Rural Employment
Item 2 is likely to be the main business of today's meeting. We will receive further evidence in our inquiry into changing employment patterns in rural Scotland. The committee will hear from Mr Allan Watt and Councillor Andrew Campbell, who represent the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities. I propose that we follow our established routine and allow the witnesses time for a short presentation to highlight the issues before members ask them questions.
A paper containing suggested areas of questioning was circulated this morning by e-mail. Extra copies are available. Have committee members received a copy of that paper?
Members indicated agreement.
Using those questions as a guide, we will be able to raise the issues that are important. As ever, members should feel free to direct the discussion into any areas that are not covered by those questions. I now invite Allan Watt and Andrew Campbell to address the committee.
Mr Allan Watt (Convention of Scottish Local Authorities):
Thank you, convener. Many thanks for inviting us to present our evidence to you. I understand that all members have a copy of our report and the presentation overheads. I would like to spend time on one diagram in particular.
In the report, we have tried to set out a national local government response, to provide a broad framework for individual council responses. Most rural councils, if not all, will be responding formally if they have not done so already. We are pleased that the inquiry has focused on the broader employment issues, rather than on a narrowly defined sector. COSLA has called for that for some time, and we are keen to work closely with the Parliament in future.
Yesterday, the Minister for Rural Affairs launched "Rural Scotland: A New Approach". We welcome the line that is adopted in that approach, which suggests that the emerging work of the community planning task force will be to roll out community planning to ensure that the rural voice is heard and that the needs of rural areas are prioritised. That was a welcome statement, as we had been waiting for some time for a formal response from the Executive. What we have heard over the past few months has been encouraging.
We would like the Executive to recognise the need to shift the focus from agriculture to a wider concept of rural development, in which environmental and social issues are bound up. That must be reflected in all that the Executive and other bodies dealing with rural development do.
There must be a specific Scottish response. The announcement by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food of a £1.6 billion seven-year rural development plan has much to commend it, but the department's approach tends to be fairly centralist and top down, which is not appropriate for Scotland. Any policy response to this inquiry should set out regional differences and be subtle enough to address them. The Minister for Rural Affairs has already acknowledged that, both in his document "Rural Scotland: A New Approach" and in the forward strategy for Scottish agriculture. We need to take a subtle approach and I shall explain how I think we can do that.
Within that subtle approach, we need an holistic perspective that is capable of joint service delivery and much better integration of services. Our challenge will be to squeeze more out of the public pound, a sentiment that has been reflected in evidence to the Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee during its review of enterprise networks. One of the big challenges facing rural Scotland is that we need a critical mass of demand to justify public services. That is difficult to achieve in rural communities. In many areas, when a local school or shop is forced to close, we hit a downward spiral—it can be difficult to stop that trend. There must be a subtler way of recognising the need for key rural services.
Many remote rural areas are facing the impact of population decline and a lack of vibrancy. Often, there is also an imbalance of population structure, with young people moving out. In some cases, that can be offset by people moving in, but often those people are elderly, which puts additional pressures on services. We must be alert to the fact that the overall figures do not always reveal such subtle changes, all of which will have an impact on downstream activities. For example, a reduction in agricultural employment will impact on downstream services and rural service providers, which in turn will impact on the ability of local authorities to react positively.
We have long said that we must consider added value in agriculture. None of that is new, but it is heartening that local government is working with others on farmers' markets and other initiatives. A tremendous breadth and depth of work is taking place. We took evidence on Friday and were delighted with what we heard on that front. There are little indications that, working jointly, we can begin to address some of these issues. However, we must be alert to the fact that a number of key industries are contracting out, which denies benefits to local communities. If those industries bring in employees from outside the area only for the day and then those employees disappear, the knock-on benefits also disappear.
We are delighted by and hopeful of the role that telematics may play in rural Scotland. They could have a profound effect, but we must ensure that there is a level playing field in terms of the infrastructure. If we are not careful, there could be information-rich and information-poor areas. We must ensure that all people can benefit from telematics and that we do not simply accelerate the divide between the haves and the have-nots in technological awareness and access.
Since the early 1980s, we have seen a marked reduction in rural services. That tends to have a cumulative impact. What is often forgotten is the direct effect on people who are employed in the public sector in rural areas. A reduction in the budgets of rural local authorities can have a direct impact on the number of people who live, work and add vibrancy to rural communities. The loss of former public utilities and local government jobs over the past 10 to 15 years has also impacted on the number of people who live and work in rural Scotland.
Without making my evidence sound too much like a whingeing session—I shall come on to some more positive aspects in a moment—I think that it is important to point out those issues. We are concerned about the potential impact of the Postal Services Bill, which some have estimated could result in a loss of up to 40 per cent of rural post office businesses. On Friday, Post Office Counters challenged us to work jointly with post offices. That is something else that the committee's inquiry might address.
We are aware that, in order to respond to tighter global economic demands, public and private services have been centralised, with knock-on effects for rural Scotland, such as the closure of schools, shops and hospitals. If we are to address that trend, we must consider how we can link up with the agencies to tackle those problems.
The greatest challenge is to ensure that rural communities benefit and flourish during the current rapid change and that policy responses are better integrated, more effective, locally responsive and part of a strategic framework for rural policies and actions. The secret will lie in resisting a quick fix, while recognising that we will need some early wins to keep things moving. Scotland was ahead of the game with the rural white paper, because it took a thematic approach rather than a narrow, sectoral approach. However, we have failed to build on that; we need a rural champion to do so.
Independent research from the University of Birmingham has confirmed that we are also ahead of the game on community planning. There is real potential in the work that is now going ahead throughout Scotland for community planning to provide a powerful strategic framework to unite agencies, policies and services. I draw the committee's attention to the diagram in my submission, which shows the potential for a community plan to draw together a plethora of agencies and partnerships to address key rural issues.
At the same time, community plans are capable of being subtle enough to listen to local communities and powerful enough to react upward to provide a voice that can respond positively to the Executive, to Westminster and to the European Union. Without that powerful local voice, there will be no mechanism for drawing together the disparate range of services and policies that is subtle enough to take account of regional differences.
I welcome comments from the committee.
We now move on to comments and questions, as usual. Who wants to start?
Thank you for your report. I have some questions. I will start with community planning, but I will bring in some of the other issues that you raised. You said, quite rightly, that a bottom-up, local and powerful voice is required. It is clear from evidence that we have taken that it is important that a bottom-up approach is taken and that some way is found to facilitate community participation in planning. What are your views on progressing that approach? We often talk about involving communities, but we are not very good at it.
I have a number of thoughts on that matter. I chair Angus rural partnership and the Tay estuary forum, so I have been at the sharp end of partnership working and know that it is extremely difficult. One has to deal with wicked issues, such as how to balance, or mesh, a positive, joined-up response from the service deliverers with taking on board what is being said from below. COSLA is absolutely clear on the need to clear out the range of partnerships—there are far too many of them, which makes it difficult for the big players, if you like, to commit fully to them. Equally, we must be much better at responding to local demands. That is why we said firmly that, at local authority level, we need a powerful strategic statement, which should be a community plan that is capable of listening and responding to local demands.
All 32 authorities in Scotland have submitted their community plans; I have reviewed them all. I was heartened by the efforts that have been made to link with local people within the plans. Rural strategies were pushed from the rural white paper onwards, but little progress has been made on them. I suggest that that is because they have been overtaken by community planning as the strategic statement.
The COSLA line on rural strategies is that they may still be required to run parallel with community planning, in order to incorporate the rural voice in the community planning effort and to raise specific rural issues. However, that approach will vary across the country. We are convinced that in the Highlands, for example, that approach may not be necessary, as one could argue that the Highlands is an entirely rural area. In areas such as south Lanarkshire, which has a rural-urban split, one might want a rural strategy to run parallel with the community plan.
Councillor Andrew Campbell (Convention of Scottish Local Authorities):
I will make a general comment on where I think we are today in rural areas before I say something about community planning. We have a 35 per cent reduction in gross output in the rural areas, and the effect of that on human life is immeasurable. The trade union movement would not accept the pressures that are being put on people who dwell in those areas—indeed, the European Parliament would not accept those pressures. The reason why those people have no voice—other than the National Farmers Union—is that their voices are diverse; it is difficult to distil them into one voice that says, "This is what is happening to the human element in rural areas—let's take action against the massive change."
I understand that, like local authorities, the Scottish Parliament has a statutory obligation to undertake a variety of services, which means that the opportunities for exercising financial discretion are limited. In rural areas, we have suffered considerably because of some of the legislation that has been passed—I am talking mainly about deprivation.
I believe that, if rural Scotland is to survive, the base industries of forestry, agriculture, tourism and fisheries must have a viable economic base on which we can keep the rural infrastructure going. As Alan Watt rightly said, the community plan seems to be the most sensible way of drawing together the rural fabric and of moving rural Scotland forward.
Elaine Murray will know that Dumfries and Galloway has a community plan manager, who is paid by the health board, the enterprise company and the council. We have made logical gains by bringing those three bodies together. The health board and the enterprise company have been speaking to each other over the past year and that has been a massive move in the right direction. I believe that all public agencies should be brought together—we must make them work together to deliver at grass-roots level, as Cathy Peattie suggested.
I have tried to give you my view and the view of COSLA. We are faced with a massive job, and I am trying to highlight the fact that we are now at a critical stage. If something is not done quickly for the base industries, the decline about which you are so concerned will continue. That is why we must try to halt it. Through the Scottish Executive and through Westminster, members should get to grips with the fuel and freight expenses that are costing agriculture, forestry and, to a great extent, tourism and the fishing industry in rural Scotland very dear, as you will know.
Thank you for your answer, Councillor Campbell. You are right—there probably are too many partnerships. It is important that people get together and concentrate on the issues.
I am interested in the wider partnership and in the participation of the community, including voluntary organisations and so on. There are some good examples of voluntary organisations playing a key role in partnerships, working alongside enterprise companies, health boards and councils. However, sometimes only lip service is paid to partnership and I am interested in how we can ensure that voluntary organisations play a full role, rather than being unequal partners. Their voices and their good ideas should be listened to. For example, community economic development should be considered, as that may be the way forward for certain communities, particularly in relation to service delivery.
As someone who serves on partnerships on a voluntary basis, I can only agree with Cathy Peattie. However, the bigger agencies must work harder to try to ensure that we draw on different strands of opinion and involve different people. In order to do that, the partnership must be interesting and exciting and people must see that their work is being acted on. That is the secret.
We are beginning to see people locking into some of the working groups that are emerging through the community planning framework. For the first time, those people are beginning to see a connection with their work, how their work connects with the work of others and, if you like, the end game. That is the real test for community planning.
Do you agree that that is because some of the organisations that I talked about have participated in the development of the community plans?
Yes.
I will take members in the order in which they indicated that they wished to speak—we will try to get the party balance right before the end.
I am interested in the views of witnesses, as representatives of local government, on the grant distribution system, on which the Scottish Executive can have an impact. In COSLA's submission, you welcome the Scottish Executive's invitation to councils for submissions to inform its review of local government finance. I am interested in your views of how the cost of delivery of services to rural areas could be quantified. You will be aware that the Arbuthnott report made a stab at that and that there has been quite a lot of controversy over whether the appropriate mechanisms were used. You will also be aware through COSLA that a number of rural areas did rather badly in the grant-aided expenditure distribution, which seemed to militate against rather than in favour of rural areas.
You suggest in your submission that the low incomes, increased cost of living, access to and increased cost of delivery of services in rural areas need to be investigated. How is COSLA tackling that? Is COSLA attempting to work out some sort of formula or series of indicators that would allow those factors to be taken into consideration?
Yesterday we were at Battleby where the Minister for Rural Affairs launched—what was it? There are so many glossy magazines. It was "Rural Scotland: A New Approach". He took the opportunity of challenging us on exactly Dr Murray's point, that we complain about not getting a sufficient share of the £21 million top-sliced for deprivation, but we must tell the Executive what the problems are and they will see what they can do. That can be answered in two ways, focusing on the political problem of getting our fair share or on making a contribution. We feel that the indicators are not correct at present. There are deprivation hot spots throughout rural Scotland that are not easily defined.
The Penhale, Noble, Smith and Wright proposals for England and Wales go a long way towards what we might want to say in a paper that would be useful to the committee. The kinds of composite indicators that would give a truer picture of rural Scotland would include income deprivation—rural areas have the lowest incomes in the whole country; and employment deprivation, which is cyclic—and some measurements were made in summer, a higher time of employment in rural areas. Also important are health deprivation and disabilities; deprivation resulting from geographical access to services; housing deprivation—I do not need to tell committee members about housing deprivation in the areas they represent; and education, skills and training deprivation—once again, that is about getting to it. People in Glasgow or Edinburgh can jump on a bus to get from A to B. People in rural Scotland cannot do that. They probably have to run a car, a massive cost for a low-income family.
In my own area, Dumfries and Galloway, the £21 million that was top-sliced off GAE last year was equivalent to £600,000. You may say that that is not a lot but it equates to 1.5 per cent in council tax. Although we do not get it we still have to spend it, so we had to raise council tax by 1.5 per cent because of that top slicing. That was pretty drastic for rural areas.
Was that all you wanted to ask?
Yes—unless Allan Watt wants to add something.
COSLA has made the point about the increasing costs of rural service provision and the closure of key services in both the private and public sectors, through the appropriate channels. The knock-on effect is substantial. Quite often local government is the last resort, jumping in to provide a service. A number of councils are beginning to track the loss of rural services. I know that in Angus, for example, there is something called the rural facilities information service, which tracks the closure of key services. The results have been quite worrying. Increasingly, councils are the last resort.
In a more positive vein, grants to rural shops and similar schemes have shown us a way of working with the enterprise companies and the Scottish Grocers Federation to retain vital services. That is worth developing further.
My question is not 100 miles away from the same subject. COSLA has been quite closely involved in formulating the social inclusion strategy. How effective do you think social inclusion partnerships and some of the other measures in the strategy are or might be in dealing with the causes and consequences of employment change in rural areas?
I have been directly involved in formulating the social inclusion strategy and I welcome the work that is currently being done to promote social inclusion. I worked with Mark Shucksmith on that. However, rural deprivation or exclusion is much less obvious than exclusion elsewhere. It is not area based or geographically concentrated, so it is much harder to define. For that reason, policy responses in rural areas have to be much more subtle than those in urban areas.
Because it is more difficult for people to understand fully what rural social exclusion is about, the policy responses are not always as powerful as they might be. One of the issues that this committee may want to examine is what would constitute a subtle response to rural social exclusion. I remember the early work that Mark Shucksmith did, which revealed clearly that rural social exclusion is often people centred and that very wealthy people can often be found living alongside very poor people. In the urban areas that is not the case and social exclusion tends to be much more concentrated, which makes the policy response easier. This is all about subtlety, and whether we have time for that, I do not know.
I noted that in answer to an earlier question, Allan, you commented that there were too many partnerships and that there was a need to clear some out. I would be interested if you could expand on that a little.
I would also like to point out one or two related developments. You will be aware of the recommendations of the Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee, which include the establishment of local economic forums. Much of the inspiration for that has come from the Grampian model. Scottish Enterprise, Scottish Enterprise Grampian, Aberdeen City Council, Aberdeenshire Council and Aberdeen Chamber of Commerce have for some time operated something similar—the north-east Scotland economic development partnership. Does that hold out any lessons for other areas that combine rural and urban interests?
In Grampian there has been discussion about what other partners to pull in, because, obviously, the organisations to which I have referred are big agencies. They include two local councils. There are many other people with an interest in economic development. Is it necessary to restrict local economic forums to a small number of powerful players, in order to have focus and to avoid involving a plethora of groups, or should they be flexible from area to area and from case to case?
Ross Finnie referred to that as what the Americans call a wicked issue. I will answer your last question first. I think that community planning ought to be capable of embracing the local economic forums recommended by the Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee. However, we recognise that in certain areas it may be sensible to have an economic forum that is spread across a much bigger geographical patch. There is a big debate about the level at which community planning can best operate. We take the view that it should operate at local authority level, but that it should be flexible enough to operate at a broader regional level, where appropriate.
It is entirely appropriate that Grampian should have such a powerful voice on economic development. However, it needs to lock into community planning. I say that because economic issues cannot be detached from social or environmental ones. Locking local economic forums into community planning frameworks will mean that they both retain their powerful strategic role and are informed by the other issues that affect community planning. For Grampian and for many parts of rural Scotland the key issue will be the relationship between local economic forums and community planning.
Perth and Kinross Council, along with many other councils, have sought to track the number of partnerships that exist. It came up with a figure of around 120 partnerships within the local authority area. That leads me to ask myself how Scottish Enterprise Tayside can commit fully to 120 partnerships. The answer is that it cannot. How can the local authority do that? The answer is that it cannot. We have to be selective and to have a framework. There is a strong suggestion that community planning would provide that framework.
I guess that there will be some tough decisions ahead and that some of the bigger organisations may be forced to say that they can no longer support a particular partnership in a particular way and that they must focus on the bigger issues. If enterprise companies and local authorities spread themselves too thinly, they may fail. Equally, there has to be a way of building in people from the grass roots. Some interesting models for doing that are beginning to emerge.
When it comes to partnership working, we must learn to give as well as take. Everybody tends to want to hold their own ground, but if that happens we will be unable to make the system work.
I have learned that partnership working is all about collaborative advantage. The people who are sitting around the table in partnerships have to be clear about what they want—what they will get from those partnerships and what they can give to them. In many partnerships people are not clear about what they want and what their organisation will gain from partnership working. In some cases, we have forced partners to ask themselves what they expect to get from a partnership and what they will give in return. There is a great deal of fuzzy thinking around this issue.
I know that in Canada the big agencies involved in coastal partnerships have been asked to work out the financial value to them of being part of a big strategic partnership. That has been very revealing. The agencies have then been asked to top-slice an element of what they gain to help run the partnership. There are lessons in that for rural Scotland.
Are you saying that the big agencies acquire the biggest financial benefit from partnerships?
Yes.
Do you think that being involved in partnerships benefits the big agencies in terms of their relationship with local communities? Local authorities have a track record of working at local level, but some of the other big agencies are not used to speaking to local people and organisations.
The agencies would be daft not to take advantage of that. One of the accusations levelled at quangos is that they are not democratically accountable. Locking them into community planning would allow them to say that they are getting closer to communities and to the democratic process.
I apologise for not being present during your oral presentation. However, I read your written submission with great interest. Forgive me if I cover ground that has already been gone over—stop me if I do.
I refer you to paragraph 5.5 of your submission, which was mentioned earlier. The last line of that paragraph talks about
"the increased cost of delivering services to rural populations."
That is something that we have discussed a great deal. The submission also refers to
"the increased cost of living in rural areas associated with accessing services".
That is the issue that I want to highlight.
I will give you an example. As a result of the local government financial settlement, Aberdeenshire Council, the authority that I know best—I represent West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine—has just lost 150 jobs. In 1995 the council wanted to decentralise its administration—to have local jobs in local communities and villages. I believe that Aberdeenshire Council is unique in having its headquarters outwith the authority area.
Villages in my constituency, such as Aboyne and Ballater, have had outstations, which the council is now closing. Consequently, people who want to pay their council tax, make inquiries and access council services and facilities will not be able do so. They are about to have to travel into Aberdeen city. The bus fare from Aboyne to Aberdeen is £5.50 one way—it is not like paying 80p to jump on the bus in Edinburgh to go down to the council offices. Decentralisation provides not only services that people can access readily, but local jobs in local areas. I am well aware of the constraints on Aberdeenshire Council, which wanted to—and did—go down the decentralisation route and is now having to centralise. My question is whether that is happening to the same extent throughout COSLA and the rest of rural Scotland.
You are absolutely right. In 1996-97, Dumfries and Galloway Council decided to have one-stop shops. The money was found in 1998, the building alterations took place in 1999 and I was supposed to open the shops last week. The council area spreads 120 miles from Langholm to Stranraer and 40 miles from the sea to the hills. In the past year, through the community planning process, we have been making close contact with and meeting the enterprise and health boards. At those meetings, it emerged that the health board had spare buildings in Stranraer and two buildings somewhere else and that the enterprise board had outlets here, there and everywhere. In our wisdom, we had spent money over three years on a one-stop shop system for the council, but all of a sudden, we realised, "Hey, boys. We are completely out of step", and that we should have a combined system.
We are now engaged in a process of thinking how we can justify a £1.3 million spend on new premises. We do not want to be isolated and provide services only for the council. The challenge is to draw bodies together through community planning. By doing that, I hope that we will address some of the problems that you raised and that there will be outreach in various areas.
Are you keeping the one-stop shop concept?
Yes, but if we had involved the other players in the field we could have done a better job. Unfortunately, local government is so slow to move that it took that amount of time. Information technology and e-commerce have come into play as well. I give the one-stop shops as an example, so that other parts of rural Scotland will not fall into the same traps. There is a good lesson to be learned. If we can pull agencies together to deliver a joint service, we will be doing rural Scotland a tremendous service.
That is my point and I would like to pursue it. When a council has a restricted budget, the decision to centralise its dealings with individuals is down to economies of scale, which save money. When we talk about outstations and one-stop shops we are talking not only about rural employment, but about the knock-on effect on the rest of the rural economy and on access.
I know Aberdeenshire well, where centralisation is happening. I deplore it and hope that it is not happening elsewhere. You have given the example of Dumfries and Galloway. Is the retreat from decentralisation happening outwith Aberdeen, or is Aberdeenshire the only place where it is happening?
We do not have specific facts and figures on that. However, the costs of decentralising are higher than centralising; otherwise we would not see the trend that we are seeing now. My initial response is that I would be willing to bet that authorities are being forced to centralise. It is a bitter irony that just at the point when it looks like we are going to get unequivocal support for community planning and working closely with the people, local government, which has taken the lead on decentralisation, is going to be forced to make an about-turn and centralise. That will send a terrible message about community planning and about our eagerness to deliver services as locally as we can and seek joint service provision. However, as some of the bigger organisations begin to embrace community planning, they may begin to say that they will commit more fully to joint service provision and sharing of buildings, for example. We may be able to reverse the trend.
Centralisation is meant to be a way of saving money, but how does that equate with the cost of economic development to rescue a small village that has lost council jobs, which needs more funding from the council to prop it up? It is almost a chicken-and-egg situation: you take away one thing and end up having to spend more on another.
I cannot argue with that analysis. Unfortunately, circumstances often force councils to make difficult decisions, which are often the last thing that they want to do. They do not have to fund the consequences directly, but they will pay indirectly. That is where there needs to be much closer integration of national policy. People need to consider the situation in the round.
We have heard a lot about Longbridge, for example, with people beginning to work out what whatever happens there will mean for the entire area—if one job goes at Longbridge, five will go in the local community. We have not yet seen deep economic analysis of what the loss of local government jobs in a community could mean for that community. We may not be talking about thousands of jobs but, in percentage terms, the loss could be as high if not higher.
I agree: one job lost in a small area can have the same impact as the loss of thousands of jobs in a large area.
Can you see any way of encouraging partnership working between agencies? I know of a community in my constituency which had access to money and decided that it needed social services, health, elderly care and so on. That community had its own pool of money—most do not—to start funding a project to build sheltered housing, medical beds, social work services and so on together. With the funding, the people fought to bring in all the agencies to finish the project. In a way, however, projects of that kind need somebody in the centre, who is not attached to any of the agencies, to pull everything together. Everyone says that the project is a great example of how to provide services in the same spot at a low cost to all the agencies, but it seems that something is stopping the same thing happening all over.
That is to do with partnership working in general and about how to make unwilling partners sit round the table. I believe that the boost for community planning will revolve around key carrots and sticks, which may be delivered nationally to give real encouragement to agencies to engage properly and, if they do not, to encourage them in another way—with a stick. If there is proper commitment to community planning, it will provide a national framework for it to happen and will not allow individual egos or small empire-building ambitions to get in the way of good, joint, community-based projects. The framework needs the extra boost-–there is no doubt about that.
The framework is there for match funding, but there needs to be a leader and the different partners need to be able to build on that. I do not think that we are doing that as well as we should. Funding is available, if it can be sourced and providing that legislation allows it. If funding cannot be achieved through match funding, there will come a time when legislation must be examined to find out whether it allows such processes to take place. We are on an ever-evolving machine and the changes that are taking place mean that such matters must be watched—legislation must allow for match funding.
The point about carrots and sticks is that the carrots can take different forms—they need not necessarily be financial. Some fiscal measures could be relaxed, which would provide encouragement. This is not about pleas for money—we must examine the issue in the round.
The community in Lochcarron to which I referred had community fund money that was left over from the oil industry. That community could have given up a hundred times, because the problems of trying to get people to work together make it almost impossible to get funding. The situation must be made easier. It is sensible to allow things to happen, rather to have them fought for.
That relates to the point that I tried to make earlier about ensuring that frameworks are in place to allow groups such as the one to which you refer to develop. We ought to be making things easier for people, not more difficult, as always seems to be the case. A joined-up, integrated framework at local level can respond better to the initiatives that come from such groups. We do not have such a system at the moment; sometimes it seems that what we have is its opposite.
Would it help if local government, for example, had a joint budget for community services?
You have touched on one of the carrots to which I referred. I think that, through community planning, we will begin to see a drive towards joint budgeting. If we could say, "Hey, there's money in here", that would be a big incentive for agencies to take partnerships seriously, and would certainly focus their attention.
Somebody must be the leader, however, otherwise that will not happen. That is the way life is.
And whom did you have in mind? [Laughter.]
I want to talk about the importance of information and communications technology to rural areas. There is a problem in that the introduction of telematics infrastructure and support can be more expensive in less populated areas. Companies that are involved in such activities will often charge more because there is not such large demand. Unless there is a way of overcoming the problems of bringing the ICT infrastructure to rural areas, telematics might act against the interests of rural areas because those areas will become information-poor while more highly populated areas become information-rich. Have you any thoughts about how that might be tackled so that rural areas can benefit from the advantages that ICT could bring, such as not having to travel and so on?
Yes. There must be a clear understanding of which areas have adequate coverage and which do not. First, a fairly extensive survey must be done on what is available in rural areas so that we can establish the extent of the shortfall. Once we are armed with that information, we can make it clear that those rural areas where there is a shortfall will suffer unless there is a level playing field. If nothing is done to encourage the introduction of that infrastructure, that will say something about our attitudes to such areas.
We do not have information on e-coverage and the depth of such coverage at the moment; I do not know of any one who does. We want to live in an information society in a modern nation. The Finns, for example, have decided to ensure that no matter where a person lives, they should have access to top quality coverage. Perhaps that is the standard that we should try to attain.
As Elaine Murray said, it is massively important that we structure e-coverage correctly. I am aware of a rural company that wanted to use an ISDN line, for which the cost would have been £220,000. That same service is provided in Glasgow for £3,000. That company would have provided up to 36 jobs. The impact on rural areas of the well-paid jobs that can come on the back of ICT is colossal. I know people are talking to BT—which was, perhaps, the culprit in that example—but Thus plc provides the same service. There are a few providers, but there must be a drawing together of those who are in the telematics business. That would give us a better idea of how best to ensure that rural areas are not socially or telematically deprived.
We should focus on and build on the strengths of rural areas. Everybody loves to live in a rural area—that is a massive strength.
I want to move the discussion on to social infrastructures in rural communities and, in particular, to talk about retaining young people in rural communities. That is a challenge. If we are to have a vibrant rural economy, people must live and work in rural areas. We must, therefore, encourage young people who were born in those areas to remain in them and we must encourage other young people to move into those areas.
There are pressures on local government funding because of a perceived lack of amenities in many rural areas. There have been cuts in voluntary groups' budgets, which have a knock-on effect on services for young people. I am interested to hear your comments on provision of services for young people. Is there a challenge in encouraging young people to stay in rural Scotland?
It is safe to say that provision of facilities for young people is essential if we are to enable and encourage them to stay in those areas. There is evidence that some more remote rural areas are losing young people. Without young people, the life-blood of rural areas is lost and without their life-blood they die—that is how fundamental young people are to those areas.
There is acknowledgement throughout local government that retention of young people in rural areas is crucial, but—as a result of pressures on budgets—local authorities are sometimes forced to close key facilities. On a positive note, there is increasing examination—through the community planning framework—of how facilities can be kept open, perhaps in conjunction with other service providers. For example, a lot of good work is being done in rural schools that provide after-school care clubs, adult education and so on. Attempts are being made to provide more services through schools to keep communities vibrant.
There is a limit to what local government can do on its own to ensure that young people stay in rural areas. Some good work is being done in economic development, but all the agencies must examine the problem. I am not sure whether I have answered your question fully.
It was a difficult question.
Some large rural communities in Scotland do not have sports centres; the lack of such facilities makes young people desperate to leave those communities and move to the cities. That is not healthy for the future of local rural economies. Do COSLA and local authorities analyse the availability of facilities for young people? To my knowledge, they do not. Perhaps I am wrong; if so, I would like to be corrected.
I will answer the specific question later, but I know that Councillor Campbell would like to come in on this.
Richard Lochhead's question follows on well from the question about telematics, in terms of young people and how we retain them in rural areas. I do not want to keep on about my area, but the Crichton college campus in Dumfries now has departments of Glasgow University, Paisley University, Bell College and Dumfries and Galloway College working together. We have 350 students; that figure will rise to nearly 700 this year and we expect it to rise further. The students are not all 18-year-olds, however; the age range is from 18 to 50 or 60. The campus is working closely with the schools, and the fact that students can travel there by bus for two years, rather than having to go to Glasgow or Edinburgh, helps us a lot. In a low-wage economy, that could also be very important for the young people's further education strands. I am sure that the University of the Highlands and Islands, with its Open University-style focus, also liaises with the schools in its area.
Having said all that, there is nothing wrong with students going to the city for a period of their lives to learn the other skills that people get from being in the city, aside from the education process.
Mr Lochhead mentioned recreational facilities; I believe provision of such facilities to be paramount. As was mentioned, local authorities' budgets for such facilities are tight, but there are means of trying to maintain them. We may have to use private finance initiatives; we are seriously considering that method for the bigger projects. In the immediate term, we are starting to bus children—up to 18 years old—to recreational facilities. That bussing is free, and gives children who live in rural patches the opportunity to get to some source of recreation. I believe that if we do not give them that opportunity, they are disadvantaged considerably compared with someone in the city, who can jump on a bus or walk around the corner.
Pressures mean that it is often difficult to create new sports centres in rural Scotland and to maintain the existing ones. When I have the good fortune to go to Scandinavia and see the quality of sports facilities there—often in fairly small and remote rural communities—I find it quite sad to come home and see what we have here. It is quite embarrassing—that is not the COSLA view, but a personal observation. I feel strongly about that.
There are some good examples of collecting information in Scottish local government. High-quality information is collected, based on rural settlement units, on the movement of facilities across five-year or 10-year periods so that the authorities can begin to track the availability of facilities. Some information exists, but it is patchy. Following local government reorganisation, it has been difficult for the smaller authorities to sustain high-quality research and information staff and services. The previous quality of information is perhaps not there, because of economies of scale.
I want to go back to what we were discussing before Richard Lochhead's point—partnership and other funding arrangements. The funding to support partnership activity is allocated through competitive means; that leads to winners and losers. Some areas become partnership-rich, while others become partnership-poor. How does COSLA view that tendency?
There is some concern about that. Economies of scale mean that some bigger, more powerful authorities and organisations are capable of producing very professional bids. That is not to say that the lesser, or less attractive—less sexy, perhaps—packages should fail, or be considered less deserving, because the council has not been able to submit an all-singing, all-dancing presentation with the bid. I have a real fear about that, and about the effect of economies of scale, particularly for rural Scotland. When a lot of work is done on a bid by the usual suspects—the one or two people who burn the midnight oil—it can be dysfunctional and disheartening when the bid fails. For some reason, the blame seems to rest with those people, who are in any case under-resourced. All the good work that has been undertaken jointly with the community begins to disappear. I have a real fear about that.
I made specific comment to the Minister for Rural Affairs yesterday about the rural challenge fund, which—it has been suggested—needs to be devolved to community planning level. I sit on the judging panel for the rural challenge fund, and I find it extremely difficult. We have all the applications in front of us, and officials are there to explain what the applications are about. I have to come to an almost impossible decision about a project that I have never seen in my life, which is located in an area that I am not that familiar with. That is wrong; it is far too centralist. We need to be much more intelligent in how we devolve such budgets to community planning level. I use that as one example, from personal experience. I think we have got it wrong at the moment.
Where there is a contrast between challenge funding and needs-based allocation of funds, do you have a preference, or is it a matter of horses for courses?
It should principally be needs-based. If it is not, we get into the competitive disadvantage situation, in which there are winners and losers. If we began to track that, we would find that the winners are those who are able to put a powerful, cogent case, because they have the resources to do so. We need to get away from that.
I recognise the criticism of the present system, but are you advocating that we should move away from the centralised approach in assessing the bids—say, in Edinburgh—and decentralise budgets to councils to judge? Is that what you are suggesting?
I am suggesting that the budgets are decentralised to community planning level, so that the partners can sit down and decide. The needs-based approach for each area needs to be handled centrally; otherwise there would be an enormous bun-fight.
But the decision making—
The decision making, I would suggest, should be done through the community planning steering group. This is an emerging model, and I am just floating some thoughts on it, but it is consistent with the COSLA line over the past two years.
If there are no further questions, or lines that members want to develop, I would like to express the committee's extreme gratitude to Mr Watt and Councillor Campbell for coming along, giving us the benefit of their views and answering our questions. Your contribution towards our inquiry into changing employment patterns in rural Scotland is greatly appreciated. Thank you for your assistance.
Thank you very much, convener. These are difficult, but challenging times. If we can all work together—including the Scottish Executive—we can make a difference in rural Scotland.