Chamber and committees

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide a response to COSLA’s request for additional funding to support local authorities in the forthcoming budget. (S6O-05166)

In May this year, the Accounts Commission forecast a £528 million revenue budget gap for 2026-27. As a result, increasingly difficult decisions are being made by councils to meet their legal obligations to balance their budgets. In its recent correspondence with the United Kingdom Government, COSLA set out the case for additional funding to the Scottish Government to facilitate a sufficient local government settlement, highlighting the acute pressures in social care and housing.

With the fiscal framework having been published, can the cabinet secretary outline how she will work with COSLA to ensure that there is effective delivery of the necessary budget provision, bearing in mind that the UK Government has delayed the autumn budget, which has seriously undermined the timescales that are available for the Scottish Government to publish its budget?

That would be helpful. I ask you to be fairly succinct, because we have limited time and I am keen for all members to come in. Thank you.

If you could weave in your answer to my question.

I will perhaps come back in later with a question on challenges around carrying financial reserves and working with annualised budgets.

In the spirit of time, however, I will now hand over to Liam Kerr.

I have a couple of follow-up questions for Malcolm Graham. One issue raised in your submission, which I found very interesting, was how challenging things have become because your case management system is going out of date. That speaks to the wider digital transformation that you described in your submission. Could you cover that in a bit more detail? It has perhaps not been on the committee’s radar in the past. Nonetheless, it sounds as though a major piece of work will be coming down the track.

The submission that we received from you was very detailed and helpful. Thank you for that and for your opening remarks.

I turn to Malcolm Graham.

Before I bring in Fulton MacGregor, I want to come back to the question on the budget that I indicated earlier that I intended to ask.

In your submission you shared information on the impact of the service being unable to carry financial reserves, working with an annualised budget process—the committee has covered that a fair bit—and not being able to exercise borrowing powers without ministerial approval. Have you had an opportunity to discuss those issues with the Scottish Government? Do you see any possible movement on that, given the considerable financial constraints and pressures that your service is under at the moment?

Thank you for that. I was going to ask one final question but we are short of time, so I will ask whether you would be happy to write to the committee about it. It is with regard to climate change. Parliamentary committees are looking a bit more closely at the work that stakeholders and public sector organisations are undertaking with regard to reducing their carbon footprint and emissions and, in essence, meeting our collective climate change targets. Would you be able to set out a bit of detail on what your respective organisations are doing on that and whether you might require some further resource to support that work? I hope that that is fairly clear—it is a bit of a synopsis. We look forward to receiving your submissions on that question.

Thank you all for your attendance today. It has been a really interesting session. I will now suspend briefly to allow a changeover of witnesses.

I welcome to our meeting Stuart Stevens, chief officer of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service; Andy Watt, deputy chief officer; and Sarah O’Donnell, deputy chief officer for corporate services. You are all very welcome this morning, and I thank you for sending your detailed written submission.

I am conscious that we overran our previous evidence session, so apologies for that. There is a lot for us to get through. I anticipate that we will probably have to run over time again, with everybody’s agreement, so it will be nearer 1 o’clock before we conclude this session. I hope that that works for witnesses and members.

I remind members and our witnesses that this evidence-taking session is focused in the main on budget issues for this and the next financial year. The committee is planning further evidence sessions in the coming weeks on the wider fire service modernisation agenda and proposed station closures.

I begin by asking our witnesses an opening question to get things under way. I will come to Stuart Stevens first. Can you update us on whether you have found the funding provision for 2025-26 to have been sufficient? What are your organisation’s main asks for 2026-27? If you are unsuccessful in that respect, what will be the consequences?