Chamber and committees

It is great to be in the wonderful north-east of Scotland and in this great city of Aberdeen. Last night, I was boring some colleagues to death about the 1952 Aberdeen local plan, which was set out in a visionary document. We have talked about vision today. In some regards, from my perspective, that vision should be from the grass roots up, rather than top down from the Government.

Today, we have heard quite a lot about NPF4, for which I am partly responsible, and a lot about local development plans. Local place plans have been touched on but no more than that. One of the great things that came from this city was the “planning for real” approach, which covered community planning and spatial planning, and was prevalent in the north-east but has disappeared. The local place plans were supposed to bring together community planning and spatial planning, leading to much greater understanding by communities of what the ambition is and what their vision is for their area.

My initial question is for Jim Grant and Stuart Bews. I recognise that we have had the Covid years and the rest of it. What have your local authorities done to help communities to formulate local place plans? Has community planning been linked with that, to get the best possible solution and vision of those communities?

It would be interesting to hear from planning colleagues—community planning and spatial planning colleagues—in Aberdeen on that.

I see that Alison Stuart wants to come in.

I have just one more question. We could probably spend hours on this, to be honest, and it still would not make a lot of sense. Financial transactions confuse a lot of folk. I think that we need to look at them a bit more closely, because I get the impression from community groups that it would be almost impossible for them to access FT money. However, it has been done previously in the form of charitable bonds for houses, and community groups might want to explore that. Has the information that you have had on FT been helpful or has it not helped at all? Has it been a hindrance to FT usage instead?

Grand. Thank you, convener.

Stuart Bews, can we have the Aberdeen perspective?

You have said that you will have a look-see at those plans as you build the LDP. That is fair enough in some regards. I would be interested in knowing what you are doing to help poorer communities to get the expertise to develop local place plans.

You missed out the “planning for real” element—that is, the community planning aspect. In terms of the formulation of local place plans, are you as an authority bringing together the community planning aspect of the “planning for real” approach in order to get this right not just for the LDP but to create the vision for the future for individual communities across Moray?

Okay. So, if I come back to communities in Moray, which I quite often do, and ask folk in Buckie, Fochabers, Forres or wherever it may be, “How did that linkage between community planning and spatial planning work? Did it work for your area?” they will turn round to me and say, “Yeah, Moray did it right.”

My next question is probably for you, Alison, and for Alasdair Ross. This morning, we heard from folks from across the north-east of Scotland who very definitely have a vision for their places—there was absolutely no doubt about that. Are local authorities, the Scottish Government and other public bodies listening to the degree that they should when it comes to that vision? Do you share my view that we should use that bottom-up vision rather than a top-down one to ensure that we get the just transition absolutely right?

I suppose that it would be difficult for community groups to handle that because they are voluntary.

Sometimes, when folks see this kind of bill, they want all of the meat there and then, but this evidence session, this inquiry and the scrutiny of it all gives us the opportunity to go into more depth to make sure that the bill is actually the right one and will help folk.

Joe McMonagle was talking about rambling on, but I do not think that you have done that today. The evidence that you have given is extremely useful. I stand to be corrected, but I think that this is the first time during oral evidence taking that we have heard folk talk about the debt and mental health evidence form to any huge degree. For many who have watched this meeting but not looked at all the background, that will be a new thing. What you have done today has shone some more light on all that.

I want to come back to one of the most important points in all this, which is something that will not necessarily require a huge change in legislation or regulation. You talked about the training that you and your front-line staff have undertaken through ASIST. I am sure that many of your staff, if not all of them, have done trauma-informed practice training and various other training.

From the evidence that the committee has received, we are not sure what training is being done on the other side with mental health professionals, social workers and others around their knowledge of debt advice that they can pass on to their clients. In some areas, other areas of business, Government and local authorities have come together to put in place toolkits so that everybody knows what is required to do the best for the person concerned. Have you done anything about toolkits for social workers, mental health professionals and others who you deal with on behalf of clients? Has anything like that been done previously to get the smoothest possible journey for folks at what are sometimes the most traumatic times? That question is for Joe first.