to our communities and help us all to make sure that we are in the office next year. Thank you, that's a very helpful answer. One of the issues I wanted to pursue was around actually renumeration for councillors and it's one of the issues which people maybe don't want to discuss but I think since local government was reformed to create large awards with three or four members it has become a focus I know looking at of the age range and information which was gathered during the published research in 2018 and in later life so I just wondered if you had any view on that issue specifically around support for councillors but also renumeration for the work that they do. Yes, Coster has actually just conducted a survey of councillors to find out how has worked the commitment given and to compare that with the remuneration and that those figures that report from that consultation will be available shortly for the committee and others and we'll be delighted to share as soon as we are in a position to do that. Yes, this is a huge issue that we are finding that's putting people off from standing as councillors because it's not a part-time job as you've already described in the work that councillors have to do. It is a full-time job but paid on a part-time salary and so many people cannot afford to step forward and represent their communities because of the renumeration involved. We've also discovered that a lot of people stand once as a councillor and discover the difficulties in their own life to be able to stay as a councillor and don't stand a second time. So we lose so much experience, we lose so much knowledge when people only stand once and don't re-stand for election later on. So yes, remuneration for councillors is a huge barrier and if we are trying to increase the diversity of people standing, it is something we need to stop. We have people maybe who are reaching retirement age find it easy to stand as somebody with a young family and yet we need those people to stand as part of our councillor body as well. So again, any support you can give on this really crucial aspect because unfortunately the way things are set up it has to be the Scottish Parliament decides the remuneration that councils get. We can't decide that ourselves. So any support you can give in Parliament to look at the remuneration of councillors I think will strengthen our democracy and increase the diversity of people standing. Thank you. Thank you for that and I'd like to bring in Eleanor Wittam. Thanks very much, convener. Good morning, President. I'm Sarah. It's lovely to see you both here today. So just exploring a little bit further in terms of the diversity that you've already mentioned. So as a former member of COSLA's buyer's selected office working group I'm very aware of all the work that's going on in the background by COSLA and councils in general to increase the representation of underrepresented groups within our councils. You've already touched a little bit on it but I don't know if you want to expand the outputs from that working group with us today. Yes, thank you very much. As you describe, we have a working group which is cross-party and no party is worthy of independence as well involved to try and address the barriers to elected office to try and make sure that by next year we have people from across our communities willing and able to stand for election. Obviously one aspect of that is the remuneration. That's something that we're addressing together and another aspect is the whole culture and we've done an awful lot of work to try and change the culture of our councils and how people are presented to encourage more people to stand. Too often people have been able to go into their town halls and look at the pictures on the wall around them and they're male people staring down at them. You know you don't get that diversity so you don't get that role model you don't get that sense of I could be one of those you don't get that sense of inclusion so that's one important aspect something else we've been looking at is how councils are operated themselves as a whole and where there are aspects of operation that are putting people off standing for elected office and looking at this I always say to people you know that the methods of business the governance we have was put in place due to previous demographic changes the way we do things can also change it's not tablets of stone stuff there's ways to change the standing orders the governance processes within our councils we've done work with with the other local government associations across the whole of the UK as well to look at civility in public office and I think this is something that our colleagues in the Parliament will also recognise how off-putting it is when you don't get that civility that respect either from other people you're working with or from the wider public and we need together to work together to address that in a way we do our own business but also the wider and social media and other aspects we're ready together to stamp out and find unacceptable any processes that are unacceptable so a lot of work we're doing together with others and we've also done work to touch on family leave to make sure that people who stand for the council can have that family leave that's really important and we've had various examples of people being able to benefit from that and again that's something we need to support from the Parliament for as well because it links very mostly with special responsibility allowances to work with you to help develop that process we've developed processes as people have told us their importance we've also got loan working guidance to encourage people to support people working on their own we've got guidance as well for menopause to help people at that age to be able to carry on their work as councillors with support and we've recently been working with Inclusion Scotland as well to try and work out in how we can encourage people who are disabled to be part of the council so there's lots of work we've done working with partners across the UK and with the Scottish Parliament as well to try and address this the work is not finished, it's on-going and any support that people can give us with this is obviously gratefully received I'll just come back sorry, am I on? I'll just come back with a resupplementary to that and just to put it on record I think that it goes without saying that under your leadership at COSLA we actually did the first job share for a spokesperson which was never done before and I think that that allows councils and in their own local authority areas to look at that level of change that's maybe incumbent upon all of us to increase the representation from different groups so just to have that on record thank you I'd like to move to Paul McClellan thank you convener and good morning president and Sarah president we had the accounts commission with us last week and we talked about the challenges and many of the things he mentioned was about inequalities it was to get your views on that and I think it's probably been entrenched more in the last 18 months obviously with Covid and I think we also talked before when we spoke to cabinet secretary about building resilience within our own communities and what resources do we need and the opportunity if you like and how they've stood up in the last 18 months or so and one final question that I raised with the cabinet secretary as well was the role of economic development units I spoke to Edas if you listened into the session earlier on about the importance of economic development units and how important they're going to be in terms of our economic recovery and just what your views are and what you're hearing from economic development colleagues in councils about how we can try and enhance their role but inequalities are absolutely crucial inequalities were there anyway what's happened during the last few months is they've become more pronounced and we've seen them and they've had a more devastating effect and we've also seen different groups probably having the inequalities their experience being enhanced as well so it's something that we've got to work together on and it covers some of the aspects that's around tackling poverty child poverty in general but wider poverty as well and it's not just about dealing now and supporting people now which is a huge part of the work but it's also looking at the causes of that poverty so we've got to bring things as you say about economic development we've got to bring things like good fair work good jobs into our local areas to help address some of those issues of inequalities as well so yes I think we've had it enhanced recently and we need to work together as a priority to address inequalities but in doing that I think it's really important that we work with our communities in each area we have across Scotland because those inequalities experienced in an urban area or be different from a rural area or be different from an island area and we've got to make sure we work closely with the local communities just like it has been happening during Covid months to work locally with people in situations that people are noticing where they live and respond to local need in partnership but that's moving on obviously to something that's happened very strongly over the recent months that local partnership working and one reason this has been able to happen is the barriers have been taken down there has been money put into the system to allow things to happen now money into the system is a key aspect during Covid for various reasons money was put in to deal with immediate needs long term we've got to look at the funding of local government we've got to look at how we can continue that local funding to make sure that supports put in at the time during Covid can continue we've developed good working relationships with third sector in our local communities and I think people are open to continue that I mean it has been so many benefits where I'm a councillor in particular we've seen that with third sector community groups council officers taking the lead to help to make sure that inequalities are addressed that there's not people missed out we have the overview of what's needed in an area as the councillor and that's been able to help to support those groups and also at a national level in the last parliament SB, CBO and consular and Eileen Campbell the then minister signed an agreement to work together a protocol for working together a national level third sector Scottish government and local government as well you mentioned economic development as being a key aspect of the work and yes this is absolute key to what we're doing and local government has to be at the centre of this local government employs 250,000 people across Scotland in many areas we are the biggest employer and have a huge influence we can make locally in terms of the economic development in terms of the jobs we provide for people living and working in the area and obviously jobs locally provided in an area the spend is also in the area as well in many cases so that that is an important aspect of economic development councils as well, their power over procurement their involvement in the procurement and their money they spend on local services can also be an important aspect of economic development locally and working together to improve that procurement we've mentioned earlier together as mentioned earlier today building and the work that can be done as part of the economic development to local government as an anchor in a community helping make the best use of local resources that are there to help drive that economic development all these are absolutely essential and what I'm saying as well I hope is leading to to the sense of joined up nature of local government's work the procurement, the employment the development and education skills and training the apprenticeships local government can offer where I am as a councillor myself foundation apprenticeships are a really key aspect of what we're doing through our local schools and encouraging people to have the skills to move forward all this work the housing that helps people in their communities as well it's all linked through local government has helped in that economic work ourselves as well business gateway is an aspect of COSLA is one of our organisations and the work across our communities as well is huge to help businesses develop to be able to provide those jobs to be able to be that function of the community so I agree that local government has a key role in economic development I agree that economic development is a key aspect in the recovery moving forward and that we must be able to be empowered to play our part in developing that building on the partnerships that have developed during Covid and moving forward and hopefully from what I'm saying here that recognition that all these things are joined up and they need to carry on being joined up and locally empowered and locally delivered to make the best use for our local areas can I just ask a quick supplementary if it's okay and I'll be brief it's obvious that one that you mentioned about the third sector and it's a role of the TSI's obviously you mentioned about collaboration obviously working with the Scottish Government with yourself and the role of TSI's now I know that will probably vary throughout the country but generally the role of TSI's could there be closer working or watch your view of the moment with the relationship with TSI's with COSLA? We're always after able closer working because that is the answer to work in our communities that is the answer looking at recovery we can't do that when everyone's working in a different sense we do need to come together we need to develop our work in partnership that is something that we've seen recently local government needs to be empowered to do so I think if you look at where power has lied in the past you know sometimes local government has been very constrained in what it can actually do because our funding itself is very much centered on priorities from somewhere else so much of our money is ring fence we don't have the flexibility to develop local partnerships the local links that our communities want we need to be able to listen locally to what's needing to be delivered we need to be able to listen and we need to be able to respond that requires us to have that empowerment and that democratic accountability locally to do that but I'll just bring in Sarah if she wants to add anything to answer Sarah, what is please? Thanks Councillor Everson I think just in response to the question about the third sector and relationships I think obviously having funding on a single year basis from a different perspective especially when we're trying to work with partners and you're only able to give them funding on a single year basis I think if the committee was able to focus on I think the impact of that on the wider community that would be something because it would value because actually we want to not just support communities but want to be able to plan for the medium to long term I mean people like the Accounts Commission we're focused on medium to long term planning and I think that's something that local government really wants to do, it wants to give that certainty and stability to its community partners as well but actually that's extremely difficult on a single year basis I think we absolutely appreciate that obviously Scottish Government has constraints that come from the UK Government's budget decisions and whether or not they do a multi-year spending review but I think just getting that stability especially after Covid and the impact that that's had you could see that perhaps for this current financial year and last there was a lot of resource put into the system but actually it's about taking that 3, 4, 5 year view so that we can all work for the best of our communities and not be kind of limping from year to year with less certainty about whether you can renew contracts whether you can employ staff etc because that all impacts ultimately on communities and I'm going to move change of subject a little bit and I'm going to invite Willie Coffey with a question Thanks very much convener and good morning to you councillor Eveson, I think it's important to hear your views on the national care service way, spoke to the cabinet secretary earlier and while it's not her direct remit she does have a responsibility to local government so it's just to ask you the principle does COSLA support the principle of a national care service? Obviously the national care service has been talked to sorry I was getting an echo then the national care service is something that has been looked at and considered for many years and I think what's important within that and what the COSLA's view on it is that any national care service must be locally empowered there are key there's good reasons maybe to look at things like having a monitoring system there's a good reason to look at workforce planning is a key aspect of what we need to do to improve our our care service and workforce planning is obviously something that can be done at a national level and working as well on improvements at a national level they are things that can be looked at from a centreised point of view that will have benefits for the whole running of care so when we look at national care I think the important thing is to think what are we actually talking about if there are things like that we're talking about but with the services to local people local communities are locally delivered then there are huge advantages within that now I think it's really important that when we're looking at national care we realise that what we're doing it seems in many ways like a distraction from what we need to do for recovery is get things better we need to look at those outcomes and we need to deliver things that improve outcomes and help that recovery that we are part of at the moment I think it's important that there is no evidence at the moment that centralisation would deliver better outcomes that's not something that's ever been made clear and we need to make sure that what we are doing is outcome focused on recovery in many ways national care as it's proposed is an attack on localism it's an attack on the local community it's an attack on the place-based work that has been talked about in the committee because if you're looking at a place-based you need to look at absolutely everything that's delivered within that local area in the FEDI report when that was issued last year on national care there was a lot in the FEDI report that we also agreed with that was really important a lot of it that was person-centred listening to our local communities and involving fair work they are all things that we have wanted to do as console if you look at our own blueprint these are features of our blueprint they are what we want to deliver as well but structural change structural reorganisation we don't believe is the way to do that we think that takes away that localism that local choice, that local involvement that place-based work divides things up in a way that when we're looking at care can't actually be divided up in the previous instance I mentioned how everything is intertwined at a local level part of care is the community in which people can access leisure services appropriate to their needs it's the environment that is possible for them to go out and enjoy it's to do with the local libraries it's to do with the local leisure activities it's to do with how the streets are accessible that must come into when we're looking at care it's about the houses people live in we've talked about housing this morning as well and all this cannot really be divided up if we're actually looking at packages that support people and are locally based I think what was particularly concerning at the moment is how there was no prior engagement with the coser at all about the expanded nature of what is now being put into national care it now includes children's services, community justice services alcohol and drug service social work many things that are done across our councils and it totally represents a departure from what was in the Fili report as I said many of which we actually agreed with and there's been no evidence there's been no reason given to us for this expansion of control to all these other areas no reason why it's important to include these in part of the centralisation and take away the local choice from our communities we do need to listen to local voices as I've already said in an answer our councillors are representing our local communities we step up from our local councillors there'll be many councillors like me who served in on parent councils, community councils that's the kind of people that become councillors we've stepped up from those communities to represent them so we know how important it is to listen to those local voices but I also think it's important to drill down to what people are actually saying and I'm not sure people are actually saying centralisation people are talking about being able to have services delivered in one part of Scotland to have the certainty that that's person-centred approach they can access those services somewhere else if they move they're talking about issues like that they're talking about having a basic criteria a basic standard we've had discussions about education how education is delivered in Scotland that's the way we work in that kind of spirit we've had a really good example of partnership work in the delivery of early learning in childcare and that's done with central discussions but local delivery so it's impossible to do all that I think it's important to drill down to what people are actually wanting and see structural change is not the answer to that structural change will take years to put in place it will take at least the length of this Parliament we want recovery we want funding in place because all the things suggested will take that funding we want funding in place to be able to deliver that recovery now not structural change which may or may not have an impact but certainly in a long time ahead wow thank you councillor for that you probably answered another 10 questions but it's really important to hear what you have to say there did you also hear the cabinet secretary saying things like how we want to improve care services across the board in Scotland and we want to establish consistency so that the public can expect the same level and quality that they receive how do you feel that that impacts on the local autonomy the decision making that the council may choose to deploy to deliver that it is about squaring that particular circle in a sense to achieve that outcome but to still retain the democratic control of it local councils want to improve care as well it's obvious we've seen highlighted in the last few months as well that care needs to improve that is not in dispute and working together to improve to share that improvement is something we are very up for that working in partnership Scottish Government, local government to develop that improvement is not something we're against at all local government itself we have aspirations to improve care we come back again to that funding model, we haven't been able to do that prevention, I think the cabinet secretary hinted at the issues of trying to deliver something now while also trying to do prevention and it's certainly an issue that we recognise in local government as well, we haven't had the ability to do that prevention work, we haven't had the funding to do that, we haven't had the funding to be able to reward our workforce in the way that they deserve to be rewarded we value them, we want to help them in their own skills and development the resources haven't been to do that but now we have talking about fair work being important, yes it is important but we can deliver it another way so we're not against improvement we want to work together on improvement but having the funding close to where the services are delivered I think is absolutely crucial allowing local people to have a voice in how those services are delivered yes national criteria so there's a basic level that people can get wherever they want but in a local area if people have a particular desire to develop care in a particular way to spend then they should be able to deliver that as well and that wider understanding of the leisure services, the local environment the housing all this that must be part of care if it's to be effective I think that is best at a local level so improvement yes we can work together on that funding is essential we can do a lot of the improvement work if we're giving the funding to do so and workforce planning centrally and agreed criteria which is a basic field from which all work can work happy to work on those levels as well so there's a lot there we do agree on taking it all centrally is not the answer thank you for that what breaks with this supplementary question thank you convener I think we were all taken by your strongly worded statement around this because they're issued so I had a couple of points I wanted to ask you specifically around your views on whether or not integration of health and social care feels worked and whether or not that's really what's driving this centralisation approach which we could potentially see and put the question to you which I put to the cabinet secretary that local government will have more or fewer powers and control over budgets by the end of this Parliament as integration works in different parts of the country it's maybe different and that's maybe something we can look at as well and work on that one I think if you come back to what we were doing in our local governance review and one of our key aspects of that was functional empowerment and by that we meant allowing different bodies to work together effectively to deliver to their local area and in this case we're talking about the NHS and local councils working together you know for as long as that functional empowerment isn't there, hasn't been there people haven't been able to get down and work together just looking at what's important in their local area to address that and where the integrated boards haven't worked is where that functional empowerment hasn't been possible to put into place and work effectively in that local area because the boards are organised differently we've had that silo approach maybe in the way government ministers are looking for aims and outcomes in their own areas rather than looking across the piece and maybe with recovery agenda we're getting more to looking across the piece rather than in silos and maybe that's a benefit from what we're doing but when different parts of the public sector have been working with different budget setups to spend different ways individual people are empowered or not to work in their local areas it hasn't always been effective and we've had very great innovative ideas like in Orkney wanting to develop the single public service model in which they have one public service in Orkney I think it's 22,000 people there but you've got the NHS, you've got the council let's bring it all together so people can work together more effectively so we're up for that innovation we've had ideas for innovation and improvement we've found barriers preventing us to deliver that innovation and I think in many cases the integrated joint boards given that a power to innovate take on the improvements could actually be delivering what people are looking for and we're asking for across their local areas what do I think about the end of this parliament and whether local government will have more or less powers at the end of it Scotland will be the loser if local government has fewer powers we are a key sphere of government in Scotland we are the voice of our local communities we come out of our communities we represent those communities we work with our communities at that local level and we recognise that the 32 council areas and areas within those 32 council areas are very different across Scotland as well and so we work in that responsive way and if we're talking about doing things like delivering community wealth building if we're developing and talking about those 20-minute neighbourhoods if we're talking about a place-based approach to planning or whatever else it is we need that local voice that local representation so I think it's something it would be good if we could work with the committee on to encourage that voice of local democracy to continue that voice of local government to continue that funding for local government which has been on a steep decline over recent years we can have the money available to respond to local choices I actually think that Scotland will be a bit better for it and we will have local services delivered as people want them locally Thank you for that Alison I've been in this role I've been learning a lot very quickly about local government and fiscal framework has been something that's kind of piqued my interest and it's given that the Scottish Government's invitation to local government to bring forward a consideration for your own proposals for such a framework could you tell the committee how a fiscal framework between the government and local government could work and following on what needs to be done to ensure that this rules-based system could work and what are the barriers to progress given most of these issues for example ring fencing single year budgets and unsatisfactory changes to settlements have been discussed for decades Yes, we've actually had an agreement from the Scottish Government in the last Parliament to develop a fiscal framework and looking at their proposals now for council tax and how that's going to be discussed it kind of raises issues about what happens to the agreement we had already about the fiscal framework the issues you raised there are absolutely crucial the ring fencing money the money coming in small pots throughout a year rather than decided at the beginning as Sarah Watt has already described that totally prevents long-term planning whether it's working with third sector partners or whether it's working with ourselves and giving security of employment to local officers to develop that economic development we've also talked about here you need to have people in place who know they're going to be there for more than one year to be able to do that kind of work so that's huge questions here but I'm going to pass on to Sarah to answer this in detail because that's her particular area to review so Sarah please absolutely is part of the local governance review we're extremely keen to develop proposals around fiscal framework in relation to the review there's a review currently going on about the UK Scottish Government fiscal framework and actually Councillor Mcgregor has a call with Ms Forbes on Wednesday to talk about that I think what if you read the manifesto commitments that Scottish Government has around the UK Scottish Government framework I think a lot of the aspirations that they have in that document are actually what we would like to see translated into a fiscal framework between Scottish and local government so things like more stability uncertainty, borrowing powers other areas of local taxation for example that we would like to see brought into that but I think when you speak certainly to the professional associations such as Solace, Directors of Finance where absolutely craving is stability uncertainty and that is really what would get everybody off to a much better on a much better footing for recovery I think that is absolutely key I think the other thing is around transparency within the local government settlement members will be aware of a briefing hopefully that SPICE have produced local government finance concepts trends and debates I think it's a really really useful document I think it presents the complexity of the local government funding landscape as it sits at the moment that you mentioned things like IJBs and what's working, what's not working I think when they were introduced they were meant to introduce seamless budgets but actually that has been very very difficult as there's been a focus on health budgets, on acute services and I think local government to say at the expense of local government have you look at the share that of the Scottish Government's overall budget that has declined over recent years I think in the past COSLA has tended to look at cash terms funding because it's very it's very clear how much cash you've got this year compared to last year but actually when you look at the real terms reduction in funding I think that's very telling within the SPICE report because that actually tells you what's happened in terms of meeting things like pay pressures inflation those are the things that local government has to cope with on the ground every year and that is that cut that real terms cut is I think what's inhibiting that kind of longer term view so I think what our aspirations for a fiscal framework are stability uncertainty certainly transparency but I think that I think there's another aspiration it's about growing the size of the funding pie so that we do have the opportunity of locally appropriate tax raising powers but I think that that would be absolutely important to stress it must be locally appropriate it has to work for a local area so for example if we are considering things like tourist tax or workplace parking or indeed any other ideas that we would like to explore in partnership with Scottish Government it absolutely has to be taken as is locally appropriate but we have a working group within COSLA we'll be discussing the work of the working group with Ms Forbes on Wednesday and we'd like to think by the end of September we'll have some good firm proposals to bring the cabinet secretary for discussion thank you very much for that Sarah we're going to move on to another topic and I'm going to invite Megan Gallagher to ask the question thank you convener the question I have for you both is in relation to participatory budgeting and also community empowerment and the question relates to whether progress is being made to ensure that all communities and not just those with the confidence and expertise are being heard and are participating in budget decisions in local authorities perhaps quickly just as a follow-on do you think that as we emerge from the pandemic communities will be more engaged with budget setting processes of the council and do you think that there'll be a change in attitudes in terms of a willingness for communities to be more engaged thank you very much for that question Megan yes, participatory budgeting is something that COSLA has been signed up for and has been supporting very much officers who are based at COSLA who are working on participatory budgeting and supporting our communities however that's often raised is it's really important for communities to be able to have participatory budgeting with their local councils but also with the wider public sector as well it should go beyond council budgets it should go to other aspects of the public sector as well and it's something we've been pushing for as a really important development because we shouldn't presuppose what communities are wanting to get involved in it should be up to communities to decide what they want to be participating on it is something that's extending across the country there's obviously some areas like Fife have been doing participatory budgeting for years and they're way ahead of this and other areas it's just developing through grant schemes to practice what they're doing and to start on a smaller way but the commitment across Scotland is there even if the pandemics may be held up progress in some particular areas for all communities being heard I understand with interest when the cabinet secretary made comments about this earlier because a big concern that we have had is that some communities are able to get up and run and do things and organise themselves and do participatory budgeting other communities aren't maybe they're newer communities maybe they don't have that local leadership developed to be able to take things on maybe it's maybe more of a commuter area and they don't have that sense of working in their local area and I think or maybe they're more disparate maybe they're more spread up and don't have the same heart that other communities have just because of their geographical location there's lots of reasons why places are maybe not as ready or able to do it but that comes back to the role of local councils again now as we're moving forward with community empowerment as we're moving forward with community wealth building that's being looked at maybe it's participatory budgeting the local council is the body locally that can give that support to iron out those inequalities to empower communities to support them to develop them so that they are able to come forward with their ideas and it is only through local government that you will have those inequalities ironed out I don't think it's enough to say that they exist and some communities have further had than others I think it's our job in local government to make sure that everybody has a voice everybody can take part and everyone can take advantage of that empowerment because what we're after after all is that local voice coming forward we are part of those communities we come from our communities we represent those communities so it's really important that local voice is here and that is our function in our councils I'd like to bring in Eleanor Whitten continuing the theme of community wealth building Thanks for that, convener and President, you've mentioned community wealth building quite a few times throughout your evidence with us today in a recent letter to the committee the Scottish Government said we intend to introduce community wealth building legislation during the current session to encourage the models wider adoption across Scotland part of that will be the removal of any impediments experienced by local authorities and other anchor organisations seeking to advance the wellbeing economy understanding of what those impediments are and what more the Scottish Government can do to help to remove those barriers I would argue strongly that our councils are the anchor and our communities are the ones that are under the overview so they need to be able to develop that place-based approach to make sure that they can use all local resources to harness existing resources to support the local economy to look at procurement, how procurement is organised what they can use the system of procurement to support community wealth building as well and obviously through employment and the use of land and assets locally it's all part of community wealth building and having the power for communities to be as a council to be able to support that work to bring about place-based inclusive growth it's important that we do this to create resilient economies so as we can help to prevent further problems for our communities to create problems going forward I think it's important that we have we are encouraged to have collaborative working across the piece that issues around procurement in particular are removed so that we can look locally at what's best to spend that money issues about how we can work across the public sector in a local area that there's not always easy to do that either and we need to get rid of all the impediments like that as we are moving forward and have that joint interest that community wealth building is not just about your local council it's about everyone in a local area working together and we've got to make sure that all functions of the public sector are able to take that on board as well we've got some great examples of how things are developing community wealth building the issue is in general but as you know our heads of this and North Ayrshire in particular has done a lot of work as well but the issues in general is to learn from them where the impediments were we need to listen and learn to what they've found works what they've found hasn't worked and need to respond together to address those but again I'll pass on to Sarah for any specific answers Sarah Thanks councillor Iverson I would go back again to one of the issues about certainly on the revenue side especially in terms of things like net zero that going from year to year makes it very difficult to drive that innovation and give that certainty within local supply chains and certainly I think there's no business locally wouldn't welcome a degree of certainty that the public sector because of its scale could actually bring I think on the capital side I think local government has a huge part to play in terms of stimulating local economies through capital projects I think it was disappointing last year to see the five-year capital spending review come forward with plans well it was welcome to have five-year plans but actually the level of capital funding was significantly reduced I think there is concern that that will really inhibit the role that local government can play locally our projects, be it flood risk management projects or other school building projects housing projects a lot of training, apprenticeships job opportunities and then leave a legacy within that community but I think if we're to really get to the heart of community wealth building then we do need that that longer term but even that medium term view not even longer term I think just a honesty about what local government actually has discretion over spending locally a lot of local governments spend is directed and we would like to see more of that decisions being able to being taken locally and as Councillor Evans said quite rightly across partnerships as well I think if things like IGBs were truly empowered to make those local decisions about care about support and do it together and not be inhibited by their accounting structures and reporting then I think we could probably make real strides in community wealth building Thank you for that Sarah it's great points on how we can go forward to build community wealth I'd like to we're going to change subject a little bit we're a bit concerned about some things we've heard about the levelling up fund and I'm going to invite Willie Coffey to ask some questions about that Thanks very much again convener On the question Councillor Evison of the former European Union structural funds and so on the levelling up funds shared prosperity funds has COSLA had any direct engagement with the UK Government on any of this you might have heard our cabinet secretary last week saying there had been none between the Scottish Government and the UK Government on this entire process so has COSLA had that direct engagement to the UK Government and do you share the cabinet secretary's concerns about the potential impact of that on the Scottish block grant Thank you we've had opportunities to talk about not the levelling up fund but not in a way that would influence the levelling up fund I think is the way I would word in answer to that one we haven't had any involvement in the design of it or the implementation of it so I think that sets the major point of your question though we have through the Scotland office through our environment and the economy spokesperson to influence how things are done and I think when we're talking about localism when we're talking about things in a local area really understanding what's needed I think that's probably a missed opportunity to actually look through our councils at what's needed in a local area but again this is a specific question that I will pass directly to Sarah to give a fuller answer on as well Thanks Councillor absolutely we would obviously share Scottish Government's concerns at anything that would have an impact on the block grant adjustment that will obviously form part of the discussions that Ms Forbes is having at a UK level on the review of the framework I know that within their manifesto Scottish Government are very keen to expand the scope of that review of the UK Scottish Government fiscal framework and I think we would absolutely want as much transparency as possible about the impact of levelling up because we can't just see things being given with one hand and taken away with another especially as Councillor Everson said we haven't really had an opportunity to shape those funds we've recently done a piece of work with all directions of finance just to find out how engaged they are with those funds and I think that what we're hearing is that the timescales were just very very challenging for councils a lot of them want to engage with levelling up to round 2 for example but the timescales were extremely challenging but I think that there's a reality from a council perspective that they will have to engage with it it's another source of funding and I absolutely want to engage but I think that through the fiscal framework work at all levels I think that we need to make sure that there's absolute transparency so we know the impact of this funding and that it is additional to what's already in the system Do you see a potential issue for local autonomy in layer 2 in much the same way that we discussed earlier with the national care service do you see any risk or threat to local decision making and accountability through this process I think that one of the key concerns about the whole levelling up is the bid approach to funding because the bid approach is not necessarily getting to places of greatest need it's getting to places that can put it bluntly write good bids and submit them so that it may come down to capacity locally and I think that would be really disappointing if there are areas of real need but actually for a variety of reasons they don't have the capacity so I think that's a major concern from local government I think that as you probably well know it prefers a distribution of funding that's needs-based, that's client-based so having to constantly work in a bid environment I think is not necessarily what COSLA would want to see for this type of funding Thank you very much for that to both of you Thank you very much for that that actually concludes our questions for the morning and it's been a very rich and thought provoking session I think it's been formed a really good basis for our work going forward and sharing the time with us and sharing your views It's a pleasure to be here talking to you this morning Thank you I'm now going to close the public part of this meeting and move the meeting into private session as previously agreed for item 3