Chamber and committees

I am talking from memory. I think that it was the valuation at the point of nationalisation.

No. We do not know. We are not experts in this. We are trying to find evidence.

Minister, I would like to develop a couple of points with you. The first concerns business rates. In the evidence that we have received, we have heard a lot about how they are a disincentive for town centre regeneration because rates are higher in town centres than they are in out-of-town sites. Do you agree that there should be wholesale reform in order to link value that is holding back investment with the tax regime, thereby supporting positive outcomes for town centres and the environment?

What you said is encouraging, but it took us back to an individual project that has been successful and made itself sustainable. Those exist throughout different communities, but we do not yet have a template for town centre regeneration that we can roll out town by town. Local communities are all different, and projects have to be tailored to each one, but it all comes back to money and to making them sustainable. There is no point in putting nice shiny buildings in place if they will have to be subsidised—at vast expense—for years to come; they have to become sustainable. That is one of the key things that I have not seen come out of the evidence that we have so far. Individual projects have made themselves sustainable, but regenerating town centres by refurbishing shops and apartments above them is a very different beast.

I want to move on to the second important issue, which is money. At the end of the day, the whole thing comes down to money, its availability and whether, through the wealth of our country, we can generate the ability to carry out regeneration.

We have been shown many examples from across Scotland of individual projects that are viable, thriving and delivering to their communities. However, we have not seen a single all-encompassing regeneration of a town centre in all our work. The parts that we have seen in places such as Dumfries are very capital intensive, and that capital has to come from somewhere. There is an assumption that some money will come from the private sector, and there seems to be an assumption among many community groups that, ultimately, money will come from the Scottish Government and/or councils, which is a wee bit optimistic when we see the amount of money that will have to be made available.

Let us suppose that, somehow, we can get the money together to start major regeneration projects in towns across Scotland. Regeneration projects seem to thrive much more in communities that are reasonably well heeled and have disposable income than they do in communities where there is less disposable income. If we invest in a wealthier community, it seems that there is a higher propensity for the project to succeed. If a project is in a more vulnerable area where there are fewer resources available and where people have less disposable income, it will be much more difficult to sustain in the short to medium term, at least.

How do we make regeneration viable and sustainable? We are particularly keen for redevelopment in our less well-off communities. They are the ones that need it most, yet they might not have the resources within them to sustain regeneration in, as I say, the short to medium term, at least. How do we make it sustainable and put in place plans to make it happen? Over and above the capital, is the Government prepared to provide additional resources year on year to keep projects ticking over?

I recognise the complexity of non-domestic rates and the calls, from a wide range of sectors, for relief from them. However, if we are aiming to rejuvenate town centres, looking at such rates would seem to be a very high priority. I simply ask you to take that into consideration when the various reports come back.

I mean FMEL.

When CMAL escalated an issue to the PSG, was that a bit of a waste of time, then?

The PSG was chaired by Transport Scotland—in effect, Transport Scotland owned that group. It is unclear to me how Transport Scotland’s responsibility to advise ministers in any formal way is established—between the PSG, which it chairs, and the Scottish ministers. I say again that the Auditor General indicated that ministers were updated on issues only on an ad hoc basis. When Transport Scotland formally advised Scottish ministers in February 2017, target dates and milestones had already been missed.

Was the belief that the alternative methods of dispute resolution were inappropriate and could not be implemented?