Seòmar agus comataidhean

I want to ask Adrian Watson a slightly different question on the same area. It seems to be generally accepted that there is an oversupply of commercial property in most of our towns and villages. Does that mean that we need to focus on repurposing some commercial premises?

We have talked about the difficulties around repurposing for residential use, although I have seen that being done quite successfully in various towns and villages. The scale of that could be quite substantial. In some places, there might not be an appetite to purchase or rent in the town or village centre—that is probably unproven at this point. What kind of incentives should be in place to facilitate that repurposing?

I have an interest to declare, as I currently have a dispute on boundaries with Registers of Scotland.

I will quote the letter from Tom Arthur. It says:

“In the period since the petition was considered in early 2018, RoS have confirmed that no errors relating to parties being incorrectly classed as deceased have been encountered”

There seems to have been only one example of that happening, which is that of Mr Rosser’s solicitor. It therefore seems to be a rather one-party issue. I suggest that we do not continue the petition.

I would like the witnesses to consider my next question in the context of a larger question. I am concerned about sustainability. There are many excellent projects across Scotland, which benefit and contribute to communities as stand-alone projects. However, I have not yet seen a regeneration project that takes in a whole town. Typically, such projects take place not in more affluent areas, which can support their towns and villages, but in areas where residents have less disposable income.

Money goes into a regeneration project, which will be big bucks, even for a relatively modest town or village. The money is obtained, it goes in and regeneration takes place. My concern is about what happens next. Is the regeneration sustainable? Does it need constant funding from the council, the Government or whatever?

When we visited Midsteeple Quarter—we have also had input from South of Scotland Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise about this—we heard about the need for financial incentives for repurposing unused and long-term vacant buildings. Do you agree with such an approach? If so, what kind of incentives should they be? How could they work, and how could they contribute to our creating the sustainable solution that we need for our town and village centres? Perhaps Euan Leitch can pick up that question.

What is Craig McLaren’s view on incentives? Who should pay, and are they necessary?

I would like to expand a bit on what Peter Mowforth said earlier about developing digital services. What level of collaboration, if any, is there between Scottish universities and colleges and retail businesses on developing digital services?

Gillian, what is your impression of the level of support for developing digital services?

Okay.

Stuart Mackinnon, assuming that you agree with Peter Mowforth’s statement that there is no collaboration at the moment, is there any way that collaboration could be put in place? What would that look like and how practical is it to expect practitioners to take time out from their business to train people who are coming up?

How joined up are they?

The impression that I got from how you described the various initiatives was that they did not seem to be terribly joined up; they seemed to be individual initiatives that have been launched for good reasons, but if you are looking across the piece at retail businesses and the offerings from colleges and universities, it does not sound very strong.