Chamber and committees

Yes, I think that Gemma wants to come in.

I will now move on to Colin Smyth. I understand that Gemma Cruickshank wishes to come in, so perhaps you can direct your question to her, first.

Good morning, and welcome to the 10th meeting in 2022 of the Economy and Fair Work Committee. Our first item of business is an evidence session as part of our inquiry into town centres and retail. The session will focus on the view from the ground. The committee will hear evidence from two panels.

I welcome our first panel, who are David Grove, lead officer for the town centre development unit with Fife Council; Jennifer Hunter, executive leader of Culture Counts; Roddy MacDonald, director of the Industrial Communities Alliance Scotland; and Phil Prentice, chief officer at Scotland’s Towns Partnership.

As always, I ask members and witnesses to keep questions and answers as concise as possible. Members will direct questions to panel members. Please do not feel that you have to answer every question, but everyone will get an opportunity to speak—questions will be directed to everyone at some point.

I will start. I ask David Grove to have a go at answering this question first, but if other panel members have something to contribute, they should let me know. In the session before the Easter recess, we heard evidence from Professor Sparks, who spoke about policy decisions over the years that have caused harm to town centres. He talked about the importance of the town centre first principle being applied. From a local authority perspective, how difficult is that to implement? What prevents that approach? Professor Sparks talked about out-of-town developments.

We have the town centre first principle in place. Is that particularly challenging? Is it to do with the size of the community? You referred to Kirkcaldy, which is typical of towns across Scotland. Some smaller villages in Fife are probably doing a bit better than our main towns.

Professor Sparks spoke about a moratorium on out-of-town developments, but you said that people like out-of-town developments. What policies can local authorities put in place and what can they do to move investment to town centres and secure it in those places?

At the committee’s most recent meeting, Professor Sparks talked about sometimes looking at a super-BID, so it is interesting to hear that Linlithgow brought together two existing BIDs to create more momentum.

Gemma, do you want to say a bit about the challenges that BIDs face in getting established and continuing?

In what way is Love Oor Lang Toun different from a BID?

Thank you. We are having an interesting discussion this morning, but I must ask people to be a bit briefer in their responses, so that we get as many as we can.

That said, I will take advantage of being the convener and ask a quick question about the Fraser of Allander Institute’s recent report on the small business bonus scheme, which was commissioned by the Scottish Government. Jennifer Hunter talked about rates relief. Does anybody have comments on that? I do not know whether everybody has had a chance to look at the report, but it looks at the scheme that we have in place for rates relief. Jennifer, do you have a view on the scheme or how it could be applied in other areas?

Do you think that the reason why Kirkcaldy does not have a BID is due to the downturn in retail? Is it difficult to re-establish the BID, given the number of empty units at scale in Kirkcaldy?

I ask Jennifer and Roddy to be brief, because we are coming to the end of the session.

That brings us to the end of the session. I thank all the witnesses for their contributions. I briefly suspend the meeting while the witnesses change over.