Seòmar agus comataidhean

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.

We turn to agenda item 4, which is evidence on the new deal with local government that was agreed between the Scottish Government and COSLA and published in June. We are joined again by Joe FitzPatrick, Minister for Local Government Empowerment and Planning. The minister is supported for this item by Ellen Leaver, deputy director of the local government and analytical services division at the Scottish Government. Councillor Heddle also joins us for this item and is supported this time by Sarah Watters, who is director of membership and resources at COSLA.

Mr FitzPatrick and Councillor Heddle intend to make short opening statements; I invite Mr FitzPatrick to go first, followed by Councillor Heddle. I will then go to questions from members.

Thank you for reminding us about the Covid recovery strategy, which is an important part of the background.

Willie Coffey has some questions.

It is great to hear that the dialogue is much improved. Minister, would you like to come in?