Chamber and committees

Okay. Thank you very much.

The next item on our agenda is to take evidence from two panels of witnesses as part of our pre-budget scrutiny for 2025-26. We are joined on our first panel by Councillor Katie Hagmann, who is the resources spokesperson for the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities; Jonathan Belford, who is the vice-chair of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy’s directors of finance section, and chief financial officer at Aberdeen City Council; Paul Manning, who is a member of the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers, and chief executive of South Lanarkshire Council; and Jamie Robertson, who is the chair of CIPFA directors of finance section, and chief financial officer at Dunbartonshire Council. I welcome the witnesses to the meeting.

We will try to direct our questions to specific witnesses where possible, but please indicate to the clerks if you would like to come in. There is no need for you to turn on your microphones—we will do that for you. We have about 75 minutes for this discussion. We turn to questions.

We were pleased to receive COSLA’s submission, which states that

“local government has sought earlier budget engagement”

and

“greater transparency in the makeup of the local government settlement”

ahead of the budget. We would be interested to hear whether COSLA is happy with the engagement so far this year and how engagement could be improved, if it needs to be.

Good morning and welcome to the 27th meeting in 2024 of the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee. Please note that Mark Griffin is joining us remotely this morning. I remind all members and witnesses to ensure that their devices are on silent.

The second item on our agenda is to decide whether to take item 4 in private.

Members indicated agreement.

Thank you very much for that—it was really helpful. Pam, back to you.

I have a question on capital investment. Your submission states:

“the Scottish Government should prioritise capital investment that ... enables investment in affordable housing ... and supports efforts to achieve net zero.”

We would be interested to understand what level of funding you think is required. What would that mean for existing areas of capital expenditure, and who should fund it?

Out of curiosity, what is the size of those houses? How many bedrooms do they have?

Thanks very much for that.

I am sorry, but we are going to have to move on now. We have only 25 minutes and quite a few questions left. Everything has been super so far, but we are pressed for time.

We will have a question on the rural growth deal, and then we have questions on a couple of other areas—financial sustainability, debt and reserves. We also want to ask about public service reform and prevention. That is just the road map or the pathway of what we want to cover in our final 25 minutes, so I must ask people to be brief with their questions and responses.

I call Emma Roddick to ask about the rural growth deal.

Right on cue, we move to Willie Coffey, who will ask about financial sustainability, debt and reserves.

That has really helped to put us straight.

We have come to the end of this evidence-taking session. As I have said, I hope that, next year, we have more time, because this is important to us. It really helps to get the detail of what is happening on the ground in relation to all the issues that we have been discussing. Again, many thanks to our witnesses for coming in this morning—the evidence has been very helpful.

I briefly suspend the meeting to allow for a changeover of witnesses.

You mentioned the Verity house agreement and the £1 billion baseline going into local government. We are interested in hearing how the forthcoming budget and next year’s local government settlement can help to address the agreement’s three shared priorities, which are tackling poverty, delivering net zero and providing sustainable public services.