The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.
The Official Report search offers lots of different ways to find the information you’re looking for. The search is used as a professional tool by researchers and third-party organisations. It is also used by members of the public who may have less parliamentary awareness. This means it needs to provide the ability to run complex searches, and the ability to browse reports or perform a simple keyword search.
The web version of the Official Report has three different views:
Depending on the kind of search you want to do, one of these views will be the best option. The default view is to show the report for each meeting of Parliament or a committee. For a simple keyword search, the results will be shown by item of business.
When you choose to search by a particular MSP, the results returned will show each spoken contribution in Parliament or a committee, ordered by date with the most recent contributions first. This will usually return a lot of results, but you can refine your search by keyword, date and/or by meeting (committee or Chamber business).
We’ve chosen to display the entirety of each MSP’s contribution in the search results. This is intended to reduce the number of times that users need to click into an actual report to get the information that they’re looking for, but in some cases it can lead to very short contributions (“Yes.”) or very long ones (Ministerial statements, for example.) We’ll keep this under review and get feedback from users on whether this approach best meets their needs.
There are two types of keyword search:
If you select an MSP’s name from the dropdown menu, and add a phrase in quotation marks to the keyword field, then the search will return only examples of when the MSP said those exact words. You can further refine this search by adding a date range or selecting a particular committee or Meeting of the Parliament.
It’s also possible to run basic Boolean searches. For example:
There are two ways of searching by date.
You can either use the Start date and End date options to run a search across a particular date range. For example, you may know that a particular subject was discussed at some point in the last few weeks and choose a date range to reflect that.
Alternatively, you can use one of the pre-defined date ranges under “Select a time period”. These are:
If you search by an individual session, the list of MSPs and committees will automatically update to show only the MSPs and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of MSPs and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of MSPs and committees will update to show the information that was current at that time.
All Official Reports of meetings in the Debating Chamber of the Scottish Parliament.
All Official Reports of public meetings of committees.
Displaying 5737 contributions
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 7 June 2022
Ariane Burgess
Absolutely. It is exciting times for all manners of local growing. We also have the Good Food Nation (Scotland) Bill, which needs to fit together with all the local food strategies.
Wayne Priestley wants to come in.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 7 June 2022
Ariane Burgess
Thank you very much. Nobody else wants to come in on planning. Paul, do you have any comments about planning?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 7 June 2022
Ariane Burgess
That brings us to the end of our questions and what has been a very useful discussion. I think that one of the things that has come out of this and the earlier session is the question of how we get people started younger on this sort of activity and how we hardwire it into the education system. What I am hearing is that, at the moment, people are faced with a large plot and do not know what to do with it; however, they still have that impulse and know that it is something that could bring them benefit. If we could get that going in schools, things might become more consistent. I know from my work in the past that a particular challenge is the summer holidays, when suddenly there is nobody to water the vegetable plot at peak growing period.
I thank the witnesses for joining us this morning and their very useful evidence. As that was the last item in public on our agenda today, I close this part of the meeting.
12:21 Meeting continued in private until 12:33.Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 7 June 2022
Ariane Burgess
Thanks for that clarity.
Paul, do you have a bigger-picture sense of the cost of allotments?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 7 June 2022
Ariane Burgess
Absolutely. That is a very good point.
You said that there are three sizes in Fife. Could you say a bit more about that?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 7 June 2022
Ariane Burgess
In my role on this committee, I am beginning to realise that local authorities have many different strategies to look at. There are strategies and plans for many different things, but there is also a need for the integration that you are talking about, whereby the local food growing strategy can speak to the local authority’s climate strategy and the biodiversity strategy. It is about that holistic thinking.
I am going to bring in Marie McNair with our closing themes around community organisations, volunteering and planning.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 7 June 2022
Ariane Burgess
I welcome our second panel of witnesses, some of whom are joining us remotely and some of whom are here in person. We have Sandy Paterson, assistant manager for food growing with Glasgow City Council; Amy Alcorn, green space programme co-ordinator with Scottish Borders Council; Marina Curran-Colthart, local biodiversity officer with Argyll and Bute Council; and Sinclair Laing, policy and strategy manager with Aberdeen City Council.
It would be helpful if members could direct their questions to a specific witness where possible, although I will be happy to bring in others who wish to contribute. I would be grateful if our witnesses who are online would type an R in the chat function in BlueJeans to indicate when they want to come in.
I will start the session with the first question. In last week’s session, in our visits and in the earlier session today, we have learned that there are huge benefits from people growing food in community growing spaces and allotments. I direct this question first to Marina Curran-Colthart. What are the main barriers that prevent local authorities from creating more allotments and community growing spaces?
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 7 June 2022
Ariane Burgess
Thanks for that response. That is an interesting point about food growing needing to be in the place-making standard—that could be a great help.
Amy Alcorn wants to come in.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 7 June 2022
Ariane Burgess
It is very heartening to hear that so many different departments, groups and organisations are involved in the city food plan. Twenty years ago, I was working extensively in community food growing in New York, and at that time, there was not the same level of awareness and understanding that everybody needs to get behind that kind of work and to realise the massive benefits that it can bring to a city.
Marie McNair has a few more questions to ask.
Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee
Meeting date: 7 June 2022
Ariane Burgess
I might have missed something there. The £50 per plot per annum is a charge to the plot holder. Does that money go back into the provision of new allotments? One issue that we are beginning to understand is that there are long waiting lists and not enough plots. What is the cost of providing allotments?