Chamber and committees

That would be excellent.

I have a slightly lumpy question for you to answer on prioritisation and funding of major capital projects. How do you determine the overall budget and type of funding for different programmes and projects? How do you prioritise between portfolios, including what the roles are for ministers and officials?

You mentioned giving ministers advice on the value and prioritisation of projects. Is that a lengthy and complex process?

As an extension of that, to what extent is the affordability of planned infrastructure investment determined by, or dependent on, external factors?

On a slightly different aspect, the non-profit-distributing model has been with us for some time. We have had discussions about it in this committee over a number of years. Could someone supply the committee with a copy of the formula for NPD as it is at the moment?

I am not necessarily asking you to give us a dissertation on it now, but could you supply that?

Allison Orr, I will ask you a question on this. We have looked at different town centres. Some that are in relatively affluent neighbourhoods seem to be able to be self-sustaining, because people have money to spend. What about the communities, which perhaps are in a majority, where there is not that spare cash? The amount of money that will be coming through is restricted by the community itself and the wealth that it has.

Regeneration will help to create more wealth in the long term, but how do you deal with that disparity? What sort of model do we need for the more deprived communities to make them more sustainable, and to give them something that they want that will generate money and attract people in?

So, you mean an online digital tax, which would be hypothecated to a particular use, which in this case would be regenerating town centres.

In my experience of regeneration in my area, organisations get off to a great start, with a lot of ideas in the community. They then get some property, which may be given to them at a peppercorn rent or whatever, and suddenly they are bogged down in maintenance and renting. They lose their focus, and they become a rather desperate landlord. How do you avoid that?

You might not know this, either, but how did they do that?