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Good morning. Every year, we see local government and central Government scrabble to find enough money to meet the pay demands of the local government workforce. Given that employment costs are around 70 per cent of local authority revenue budgets, how can pay deals be managed more sustainably and strategically?

Does the rise of £1 billion in council debt between 2021-22 and 2022-23 give rise to sustainability concerns for council finances? At what point does council borrowing become a problem?

Good morning. Dr Carr-West, from the survey that you carried out with local authorities, you mentioned that the picture in Scotland is very bleak on local government finances. Could you suggest any possible next steps to improve the financial sustainability of councils in Scotland? How can potential financial risks be mitigated?

It would be great to hear from Abdool, too, about any experience that he has seen somewhere else.

Can I just probe a bit more into that? Obviously, you have seen how councils in England work; in a past life, I worked with local authorities in England. Have you seen any good practice in relation to shared resources, such as software systems? My colleague Miles Briggs mentioned the sharing of bin services. I do not know whether local enterprise partnerships are still around, but they worked together—in the southeast and other areas—to look at where savings could be made and how development and services could be better delivered. Do you have any good practice examples of councils having saved money by sharing resources and working together?

Dr Carr-West mentioned that, in the survey that you carried out with local authorities, councils highlighted workforce challenges. How can pay deals be managed more sustainably and strategically, given that employment costs form around 70 per cent of the employment budget?

Thank you.

Thank you for your response, cabinet secretary.

I agree that it is a cross-party decision now, but my question clearly referred to the point at which the relationship was between COSLA and the Scottish Government, not cross-party groups. That is why I asked you question that I did, which I got some earlier evidence on. Basically, the relationship broke down. It is very important that we never have that relationship break down; we talked about that previously in a session on the Verity house agreement. However, COSLA’s chief executive clearly stated in evidence earlier that the engagement by officials dropped. Were you aware of that?

I will go on to my next question. Given that the Scottish Government obviously agrees with the pay uplift recommendations—you have said that it is a good report—how would you see the requirement for £4.6 million being met? Is the Scottish Government suggesting that individual councils would find that money? I know, because I have spoken to 31 of the 32 council chief executives, that it is clear that they are struggling right now to meet essential spend. We also heard in the evidence earlier today that there will be fewer people out there now making decisions in councils. It could mean that, but it could also impact services, because services may have to be cut if local authorities have to find that money.

Last but not least, I would say—especially being a person from a minority ethnic background—that we will not attract key representation from people from disabled backgrounds and people from minority ethnic backgrounds but also, very importantly, women. We have heard today from SLARC and COSLA that there are barriers for women to come into the profession and salary is one of those. Would you like to say a little bit about that? Also, you mentioned that it is not just salary that is a barrier and that there may be other things involved. It would be good to hear from you about that.

Martin McElroy has just mentioned that he could see that Government officials were not attending and relationships were changing. Did any of you voice that to the cabinet secretary? Was anything written or emailed to say, “You are not attending”?

Good morning. I thank the witnesses for their opening statements.

The cost of the pay uplift for ordinary councillors would be around £2 million and the cost of increasing pay for senior councillors would be around £2.6 million, which is a total of £4.6 million. Could COSLA provide more details on how it sees that being funded? Angela Leitch touched on the thinking behind its being in the Government’s settlement. Jane O’Donnell mentioned that that was stressed many times to the cabinet secretary. You said that you met 28 times as a committee, is that right?