Seòmar agus comataidhean

I have one more question, which combines your islands remit and the issues of housing and land. Over the recess, I visited Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles. I am a Highlands and Islands MSP, and the big issue for me is repeopling and keeping in place people who want to stay in their villages. Housing is a big part of that. The other part of the equation is jobs, but the issue of housing seemed to come up everywhere I went. A lack of land on which to build houses is also an issue. For example, on Barra, the land is all under crofting tenure and there is not much space to build housing. In other places—for example, on Harris—although the land is owned by a community trust, it is in places that are extremely difficult to get to, so house builders do not want to take on the job even though the funding to do it is in place. Where does your role as the cabinet secretary with responsibility for islands fit with supporting the building of housing for island communities?

I warmly welcome to the meeting our second panel of witnesses: Councillor Alison Evison, president, and Sarah Watters, director of membership and resources, COSLA. Councillor Evison, I invite you to make some opening remarks.

Thank you very much. We have a range of questions to ask you.

Given COSLA’s role in representing the interests of local government in Scotland, what should the committee focus on over this parliamentary session? Moreover, the committee is keen to play a role in helping people to understand and appreciate the importance of local government, so we would very much appreciate it if you could add anything that might support our thinking on how we can do that.

We move on to questions on next year’s elections from Miles Briggs.

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.