Seòmar agus comataidhean

I welcome our second panel: Chris Donaldson is the head of rent service Scotland.

I will ask the opening question. Will you explain how the adjudication process in the Private Housing (Tenancies) (Scotland) Act 2016 works in practice, what timescales are involved and what data you use to assess open market rents?

That is quite insightful. My ears pricked up when you mentioned rural and island issues. Pam Gosal has a question.

That is super. Thanks so much for that overview. Certainly, it was helpful to hear the breadth and depth of the work that you did and where you went to find the evidence of the situation that we face. We have a number of areas that we want to explore and I will begin with councillor workload and responsibility. However, before I do, I want to declare an interest: I have a brother who is a serving councillor. I just want to get that on the record.

There is an assumption in public life that being an MP or an MSP is a full-time job. I am interested to understand why a local councillor job is not considered full time, when the demands on councillors are, at times, at least on par with demands on parliamentarians.

I am sorry Colin, but I will have to ask you to wind up because we are quite tight for time with our next panel.

It has been a very interesting piece of deep questioning. I have a question about social media and boundaries and possible training for councillors to understand that they do not need to be available 24/7. It sounds inappropriate that people are contacting councillors late at night and they feel that they have to respond. Maybe there is something there that we need to look at. Certainly, we will take note of the need for that formal data set. That could be useful for us. I can see that you have identified quite a lot of strands of work.

It is important to keep that hybrid option, but it is also a good approach to encourage a meeting where people can imagine seeing most of the people on their committee or whatever. Gordon MacDonald is joining us online and has a couple of questions.

Gordon, do you want to pick up your other questions? Steven, perhaps you cannot see us but I want to assure you that we are definitely here and listening very keenly.

Okay, super. We have come to the end of our questions and it has been very helpful to hear from you and your reflections on SLARC’s work and their report. Thank you so much for joining us. As that is the final public item on our agenda , I now close the public part of our meeting.

I will bring in Colin Beattie on another topic—information gathering by SLARC.

I take your point about not equating the role with hours necessarily, but I want to ask a further question. In 2005, the first SLARC report found that councillors worked 32 hours per week on average. The most recent report says that the average is now about 29 hours. I am interested to hear what evidence you found that the workloads and responsibilities of councillors have increased over the years.

The next item on our agenda is to take evidence on the Scottish Local Authorities Remuneration Committee’s recommendations for councillors’ remuneration and expenses from Angela Leitch, who is the committee’s convener, and from Peter Argyle, Rosie Docherty, Martin McElroy and Laura Simpson, who are all members of the committee, which is otherwise known as SLARC. I welcome the witnesses to the meeting and invite Angela Leitch to make a short opening statement.