 OK. Good morning and welcome to the 7th meeting of the local government and communities committee in 2019. Can I remind everyone present to turn off their mobile phones? Agenda item one is consideration of whether to take agenda item six in private, are we all agreed? Thank you, that's agreed. Agenda item two is evidence in the draft asset transfer request designation of relevant authority Scotland Order 2019. I refer members to paper number one. Rydyn ni'n gweithio, Kevin Stewart, the Minister for Local Government, Housing and Planning and Malcolm Coway, Policy Manager, Community and Powerment, team Scottish Government. The instrument is laid under the affirmative procedure, which means that the Parliament must approve it before the provisions can come into force. Following this evidence session, the committee will be invited at the next agenda items to consider a motion to approve the instrument. I now invite the minister to make a short opening statement. Good morning, convener. Thank you. The communities and local government portfolio includes responsibility for embedding part five of the Community Empowerment Act, which concerns community asset transfer requests. Those introduce a right for community bodies to make requests to all local authorities, Scottish ministers and a range of public bodies, as set out in schedule three of the Community Empowerment Act for any land or buildings that they fail they could make better use of. Under the legislation, community groups can request ownership, lease or other rights as they wish. The public authorities, which are named in schedule three of the act, must transparently assess requests against a specified list of criteria that are laid out in the act and agree the request unless there are reasonable grounds for refusal. Visit Scotland now needs to be added onto the schedule. They are the lead Scottish Government non-departmental public body responsible for growing and developing Scotland's visitor economy and for advising ministers on policy. It has a wide statutory powers to promote tourism and has a budget of around £50 million per annum, which is largely funded by the Scottish Government. Visit Scotland has a number of offices and eye centres throughout Scotland. There are 14 offices spread across the country, including the head office in Edinburgh and 26 eye centres, previously known as Visit Scotland information centres, most of which are open every day of the year. Those eye centres welcome thousands of visitors and local residents looking for information on the local area as well as products and services. We have been working closely with Visit Scotland, who understand the requirements to be added onto schedule three of the community empowerment act as a named relevant authority in their own right. That is necessary, as although they are currently listed in the schedule under the entry of Scottish ministers, it only includes land and buildings that are owned or in the care of Scottish ministers. A number of their buildings are not in that category. The action brings the entire portfolio of land and buildings into asset transfer legislation, including land and buildings that they own or manage in their own right. I thank you for giving me the time to speak about this this morning, convener. I am happy to answer any questions that the committee may have. You said that Visit Scotland needs to be added because it owns some property in its own name. It is part of the Scottish administration, so it needs to be added to the schedule. However, there are many executive non-departmental public bodies that are not in schedule three that are not subject to asset transfer requests. What was the particular reason for needing, in your words, to add Visit Scotland? Has there been particular approaches from communities? Visit Scotland approached the Government to ask to be added to schedule three. As I explained in my opening remarks, we have a situation where some of the assets are owned by Scottish ministers and some are owned by Visit Scotland in their own right. That brings all of that under one umbrella in terms of the community asset transfer aspect. Members may be aware that Visit Scotland has been looking at their portfolio of properties across the country as they look to having a more online presence to deal with their business. I think that it would be wise in those circumstances and they think that it is wise in those circumstances to ensure that all of those assets are in that schedule three. There are many bodies listed on the Scottish Government's website that are executive non-departmental public bodies, not all of which are in schedule three. Last year or 2017, we added historic environment Scotland. Is there any reason for not bringing forward an order that would just add them all and be done with it? There are obviously reasons at points where certain bodies have been added into the act. My predecessor when he moved the act, spoke about the bill and passed the act, told the committee and others that that would be something that the Government would continue to keep a look at. On this occasion, there has been a request from Visit Scotland and that is why we have moved on in that front. If the committee wants any further detail around this, I am willing to write to the committee on that issue. I made a point during the consideration of the instrument on historic environment Scotland, but I have constituents who wish to apply for asset transfer to land, which they understood was owned by the City of Edinburgh Council, but on investigation they discovered that it was owned by an arms-length body—the name escapes me at the minute—but the business body of the Edinburgh Council set up to develop the west of Edinburgh, etc., which is the owner of substantial land assets across the city. I am curious as to the process within the Scottish Government. When a bit of the Scottish Administration comes to you and says that it wants to be added, such as Historic Environment Scotland or Visit Scotland, you readily accede. How can communities who stand in whose benefit the act is designed to be get a timious and predictable response to request to add a body that they are interested in? I do not have the details of the situation that Mr Wightman describes, so I am unwilling to commit to anything there. If Mr Wightman or the committee wants to find out further detail about the issue that he is describing, I am more than willing to write back to the committee in that regard. The committee will probably ask for the information about how local communities— Yes, I am not advocating particularly in the case of this. I am just wondering what the process is within Government. The evidence is that, when a public authority approaches ministers, they bring forward an order, but if community bodies— It is not necessarily the case, convener. Obviously, here, Visit Scotland has asked us to look at this. We have looked at this. We have agreed that they should be added to schedule 3. That is why we are moving the statutory instrument this morning. If there are other bodies where similar things crop up to ensure that there is consistency, I think that the key thing is here that some of the assets that we are talking about are held by Scottish ministers and others are held by Visit Scotland. That brings everything under one umbrella to ensure that communities know exactly what the situation is here. In terms of other aspects of this, we will consider any request that comes in and move forward appropriately, convener. We will request the information from you that Mr White will discuss very quickly. Just very quickly, I support what the minister is bringing forward today. Can I ask the minister, are you happy with the progress that local authorities are making in terms of building the capacity to be able to deal with asset transfer requests coming in from councils? I think that it would be fair to say, convener, and I have said it here before at the committee, that some councils are doing immensely well in dealing not only with the community transfer, asset transfer aspect of the community empowerment act but also other aspects of the act. There are other local authorities that are a bit behind. From my perspective, one of the things that I want to see is help where it is required in terms of community capacity building to allow communities to look to see if it is possible for that asset transfer to take place. We have got some very good examples of local authorities where I think they are going the extra mile in involving communities. East Ayrshire, North Ayrshire have done very well in that. It would be fair to say that some other councils are not at that level. I am very keen, convener, as you have heard me say before, to ensure that best practice is exported not only between local authorities but also between communities themselves. There are some good community networks out there that are very good at helping to pass on information and communities. I think that we are doing well in a lot of places and still a bit to go on others. That takes me on to agenda item 3, which is the formal consideration of motion S5M-15748. That calls on the local government and communities committee to recommend the approval of the draft asset, transfer, request etc. Order. I invite the ministers to speak and move to this motion. I will just move, convener. Thank you. Thank you very much. The motion S5M-15748, in the name of the minister for local government, housing and planning, be approved. Are we all agreed? The committee will report the outcome of this instrument in due course. I seek the committee's agreement to delegate authority to me to approve the final draft of the report. We move on to agenda item 4, which is consideration of negative instrument 23, as listed on the agenda. I refer members to paper number 2. This instrument is laid under the negative procedure, which means that its provisions will come into force unless the Parliament agrees to a motion to annull it. No motions to annull have been laid. The delegated powers and law reform committee has not drawn the instrument to the Parliament's attention on any of its supporting grounds. Do members have any comments on this instrument? In that case, I invite the committee to agree that it does not wish to make any recommendations in relation to this instrument. Are we agreed? That is agreed. Agenda item 5 is an evidence session on city region deals. The committee published its report on city region deals in January 2018, and, since then, it has agreed to keep a watching brief in the development of deals. Today, we are taking evidence in the Glasgow city region deal, which was the first Scottish deal to be signed off. I welcome this morning councillor Suze Nakeen, chair of Glasgow city region cabinet and leader of Glasgow city council, Kevin Rush, director of regional economic growth, Glasgow city region, Joyce White, chief executive, Western Berkshire council, Graham Tom, managing director and John Nolan, associate director of SQW. I invite councillor Suze Nakeen to make some brief opening remarks. Thank you, chair. I'll be very brief. The Glasgow city region city deal, as members probably know, was the first city deal to get under way in Scotland. It's one of the most advanced in the UK at this point. We are one year out from our first gateway review, and at the last meeting of the city region cabinet early in February, we had a report that was demonstrated from SQW, which indicated the progress that we are making towards that first landmark. By the end of September 2018, we spent £119 million. That was against a projected £124 million, so it's very close. I would say that it's expected to accelerate, and indeed it has been accelerating over the past year and is expected to do so in every part of the city region over the coming year. As colleagues probably know, the Glasgow deal is primarily an infrastructure deal, although it did also have significant employability and innovation elements, which were among the first parts of the deal to be delivered. I would say that now there is real impact visible on the ground, literally on the ground in the streets of Glasgow, if anyone has been in Sucky Hall Street or the inner east round about the Calton-Barras area recently. There has been £56 million spent in the Canal and North Gateway project in Sight Hill. That's the largest area of spend so far, but there are a whole number of other projects where we will see considerable progress and acceleration of spend in the coming months. Finally, the point that I would make is that the city region structure, the city region cabinet and the other structures that go alongside it, including the chief executives group, which Joyce White is obviously a member of, has gone beyond just oversight of the city deal. Oversight and implementation of the city deal remains its primary purpose, but it has, in terms of joint regional working, gone considerably beyond that, with a focus on skills, attainment in education and on skills pathways and the jobs that we expect to be created through the city deal investment, on wider connectivity in the city region and, overall, on inclusive economic growth and how we make sure that that is engineered into particularly the infrastructure investment that will take place over the next decade or so. Just following the publication of your annual report in March last year, have any milestones or deadlines been revised or missed? Have any significant changes been made to planned projects or have any changes been made to the governance approach since the annual report was printed? Not since the annual report was printed. I think that the one project where there has been a potential significant change, although it is still under discussion just now, was at the last city region cabinet. There was an agreement that the previous outline business case for the Glasgow airport access project would be another outline business case produced essentially. There were significant concerns around the robustness of that business case and the deliverability and the costs. We have asked officers to produce another outline business case on another option for connectivity to the airport, which did not previously have a business case attached to it, so that is something that we expect some fairly rapid progress on in the first half of this year. In terms of governance, there have not been significant changes. The governance structure was put in place when the city deal was established in 2014 and during 2014-15. I would say that the governance has worked very well. The governance structure, when I first became chair, I made some minor changes to make the cabinet more strategic perhaps. I think that the cabinet's agendas were often perhaps sometimes ticking off and rubber stamping full business cases, for example, where the work had already been done at chief executive level. The scrutiny had taken place at an earlier process. I think that there was a bit of a danger at that point that the cabinet was getting dragged into perhaps operational issues, which I think is not really the role of the politicians. We have moved to make the cabinet more strategic. We have worked more closely than ever with the Commission for Urban Economic Growth, based at Glasgow University, chaired by Professor Saranton Muscatelli, with a particular focus on understanding what inclusive growth means in the context of the city deal. However, there have not been major governance changes. Kevin Rusch will be able to talk a little bit more about the process of this, but what we did not do was bring forward augmented business cases for many of the projects that had already been through and had their outline business cases approved at an earlier date. I think that each of the local authorities has now gone through the process, or certainly most of the local authorities have gone through the process of producing an augmented business case for each of their projects. The cabinet has been looking at those. That has been an extremely useful exercise in that it has looked again at some of the assumptions and targets that were put in place in the early days of the projects, which I think we now understand more. We have more information and more understanding, so those augmented business cases are probably more realistic. They give us the kind of detail that we really need moving forward to make sure that we are delivering and that all of the cases are deliverable. There has been additional work, rather than a complete change of approach. We have refocused in some areas, but there has certainly not been a tearing up of anything in a startling again. Okay. Mr Rusch, do you want to come in at this point? I guess to echo the points that Councillor Aiken has made about the augmentation process. That was cabinet had sought assurances that the projects that were being invested in were the correct ones. They had asked to each business case to be reviewed against HM Treasury Green Book to ensure that the economic cases were sound. We have had 11 of those augmented OBCs come through so far. As Councillor Aiken says, that helps in demonstrating the benefits of it just now, but also monitoring those benefits as we go forward. We now have a much clearer articulation of what we expect from each of the projects. That has had some impact on timescale, so your question earlier on about timelines as well. The augmentation process has slowed down some delivery. Our view on that is that it is important to ensure that the governance is robust around these, to ensure that we can satisfy cabinet and, ultimately, the funders that these are the right projects to invest in. We are satisfied that, although that has led to some delays, it has still been the right thing to do. The deadlines that have been missed have not been missed because you are slipping, but because you have changed the way things have been done, you need to make sure that it is better for them. There is a variety in any major infrastructure project that can occur for a variety of reasons, and I think that the SQW report captures some of those, but certainly that augmentation process has contributed to that. However, we are comfortable with that. We are comfortable that it enables us to satisfy ourselves that these are the right projects. The one other thing that I would add in terms of governance changes that we have had since the annual performance report is the establishment of the regional partnership, which emerged from the enterprise and skills review that the Scottish Government published in 2017. There was a call for us to start to think beyond city deal and to wider regional working, so we established a regional partnership that it met for the first time in October last year. Its second meeting is tomorrow, and that brings together local authorities, both Governments, Skills Development Scotland, Scottish Enterprise, Chamber of Commerce, and others to start to look at wider regional activity. Okay, thank you very much for that. Annabelle, then Alec, then Kenny. Okay, thank you. Good morning to everybody and thank you for coming in. In terms of the actual projects, I note what Susan Aitken said about the fact that there had been a focus on infrastructure, but at the same time there had been significant employability and innovation elements. With those kind of subjects, it's always taken as red that everybody knows what everybody's talking about, and in fact it occurs to me that we don't. It would be helpful to hear a bit more about those employability and innovation projects, because they don't seem to be getting much attention, and I'm sure that that perhaps is not quite just in terms of the impact that those projects must surely be having in the city of Glasgow. Yes, absolutely. I'll ask Kenny to say more about the employability ones. He's been very close to involving those, but there was, in addition to the infrastructure fund, which is the £500 million from each of the Governments, there was additional money, so there was some money from DWP that was specifically for employability and skills. There was a particular project on workforce progression, so those were relatively short-term. There were time-limited projects. They happened particularly in Glasgow, in the city of Glasgow, so it was Glasgow City Council that took those forward, but what has come out of those, I think, is some really important learning about how we make sure that that's embedded into work that we do in future. I think that workforce progression particularly, that was quite a new approach, and it was specifically in the care sector. There was some really useful learning that came out of that. The innovation, particularly the Taunteen in Glasgow, in the Taungate, which was the first project completed. There's the odd thing that happened before my time, and I'm going back and checking my timeline, so when I looked to Kevin O'Ll, there before his time as well, Joyce is the only person who's been there from the beginning. The Taunteen building, which is a start-up innovation space primarily for tech start-ups, has been extremely successful. There have been a number of spin-off companies coming out of that and moving on to other premises. The Imaging Centre of Excellence, the ICE, is out at McQueen Elizabeth II hospital, which is a joint project between the City Council, the City Deal, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, and the University of Glasgow, where they're doing quite remarkable things, absolutely at the cutting edge of medical technology in global terms, not just UK, and the Medicity Complex in North Lanarkt as well. A number of things there which tie in and lead to the way for some of what will follow in terms of the infrastructure investment. The important thing to say about the infrastructure investment is that none of it is about just building things. It's all about enabling infrastructure investment. For example, some of the projects are favourite is the Metropolitan Glasgow Strategic Drainage project, which doesn't really get hearts beating very fast, but in actual fact it's really exciting when you get to it because it's about resilience for climate change, it's about managing surface water in a whole swathes of the city, where previously land has been either unusable or its use has been limited because of drainage problems, part of Glasgow's post-industrial heritage. One example that I would give of enabling infrastructure is the Keywalls investment, which there's £60 million going into that to fix Keywalls under the Clyde, so it's all taking place under water, but without that investment, for example, the announcement of the Barclays inward investment, which was the biggest commercial property deal in the UK last year, probably wouldn't have taken place because they are situating on the banks of the Clyde exactly where there are issues with the Keywalls, so that public infrastructure investment is already demonstrating the value of jobs and growth off the back of it. I don't know if you want to say a bit more about the employability stuff particularly. Yes, so I guess Councillor Aiken's point about enabling infrastructure. The Glasgow city level was always based on us investing in things that the private sector wouldn't, and therefore investment comes off the back of that, and to some extent, I think, in both the employability projects and the innovation projects, there was a similar idea behind that, so the working matters programme, which Councillor Aiken referred to, a £9 million programme jointly funded by DWP and the local authorities, is working with some of the hardest to reach client groups, so these are people very far from the labour market. It's quite expensive, so £9 million for a target of 600 jobs is not something that we would be able to invest in ourselves, but that gave us the flexibility to try new things, to work with a client group who'd now been assessed as fit for work because of benefit changes. The average period of unemployment of that cohort that we worked with was 13 years, and we had someone who'd been unemployed for 46 years, which barely seems possible, and now assessed as fit for work. The principle behind that was to invest in things that are quite expensive and go beyond what local authorities would usually be able to invest in themselves, and we've been able to take some of the learning from that, I think, to roll into other activities now. I mentioned the regional partnership earlier on, and we are now starting to look at a regional employability offer, taking the learning from things like the working matters programme and rolling that into new initiatives as we go forward. The other... Sorry. No other... Please go on. Just on the innovation project, I can have spin-off. Again, the city deal was supposed to be the catalyst for other economic growth, and we've now got three innovation districts based within the city region, one around Strathclyde University, one around Glasgow University and one out of the advanced manufacturing innovation district in Renfisher. All three of those are centred around city deal investments, with Tonteon in the one in the city. The ice building, as Councillor Aitken mentioned, and the enabling infrastructure that's going in Renfisher around Ameds. Again, relatively small amounts of money that have been put in by the public sector, but what that's enabled has got the potential to be really transformative for the Glasgow economy. That's all very interesting, and I guess with the employability work that has gone on and is continuing to be progressed, I suppose the key is to ensure that it's not just a sort of one-day wonder and that that actually it is sustainable, because that is the key difference that can be made to the lives of these people who otherwise might never find employment again. Joyce, in terms of your area, in terms of the discussion that we've been having thus far on these kinds of projects, what's been the impact, what's happening? Yeah, you know, thank you for the opportunity to contribute. Certainly, the skills and the employability training has brought benefit to West Dunbartonshire Council, as it has to all eight of the local authorities within the city region. Kevin has already expanded on the fact that, in some areas, it's the hardest to reach that we've been trying to get back onto the employability ladder. We've been successful, but we're taking some lessons and learning from that and looking at how we can apply that into future funding that we're applying to address the unemployment. I think that the other area for us is the fact that the totality of the deal and the collaborative working that we now have across Glasgow gives us the opportunity to improve what we're delivering for employability. Kevin has already referenced the fact that there's a regional opportunity for all of us. Each of the projects in their own right has a huge employability opportunity, whether it be in the construction stages or the employment opportunity that comes in the back of it. Being part of it is bringing in some more employment opportunities to West Dunbartonshire Council in the north-west of Glasgow. Do you expect to see the progress continuing then as further projects are rolled out? Yes, absolutely. Our own particular projects as well will bring huge employability opportunities, as we reclaim effectively a piece of land, the Exxon project and also open up the access routes of the A82 to the Botmallol Loughment, which is quite critical from a tourism and employability opportunity in the greater Glasgow region. I think that that is very interesting. Can I ask before I want you to focus on a couple infrastructure things, but in terms of developing best practice there, is that something that local authorities and city deals across Scotland are sharing? Do you come together through the different bodies and organisations to share that type of good practice, like reaching those that are hardest or furthest removed from the labour market? I answer that. Yes, so that does take place. We are going through a review of the employability programmes that we will then share with the other city region areas. There's a number of areas in which we do that, either through COSLA, Slade or the Scottish Cities Alliance, but we are quite clear that the learning from that is something that we'd be quite keen to share across the country. If there is the work going on there, it would be good to share it with this committee as well. Could I return to the infrastructure and you mentioned the Glasgow airport access project. As a fifer, perhaps that's one of the projects that I'm aware of in terms of the Glasgow city deal, because there's been a fair bit of controversy around that. I know that I've listened to radio interviews where business representatives in Glasgow have said that this is something that's absolutely needed to drive the west Scotland economy. The Scottish Government seemed to have ruled out the airport link. Can I ask an update where that is? How has that come about, given the controversy around that? Is all the partners involved in that? Is business, for example, because business seemed to make a case for the airport link? Who are you engaging to try and reach a decision on that? The first thing to say is that there will be an airport link. It will be a different project from the outline business case that was passed by the city region cabinet in 2016. For a number of reasons, that was the case there where. That's before my time on the cabinet, but I'm aware of some of the decisions that were made around that. I think it's fair to say that Transport Scotland always had significant concerns about the impact on central station capacity, in particular, of an additional line. Something that was not using existing real infrastructure, but was building something new with the expectation of it coming into central station. They had raised those concerns. There's a joint executive steering group, which involves the two local authorities for that project. It's a regional project, but it's Glasgow City Council and Renfrewshire Council, who lead on it. Both of those authorities, the Scottish Government, are chaired by the cabinet secretary, Transport Scotland, Network Rail and Glasgow Airport, the partners there. There was an agreement to commission a report to look into the details of that business case. When that report came out, it's fair to say that it raised very significant challenges, particularly on a number of levels. It's probably three key areas. One was the deliverability of the project in the first place within the budget. The Scottish Government has been clear that any overspend over and above the £144 million that is budgeted in the city deal would be for the two local authorities to pick up. As leader of Glasgow City Council, I have a particular interest in that, as well as as chair of the City Region Cabinet. Equally, my counterpart in Renfrewshire Council has a particular view on that. It raised very significant concerns that could be delivered within the £144 million. It also raised concerns about longer-term operational viability and sustainability. Although most airports are not all, there are a number of airports around Glasgow's size, which currently do not have rail links of some kind, although many are obviously looking into them. Very few have just a rail link that just goes from the airport to the station, to the city centre and back again without connecting anything else. Most of them use existing, and most people who travel will expect that if they get on a train at the airport, there will probably be other stops along the way. The plan for the previous tram train link was that it would just essentially go back and forward from the airport to Glasgow Central and not connect to anything else. There aren't many links that have that. Heathrow is one of them. Heathrow also has alternative. You can get the tube, which Glasgow obviously doesn't have, but I think we all know that Heathrow Express is not a cheap way to get to and from Heathrow Airport. Whether that would be sustainable for an airport the size of Glasgow, albeit that Glasgow is growing considerably, whether that would be sustainable in operational terms, again that would be something that would fall to the local authorities to carry that. There were serious questions raised about that, but I think probably the biggest challenge was about economic impact, a negative economic impact on other parts of the city region, including Inverclyde, Renfrewshire, South Lanarkshire and beyond the city region Ayrshire, and the impact that the loss of capacity at Central Station would have in, certainly, the medium term on rail services serving those parts of West Central Scotland. The questions that were raised about that were pretty conclusive in terms of making the decision, ultimately, that that particular project wasn't going to be, or didn't look like it was going to be, the right project when there were other alternatives available. So what we've done is we worked through, and this has been done collectively, the officers from the respective councils have worked with Transport Scotland officials and Network Rail to work through some of the issues that were raised in the consultancy report, the Jacob's report, and try and close as many of them off as possible. The conclusion that we came to was that an alternative option would be linking the airport directly with probably Paisley-Gilmore Street, in the way that, for example, Gatwick North Terminal is linked to the railway station at Gatwick South Terminal, so with some kind of a PRT system, personal rapid transit, of which there are various options, but a small tram type or shuttle type arrangement. Linking that in with Paisley-Gilmore Street, Paisley-Gilmore Street essentially becoming the airport station, and then people connecting into existing rail services to make their way into not just the city centre of Glasgow, but other parts of the city region. That was one of the options that was looked into at the time. There was no outline business case taken forward for it, so what we've now agreed is that we will take forward a proper, a fuller business case for that and look into that, whether that's a feasible option. At the same time, and the other crucial side of it is that we're working with Transport Scotland and the Scottish Government to address the wider connectivity issues in the city region. The cabinet secretary has said that that will be part of the strategic transport project review, the next strategic transport project review. There are various different elements to it to make sure that we will connect the airport with Glasgow, with our existing public transport systems, but to do it in a way that is both sustainable but also takes into account wider connectivity issues. Is there a timeline for that, given that previously people believed that the system was made? Secondly, what is business saying that the barriers are to growth in the Glasgow City Region is transport? One of them is, what are they saying? We expect the timelines to be the same. The plan was start work by 2023, delivery by 2025. We fully expect that for the city deal part of it, anything that is more of a national strategic transport project will have a different timeline, and that's obviously still to be developed, but we would expect it to happen within exactly the same timeline. Yes, transport absolutely is. There's no question. It's one of the biggest barriers, and we've done a lot of work within Glasgow City Council on that. We established a connectivity commission back in 2017. Its first report was at the end of last year. We're expecting its second report, probably at the end of March, early April. Its second report will look at those wider regional connectivity issues. I'm pretty confident that it will help to inform the Scottish Government and Transport Scotland in their thinking around STPR2. There's quite a lot of work going on in those wider transport and connectivity issues. Absolutely, they are a barrier. The poor connectivity stops people getting to their work, and it stops people from the most deprived areas in particularly getting to their work. It's an issue in Glasgow. We're doing a lot of work on buses, particularly where connectivity is poor. The other barriers are barriers that we're touching on in some of the other work through the city deal employability, and particularly around the numbers of people in the city region who have been excluded from employment because of long-term illness or disability, and skills as the other massive barrier. Glasgow as a city is a very highly skilled city when you compare us against other UK core cities outside London, so the likes of Manchester, Birmingham and Liverpool. Glasgow is much more highly qualified. The numbers of degree-level qualified people are up over 40%, actually more than the Scottish average, but we also have the largest numbers of people who have no qualifications or recognised skills, and that is an enormous barrier, so there's a lot of work around skills pathways. Going back to the employability thing, the whole point is that we don't just spend this money and say, there's a new bridge, there's a new road, there's some fixed key walls and some land that's now ready for development, but that at every stage of the way we make sure that the projections and expectations around work and employability are pushed through and actively engineered into the process when we don't just wait for it to happen magically as a result of the infrastructure spend, we make sure that the infrastructure spend and the work on inclusive growth go hand in hand. I will touch on relationships in terms of those partnerships, because you've got the Scottish Government whose objective the state is inclusive growth, the UK Government's priorities, economic growth. What is the dynamics of those relationships between the two Governments, those local authorities coming together? Do you think that there is new money being brought in as a result of this, or is it simply money that was in the pot, the Government anyway? In terms of private sector investment, is the private sector investment coming in as well as a result of that? Can you maybe just tell us about those relationships with those two Governments and the private sector and investment? I'll maybe let Kevin and Joyce say a bit more about the relationships with Governments because they have been more directly involved in meeting yesterday with the two Governments. They will be able to say a wee bit more about that. Kevin can also say that, yes, we are seeing private sector investment already, and I think that earlier than we had anticipated probably, we are seeing that private sector investment coming in. That's a key target. Of the money from the Government, so that's £1.2 billion altogether, we have to bring in £3.3 billion of additional private sector investment, which is directly linked to and generated by that public sector investment to begin with. We have a very keen focus on that, a very sharp eye on making sure that those relationships with the private sector are in the right place that they need to be. I think that it's fair to say that we are giving quite a lot of thought to that just now about what those structures need to be. I'm not convinced that the early structures that were put in place around linking in with the private sector were quite adequate, so we've been giving quite a bit of thought about how to improve that. I think that we'll have new structures in place this spring. Lord Hockey has been chairing a group, and he's been very helpful in meeting him again in a couple of weeks to talk about the next steps, how we take that forward. The only other thing that I'd add before I hand over to Kevin Joyce on this is that the SQW report, which we are one year out from our first gateway review report, which we got at the last City Region Cabinet about three weeks ago, indicates that if the projected spend carries on in the same trajectory as it has done so far, by the time we get to the close of the city deal period, the eight local authorities will collectively have themselves invested more than the initial £1 billion, or £1.2 billion, from the two Governments. It isn't just the case that we're just spending the money with it, and I think that the Canal and North Gateway projects are a very good example of that. The work that's going on in Site Hill is as much from Glasgow City Council as it is from the Scottish Government, or the two Governments. Just a guess, the Barclays example is the prime one, I think, of seeing private sector investment coming off the back of the city deal already. As Councillor Aitken said, some of that is earlier than we expected. We thought that we would go through the remediation process and then look for the private sector investment off the back, so Barclays is a really good example. Similarly, other inward investments in the last year, inward investments have been very strong in Glasgow. We've had channel four coming again into that innovation district, which has been alongside 20. That's a positive thing for us. I think that in terms of relationship with the Governments, they're actually very good. I know that the previous committee report picked up on the issue between inclusive growth versus economic growth. I would argue that they're not mutually exclusive. You still need economic growth to have any inclusion, so whilst there could be a tension if one Government was saying, okay, we only build shiny office blocks in the city centre and another Government was saying that we should build community centres, but I don't think that's the way it's characterised from the Governments. They have now set up annual conversations with each of the city region deals, and we went through our sounds a bit pejorative. We had ours last Monday, and we met both Governments there. I think that there was a sense from them that they were working quite well collaboratively on the deals. They were very pleased, I think, at the progress that's being made in Glasgow. I haven't picked up any major tensions either between them, and certainly no tensions between them and us. To add to that, I attended the annual conversation that we had with the chief executive of Easton Bartonshire Council. It's really important that it's not all about only the Glasgow city aspect. It's the wider city region. It's all eight local authorities. That conversation was very helpful because it looked at us delivering the deal today, the progress that we had made, then looking at the forward look and how we were going to progress. We expanded a wee bit more on the new regional working that we have established. For us, as chief execs, that brings a huge opportunity. The comment, or the point that you made about the private sector investment, my own local authority will lead on the housing portfolio. It gives us a much better opportunity to present ourselves as a region, from a housing development point of view, and to have stronger links into the private sector development. That's specifically in housing, and it's also been the case in many of the other portfolio groups that we've established under the governance structure that we now have as a city region. Having the chamber as part of our partnership working is another lever for us to attract new inward investment. Inward investment in its own is a portfolio group itself. We're positioned well to strengthen ourselves. Rather than eight local authorities, we're sitting in one strong region, and we can attract more into the economic part of the Glasgow city region. We've got a lot to get through this morning, so if we can just try to make sure that we keep the answers as short as we possibly can, but with all the information that it would require, not a hard task at all. Just square that circle. Strathclyde region reborn, to an extent, I see. First of all, I'd like to thank Councillor Aitken for her detailed explanation of the Glasgow Airport Access project. That's really helpful. It's representing someone from North Ayrshire. Obviously, we have real concerns in North Ayrshire that we could be disadvantaged if the plan to have an additional line went forward. We all want to see the Glasgow city region deal prosper, but not necessarily the expense of other parts of Scotland. There was a real concern, obviously, that when the Medicines Manufacturing Innovation Centre went to ensuring that it was at the expense of Irvine rather than additionality. It's about additionality, I was working to ask the questions, because we talked about the £1.2 billion of public money. We're looking to bring in £3.3 billion of private sector investment, and Barclays has already been touched on. I'm just wondering, though, how you measure additionality and what I mean by that is how much of this would have happened without the deal and how much is directly attributed to the deal in terms of both the public investments and the private investments. Thirdly, I'm just trying to ask these altogether, convener, given your concern about time. The other thing about how many jobs are directly attributable to the deal as opposed to what might have happened because of general economic changes? In each of the business cases that are brought forward for a city deal investment, we capture displacement, so attribution has to be put in there to identify what is genuine new economic activity and what is just simply displacement from elsewhere. That's something that has to be brought forward through that business case process, because there is no real additionality if we are just simply taking jobs from one part of the region to another or even from outwith the region into that. That's something that's captured at the very early stage. The reality is that when we went through the initial programme modelling phase, some projects fell off because they displaced activity from elsewhere, so any of themselves had greater economic benefit than some of the individual projects that went ahead, but they actually displaced too much activity from elsewhere, either within the region or within the country. That additionality is something that we are very keen to capture. In terms of jobs directly attributed, yes, so that is also part of the business case, so people will capture what the directly attributable jobs and the indirect ones are. Those that we have been very clear with the individual authorities, they need to make sure that they are confident of their numbers because that's what we monitor, that's what we go back and ensure that it is monitored. We've just put in place a new community benefits software package, which will enable us both to track that in real time and present that information. I think that up until this point we've captured it in a kind of old-fashioned way of Excel spreadsheets and those kinds of things. It's all part of the business case process, it's all part of the monitoring, but now we've got a better way to capture it and report it. I think that we are principally interested in what happens after the project has been delivered and what the economic benefit of that is. I think that where we are now, lots of that is probably too early to say, but that's the evaluation question to come back to as projects are completed and benefits flow through. I note to your comments there, Mr Tom, about being too early to say, but the deal was signed in July 2014, so I'm just wondering what additional jobs, additional infrastructure spending and additional private money leverage that we have actually that can be attributed to the deal at this stage? Do we have any figures on those? I'll start when you come in. What we have is figures on spend and on, because Kevin has alluded to, leverage, which is in the framework that we're working towards. The issue with lots of these projects is the bits that we are looking at are infrastructure projects, most of them are not completed. Until they are completed what you're looking at, as Councillor Aitken said, the work going on on Suckey whole street, the work going on on site hill is creating some construction jobs, which we can measure in terms of the economic benefit, the impact, that will follow later. I appreciate all that, but I just want to get some kind of idea of where we are. It's not a state secret, is it, any of these responses? One of them is 100 extra jobs, 1,000 extra jobs, a billion extra investment, 100 million extra investment. I'm just looking for some ball part as to how the deal is progressing at this point in time. It's not an evaluation like a decade from now. I'm just looking to see how we're going, because we're obviously looking to see how successful or not deals are. I think that if we get some kind of hint as to additionality at this stage, it helps us, especially as, for example, there's a growth deal that was signed in 1 February and it will give some signposts, and I would hope to that in other deals in Scotland. On what we've been measuring so far, there is a long-term programme of investment, and what the PMO has been collecting from the project managers is information on the milestones in putting in place the infrastructure. The next phase of our work, which starts over the next month or two, is going beyond that monitoring data and saying, okay, from the infrastructure investment that's been put in place today, what other investment has followed on and how many jobs are attributable to those projects? So we've deliberately left that phase of work as late in the process before gateway review 1 as possible, so that we can collect that as late as possible. Okay, just one last thing, and I'll switch away from that. Alec Rowley was talking about the relationship between the deal and the UK and the Scottish Governments, which was positive, Mr Rowsh said, but I'm just wondering how is the situation in terms of levering in the funding for specific reserves and devolved competencies impacting on the deal? Is that working out okay? We've had some discussions previously at the committee that, for example, the UK Government only wanted money spent on reserved issues, Scottish Government perhaps was a bit more flexible, but one wonders whether that means that the money is not being spent optimally because it might not necessarily should be spent on reserved issues. It could perhaps be spent more on devolved issues or vice versa, if you get what I'm saying. I'm just wondering if the money is resources being optimised through the way that Governments are investing their resources. In relation to Glasgow specifically, we don't have that barrier, so both Governments just give us money in grant form for infrastructure spend, so I know that that's an issue for other city region deals that have followed us, but ours just comes in a grant for an infrastructure fund, so there's no this is your money and this is your money. Ultimately, it's the decisions of Cabinet how they choose to invest those. I understand that there's attention in other city region areas, but it's one that luckily, just because of where we were in the process, we've not been exposed to it. It seems to me the most sensible way forward, so one wonders why it's happened the other way around, but we'll leave that to you now. Thanks, Cymru. Good morning. Can I ask about a specific project at SQW? Have you done any analysis of the economic benefit of the Kathgen relief road, which I think was the first infrastructure project to be completed? The Kathgen relief road is one of the three projects that we are focusing on for our final phase of work, which is the impact evaluation work. In the evaluation plan that we agreed with the city region for that particular project, the agreed methodology would be to look at first of all, as it is primarily a transport project, to look at the transport data for the local and surrounding areas to see what difference the completed road has made on the transport and the issues and the congestion within the local areas. In addition to that, we are also going to be speaking to local stakeholders, developers, to get qualitative feedback on the impact of the road in terms of local businesses, local developments, how that has had an impact in decisions to take forward those projects. That is one of the projects that we'll be looking at over the coming months. I can probably save you some time because you won't get very much. That road was essentially a bypass and leads to no industrial areas whatsoever. I'll be interested to see what you come back with. Moving on from that, there was a concern with that road and its economic benefits or lack of them. As there were concerns with other roads put forward by South Lanarkshire Council, including Stewartfield Way, the question is not to you, Mr Nolan, because you probably don't know the answer to this one. I was interested to hear Councillor Aik and say that all councils have produced augmented business cases. Does that include Stewartfield Way, for instance? Stewartfield Way has not come through yet. We expect that at some point in 2019, but it has not been produced as yet. That has not been produced. That is a major project. They are working on that just now. Each of the projects are in turn. There have been other augmented business cases coming from South Lanarkshire, but not specifically for the Stewartfield Way project. We will be able to scrutinise that in detail. The revisited assumptions around a remediated land, jobs, houses being built and the cost-benefit analysis, the various different criteria that will be revisited as part of that augmented business case. So far, South Lanarkshire has not said anything about changing any of the projects in their area? Not to this point, no. Obviously, there is a change control process that can be gone through, but if, for example, any authority chose not to go ahead with a project or there was a reason why a project could not go ahead, it can modify that project. However, if the project does not go ahead and that money comes back into the pot to be allocated to the highest performing across the region. However, there has been radio silence from South Lanarkshire. On that particular one, I will move on to other questions. In relation to Stewartfield Way, yes. What we anticipate that they have reported to us that the augmented OBC will come in 2019, and that is within the timescale of a number of other authorities as well. Okay. When you, Councillor Aitken, appeared before us previously, we questioned you about the transparency around the city deal and particular questions on the website, which is the way that the public might find out about things. I had a quick look at that, and it does not look to be radically different from what it was before. In fact, when I looked at my hometown, which is East Kilbride, this morning and zoomed in on the map, there were no projects on the map. I know that that is not true. That is something that will take away and pick up. That is not too good. You, Councillor Aitken, produced a helpful update in February of this year. The previous update on the website was produced by Councillor Macaviti, your predecessor, some time ago, so that there is real difficulty in finding out what is going on. So there is a new communications plan that has been put in place from January, so that is why that newsletter was issued. Those will now be issued on a monthly basis. There are also blog updates that are also now being issued on a four-week basis. All of that is correct to note that that is something that has been in train, but it is something that has started just from January. If we come back in a year's time, then there will be 12 of those. I think that you have told me this before, Mr Rush. Indeed, but the new communications plan has now been put in place. It really needs to kick in, because people need to be able to find out things. I think that the newsletters are a particular new development. There have been a whole number of other developments. The social media strategy has been considerably enhanced over not just since January but over the past year at my request. I would say that some of the detail on some of this work sits with the local authorities as well. Although Kevin and his colleagues in the programme management team are scrutinising that, it is the local authorities that bring forward that detail. The work on South Lanarkshire's projects sits with South Lanarkshire. They lead on that. The work on North Lanarkshire's projects sits with North Lanarkshire and so on. The local authorities themselves also have individual responsibility for talking about the detail of their project. They are the lead authority for their projects. Glasgow's projects, for example, on the Glasgow City Council website, are quite considerably detailed and broken down with timelines and with different aspects of the projects under the overall heading. I think that we are strongly encouraging all local authorities involved to detail their projects. Equally, there will be some in which there are elements of possible commercial confidentiality around contracts and procurement and things like that, which will not be able to be necessarily shared with the public. The original business case for Stewartfield Way, which would have been submitted back in August 2016, is available for people to find and read and to follow up on what they choose to do. All the papers that have been to the cabinet at any time are in the public domain and can be found. I would say that, reasonably easily, if somebody is interested, they could certainly get their hands on those without having to look too hard. I completely disagree with you. It is not easy to find anything. You can blame the councils, but they should all be held in one place. You should be able to come on to your website—I am sorry to bang on about the website—but it is the place that people will look. All that information should be in the one place, and it is not. You should not have to go on to individual council websites, who are all doing different things. Glasgow may be doing really well. South Lanarkshire, I can assure you, is not. I have not looked at the rest, but we should not have different approaches. You should be able to look in one place and find out what you need to know. You can look in one place to get all the papers. All the papers that have ever been can be found in the one place. We would have to use the right search terms, I suppose, to find the particular one that you are looking for. There is obviously a lot of information there. In terms of information about the operational work that South Lanarkshire's officers are currently undertaking, the moment that you are not going to find that in the city deal website, because that is operational work that is being undertaken by council officers, and that would have to be a process for that local authority to respond to detailed questions about that. I should say that we asked South Lanarkshire along, but they are setting their budget today, so that is why they cannot be here. Otherwise, they would be getting the questions. Can I ask what the actual review process is for projects? If a council wants to change something, or even if it wants to drop something completely, is that possible? What do they have to do? If there is a material change to a project, Cabinet can give the member authority a defined period of time to bring forward a modified project that generates the same benefits-to-cost ratio for the overall programme. It would have to be modified within the scope of the original one, so that you could not use a different example. However, if it was a bridge over the River Clyde, you then could not come back with a different project and a different part of your authority and claim that that was a modified project. That would then be a cancellation of your existing one. That call goes out and that money comes back into the pot, so if I use Stuart Fieldway, if £62 million became available, that would then be for Cabinet to issue a call to the member authorities to bring forward projects of their own. As it stands just now, the one that has the highest GVA would win. That is not a South Lanarkshire allocation to be clear, so if South Lanarkshire did not go ahead with that project, the money comes back into the pot to be reallocated. Cabinet has a duty to ensure that they invest in the right project so that those are not allocations to individual authorities. If any project falls for any reason, the money comes back into reallocated. Have you had examples of councils dropping projects or changing them? There are some discussions just now with a number of authorities about some changes. We had a look at the CWRR, Clyde Waterfront, Renfrew Riverside project last year, the Renfrew bridge, as it was known, because there were substantial issues with planning, I think, with Western Bartonshire as well. Because of the uncertainty around that, Renfrewshire did a bit of work to look at what a modified project might look like. Now, in the end, that project got planning permission is now proceeding as planned. Those are the kind of decisions that are taken, but again in that case, if Renfrewshire councillor had come forward with a project that was entirely different, then that is not in their gift to take that decision. That is ultimately up to Cabinet to decide. North Lanarkshire significantly modified a project as well, but not to the extent that it was a wholly different project. Had it been that we are not going to do that any more, we are going to do something else instead, as Kevin says. The money comes back into the pot. Can I just ask just on that exact point, if they had come back with something that was completely different, would they then have to have sold that to the Cabinet as a new bid? Yes. It would have to go through the same process as others, so it would have to demonstrate. The GVA is essentially what we judge on. Those were the criteria set at the beginning for how projects are chosen. It would have to be GVA. If there were other projects, the other local authorities were saying, hang on, we think this is better. It was demonstrating better GVA and better cost benefit. At return, there is no guarantee that the local authority who wanted to change would then get… To give one example, Easton-Bartonshire does not have an infrastructure project. That was its choice in the early days. They are quite keen now to have an infrastructure project. If money comes back into the pot, Easton-Bartonshire would be bidding strongly to say that we would like our infrastructure project to come forward. I am fairly confident that Glasgow would have some projects that we would like to see, but all the local authorities will be in that position. Ultimately, the decision on what goes forward is made on that regional basis. The rules and the criteria for making that decision are very clear, and Cabinet would have to abide by those in order to demonstrate to the two Governments and, indeed, to SQW at the Gateway review that the governance processes will all be followed correctly. That has been very useful. SQW provided a written submission to the committee, and I must say that I am a little bit confused by what the purpose of the national evaluation panel is. You say that the purpose is to evaluate the impact of the locally appraised interventions on economic growth, but you are then going to say that the following are not within the scope of the NEP, and that includes economic evaluation. Can you explain exactly what the national evaluation panel is doing in relation to economic growth? Sure. I suspect that it is technical language rather than anything else that is causing the confusion. What the panel was able to do was to measure the economic impact of the intervention, whereas economic evaluation in the jargon is about value for money, which we are not seeking to assess. We are back to an earlier question. We are looking at jobs, we are looking at GVA, but we are not doing a value for money assessment or benchmarking of that. You are looking at economic impact, which I think is popularly understood. Are you looking at economic impact against any target that was set when the city region deals were introduced? Yes, in the sense that we will look at what the project has delivered against the business cases that have been referred to earlier. Sorry, I am having problems hearing. Yes, in the sense that we will look at the impact of the project in comparison to the business case that was set out for it. Is the business case in all the investment funds that you are looking at, did they all, including Glasgow, contain GVA projections? Yes, all the business cases are assessed on the basis of their long-term GVA impact, so they all have that. You also say that the approach will involve interim reports provided during the evaluation period. Have you produced any evaluation reports in this respect with regard to Glasgow? Our work, which takes us up to gateway review 1 for Glasgow, is December of this calendar year. There are three phases of reporting. There was a baseline report, which was produced in summer 2018. That baseline report covered primarily the kind of qualitative strategic level benefits of developing and setting up the fund and the associated structures. The one-year-out report was produced in January. It looked in detail at some of the operational issues in implementing the projects. The final gateway review report that we produced later on this year, as I said earlier, will include the impact evaluation evidence that we collected from the three projects. There are the three phases of reporting that we have been asked to do. There are the two that you have reported on already. Are they on the website? We can have a look at them. Yes, they have been to Cabinet. As the council already said, they are for our public. Great, thanks. Although you are not strictly involved in other city region deals across Scotland, are you looking at them? Do you have nothing to do with them? That is fine. Have you found any contrast or lessons in relation to the Glasgow City region deal compared to the other 10 that you are looking at out with Scotland? Are there any key differences, lessons that you would like to draw to our attention? I probably need to be slightly careful on how we answer that. Part of our remit is not to compare across city deals, so I guess that those are personal opinions rather than as part of our contracting team. The difference is that there are two key differences. Glasgow is different because it has the Scottish Government involved, which is not involved elsewhere. Welsh Government is involved in Cardiff, but it is in a different way. That has created a slightly different dynamic, not a hugely different dynamic, but it has created a different dynamic, which I think that we have met quite well in terms of their slightly different expectations through working very well with the commission and Sir Anton Muscatelli to resolve that. The second thing that I think is slightly different is that all the city regions started in a different place and are moving at a slightly different pace. I think that we have said another four. We are generally impressed by how much Glasgow has achieved if you compare it across the 10. It is one of the fastest-moving, fastest-spending city deals that we have seen. In terms of economic impact, are you assessing any potential displacement impacts that was a concern that the committee raised in its report? As part of looking at economic impact, we are looking at displacement in the way that the national framework—the framework that we designed to sit across the 10—was about displacement within the city region. What was the economic impact within the city region? I think that reading the committee report, some of your interest in displacement, is a Pan-Scotland displacement issue. For example, picking up Kenny Gibson's constituency any displacement taking place in Ayrshire, for example. You are correct that it was displacement out with the city region deal, so you are not looking at that. You are just looking at displacement within the bounds. That was the way that the national framework was set up. It is feasible to broaden that out slightly to accommodate the committee's concerns, having read the report from last time, but that was not the original way that we started on this assignment. Therefore, you are not doing that. You are not looking at displacement impacts outside the city region deal area. We will do a small amount on the impact projects, but it is not the main focus of what we are doing. We will get some information then. Can you say at the beginning when you had your opening statement that the deal was one of the most advanced so far? Were you in expectation of that because you were one of the first to progress that? Throughout today, we have talked about there has been a refocus of the deal, there has been some communication and there has been some complexities working with other councils. It may well have been advanced, but the smooth running of it is in question. We have also touched on it from other MSPs today in evidence that the openness and transparency at times was a problem. When we are looking at the sharing of best practice, what has Glasgow done or what is it doing to ensure that the best practice is being dealt with with other city deals across Scotland at present? The first thing to say is that the deal was intended and constructed as a 20-year deal. We are in the first fraction of the period of it being established. It is probably fair to say that the first couple of years were devoted to establishing governing structures and having rules in place. That is obviously a significant amount of public spend. I think that that was the focus for the first couple of years. I was not there at the time. I was obviously aware of it. I was an elected member, but I was not a member of the cabinet, so I was not very close to it. It is still the case to a certain extent that none of this was ever expected or intended to happen overnight. It was very clear that we were only able to draw down £30 million a year of investment. There was never a question of £1 billion being spent within five or six years. This is investment over an extended period. I cannot speak for prior to May 2017, but since then I would say that the joint working between the local authorities has been excellent. It has just improved as we have developed the city region into something that is much wider regional working. Kevin mentioned the regional economic partnership. We are probably more advanced than the development of other regional economic partnerships in Scotland. The Glasgow City Region coming first in terms of city deals is also allowing us to set the pace for other regional ways of working, particularly around regional economies. Regionalisation is a significant part of the enterprise and skills review and moving towards thinking about the Scottish economy in regional contexts. We are finding that that is increasingly useful and helpful when we are talking to inward investors. In terms of transparency, there were issues about all of the deals in the beginning, and I know that some of the later deals are experiencing this now even in that because of the nature of them and the nature of the way that they were established, the projects themselves were not open to any kind. The selection of projects was not open to public discussion or public consultation, if you like, because they were selected on the basis of rules set by the UK Government in particular, and those rules had to be established. It was not a case of any of the local authorities went out and said to neighbourhoods and to communities, what do you want? Transparency was not there in that element. Transparency in terms of governance, though, and in terms of the processes being followed, I think that it has always been there. It is complex, undoubtedly, and I am not going to lie, it took me a good few months to get my head round it when I took over the chair some of the criteria that we are dealing with. Kevin and other officers are there to do some of that technical stuff for me, luckily. I think that there has always been transparency around the governance, and we have had examples of decisions being made at Cabinet, a city region Cabinet, which then went back to member local authorities and went through the democratic processes of member local authorities as well. I think that that is important to say, not a huge number, but there have been incidences of that. Perhaps the really important thing for us going forward in terms of public engagement is that the individual projects, as they start to impact on communities, or indeed before they impact directly on communities, the public engagement, the transparency around that has been as exemplary as we can make it. That does sit with individual authorities. It is up to them to engage with their own local communities. I think that, certainly in Glasgow, the engagement that went on around the recreation, the building of a new community in Scythill, for example, which I personally thought should be talked of as the type of flagship project that the city deal is designed to enable. I think that it has been exemplary. It has been of a very high quality. It has been genuinely deep levels of community engagement. Similar work is going on around the avenues. That is the enabling public realm infrastructure as its full title, but we call it the avenues for short. The work on the Garnett Hills, Suckey Hall Street, and the district regeneration framework in the city of which the Suckey Hall Street avenue is part of, again, very deep, detailed levels of engagement with local communities on that. There is a lot there that can be learned from and can be rolled out. That is the bit that communities are most interested in. How is it going to affect me? How is it going to affect us day to day? Particularly when it is infrastructure-related and there is construction work going on with all of the short-term interruptions and disbenefits that come from that, that public engagement is particularly important so that people know that there is something coming at the end of the interruptions in the short term. There has been a great deal that can be shared. As Kevin said earlier, there are various forums in which we can share that with other local authorities and other regions, not just city regions but economic regions in Scotland. It is important to say that the Ayrshire growth deal is an example that these are no longer just city deals, they are economic regional deals. Therefore, there will be different learning and different approaches in every one, and that is the whole point of the regional approach. There is no other region like the Glasgow region in Scotland where the only metropolitan region in Scotland is the only true metropolitan region north of Manchester. No one else is going to have exactly the same factors, exactly the same issues to deal with. No other local authority has the same levels of contaminated post-industrial land, for example, which is quite a focus of the Glasgow deal. However, the principles around things like that deep dive public engagement is definitely something that we can share. We are learning and getting better at that all the time. Certainly, from our regional point of view, the collective responsibility and the collaboration that is happening across the local authorities I have already expanded on. The other thing that I can tell you is that the Society of Local Authorities, Chief Execs, where 32 local authorities are all represented, we had a review of our thematic priority areas last August. Regional working and the city deals was one specific area where we thought that we could establish more cross-working lessons learned from each other and how we could share. I am past chair of so last, but I am Maria Donnell, who is the Chief Executive of Glasgow, is now chair. That is certainly one of the thematic areas and one of the focus areas that has been put in place now. That taps right into the question that you had very specifically asked. I can echo what Councillor Aiken has said about the responsibility of managing those projects at the local authority level. The proactive or reactive community engagement, as sometimes it has to be in that, I have certainly felt that myself with the Exxon project, but that is something that we are planning for as we would with any capital project investment that we have within the local authority. That responsibility for good strong community engagement and where there is any potential disruption in our communities that we get the best benefit from contractors who are working in the areas and helping in our schools, that is all happening in the local authority areas. I cannot speak for the lannarchers, but I can certainly speak in my own local authority and say that that is happening there with the Exxon project and all other capital investment projects that we have in our plans. I mean that those deals will give huge potential to so many local authorities and so many parts. As you identify yourself, Glasgow has a unique opportunity within this whole process. The whole idea of employability, regeneration, progress, all of that is enthroned in the whole process that you are trying to bring together. Is there or have there been any lessons learned from other deals that have come since Glasgow? Or have there been things that Glasgow wished they had done that other deals might have done that might have smoothed some of the difficulties that you have had in your own one? Sorry, Joyce, do you want to— Yes, maybe if I can just—I, as was mentioned earlier, have been here since the very beginning of this deal in 2014. What we did to in the very early days of formation was learn from Manchester and also from Leedson. We had some workshops with them to see whether there were some lessons that we could learn and how we could be informed as we developed our process. I think that, as Councillor Aiken has already said, all the deals are different. We have also heard the SQW mention that about the more developed stages of the UK and the Scottish Government investment in that. We did look south of the border to learn and to hear from them. In particular, I can tell you that the housing portfolio establishment was something that we heard about in the Manchester area. It was being led by—I think it was actually Bolton, in fact—who were the local authority who were leading on that. We had some learning from there. That helped to inform our thinking around what were the most important areas to be focusing on. I do not think that it is a rebirth here. This is an establishment of what is best delivered at the local level, at the regional level and at the national level, right across Scotland. I would like you to come back. Just one point being if you can remember to send us any links to any papers regarding employability. Specifically, that project with the DWP would be really interesting. Kenny Gibson joked about a Minnie Strathclyde regional council earlier. I am not sure where Kenny thought that that was a good thing or a bad thing, but Minnie in Scotland feels that the removal of the regions back in the 90s had restricted the ability to organise on a regional level. For all I am hearing today, you seem to be suggesting that there is potential for the city deals to become wider and organised. Would I be right in saying that? Would you see the city's regional deals looking at wider service delivery, such as, for example, education authorities? There you go, Councillor Aitken. Would you like to put in record that you want to change the local government's approach? I really ask me to if I want to abolish Glasgow State Council. I think that the Scottish Government is absolutely clear that the direction of travel around economic development and inward investment and inclusive growth is regional. We can have more in effect on a regional basis. The Glasgow region is very clear why. If we are generating the number of jobs that we need to generate, then inevitably there will be people travelling into Glasgow to take up those jobs. Equally, some of our neighbouring local authorities require Glasgow to be generating jobs for their citizens to take up, because with the best will in the world, they do not, on their own, have that capacity for the kinds of job growth and job creation that Glasgow does as a city. That is why the region is so important. We will more and more think about things on a regional basis. In fact, I would say that we are doing so already. Kevin works in Glasgow City Council and is located in Glasgow City Council, but he is the director of regional economic growth, not just city economic growth. The city council has a very clear understanding that we will work better as a region. Some of the pitches that we have done for inward investment have been very much on a regional basis. It was in the discussions that we had with Heathrow Airport about their logistics hubs. I know that other parts of Scotland have also been pitched for those areas. However, the potential sites that we offered them were very much on a regional basis. We did it as a city region, not just as Glasgow City. There are clear benefits to that. That is why the regional economic partnerships have been put in place. As I said earlier, Glasgow City Council has the advantages of their own work, but it is certainly a step ahead because we have already put the regional working in place. The regional economic education collaboratives are in place as well. That has been in about 18 months. The officer lead on the Glasgow City region is the East Renfrewshire. The councillor chair of that is from Renfrewshire. The collaborative working on looking at our curriculum on a regional basis and the skills pathways from our schools into the jobs that we are bringing in the high-skilled jobs of the future to ensure that, as a region, we are equipping our young people in our schools to be able to make sure that they can take advantage of those future high-value, high-skilled jobs. That kind of work is much better than that takes place on a regional basis. Does that require major structural changes that require legislation? I think that we are demonstrating that it does not, that if you have the will, both the political will and the relationships between senior officers, which are just as, in fact, if not more important, because, as indeed the city region cabinet has demonstrated, politicians come and go, but the officers are there for longer. If that will is there to work collectively, then we are able to move forward with agreement on what our priorities are. We have a regional economic strategy as well, which is a basis for a lot of this working. Finally, Graham, you wanted to come back in. Thanks, and it very much follows on from that. This committee dealt with the planning bill. The committee's finished with it, thankfully, because it took rather a long time. One of the proposals in that bill was to scrap strategic development plans, and the committee rejected that idea. However, my question to you would be, do you have a model as a city region that could be replicated or used to deal with regional planning? Because everything that you have said, Councillor Aiken, backs up the idea that we need regional working, we certainly need to plan regionally. I think that there is no doubt about that. It is just finding the right model. Do you think that you have it? Yes, we have established regional planning structure with the Clyde plan development team. I think that our view in the planning bill is that, regardless of what comes back as a statutory duty for us to do in terms of regional planning, we will be doing regional planning anyway. We will be taking forward a regional spatial strategy, regardless of what the statutory duty is. It seems somewhat inconsistent with a lot of regional working that we are taking forward and others to then take away a layer of something that we have done historically. We have a kind of watching briefing on the planning bill, but to some extent the statutory duty is, I do not mean that it is neither here nor there, but I think that we will be taking forward a regional approach anyway. Specifically, the model that we have through the Clyde plan team is one that has worked well. Once the planning bill is out of the way, we will be discussing with Clyde plan about how that integrates more closely with the regional structures. As I said, I think that we are supporting our regional planning as a principle. I would just add to that that those regional approaches also have to balance with local democratic accountability and the elected members who represent the communities where planning decisions have the impact. That is something that probably needs to be worked through as regional economic partnerships progress. We have had some experience of it within the city deal and in actual fact, in the end, it all came out fairly smoothly. There will be tensions within that, but I think that that is probably inevitable. We should accept that sometimes there will be tensions between what officers wish to do and wish to plan for on an operational basis and what elected members on a local basis want. That is the nature of local government. I think that that is absolutely fine. That is fine by me. You are not there to agree with your officers all the time. Thank you very much. Can I just say thank you very much to Councillor Aitken and the rest of the panel for that? That was a very, very useful session. A further evidence session on city region deals will take place on 13 March when we will hear from representatives of more recently agreed deals. That concludes the public part of today's meeting and I move the meeting into private. Thank you.