Official Report 428KB pdf
Good morning, and welcome to the 23rd meeting in 2013 of the Local Government and Regeneration Committee. I ask everyone to ensure that all mobile phones and other electronic devices are switched off.
Thank you, convener.
Item 1 is evidence on regeneration. We have three panels of witnesses representing local authorities and the enterprise agencies. They have submitted written evidence, which members have in their papers.
I apologise on behalf of West Dunbartonshire Council because our convener is, unfortunately, unable to attend due to there being a committee meeting this afternoon; we hope that it will have a positive regeneration outcome for West Dunbartonshire.
Very good. You are welcome, Councillor O’Neill.
Thank you.
I will ask the first question. Can you give us an idea of the size of funding for, specifically, regeneration activity? Beyond that, can you indicate what proportion of those moneys is used for community organisations and community-led regeneration? Councillor O’Neill—do you want to start?
In West Dunbartonshire we have been setting the budget over the past year or so, and we have now embarked on a 10-year capital regeneration investment that is worth somewhere in the region of £133 million. We are building new care homes and schools, and are investing £85 million in housing to meet the Scottish housing quality standards. There has been quite a turnaround in the region. Under the previous council administration, we were potentially going for a partial stock transfer, but under the new administration, from May 2012, we changed that course. The officers have now come round to that, and will be delivering fully to the Scottish housing quality standards in spending £85 million on 10,000 or so houses. We have also embarked on building two new care homes with provision for, I think, 90 beds each.
Feel free to bring in Mr McAloon to answer my next questions. What is the “huge amount of money” that has been allocated to regeneration? I reiterate that I would really like to know what proportion of that money is going into community projects and community-led regeneration.
I would be happy to provide the committee with the overall figure. I endorse what Councillor O’Neill said. Through the community planning partnership, the council has listened to the community. For example, we recently ring fenced money for a social enterprise challenge fund. That provides an opportunity to encourage communities to set up enterprises to support themselves.
The committee is really interested in getting the detail on the specific budgets and the proportions. It would be useful if those figures could be sent to us.
Our figure for regeneration funding is £9 million. That must be looked at in the wider context. We see regeneration as an integral part of the work that we do. The decisions that we make on housing, schools, purchasing through the council and employability are all linked. That involves working together with our partners through the community planning partnership.
Certainly.
Clyde Gateway is an urban regeneration company of which I am a founder member. We are working with that organisation in what is one of the most deprived areas of South Lanarkshire and Glasgow, with highly contaminated land and some of the worst figures in the country for long-term unemployment, poor education standards and so on. Those are the sorts of things that we see.
Councillor Thompson mentioned the £9 million of support that the council gives to regeneration activity in South Lanarkshire. As other authorities will testify, that money is then used to lever in money—from Europe, from the Scottish Government, from the Big Lottery Fund and from other sources.
Do you have at your fingertips the proportion of that money that is spent on community-led projects?
I do not. Clearly the LEADER programme, which is about rural development, Is very much about bottom-up, grass-roots initiatives, so all of those resources would be included, as well as the bulk of the tackling poverty funds that involve working with local communities. All of that £5 million budget is linked closely to community needs.
Further detail on that would be extremely useful for the committee during the course of its deliberations.
May I come back in on that point?
Do so very briefly, Mr Thompson, please.
To add to what Jim McCaffer said, we have a community planning partnership board that the community sits on with our partners. We fully involve the community in decisions that are made and recommended to the community planning partnership.
To be honest, I find it quite hard to quantify the amount. We probably have a similar capital spend to other authorities of similar size, but it is hard to put a figure on how much we spend on regeneration, including the whole social aspect, because the money is, obviously, divided among various projects across social work and education, especially when we take into account work such as early years intervention, if we are discussing regeneration in its broadest context.
We will bring together the figures in the same way that colleagues have said they will and break them down into various aspects, including our capital spend from various big projects. As Councillor Evans highlighted, Angus Council has shifted from a budget-led approach to an outcomes-led approach. We try to use money flexibly so that we see added value and connections with, for example, building new schools or working with our colleagues in the national health service around hubs. We work through community planning to tie such developments in with the provision of sustainable economic regeneration jobs during the building process, and with sustainable employment during the lifetime of the projects.
Am I right that what you are saying is that you ensure that mainstream budgets are used to help regeneration?
Yes.
Does the same go for the other authorities? I would like yes or no answers.
You are bending the spend to get the most out of it. We will probably return to that aspect shortly.
I will focus on capital spend in my questions, which I address to all the witnesses.
I do not know whether at this point we should defer to the officer.
That is a very difficult question to answer, particularly for an officer.
Will I attempt to assist you by—
Perhaps you could depoliticise the question for Mr McAloon.
It is not a political question.
I know, but officers are always wary of such questions. You should maybe ask what priorities would still stand.
No. That is not what I mean at all, convener, if I may say so.
Do you want to try again, Mr McAloon?
One of our key projects is a new civic building. That project has absolutely been driven by the need to make a difference in the local area and it links in with the review of town centres that has just been completed. Town centres have to be about much more than the retail experience; they have to be attractive centres that the community wants to use.
What I am hearing you say—you can agree or disagree—is that you are using communities’ needs in order to prioritise spending that you might normally, for quite proper policy reasons, take forward in any event in areas where the regeneration impact will be greatest. Of course you will not always achieve that, but that is essentially the aim.
I see heads nodding, so I will move on to questions for Councillor Thompson and his team. You said that regeneration is integrated into everything that you do, so I suspect that you are in the same position. Remember that I am focusing on capital expenditure.
We have a capital budget of £5 million to £6 million for regeneration. Let me address your question. It is always good to get a question from a lawyer, because they are usually pretty testing.
I am not a lawyer.
Are you not? I thought that you were
I am a mathematician.
That is worse.
I count things. You have just insulted at least one member of the committee.
I apologise for that, Stewart.
That is helpful. Councillor Evans, your official specifically highlighted the building of new schools. Would those schools be built if you had no regeneration strategy? A lot of things get bad regeneration, and I am starting from the position of having some deep scepticism about that. I am absolutely here to be persuaded, however.
To be honest, Angus Council does not have to pretend not to have a regeneration budget or a regeneration committee, because we do not have those things. As with the majority of capital budgets, the money is assigned to the greatest need. We have two big school projects going on in Brechin and Forfar, both of which are community hubs, but they would not have been possible otherwise—they were not planned for. It was through the Government that we were able to go ahead with them.
Thank you, convener.
Thank you, Mr Stevenson—the non-lawyer. We now turn to a lawyer—Margaret Mitchell.
I was just thinking that it was as well that you did not call our mathematician a banker, but I remember that he is a former banker.
He would deny that as well. Let’s not go there. [Laughter.]
Can I tease out a little bit about community-led regeneration? You talked about encouraging communities and including them in the process. To what extent have the CPPs in your areas supported community-led regeneration?
There is an emerging process around the proposed community empowerment and renewal bill, and in West Dunbartonshire we have developed a new framework for community engagement. We have a citizens panel, which we are trying to augment, and we have public reassurance initiatives.
If a local organisation or a group of people had an idea for what they thought would be a good community initiative, how could they get that to you? How would the council be made aware of that?
You have just teed that up for me, Margaret.
To go back to my original question, given everything that you are doing to engage with the community, you would not necessarily see CPPs as being the main driver for community-led regeneration.
No. They definitely play a major part, but I would not say that they are the main driver.
Okay. Let us hear from Councillor Thompson.
In South Lanarkshire, the community groups are involved throughout the whole process of making decisions, right up to the CPP. The thinking is that we should be doing things not for people, but with people. We do that in a number of ways, including through the community capacity building that we are doing in the worst 5 per cent of areas; the regeneration partnership that I mentioned earlier where the decisions on many of these things are made—the voluntary organisations and local communities sit on that; the LEADER programme in rural areas, which they also sit on to make decisions; and Voluntary Action South Lanarkshire—VASLAN—on which they are also represented. Those groups are all around the table and can put their views and wishes directly to the CPP. Also, let us not forget Clyde Gateway, the urban regeneration company.
That sounds good. Let me give you a practical example of such support. Many communities would dearly love to hire and use assets that councils own, but sometimes they are not given access to buildings after hours or even during the day—perhaps for health and safety reasons—or the charges are prohibitive. Will you comment on that?
Councillor Thompson, will you be brief? We have a lot to get through.
We are keen to work with communities. We have a community asset transfer scheme, to try to help people who want to take over an asset—
I was not talking about taking over an asset. I was talking about assets that local authorities own and run, which have spare capacity that people are often not able to use.
We are only too happy to work with people on that. If you know of examples, please flag them up to us and we will look at them carefully. If there is spare capacity and we can find a way of ensuring that the community can benefit, we will do that.
Okay, thank you. Did Councillor Evans want to respond to my question on CPPs?
What you talked about is exactly what we are doing. We have vacant buildings throughout Angus that we are letting community groups use. If a building is vacant or on the market, we are not doing anything with it. What is the point of having it sit there doing nothing, when people could put the space to good use? It is about working with community groups to see what they need and whether we can facilitate things.
There is a point to be made about wider community planning and some of the frictions between national agendas—on the disposal of NHS land through the disposals book, for example—and how they do or do not contribute to strategic alignment.
That is very useful, Mr McKeown. I will not go around the table on that, because we would probably hear about a lot of local aspects, but, if any of you want to send us information about where such difficulties have arisen, that would be very helpful.
I am interested in how we maximise investment in regeneration and the policy changes that can be made to incentivise it.
I ask you all to give brief answers from now on, because we have a huge number of questions to get through.
I think that you have been speaking to the leader of the council about brief answers again, convener.
I will be brief, convener, because we are short of time.
I certainly hope so. The Government is listening to what we are saying and is doing its absolute best, but we must remember that we have to balance what we do against European legislation. We have to push the boundaries as far as we can, and there are some very good models south of the border—particularly in areas of London—that we can look at in that respect.
Councillor Thompson, you mentioned the council’s procurement department. Some of us recently visited the Clyde Gateway project, which seems to have dealt with certain procurement issues that others have felt to be an impediment. That is my impression from what was said to us. What co-operation is there between South Lanarkshire Council’s procurement department—as you referred to it—and the procurement work that is going on at Clyde Gateway?
It is not just about Clyde Gateway but the council’s whole process. The procurement department has been given specific instructions by the chief executive and the elected members that it is necessary to bring on local suppliers. If we need to build our capacity, we will do that using our economic development budget. The suppliers must use our work programmes. We can put some of that in legislation, but some of it we cannot. We have worked very closely with Clyde Gateway on how it procures, and its model is very similar to the one that we use. We are very supportive of Clyde Gateway. We believe that there is a way forward in the procurement area and that it is one that we cannot miss, because it is very important.
Okay. Does anyone else want to talk about procurement? I hope that you will all become involved in the consultation on the bill, because that is extremely important.
I have a question for each of the local authorities. The first question is to Angus Council. You stated in your written submission:
Absolutely. I talked earlier about it being hard to pinpoint budgets and identify spending, but we are trying to take massive steps in the direction of tackling obesity and poverty. We are doing that through a lot of early intervention projects, but it is done in conjunction with community planning and working with the third sector. For example, Voluntary Action Angus is a key partner. We are looking at the most deprived areas in Angus and working together to tackle the issues there.
Would it be possible to send the committee more detailed information on that?
Absolutely.
Thank you. My next question is for South Lanarkshire Council. Councillor Thompson, on the first page of your written submission, in answer to question 1, you referred to the
It is important to get a balance. I am interested to see that Scottish Enterprise and South Lanarkshire Council take the same view on the issue, which just goes to show that partnership does work.
Thank you. My next question is for Councillor O’Neill. You referred earlier to the meeting that will take place this afternoon regarding the potential benefit for a regeneration project that is to do with a school.
It is East Renfrewshire Council. We are about three months behind East Renfrewshire Council in the procurement process and we would save on costs.
Would there be potential financial implications if there were any further slippage in the procurement and in moving ahead with the programme?
It is contained just now. If there is an officer recommendation for a particular site but there is a groundswell of opinion within the community against a particular bit of greenbelt being used—
We are getting too much into local policy decision making, as far as I am concerned.
I appreciate that. As it stands just now, there will be no slippage and we will not fall behind.
According to what we have heard this morning, the establishment and measurement of regeneration outcomes has been quite varied. Would you welcome an approach that was based on people’s wellbeing?
Absolutely. We are working more towards an outcomes-based approach anyway through our community planning, so we would welcome that. The funding tends to be diverted to shorter-term projects that are easier to slice at budget time. A lot of the time, we cannot see whether a project could have a positive impact 10 years down the line because we do not get the chance to assess it properly. Therefore, I would welcome such an approach.
We conduct a residents survey that includes that issue. We have done that in 2007, 2009 and 2011, and the next one is due at some point this year. The background to your question is right—we need to measure what we are doing to see the outcomes that we are getting from it. We need to measure what is happening out in the communities, and the best way to do that is to ask the people who live there.
We see regeneration very much in terms of community wellbeing. If we do not have jobs, regeneration and people interacting socially, we will not have healthy and safe communities. We look at the whole mix of regeneration and all the benefits that come from it. If people have jobs, they feel better about themselves, about their children and so on. It is not rocket science. Regeneration will have a domino effect if the community is at the heart of it.
Good morning. Convener, I apologise for starting with a local question—I will try to generalise it in the context of the issues that have been raised today.
Give it a bash.
Councillor O’Neill, you talked about community asset transfer in Duntocher and said that the facility is being used daily now that it is run by the community. Why do you think the facility was not used daily when it was under the control of the council? What is different now that means that it is used more frequently by the community?
I hesitate to make a political point, but I do not think that we were using our assets appropriately. A cost implication was undoubtedly involved; previous administrations were trying to reduce budgets.
The situation shows that communities can operate facilities successfully, which leads to the argument about community asset transfer being of benefit to communities.
The approach has been very successful. The contractors use our employability scheme to do their recruitment. We support many people with job subsidies and training. The recent figures show that more than 90 per cent of the people involved are still in full-time employment a year after they have finished participating in the scheme. The approach is very good.
My final question is to Councillor Evans. You referred to the revamping of community councils in Angus and you talked about engaging with “positive-thinking people”. How do you engage with people who do not think positively and who might criticise the local authority’s regeneration strategies and policies? I will not put that question to the other witnesses, although it might apply to them. How do you tackle people who question what is being done—particularly if they have been around for many decades and have seen things being done to rather than with them?
There are a lot of elected members in this room, so I am sure that we are all used to meeting people who do not think positively about us, let alone other things.
I had those three brief questions, but I want finally to raise an issue that people might want to reflect on. Engaging with people at the start of the process might assist in taking them in the direction of travel that you are aiming for, rather than have them fight against it. One big issue is that many communities feel that they are getting things done to them rather than with them. That is why you might get negative thinking at the start of the process.
Thank you, Mr Wilson.
It is quite hard, because on the other side we have a border with a city where the needs are quite different. Aberdeenshire is a place that we could work with more closely, but I do not think that the relationship is 100 per cent there in respect of regeneration. Regeneration feels quite localised at the moment. I do not know whether Mr McKeown has a different opinion.
I understand that. I will come to Councillor O’Neill next to ask about West Dunbartonshire. There are areas where the effects of regeneration—or lack thereof—are felt across local authority boundaries. What I am trying to establish is how we ensure that there is discussion between local authorities, as there has been in relation to Clyde Gateway, so that communities on the boundaries do not miss out on regeneration prospects.
From our perspective, it is about the regional planning approach, which in Angus is the TAYplan approach. We start off with strategic planning discussions between officials and elected members. That is helping us ensure that we bridge any gap between Dundee and Angus.
You have opened another can of worms. You are obviously involved in TAYplan, but Edzell air base is included in the Aberdeen city and shire plan. How do you ensure that there is co-operation in that regard?
We met the chief executive of Aberdeenshire Council as we walked into this meeting, and we have agreed to catch up and have a conversation about shared services and regeneration activities. At one level, it is as simple as having and using good personal relationships and then bringing in elected members to talk to each other. That world is opening up much more now than it ever has in the past. We have to create those opportunities and make them work for us. At one level, it is as simple as that.
Councillor O’Neill?
Given our position, we do a lot of work with Argyll and Bute Council and Stirling Council as our three boundaries meet. We also work with the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority.
Councillor O’Neill, I think that we are drifting off the subject of regeneration and the cross-border co-operation aspect.
Okay. There is the Clyde Valley community planning partnership and the joint development group, and I am vice-convener of the Clyde and Loch Lomond flood prevention group, which is working with the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and local authorities that are adversely affected by flooding.
Councillor Thompson, you mentioned Clyde Gateway. Do you want to say anything else?
We have a good relationship with our old friends in North Lanarkshire, particularly on regeneration and what we call routes to inclusion. We sit down together regularly to think about where people are and where they are going. The initiative is politically led, and below the political leadership there is an officer group. We look at business development and business gateway, which has some fit in that regard, and we look at tourism, which is important in the rural area and also fits with the regeneration agenda.
Thank you all for your evidence. I hope that we will get feedback on some of the points that were made.
I welcome our second panel: Rachael McCormack is director of strengthening communities at Highlands and Islands Enterprise; Councillor Thomas Prag is chair of the planning, environment and development committee at Highland Council; and Andy McCann is economy and regeneration manager at Highland Council. Does anyone want to make brief opening remarks?
I have no intention of making a long opening statement, because I am sure that members have lots of questions, but it might be helpful if I remind members that although people tend to think of the Highlands as being rural we have areas of significant urban deprivation.
Thank you for that. I am sure that most of us are aware that not all of Highland is rural. Many of us will have visited the great city of Inverness and some of the other urban areas of your authority. In terms of tourism, a lot of us have been here, there and everywhere. However, that point is useful, because we sometimes see local authorities as being either urban or rural, so thank you for that.
Yes, but I am going to rely on my colleagues quite a bit.
Fair play, sir.
I heard that question being asked before and I wished that I had had it beforehand because we could have done the homework for you. The difficulty, in many cases, is in identifying what is in the regeneration budget. Frankly, so much of what we do is about communities and regeneration anyway, but it is the additional bits that we need to consider.
Good morning. One thing that we are keen to point out is the Highland LEADER programme, which we have been active in. That is a £16.5 million programme in Highland. It is European cash and it is matched with some Scottish Government funding, but £5 million of match funding has also come in from the council. Some 350 projects have been funded through that. External funding has come in, but the council has also identified spend.
As you said, the LEADER money is mainly European. You also mentioned the European social fund money. How much European money do you have to play with, as it were?
As I said, the LEADER programme is a £16.5 million programme. It includes LEADER and convergence funding. We recently pulled down £1 million of ESF funding for employability activity, and we have also just pulled down £80,000 from the Scottish Government for a particular employment initiative that has come along. The council has also pulled down money from other, wider funds including the European regional development fund and the European fisheries fund, which again supports community activity. That is just under £0.5 million.
Okay. It would be useful for us to get our heads round that.
Highlands and Islands Enterprise and our predecessor organisation, the Highlands and Islands Development Board, have been in establishment for a period spanning five decades. Back in the 1960s, the HIDB was given a remit of social and economic development, and now HIE has that remit. That distinctive characteristic of our organisation means that we interlace and combine approaches to social development and economic development.
Good morning. Can we tease out how, in practice, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and Highland Council co-ordinate their regeneration strategy and activity, given all the funding that you have mentioned and the shared aims, to ensure that there is no duplication and that there is value for money?
For the benefit of the committee, I clarify that HIE’s relationship is with all the local authorities in the region, one of which is Highland Council. We also work with colleagues in Moray, Shetland, Orkney, Innse Gall and Argyll and Bute. In addition, we have a little bit of crossover with North Ayrshire. I hope that I have not missed anybody.
Yes, go ahead, Ms McCormack.
For a number of years, HIE has supported community-led regeneration in a very specific way, which we term community account management, whereby we work with a whole community in a particular location when the community identifies and establishes itself. We provide support, resources and some access to finance, but we also bring other agencies together around the community so that it can benefit directly from specific support.
Is it through that interim review to which you referred and through account management that you have the checks and balances to ensure that you are not duplicating anything that is already being done in Highland Council or in one of the various councils that you mentioned HIE works with? It is a lot to keep a handle on.
It certainly is. I am fortunate in having an extremely capable staff and a range of colleagues who work directly with partner agencies. It is not all for HIE to deliver—absolutely not. It is community led. HIE provides an umbrella—a framework, if you like—but we are reliant on colleagues and share that responsibility for delivery with them. That includes colleagues such as the colleagues who are here from Highland Council, our other local authority partners and our health authority partners—it is a multi-agency list.
Okay. Councillor Thompson—
Councillor Prag.
Sorry. Councillor Thomas Prag.
That is all right, I am used to being called lots of things. For such a short name, it can be difficult.
I am tempted to say that working together is just something that we do; it is how we work in Highland Council. We do not necessarily think of having to make the connections, because they are already there and we work together in an operational sense.
Are there checks and balances to ensure that there is no duplication of funding by councils and HIE? Do you ensure that there is no wastage at all and that value for money is a priority?
Who wants to tackle that one?
On checks and balances, it is about understanding individual projects and the finances through the operational mechanisms that are used. For example, the Nigg operational mechanism had to be very clear and detailed because of the particular investment issues there, state aid issues and so forth. The operational mechanism for individual projects, such as the Highland LEADER programme, identifies the funding clearly and up front. If agencies are looking for particular outcomes, that is captured in the projects’ outcomes.
Ms McCormack, you were keen to answer that question, too.
I echo Andy McCann’s point. I can give a couple of examples, without going into detail here, from the course of the past two days. An issue arose, but before we or anyone else steamed in to sort it out, the first port of call was a phone call at director-to-director level. Then we would encourage colleagues from the respective teams to have detailed dialogue. Secondly, on the way into Edinburgh last night, I pulled into the car park at Wickes because Stuart Black was on the phone wanting a chat about something where there is a mutual crossover and we need to collaborate. I do not think that I could make up that kind of example.
I want to pursue an issue that I pursued with the previous panel, the essence of which relates particularly to capital expenditure. If we were not engaged in regeneration, what would we not do? To turn that on its head and put it positively, what are we doing in capital expenditure that we are doing only because we are focusing on regeneration?
That is a very good question. I am glad that, as I listened to it, I had a little time to think about it. By the way, the mathematician in my family was my father, not me.
We referred in our written evidence to a particular project in which the council was investing in a school. The council was aware that the community was keen to have community facilities in the school, but the council’s capital programme was not able to provide them. The council used part of its capital to provide the space, but it was through community development activity that the community got together and did the fit-out. The community is now involved in the management of the facility.
Are you saying that as a matter of policy you use capital expenditure in a way that maximises the building of community capacity?
When there is the opportunity to do that, that is certainly what happens in Highland Council.
I have not thought about it in that way, but I think that we instinctively do that. In other words, I do not think that there is a written policy, but we would immediately make the most of our capital from a community point of view. Perhaps I have misunderstood the question.
Are you suggesting that regeneration is so ingrained in everyone that you do not need to speak of it? I am slightly sceptical about that.
We can always find things to talk about. Is regeneration ingrained? I think that it is. Let me give you an example. We have a lot of small towns and city centres, as everywhere else does. A report about regenerating town centres was produced recently for the Scottish Government, but we had already been thinking about how our city centres need to be different kinds of places. We had organised a seminar for our members about the issue, so that they could think about it—so regeneration is embedded in our thinking.
I might go back to buying my shoes in Inverness if you closed down the bank that replaced the best shoe shop in the Highlands. But there we are.
We are getting parochial again. Ms McCormack, do you want to add anything?
Mr Stevenson made an interesting challenge about our perspective. When we look at capital investment, we probably do not describe what we are doing in terms of regeneration objectives. The objectives that we seek in relation to community-led development are to do with demographic change, positive economic activity, increased social participation, services and amenities that are managed for and by the community and positive changes in environment and land management. We look for a qualitative measure of overall community confidence.
Will you clarify one point? You said that an investment of £1 levered in £6.60. Is that right?
In terms of community investment secured during the period that we looked at, although a number of those communities had support from Highlands and Islands Enterprise over the preceding period. We did an interim snapshot evaluation to examine what the spending and productivity had been during that period, and we found some fairly significant results. I would be happy to share that with the committee, if that would be of interest.
That would be of great interest to the committee, thank you.
HIE and HIDB have been around for five decades. What impact has that had on communities, particularly with regard to social development issues? Has it given communities in the Highlands and elsewhere a grasp of what can be achieved if they are actively involved in regeneration?
Most communities would agree that it has given them massive confidence—that is an appropriate descriptor. I think that the longevity of the relationship—which I will probably mention as many times as possible when I am before the committee—is fundamental, as are the expertise and guidance of staff who understand communities.
She would say that, wouldn’t she?
And she does.
I am really glad that she did so as comprehensively as she did. However, I can speak as someone who is outside HIE. I have been involved in the Highlands since 1976, and will be for the rest of my life. Back then, confidence was pretty low. Population flows were still negative, particularly among the young people. That has changed. The reason for that is the issue of confidence. I notice, as I walk around and talk to people, that people are confident. They are still living in fragile areas, of course, so why are they confident? I think that it is because of the local knowledge and local understanding of HIE. People trust it and, therefore, are willing to work with it.
The point that I was trying to come to is that the good practice over those five decades has allowed communities to engage fully in the process and to feel valued within the process.
The nice simple answer is that that is challenging but they both matter, and they both matter to each other. For a big authority such as Highland Council, that is sometimes quite a tricky balance. We have councillors in Caithness who would always argue that we are not doing enough for Wick. Wick is quite a good example. It is an area that is not in the best of health, if I can put it that way—I walked round it recently—but it has potential, because of offshore wind and so on in the harbour area. We have done some work on that, as has HIE.
You mentioned that you had been involved in the Highlands since 1976 and you talked about depopulation in some of its rural areas. In some areas, that has been successfully turned around, but not in all areas. You mentioned Wick and the issues that it faces. How do you see Highland Council skewing its funding, particularly its capital expenditure, in the future to assist communities along the northern coast to fully engage economically with some of the opportunities that are currently available to them?
The answer is that we are already doing a lot. I am sorry, as this is going to sound like a love-in, but we do that together. Yesterday, there was a meeting of the Caithness and north Sutherland regeneration partnership, which I could not go to. That is a classic example of a partnership. It involves organisations such as HIE, Highland Council and the local chambers of commerce. A lot of work is being done there because of the Dounreay rundown. The plus with that is that we know the phasing and how it will work. The Caithness and north Sutherland regeneration partnership is heavily involved in that, and we work with it on that.
How do you engage with those communities to ensure that the council, when it can, drives some of the capital investment that could take place to assist them?
I will give you an example. We are producing new local plans for those areas. In Wick and Thurso, we held charrettes—I do not know whether you have come across them.
Yes.
It is a dreadful word but a very good process and one that involves the local community. Communities have joined us and our planning colleagues in drafting their own plan, which is now being discussed and consulted on.
I am tempted to talk about the John o’ Groats signpost, but I will avoid that debate.
I thought you might want to talk about Old Pulteney, but we will not go there either.
We thought that the topic might come up, so we nominated Rachael McCormack to discuss it.
I was telling colleagues about a question that came from the floor during the Development Trusts Association Scotland conference, which took place a week last Monday. I was surrounded by esteemed colleagues when a state aid question came up, and everybody looked at me, so I am quite happy to take your question.
It would be good if your knowledge could be shared across the country. You are the first person who has ever attempted to answer that question by beginning with positives—that is really good, and I thank you for it.
I would be happy to do so.
Picking up on what has just been said about state aid, the issue with regard to regeneration and a wide range of other areas, as I understand it, arises when public money is adjudged under state aid rules to distort competition. I am seeing heads nodding, which confirms my understanding of an issue that we all wrestle with.
I think that that is for me again.
Yes, I think so.
I mentioned the group that we put together with the Big Lottery Fund and the Scottish Government’s state aid unit. That culminated in our internal business improvement and audit team, within which we have a remarkable individual, Mr Melvyn Waumsley, who is the state aid guru—we defer to him, although we now have significant knowledge on the issue across the organisation—producing a position statement paper. That has a focus on community enterprise, as that is where some of the issues have emerged in the recent past. The paper has been seen by our board, so it is a matter of public record, and I am happy to share it with the committee. We are in the process of talking to colleagues in other organisations about how we align much more closely and make common and shared decisions on state aid.
I have an observation and a request.
Briefly, please, Mr Stevenson.
Given that we are pretty clear that there is huge hidden self-constraint on the issue, which of necessity you cannot measure easily, I encourage HIE to be as public as possible in deconstructing those hidden constraints to which many people feel themselves subject, using the evidence base that you have. That would be extremely helpful.
We would also love to see HIE’s position paper, if that is at all possible.
I am sure that it can be shared.
Stuart McMillan is next.
Thank you, convener, although Stewart Stevenson just stole the question that I was going to pose. However, I have another one. Earlier, we heard about community involvement at Machrihanish and that about 70 per cent of the population had taken part in the wider community involvement operation.
To clarify that for the avoidance of doubt, that figure relates to the vote to go ahead with land ownership, rather than simply community involvement.
Okay. Over the past decade or so, have there been any marked differences between urban and rural areas in relation to community involvement in schemes?
Your question goes to the heart of where communities work and where they do not. I have both in my ward, so I recognise that quite well. In some ways, the rural communities work an awful lot better—positively, as somebody said earlier—although not all of them, as one of them has more problems. They more naturally have something to hold them together, as people tend to know one another better. That is much harder to achieve in most urban areas.
It is an interesting question. How do we engage communities and get a community that has not been active to become active? Do we create the conditions for that? If so, what are those conditions?
Early stage community organisation interventions are really important in creating the capacity for communities to be able to go on and think bigger things. For the best part of a decade, our assets team has provided access to expertise and a little bit of resource. As I mentioned earlier, that allows a group to be autonomous and make some decisions. We do not put whistles-and-bells caveats on how the money should be spent; we encourage the community to think about their trajectory, their governance and their constitution. Once they have gone through some of those early stage development processes, we encourage them to think about how they engage with a wider community.
Thank you for your evidence, which has been very useful. I suspend the meeting for approximately 10 minutes for a comfort break.
I welcome our third and final panel of witnesses. Aubrey Fawcett is corporate director of environment, regeneration and resources and Stuart Jamieson is head of regeneration and planning at Inverclyde Council, and Allan McQuade is business infrastructure director at Scottish Enterprise. For this panel, we are also joined by Duncan McNeil MSP, whom I welcome to the meeting. I invite him to declare any interests that are relevant to the committee.
I am not aware that I have any interests that I am required to declare to the committee, but I refer members to my declaration in the register of members’ interests.
Thank you. I will take your questions at the end, after I have given committee members an opportunity to put their questions.
No—we have no opening statement.
I will start the questioning. Gentlemen, what were the original objectives of Riverside Inverclyde? What progress has been made to date in achieving those objectives? Who wants to start?
I will kick off. We shared a paper with the committee, which I think has been circulated. I refer members to the start of that paper, which goes into detail on the objectives. Let me just get the right paper in front of me.
Convener, for clarification, is Mr Fawcett referring to the paper that we received in confidence?
That is correct.
My understanding is that committee members need to honour the agreement that was made when the paper was supplied to the committee, which was that the paper would be kept confidential. If Mr Fawcett is going to start quoting from the paper, has the council lifted the confidentiality agreement that was reached with our committee clerks about that paper?
Mr Fawcett?
No, the council has not lifted that agreement, because the council, Scottish Enterprise and Riverside Inverclyde are still in the process of considering the paper. Mr Wilson is correct that we should not quote individual elements of the paper. However, I can say without causing difficulties in that regard that although we consider the paper still to be private, in due course we will release most, if not all, its contents once we have finished our consultation internally and with the stakeholders who are participating and providing information. We are quite happy for members to have access to the document to see the context. The objectives are set out in that paper. I hope that that makes things easier, convener.
Without quoting directly from that paper, which you say remains confidential, perhaps you could give us an idea of the original objectives for Riverside Inverclyde and where it is in terms of succeeding in those objectives.
One of the main planks of activities and objectives that Riverside Inverclyde was required to participate in was physical regeneration of the Inverclyde area. That required Riverside Inverclyde to concentrate its activities around seven geographies, to which another—Gourock—was bolted on later. Riverside Inverclyde was also supposed to provide activities related to physical regeneration, such as facilitating economic restructuring and, obviously, engaging on access to opportunities for the local community. Those are the main planks of activity that are associated with the objectives.
It is fine for you to be as general as you want to be with regard to the paper, but that should not stop you giving us detail and fleshing out the bones of the original objectives and where you are at the moment.
I can tell you about some aspects of the targets for Riverside Inverclyde that were published back in 2006-07. For example, 77 hectares were provided for development purposes, provision of business space and job creation, and those elements were identified and were probably quite accessible on RI’s website. So far—I will work on a percentage basis—about 66 per cent of the public money that has been allocated has been expended and RI has managed to deliver 66 per cent of its business space target. I also note that one of the facilities that it funded was the Beacon theatre. Over and above that, the number of jobs that it has provided is proportionately small, at 191.
What was the target for jobs?
The target was 2,600 jobs.
Okay.
As for how that lies in that grand scheme of things, one of the previous witnesses—the councillor who was sitting in this very seat—said that regeneration is very much a long-term business. That is also made clear in Inverclyde Council’s submission. As someone who has been in regeneration for many years—I headed up economic development at Clackmannanshire Council, was principal economic adviser at Fife Council, was head of regeneration at North Tyneside Council and am now economic director at Inverclyde Council—I am absolutely clear that comparing what has been achieved halfway through a development programme, which will be purely a snapshot, with the original targets is not the way to be able to say whether you have or have not achieved something. I guess that when you engage with the other urban regeneration companies you will probably get a similar message. I am aware of recent reports in The Scotsman about another urban regeneration company that had created something like 360 jobs.
You concentrated on jobs in your response, but the initial thrust of my question was on leverage. HIE said earlier that for every £1 that it has invested, £6.60 has been levered in. Can you tell us, Mr Fawcett, what investment has come in from the investment that was made from the public purse?
We did not get into that in the report. We identified what opportunities there would be in terms of the gross value added, which was about 9 per cent, compared with the original target.
Gross value added would be about 9 per cent, compared with the original target.
Yes. Are you referring to private sector investment?
Yes.
The original target for GVA was £90 million and the original target for private sector investment was £295 million. That number was identified and published about six or seven years ago.
Where are you at now?
Do you mean in terms of private sector leverage?
Yes.
Private sector leverage at the moment is sitting at £3 million to £3.5 million.
From what investment from the public purse thus far is that?
I think that public investment has been £60 million or £61 million.
Okay. We might come back to that.
Part of your evidence is on how the various partners work together. How does Scottish Enterprise work with Inverclyde Council to provide physical, economic and social regeneration in the area?
Obviously, we work in close partnership with Inverclyde Council on those issues. Scottish Enterprise is a national agency, so our focus is on the national agenda, with Inverclyde being part of that. Our work with Inverclyde is through our focus on account-managed companies and sector growth.
What does SE do at a more local level?
In 2008, with the change away from the local enterprise companies, it was agreed that Scottish Enterprise would not be part of local economic development and regeneration, which is now very much the focus of councils. We obviously have dialogue around that, and there is a relationship, particularly around company growth, between account-managed companies and the business gateway, which is the council’s responsibility.
Whether the work is more general or local, how do you ensure that there is no duplication and that there is absolute value for money in all that is being done and looked at?
As was said in the previous evidence sessions, that is done through dialogue and through ensuring that we are joined at the hip in terms of development projects. It is also done through ensuring that, where we are working with a company, there is no overlap in terms of other funding.
An interim review of account management was mentioned in the previous evidence session. Is there just dialogue or can you point us to something more concrete?
We operate through the relationship and we ensure that, if we are working with companies, the council knows what we are doing and how we are supporting them.
So you cannot point to a mechanism, although we have the interim review.
A mechanism is in place across Scotland for companies to come through the pipeline from business gateway to account management. That is reviewed regularly. I am the responsible officer for Inverclyde Council, so it is my responsibility to ensure that no overlap exists and that there is dialogue. As Mr McCann said when he was sitting in the seat that I am now in, we ensure that through close working relationships.
I ask Mr Fawcett to give the council’s perspective.
I agree entirely with Mr McQuade about engagement. He and I have regular meetings. Having worked with the old enterprise network in Scotland, I think that the lines of responsibility and the ability to help each other are clear in the new enterprise network. I am impressed with how we engage with the enterprise network. Years ago, councils were probably not such effective engagers, and perhaps Scottish Enterprise was not, either. However, we now have an absolutely spot-on working relationship; it is working extremely well.
Can you offer the committee examples of when, for instance, you were on top of something through dialogue and you identified duplication?
I will give a specific example in which the outcome was positive. Shed Media, which produces the television programme “Waterloo Road”—you might know it—was known to be looking for a school facility, and that interest in property came across my desk. I had a conversation with the council about its surplus property—the URC was also involved in the discussion—and the outcome was that Shed Media chose to come to Greenock. It was offered a number of locations in Scotland.
It is good that you can point to something positive. Sometimes, we learn more from negatives.
We have regular engagement with account managers in Scottish Enterprise and we have a positive working relationship with them. We believe that the businesses in Inverclyde benefit from that.
I am in a bit of a quandary, gentlemen. We have a document that is not for publication; Mr Fawcett started by trying to quote from it. I will try to tease out answers to the questions about leverage that I asked previously, which still have not really been answered. Mr McQuade heard the evidence from Highlands and Islands Enterprise. How much has each pound of public money levered in?
Mr Fawcett referred to the numbers. I will step back to give a bit of context to why we are where we are with the report. It was commissioned jointly by Riverside Inverclyde, Scottish Enterprise and Inverclyde Council and it was produced in June. The Riverside Inverclyde board, which was considering the matter through its chair, decided to hold a special board meeting to consider the report and comment on it, as would be expected when an organisation is reviewed. The review was independent.
Gentlemen, I am sure that you understand the quandary that the committee is in. We have received this report, which we have agreed is not for publication, and the first thing that you do in giving evidence is quote the report. John Wilson rightly picked up on that in the initial stages of your evidence.
We would have to look closely at the position with regard to urban regeneration, and I would have to get back to you in further written evidence.
When is the report likely to become a public document?
As I said, the board of Riverside Inverclyde is considering it at the moment. It will meet tomorrow for further discussion of it and of the way forward. Given the pressure from the committee, I would encourage the board to get to a point at which we can release the majority of the report. There are parts of the document that cover what I would consider to be commercially confidential aspects of relationships with third party organisations.
The committee understands such relationships and has always behaved with honour and integrity in that regard. I will come back to the issue.
Good afternoon, gentlemen. At the outset I stress that, since I was elected to the Parliament, I have been supportive of Riverside Inverclyde and have made comments both here and outside the Parliament in support of it. I have seen the benefits of the infrastructure that it has put in place and I commend it for that. Nevertheless, it is a public organisation that receives public moneys and, as for any public organisation, it is important for it to be thoroughly scrutinised.
I think that we are moving into the territory of the detail of the report, convener. In relation to the council’s submission, Stuart Jamieson will cover some aspects of targets and outputs. I note that every other council at today’s meeting was asked about those things. We currently have a focus on Riverside Inverclyde, but I am happy for Stuart Jamieson to pick up on your question about the council’s submission.
An example of where the community has been listened to is in respect of our employability programmes. Inverclyde Council has developed some employability programmes in liaison with the community planning partnership. There is a strategic employability group that comprises representatives of the public sector, private sector, third sector and voluntary sector. In designing the programmes for our £2 million employability programme, we engaged effectively with the community. We listened to the community in respect—
Will you clarify whether that £2 million is Riverside Inverclyde money or Inverclyde Council money?
It is Inverclyde Council money.
Where has the tie-in been with Riverside Inverclyde, with both organisations following through and working in tandem with a strategy?
It was clear at the outset of Riverside Inverclyde that it would concentrate on physical regeneration while the council team concentrated on employability and, I suppose, the softer elements. That was a fairly successful strategy. Stuart Jamieson’s team did not get involved in active, physical regeneration. The separation has been quite clear cut. We recognise that there has been a wee bit of blurring around the edges in business development support, but that is essentially how the work was led.
RI was set up in 2006 and the members agreement was signed in 2008. In between those points, some £8.6 million was allocated to Riverside Inverclyde for expenditure. How was that money thoroughly scrutinised?
Convener, I am trying to get the drift on the relationship between the types of questions that colleagues from the other councils were asked and the questions that we are being asked, which are focused on the activities of Riverside Inverclyde. I am trying to weigh that up in relation to how we can give a flavour of regeneration as a whole within Inverclyde, and not just the work of Riverside Inverclyde.
Mr Fawcett, committee members are free to ask the questions that they wish to ask. We heard other evidence earlier today and we have questioned you on exactly the same things. Thus far, you have failed to give us the answers because of a document that is not for publication. We agreed that we would not refer to it, but the first thing that you did today was to refer to the document.
It does not appear to be.
Okay. You talked about the downturn. Everyone around the table, throughout the nation and, probably, around the globe is very aware of the downturn. Were targets adjusted? Was there a realistic adjustment of possible achievements when the downturn happened?
The targets in the business plan remained set as ambitious, so, in a word, the answer to your question is no. Part of the mid-term review that we are carrying out is to determine the direction of travel for the company and how best to revise the targets. The targets were discussed at the—
Can I stop you there? We have had the mid-term review now. At the beginning of the economic downturn, in 2007-08, how long did you wait before you started those adjustments?
The URC is an arm’s-length company. The board, which included a mix of public and private sector members and a private sector chair, working with the chief executive, determined that the targets would be held.
Public and private bodies right across this country and others realigned business plans at that point in time, because they realised that a lot of different things were going on, some of which had never been experienced before. Are you telling me that at that point Riverside Inverclyde did not change its business plan?
It changed its business plan to adjust the direction of travel. As Mr Fawcett said, it took on an additional area of focus. It focused more on areas where there would be economic development outcomes, such as direct provision of business infrastructure. The Clyde View office development came forward through the business plan to help address the economic downturn. Riverside Inverclyde adjusted its business plan but left the targets.
So there was no adjustment to forecasts or targets.
As we have said, a long-term regeneration strategy was set out. You have to be ambitious in the long-term agenda, so the board determined that it would leave the targets as they were in order to be ambitious and take a long-term view of outcomes.
I understand ambition, but there is realism, too.
Following on from what has just been said about targets, did any discussions take place between Riverside Inverclyde and Inverclyde Council on the resources that were available and each organisation’s vision for wider regeneration in Inverclyde? Was there a shared vision or were there two independent visions? Was there any co-operation?
There was on-going dialogue with the chief executive over quite a long period. We agreed which areas of activity we would get involved in, where there was close work that could overlap. On the strategy document that RI worked to, it had a business plan, which it reviewed.
That is okay.
Who will deal with that question?
I am happy to do so.
I will pick up on that point and come back to my earlier comments about Scottish Enterprise’s focus on national organisation and sector delivery. On Riverside Inverclyde’s future development, I should say that we are very committed to working with the company. We would look to the council to take the lead on developing its direction of travel, but we would certainly have an input into the debate.
Are you finished, Mr McMillan?
No, convener.
We are talking about different economic times. Given the challenges facing Inverclyde and its position in Scotland, it was appropriate to try to bring it into the mainstream. A lot has been achieved: we have talked about the physical regeneration that has happened, the business space that has been created and so on. The approach was appropriate for its time, but I think that Inverclyde still has to be ambitious, given the economic challenges that it faces, and that we need to keep pursuing the aims.
One might argue that Riverside Inverclyde was being asked to take on roles and indeed areas of land that should have been tackled before 2006 and that in the early days more was put on its plate than the council might have anticipated.
I think that that question takes us into the world of hypotheticals. The question of when this or that should have been done is neither fair nor pertinent.
In that case, convener, may I ask another question?
Okay.
Were Riverside Inverclyde’s corporate governance and management satisfactory? By that, I mean the frequency of its board meetings, the papers that were published and the information that was made available to allow decision makers to make decisions.
The board papers were satisfactory, but the timing of board meetings sometimes slipped a bit due to circumstance. The council and Scottish Enterprise—the two of us—were working with the chief executive to ensure that the timing of boards meetings and so on was appropriate. The governance, in terms of the decision-making process, was and is appropriate.
What are the panel members’ views on community planning partnerships in Inverclyde? Are they supporting community-led regeneration?
The community planning partnership in Inverclyde works; it listens to the community. Employability programmes, which I cited previously, are an excellent case in point—through listening to the community and promoting programmes that are specific to the community’s needs, we have addressed some of the major challenges that we face in terms of unemployment levels.
Scottish Enterprise is a member of the community planning partnership but, as I said, it is not directly involved, because it is a national organisation. From what I see of the relationships that the council has formed with the community, I echo the comments that have been made, but it is not an area that we are involved in from day to day.
Good afternoon, gentlemen. First, can you advise the committee about the membership of Riverside Inverclyde’s board? How many of the members were public sector representatives?
I apologise if I am wrong—I do not have the figures in front of me—but having done a quick calculation I think that the members of Riverside Inverclyde’s board included two from Scottish Enterprise, three from the council, one from the community and three business representatives.
That is a total of nine members, and the chair of the board was one of the private sector representatives.
Yes.
Thank you—that provides useful clarification.
Aubrey Fawcett and I generally met the chief executive on a monthly basis, although it is fair to say that the timetable slipped over the past year when meetings were not overly regular. We were working to address that to ensure that the proper relationship was in place.
In addition to the meetings that Allan McQuade and I had with the chief executive, we had operational meetings, particularly on the physical development of sites and the planning process. We still have those planning liaison meetings, at which we engage on which projects are being considered, look at issues that are challenging from the perspective of getting public consents in place and try to facilitate progress. That is an on-going process. Stuart Jamieson and I sat down with the project managers to review their thoughts, ideas and proposals, so that we could try to make it as easy as possible for them to implement things.
In relation to the monthly meetings and the operational meetings to which Mr Fawcett referred, how regularly did Mr McQuade report to his line management about issues with Riverside Inverclyde and how often did Mr Fawcett report to the council and the relevant committee?
I reported regularly. As I mentioned, I have responsibility for all Scottish Enterprise activity in relation to urban regeneration companies. My managing director has changed recently, but I have monthly meetings to discuss a range of things that I am responsible for across the country, with URCs picked up on by exception if there are issues to be addressed.
I have an obligation to get the operational plan up on a yearly basis and there are regular reports in between to identify progress on projects, so there is regular engagement with members. There has been engagement with them on the recent report as well. We are not backward at coming forward with information for members.
Mr McQuade, given your experience with URCs, is this a unique situation that we find ourselves in with Riverside Inverclyde, or is it common among URCs?
What do you mean by—
I am talking about the operation of the URC, the return for the public pound and the other issues identified in earlier exchanges.
In the main, the URCs all work well although Riverside Inverclyde has its current issues, which we are working our way through. They all function well and there is full scrutiny of how public money is spent. Riverside Inverclyde has its challenges, which have been thrown up by the report, that we will work our way through.
Thank you.
It is for an employability pipeline that takes people from the hardest-to-reach areas towards employment.
Is that £2 million set aside annually or over a period of time?
The council’s current commitment is to provide it annually.
Can you tell us how many jobs have been created to date and over what period those jobs have been created?
Over the past three years, a total of 375 jobs have been created.
So, about 125 jobs a year have been created through that £2 million fund.
What I said earlier was that one of the primary objectives of Riverside Inverclyde is physical regeneration. What Mr Jamieson refers to is the softer, economic side of things. The staff from the council concentrate their activities around employability and business support while Riverside Inverclyde focuses its activities primarily on physical regeneration. There is a clear divide. I am not saying that they are out of sync; I am just saying that that is who does the work, which is why there is a divide. In terms of the operating plan, the intention is to have the thing brought together with the two teams working closer, but that would not stop there being an allocation for physical regeneration and an allocation for employability-type activities and business support.
Are you telling me that Riverside Inverclyde had no targets for job creation from the funding that was being provided by the public purse?
I have not said that. I said that the target—
Perhaps you could repeat what you said earlier for Mr Wilson’s benefit.
Riverside Inverclyde’s target was to create around 2,600 jobs; it has created 191.
Right.
The media commentary suggests that trust had broken down between individuals in the two organisations. If that was the case, would that have affected the scrutiny of Riverside Inverclyde?
First of all—I am sure that you will have heard other people say this—I would not believe everything that is said in the papers.
Indeed.
Over and above that, trust had not broken down. We would not have committed to large-scale projects with Riverside Inverclyde had trust broken down. We had a very good working relationship at the operational level.
I have not had sight of the leaked document or even the summary, so my comments will be general. My questions will not be parochial: I am attending the committee because of my constituency interest in the matters that are being considered by the committee in its important inquiry.
Who will have a bash at answering that question? They will not want to go into the political sphere when doing so.
First and foremost, it was not a 10-year commitment. Scottish Enterprise approved rolling funding and an earmarked amount of money was available to the URC.
You would not disagree that Inverclyde Council is the only organisation that is contributing significant finance.
Funding is coming to the URC from the Government. The URC is also in a position to bid for money from the new regeneration fund, so that money is potentially available from the Government. It is to the council’s credit that it has continued to invest in and support the URC.
I think that we established from your earlier remarks that the council is standing foursquare behind that process.
I said earlier that regeneration is a long-term play in terms of commitment. Figures that are a snapshot in time need to be taken in context. We are in the unfortunate position that, because of a leak, the figures are perhaps not being taken in the appropriate context. We hope to make sure that that issue is resolved. Given the energy that is available through Scottish Enterprise, the council and the partners in Inverclyde, we should be able to move forward with little or no effect on the regeneration prospects for the area.
It is extremely unfortunate that we ended up with the report effectively being traded in the press. That is not the way to do business. It only causes problems and angst. That is one of the reasons why we are before the committee today, I suspect. However—
Can I stop you there, Mr Fawcett? You are not before the committee today for that reason. We said right at the start of the session that we intend to talk to all the URCs and we hope to be able to compare what is going on in all of them. That will be a little bit difficult, considering that we have been restricted in terms of what we have in front of us. You started off quoting the document that we were not supposed to refer to and you have just said that that document was leaked. I have not seen the leaked document. I have not seen what the papers in Inverclyde or elsewhere have been saying in that regard, apart from a few snippets that were sent to me via Twitter, which is not the way to conduct business in my opinion. If I were in your shoes, given that the document has been leaked anyway, I would have thought that maybe now was the time for some openness and transparency, which may help to dispel some of the myths that have built up, restore confidence and add to people’s wellbeing, which is surely what the URC is all about.
Thank you, convener. I have to say that we are entirely transparent. As Mr McQuade said, our intention is to make available as much of the report as possible—apart from the commercially confidential elements. I have a lot of questions about what has been said in the press. We would not be here today if the report had not been leaked. We would have been able to go through due process and I would have thought that maybe by this time we would have been able to publish the greatest part of the report. Sadly, I am in a difficult position—as you are, convener—but that is where we are today.
Mr McNeil?
I am aware that you have had a long meeting, convener, but I have another couple of small questions. I will not test your patience, or that of the committee.
Please make questions and answers very brief.
To pick up on Stewart Stevenson’s questions, what if there had not been a Riverside Inverclyde urban regeneration company? What would Inverclyde look like now?
I do not like hypothetical questions very much, I have to say; I prefer to deal in facts. I do not think that anybody could really answer your questions, Mr McNeil.
I do not wish to cut across you, convener, but I picked up that line of questioning from Stewart Stevenson, who asked about what would have happened without the regeneration company.
I listened to the earlier debate with interest and found the dynamic interesting. Clearly, one person’s regeneration is another’s general council business. Urban regeneration companies bring a long-term if time-bound focus to addressing certain challenges, and it is clear that, in Inverclyde, the sense of place would not have improved had it not been for the work of the URC and the additional moneys available to it. As for the new buildings that have been provided, Inverclyde might have lost a couple of significant companies that were looking for new premises but had to move away because the properties that they needed were not available. URCs address and accelerate solutions to specific problems. I am not placed to comment on what schools or other elements do with regard to regeneration; I am looking at the issue purely from my knowledge of URCs.
I do not think that this is hypothetical, convener, because there is real, tangible evidence that Riverside Inverclyde has made genuine improvements to Inverclyde. It has, for example, brought jobs; I recognise that it is only a small number but, as I understand it, that is the case with many of the other URCs. It has brought physical regeneration and, indeed, town centre regeneration through money that has been provided by the Scottish Government. Genuine benefits have accrued and I would not for a minute like to leave committee members with any impression other than that Riverside Inverclyde has brought something positive to the table. We have debated how much has been spent and the value-for-money element; I accept those points, but the fact is that had Riverside Inverclyde not been there some of these benefits would not have been brought to the table.
Thank you.
The convener has already made this point but, in response to the allegation that our questions are based on a leaked document, I want to make it clear that many of the questions that have been asked and, indeed, which I myself have put to witnesses were based on the evidence provided by Inverclyde Council, Scottish Enterprise and responses to our earlier questions. If problems have arisen in the local community as a result of the leaked document, that is an issue for Riverside Inverclyde’s board and the organisation’s various partners.
I reiterate that the committee intends to speak to all the URCs. No exception is being made here. The committee received a not-for-publication document and has behaved honourably and with integrity. I should also point out that it was Mr Fawcett who began the session by attempting to quote the document in question, which in itself has opened up a further can of worms.
Will you be calling for similar reports and transparency from the other urban regeneration companies? I am sure that that will be helpful.
We will be asking the questions that we have asked today about leverage and everything else.
But will you be calling for similar reports?
I do not know whether the other URCs have such reports, Mr McNeil, but we will try to gather as much evidence as we possibly can from them.
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