Seòmar agus comataidhean

I am an MSP for the Central Scotland region.

Does anybody else want to comment on community engagement?

I put the same question to Jackie Weaver. Do you have examples of how well or how badly community or parish councils are engaging with the wider community? What best practice models have you seen in making sure that the wider community’s views have been expressed?

We have touched on the issue of how community councils convey the views of the community to authorities, whether that is national Government, local government, health boards or other statutory authorities. How do they do community engagement that allows them to genuinely convey the community’s view, rather than the individual views of the members of the community council? Is that happening, and how is it happening?

Thank you for that. As well as asking about how community councils represent the views of the wider community, I would like to ask about how we make sure that community councils and community councillors are representative of their communities and how we increase the number of volunteers. I do not know how many community council elections have been contested over the past 10 or 20 years. How do we increase the level of participation? How do we make sure that people with caring responsibilities and people from marginalised communities are involved? How do we make sure that community councillors are as representative as possible? I will come to Emma Swift first.

Jackie Weaver, do you have any reflections to offer on the diversity of parish councils in England?

John Blackwood and Tim Douglas, do you or your members have any experience of local authority interventions on that front? Are there any examples of local authorities getting in touch with members to talk about standards? What does that process look like? How is it handled on both sides?

I have a question for John Kerr. It is not about a council’s role as a social landlord but about its strategic responsibility in ensuring that all homes in the local authority area meet the tolerable standard and its ability to report breaches of that standard to the tribunal. How proactive are councils in assessing stock across all tenures? What do you do to support private tenants, too? In the previous session, we heard that private tenants sometimes live in houses with damp or mould but do not have the time or the energy to pursue that, or they might be concerned about their tenancy if they were to do so. What are councils doing proactively in relation to all the stock in local authority areas?

Thank you.

It has been eight years since the Community Empowerment (Scotland) 2015 Act was passed. Can the minister and Councillor Heddle point to any evidence that shows that communities are more empowered now than they were back when the act was passed? I will go to the minister first.