 Good afternoon and welcome to the 27th meeting of 2023 of the Economy and Fair Work Committee. This week we are pleased to be meeting in Aberdeen. This is the first time the Economy and Fair Work committee has met outside of Holyroodd in this session. I thank Aberdeen City Council very much for hosting us in this magnificent room. Our first item of business is a decision to take item 3 in private. Are members content to do so? Thank you. So our next item of business is the first evidence session of our inquiry into a just transition for the north-east in Moray. Industry is the second highest carbon emitting sector in Scotland after transport and there is currently a target of 2045 for Scotland to cut greenhouse gas emissions to net zero. The committee is interested in looking at how we can support, incentivise and de-risk this transition to benefit industry and the community. I would like to thank those who have responded to our call for views as well as everyone who took part in our engagement workshop this morning. All the views expressed will be considered as part of our inquiry. I'd also like to thank the staff Aberdeen South Harbour for hosting a visit from us this morning. We now move to our evidence session and I welcome Stuart Bews, Program Manager at Aberdeen City Council, Jim Grant, Head of Economic Growth and Development with Moray Council, Alistair Ross, Policy and Consultations Officer, Aberdeen Council of Volatile Organisations and Aberdeenshire for Action and Alison Stewart, Hub Manager, North-East Scotland Climate Action Network. Paul McCarrie from Aberdeenshire Council has given us apologies for this meeting for understandable reasons. Before we start questions, I'll invite Maggie Chapman to declare an interest. Thanks very much, convenant. Just to note for colleagues, I'm a member of the Nescan Board, so just to have that on record. Okay, thank you. And if members and witnesses can keep their answers as concise and direct as possible, that means we can get more questions in this afternoon. If I may best start, this does reflect on some of the discussions already had today and ask the panel how they would define a just transition, what would a just transition for North-East and Moray look like? I might come to some of the people who helped us out this morning, as you've already had a go at answering this question, but come to you first, Alison, if you'd like to. Well, I think firstly we do need a vision for North-East Scotland, Moray, Aberdeenshire City and Aberdeenshire. That's a joint vision with all members, parts of society involved in that creation of it. We have done in Nescan quite a lot of visioning exercises both for COP26 and after that point in time. And so I know the kind of broad strokes of what the communities think and people within communities think of what they want for just transition. And that really focuses in around a holisticness, a localism so that they can have everything that they want in walking, biking distance, that they have the ability to grow food locally and that they have local decision making. So that is very clear as well. And green spaces is crucial by diversity and really when we're thinking about that kind of drawing of it, it's that green byways for walking, for biking, it's the localised industry, it's the retrofitted so that it's kind of warm, cheap houses to run, it's the renewables on buildings, it is the justness in relation to equity and the healthiness as well that comes from having things locally, things well thought out so people can walk, can cycle, can access nature as well because those things are crucial. So I think that's really important is that whereas we might ask lots of people and they'll come up with that vision, a very similar vision, when it comes to implementing in their community, in their environment, the details will change. So it's really quite place based. Thank you. Jim, if I may welcome to you from Moray Council, if you want to give a view of how, what does the council understand a just transition to be and how will we know when that has been achieved or delivered? So I think in terms of government policies around both programme for government but national planning framework for national strategy for economic transformation, I think government has set out that vision and ambition for what just transition should look like but I think there's still a huge challenge in how we get there particularly in terms of where investment goes when we're trying to address inequalities and inequalities in the economy that perhaps built up over decades. Certainly in rural Scotland population decline is a big issue. I can only see that getting worse with some of the elements of transition particularly around transport and how we ensure that that is just both for rural areas and city areas as we try and tackle carbon and climate change issues. And then Stuart, if I come to you because you're Aberdeen City Council, it's quite different in terms of the challenges or it might be the same but do you want to say how the council defines a just transition and what they're working towards? Thank you. Aberdeen City Council's got a number of strategies and policies. I wouldn't say that they're necessarily directly focused on a just transition, typically in the area. We've had a focus on climate change action plans and we've looked at an energy transition. I think the part around the just transition has been to some extent defined by the Scottish Government. I think the challenge that we feel as a local authority is how do we move towards this idea of the just transition which is far more socially equitable. And I think one of the areas where there's perhaps a bit of a lack of clarity at the moment is the idea of what is it we're trying to do if we look at the just transition fund and the objectives that it has. We can see logic in them. I think the difficulty is which organisations would take a lead on that and how would they do it. So as a local authority, I guess the commitment that we have is to try and work with all of our local stakeholders to try and support that but I'm not sure that it's something that as a local authority we'd be able to do on our own. And just one other question that you had asked was around how would we measure a just transition. I think that's an excellent question and I don't know the answer but I think if we know how we might measure that I think that would help us in terms of shaping what we need to do to get to that point. Because we were interested in whether there's enough because we're looking at a place based just transition and whether we have enough knowledge and data around what is you know can be measured. Is there anything that is tangible that we could see within a local authority area? Potentially. So for example we have indicators the SIMD indicators for example. We were actually having a conversation out in the other room about this where we were saying the difficulty in using those as your basis is that impacts that you may achieve through this fund it's not instantly recognisable because they're done over such a long term. My feeling is that we'd want to measure impacts far sooner than that and we'll be able to measure the immediate impact and outcome of those investments but actually what they do on a larger scale in the context of SIMD that's going to take much much longer and it'll take other factors into account beyond just what we're doing specifically to address a just transition. I suppose from what you say, I don't know if Stuart and Jim if you want to respond back to this is from what you say is it fair to take a reasoning that you feel the Scottish Government is understanding what just transition is and what they want to achieve but you are probably some of the key delivery partners. Is there enough support or communication about the shared understanding of what's trying to get delivered? Is it clear enough what they're actually trying to deliver? I don't know if Stuart will come to you then Jim I'll give you a chance and I'll come to Halston. I think that's the challenge and we can see from the Scottish Government's publications what you intend for that to mean and the timescales associated. As a local government though we're recognising that some of those key sectors in there are not necessarily sectors that we're having a direct responsibility for. There wasn't a mention around transport and industry and the accountability or the responsibility they hold for emissions. There are policy drivers we can put in place but actually in terms of the financial investment that's needed to change that. I think that possibly goes beyond what we as a local authority would be able to achieve on our own even with the national guidelines that are there. You mentioned the place-based approach and that is something that we've had support from the Scottish Government on through the place-based investment fund. We continue to administer that. That tends to be more community focused and smaller scale initiatives but I think when we have within the context of place-based investment fund there's a clear strategy there that we're able to go and implement because we have the responsibility for the place so that sits really nicely with us. I think with the just transition it's a far broader remit and not all of which necessarily would sit within the power of a local authority itself. And James you want to respond? Yeah so I think in Murray we're fortunate in terms of size or scale of the area that we're working with in that we work very closely with partners so the council has an ambition around being at zero by 2030 in terms of climate change but we have the climate assembly that's operated by Murray TSI which the council participates along with the community and the private sector in that climate assembly. We have good connections in with UHI Murray who are delivering on skills and one of their early just transition projects is looking at the gap in green skills for the Murray area and what can be done so I think from a community planning perspective and partners across both Highland Islands Enterprise, UHI Murray, the council and the community I think we're well placed to work out what needs to be done but we are reliant on the funding to enable that to be done and I think that some of the delivery of just transition fund has perhaps not been communicated as well as it could be or should I say planned as far in advance as it could be. It feels like we've been a bit reactive which is understandable for the first round that was done but I think longer term planning over the future years would help particularly community groups but also local authorities in UHI Murray and how we move forward and the capacity within some of those bodies to develop projects I think is important. Thank you. Also I'll come back to you and come back to the start of the question. Do you feel there's a shared understanding of what a just transition means? No I think there's a bit of a disparity between how communities and the third sector are included in the discussions with the private sector and the public sector around that vision. Communities don't tend to feel that they have the same level of influence when they're in discussions or in meetings so it's important that communities are not just listened to but they have the power themselves and the more importantly the resources themselves to make changes in their places. I'd also say communities are not just about places they're about communities of people as well that have shared characteristics or shared interests and so it's not all about place certainly when trying to make a just transition we know at the moment we're not including all parts of our communities that should have a voice and those are communities of people rather than places and so that's important consideration we would say from the third sector as well. So yeah at the moment I would say in Aberdeen City in Aberdeenshire that the transition that's dominating in the moment and it's dominated by the transition from the energy perspective with the voices of those big companies and deep pockets and the communities don't have that parity of a voice. And then before I come to Colin Smyth if I just want to talk about how do you measure a just transition? Do you think a set of kind of greed measurable targets or indicators would be helpful because we have ambitions and targets set but how do we know if we're actually delivering them? I don't know, I just need to come up with what the set might be but would a set would something like that be helpful? Jim if I come to you. Yeah I think a set of measures is helpful it does help guide projects and helps to develop if you like the baselines for those measures whatever they may be early so that you can show change and you can show benefit with the progress of the projects. I think what's difficult is a set of measures that really captures the full breadth of a just transition because it does range from very significant transport projects down to very small communities and how we address some of their issues and barriers. Is anyone else on the panel want to respond to that Alistair to do? Because how do you measure the social impact of this that's what's very very important we can have x number of jobs or x number of projects you know but how do you measure that wider social impact of providing a bus service to a community that's isolated rather than counting the number of journeys what does that actually do for a community and yeah in the in the same way providing employment opportunities for people in in new green industries there's a much wider social benefit to that and how how is that measured because that's the justness of the the transition that and that's not the easy bit to measure. Just to come in I mean obviously when you went measurements you first need a plan to measure against so I think you need the vision and then you need the plan and then from the plan you will get the indicators or the KPIs but measurement is very tricky so being a regional hub we're trying at the moment to create indicators that really can show the wider social impact it's going to be very difficult and it's something that is long-term it's something that's very very um nebulous um how do you measure the increase in confidence in a community the increased capacity um so but that is we have to have a new thinking about monitoring learning and evaluation that isn't just about economic indicators and and figures but a much deeper way of actually measuring change because that's what the transition is all about really. I'll still let you brief to come back and then I'll go to Collinsmouth. Thanks and I do understand the um the nature of the world that we work in but short-term measures or quick wins are no use for communities what it's sustained investment in long-term funding and long-term projects over you know it's not it's not two or three years or five years it's 10 15 20 years that you're looking at to really change a community um so that was that point. Okay um Collinsmouth so we're followed by Maggie Chapman. Thanks very much convener can I just follow up on a point you touched on Alastair regarding community engagement we had obviously an excellent session this morning with community groups and what struck me was that the huge amount of fantastic work that's taking place across communities but you seem to be suggesting that the communities don't feel sufficiently empowered to shape that just transition in the the northeast can you say a bit more about that point you made there is a good examples of where that empowerment is taking place at the moment that we can take away um or what needs to be changed in order to better involve those communities. Yeah I think probably the and I don't think we've done them yet but Alastair maybe we can confirm it things like citizens assemblies um where you you have um selected a broad range of opinions at the start you know a whole different range of people from a community um who then actually have decision-making powers and some money behind them to to to do projects in their local area those are places that are successful um also when you talk about communities they're all so hugely different you have some communities that are full of very active people um who have a whole range of skills those tend to be areas that are um wealthy anyway um and they they can quite easily um do community projects or start up green businesses and there are loads of examples of those that we could share with you um but that's not the just part of it those those those communities can already do that it's how do we get the resources and um build the capacity in those communities that don't have those skills and don't have those people and definitely don't have the power or the resources to do it so all that we need to do to change that um so we have to be a bit more it's about local democracy really very localised democracy um but i would say and i know there's discussions about that in government and parliament just now yeah do i think really what you can do is you have to think about how to build capacity so the funding you know when you're funding in and the kind of things you have to do make it quite difficult because we should be successful you need to put time in the front to actually build relationships in the community and trust and know who to bring in to community assemblies to really be able to have a diversity of representations so that every bit of that community is actually represented because that really brings a buy in for the community as a whole much much easier and alongside that there has to be the kind of education and really capacity building within that community to come up with a plan to then as as I was saying to be able to support the community in that plan and have some community commissioning so the money has to be there for those projects but also the support the people support from something like nescan you know to really be able to to empower those people so they can go in then do that by themselves but it's really important that that is really quite intensive in relation to financial and people resources but the only way you can build capacity is by people time and energy really my colleague's going to have some specific questions around how the local authority engage with the UK and in Scottish Government but I suppose I want to focus on how the council engage with communities and turn it yourself Stuart and Jim I mean what changes have you made as local authorities to the way you engage communities as we begin to address that need for a just transition I was at a table this morning Stuart with a group of people from Tory and I won't mention a particular park but there was a general feeling that communities don't feel maybe the local authorities engaging them enough to allow them to really shape that transition at local authority level so what sort of changes is the local authority made to try to better engage people or what do you plan to maybe do in the future thank you I think some of the things that we've seen the council has a local outcome improvement plan that brings together a whole range of local stakeholders who are shaping the policy policy decisions of the council and all of the reports that we're bringing through committees we have to be able to address that local outcome improvement plan so there's a commitment from everything that we do to try and have a positive impact on that plan that's been put together by the council along with other stakeholders but I think probably the crux of your question is not so much about that strategic element it's more about the kind of the practicalities and that's always been a challenge not just for the city council I think for most local authorities is to understand that what we're trying to achieve here is for the communities to work with us not for us to work with them that feeling is often one of well here comes the local authority to tell us what we have to do or what they're going to do to us trying to change that around by getting early engagement with the communities and what we've often found is that organizations obviously Alice there's from from ACFO they have a really good relationship already with a lot of these community groups and so it's how do we work with ACFO to make sure that the messages that are coming through from the community we can tie into those and that we can improve proper genuine consultation with the communities what we don't want to see is a situation whereby we think something is is good because on a strategic level it fits to then understand that it's not actually what the community wants it feels like it's being done to a community so that's where that piece before any kind of plans and decisions are made we want that early engagement and I think part of what we're seeing and what we discussed if I just bring this back around to the just transition pieces that when we take this in the context of just transition that's a really difficult conversation because I don't think we're probably clear as to what how do we measure a just transition what's that conversation about how do we engage in a way that everyone is clear as to what we're trying to do and just to pick up on on something that Alison had said in terms of the funding one of the key things that gives us a real challenge around the just transition fund is that it's a capital only fund and in order to mobilise communities and groups and allow them to take forward ideas and initiatives revenue funding alongside that would be a huge boost to them when Jim obviously you mentioned it with the citizens assembly that you have and how does that shape policy in your area and how do you get to those I suppose have to reach groups to make sure it's not you know community groups that maybe we all know about in that area but it's actually people with those groups even are influencing your policies in your area so I think the climate assembly I mentioned is a specific assembly run by Murray TSI or TSI Murray around climate change and energy and renewable energy so it brings together both communities public sector and private sector organisations who are specifically interested in in addressing those issues around renewable energies in particular on general community engagement as a local authority we we already do extensive engagement around things like local outcome improvement plan place plans for those areas experiencing specific inequalities that we deal with we have engagement under planning for master plans we with all all our main town centres of recent hard town centre improvement plans with significant community engagement and climate change and net zero and the implications of that have all been part of that planning process looking at how how communities need to change what can be built in in terms of active travel etc for that and we're currently going through local development plan for 2027 and having that engagement with communities around well what does that look like how do we bring MPF for policies into this and the ideas around just transition and climate change is all built throughout those whole policies so it's starting that conversation with communities around what they want to see and what they think is important I think the difficulty engaging directly on funding and looking at all getting communities are excited about projects in their area and coming forward with the ideas more is that piece I mentioned earlier about being able to long term plan so if we had a profile of the just transition fund even over the next five years and we knew what that makeup was that gives communities something to say we can aim for that with the capacity funding to help a community grow and develop a project they know that if we bid into here there's going to be a pot of money that we can bid in for whereas at the moment there's a bit of uncertainty around is it going to be capital funding or is it going to be you know the Scottish National Investment Bank funding which perhaps isn't suitable for some other community projects I'd be pleased to know there's lots of questions on the fund coming shortly I think. Okay and good afternoon to the panel thank you for joining us. Studio if I can start with you you talked about use the phrase genuine consultation and early engagement and I'm interested in how you understand thinking about broader community empowerment principles how you understand that is different to co-production. I think that's probably the phrase I was looking for is we feel the ideas exist within the community and I guess part of the role of the local authority is how do we support those ideas to come forward and now there are other organisations that we would work with in doing that some of them are sitting here today and I think what we want to be clear on in so far as the just transition aspect is that locally and regionally and nationally too sorry there are policies and strategies in place and I guess what we're looking to to pull together is these ideas within the communities how do we actually help to demonstrate that strategic fit one of the things that we've become aware of is that often there are good ideas just not quite linked up with other good ideas and that's a key thing that we feel is a local authority we can help so that's where we want that engagement that consultation because we're having a number of conversations we can't have everyone around every table it becomes counterproductive so it's how do we link up the right organisations and the right ideas so that they can maximise the benefit of those ideas okay thanks that's helpful so there's that work happening or you're attempting to try and support communities to to bring their expert because it's expertise we're talking about it's it's it's expertise and experience together in different ways how are you what are the structures that are preventing you from doing that we've heard about funding and I know there'll be other questions about funding what are the structures that are preventing you from doing that in an effective way that transcends some of the or if we dealt with those we would be able to get that sort of cross community collaboration and and rather than genuine consultation genuine co-production of a long-term strategy for just transition I think the the big challenge that we have is around the expectation management we would love to be able to go out and say I have these conversations but actually from round one we still don't know when round two is going to be we don't know how that's going to look we have other funds that we administer as a local authority and we've had a bit of clarity around what that's going to be year on year I think it was four or five years for example for the place based investment fund so that's allowed us to to go out and promote that and we do that already and we've seen a strong number of local initiatives come forward and be delivered really successfully the challenge here is we don't want to raise those expectations and find that we've encouraged groups to take forward initiatives and ideas but actually there's there's no means to go and deliver them and so that's probably a key but I think that would allow us to actually really go and push this and I think one of the things that's that's perhaps not being addressed and I appreciate there are questions around the fund later but we are seeing at the moment that the fund comes out and it's then kind of open for for everybody with a very broad remit the role of local authority in doing that is really difficult to promote because we have so many questions from so many different sectors about how they can access the fund and we don't always have a huge amount of information either on that so I think more knowledge and sort of a better indication of those timescales would be the key thing to allow us to have those conversations okay so there's something in there about how the Scottish Government and others who support that fund there's a communication there's an information issue there never mind the strategic work that that needs to happen John can I come to you a similar kind of question what is it that how is it that you in Murray um where are the barriers to co-production and actually seeing the creativity the skills the expertise of local community groups actually come to fruition in a planned and strategic way I'll pick up on Alistair's point earlier that in some communities that happens because they have capability within the community they've perhaps benefited for a number of years for from wind farm community benefit and therefore the structures within that community enable them to come together and push things forward other communities haven't had that community benefit they perhaps haven't got the same capacity within the community and the only way you get into those areas and really build that capacity is from organisations such as Alistair's and Alison or council staff going into those areas and providing support and our limiting capacity is the staff to do that because it comes down to local government funding and choices councils have to meet okay if I if I can ask you it's a related question um but on a specific issue and I would ask this of Aberdeenshire colleagues as well but I'm not able to be here there's something around large infrastructure projects that are seen to be needed I'm talking about some of the the SSEN work on grid upgrading and infrastructure upgrading how is it that given that the the imperative goes beyond your remit goes beyond the Scottish Government remit it's a UK wide imperative how how do we make sure that or how can you make sure that communities that are directly affected particularly in rural areas actually have their voices heard in the meaningful way so it's through the standard planning consultation process all those upgrades will be consulted on and anybody can put a representation into the energy consent unit so I suppose from the formal process communities can have the say an OSSEN were recently consulting on potential for community benefit from grid infrastructure upgrade and substations which was something UK government had been consulting on earlier in the year I think I've still to produce findings from that um when you look at MPF4 and policy 11 in MPF4 11c says that we should be maximising economic impact from all energy developments and that includes grid infrastructure infrastructure and substations but at the moment um that policy doesn't have any guidance behind it so local authorities can't suggest conditions around meeting socioeconomic benefits and particularly local socioeconomic benefits so I think that's an area where we could improve if we had specific guidance on policy 11c I think that brings it more into formal process is that is there something in that space that Mary council could determine for yourselves given that you are probably better placed to understand that what what happens in your communities then then an external agency coming in from from outside would be I think not just money council but the community themselves can do that but what we're lacking at the moment is the powers to make it happen so it comes back to the decision making power okay I suppose I'm interested in exploring questions of accountability as well and local authority folk may want to come in on this but I'll come to Alistair and Alison on this how is it that how would you like to see questions around community empowerment and the accountability for decisions being made whether those are made by local government whether those are made by Scottish government whether those are made by community councils at whatever level they are made how would you like to see accountability embedded in our understanding of of those decision making processes that's very interesting and we should say we're looking forward to the community empowerment act review good answer I think there's a big thing about communities being asked constantly about things but never feeling that they've actually been listened to that's communities of place in communities of people because and that involves the third sector as well because people do feel that when you are consulted there's a predetermined outcome and it's very very rare for the outcome to be changed from what a community's feedback has been after the fact of a say a development or something's been presented that we have to be corrected on that but I would think it was a very very small percentage where that happens and so that gives people in communities a sort of it's it becomes a slog to take part in consultations it becomes a slog to take part in decision making processes at any level it would be nice to have very very local democracy and I should declare I'm a community councillor but that's maybe not the right model and I know that we're all looking at this at the moment but I think there does need to be a change because there is a local authorities and communities do work together but there is a lot of a there is a disconnect especially when you're talking about big areas and Murray and Aberdeenshire where villages and towns have their own very distinct identity in the way that they they do things and that doesn't necessarily reflect always reflect the way that things are done on a more regional basis. Alison do you want to come in on? Yeah there is a power imbalance and without and we have to then correct that power imbalance otherwise there's not going to be the communities being listened to so for instance I completely agree with with Alastair and what he was saying about localisation and it seems that the more local we make decision making the more accountability there actually is and for instance and also there's an awful lot of consultations about the same things and I know that our members are getting quite weary of putting the same information the same kind of consultations and never understanding where it's going so really if you're going to put something information out you need to then understand what's happened with that information so from a accountability perspective what I'd like to see is if you put in you know what you think that you then get a response saying how that's been taken forward or not taken forward and why that is the case so for instance the national planning framework for a number of community groups did put in consultation responses and that seemed like in the first iteration that's a lot of what the third sector and community had put forward was going through and then we have the corporate interest coming in and that's the thing that goes forward it's very different and really from that whole thing where do communities actually have power local play space bands are just you know we can look at them but the communities have no actual power to make decisions and where they're at where you have no actual power then you get disconnected and disenfranchised so really there has to be that kind of real accountability coming through you know you said we did kind of thing and but also what is the outcome when it nothing does happen because in our current democratic system there really isn't any real accountability because we haven't got a real democracy in that sense so I think you have to make it more democratic on the ground and follow that through different systems to the top thanks can I just unpick that a little bit more and I suppose maybe think about the consequences of if and when this goes wrong do you do you see in the membership that you have in the conversations you have with different communities is they trust in the just transition agenda no there really isn't there's a hope and desire but there's not a trust let's put it this way the just transition fund was kind of created very quickly it got created on the back of I think to some extent some inwards kind of conversations etc when we were engaged at the start there was this expectation that there would be resourcing money for communities to be able to access the main part of the fund we had seven applications from Nescan members going into that main bit of the fund it took a lot of capacity for us to be able to support those and for the communities to actually do that they were up against organisations with huge resources and an understanding and it is quite complicated but in funding applications so none of those were successful apart from Nescan hubs one which was actually not done from the main bit the fund but from the resourcing money so the understanding was that their Nescan would get money to actually help communities build the capacity to enable them to to bid into the next bit of the fund the next year when that came about because in the first year it was capital and there's multi-year bids put in by bigger organisations they swept up the cattle aspect of the just transition fund for year two leaving a new financial instruments which were completely inaccessible for community groups and charities to a large extent the other little bit of money went to the energy transition zone to then put into pre-existing oil and gas companies as opposed to any new innovations so in effect community groups are unable to access the main chunk of the just transition fund so yeah so there's quite a lot of work then I suppose that we and partners probably in local governance as well need to do to build I was going to say rebuild trust but that implies it was there there to begin with but to build to build that trust are there are there particular things that you think we need to be focused on as we do that or it doesn't come back to what you were saying earlier around we need to invest in people in time and capacity I think so the kind of just transition communities project that we're doing and what we see is when you start co-creating plans with with communities with other actors and and then communities are responsible for creating those plans and and passionate about where they live and and really have a good idea of what needs to occur whenever you have this conversation you don't need to call them just transition in fact you shouldn't just where would you like to see your community going they will end up being just transition plans and if you then resource them properly so give capacity building skill development for those people involved commission within the community so your community wealth building and and really then have a stakeholder group from local authority business and and you know company and sorry community members like they have done in some parts of Scotland already and then you get that building up and then you have a plan and then you finance that plan and if you finance that plan you will get the results that you want and then you've got to keep on redoing that. Can I have one more question on planning? I'll come back to your planning what I'm going to do is let Murdo Fraser and see his questions on the fund and I'll come back to you Maggie then. Thank you sorry I've got a couple of questions around this and maybe I'll ask both questions together because the overlap first is a very general question which is to what extent do you think the just transition fund is being used effectively and what could be done to make it more effective and secondly and slightly more specific I was looking at some parliamentary answers my colleague Liam Kerr got just last week about the just transition fund in year one of the £20 million available for £22.23, £10 million of capital grant allocation spent, the £0.5 million financial transactions were allocated to social investment Scotland social enterprise just transition fund and the balance of £9.5 million financial transactions were unallocated for £23.24 the funds entire financial transaction allocation of £25 million has been allocated to the Scottish National Investment Bank and in our informal session this morning we heard from some of the stakeholders concerns about the Scottish National Investment Bank role and how effective that was in leasing with local communities so my second question is do you think it's right that Scottish National Investment Bank are in charge of this money and how effectively are they engaging with you? So I think it's really difficult to actually measure the impact of the first year because we haven't had any real communication about what has happened out of the first year funding so what has happened to the money that's given out is not clear what I will say I think is a very scattered gun approach and really you were never in a business start doing something with that plan of where you want to get to so if you don't know where you want to get to then how can you measure effectiveness we don't have a vision for the actual fund even though I did discuss that at the time and it was said that we were going to have a regional vision for the just transition plan and there would be local stakeholders to create that that didn't occur in year one hasn't occurred yet so I think giving money willy nilly doesn't really really produce an effect you need to actually be thinking about why you're doing it for what reason to get to what outcome so I think that's really important I think that you know in effect of the communities because they only can get access like very small percentage of that funds with a Scottish national bank I don't know enough to really comment too much what I will say is though that having financial instruments will not be effective for communities in the third sector and for SMEs you know because it's only really for the big boys and girls that can really be able to do financial transactions so giving it all to that is by effect denying entry to the fund or access to the fund for those who haven't got the financial resources to enable that to occur and it's always about horse trading and really what I think we need to think about is why do we have the just transition fund what do you want from it and then really put the right financing into that it's not just about the amount it's actually how it's allocated it is it revenue is it capital is it financial instruments and recognise who you're excluding by your your kind of choices I also can't comment on the Scottish National Investment Bank I don't know enough about it but the effectiveness of the fund was the first part of your question and what Alison said about having that vision of what's the fund is trying to achieve would be important and the information that he had this morning on my colleague Dan's presentation which he sent showed the type of projects that have been successful in receiving money from the participatory budgeting part of the just transition fund which we work with Nescan and other partners on. The number of projects around business and the economy were much lower than those projects about the environment and community in place but that's because those are the things that communities have the skills and the capacity to deliver at the moment we as TSIs we don't have the resources to help communities set up new businesses to change the economic outlook of their place. The fund as well is a very short time period in which to spend it so those naturally are the types of projects that you can deliver in that short space of time as well you can you can do things you can build something within your community or you can plant things within your community very quickly within a short space of time but you can't develop a new business with just capital funding in three or four months. Just before I bring the others in Alison just to follow up something that came up in the session this morning was that restricted to capital funding was a barrier to many groups and it would be better if it was also part of a revenue fund but it doesn't really agree with me. Yes I think all the TSIs would support that. The three in the northeast would support that because it's all very well having the money to buy equipment but if you can't pay someone to use it or you can't get staff to to run a place then you fail before you've started. There's also no long the long term ability to maintain a project then if you'd have no revenue funding because I mean the third sector it's quite clear we need we need more fair funding more funding that's longer term more funding that's flexible more funding that's easy to apply for and more which is easy to report on as well and evaluate your outcomes on as well so yeah there's a few apologies obviously having microphone problems thank you Stuart maybe you go back to my original questions if you don't mind. In terms of the first round and its efficiency so in terms of the projects themselves too early to say what I would comment on is probably the process around how we got to those projects it wasn't very clear what the fund was seeking to achieve and there was a huge breadth in applications that came forward from an assessment point of view I think that makes it really challenging for Scottish Government officials without really knowing what the fund is intended to do and the fact that it covers so many areas. The other thing that we fell about it was that there's a duplication there in terms of some of the other existing funds that the Scottish Government has and it's kind of what do you want this fund to do that can't already be funded I think is perhaps that question. The other parts around that I think where I would also add we said in our consultation response that local authorities and other local stakeholders are well placed to support the Scottish Government in the assessment of those applications. We do have a number of local and regional initiatives that are ongoing and I think where we could provide some input that would be helpful for Scottish Government colleagues is to understand what's already happening locally and regionally and to make sure that there's complementarity rather than duplication within these ideas in terms of the allocation of funding to SNP but I'm not 100% sure if that is intended to be for the remainder of the programme or if it was just an initial allocation. What we struggled to understand there though was that in terms of the participatory budget in piece it's kind of been considered around £1 million per year the allocation that we're seeing going through SNP is significantly higher. I haven't seen evidence of why that figure I guess is probably the question that we're asking and I think the point that Alison stressed earlier is around the idea of a plan. What do we want to achieve with this fund and how will we achieve it? It seems to me that if you decide an allocation of £1 million a year primarily for the third sector through a participatory budget and route is sufficient to then allocate £25 million roughly per year through SNP seems like a very different scale and I think it's something that Alison and both Alison have said is that the sort of investment that you'll see through SNP is not really something that's likely to allow access through community groups and or the third sector in general. So I think there's elements of the fund that require a bit of clarification and I think if that could be achieved before future rounds are called I think that would really help stakeholders likes of you know who you have on the panel today to support other groups to bring forward proposals that have a really strong local impact as well as supporting the intended outcomes of HS transition in terms of the Scottish Government's policy direction. Okay thank you and Jim. Yeah so I think in terms of effect that I'd agree with my colleagues that capacity funding particularly for your community groups is key because without that capacity funding they really can't even develop or build a project to a bid stage never mind have the confidence of taking that forward if they're successful with it but you may find this strange but the same applies to local authorities in Murray we have quite a small team for economic development we deliver as much as we can with the funding available but when we have funding like just transition fund that comes along at reasonably short notice to pull bids together that really impacts on capacity so capacity funding and that long-term plan or knowledge of what's coming over the next five years can make a real difference to the quality of bids and projects that you'll get coming forward. I think in the first round all our bids were feasibility projects really looking at putting the strategy or the strategic elements in place for future bids for it and I suppose similar to UHI Murray with their green skills gap they were looking at well let's let's do the work find the evidence base and really look where do we need to intervene to make a difference in future rounds so I think that's where the first round went went on SNP itself they've certainly been in contact with the council I'm not aware of them being in contact with community groups but that doesn't mean to say they haven't been but as others have said I think it's a very difficult fund for communities to get involved in and I'm not sure how much value it added because I believe there was similar funding already available through SNP that people could access for that purpose. Okay thanks for that I mean just just to follow up with with both of you from from local authority perspectives I mean I can understand I mean go back to the point Alison made earlier about I think the term you use that SNP funding for the big boys and girls so maybe that is maybe that is the intention but perhaps we need some more clarity from SNP around that but what engagement have both local authorities had with SNP about how you point people in their direction and access funding? In terms of Aberdeen City Council there may have been engagement it's certainly not with myself so I couldn't comment on sort of giving you a specific no they haven't been in touch I assume they have but certainly in the role that I'm in I would anticipate that if there were conversations being had with funding bodies I probably ought to be aware of that and so far I'm not we had the announcement that the funding was to be sort of rerouted through SNP and like Jim said you know there were funds already available within SNP for a very similar purpose I can see a degree of sense in making use of SNP because it does that type of transactions already I think the question I have around the involvement of SNP is perhaps where the figure came from as to how much should go in there and if there's any evidence of demand for that but for the type of funding that they would offer I don't disagree with making use of them. Yeah so SNP did contact myself within the council had a conversation around what the fund could do and how they would operate so we have the contact there it's really identifying then what types of projects would be suitable for bidding into that and which organisations may be suitable for doing it. And have they given you guidance around that last point? So they haven't given us guidance around that last point? They haven't. I know there's been nothing come out directly to me on that. Okay all right thank you. Okay thank you. I want to bring Gordon MacDonald in as it's again on the fund. Thanks again for your morning and good afternoon panel. We've touched upon already participatory budgeting and I just want to ask I was interested in a comment you made jam earlier on where you said we already do extensive engagement with the community and you gave a long number of examples so the million pounds that's going into participatory budgeting what impact has that had? In terms of participatory budgeting it's been led by TSI Murray very much welcome both by TSI Murray as an organisation in the impact they can then have across communities and their engagement with communities but also the communities themselves it is an opportunity it's an opportunity not just for the communities and their individual projects but to share ideas across communities as well so I think it's a very useful mechanism it's a mechanism that the communities themselves are quite used to now in that there's been several different funding mechanisms over the years that have been delivered that way through TSI Murray and Money for Murray so it's well recognised very supported by a community and very welcomed by communities as a way of accessing funding. Okay and how do you think over the 10-year period that the Just Transition Fund will be in place would you be supportive of that element of the fund increasing? Absolutely yeah okay Alastair I was wanting to ask you the voting of projects etc is that the most effective way to allocate funds? It's certainly the most effective way to make sure communities feel that they've had their say and to enliven and animate communities around their own particular project and get people more people involved and get that level of engagement at a community level I would say it's probably better than people sitting in a closed room deciding certainly more open and transparent but we would also take as much money from the funds to give out that way as we could get our hands on and Alice in this morning the presentation you gave you highlighted being an increase in participation from year one to year two I think it was 62% if I've backed up the number correctly. I think obviously so Money for Murray and TSI Murray have been doing participatory budgeting for a long time in Murray so that understanding the community is is much more understanding about A what Just Transition is and B what participatory budgeting is obviously it's quite a new concept here the council has done it but only in specific communities so it has to be more familiarization as the communities in the region get more aware of it then it you get more buy-in but obviously as we as organizations supporting it get more understanding of how we can do it better that also increases so you know given that support the capacity building to groups to really get the publicity going to ensure that we have the right structure and criteria that all makes a difference it has has an impact on communities it is good as you as you heard this morning there was a huge amount of projects and different kinds of community projects and I do think that's really important that the varieties and the smaller projects more than the big amounts because the big amounts will go to retrofitting and and vehicles and stuff like that but for communities to really get some funds it's it's amazing what it can do it has to go alongside revenue funding we have had some revenue funding this year but I think if we had the revenue funding as part of the actual amount that you bid for that would make it a lot lot better should it purely be PB I think the best way ahead for giving community projects money would be would be not just PB but just straightforward funding as well if we want to ensure that we are covering all bases and that would be a good way but as Alistair was saying it really does help to really communicate just transitions more widely which I think is beneficial I think it's got multiple purposes the just transition participatory budgeting fund it's developing climate literacy enables us to go into community groups and really help them to to recognise the projects that they actually have our community climate action projects to enable them to get to think wider and get different funding but then put them on the next step the next step of really becoming more climate active in a way that suits them and their communities you know it was great to see that 62% increase in people taking part but when you looked at the age profile under 25s were a very small proportion of the people that took part so how are you going to improve the engagement process under 25s so we wanted to to build in young scott this year we didn't have the time and that's an issue that we have for this whole like one year one year and because by the time we get it and then we do the criteria and we will in the lessons and we put things in place there's a very little time for us to actually run the fund and then the the groups get the money before then it goes out the door but to be spent by the 31st of March you can imagine that it's very tight so what happens is that then the time that we have is right over the summer which is when the schools are out which so we can't access young people if we continue to have the same kind of timing constraints in a really effective way so what we would like to do is work with our partners and and other other partners to go into schools and do more school work and and we have the ability and and the partners to be able to do that and and then also young use young scott platform which is very effective much more engaging platform for young people for the voting aspect too so there are different ways and mechanisms that we can do it but it does mean that we really need to to not be doing that whole thing over the summer needs to be before that or after that so we need to be very aware the fact that community groups or have got lack of capacity over the summer too because they're on summer holidays so it needs to be engaged with throughout the whole year and if we weren't stuck to this whole one year one year of of lapping to spend it by the 31st of March that it'd be much more effective okay i've just got one final point again back to you Jim in the written submission from Murray council it said projects funded which have a region wide remit are perhaps finding it difficult to engage with areas such as Murray with which they have no previous connections for delivery of services meaning the benefit may be concentrated in Aberdeen are you able to elaborate on that yeah so i was referring a bit but like Alison mentioned earlier that um obviously with very good bids came in from some of the organizations within Aberdeen both the educational um but also some of the local agencies they bid for region wide projects um and although they touched base with us i think because there's there's a lack of relationship there it's a bit more difficult then for them to deliver region wide because they are very Aberdeen how would you resolve that has to be done through great communication um but i as i don't know the agencies i don't know what capacity they have to do that within their bids okay thanks very much okay thank you Maggie Chapman she was to come in on planning and then i'll take Brian Whittle thanks very much clear yeah yeah i suppose Jim and and Stuart particularly coming back what we've we've spoken about um some of the issues in some of the issues that you and you know community groups have around the the broader planning strategies and and you talked about uh the the planning process and consultations and community engagement in that way i'm just wondering whether you think there's actually more we can be doing to reach people who maybe can't or don't know how to engage because a consultation is only as good as the the framework that sets it up but also as the responses that gets back and if we're not reaching the right people then we're going to miss folk in that and i'm just wondering whether you can comment on that thinking particularly about the spatial planning that that we've got yeah so um it's always a challenge uh i think in Murray certainly our engagement on planning master plans and local development plan process we do involve the schools so we're trying to get in there and reach as many young people because ultimately that's what the local development plan is for they're the ones that will ultimately benefit for it so we do do a lot of work with schools and trying to get in in with them we go to the communities themselves and have the the usual sort of displays and workshops and dropping sessions with communities we also try and contact communities of interest particularly around accessibility etc to ground get as much input as we can but it's difficult it's difficult to even you can go to a community but there'll always be individuals within that community that won't come to a dropping session and perhaps aren't involved in a community of interest and that's difficult i think we do a lot online nowadays as well and through social media so we try and we do capture some of that information from perhaps people that wouldn't otherwise engage in a face-to-face session through social media okay and Stuart a similar question to you how can how can we make sure we do actually capture community voices not just a few community voices i think the what Jim is describing in terms of the work that goes on happens in most local authorities i think you do get a lot of feedback and i think the the part i would probably say that we need to be clearer on when we do engage is to actually understand what the questions we're asking it it's very easy to to ask a whole range of broad questions and you get broad responses i think sometimes we we need to understand the subject matter better and ask much more direct questions which give us a much more direct feedback that we can actually do something with i think the other part in around that is that probably as part of that designing of the consultation piece itself before going out to consult with them with kind of communities as a whole i think we probably need to engage a bit closer with stakeholders and who are often closer to either the communities themselves or to certain sectors and so on and actually engage with them as part of that design piece before we seek the views so that we'll get a steer in terms of what those questions should look like and so we avoid going out with these really general type questions which don't give us a real input back and i think the the point that i asked to me earlier um many communities um people and places may feel that they've kind of been a bit ignored and i think part of that is because we're asking the wrong questions sometimes we're being very generic and vague in those and i think that's something that if i think about the the just transition piece we said earlier there's a bit of a lack of a plan and i mentioned about our concerns around expectation management and that's the concern i have is if we were to go out and engage on the just transition fund as it is what does that do for the expectations because we have no means by which to kind of combat that and i know we have ideas about how we would like to see that look so that we could go out and have a positive engagement but actually just now we're a bit in limbo of if we create all this expectation and huge amounts of time effort and money is spent on the capacity to try and pull together good funding applications we know that from experience of round one there's a reasonable expectation that they won't get through we know that if the participatory budget element remains at around one million pounds per year if we create an expectation and support groups to develop more many of them are going to be disappointed and of course the whole process then feels like what we told them and they didn't listen so i think there's a piece that that we probably need to do first which is around that wider plan and then engage and and do you see this linking to other sort of regional strategic work like that happening within the regional economic partnerships for instance how do you see the the sort of planning element specifically for the just transition do you have you have you had those kinds of conversations at the regional economic partnership level to some extent and i think often i feel like there's a lack of an understanding around the just transition fund which means that when we're talking at a regional economic partnership level about the regional economic strategy somebody may say could we seek support through the just transition fund and you go well i'm not sure maybe and it's this whole piece then again around expectation management there's an expectation we should be able to access it because it feels like it's a good fit with the fund and so it's a real struggle and i know some of our regional economic partners fed back through the consultation have viewed their responses and you know generally i think the view across certainly Aberdeen which is all i can talk for at the moment is one of there's a huge opportunity there but what can we actually do and if we don't define that well enough then i feel really sorry for the officials at the Scottish Government who are going to be bombarded with a host of really good ideas but unable to support all of them because we haven't got a clear definition on what what the priority is. Of course. I'll bring in Brian Whittle who has questions on planning system followed by Cymru Stewart. Thank you very good afternoon to panel. I appreciate you being being here. The discussions this morning it was quite interesting how planning came up and it was mentioned there was a sort of communities feel removed from decision making and actually disengaging and the words of you know on-shore wind came up and solar came up and I just wonder whether what you consider the current planning regulations are fit for purpose especially around spatial planning and the presumption of planning because you know South of Scotland MSP and my bag's full of this we said no but the Scottish Government said yes why did you bother asking this type scenario so I wonder if I come to you Alison is that part of the problem? A huge problem communities have really got no power in planning and the presumption needs to change from development to to on against except for when it is sustainable development and communities need to have more of a say what goes in the community but there comes a responsibility so not just a kind of not on our backyard approach but that comes with power comes responsibility so the local place-based plans are in my view quite ineffectual because they don't have any legal authority and what happens also and also I think that the local authorities themselves you know there's an awful lot of planning that would want to to have say no more to kind of unsustainable development but are not empowered to because the reporter will come back because of the presumption for development and they will reject the council's decision not to give permission to those developments there's a lot that we could be doing in relation to giving planning permission that could really enable a just transition there is some local authorities in England that have kind of guidance along this kind of basis of exactly what you can do we really have to have a holistic approach in relation to active transport health and growing space like green byways and blue byways so connectivity between communities so in yeah in short communities need more say and and if you bring them in in a in a proper way then the responsibility will come with that as well if I could just build on that a little bit Alistair but if I played a bit of devil's advocate here you would suggest that many communities would say yes we do think that it's really important that for the transition that we have onshore wind and we have solar but I don't want it over there so how do we cross that boundary of bringing the communities with us to make sure that they're properly recompensed for any you know development around around about them so I'll try and I suppose it's not really my place as to represent TSI to comment on plan and per se but um what I would say is that communities who are successful in getting a really meaningful community benefit from a development such as a wind farm are communities who are already up skilled and have the structures in place to be able to to do that so it is about again capacity building in communities to be able to take advantage of what is available but also to have those skills to oppose something that you you don't want because those skills don't exist everywhere as well so that would be from a community group perspective I would say that there are places that have very knowledgeable people very well resourced people who are able to mount campaigns for or against certain developments but that's not that's not everywhere and again say taking a community benefit from a from a wind farm they're places that have very good structures that are making great benefits throughout Aberdeen Sharan and Murray as well and perhaps not so much in this city you know no onshore wind in this city but yeah those skills are already there the what we what we don't have is a way of really empowering communities to to to get those skills to learn those skills to be able to to do those things it's both from a gym from a council perspective what how's how does it does it do planning frustrate you any um no i think you have a planning system that i think if you look over the last 10 years it never stops getting reviewed for something third party right of appeal is always part of that review it never makes it into the final version because of the difficulties of having a third party right of appeal effectively delaying development um in the long term so i think communities have to engage at the local development plan evidence stage which is what we're doing in Murray just now they really have to influence what goes into the policy and as with MPF4 they have to influence that i think once you have those policies there is very difficult for them for communities to influence something that they perhaps don't like if actually planning policy supports it and with MPF4 now um with renewable energy and quite rightly because we need to tackle climate change you have a policy document that is exceptionally supportive of renewable energy developments including onshore wind in policy 11 you have a policy there that recognises that there will be significant or some types of renewable energy give significant landscape and visual impact but can still be acceptable with that now there's a balance in there in that it does say we will only support these where we maximize economic impact and where there's local community local local and community socioeconomic benefit but that's the bit i referred to last time at the moment there's a lack of guidance there if members wish they could go and look at the most recent reporters decisions on those and you'll see that for that policy 11c they effectively are saying we can't make a decision on this because of the lack of guidance so so the policy is delivering renewable energy but communities particularly in rural areas are missing out on the socioeconomic benefit because it's not being maximized and i think that's a real issue that needs to be addressed thank you thank you very much convener and it's great to be in the wonderful northeast of scotland in this great city of arborine and last night i was boring some colleagues to death around about the visionary documents that was the arborine 1952 local plan and it was a visionary document and we've talked about vision here today and in some regards from my perspective that vision should be from the grassroots up rather than from government down so we've heard quite a lot today about mpf4 for which i'm partly responsible we've heard a lot about local development plans we've had some touching on local place plans but not very much but one of the the great things that came from this site uh and was very prevalent in the northeast but has disappeared uh was planning for real and that was community planning as well as spatial planning now the the local place plans were supposed to bring community planning and spatial planning together which uh led to would should lead to much greater understanding for communities of what the ambition is and what their vision is for their communities so my initial question is for Jim and Stuart and i recognise that there's been the Covid years and the rest of it but what have your local authority has done in terms of trying to help communities formulate local place plans and has community community planning been linked with that to get the best possible solution and the vision of those communities Jim first please yeah thanks for the question and a good question um terms of local place plans so as an authority we did planning for real uh with the number of communities and you're right it wasn't just spatial planning that was looked at in fact i'd say the majority of issues that community wanted communities wanted to be dealt with weren't planning issues they were much more functional in terms of how the town worked and potholes and parks and and different things they wanted to see in terms of local place plans the stage we're at in look at development plan where we have to produce the next local development plan by 2027 so we've gone out to communities with a call for those that are interested in local place plans we've had quite a number of responses from different places that are looking at that um and have noted their interest in it and then through the process of developing the local development plan we'll engage with those communities and see what we can do to guide them and help them with the production of that plan uh and i think that's at the moment it's only once those local place plans are produced that we can then take account of them to build them into a local development plan so you've said that there's a leak see at that as you build the ldp um and that's fair enough in some regards what i would be interested in knowing is um those poorer communities what are you doing to help them get the expertise to build those local uh place plans but you missed out the element of planning for real the community planning aspect of this in terms of the formulation of local place plans are you as an authority bringing together the community uh planning aspect of planning for real in order to get this right not just for the ldp but to create the vision for the future for individual communities across money yeah so in terms of local place plans it's not just the planners that are engaging with the community on that we are working closely with our community support unit and it's our community support unit that work across community planning and work with communities uh they they effectively led most of the planning for real work so we're doing similar thing with the local place plans and how we approach it okay so if i come back to communities in murray which i quite often do um and say to folk how did that go in terms of that linkage between community planning and spatial planning did it work for buckey or focaburs or forests or wherever it may be they'll they'll be able to turn around to me and say yeah murray did it right so because unless unless community planning starts considering place and i don't mean just local place plans but unless the partners around community planning really start looking at place um not just in relation to spatial planning but service delivery um then how are we all going to work collaboratively both both in terms of where we invest but also where we have to cut services uh that has to be done in a collaborative way across partners if we're going to have sustainable places in the future sure the everdeen perspective unfortunately i'd have to consult with colleagues in strategic place planning it's not an area of my work okay it would be interesting to hear um from planning colleagues uh community planning and spatial planning colleagues and everdeen around about that um i see allison wanting to come in convener actually nescom's been helping both in everdeen city and everdeen show to to try and and do exactly that so i said that we did community assemblies in telejourn woodside linksfield and tori and so we've been working with the community planning and and that to really ensure that those are are pushed into um the loyb and also um the what's it called priority priority neighbourhood planning as well um and they also the what we've been doing conform the basis of local place-based plan and that that is going into a year to the community's project in Aberdeenshire we're working with um local authority uh colleagues in um in in verori in different local authority areas with Aberdeenshire to ensure that the plans that we're creating in in these um delivered democratic processes actually can are the local place-based plans and they bring in the community planning as well so probably my next question was for for you and for allister because you know very definitely this morning we heard from folks from across the northeast of scotland who very definitely had a vision for their places absolutely no doubt about that do you think that local authorities scottish government other public bodies do you think that they are listening to the degree that they should um around about that vision and would you share my view that it should be that bottom-up vision rather than a top-down vision that makes sure that we get this just transition absolutely right Alison please yeah i mean and to come just briefly answer your question the question unfortunately what's happening is a lot i think that in Aberdeenshire a lot of it's going on to community councils who haven't got the capacity to be able to do local place-based plans so there needs to be the capacity given to communities to create those plans they're really labour intensive and the skills as well to develop them but yeah no i totally agree um kevin with the fact that it needs to be bottom-up because when you take a co-creational approach you get the right plan so you get all the kind of knots pulled apart at the very beginning and then you're all on the same wavelength going through so whereas it can take some time to create a co-creational plan it goes much faster after that point so if you go into community and you just say right we're going to put in segregated bike paths along these roads this road in this road just an example it won't work as well as you go in and say okay would you like this and where should we put them where will you use them and then you get the right things and you don't get the money wasted so definitely that's the case it what happens though at the moment is that a lot of people think it wastes time to go in and do co-creational haven't got the time they want to do it fast as possible it just and they don't trust the community and that's what we're getting so then you get misspent money and things that don't work so from a personal point of view you know I've found that the best policy and decision making has been when you've listened to the voices of lived experiences you're formulating the policy and that's basically what you're arguing for Alistair I do you share that view I'm sure you do but let's hear from you in that from yeah absolutely it's it's um it is a collaborative approach that's needed and but what would say is again is that parity of esteem as they say between the third sector and other partners isn't always there um the experts of lived experience people who actually know what's going on are not always taking seriously their opinions not always given the same weight um and that that is a that is an issue what would say about local place plans particularly though is if they were really designed to implement the wishes of communities then they would have some statutory weight to which they don't I think there doesn't necessarily need to be statutory weight but there has to be parameters that are set by all sites and I think communities understand that they understood that during planning for real here many many moons ago they realised that you can have a swimming pool in three adjacent streets for example um and folk realised that you know you're going to need x amount of housing to make sure that um the school is going to continue to have the role it has so I think that none of this is insurmountable um my my final um point convener is around about communication um because we heard from a lot of people this morning um around about various things um and they had questions about aspects of how the entire just transition fund was working because it had never been explained to them the reasoning for certain things happening do you think that communication needs to be improved and this can be yes or no basically from Jim yeah yes I'd say so I think communication at the beginning um before the first round was very good over that short period of time to pull things together it's been very quiet since um so I think it can sure echo what Jim says and I think part of that communication if we could get more than a year by year approach that would be hugely beneficial Alistair yeah it's it's it's very rushed and that's the that's the main issue that we're coming Alistair yes but there is a severe lack of capacity within the climate change division team there's not enough people there to do it okay um just just one point and I could probably spend hours on this to be honest with you and still not make a lot of sense um but financial transactions are um things that confuse quite a lot of folk um and I think convener we maybe need to look at the FTs a little bit more closely because I seem to have the impression from the community groups that it would be almost impossible for them to access FT money however convener it has been done previously in the form of charitable bonds and that's maybe something that we would maybe want to explore charitable bonds for housing that was um and I just wonder in terms of the explanation around about this um has has the information that you had been helpful or has it really um not helped at all and been a hindrance in terms of FT usage I think FTs very difficult concept to put across to people I don't think charitable bonds would work for community groups they might work for bigger charities um I think the only thing that will work for community groups is just funding and revenue capital combined thank you Alistair yeah I would agree um you need you would need the capacity within the community groups to be able to handle these things but um yes it just needs to be money but it needs to be longer term or it needs to be in a more sustainable, fairer way and I suppose that would be very difficult for community groups to handle when they're all voluntary in the name exactly glad thank you thank you convener thank you just before I move to Brian Whittle just on the issue of planning and Jim you kind of answered the first question around um the planning system whether it is enabling a just transition we do have to achieve our climate targets at pace does the planning system the current one we're working with do you think it recognises that or is it presenting difficulties or barriers to actually getting the changes done at a pace that we need to see so I think MPF4 as a document has absolutely created that ambition around getting it done both from climate change and biodiversity a very positive message coming out of MPF4 I think at the moment it lacks some of the guidance that would allow planning authorities to really enforce that ambition and deliver on that ambition I think there's certain policies where there's uncertainty both from developers and planning authorities in terms of what does that mean and it's early days for MPF4 but I think if we don't get the guidance in place we'll miss out on opportunities community wealth building policy within MPF4 I think it's fantastic to see it in MPF4 but it lacks any bite it simply says if it's got community wealth building we'll support it but it doesn't say what we'll do if it doesn't have community wealth building so those elements could improve but as a document it's certainly clearly sets the ambition in pace that's been looking for. Thank you. Brian did you have a couple of other questions you wanted to talk about? Yeah thank you I'll be brief can be given a given a time I wanted to briefly just have a wee look at the relationship between UK and Scottish government policy and you may be aware that they sometimes disagree on the odd occasion does you think that the UK government policy providing of clarity uncertainty around that transition to net zero and come to you Stuart Pickard? That's quite the question I think not deliberately sitting on the fence here but I think what I would say to some extent is just I think both governments to some extent we find it difficult to interpret the difference between a just transition and an energy transition we have so many transitions that to to fully understand what one thing is over another is really difficult within the funding landscape as well we see a lot of use of terminology which again may suggest energy transition but actually the intent may be just transition so I think when we look at that as a local authority we're fortunate to some extent we have capacity knowledge and resource and experience of these things to pick that up but I do suspect that smaller organisations will struggle to recognise the difference and again it's it's making these things as efficient as possible in my current role I engage regularly with Scottish and UK government officials jointly and that's been a really good positive experience because what we find is that they're able to understand what the challenges we face are in terms of delivering policies which in many cases are intended to deliver similar things but actually are worded differently which means that there's a potential for clash in there so do I think that they're both on the same page possibly not but I don't think they're a million miles apart. Trough if you agree with that Jim what would your ask be for each government? So so yeah I do agree with that in terms of the ask I think Scottish government set out the ambition clearer around just transition UK government very much recognise the challenge of energy infrastructure and the impact of the energy and infrastructure on the regions that host it hence their consultation earlier in the year around community benefit. I think I'm not sure of voluntary community benefit system is necessarily what we need are we going to deliver a just transition with a purely voluntary system I think that's a question I'd ask and whether actually actually through things like MPF4 and policy 11 is that something that should be addressed through planning. Yeah if I just just finally just if we add in all layers of government do you think there's enough policy coherence between all those layers to allow you to develop a strategic plan Stuart? It's not fine. I think we have lots of policy and increasingly sometimes what we find is that when developing new policy there's a need to take account of a lot of existing policy the difficulty in doing that is that if that existing policy are to be changed in any way shape or form as an impact on the new policy and from a wider kind of community point of view it's too much you know what are we trying to do what's the latest policy and we see things in funding applications strategic fit where do you where do you want to start you know you can you could link it to almost any any strategy or policy I think what would be really useful to know is if we were talking about a just transition fund what is the key underpinning policy and that's a relatively defined scope at the moment I think the the challenge we have is lots of policy lots of targets lots of objectives those can and are routinely reviewed and amended and so on and trying to get that longer term focus that that we all spoke about from the funding perspective is so difficult when there is a lot of emerging and I don't know if adapting is right we heard about you know policy and strategy I think local authorities we we set out a clear vision that takes us up to 2045 those are visions how we deal in terms of the kind of the more the more regular and localized policy is harder because the the changes that we see in terms of specificity here and that transition from sort of oil and gas towards net zero there's a huge amount of things that can happen at pace so within the context of a long term strategy we need to be able to take account of that what challenges us is obviously national governments then developing national policies and frameworks and we have to ensure that our long term strategies still fit into those and that's all fine we can probably just about do it but from a community perspective that idea of how we get people engaged and not disengaged if there's too many policies procedures it's just such a confusing message to put out there and you mentioned the piece around that kind of that communications it would be fantastic if we could talk about just transition in a single message that that captured the the national policy and strategy side as well as regional local community levels and I think what we want to see is the the ideas coming from the communities understanding what are those key policy and strategy drivers that they're looking to support implementation of I'll leave it there okay thank you John Mason Jewish Justin questions I mean we've covered quite a lot of ground and some of the issues have been touched on already but we have focused quite a lot on the communities and how they can feed in and I think some of the input from the local authorities some of the written input has been about how maybe the councils three in this case I think could be more in control of the whole fund rather than central government and we get some suggestion this morning that some of the central government rules you know are making it very difficult to put it into practice I mean should it have been or should it now be the whole fund more under the control of the local authorities Mr Graham that's a good question certainly local authorities are more than capable and is three local authorities I think the announcement one of the good things with the announcement of the just transition fund is it brought the three local authorities together in that partnership and working together much more actively than previously we do Murray sits with Highlands and Islands regionally economic partnership so although we've always had good relationships we've only ever come together when it makes sense to come together so I think from that point of view yes the local authorities could do that should the local authorities be the ones in control I'm not sure I would go that far I think there's local authorities there's communities there's the business group and it's maybe looking at well how do you bring that together as a a board regionally to have more say more involvement rather than just local authorities I mean I think we've got the wrong one yes and one of the specific things that came up this morning it's been referred to already today is this kind of one-year window that you have to have consultation you have to make decisions and then you've spent the money all within a year and of course local authorities also to some extent have that problem because I know they're always complaining about they want multi-year funding but do you think if the if the local authorities were running it with this fund for 10 years you'd be better able to deal with that and give community groups more of a spread of time Mr Bews if you want thank you yes is the short answer I think just to pick up in your original question I think we probably want to make a distinction here that we're not necessarily suggesting local authorities have control over the fund but rather local authorities could be used as a means to administer the fund and I'm mindful that colleagues within the Scottish government are being asked to take a lot of decisions that have a local impact without necessarily having the local knowledge that local stakeholders would have I think Jim's suggestion of potentially creating a board or something similar could be something worth exploring because one of the conversations that we've had recently is that where the third sector had been asked to administer the participatory budget and I know that early November they've announced the successful projects those projects haven't until the end of March to spend that money and as far as I understood it the third sector bodies haven't actually received the funding from the Scottish government to be able to to pay it out and one of the things that a local authority can do if we have a longer term agreement with the government is we might be able to support in trying to accelerate some of those processes and we administer shared prosperity funds on behalf of the UK government place based investment funds on behalf of the Scottish government and we regularly take calls for applications throughout the year and the flexibility that we can offer to do that while still reporting back to the Scottish government on a annual basis within the financial year can be achieved so that may be a way of trying to address some of the concerns around the kind of the single year rush if you like to get projects in out for consultation approved and spent within a relatively short period of time. I mean if I just stick with the two local authorities at the moment I'll come back to yourselves and let you comment afterwards but do the local authorities have a capacity for taking on more of the kind of running of this because I know you're all strapped as well either of you. Challenging. Very challenging given local government finance as it is and certainly where Murray council is at the moment I think there need to be capacity funding there to enable some of that to happen. Yes and just to echo that I think the the level of capacity funding there is probably not much different than the resource that the Scottish government already has to put into this I think the difference is the fund is is a bit closer to where it's intended to have that impact ultimately whether it's one two three local authorities whoever it is that could have responsibility they will be accountable back to the Scottish government so I think that could be achieved. Okay and just another point for the two of you I mean I think it was Murray Aberdeenshire council sorry that had raised a point and I realised they're not there today so maybe or maybe not you can comment on this but the idea that the just transition fund should be aligned with other economic plans such as the regional economic strategy and we've heard a bit about duplication but I mean are they aligned at the moment or can they be better aligned or is it a problem or is it not a problem? There is some alignment not complete alignment and I wouldn't expect the just transition fund to fully align with the regional economic strategy I think the rationale in around that comment probably stems from a number of areas there's pieces in the regional economic strategy around innovation there's also pieces in there around communities and culture so again there's scope for some alignment within there but I think probably more what I would take from that comment is there's something I said earlier about you know we've been talking about community plans locality plans how do they fit and when we start looking at all the different spheres of governance it's quite a stretch to take something that's very localised and community led and link it into a national policy so I think if we're looking at something in around that regional level they tend to have been developed with regional partners and they're they're probably more suited to the kind of the plans that are in place across that regional level. Mr Grant. Yeah I'd agree and I think that comment probably relates to some of the projects in the first round that were successful perhaps didn't align with regional plans for arweddinshire particularly around transport things etc so I think more cognisance of the strategies and what an area is trying to achieve already when considering bids is something that should be looked at. I mean I think as people know I'm a substitute in the committee so I'm not quite as familiar with some of this as colleagues are but coming in from outside it my feeling was that the idea of a just transition fund should be quite kind of clear cut it should be in a space that nothing else is and yet stuff I've heard this morning like you know in order to get the money quickly and spend it we either plant trees or get an electric vehicle and both of these I would have thought could have happened elsewhere they didn't need a just transition fund to make them happen so is it is it just really maybe I'm slightly cynical is it just more money for things that we're already trying to do or is there a specific space for this fund? So I think it comes down to that definition of what is just transition and if I talk about Highlands and Islands region lock economic partnership and you're looking across the difficulties for islands and certainly promote rural areas it's the usual things that we've already or always done around population challenge housing transport link links skills digital connectivity they're the big issues facing lots of rural communities and urban centres as well and the inequalities around that so just transition can mean lots of things depending what your intervention you're looking for I suppose from my point of view it's it's where does the balance of investment go so urban areas particularly can have overheated economies etc equally you've got rural areas with significant depopulation issues where we can't get people in the hospitality sector we can't get employees for the care sector so but if we concentrate all our investment in one place that's not a just transition so it's really looking at how do we address some of these issues around inequalities both in urban areas and rural areas to try and address that and give the just transition on it okay I realise that my questions are mainly to the local authorities so Mr Ross or Mr Stewart I mean do you have any thoughts about that should we have more of the decision making power at the local authority level or should we just forget both central government and local authorities and focus entirely on the communities no I've always felt we need not just a just transition fund plan but a regional plan which includes everybody in the region and I really don't feel as if they should be a disconnect between all the different plans and the regional economic strategy should also be a just transition strategy and it should include communities and third set and everyone involved in it so it isn't just the usual industry or vested interests that are dictating the direction that our region is going in and I feel that very strongly and I feel that there should be a body which takes forward this this plan this vision into action plan and then the accountability aspect of that so then you know there's a reporting to that body which is a regional body which has got representatives from different areas within our our society and that the just transition fund then would be linked into the plans at that body that the people come up with perhaps led by the three local authorities well the thing is though a you're going to have a lot of politics within that there's a lot of already pre-existing vested interests and and I feel that sometimes like having it coming from out of region or out of that is a positive so that could be newness and it breaks up some of that and I don't understand why it hasn't already been this huge collaboration on a regional vision for just transition anyway and it comes down to the fact that there is politics involved so I do wonder how effective that would be for real new ways of doing things in new ways of thinking but I haven't given enough thought to any further on that. Did you want to add anything Mr Ross? I haven't thought about beforehand but I kind of agree on that point of the the fact that the funds come from the Scottish Government and there's feels more neutral than perhaps it would be if it came from local authorities although saying that the closer the money is to people the better so I'll need to have a think about that one but we from a third sector perspective just say if we were involved in some regional plan we would want an equal seat at the table at the moment we don't have an equal seat at the table in terms of economic strategy any economic planning or anything like that the third sector despite its size both economically in terms of people and social impact we don't have that status as an equal partner. Though you're not actually elected are you? No. Okay I'll leave it to that convener. Thank you that brings us to the end of this afternoon session I would like to thank all the witnesses for the time they've given us this afternoon and we'll now move into private session.