Seòmar agus comataidhean

We will stay on the housing theme with questions from Elena Whitham.

In the interests of time, I will not ask a supplementary question but, from a Highlands and Islands perspective, I want to flag up that, having travelled to the islands over the recess, I am aware that there are massive issues with housing there. At some point, we will raise that matter with you. It is clearly much more expensive to build housing on the islands. There are also issues relating to land, skills and labour. I am deeply concerned that we give a lot of consideration into how the 11,000 affordable houses that are earmarked for the islands will come about.

You talked about barriers being swept away and the need to ensure that a can-do attitude remains, and you said that that will take work. What kinds of thing can we do to keep that partnership working and support the can-do attitude at community level?

Thank you very much for that, Sarah. We move to another topic. I invite Meghan Gallacher to ask her questions.

Thank you for that—you have made some great points on how we can move forward to build community wealth.

We will change the topic. We are concerned about some of what we have heard about the levelling up fund. Willie Coffey will ask some questions on that.

As previously agreed, we will continue the meeting in private to consider item 3.

We are going to change themes and move to housing.

Although we have other questions, in the interests of time, we will put them in a letter to the cabinet secretary. There are important issues to do with reducing emissions from home building. We are also interested in how local authorities will be affected by the levelling-up schemes. However, we will put those questions to the cabinet secretary in writing in the next few days.

I thank the cabinet secretary for coming to give evidence. It has been very helpful for us to get a baseline understanding of the Government’s priorities to carry into our scrutiny in the coming session.

Welcome to the third meeting of the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee in session 6.

Our first agenda item is consideration of whether to take in private agenda item 3, which will be an opportunity for members of the committee to reflect on the evidence that they heard earlier in the meeting. Do members agree to take agenda item 3 in private?

Members indicated agreement.

Thank you; I appreciate your opening remarks, cabinet secretary, which point us in a good direction for asking our questions. I will just comment that I think that we have a great opportunity. You said that you are overseeing a wide-ranging area, but it is all joined up. The committee has been talking about our remit being local government and housing and planning, and how important it is to hold all those together and see how those aspects of how we design Scotland work. We have the opportunity now to do that.

The committee has some questions and I will start. What are the biggest challenges facing local authorities? Do you agree with the Accounts Commission for Scotland that tackling inequalities and addressing the effects of poverty are some of the biggest challenges facing local authorities? I heard you say that one of the most important challenges is tackling child poverty. Can you share a bit more about that?