Official Report 779KB pdf
Our next item of business is our second evidence session on the Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Bill. I am delighted to welcome Jane Martin, the managing director of innovation and investment at Scottish Enterprise, and we are joined online by Dr Emilia Crighton, director of public health at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, and Jackie Taylor, executive director of finance and corporate resources for the South Lanarkshire community wealth building commission. We hope to be joined by Hayley Mearns, chief executive officer for Voluntary Action Angus.
Daniel Johnson will kick off with the first question. As always, I appeal to members and witnesses to keep their questions and answers as concise as possible.
Thank you, convener; I will do my best.
What will our witnesses be able to do as a result of the bill that they cannot currently do? What will they have to do that they do not currently, not including meetings or a reports?
I will start with our colleague either from the local authority or the health board, because they probably have the most interest in the bill. Perhaps Dr Crighton could start. [Interruption.]
Can I come in?
Please do.
Apologies, but there was an additional conversation going on that interfered with the question. [Interruption.]
We seem to have some interference on the audio.
If I heard the question correctly, it was about what we would be able to do as a result of the bill that we cannot do today. Is that correct?
What additional powers, abilities or capacities will the legislation give you that you do not currently have, and what will you have to do that you do not currently do, not including reports that you will have to produce or meetings that you will have to go to? What outcomes will you have to deliver that you do not currently deliver?
The national health service has been instructed by the Scottish Government to be an anchor organisation. We have three areas that we have to report against: employability, procurement and the use of landed assets.
If the bill is passed, it will simply put into legislation what we currently already do with partners, particularly local authorities, and our wider partners through community planning partnerships, to demonstrate how we promote community wealth building. We are already engaged in quite a lot of activity. In the future, as a result of the bill, we would probably have to create formal plans for work that we carry out with partners, but there might be additional elements of work that we would have to engage in.
You are saying that you are already carrying out the work and you probably already have the plans, but you might just have to retitle them. Is that what you are saying?
As an anchor organisation, yes, we have the plans. We are working closely to a framework that we agreed with Scottish Government colleagues. We are participants in the Glasgow city region, working as part of a team of eight local authorities and two health boards to produce those plans.
Jackie Taylor, I will ask you the same question. What will you be able to do that you cannot currently do, and what will you have to do that you are not already doing?
Good morning. Our position is similar to the position that my colleague from the NHS described. Councils, including South Lanarkshire Council, and the commission that we have formed around community wealth building are already doing a fair bit in this space. That said, we are supportive of the proposed legislation in the bill, because it will give others that are perhaps not as advanced or engaged in community wealth building an added push to get involved and make sure that we address the need to build wealth in communities across the country. Having that wider responsibility and the statutory footing behind it means that we can get that benefit across the country.
However, I would point out that, as is mentioned in the financial memorandum, the responsibilities on councils to progress the measures in the bill will have resourcing and financial implications. I would expect that, as well as the benefits that we are seeing just now from community wealth building in my area and my council’s community wealth building commission, there is likely to be a greater administrative burden on councils and partners to progress the measures. The level of that burden will depend on how advanced each area’s work on community wealth building is at the moment.
I am not trying to take us into a negative space already, but the responsibility to take forward the legislation will probably be placed on councils, and that has resourcing and financial implications.
Scottish Enterprise is a national agency with international reach, so thinking about our delivery in local economies can sometimes be quite challenging for us.
We have a statutory responsibility in relation to community planning partnerships. The discussions and plans on the local economy are inconsistent, to be honest. I think that we work very well across a number of regional economic partnerships, in which we consider how we can exploit opportunities with local government and other partners on the ground.
To answer your question, we already do a lot in that area. What will be different? We will be compelled to act, we will have to work harder at translating what we do so that it works at the local level, and we will be accountable for specific outcomes locally with our partners on the ground. Ideally, that work would be done on a regional basis, and we might come on to talk about that.
Conceptually, we do a lot of work in that area. I do not think that, at the moment, anyone, including local government, has a statutory responsibility in relation to the local economy. The bill will give us that. The challenge will be around, for example, the execution and the proportionality of the guidance.
I have a brief follow-up question. You will have to undertake additional activities and co-ordination. You have mentioned community planning partnerships, which already exist. If the cabinet secretary, in a letter of direction to Scottish Enterprise, said that you must do certain things, including engaging in community wealth building and undertaking a co-ordinating role, you would have to do that, would you not?
Yes.
That would be in a letter of direction, so that would not require legislation, would it?
Yes, we have to follow letters of direction. However, other partners in the local economic development system will not have that same line of sight to ministers that our organisation has.
Great, thank you.
I return to Jackie Taylor. Councils have to abide by quite a number of different bits of guidance, both statutory and non-statutory. Councils absolutely must follow statutory guidance—that is a matter of law. Updates to guidance could deliver very similar results without necessarily needing this legislation. Indeed, might that provide a more holistic way of looking at community wealth building and ensuring that it is thought about across all policy areas? The Government could set that out when it provides its statutory guidance to local authorities.
Absolutely. Statutory guidance and non-statutory guidance could and would, I assume, allow council areas and other partners to take forward the benefits of community wealth building.
We have the ability to do that right now. Some areas are more advanced than others in that approach. Having legislation would put community wealth building on a statutory footing; it would instruct and ensure that that is progressed in that way.
There are other non-statutory ways that could benefit communities with regard to building their own wealth. We explored some of those areas in our response to the call for views.
There are non-statutory ways in which we can progress the policy, but having legislation would force everyone’s hand and ensure that everybody is taking this forward, which I think would be beneficial.
I will leave my questions there. For the avoidance of doubt, I have been playing the role of devil’s advocate this morning. I thank the witnesses for their comments—your responses have been very helpful.
I have a question about the benefits that the bill could have. Part of the bill is about procurement and increasing the local spend in our communities. What is the average spend on local procurement in your area and what are the potential benefits of increasing it?
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About 85 per cent of Scottish Enterprise’s procurement is won by small and medium-sized enterprises in Scotland. We have tracked that for some time. We are thinking about whether we can break down any large procurement into regional procurement in future.
A potential benefit of the bill is that it could provide a model that creates much more cohesion across the public sector, which would enable us to think about joining up procurement and—there is a question about whether legislation is required for this—how we use it innovatively to stimulate new local businesses and social enterprises. There is something to be gained from public sector partners coming together on that agenda. There are probably examples of where we have done that, but we do not do it systematically.
Do you have any information about the proportion of spend across the bodies that are listed in the bill? I am talking about local authorities and the health service for example. Have you guys done any work on that?
No, we have done no work on that at all. I think that the Scottish Government did some work a few years ago on how to unlock some of the public procurement and public spend.
I ask Jackie Taylor the same question.
I do not have a percentage for how much the council spends on SMEs. It is probably around the figure that Jane Martin mentioned. I can provide that to the committee later. However, as Jane mentioned, we are talking about SMEs in Scotland, not necessarily our local community areas.
As well as being something that needs to happen at a national level in Scotland, for me, community wealth building is about South Lanarkshire and ensuring that we grow the wealth in our area. There are benefits that we can achieve in procurement for which, again, legislation might not be needed. For example, perhaps the existing supplier development programme can target organisations other than just council bodies.
There are ways that we can encourage, help and support smaller companies and third sector organisations to get a space in providing services to local authorities and wider public bodies. They will need support to do that. We have Scotland Excel, which delivers support for procurement across Scotland. Perhaps, using its skills, knowledge and abilities, we can help to drive procurement benefits for smaller organisations.
Being a finance person, I know that the commercial aspects of the matter are important. If we are looking to attract smaller businesses to deliver services, they might not be the cheapest. We have to acknowledge that. That is not to say that it is the be-all and end-all, but we know that councils’ and other bodies’ funding is particularly tight just now, so I am balancing the benefits of procurement against the potential for additional costs on the back of it.
I want to check something that you said. We were at North Ayrshire Council on Monday. It has grown its local procurement from 20 per cent to 26 per cent over the past five years. Are you suggesting that you are doing substantially better at local procurement than North Ayrshire Council? I thought that you said that it was probably in line with what Jane Martin said.
I think that the figures that I quoted are for SMEs in Scotland rather than in the local area. I will confirm the figures to the committee so that I do not steer you down a road that is not correct.
Okay.
I ask Emilia Crighton the same question.
I mentioned the fact that we are an anchor organisation and report regularly to the Scottish Government. Our procurement annual report for 2023-24, which is the most recent year for which we have figures, shows that our local spend that year was £106,868,030, which was an increase on the previous year’s spend. That figure represented 12.6 per cent of our overall trade spend, which was a drop from 13.5 per cent in the previous year, and we have a target to increase the local spend to 14 per cent. The spend on small and medium-sized businesses in 2023-24 was £354,149,593, which was 43 per cent.
The bill will not change our procurement processes. However, there are changes that we could consider through procurement legislation—that is, the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014 and the Public Contracts (Scotland) Regulations 2015—that would perhaps enable an expansion in how we contract local businesses. The NHS is a major procurer of services and supplies. Therefore, having legislation that is not community wealth building legislation but that would enable us to act in that way would be most helpful.
I have one final point. When we visited North Ayrshire Council, we heard that part of the reason why it was able to grow the percentage that it spent locally from 20 per cent to 26 per cent was because it made more use of quick quotes in the procurement portal—if I understood correctly, it raised the threshold to £200,000. What threshold does NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde use for quick quotes?
I am afraid that I do not have technical expertise on thresholds for quick quotes.
I have done a bit of research, which suggested that the figure is £50,000.
I would need to go back to procurement colleagues on that.
Okay; thank you very much.
I want to follow up on that point, Dr Crighton. You make the valid point that the bill will not change the current procurement rules. It has been put to us by witnesses on visits that the current procurement rules are, frankly, a hindrance, and that there is not enough power in the bill to move the dial on local spend. There is no requirement to do that, even with the bill, because you are covered by existing procurement law. Is there an argument that that needs to change? Do you think that it will happen?
Based on current procurement laws, you are not very confident that you will definitely get a significant rise in local spend. Therefore, do we need to change those laws to, for example, strengthen community benefit requirements or look at thresholds again to really move the dial on local spend through public sector procurement?
We need a mixture of things, and it depends on what services we procure. One of my colleagues has just advised me that our threshold is indeed £50,000, as was mentioned earlier. I apologise for not having the figure to hand.
We need to balance the elements. We need to ensure that we have fair and competitive procurement but, should services be available from within the communities, we need to ensure that there is nothing stopping us from procuring those services. It is very much an issue of the availability of the services or goods that we require.
But there is no requirement for you to do that under current legislation, is there?
As an anchor organisation, we are committed to ensuring that we do that. We are mindful that health is a by-product of the economic wellbeing of the community, so we are committed to procuring locally as much as we can.
I put the same question to Jackie Taylor. I appreciate that you are going to come back to us with the figure on the percentage of South Lanarkshire Council spend that is local, but are there sufficient measures in current procurement legislation to ensure that you can increase that significantly once the bill goes through, or will the legislation still be a hindrance?
We spoke to businesses in North Ayrshire, which is a good example of what can be done. To be fair, there were no tier 1 bodies there, but the challenge was how to get companies that win big contracts to use local contractors, because procurement law does not really allow organisations to push for that. Do we need to consider changing that law to enable you to handle more contracts at a local level?
Absolutely. One of the points that we made in our submission was that anything that can be done to help us to be more flexible in how we procure would be helpful. We are talking about things like quick quotes and potentially breaking down contracts into lots so that smaller companies can access what can be quite big contracts for local authorities, the NHS and wider public bodies. We are still able to make decisions on what our thresholds are for things such as quick quotes. We have expanded and made our thresholds bigger, and we can go wider on that to make things a bit easier. We have also ensured that, if we go to quick quotes, at least two of the five quick quotes that we would look for in our local procurement rules would have to be from local SMEs.
That kind of thing does not have to be in legislation, but it is still possible to try to encourage and improve the uptake of business from local areas. Anything that can be done to change procurement law to keep everybody on the straight and narrow is to be welcomed, but there are things that we can all do on things such as thresholds, expanding our use of quick quotes and making sure that we are specifically getting quotes from local bodies.
Jane Martin, I appreciate that Scottish Enterprise is a national body, but do you have a view on the current procurement thresholds and community benefit requirements? Are those a hindrance to community wealth building? Is that something that you come across when working with local business?
The issue is relevant to Scottish Enterprise in relation to our procurement. We ask for community benefit responses in all the procurement that we do. Last year, about 57 per cent of those contracts had a range of different community benefits in them.
I would like to correct the figure that I gave you earlier. I have just checked, and 78 per cent of our suppliers last year were SMEs, and the figure was 85 per cent the year before, so it is always about 80 per cent.
We have heard from all kinds of businesses, particularly small businesses, about their challenges in getting public procurement contracts—you will have heard that yourselves. We need to strike a balance. Procurement can be a great tool in ensuring local benefits, but we need to balance that by ensuring that it is accessible for local businesses, because they just do not have the level of resource to go through the hoops and articulate all those kinds of things.
There is a point about how we can work better with supply chains and things like that, which you mentioned, convener. That could add a lot of value. We naturally think about the local impact, and I know that a lot of organisations do that. However, considering procurement legislation in a way that will better enable that and make it transparent, clear and consistent across the system might make things much easier.
The other day, I was at a session with a range of growth businesses from different parts of Scotland—younger companies, SMEs and global companies with a footprint in Scotland—and a common issue that was raised there was the need to ensure the procurement of local content. When big contracts are issued by the likes of the Ministry of Defence or others, it is important to ensure that local content is embedded in those processes in a much more systematic way. There is more that could be done in that regard.
Dr Crighton, do you want to come back in? I see that your hand is raised.
Yes. Reflecting on the major expenditure that the NHS has on drugs and supplies for healthcare, it is absolutely crucial that the Scottish economy produces such goods, otherwise there will be a limit to our ability to procure goods locally.
That is an issue about our capacity. Thank you for that.
Good morning, panel members, and thank you for joining us. There is a wider perspective on the bill than that which relates to procurement. I have a general question about how you see things changing in a range of areas that would help to direct moneys positively to enable some of the community wealth building activities that are under way. How will the bill help to firm that up?
A range of mechanisms could be used, some of which are probably already being used. I am thinking of community asset transfer, compulsory purchase orders, local sector pension funds or the entirely different route that is provided by SNIB. I accept what you said earlier in response to Daniel Johnson, but will anything change as a result of the bill that will get money into projects? Jackie Taylor, you mentioned the commercial aspects, so perhaps you or Jane Martin could offer some thoughts on that.
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One of the things that we already do relates to what I would call the spillover benefits from foreign direct investment. The bill will make our accountability in that regard much more explicit, in that we will need to report on that and ensure that it is part of the action plans.
We already seek clarity on what the benefits to the Scottish supply chain of such investment will be and we track those over time, and we already ensure that introductions are made to local colleges to ensure that the necessary training and skills are provided. A number of larger businesses are involved in other activities in local communities that are about giving back, such as voluntary groups working with local schools. The bill will make all that activity visible. It will make us better able to learn from best practice and to share examples of it more effectively.
The bill offers an opportunity to make the work that people are doing visible, to make the process much more systematic, to ensure that we learn from best practice and to give cohesion to all the different activities in local areas and regions in a way that allows us to have an even greater impact.
How do you know that that will happen as a result of the bill?
I do not know that it will happen. All the aspects of how that will be delivered will be in the guidance. There is a maturity across the local and regional partnerships in Scotland, because we have been doing community planning for quite some time. The regional economic partnerships are evolving and maturing. I have been in this game for a very long time, and I get the sense that we are now coming together in a way that has been building up for a few years. The bill could create a platform that enables us to be clear on the actions that we need to take together, but how that happens will depend on the detail. It is important that it is done in a way that is proportionate and outcome focused.
Even if there is a good prevailing wind and the guidance sets out how best practice should be shared, that will not, of itself, mean that any more money will be available, will it? The bill will simply suggest that things could be made marginally better through the sharing of best practice.
Potentially. A lot of this will be in the guidance rather than the bill itself. If we all become accountable for a proportion of the outcomes that must be delivered, there will be an opportunity for us to be much more creative about some of that. However, I absolutely take your point.
Do you think, therefore, that we could come at the issue from the other end? Could we look at the financial mechanisms over which the Scottish Government can exert some control and see how those could be used effectively to assist community wealth building? Do you have a sense of whether we could flip the approach on its head in that way?
To be honest, that is likely to be how a national agency such as Scottish Enterprise would approach the issue, rather than by dividing up the pie in every local area. We would probably approach it by looking at what we see happening internationally, understanding where the big strengths are in the economy and working out how to translate that and work with local partners to ensure that the benefit reaches local communities.
That is likely to be how we would approach the issue, because the downside of the bill for an organisation such as Scottish Enterprise is that there could be 32 community wealth building partnerships across Scotland. I do not think that that is how the bill is likely to work in practice, but we could invest a lot of time and resource in holding lots of meetings in an effort to get things done. To be fair, I do not think that that is the spirit of the bill, but there is a risk of that, so the approach that you have articulated is likely to be the one that we would take.
Would you expect there to be more mention of that in the bill? What the bill intends is great—I do not think that anybody is particularly objecting to it—but I am not hearing much dialogue about how you actually make it happen. We will probably start to derive a much clearer set of benefits by focusing on the how, and I feel as though there is a slight disconnect in that respect.
That is fair. There is something about timing, is there not? When community planning partnerships were rolled out, the guidance gave a structure but allowed local partners to develop processes that would work for them. Those partnerships needed to mature over time. From an economic perspective, a lot of them have morphed into joint working across regions with local authorities and others in order to get much greater bang for their buck. The bill’s intention could potentially be delivered through that route.
Do either of our two guests who are online want to come in on that point? Emilia Crighton, I see that your hand is up.
Thank you very much for all the questions. Our experience of developing the anchor plans encouraged us to think about areas such as employability initiatives and the use of our estate, such as the Parkhead hub, in which a social enterprise is embedded along with the library and the community space.
One of our greatest challenges is resources. Health is focused on delivering healthcare, so community wealth building is an additional activity. However, having additional resources would perhaps enhance that work. Our experience through the anchor accelerator summit, working through the Glasgow city region, allowed us to come up with initiatives on employability and supporting local businesses. The bill might provide the resource, which would enhance the ideas and the work that we already do with our partners and would increase our ability to deliver on community wealth building.
To pick up on what others have said, it is positive that everybody who is participating today seems to have quite well-developed approaches to community wealth building. It is not necessarily about having extra money in the system; it is about the actions that we are all taking to ensure that the community is building its own wealth. The lack of funding into this area is not necessarily a barrier to that work.
Action plans in South Lanarkshire are built on pillars such as workforce, spend and procurement, which allows us to grow community wealth through things such as community asset transfers and making the space and procurement work for local businesses. That said, if there is the ability to influence moneys coming into the area, having the umbrella of community wealth building on top of that can only be helpful.
We said in our submission that the ability to perhaps influence in some way any national moneys that have a community wealth building focus, such as lottery funding, can only be a good thing, as it would support organisations, along with anchor organisations such as the NHS and councils, to take forward their input into community wealth building.
I thank the witnesses for coming in today. I have a quick question for Jane Martin and then more general questions. We heard last week from Neil McInroy about the intention of the bill to pivot how we support businesses. Is Scottish Enterprise ready to pivot to supporting co-operative social enterprises and employee-owned businesses? Is that part of your plan?
You might be familiar with our small inclusive models team, which punches way above its weight—it is a national asset. It does a mix of awareness raising, sharing and promoting business models, and working intensively with companies that are moving to a co-operative model.
We do not currently have plans to do a lot more on that. However, Neil McInroy has been doing some work on it in the response to his report, which talked about a centre of excellence, and there are pockets of resource across different parts of Scotland, so there could be merit in joining all of that up so that it could punch above its weight and drive more work.
If, as a result of working with partners on community wealth building action plans, we saw opportunities to create more of them, through different mechanisms, we could look to see how we could resource that organisationally.
As my colleagues on the panel have said, we find that there are always trade-offs, and my experience of working with local partners has been that we add value by keeping the national oversight and international reach. We are able to approach partners and consider whether there are things going on in different parts of Scotland that could be duplicated and whether we could join those up to add more value. That is where an organisation such as Scottish Enterprise, with the remit that we currently have and what we are resourced to deliver, can add value, as opposed to taking work or resource that might be deployed to early stage investment markets, foreign direct investment, international trade et cetera. We could pivot all of our focus on to putting more resource into co-operatives at the expense of that work, but I do not think that we are quite ready to do that.
I have a more general question for you. The committee went on a wonderful visit to North Ayrshire on Monday, and one of the questions that we put to some of the organisations there, which are on the ground and delivering community wealth building with projects that are benefiting people, was how do we measure the success of community wealth building? People in the room talked about building connections, crisis support, quality of life and other opportunities. Some of my concern is about how we measure that in the bill. In its intention statement, it says that the intention of the bill is to
“reduce economic wealth inequality”,
which is fine—I do not have a problem with that—and
“support economic growth”.
I am worried that “economic growth” will be explicitly interpreted to mean an increase in gross domestic product at the expense of all of the other lovely things that we know are so important, such as opportunity, crisis support and quality of life. Is economic growth the right way to measure the success of the bill, or are there better ways to do that?
The approach needs to be layered. There is something about how we can work systematically to know that we are successful in some of the things that you spoke about. Ultimately, if we were successful, it would add up to more growth. I am not convinced that that means only GDP growth or that that is the gold star.
We measure the number of living wage jobs and we are also much more concerned about higher value jobs and taking what people are paid much further up the value chain, because of underemployment in Scotland. We measure things such as research and development and business investment based on their own growth, rather than by using GDP outcomes. We measure things such as those because we know that that is how overall economic growth can be tracked.
This could grow arms and legs and become very complex, but it could also unlock a fruitful conversation about what the right things are so that partners could get to the point at which they face a measurement framework together and holistically. That could add a lot of value and give us evidence for decision making in future. However, the risk is that it becomes overly complex.
I do not know whether local government still does this, but it used to track a set of economic impact measures, and I think there were about 50 or 60 of them, which meant that sometimes it became difficult to see the wood for the trees. Therefore, I take your point about being thoughtful about what the measurement framework looks like, but it should be proportionate.
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Our community wealth building commission talked about that only yesterday at its meeting on metrics and how we measure success. Our plan contains 71 measures—I will call them actions—that we are giving a red, amber or green status. So, we are saying, “We’re working on this” or “Yes we’re doing it”, and we are probably less focused on how we measure whether something has improved.
You would hope that we are seeing improvements as a result of doing all these things. However, the commission has talked about the importance of something that is measurable from a quantitative, rather than qualitative, perspective in relation to how things are improving.
I was pointed to something that the NHS has started using that I think is called the anchor metrics framework. I do not have details of that—maybe Emilia Crighton does. That framework seems to be designed to measure improvement and how the outcomes are improving. How we can make sure that we are measuring this work appropriately is definitely on the radar, because, if we are not measuring it, how do we know that what we are doing is working?
Thank you for provoking that deep question, Lorna. We have the anchor metric, which Jackie Taylor mentioned, but, on the impact, the short answer is that GDP is not the answer. I say that because, if we look at the use of community assets since the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 was passed, for example, we can see that it is not the communities that would benefit most that are engaging, so there is a danger that a GDP measure might not capture an increase in inequality, which you mentioned. Therefore, perhaps we can truly measure the impacts through elements that are sensitive to identifying whether inequalities have been narrowed in any shape or form if we target particular communities where we would really like to see wealth building happening. In addition to our existing metrics, we perhaps need to track the impact on inequalities in specific communities, by looking at employment rates, income satisfaction and distance to place of work, for example.
Who needs to be in the room to ensure that the bill captures the learning from your experience of community wealth building? We have heard that the finance pillar is one of the more challenging pillars of community wealth building, so who needs to be in the room to help to tackle that? How important is the influence of partners who own land or significant assets, for example? Should private business be in the room? Who needs to be around the table for that to be successful?
All of the above need to be in the room. The risk, however, is that you end up with a huge group of people who are not really coming together. It depends on the action that we are focused on. This already happens, but really embedding the idea of public-private partnership for delivery is critical, because we will not get wealth building without thinking about the private sector dimension. Things are happening in the banking sector, for example, with regard to inclusion for bank accounts. There is innovation in that regard, and there could be really good thinking and input from the banks on that agenda, which might provide ideas and innovative models that the public sector can then get behind. Business and others absolutely need to be in the room. In my experience, we get better impacts and outcomes when we work alongside the private sector but we are very clear about what we are trying to achieve, as opposed to it being around governance, criteria and box ticking. We need to be very clear about what we are trying to do in a particular area and what success would look like. There is an opportunity to engage with partners and the private sector around that agenda, as opposed to having a very complex governance structure, which I would certainly recommend that we avoid.
Jane Martin’s points are all well made. I would add that, for me, the more the merrier, because there is a role for the private sector, the third sector and publicly funded bodies to play in taking the agenda forward. However, each of those bodies will have different objectives. The private sector will have a commercial mindset. I am thinking about things such as pension funds, which will be focused on delivering outcomes for their current and future pensioners, so they will have obligations to focus on that over community wealth building objectives. Therefore, it is absolutely important that those individuals are part of our considerations in relation to community wealth building, but we must also consider their competing objectives.
I am mindful of particular businesses that we have in Scotland and the difficulties that we have in relation to the input of alcohol businesses to various aspects that impact on health. Therefore, I am mindful of the sort of private businesses that would have an input. However, to answer Lorna Slater’s question, we certainly need the third sector in the room. I agree with Jackie Taylor about competing interests, and I would not see extracting wealth from communities as beneficial to community wealth building.
We have spoken about guidance already, but would you suggest anything else that should be included in the guidance? For example, during the committee’s visit to North Ayrshire on Monday, we heard that they had had good success by taking as their starting point the inclusive growth diagnostic and a map of regional land and assets. In that way, they knew where the problems were and where their assets were so that they could understand what they were doing. Would that be a good place for our new community wealth building partnerships to start? Is there anything else that should be in the guidance to make sure that this works?
Actually, that would be a good start, because that would involve people asking, “What will work for our local area, what are we trying to achieve and what are the assets that we can deploy?” The additional piece of work is about considering what we are aware of across the region and across Scotland that could add value to that agenda, but that strikes me as a good place to start: clarity of outcome and establishing what assets and tools we have to deploy.
I would like to see guidance that is enabling, rather than prescriptive. I would not want to quash the good work that is already taking place on community wealth building. I have no issue at all in relation to the plan around assets and understanding what resource we have to do this, but we need the flexibility to develop these plans in the right way for the local area.
First of all, I am thinking about the footprint of the plans. For example, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde covers six local authority areas, and it would not necessarily be very helpful if I was required to participate in six plans. The other thing is that I want to ensure that the guidance allows the natural geographies to come together, such as with the Glasgow city region. Mapping might be helpful, but we might spend a lot of time mapping the assets instead of putting in place the ideas that we have and promoting what we already do. Therefore, I would like to see us evolving and building on what is already there.
Good morning. Will the bill have an impact on existing economic development structures and plans, including community planning partnerships and local place plans? What difference, if any, will the bill make? I put that to Jane Martin in the first instance.
I hope that the bill will not add to the existing structures, because there are available structures that can be used. Community planning partnerships currently have no statutory responsibility for the local economy. As I said earlier, there could be an opportunity to ensure that that is done systematically and consistently across the piece.
Similarly to my colleague, I am hopeful that the emerging and maturing regional economic development structures that we have can be deployed in relation to the delivery of the action plans.
I do not know whether that answers your question. I do not think that anything new is needed for that work to be executed, but I think that we could strengthen what already exists around coherent and concerted action.
Jackie, do you have anything to add—for example, on community planning partnerships? Do you have a view on whether the bill will make a difference?
I am very aware that the bill sits to the side of community planning partnerships, which we already have. I am not sure whether those existing relationships and economic partnerships need to sit in a separate space. Having legislation on a community wealth building approach does not necessarily mean that partnership working will be enhanced if it was not there previously. Community planning partnerships are working, which I think is a good thing.
To pick up on a point that Emilia Crighton made earlier, we must be clear on how thinly some of those organisations might be spread—we see that in community planning partnerships, where the NHS might be required to work in multiple areas. That is definitely an important issue to consider.
Emilia, would you like to add to that?
Yes. Most of the partners that the bill identifies as being part of community wealth building are already in the community planning partnership, and the CPPs already have their own planning cycle—I think that the Glasgow one goes on until 2034. Therefore, we need to ensure that we do not duplicate efforts, that we have consistency and that we minimise the impact on organisations that will be fairly thinly spread on the ground if we have to meet in different arenas for different aspects. It is a case of coalescing agendas across different aspects.
I have a slightly broader question. Is there anything that is not in the bill that you think would improve it? I see that you are all thinking.
With the NHS being an anchor organisation, there is a clarity of focus in what we do. On whether the bill can enhance anything, the issue is perhaps about how we mobilise behind a clear purpose and have the ability to go to the next level in a way that builds on what we already do. My question is how we would be enabled to do that and how we would cut down the different silos. As well as child poverty plans and CPP plans, we will have community wealth building plans, so it is a question of how we bring all those things together to strengthen the impact of all the plans that we currently need to have.
I will touch on an issue that I have mentioned already, which we addressed in our submission. We would like to see something in the bill that helps to break down some of the barriers that we face, perhaps around procurement and—although this is not my area of expertise—planning. We would be in favour of anything that could alleviate some of the barriers that restrict our ability to progress community wealth building. That is probably where I would go with that question.
I am not sure that I have much to add. I agree with Jackie Taylor’s point about procurement and planning and the need to think about how the bill could be used to remove barriers. I also agree with Emilia Crighton’s point about the need to ensure that we do not create an additional layer. Perhaps the bill could include a provision to ensure that we coalesce around the multiple different things that we are being asked to do and that we use community wealth building—which, to be frank, is happening quite a lot on the ground anyway—and, in particular, the action planning aspects of it, as a way of bringing those strands together.
Thank you.
Willie Coffey is next.
Good morning. My question is probably for Jackie Taylor from South Lanarkshire Council, but I would be obliged if our other two colleagues were able to respond, too.
Jackie, you will have heard committee members say that we were down in Irvine in North Ayrshire on Monday, where we met fantastic local people who deliver local projects there, as well as some great officials, who provide support.
My colleague Lorna Slater mentioned the diagnostic tool that North Ayrshire Council has developed. I am keen to ask you whether South Lanarkshire Council has been able to do something similar. Your authority has a big area and many communities to cover; it stretches all the way from Rutherglen away down to Biggar, it includes East Kilbride, and there are small villages all over the place. Do you intend to embark on a diagnostic process that engages with communities at their level to understand their needs, their hopes and their aspirations for what community wealth building could bring them?
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I am not au fait with the diagnostic tool that you mentioned, so I cannot comment on whether we are working towards pulling that information together, but I know that our approach to engagement with the community is very strong. We have a strong team that is responsible for making sure that community engagement is taken forward.
You are right that, as other councils do, we have every size, shape and form of difference in our geographic area. It is important that we recognise all of that, from affluent areas to areas of deprivation. That is important when we think about how we are going to tackle the actions in our community wealth building plan.
With your permission, I can ask my colleagues in the community engagement team to see whether they have considered whether we could take forward the diagnostic tool that you mentioned. If that would be of use and we could take that forward, I would absolutely encourage that.
We were keen to see a copy of that tool, because it is not something that would appear in a Scottish Parliament bill. It is something that is very local and meaningful to the communities that have to deliver it.
We asked the community groups what makes the whole process work. It is the people who deliver and drive it—the local officials and local community groups and their enthusiasm, determination and dedication to build and improve community wealth building—that make it work, not the bill. Do you see that in abundance in South Lanarkshire? Are you well placed to get a meeting of minds between the officials who are determined to deliver it and the community groups who are keen to exploit it?
In South Lanarkshire, we absolutely have visibility of how communities play a role in what we all do. As well as having our community wealth building commission, our action plan and our strategy, we are very much focused on what the community can do for us and for themselves. We are undertaking a review of our relationship with the third sector. That is important, because the third sector delivers a heck of a lot for communities, which enables the council to deliver more. We recognise the crucial role that the third sector and community bodies play in supporting key council services such as social care and education.
Our elected members are particularly strong on that support. Having that basis of support from our elected members is important, and I imagine that that is replicated in councils across Scotland.
We recently had a big drive on community asset transfers, which is fantastic, given that councils are having to consider policies to reduce the number of assets that we have, and given our drive to be efficient in an environment in which money is tight. We have been able to withdraw from owning physical assets because the community has taken those on through community asset transfers. In that way, we have been able to continue to deliver a space for the community to access. Presentations from organisations at our community wealth building commission have sung the praises of our ability to do that.
Working in partnership with communities is absolutely key to driving forward community wealth building, and you are absolutely right that the groups that are on the ground know how to make a difference, and they are making a difference. This process is not about producing 15 pages of actions; it is about getting those groups involved and hearing from them about where they want to go and where we need to support them.
To pick up on what we have talked about today, if we enable things to happen—for example, through procurement or planning regulations—that could help local groups, regardless of whether we call it a community wealth building action plan. That is important.
I see that Dr Crighton wants to come in.
To add to what my colleagues have mentioned, we know about the wealth of our communities. We have had community planning action plans for a very long time. However, we wonder whether the co-ordination of Scottish Government grants could be improved through the bill. We have examples of grants coming from nine different sources, which has a huge impact on the ability of poor communities to spend money and generate wealth. That is the one thing that we would ask for, if possible.
I have a final question for Jane Martin, which is a bit like the one that Daniel Johnson asked. What role do you see Scottish Enterprise having in the community wealth building process? How do you see the organisation working with, say, South Lanarkshire Council to grow and develop the whole principle of community wealth building?
I see us as being an active and constructive partner. We rely heavily on our colleagues in local authorities to bring us in as appropriate, because we do not have the bandwidth to be involved in every community conversation. Unlike our colleagues in Highlands and Islands Enterprise and South of Scotland Enterprise, Scottish Enterprise, as an organisation, does not have a community remit.
The way that I would describe it is that we would actively lean into those conversations. We are very up for being challenged on and accountable for how we ensure that the work that we deliver as an organisation creates a win-win situation. We want to ensure that what we do is additive and goes in the same direction as what is being done by others, as opposed to off to the side. We are already actively involved in such conversations with regional economic partnerships, community planning partnerships and so on. That is what I see us doing.
Thank you.
I have a final question. This is not quite “Dragon’s Den”, but I will give you a chance to pitch to us. Is there anything that you have not been able to share with us—either in your written evidence or your observations so far—about ways in which the bill could and should be improved in order to deliver the ambition of community wealth building across Scotland? You might not have anything—you might be happy with the bill. Who wants to go first?
From my perspective, I think that the bill is quite clear. The principles are well laid out, but the guidance and the implementation will be key. It will be a case of keeping a proportionate focus on outcomes, building on all the things that we have talked about and, potentially, challenging organisations such as Scottish Enterprise to be more creative and thoughtful with regard to how we can be accountable and measure the impact on local economies of what we do. I imagine that my colleagues will have more to say about that.
They might have a longer list. Dr Crighton, I think that you put your hand up first, so fire away.
I was asked to ensure that there is resource to deliver whatever is required. We do not want to divert from our current core business, but we would like to have the facility to increase wealth in our communities because, ultimately, that is the answer to addressing inequalities in health.
I see that Jackie is ticking that point about resources off her list—
Absolutely.
However, I am sure that she has others.
It is always good when others have the same ideas as we do. I very much think that the devil will be in the detail. We have all had a good opportunity to feed in some of the areas in which, through the bill, we might be able to see benefits.
When times are tight, having the resource to deliver something that is good, such as community wealth building, is important. As I have said, the financial memorandum mentions that the cost to local authorities of delivering the bill will be £4.5 million. That is a lot of money that we do not have, so if we are to deliver the bill well, we must rely on having that resource there. If we are to take forward the bill, it is important to recognise that—outwith the responsibility of local authorities—those partners that we want to ensure are involved in the process have resourcing restrictions as well.
However, again, we are very supportive of the bill and of the enabling powers that it will provide across the board.
Thank you for that final word. I thank all our witnesses for joining us today.
12:09 Meeting continued in private until 12:21.Previous
Grangemouth’s Industrial Future