Official Report 246KB pdf
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the 12th meeting of the Enterprise and Culture Committee in 2004.
I am a member of the strategic advisory group that was established by the chairman of the Scottish Rugby Union to examine the future of Scottish rugby.
I am a director of Dundee United Football Club.
I am a shareholder in Aberdeen Football Club.
Our first panel of witnesses represents the New Opportunities Fund. I invite them to introduce themselves.
My name is David Campbell and I am the Scotland board member on the New Opportunities Fund. With me today is Eric Samuel, who is our senior policy officer.
You submitted written evidence, which has been circulated with the committee papers, so we will move on to questions.
It is there partly because we are in the throes of amalgamating with the Community Fund. With effect from 1 June, we will have an administration amalgamation. However, primary legislation from Westminster is required to enable full legal amalgamation to take place and it is anticipated that we will not be able to get that legislation through until perhaps the spring, or possibly the autumn, of next year. We will be constrained by the policy directions that we are given. It has been suggested that those directions will continue to fund programmes in health, education and the environment, much as the New Opportunities Fund does at present, and to give smaller grants to the voluntary and community sector, much as the Community Fund does at present.
I understand that, but I presume that that was always the case. I am trying to press you on whether you have been given any hints that a change of direction is likely. Was the remark that I quoted just a throwaway remark? We know that anything can change in the future, but why was the remark put in your submission?
I would not read anything sinister into the remark—it was included merely to highlight what could well be the case. We were not specifically involved in sports programmes until we introduced our new opportunities for physical education and sport—NOPES—programme, which is a recent development.
To approach the matter from a different angle, how valuable is the inclusion of sport in your programmes? Does it deliver value in relation to other areas such as health and education? To give an example, on Friday night I saw the Bank of Scotland's midnight league initiative in Dumfries, in which about 200 youngsters play football from 8 o'clock until 11 o'clock at night. I spoke to the police who are involved and they said that the number of reported incidents on Friday evenings has plummeted since the programme started. It is clear that in some circumstances sport can have a much wider effect than just as sport per se. Do you think that sport is of significant value? On the basis of that, do you think that it would probably continue to feature if rational judgments were made about it?
Sport is of significant value; as I said, we consider our sports programme not only as a sports programme but as part of other areas. I recently had a discussion with some senior police officers whose work relates to drug use. I asked them to imagine that they had a fairy godmother who could come along and give them a large sum of money, and to consider how they would like it to be spent to fight drug use. The answer was unequivocally that it should be spent on providing alternatives for young people—they see that as being their biggest challenge.
I am conscious of the large part that football plays in the life of Scotland, but my interest tends to be in the importance of less mainstream sports, and the difficulty that exists sometimes in funding activities such as motorbiking and car-based activities, particularly in the context of diversionary activities and reducing antisocial behaviour. Nothing in your submission speaks about non-mainstream sports. Do you have a strand that examines such applications, and whether and how you encourage them? What discussions have you had with other funding bodies?
We have always tried to be as flexible as possible with all our programmes. We tend not to be too prescriptive in defining activities: the range of activities that we have funded through our current NOPES programme is wide and includes motorcycling, athletics, basketball, cricket and cross-country. There are 23 projects involving dance, which is an important activity for young people to be involved in. There are disabled multisports projects, fitness projects, football, girls multisports, golf, gymnastics, hockey, horse riding, martial arts, mini tennis, rugby and skiing projects. Three projects involve leadership skills. There are swimming projects, tennis projects, one volleyball project and one weight-training project, so there is a wide range of activities. It is not for us to be prescriptive and say, "You must come forward with this." It is up to communities and leaders in local authorities, who are taking the lead in the NOPES programme, to come forward with projects.
My question was not about your being prescriptive, but about the discussions that you have had with other bodies to encourage more applications such as those to which I referred. I know that you cannot go out and solicit specific applications, but you can participate in activities to encourage awareness.
It is not our role to go out and encourage specific sports—it is up to communities to take ownership of what is happening in their areas. I will not second-guess what they consider to be the priorities that are best for their areas. We encourage them to come forward with diverse sports, because that is important.
Good afternoon, gentlemen. At the top of page 4 of your submission you refer to fundamental differences between the direction that you take and the direction that sportscotland takes. To some extent my question follows on from Christine May's question. We have a plethora of programmes and a wide diversity of aims. Are you concerned that the improvements for sport—and the ancillary benefits for health, education and anti-drugs activities—might be lost because of that diversity of programmes and range of aims, and because we do not have a clear-cut direction?
That is not necessarily the case. We worked closely with sportscotland on the two main strands of our programme from the beginning. Sportscotland has been involved in shaping and delivering that programme, and it is represented on both decision-making committees that make decisions on grant applications. What we do is complementary to sportscotland's aims and goals. Sportscotland is tasked with delivering specialist sport outcomes in two subjects in which our work is not complementary, but apart from that, everything that we do complements sport 21 and sportscotland's other main drivers. Eric Samuel has been a bit more involved in that.
I reinforce what David Campbell said. Our programmes reinforce the national sport strategy, sport 21. Nothing in any programme we operate does not support the national strategy. What we do supports in particular the participation rates and targets that are set out in that strategy.
I accept that an attempt is being made to take a holistic approach, but your approach is to deliver not for sport, but for health, education and anti-drugs strategies. Sportscotland is intended to deliver for sport. Significant fluctuations occur from year to year in overall funding and greater fluctuations perhaps occur in funding of particular sports. The significant funding drop for the Scottish Cricket Union has been highlighted to us, as has the disparity between hockey funding and football funding. Given all that, do you have a role in guiding politicians on how we can ensure that we have continuing programmes? If continuity of funding is not maintained, we are likely to end up with all sorts of disjointed programmes for delivery on sport and the other objectives.
I understand the point that you make and the difficulty, but we must understand that lottery funding is intended to finance time-limited projects. It is not intended continually to provide core funding. Limited funding is available; being the main source of mainstream funding for the activities that you talked about is not the lottery distributor's role.
In that case, should greater reliance be placed on sportscotland's directing where your lottery funding should go to deliver for sport?
The New Opportunities Fund was established under the National Lottery Act 1998 and was empowered to fund projects on health, education and the environment. We were not established to fund sporting activities and we should not be seen as the main funding source for sporting activities.
I will ask a couple of general questions about the New Opportunities Fund and the new body, which I understand will rather unimaginatively be called the big fund.
It will be called the Big Lottery Fund.
That choice must have taken much committee consideration, although not of course by the NOF.
The intention is that an administration merger will take effect from 1 June this year, which is not far away. Some form of Scottish committee, like the Community Fund's Scottish committee, will exist. I understand that the new lottery distributor's main board will have three Scotland directors. They will form the rump of the new Scotland committee and will have the power to co-opt outside members on to that committee.
I invite you to speculate about the future. Paragraph 6 of your submission states:
My understanding is that the secretary of state has guaranteed the funding stream, but not the amount. The forecast at present is that the amount will be between £600 million and £700 million per year, depending on a number of factors. There can be no absolute guarantee of the figure, but the secretary of state has guaranteed the principle that funding will continue until 2009.
That is not as hopeful as it appears in your submission. The point is that there will be a funding stream of indeterminate size between now and 2009. Another unknown factor is the possibility that the bid for the Olympic games may be successful. How are you planning for that?
We are planning for that, although we do not know what its precise impact would be. Our best estimate is that the impact would be a maximum of 5 per cent. To put that into context, the overall funding in the United Kingdom that will be available to the new distributor for the year 2004-05 will be about £660 million, which means that Scotland will get about £76 million. If the Olympic bid were successful, the UK-wide figure for 2008-09 would drop to £607 million, which for Scotland would mean a drop to about £70 million. We are talking about a drop of about £6 million, which, overall, is manageable.
If we use population as a guide, Scotland punches above its weight in respect of the share of lottery funding that it receives. Would the notional figures that you have given maintain that advantageous position for Scotland?
Yes. At present, we receive 11.5 per cent of the funding. Members who are familiar with the Barnett formula will appreciate that that is not a bad figure. We do not envisage any change in the period that we are talking about.
In response to Brian Adam, you outlined the role of the New Opportunities Fund in sports funding, although I accept that that is not your primary function. The work that is being done in health-related areas is positive. Perhaps you are just being cautious, but the first paragraph of point 6 states:
In essence, that is the same point that the convener raised. We were putting down a marker about the situation; we were not necessarily saying what will happen.
To reinforce what David Campbell said, we are in the hands of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and of the Scottish Executive. Our work is determined for us by those two bodies, so we deal with whatever is given to us in policy directions. In 2001, the policy directions gave us the new opportunities for physical education and sport initiative, but we do not yet know what will be in the next round of policy directions; there might be a sports programme in them or there might not. All that we were trying to say was that our work schedule is determined for us by others and that what comes through the policy directions is what we must set out to do.
I accept that you work within policy directions, but I find it surprising that you raise the point, because the physical education and sport initiative seems to be quite successful, so it would be surprising if it was to be terminated.
It would be equally wrong for us to raise false hopes by saying that it will definitely continue.
My point is that it would probably have been better if the point had not been raised at all, because it sets people thinking about areas into which their minds may not be required to go.
I think that it may be a play on words.
Provision should improve, but teaching is dependent on more than the facilities. We can provide the facilities, but it is up to the education authorities then to provide the good teachers who provide the education.
So if it does not work, it will not be your fault.
Definitely not.
My question follows on naturally from where Mike Watson left off—at least, I hope it does. You have said a lot in your written submission and your comments so far about the way that co-ordination is now taking place at national level to ensure that policy and direction of resources come together across a range of bodies. You have also made specific reference to sportscotland. Will you elaborate on the equivalent issues and considerations at local level and tell us in practical terms how your liaison with local authorities—although other partners are also clearly involved, such as those who organise sports locally—ensures that local investment strategies are as effective and, to use the old-chestnut phrase, as joined up as possible?
We have used different types of funding programme, from open-grant programmes in our healthy living centre to award-partner schemes. Fresh futures, our environment programme, is an award partner of Forward Scotland and Scottish Natural Heritage, and we have made use of Highlands and Islands Enterprise's community land unit in our Scottish land fund. Under the NOPES scheme, for example, we have used indicative allocations to local authority areas and we have in some of the health board programmes used indicative allocations to health board areas.
Your description of the situation suggests to me that to some extent the New Opportunities Fund lets go and allows local decision making, involving local partner agencies and so on.
We certainly do not let go—I chair the decision-making committees of both programmes. However, in the PE and sport programme in particular we have asked local authorities to supply us with a list of projects, along with a supplementary list, and we have asked them to prioritise projects. The aim is to help the committee to make decisions in the award-making process. We have not negated that element—we examine applications closely.
Where would the new arrangements for community planning feature, if at all, in that process?
Members who are aware of the community planning process will know that in some areas it is moving faster than in others and that in some areas it is working better than in others. We were hoping that the PE and sport programme might help to kick-start the community planning process in areas where it is a bit slow. We regard the process as being very important and we want to work through it, especially looking towards the future.
I want to pursue the theme of the experience of the impact of NOF funding on the ground. Will you comment on your application procedure? What steps have you taken to date or could you take in the future to make the procedure more accessible and less labour intensive for those who use it? It is fair to say that the NOF is not the only organisation against which that complaint is made. However, it is equally fair to say that it is suggested perennially that the mere process of applying can absorb a lot of time and energy. The period from the point of application to the point of decision can also be quite lengthy, which has all sorts of implications for local organisations and developments.
The short answer is that we have tried to simplify the process. We are aware of the concerns that Susan Deacon expresses, but everything depends on the funding stream and programme with which we are dealing. Our first programme of healthy living centres was a two-stage open-grant programme and took a long time. There were many complaints about that and we have learned many lessons from the process. That said, at the end of the day there are healthy living centres in every health board area in Scotland except Orkney. We have excellent projects, some of which would not have been as good as they are if there had not been a fairly turgid open-grant process.
The facilities side involved a two-stage process. The first stage was simply to provide a list of projects and to prioritise them. People were asked to answer only three questions. At stage 2—the stage that we have reached with most of the projects—we get down to the nitty-gritty and want to know in much more detail what the building projects will be. The activities side of the NOPES programme involved a one-stage process, which was probably easier, but we asked a lot more questions.
You talked about one and two-stage application processes, but your submission points out that certain organisations apply to sportscotland as well as to you. In both cases, the money comes from the national lottery. Is that not just plain daft?
I do not think that it is "plain daft". Lottery distributors have been working together much more closely and a number of programmes have received joint funding. A number of the projects in the NOPES programme receive joint funding from sportscotland, because sportscotland regards them as good projects that meet its priorities. That is not necessarily daft.
I was going to ask the question that the convener just asked, so I will follow his question up.
Sportscotland exists to do a much wider job than just the distribution of lottery funding to sports programmes. We have a much wider job too, in that we distribute lottery funding in other areas. People should ensure that the two bodies work closely together, complement each other and make the best use of the talent that is available to them.
Your submission mentions complementary funding and there are clearly situations in which both you and sportscotland put money into a project. Would it be more sensible to operate a one-stop shop for such projects, which would make it easier for external bodies to apply for funding? I presume that such bodies currently have to spend a great deal of administrative time completing separate but fairly similar applications.
All the Scottish lottery distributors use a lottery forum and I know that they are currently considering the matter. We do not try to make things difficult; sometimes we channel people in another direction, perhaps to get additional funding or towards a better source of funding. We work well together and our awards for all programme is a one-stop shop, which covers small grants from £500 to £5,000—our contribution to that programme also funds some sports projects. We are considering the area and I think that such programmes make a lot of sense.
You might have covered part of my question in response to Mike Watson. I thought that one comment in paragraph 6 of your submission stood out because there have been a number of submissions about the problems relating to declining lottery funding. Your submission states:
As I said, we envisage that, if we take a base figure of £76 million in 2004-05 for Scotland, that figure will drop down to around £70 million, although a margin of error could well be involved. In real terms, that is a drop of £6 million. That said, that still leaves quite a significant amount of money annually for continuation funding of new projects.
Would that be at a similar level to the number of projects that you are currently funding?
It is difficult to say. One can probably make such comparisons with sportscotland and some other lottery distributors that make straight grants, but we fund a variety of different and new projects. Things depend very much on the type, size and complexity of the project and it is probably easier for us to talk in money terms. We are probably talking about a drop of around £6 million. Obviously, we would prefer that not to happen, and if Camelot is clever in its marketing and receives increased ticket revenues, perhaps it will not happen. However, that is currently what we are planning for, using our best judgment.
My second and final question is on the paragraph on community sport on page 2 of your submission. Would you say more about the key stakeholders with whom you are liaising to develop the youth sport initiative, and youth football in particular? I am aware that there are excellent schemes in clubs to deliver community youth coaching, but some of those schemes are apparently under threat as a result of lack of finances. Can you say whether some of those coaches and clubs are among the stakeholders?
We have ring fenced about £6 million of the fund to help youth football and are still developing the programmes, so I cannot give you further information. A balance of £5.5 million will be spent on encouraging the widening of participation in sport in communities. Again, there is consultation. I think that we have had one consultation meeting.
We had a very targeted event on widening participation, in which more than 20 organisations were involved, including the Scottish Executive, sportscotland, governing bodies, Scottish Disability Sport and black and ethnic minority groups. The event was very targeted because only a small amount of money was available. That part of the programme will be aimed at getting people who are currently inactive in some way active through sport.
Absolutely. I would like to make a plea, in a way. Obviously, clubs are involving young people in their thousands in their schemes; that is not just about performance, but about those issues to which you referred.
If there are no further questions, I thank the witnesses from the New Opportunities Fund for their evidence.
Yes. I should probably declare an interest as a member of the Writers Guild of Great Britain and as a playwright.
I think that you are also a director of a theatre group.
Yes. Thank you for reminding me of that. I am a director of Borders Youth Theatre and of 2000 & 3 Estaites Ltd theatre company.
Thank you. Before we move on to our second panel of witnesses, I should tell members that Jamie Stone has now sent his apologies for not attending the meeting.
I am the director of the Scottish Arts Council and I am accompanied by Jim Tough, who is the head of arts.
Thank you for attending the meeting. You have submitted to the committee a paper and your draft plan for the next five years. I know to my cost as a member of the Finance Committee that, during scrutiny of the budget, the committee is always very keen to see what it is getting for its money. The Executive has set various targets that you repeat in your submission. How useful have you found them? Looking through some of the targets, I wondered whether simply meeting or exceeding them might take you down routes that you did not particularly want to go down. Moreover, you might meet the targets in some strange way that might not necessarily benefit what many of us would take to be the arts.
First, it is important to say that targets are useful. This is the first time that the Scottish Executive has set us formal targets. In the past, we have been given a grant on the basis of a whole series of discussions, plans and so on; having the targets has helped us to direct our work.
The first target concerns numbers of people, taking part in cultural events and activities. Even if we get around the definitional problems that are bound to arise from such a target, will attempting to meet it not drive you down certain routes? In other words, will you not need to have a certain proportion of events that bring in more and more people?
Yes. However, part of the Scottish Arts Council's work has always been to involve more people in the arts. For example, one of the specific targets is to engage what the Executive regards as under-represented groups. We are equally aware of the need to make the arts available to as wide a range of people as possible. Again, I think that our aims very much accord with what the Executive is seeking to achieve in making the arts available to all sections of the people and to everyone who wants to be involved. As a result, although we support an element of our work to ensure that we meet the targets, it is not terribly different to what we would have been doing anyway.
I want to move on to the balance between lottery funding and—if you like—Executive funding. You have highlighted the fact that the amount of lottery funding has sharply declined and that Executive funding has more or less come up to match it. Much lottery funding was predicated on the idea that it would not provide core funding, but would be used to start projects that would then finish or go off on their own. You said in paragraph 5.2 of your written submission that the
As you said, I highlighted the disparity between lottery funding and the funding that we receive from the Scottish Executive. Not so many years ago, lottery funding was considerably in excess of Executive funding, but that situation has changed markedly. As my written submission indicates, national lottery funding will be further reduced. Obviously, we continue to fund a range of projects through national lottery funds, but we have had to reduce the number of projects that we can continue to support. For example, the Lochaber Music School in Fort William was started off with a national lottery grant for three years. At the end of that period, we were unable to continue support because the lottery fund is not allowed to be used on a continuing basis for that type of activity and because Executive funding was not sufficient to increase funds to support the music school.
I suspect that many of us have seen in our constituencies cases that are similar to the projects that you describe. The lottery fund was never meant to deliver continuous core funding, but many people spend much time tweaking their presentations to bring some novelty to what they do year on year so that funding will continue. However, such projects have the same people, the same organisation and the same premises as they did previously. The paperwork changes and the money keeps rolling in.
There is an element of that, but it is not as overt as you suggest. Most projects that come up for funding are new and are sparked off by people having been involved as participants or artists in a previous project. Therefore, it is not true to say that a new project is the old project in disguise; it is a different project that might be related to an initial project, which has been prompted by people becoming more interested in the arts. A range of projects that were initially supported by the lottery has prompted a general expansion of interest in the arts. However, we are not able to sustain interest that has been generated from earlier projects.
To the extent that the lottery funding does its job by setting up a project that then moves off according to its plan, has a false prospectus been sold? There must be many projects, like the Lochaber Music School, that had no provision in their mainstream budgets for when they ran out of initial funding. To what extent do your budgets have provision for the future? Do you look ahead and say, "In two years' time such and such a project is going to run out of its lottery money—is there something that we can do?" Is that part of your planning process?
That is becoming more a part of our planning process because lottery funding rules have gradually changed over the years. When lottery funding first started, there were severe constraints on the use of the funds—for example, we were not even allowed to have a budget. Over the years, the rules have altered and relaxed slightly so that we are allowed to plan ahead. If we feel that something merits continuing support we are able to at least attempt to build that in to our on-going funding from the Scottish Executive, but that is not always possible as it depends very much on the nature of the project and the amount of Executive funding that we get, which remains at a fairly constrained level. Planning has been improved because of relaxations in how lottery funding is allocated, but our ability to deliver that kind of joined-up approach is not as great as we would like because of the lack of flexibility in Executive funding.
Could you quantify in a qualitative sense—I suspect that that is a contradiction. Could you describe in a qualitative sense how much disappointment there is among organisations that have been stimulated by lottery funding and see that they are going to run into problems when that comes to an end?
It is difficult to quantify the disappointment. The feeling that I get from talking to people is that a lot of activity is taking place that could be supported should the funds be available. We have had to cut back on all aspects of our funding in relation to the lottery, from the capital expenditure programmes through to the various short-term programmes that we support in communities. Jim Tough may have some further detail.
There are specific examples in which we have improved our planning so that down the line, if it all goes well, we can seek to secure through Executive funding projects that get a start from lottery funding. Examples include arts and disability theatre companies such as Lung Ha's Theatre Company and in the music sector the Drake Music Project. We have used lottery money to help them to build their artistic quality, their skill and their capacity with a view to revenue funding them in due course. We have managed to do that in some cases and that is the proper strategic use of lottery funding.
Graham Berry will remember from my time on the Scottish Arts Council lottery committee that one of my areas of interest was encouraging projects and activities in disadvantaged communities and overcoming the difficulty of doing that under lottery rules then and now—partly because many of those projects would never wash their faces financially and one of the criteria for lottery funding in the early days was that eventually they should do.
We have a range of programmes that we operate directly through schools co-ordinator schemes—creative links posts that work in communities—and through the core-funded organisations that we support.
Most of the work that we do that is supported by the Scottish Executive's funding to tackle areas of disadvantage has to do with what you might call communities of interest. For example, in the past year or two, we have put a significant amount of effort into the arts and disabilities sector. We have worked with Lung Ha's Theatre Company, the Theatre Workshop in Edinburgh, the Birds of Paradise Theatre Company and so on, which are working to address participation in that area.
Given that the national lottery funding is circumscribed by time, in that it will run out at some point, what research have you done to find out what general lessons have been learned from those lottery projects and how have you built in that information to your budgetary discussions with the Executive? What changes do you hope that the Executive will make in its approach following the review as a result of the lessons that have been learned?
The research that we have done in relation to lottery funding has been based on an evaluation of the effect of the funding that we have applied in the years to date. That has shown that the money has been spent fairly wisely and well and that there has been a large increase in participation.
When the arts councils were set up, the aim was to ensure that arts funding and grants were entirely separate from the Government. Is the relationship between the Scottish Arts Council and the Government in terms of priorities and so on still correct? Do you feel that there is far too much hypothecation of your funds from the Executive? If so, do you think that it is appropriate that you have funds that are ring fenced for particular elements of the arts, given that you have set new targets and priorities?
There is certainly more hypothecation of the grant that we receive, although the amount that is hypothecated still accounts for a relatively small proportion of that. With the establishment of the Scottish Parliament, it was inevitable that the Scottish Executive would be more involved in the way in which our money is allocated, but it is proper that arts funding should be examined in that way. From the Scottish Arts Council's point of view, there are times when the relationship is, to be frank, a little bit tighter than we would like, but it is not yet at a stage where we are being directed in any way.
On a slightly different topic, are you entirely happy with current spending on voluntary arts in Scotland? For example, we have received evidence from the Scottish Community Drama Association that the Scottish Arts Council is not quite sure what criteria to apply to voluntary arts organisations in deciding whether to continue their funding.
The straight answer is no. I am not happy with the relationship that we have at the moment with voluntary organisations. There is a lot that we can do to improve that.
There does not seem to be much about the Voluntary Arts Network in the draft five-year plan that has been circulated to the committee.
No, there is nothing specific in there, as that is an overarching plan that does not mention many organisations or activities by name. Nevertheless, that is something that we will look at.
On page 5 of your written submission, you give a list of Scottish Arts Council grants and how much other funding they draw down to the arts. It looks as if Scottish Arts Council grants make up about a third of the total arts expenditure. Do you have any figures that relate to the contribution that the arts make to the Treasury on the basis of that Scottish Arts Council spend? How much money comes back from arts organisations through VAT, income tax and other forms of taxation? I believe that those figures have been worked out for England or possibly for the United Kingdom. Do we have the equivalent figures for Scotland?
There are no specific figures of that sort. We recently commissioned an economic impact study of the arts in Scotland from the University of Glasgow, and the results are now available although they have not yet been published. I expect that, within the next few weeks, we will have more information about the contribution that the arts as a whole make to the economy. Arts Council England has supported a study specifically on the contribution that theatre makes to the economy as a whole. We participated in that, to some extent, by inviting it to include a certain number of Scottish theatres in that survey, which will be published in the next week or two.
It might be useful if you could ensure that the committee clerks have details of those economic impact surveys.
Yes, indeed.
It would be helpful if we could get copies of those surveys as soon as they are available.
I would like to follow up the points that you made in relation to the lottery. It is helpful to have the draft corporate plan, in which you outline the review that has been undertaken of the lottery strategy and list four priority points. However, the plan contains only notional figures projecting lottery income ahead over the years, which, not surprisingly, tapers away. That impacts on a point that you make in your submission. You say:
Ideally, I would prefer it to be reinstated from Scottish Executive funds. It would be difficult to realign lottery funding because of the pressures on it. Much of our loss of lottery income has been simply because of the decline in sales. Income is not coming into the lottery stream as a whole.
If it is not possible, or if for whatever reason lottery funding continues to decrease—whether overall or simply your allocation—how will your lottery strategy be affected? In your submission, you make four basic points and indicate how they fit in with the Executive's priorities. If funding is not at the level that you have anticipated, would you have to revisit your strategy for the period from 2004 to 2009? Would you reduce pro rata? You have listed your priorities 1 to 4, although I do not think that you have listed them in order of importance. It seems, from my reading of the list, that you regard the priorities as equal. What adjustments would you make if you did not have so much lottery funding and if there had been no reinstatement?
We would have to discuss that in detail with our council, but my inclination would be not to reduce funding pro rata across all activities but to reduce levels in a way that protected to some extent the community-based activities that the lottery fund supports, and perhaps to have a greater decline in the major capital expenditure funding that we support from lottery funding.
I understand that answer. However, you may have heard the evidence of the witnesses from the New Opportunities Fund. We talked about the work that the fund does within its health, education and environment remit. Sport has been brought into the remit of health, for obvious reasons. In your draft plan, you mention, twice, the linking of health and arts. That seems to me something that could well be developed. Your plan mentions two or three projects for the immediate future. Will funding for those projects come from existing funds, or would it not be perfectly reasonable for you to say to the New Opportunities Fund, "Look, this is arts, but it is arts in a cultural setting and arts in a health setting. Could we work with you in the same way as you currently work with sportscotland?"?
We will take money from whatever available source. Typically, we would try to use our own funds to spark things off and perhaps to get a pilot study going. Then the first approach would be to the Scottish Executive to see whether additional funds were available from the health budget, to use your example. There has been some indication that we may be able to do that at some point in future.
So there are prospects, whether directly from the health budget or from the NOF.
Yes.
The other point relates to targets. Your submission states:
The annual forums are twofold. We have forums relating to each specific art form, so there are separate forums for drama, dance, music and so on, to try to gauge what is going on in those sectors. We have also had forums to engage with the general interested public on what they consider appropriate for the arts and how they might contribute to the development of our aims and objectives. We hope to be able to improve on that process gradually over the years, as we started only in the past 12 months or so. Jim Tough may be able to add more to what I have said.
The forums give us a way of hearing different voices on the arts in Scotland. Inevitably, there is a tendency for us to engage with the folk we fund, but we are also interested in speaking to other people about their aspirations for the arts in Scotland, and the forums are intended to allow that. We have not finalised our arrangements, but I think that the plan for the coming round of forums in the autumn is to focus on young people and to hold discussions in schools so that we can talk to young people about what they would like to see with regard to the arts in Scotland.
I very much welcome what you say about the forums. As a spin-off from that, you say that your target is to achieve a 70 per cent satisfaction rating. What was the most recent rating?
I do not have the figures to hand, but we have measured those targets only once in the last round and I think that we exceeded that target.
My final point relates to a comment that the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities made. It may be a slightly disingenuous question, and you can probably anticipate it, but what do you think your working relationship with COSLA is?
We have a good working relationship. We recently had a meeting with the team at COSLA. As with all relationships, there could be improvement and more co-operation. We also have meetings with most local authorities, either individually or as cluster groups, to discuss what is and is not supported in the areas that they represent.
I shall raise the issue with COSLA representatives when they come before us, but I wonder whether you could comment on something that COSLA has said. It said:
That assertion is not quite correct. I acknowledge the fact that the input from local authorities to the arts is immense. We certainly would not argue that we are the only or main player. We work in partnership with many organisations and interested parties, and local authorities are clearly one of the key groups that we would seek to continue to operate with. As I said, we do that individually as well as collectively through COSLA, VOCAL—the Voice of Chief Officers for Cultural, Community and Leisure Services in Scotland—and various cluster groups.
My question was not about the national cultural strategy, but about the guidance.
My colleague Caroline Docherty and I were involved in a few meetings with the planning group to develop the guidelines. I share Graham Berry's surprise at COSLA's comment. My recollection is that the guidelines include a series of specific case studies, which we provided.
As it seems fashionable to quote from COSLA, I ask you to respond to the suggestion that COSLA made to us in evidence that the Scottish Arts Council is not sufficiently focused on providing strategic leadership but is overly concerned with the administrative disbursement of grant funds. I listened carefully to what you said and I do not ask you to repeat any of it. However, I remain unclear about where you think the balance rests. We are in the realms of an imperfect science, but can you add anything to, or summarise, what you have said to give us a clear sense of the extent to which you feel that it is your role to establish a strategic direction and leadership for the arts in Scotland or to contribute to the Executive's doing so and then to implement much of that?
The Scottish Arts Council is the only national body that exists to develop and support the arts alone. That is why we exist. We are the only body that has a national remit, although local authorities properly have a remit in their areas, and we are the only body that has been set up specifically to support the arts alone. Although as we mentioned, many instrumental benefits, such as economic and health benefits, flow from the arts, they flow only as a natural consequence of the intrinsic value of the arts. We exist to support the value of the arts, with the understanding that the instrumental benefits flow as a natural consequence.
I am sure that that discussion could continue indefinitely.
We struggle all the time to balance access with excellence, but I do not think that there is a conflict between the two. One is a natural consequence of the other, just as the instrumental value of the arts is a consequence of its intrinsic value. Over recent years, to encourage access we have become engaged in more work that is based in communities and so on. Historically, it was quite acceptable for arts councils to support a very narrow range of arts activity. At the time, that seemed to be fine and acceptable, but that is no longer the case. We are trying to widen the range of activity that we support to encourage people to become involved in the arts.
I was particularly interested in what you say on pages 11 and 12 of your draft plan about the First Minister's St Andrew's day speech last year and about developing the idea of putting the arts, culture and creativity at the heart of learning, especially in our schools. If we do not have time to pursue that issue this afternoon, perhaps we can get further written information on the matter, because it may be germane to some of the committee's wider thinking and work.
You raise a number of points. In addition to our corporate plan—committee members have a draft of the plan—we have an education strategy, which explains in more detail how we hope to achieve various aims. However, the resources that would enable us immediately to implement that strategy and those aspects of the corporate plan are not there. That will be a tool in our discussions with the Executive and perhaps this committee, local authorities and other organisations, about how we can achieve the overarching objectives in education and the arts.
Part of our advocacy and research role is to encourage and demonstrate the idea that creativity at the heart of learning has profound effects, not just on individuals, but on the community, whether that is expressed in the creative industries or in cultural confidence. We strongly believe that. In the spirit of the First Minister's speech, we have been in discussion with people involved with Executive portfolios other than the one that serves us, to try to encourage commitment to pilot projects that would tackle the matter.
I commend the Scottish Arts Council for the second of its three principal aims, which is
We fund a range of organisations in addition to the four national companies. We support about 100 core-funded organisations and we consider that their task is to engage with as many people as possible. The national companies are no exception to that. Although some of the companies currently reach relatively small numbers, they aim to increase their audiences over the years. Our task—
Surely there is no great evidence that they are increasing their audience numbers over the years. They appear to develop programmes, but they satisfy only the same, small audience.
The Scottish Arts Council has made a lot of changes in the past year or so. One of the key changes has been to accept that the public funds that we have at our disposal are there for all people. We are talking about public money, so the public as a whole have to benefit. The other change that we have made is to accept that all arts are worthy of support in some way—they are valid as art forms, whatever they are. We encourage people to understand that they are involved in the arts—whether or not those arts are supported by the SAC—because they read books, go the cinema and listen to music. Those are all arts. They might not all need a subsidy from the SAC, but we have to get across the message that they are all valid art forms and part of the arts continuum, which is huge and touches everybody's lives at all sorts of stages and in all sorts of activities.
What might be wrong with it is a continuing skew in favour of small interest groups in terms of the national companies. Unless we grow the arts budget or change the distribution, we will not see a change.
Those two points are correct. We have to work with the national companies to help them to increase their audiences, but one of the key factors that determine the audience for any performing arts or visual arts organisation is the amount of money that it has. At the moment, a large proportion of the funds that such organisations have is directed towards simply existing—paying the bills, maintaining the roof and so on.
My worry is that if we continue to do the same thing—which is what appears to be happening—all we will do is allow the same people to go to more events. I do not know that that would satisfy the second of your principal aims, which is
That would be true if nothing else changed, but we are working with all such organisations to make them change, as I said. They must understand that the challenge to arts organisations is to increase their audiences. They must do that. Another change in our draft corporate plan is the SAC's recognition that we must engage with far more people. We can deliver that only by encouraging the core-funded organisations that we support to increase audiences.
I will give two examples to reassure the committee that we are not standing still and that we want to improve the situation. The Scottish Chamber Orchestra, which is a national company, has an exemplary education programme and its reach is extending. It hits the creativity in learning theme and engages new young folk in the experience of the arts.
On a different tack, the national companies and their supporters complain to many of us about the companies' inadequate funding. It looks as though funding for the four national companies will never be adequate. Have you thought about saying, or will you ever reach the stage when you say, that rather than funding four national companies inadequately, you will forget about one and fund three well? Should that option even be considered for the sake of balancing the budget and doing things well rather than always being kicked around?
I would not restrict that to the national companies. We support roughly 100 core-funded organisations that cover the country and operate across all the art forms. Some have a greater audience than others and all produce quality work. If funding to the arts is not increased in the coming years, we will need to review the role of all those organisations and whether we should fund fewer of them but to a greater extent.
I thank the SAC witnesses for attending.
First, I would like to say that it is a great privilege to be able to speak to you in the chamber today. I am a councillor on Scottish Borders Council and COSLA's spokesperson on art and sport. With me is Rod Stone, the head of lifelong learning and recreation for Aberdeenshire Council, and Ian Hooper, the depute director of culture and leisure services for Glasgow City Council.
On sport, COSLA's submission says:
I suppose that the evidence insinuates that that is the case. COSLA's view is that the key challenges relate to widening opportunities. Addressing through sport the wider quality issues facing Scotland in relation to health, social inclusion, physical activity and community safety involves increasing participation among priority groups such as children and young people. We agree that the key challenges are the six targets that are set out in the sport 21 strategy, particularly in relation to increasing participation among those who are more disadvantaged and who are not participating at the moment.
It is interesting to hear you say that. I know that sportscotland has a programme that is designed specifically for people who are achieving excellence in their particular sport. Similarly, one might argue that the Olympic bid is about the small set of people who are at the pinnacle of their sport. Are you calling for a reappraisal of that strategy or, at least, a considerable shift in the balance of investment?
Possibly the latter. The sport 21 strategy addresses the full range of challenges in sport, from widening opportunities to achieving excellence. The issue that we raise in our submission relates to the implementation of the strategy and the balance of resources. We are supportive not only of the six targets that relate to the widening of opportunities, but of the rest of the 11 targets that are outlined in the sport 21 strategy. Obviously, local authorities focus on the grass-roots participation, although we do not do so exclusively; we do it with regard to sport 21 and to the wider policy issues that are core to the main priorities of local authorities.
In your submission, you state that one way of getting around the problem of aging facilities is to improve community use of schools. I am aware that there were initially some problems with community access to schools that were built by public-private partnership schemes. Has that situation improved at all?
A study on the community use of schools has been commissioned by sportscotland and it is nearing completion. It is likely to show that there is a great deal of underuse of school sports and arts facilities for community use. There are a number of reasons for that, many of which relate to resources and management regimes and some of which relate to facility design. COSLA says, and I certainly agree from the perspective of a rural authority, that one of the best ways of improving access to facilities is to widen community use of school facilities.
That is an interesting point. It would be interesting for the committee to see the details of that research. My second point is a broader one on the role of national agencies. Your submission implies that you would like greater strategic direction from, for example, the Scottish Arts Council, but you are also looking for more local flexibility on how awards are spent on delivering programmes. Is that a contradiction? Can you give us more detail on how local flexibility could be given?
I have been in local government for a long time and I have seen a gradual drift to the centre. I am excited about the new community governance arrangements that are on the statute book. This is a good time to revisit the role of local authorities in the provision of a range of services, of which the arts and sport are two. There is an opportunity for a clear distinction to be made between the wider strategic issues that have to be addressed and the delivery of those services to the people whom you and I represent. If more authority was given to people locally under the community governance arrangements, the system would be more efficient and effective and the decisions would be better appreciated in the localities that we represent.
Does that mean that the moneys that are administered by the New Opportunities Fund should be administered by local authorities or just that those funds should be implemented and managed locally?
As a local government man all my life—I was an officer and I am now a councillor—I would argue strongly that governance of society has drifted to the centre. This Parliament was set up because that had happened over hundreds of years. We now have this tremendous Parliament and we believe that the time has come for Scottish local government to be given close consideration, so that we can give power back to the people. I am pleased that the Parliament has recognised that in the statutory framework. Everyone to whom I speak wants the Parliament to succeed and wants local authorities to succeed in delivering what the Parliament and local councillors want to do. I urge you as MSPs to consider that, to see how we can improve delivery. Across the spectrum of bodies, there are many agencies that are confused, through no fault of their own, by their multifunctional roles in delivering both strategy and grant funding.
I will ask a couple of questions on sport and one or two on cultural issues. I am not sure whether you heard the evidence from the New Opportunities Fund witnesses.
We did.
They talked about their role in working with sportscotland on funding sporting facilities and activities. In your submission, you say:
That point is raised in the context of the condition of many public culture and leisure facilities, including sports facilities, in Scotland and the United Kingdom. That is a significant issue. The paragraph that you highlighted relates to the different ways in which, through funding, we can raise finance to address the condition and quality of aspects of the infrastructure—I am thinking of swimming pools, playing fields and so on—that through sheer age are past their useful life. Lottery funding is one approach and the prudential borrowing framework that is being introduced for local government offers local authorities another good option for raising funds. Moreover, extending the PPP model for improving schools in Scotland to culture and leisure facilities, as has been suggested, might be another option for raising finances to address the serious problem of the state of some of Scotland's facilities.
Your response is helpful, although I interpreted the statement about PPPs slightly differently. I can speak with any knowledge only about Glasgow, but I know from my experience and from anecdotal evidence that PPPs have produced new schools and sporting facilities that cannot be used significantly outwith school hours because of running costs, which means that the full community cannot use them. Apart from the obvious answer that local authorities need more resources, what is COSLA's response to getting round that problem?
I do not have a lot of experience with PPP projects; indeed, I do not like the system in principle. However, I suppose that we have to live with it, and I understand that Scottish Borders Council is considering such an approach for the current school estate.
Although I feel that we have addressed the issue in Glasgow, I concur completely with Councillor Garvie's remarks. On the arrangements for, and the scale and extent of, community use of school buildings outwith normal school hours, the devil is in the detail that is written into the PPP contracts. Such detail is crucial to the effectiveness of those contracts, not only in delivering for schools and the curriculum but in allowing schools to fulfil their wider role of providing valuable facilities for the community.
I wonder whether that response is connected to a comment in your submission about the action plans to deliver the sport 21 targets. You say:
Yes, to some extent. There is no getting away from the fact that, for us, funding is the great limitation of PPP programmes for schools. There are two difficulties: unless adequate funds are available, both the number of sports and arts facilities that can be included in a new school design and the ability to staff facilities outwith the school's core operating hours will be constrained. Local authorities are able to deal with the problem only by what might euphemistically be termed the rationalisation of existing resources. I say "euphemistically" because, if we wanted to invest more money in community facilities in a PPP school, we would really need to close other facilities or reduce funding elsewhere.
Your final point was important. I want to turn to the cultural sector and your comments about the national cultural review. I understand that the minister will announce the publication of the review on Thursday. You pointed out in your written submission:
We touched on that in the last line of the paragraph from which you quoted. I apologise for the paragraphs having bullet points rather than numbers. However, the paragraph refers to the number of cultural agencies in Scotland with which local authorities, individuals, voluntary groups and so on must deal.
So it is the very number of organisations that leads to the complexity.
Yes.
That need not be the case, but it is.
Yes, it is the case. For example, a voluntary organisation in the middle of Glasgow or Aberdeen that wants to apply for help, advice or money might cross the boundaries of the cultural agencies, which would have resource implications for the voluntary organisation. We feel that the time is right to have a good look at that situation. The cultural agencies have been in place for a long time and they do first-class work. However, you and I represent the customer's point of view and we need to ask whether the existing situation is working as well as it can for them. COSLA is not sure that it is.
I look forward to reading COSLA's submission for the review.
Perhaps I can use the active schools programme as an example of how the relationships could be improved. That is not to say that there are not reasonable working relationships. The issue is more about how we can be constructive and strengthen the relationships. That is the approach that I want to take, and it has come up in a number of places in the evidence, including the earlier discussion.
That seems to be a question of relationships with the Executive, rather than with the Scottish Arts Council or sportscotland.
It is about relationships all round. The Executive is involved, as are sportscotland, the Scottish Arts Council and local government.
I heard your question and the responses to it from Graham Berry and Jim Tough. We are not saying that there is no contact at all, but we are suggesting that there is some scope for improving the nature of the contact. It is one thing to have periodic meetings, but it is another to have regular meetings to consider major strategic issues that are of concern to both sides and to work together to try to tackle them. It is one thing for us to be involved in cluster meetings with the Scottish Arts Council or to have meetings with the partnership manager in sportscotland, and another for us to have engagement at a senior level in organisations.
I am broadly sympathetic to your suggestion that consideration should be given to a little more local decision making on the distribution of funds, but it would be a little refreshing if someone were to appear before us and suggest that they had too much decision making and that it might be better if someone else took it on and took the budget with it. Inevitably, you are open to charges of self-interest on that.
I will take a second to deal with your first point. I am not a councillor for self-interest: I represent the commonweal and the common good of the people. I have no self-interest, and I do not really understand the point.
The comment was facetious. Do not take it to heart at all.
Ian Hooper will deal with the first question.
I have given one example already—the active schools initiative—and another might be the cultural co-ordinators initiative. The social inclusion project lottery programmes that are administered by sportscotland and the Scottish Arts Council involve national agencies in local, detailed discussions at community level. Might there have been another way of dealing with the allocation of funds? It is interesting to note that the New Opportunities Fund has developed some different ways of dealing with lottery programmes, such as giving allocations to agencies that work more locally, which allows a more strategic but more flexible approach to be taken locally. Perhaps there are some lessons to be learnt from the way in which the New Opportunities Fund has dealt with some of its programmes, such as the NOPES programme.
Brian Adam asked for examples. The example that springs to mind is the new opportunities for physical education and sport programme, which has been mentioned. Two years ago, we were working on programmes and project proposals to submit to the NOF. Local authorities had six months in which to consult, put together costed proposals and submit those proposals to the NOF. Some 20 months later, we still have not obtained all the funding for the projects that we proposed. There is, therefore, frustration with the time that it takes to process applications, as well as with the amount of work that has to be put in to satisfy some lottery distributors that the money is being used prudently. We are sometimes asked to put in a great deal of work in relation to relatively small amounts of money.
Surely the point that you made in your submission is that too much of the distributors' resources are being tied up in that process, but you are now saying that too much of your council's resources are being tied up, with no certainty of a return. That is a perfectly valid point to make, but it is not the point that you made in your submission. Are there examples of how distributors use too many of their resources on administration rather than on grants?
I apologise, as I have obviously not answered the question clearly. The point that I was making was that a great deal of a local authority's time is required not only to make an initial submission, but to deal with all the subsequent inquiries and provide all the information that the NOF seeks. A great deal of administrative time on the part of the NOF is also required to process such things. We suggest that a much more efficient way of dealing with things would be by following up the allocation to each local authority that was indicated at the outset with a requirement on the local authority to indicate the outcomes that it saw being achieved. The check would be that such outcomes were being achieved. It would be left to the local authority to be able to determine exactly what happens to satisfy the NOF, or whoever, that outcomes are achieved. Currently, there tends to be a lot of scrutiny relating to inputs and processes before we get the money drawn down, which is frustrating.
I want to return to aging facilities. I recognise the validity of all the points that are made in the submission, but if there are no facilities in which any of the activities can be delivered, all the schemes are worthless. To some extent, are we not pussyfooting around the fact that there is a huge capital investment crisis, as there was in the schools estate? I see nothing that says that you are talking to the Executive about something like the education PPP, which grew out of frustration that, at current levels of growth, budgets in education would not be sufficient to deal with that crisis. What is COSLA doing to find a similar innovative solution for cultural and sports facilities?
I assure you that, under the comprehensive spending review, colleagues and I regularly meet the Minister for Tourism, Culture and Sport, Frank McAveety, and his civil servants, and Pat Watters, who is the president of COSLA, and emphasise the point that you have made. That is not in the submission, which is not all-inclusive, but we press constantly for capital expenditure availability, whether under PPP, prudential schemes or whatever, to do the kind of work that is essential to bring our recreational facilities up to the standards of many other western European countries. My colleagues might wish to amplify the details, but, as far as I am concerned, that is a high-priority issue for us at a political level and we constantly raise it. The issue is before the Executive and ministers.
The need to tackle infrastructure problems was the single biggest issue that COSLA flagged up in its submission on the comprehensive spending review. VOCAL has made exactly the same point. We have suggested that there may be a variety of ways in which we can lever in money to address the problem of aging facilities, but the scale of the problem is huge. Sportscotland has estimated that we need to spend something like £500 million over 25 years to upgrade the existing stock of swimming pools. It has just completed research that is likely to indicate that several hundred million pounds of investment is required for other indoor and outdoor sports facilities. Clearly, that sort of money is not available, so we must look for imaginative ways in which to tackle the problem. Unless we start to make inroads into that, participation in sports and the arts will no longer be attractive because we will have no functional and attractive facilities to offer to the public.
I ask Mr Hooper to answer the question about disadvantaged groups and transport facilities.
We know from our work in rural areas and in Glasgow that lack of transport can be a key barrier to the use of local facilities. Local facilities, including schools and primary schools, can play a key role in providing opportunities for community participation. We make the point in our written evidence that the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, which must be implemented, has significant implications for many cultural and sporting facilities in Scotland. It adds weight to the need to address the issue of infrastructure and the cost that the public sector in Scotland faces.
One final question arises from the section of your written evidence that is entitled "Role of National Agencies". You say:
I have never been keen on what are now called NDPBs—they used to be called quangos. I am a great democrat—as I am sure that you and your colleagues are, convener—and I think that society should be sparing in what we put out to non-elected bodies. Some are essential, but it is time for us to have a long, hard look at what we do with those bodies and what roles they are being asked to fulfil. We think that there are too many of those bodies in the area of arts and sport, and I beseech you to have a long, hard look at the matter with the Scottish Executive to see whether there can be a rationalisation. I hope that that might happen in the review. My personal view is that it is time to look at the matter to see whether our scarce resources can be used more effectively for the people whom we represent.
That was not quite the question. You ask whether the agencies are fulfilling their key roles. Are they?
I do not know the answer to that question. Perhaps my colleagues can answer it. I have not been involved directly for a long time: I was elected to the council only last May, so I am new to my role. So far, I have dealt with sportscotland. I am not really qualified to answer that question, so I ask my colleagues to do so.
It is an old adage in politics that one should never ask questions unless one knows the answers. I wondered whether, having asked the question, you had an answer—collectively.
I have found generally, during my life in local government, that remote government rarely means excellence. We should look at who is doing what in Scotland in this area. I am sure that the bodies in question do excellent work within their roles, but it is time that the roles were revisited. That is my position. I am not sure whether my colleagues wish to add to that.
I would add only that, by definition, the bodies in question are national agencies whose role should be, in large part, strategic. When areas of their work impinge on local delivery or are more concerned with local delivery, one might question whether that is an effective use of their resources. I am expressing again something that I said earlier. The key question is whether their staff—they would argue that they have scarce staff resources—are fully dedicated to their strategic roles or whether staff sometimes get too tied up in what might be better delivered by other agencies more locally.
The organisations are, to some extent, fulfilling their roles, but the big issue is to what extent. COSLA will wish to make a detailed submission to the national cultural review, but it has concerns about the degree of centralisation that is taking place and about the number of organisations, the potential duplication and the lack of clarity about who is responsible for what. The sheer number of such organisations, particularly cultural ones, is a matter that must be addressed. However, the situation is complex and to give a sensible answer, we would need to go into much more detail than we could do this afternoon.
I am sure that we will hear your views in due course.
That is what I meant to say, convener.
I thank the witnesses from COSLA for their evidence.