Chamber and committees

You obviously collected a lot of information. Your paper touches on social media, the speed of communications and the desire of constituents and so on to get an immediate response—everything is immediate. I get more than 500 emails a day, so I do not know how immediate I can be. Councillors must be encountering the same thing. What specifically was your impression? It seems to me that the workload—in relation to the volume and immediacy of the things that are coming forward now—has increased hugely.

To touch on something else, did you speak to former councillors as part of the process and hold an exit consultation with them, if you like, to understand the reasons why they stood down? It is quite important to know whether it was because of salary, just because of uncertainties of the job, or because of online abuse, which is fairly out of control at the moment.

Such a data set would be useful. However, it does not exist at the moment. Would the easiest thing not have been to go to the individual political parties, which would have known who their ex-councillors are and could have put you in touch?

I was a councillor for a few years so I have some impressions from that period. Is SLARC confident that the survey results are an accurate representation of councillors’ experiences, workloads, levels of commitment and so forth?

The previous witnesses covered a broad variety of issues that impact on councillors and on the time that they can actually allocate to the job. Mention was made that 28 hours and 45 minutes is the average time that an ordinary councillor spends on the job. I am not sure that that sounds part time.

I will ask about what is perhaps a more controversial recommendation from SLARC. Does COSLA agree with the recommendation to strengthen legislation to ensure that councillors perform their duties?

Is Brianna Fletcher there?

One of the things that you have referenced is that the average hours worked by an ordinary councillor is 28 hours and 45 minutes, which is quite a lot. If they are expected to do a full-time job on top of that, that will be very tricky to do. At best, people might be able to work part time, which is limiting in itself in respect of future prospects. From my experience, I believe that councillors are underpaid, but I do not know what the level of pay should be. Do you think that it is fair to say that 28 hours and 45 minutes is a part-time job?

Secondary. For the primary school it is 54 per cent. These are not unusual percentages in my area. I know that my area’s figures are slightly higher than some.

I do not disagree with anything that you say. Everything is individual, each person responds in different ways and you have to build the support around that. My concern is the scale, which is worrying. How do the resources get put in place for this? It is not just a question of money. It is people and the support that people can give to these young people. How do we do it? That is an impossible question.