Chamber and committees

The guidance will be a living document, but I will be happy to speak to the committee when it is published and whenever the committee feels that there has been a significant change that it wants to discuss further.

We expect planning authorities to develop the plans over a period of about five years. Those will not all come at once. Six authorities are ahead of the game, I think. It should be phased over time.

Part 2 of the act is being reviewed through an informal process, which felt like the appropriate level. It is all about ensuring that we use resources correctly.

I ask David Milne to comment.

We are working with the high-level group to look at the range of skills that are required for the new plans. That is to ensure that we have performance improvement and the necessary reform to support that cross-sectoral approach to the range of skills, including mapping skills, that is needed, and to determine whether additional resource is needed.

Was there anything specific about the mapping that you want to know about? I see that Andy Kinnaird wants to come in.

Thank you for those comments, which are largely similar to the notes that I have in front of me. LOIPs are really important, and it is important that they are ambitious, yet realistic, with that focus on improvement outcomes and reducing inequalities.

In terms of the concept of the new deal, we need to understand outcomes better and what it is that we are trying to achieve. I will ask Andrew Connal to talk a bit about what that might mean in the context of the new deal.

The Western Isles example shows that there is not a blockage to a connection with Business Gateway or other organisations.

Public service reform—in particular, how we deliver effective and efficient public services—has to be supported by effective community planning. That work is key to achieving the cost-cutting policy missions, including tackling inequalities and aiding prevention, that have been set out by the Scottish Government. The critical message, which is one of the three priorities for the Scottish Government from the recent budget, is that public services remain sustainable and well placed to improve outcomes and reduce inequalities. We are reinforcing that in our engagement with public bodies, including many of the statutory community planning partners, and we are emphasising that they need to pursue opportunities to do that, both alone and in collaboration.

You mentioned that there is a degree of variability. Given the nature of public service reform, you would expect there to be variability, but it is obviously the Government’s role to ensure that public bodies act and that implementation on the ground remains fit for purpose. That is why the then Minister for Public Finance, Planning and Community Wealth announced the review that we are taking forward and why I welcome the work of this committee.

It is important that we work to prevent there being a clutter of different bodies in the landscape, and CPPs are ideally placed to help with that. One example that the committee had was from Community Planning Aberdeen, in which the Aberdeen health and social care partnership used common data. That showed that it is possible to have one set of data that is used by multiple partners.

The challenge as we count more things and expect more reporting is that doing so becomes burdensome. We need to be mindful of that, particularly in what we are trying to do with the new deal for local government. David, do you want to talk a bit about how the groups interface?

We are generally comfortable that the majority of the changes are not being made by the regulations; the majority of the changes were made by the Planning (Scotland) Act 2019, which is already in place. As I said, we have tried to keep the regulations to a minimum.

As you said, community engagement is really important for community planning, given its focus on improving outcomes and reducing inequalities. Engagement at personal or family level is especially important for households that experience disadvantage, in order that we can understand what matters to those households, so that suitable responses can be shaped around that.

However, direct engagement—using the usual methods—might not always be appropriate, so we need to look at different ways of ensuring that people have the opportunity to have their voices heard on the issues that matter to them, and that they feel confident that their views have been heard.

It has been interesting to hear about examples of CPPs engaging with people in less formal settings, in which they are likely already to be: for example, the North Lanarkshire CPP’s engagement in schools and health centres and the East Ayrshire CPP’s hosting of an annual joint session with its children and young people’s cabinet and local members of the Scottish Youth Parliament. We need to look at how we can do more of that and share such best practice.

What is done will vary because communities are, by their very nature, different and places are different. However, it is good to see examples of CPPs reaching out. The concern, however, is that they are just hearing from the same folk as ever and not from the people who are most impacted by the plans that they intend to take forward.