Seòmar agus comataidhean

I was saying that we have about nine or 10 questions to go through—

We will now hear from Debbie Herron of Forres Area Community Trust. Will you give us an overview of your community, highlight the challenges that it faces and outline the trust’s strengths and its role in overcoming those challenges and improving outcomes?

Thank you. I will go round everyone again with a second question. Answers can be fairly brief, again, because we have more questions and we do not have a lot of time—I wish that we had a whole day in which to speak to you. We have tried to select organisations that represent experience from across Scotland so that we include everyone. Rona Mackay is in Benbecula and Pauline Smith is in Easterhouse. It is great to hear the range of experiences.

I want to understand what level of involvement you had in the local governance review, your expectations in participating and communicating with the organisers, and your understanding of the next steps. I will ask you to comment in the same order as before. You can be brief. I just want to understand whether you had engagement and how it went.

Thank you. It is very interesting to get those perspectives from you all. The subject of my questions will be picked up by Paul McLennan.

If you heard most of the question, please just go ahead.

I am sorry, but we have lost Debbie Herron’s audio. She probably cannot hear me, either.

Mark Griffin, who is joining us virtually, will ask the next question.

How confident are you that councils will receive multiyear settlements from the Scottish Government from now on?

That was the last of our questions. I thank Alison Evison and Simon Cameron for joining us this morning; it has been good to hear COSLA’s perspective. Before we conclude the meeting, if there is anything else that you want to make sure that we hear or that you want to underscore, you have a moment to do so.

We can put those questions in a letter.

I do not know whether the witnesses can hear me, but we have come to the end of our time. We have a few more questions, and some of you might have missed out on answering because of the technology, so we will put those questions in a letter to you and you can respond to that. You can also use it as an opportunity to let the committee know anything else that we might not have been able to cover this morning.

Thank you very much for being with us. It was good to hear a range of perspectives from an urban context to a rural and island context, and how some of the issues are the same. It has been good to get a sense of how the local governance review is going.

I will suspend the meeting to allow for a change of witnesses and a wee break.