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That sounds tremendous.

Did I hear somebody else say something? Barry, do you want to come in?

Thank you very much for that. Your having those specialist groups sounds like a really constructive approach. I am heartened to hear that West Lothian Council encouraged the formation of the forum and that it resourced it to some extent. It is also interesting to hear about the town centre funds. I notice that there are often pockets of money around, but it requires somebody to notice that those can be accessed.

Thank you very much. We have run out of time, but I have a question for Oliver Escobar, which we do not necessarily have time for him to answer now. I am interested to know whether you have set out in writing the difference between taking the radical route of rebuilding versus the more incremental route of reforming. Do you have that comparison in a simple form that you could send us? That would be interesting, because we have the opportunity of the local democracy bill and community wealth building. That information might help us to understand those two approaches.

At the new deal for local government event that we held a few weeks ago, one voice said that we need to take the incremental approach and another voice said that something needed to be broken. You are almost saying that as well.

Thank you for that. I have also heard that clerking teams are the institutional memory of organisations, because they are the ones who document things, ensure that things are re-presented, highlight what needs to be considered and so on.

Donald Stavert wants to come in, after which we will move to questions from Willie Coffey.

Before I bring others in, I just want to ask you about that reform and rebuild issue. Something that has been on my mind—Emma Swift talked about it in the previous evidence session—is the fact that community councils are unincorporated and the difficulties that that causes. Do we need to move to incorporation? It is my understanding that we have ended up with development trusts, partly because community councils do not have some of the same powers and abilities.

That sounds fantastic. I am sorry, Willie Coffey—I set you up, but I skipped over Bill Pitt. Bill, do you want to come in now?

Thank you for that, Bill. I have been wondering about something like that, too. Do community councils have the right to invest, or do you need that power?

Yes.

Thank you very much. Does anybody else have any reflections on the strengths of community councils in Scotland and what role they could play in democratic renewal at local level? Perhaps we will focus on that.

That is an interesting point. I am interested to go a little bit further. You said that in England, around 25 years ago, parish councils started to use their tax raising powers for local levies. What kind of things did they bring about? What did they tax people on and was there resistance to that?