Seòmar agus comataidhean

I am heartened to hear about the progress that has been made since we were all together in May in Edinburgh for the evidence session that the committee held on the new deal. It is great to see that things are moving along swiftly. We are passionate about keeping an eye on the issue—obviously, local government is in our title, so it is important for us to support the process as much as possible.

The new deal highlights three shared priorities for the Government and COSLA—tackling poverty, a just transition to net zero and sustainable public services—and notes that there will be a focus on achieving “better outcomes”. I am interested to hear from you both about what discussions you have had on how you achieve those outcomes, and also how the priorities were identified and agreed.

Thanks very much.

I invite other members to declare any relevant interests that they might have.

Thank you.

It is interesting that the “New Deal with Local Government: Verity House Agreement”—I think that that is the first time that have been able to say that in public—says:

“Community Planning Partnerships will be recognised as a critical mechanism for the alignment of resource locally, focussed on prevention and early intervention.”

It goes on, but it is important that community planning partnerships are central to the agreement between COSLA and the Scottish Government, so I am interested to hear what the minister thinks the role of community planning partnerships is.

The committee has made a number of proposals and it has ideas about how community planning partnerships can be improved, so if something is done to address those things, how can we give communities a voice in that through community planning partnerships, in the new deal that has been agreed?

Councillor Heddle, in the eight years since it was passed, how successful do you think the Community Empowerment (Scotland Act) 2015 has been in shifting power to communities, and what does community empowerment look like to you? The Verity house agreement puts community planning partnerships in a central role, so how do we ensure that communities have a voice in the new deal?

Under agenda item 3, the committee will take evidence as part of our post-legislative scrutiny of the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015. We recently concluded an inquiry into part 2 of the act, which concerns community planning, and the Scottish Government has now published its response to our inquiry report. That was the fourth part of the act that our predecessor committee looked at. The committee has also looked at part 9 of the act, which is on allotments. Our predecessor committee looked at part 3 of the act, which is on participation requests, and part 5 of the act, which is on asset transfers. Each of those elements is important in empowering communities.

Today, we will take the opportunity to reflect on what progress has been made across all four areas of the inquiry. To do that work, we are joined in person by the Minister for Community Wealth and Public Finance, Tom Arthur, and the Minister for Local Government Empowerment and Planning, Joe FitzPatrick. The ministers are joined by Scottish Government officials. Andrew Connal is community planning and public service reform team leader in the Scottish Government, and Kathleen Glazik is the community empowerment team leader. We are also joined online by Councillor Steven Heddle, who is vice-president of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, which is often referred to as COSLA. Councillor Heddle is supported online by Garrick Smyth, who is policy manager in the workforce and corporate policy team at COSLA. I welcome all of you to the committee.

As you can imagine, we have a number of questions. I will ask the first question. The evidence that we heard during our inquiry into community planning from community organisations, particularly in communities of interest, about the extent of the shift of power towards communities was a lot less positive than the evidence that we heard from public bodies. Eight years on, how successful has the 2015 act been in shifting power towards communities? We are interested to hear your reflections on that. In answering that question, it would be helpful if you could set out what you understand “community” to mean and, moreover, what community empowerment looks like to you.

I will start with the Minister for Community Wealth and Public Finance.

I agree that that is absolutely what we need right now, in the transition that we are going through as we move to fulfil the aspirations of the community empowerment agenda. It is about how we get there and having that additional support in place.

Councillor Heddle, did you want to come in, or shall we move on?

You are happy to move on. Okay—super.

I know.

Great—thank you for that. It seems that there might need to be more discussion with all the partners in the CPP, with everybody getting involved in how to bring about that improvement in skill sets. I recognise that there are some CPPs for which it is working very well, and there are other places where it is not. There is an equivalence that needs to be recognised in terms of the contribution to how CPPs are run.

I will move on and bring in Marie McNair.

It is great to hear about your experiences, Mr FitzPatrick—the Dunoon story is tremendous. I declare an interest in that, when I lived in New York city, I was majorly involved in community gardens there.

I notice that we have a direction of travel in the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 around allotments, and Ivan McKee mentioned the frustration in that regard and our desire for that direction of travel to be paid attention to. Recently, it was brought to my attention that an allotment community garden project has been told by a local authority that it will now have to pay full ground rent, on common good land, which will be £13,000 a year. That cannot be paid out of the project’s charity fundraising money. Therefore, there seems to be more work to be done to support the community empowerment agenda, particularly under part 9 of the 2015 act, to flow through to the most local level.

I totally understand that local authorities are potentially having to take difficult decisions, because it is a very difficult time for local authority funding and finance, but how do we start to recognise where we are all going together? Mr FitzPatrick, it is fantastic that you are highlighting the good food nation plan, and local authorities will be coming up with their plans. I hope that they will work synergistically with the local food strategy plans that have come out of the 2015 act.

There is still more work for us all to do to highlight the importance of the matter and the enthusiasm of communities in seeking the opportunity to be resilient and to have access to locally grown food and all the value and co-benefits that come from that.

We will move on to a slightly different topic, and I will bring in Mark Griffin.