Chamber and committees

I would like to thank all three witnesses for their contribution this morning. I move the meeting into private session.

I have a final question, and I apologise if you have already addressed it. There are a number of areas where councils can carry out work and reclaim the costs of the work from the owner. On paper that sounds very simple. Can it be difficult for councils to recoup expenses for work that it has carried out on defective properties and so on?

If it is brief. We are trying to make progress.

Good morning and welcome to the 14th meeting in 2022 of the Economy and Fair Work Committee. Our first item of business continues our evidence gathering in our town centres and retail inquiry. The broad theme for today is keeping town centres alive, focusing on driving change and creating resilience.

I am pleased to welcome our first panel. Martin Avila is the chief executive of Community Enterprise Scotland, Dr Allison Orr is a senior lecturer in real estate at the University of Glasgow, and Pauline Smith is the chief executive of the Development Trusts Association Scotland. As always, it would be helpful if members and witnesses could keep their questions and answers as concise as possible.

I will ask the first question. From the evidence that we have gathered so far and a number of visits that we have been on, we have seen that community involvement and commitment have been recognised as being important, along with—sometimes—leadership and the change that has taken place. However, there are also issues of capacity to be addressed, and not all communities start from the same place when it comes to their level of engagement.

What more can be done to support less-empowered communities? I recognise that being engaged in that kind of work is part of the bread-and-butter role of the people on the panel.

For example, local place plans are one of the key pillars in trying to drive change. How do we support all communities to be engaged in that?

Martin Avila has referred to the evidence that we heard last week. I do not know whether Dr Orr has had a chance to look at last week’s evidence, which we took from the Scottish Property Federation and SURF. Martin raised points about increased capacity in local communities, whether in relation to planners or community development workers. Is that about a change of practice or would that require additional resources? We heard last week about the shortage of planners and the pressure on planning departments. Is there a resourcing issue in relation to making the changes in decision making that Martin outlined?

I come to Pauline Smith. Would you say a bit about the development trust organisations, how your members engage with communities and how important they are with regard to town centre regeneration?

I will allow other members to explore some of those issues in more depth in a moment. The committee went to visit Midsteeple Quarter. The community ownership process is complicated and quite lengthy; as you said, it can cause fatigue. With regard to making one or two changes to make the process easier, one of the suggestions that the committee has heard is that there could be a central resource—funded by Government or the enterprise agencies—so that communities could draw on expertise, which would provide them with support when they needed it. Would that be helpful? What else would help to shorten the process and make it easier?

That brings us neatly to Colin Beattie’s line of questioning.

Please be brief, as we must make some progress.

Sorry to interrupt, Mr MacDonald, but if you can make this the last question, that will be helpful.