Chamber and committees

Do you see any councils moving towards full-feature participatory budgeting?

So, are you thinking about the administrative or backbone-type stuff?

That is very helpful. Blyth Deans, I liked that you laid out the process and mentioned that things are unearthed through the series of work that you have been doing on those areas of focus.

Given the forecast financial environment, how robust are the financial plans that are being developed by councils? Obviously, they are probably different for different councils.

That is very interesting. I want to come back on one point. I do not know who wants to answer this one; perhaps Jonathan Carr-West can start, because he mentioned the subject.

Jonathan, you said that the power of general competence should be properly scrutinised. If we were to move to giving councils in Scotland that power, who do you think should pick up that role?

Thanks for that.

I come back to financial sustainability, which I asked about earlier. Some local authority service areas are experiencing significant cost pressures—as we have been discussing all morning—in particular, adult social care. I am not asking you to single out any local authorities, but do you see a pattern in terms of a connection to demographics or something like that?

We have come to the end of our questions, but we have a bit of time in hand, so if there is anything that you were expecting us to ask about, or anything that we have not touched on, we have time for you to add to or emphasise what you have said.

Jonathan Carr-West, you have spoken previously about

“an increased basket of different local revenue-raising options”.

It would be interesting to hear what you mean by that, what lessons we could learn from other countries and how such a basket of measures could work in a Scottish context.

Okay, thank you. I will bring in Miles Briggs.

Thank you very much. That will help us in considering what questions we direct to you. We will try to direct questions to one or other of you initially, but if you would like to come in, type R in the chat function and the clerks can let me know and I will bring you in. We have about 90 minutes for this discussion.

The point of the session is to understand what has happened to some English local authorities and to hear about the lessons learned as regards financial sustainability for Scotland.

Jonathan Carr-West, are the drivers of financial weakness that have been identified for Scotland similar to those for councils in England and Wales, and are there differences between the Scottish and English local government finance environments that could impact on financial sustainability?

Thank you for that.

I want to continue on the differences between Scotland and England. I will start with Jonathan Carr-West, then Abdool Kara can come in. The lack of a general power of competence for Scottish councils is often cited as a weakness, and we have had a number of councillors in the room saying that giving councils in Scotland such a power would be a helpful next step with regard to raising revenue.

However, the LGIU has stated that the current position might be a reason why Scottish local authorities are not exposed to commercial risk. I am interested to hear—from you initially, Jonathan—what the benefits are in having a general power of competence, and whether they outweigh the risks.