Seòmar agus comataidhean

I want to go back and pick up a bit of a thread connected to Christine Grahame’s questions. This question is for the independent track owner. In Thornton Greyhound Stadium’s written evidence, you wrote that, if you felt that an owner was failing in their duty to look after their dog properly, you would address that. Picking up on the earlier conversation about the vet, I am interested in hearing about the next steps that you take in the situation that a greyhound is injured, given that no vet is present on the site and only out-of-office emergency vet services are available on a Saturday night, when races at the track take place.

Okay. Thanks for that clarification.

Kate Rowell, I am interested in your comments about abattoirs and I want to pick up on what you said about mobile abattoirs, which interested me, as a Highlands and Islands MSP. You mentioned that the regulations are too difficult. Could you unpack that a little bit?

Thanks very much. Paul Brignal, why is it seen as less important, as I understand it, to have a vet present than it is to have a bookmaker at your track?

We have just heard from GBGB about the importance of a vet being present at a regulated track.

I was asking about how the authority would go about developing it, and then about the opportunities for communities and individuals to input.

Councillor Heddle has dropped out again. I think that we got the bulk of his response, which was very helpful.

I move on to tackling inequalities, on which Annie Wells is leading.

You are doing a fine job. My question was about the role of CPPs. In relation to the proposed community wealth building bill, you talked about the importance of CPPs as a forum that can keep everyone in the loop. I imagine that there is also an incredible opportunity, in Orkney or elsewhere, to work with partners to identify local procurement, for example. That would enable those agencies to manage procurement locally, which I am starting to get really excited about.

That concludes our questions. It has been a really useful discussion, and it has been powerful to have the Scottish Government and COSLA in the same space, responding to our questions. It was heartening to hear the local governance review mentioned quite a few times. The new deal was also mentioned a good number of times. It was good to hear that you are working in areas that we are taking a strong interest in.

It has been useful to hear your perspectives on the community planning partnerships—that will be a useful element to add to our report. I am really grateful to hear that you have already been paying attention to the work that we have been doing in this area. I am glad that we could contribute constructively in that way. Thank you for joining us this morning.

We agreed at the start of the meeting to take the next item in private. As that was the last public item, I now close the public part of the meeting.

I do not know whether this is the right place to ask this question, but I will do so. We have NPF4, local development plans and, my favourite topic, local place plans—I see Andy Kinnaird smiling, because he knows that I often bring them up. One of my concerns is about local development plans, which you have said might take five years to create—that is an interesting and useful bit of information. A community might not have wanted to create a local place plan or get on board with its local development plan. If people just put in place a done-and-dusted local development plan and say, “Here it is,” how could that be opened up at a later stage, to give space for community expression to be honoured and respected through a local place plan?