I am very happy to explain that, convener, and to take the opportunity to explain to members a little bit more about where the SPA, as an organisation, is at.
Members might be surprised to hear this, but I think that it is important to share it: when I took up the post as chair of the SPA, it had 27 members of staff. On its initial establishment, the figure was set, at different points, at 50 or 60. The Crofting Commission, the Scottish Housing Regulator and the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator all have around 50 staff; the Cairngorms National Park Authority has around 70; and the Scottish Futures Trust has around 80. Having only 27 members of staff was a decision made not by the Scottish Government but by my predecessor and the then board, who decided to leave a number of posts vacant and not to build the organisation. Frankly, it is hardly surprising that the SPA was struggling to perform some of its duties effectively.
To address your question, convener, I can tell you that, by May, we had taken the number of staff to 40. To do that quickly, the interim chief officer took a number of steps to bring in the secondments and interim appointments that you mentioned.
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We have taken and continue to take such measures, as well as making permanent appointments, which I will touch on. We have brought in people from the Scottish Government and reached out to other parts of the public sector, such as local authorities—the interim deputy chief executive and chief operating officer is on secondment from Highland Council. A member of staff from Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary in Scotland worked with us for about nine months to help us to develop governance improvements.
We have drawn up a revised structure for where the organisation needs to be in steady state. Under that, the organisation would have about 68 people. We have also made and are making a number of permanent appointments.
All those things take time and need to be managed carefully. As the convener will appreciate and as members will know from experience, if we simply draft lots of people into an organisation, we create different problems. We must manage people into the right roles and manage how the team develops. That big job of work is still in progress.
I hope that that helps to set in context the interim appointments, which members have asked about before.