Chamber and committees

I briefly suspend the meeting while arrangements are made for our second panel of witnesses to join us online.

Blyth, have you seen any innovation in how local authorities are engaging with communities? In the committee, we hear about consultation fatigue. Have you come across any councils that are engaging with communities in a different way that is perhaps a more uplifting experience for people? People feel that they are consulted but do not then see a result of the consultation.

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.