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Thank you very much for that—it was really helpful. Pam, back to you.

I have a question on capital investment. Your submission states:

“the Scottish Government should prioritise capital investment that ... enables investment in affordable housing ... and supports efforts to achieve net zero.”

We would be interested to understand what level of funding you think is required. What would that mean for existing areas of capital expenditure, and who should fund it?

Out of curiosity, what is the size of those houses? How many bedrooms do they have?

Thanks very much for that.

I am sorry, but we are going to have to move on now. We have only 25 minutes and quite a few questions left. Everything has been super so far, but we are pressed for time.

We will have a question on the rural growth deal, and then we have questions on a couple of other areas—financial sustainability, debt and reserves. We also want to ask about public service reform and prevention. That is just the road map or the pathway of what we want to cover in our final 25 minutes, so I must ask people to be brief with their questions and responses.

I call Emma Roddick to ask about the rural growth deal.

Right on cue, we move to Willie Coffey, who will ask about financial sustainability, debt and reserves.

That has really helped to put us straight.

We have come to the end of this evidence-taking session. As I have said, I hope that, next year, we have more time, because this is important to us. It really helps to get the detail of what is happening on the ground in relation to all the issues that we have been discussing. Again, many thanks to our witnesses for coming in this morning—the evidence has been very helpful.

I briefly suspend the meeting to allow for a changeover of witnesses.

You mentioned the Verity house agreement and the £1 billion baseline going into local government. We are interested in hearing how the forthcoming budget and next year’s local government settlement can help to address the agreement’s three shared priorities, which are tackling poverty, delivering net zero and providing sustainable public services.

Thanks very much for that. It is helpful to understand some of the constraints that you are working under, the challenges and the complexity.

I will move on. I am interested in your response to evidence that we have heard from witnesses that the 2024-25 council tax freeze has negatively impacted local government finances and damaged the relationship between local government and the Scottish Government.

What is your sense of the impact of the council tax freeze on the relationship with local government?

What was said in the previous evidence session about communication, connections, discussions and meetings being in the diary indicates that there is still a relationship, which is very important.