Chamber and committees

Does anyone else wish to come in? I am happy to move on.

Yes, across the funding landscape there seem to be quite a few pots of money, and it feels as though things need to come together a bit more.

We actually have a stack of people who are keen to respond to that important question—Alex Nicoll, Shaun Macaulay and Euan Jardine.

We will now hear from our second panel of witnesses. We are joined online by Councillor Shona Morrison, who is the president of COSLA, and by Sarah Watters, who is the director of membership and resources at COSLA. We are joined in the room by Cleland Sneddon, who is the chair of the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers. I welcome our witnesses to the meeting, and remind all members and witnesses to ensure that their devices are on silent and that all other notifications are turned off during the meeting.

Committee members will direct their questions to a specific witness where possible. If anyone else wishes to come in, please indicate your desire to do so to the clerks. Those participating remotely can do that by typing R in the chat box in BlueJeans.

I will begin with a few questions that are about the progress that has been made with the new deal. I give Shona Morrison a heads-up that I will direct my first question to her, initially. Last month, the committee received a written update from the Scottish Government on the new deal. How does COSLA feel about the progress of the new deal? The Government’s update spoke about agreeing a new deal

“in advance of the next financial year.”

Is that timescale feasible? What needs to be agreed before a deal is struck?

We will move on to another question, while sticking with the same topic. Shona Morrison, I will come to you. I know that this was mentioned in our discussion with our previous witnesses, which you were watching, but is there anything that you want to highlight, underscore or bring in that is new in relation to the new deal between the Scottish Government and local government?

Thank you very much for that. I will bring in Paul McLennan.

Sarah Watters wants to come in.

Thank you for underscoring the point, and for noticing, that the local governance review has been tucked into the new deal for local government and that we need to be mindful of that.

I believe that Miles Briggs might have a supplementary on that topic.

It sounds like that was very constructive. Do you have a sense of how regular the meetings will be?