Seòmar agus comataidhean

We will continue our consideration of the Scottish Government’s local governance review by taking evidence from representatives of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, who are joining us virtually. I welcome Councillor Alison Evison, the president, and Simon Cameron, the chief officer of the employers team. We will move straight to questions. If you wish to respond or contribute to the discussion and we have not called you to speak, you can put an R in the chat box. Some of my committee colleagues are joining us virtually, too.

I will get us started. I am interested in getting an update on the progress of the governance review since May’s elections. The committee has previously heard from COSLA about the principles that it would like to shape the new fiscal framework, but can you now describe how that would work in practice?

Hang on a minute, Alison—your volume is quite low at our end. Let us try again.

Thank you.

The next question is from Meghan Gallacher, who is attending the committee online.

Thank you very much. You did really well, because I have just had a message to say that my question was cut off, so I will repeat it. The committee would like to get a sense of your community, what the challenges are, what the strengths are and what the role of your organisation is in improving outcomes.

It is great to hear some detail on Midsteeple Quarter, but we are looking at the challenges and strengths in relation to the governance review, so we would like to hear about the blocks to you doing what you want to do in your community. We want to hear a little about the community, the challenges in the community and the strengths and role of the organisation. I say that because we have nine more questions and we will tease out a lot more as we go through them.

We will move on to a different subject, with questions from Elena Whitham.

Philip Revell and Debbie Herron would like to come in on Meghan Gallacher’s question.

I see that Debbie Herron and Alison Macleod would like to respond.

Agenda item 3 is consideration of the regulations. As no member wishes to comment, does the committee agree that it does not wish to make any recommendations on the instrument?

Members indicated agreement.