Chamber and committees

I will start with Alison Payne. Bill Howat has been thrown in at the deep end a few times this morning already.

Does anyone else want to add anything?

Yes, we come to the easy topic of public service reform. The Accounts Commission has stated that

“councils ... urgently need to transform how they deliver services to become financially sustainable.”

How, in your opinion, should councils be looking to change how they deliver services? What opportunities does local government have to reduce costs and improve efficiency that it has not already looked at over the past number of years? Moreover, how can the Scottish Government actively support that transformation? As I have said, it is an easy topic.

I have a question in relation to the Christie commission report. As a committee, we have discussed its recommendations—and the changes in how local authorities operate that have come out of them—in many areas of our work, especially in relation to how local authorities are able to move towards a preventative model. Do you have any examples of that? Were the principles of Christie taken on board or not? That perhaps comes down to the difficulty of making the shift to prevention, because you do not have a separate budget to do that work.

Good morning, and thanks for joining us. I have a couple of questions. The first relates to restricted capital resources and how you believe councils should prioritise their capital spending. Do you have any examples of good practice and how they are engaging with communities around that?

Thank you for that.

Evidence from the Scottish household survey shows that public satisfaction with local government services has reduced in recent years. Is that experience mirrored in England? What would have to change in order to reverse that trend? We have touched on the idea of people being more engaged in decision making. Local government is facing a number of pressures and satisfaction seems to be declining.

There is a lot to think about there. Thank you.

Good morning to the panel and thank you for joining us.

I want to touch on the Verity house agreement. What is your understanding of developments towards the fiscal framework and the monitoring and accountability framework that were included in the agreement?

In the Accounts Commission’s submission, you state that councils

“urgently need to transform how they deliver services to become financially sustainable.”

You have touched on the potential for savings and efficiencies of a once-for-Scotland approach around information technology—I think that NHS Scotland, for example, has been moving towards that—and around procurement. What would you like to see included in the forthcoming budget to take that work forward and to look towards how councils can collectively work together to become more financially sustainable? There is potential in some of the work, for example of my council in the city region area, to implement the sharing of resources and expertise, especially in planning and things like that.

On that point, have you done any work to map where councils have looked to change services—for example, putting bin services out to tender—and efficiencies that that has delivered for councils and where other councils have taken a political decision not to do that, so that we see services being delivered in different ways at different costs in all 32 councils?