Chamber and committees

Last month, I was at an emergency summit to look at the issue of empty shop units on Aberdeen’s Union Street. Our town centres are desperate for help. Can the Deputy First Minister tell us how the cuts to the city’s investment and strategy and the regeneration budget of £66.4 million will help the situation? That feels like the kiss of death to our high streets.

I will try not to speak as quickly as the minister.

I thank the Government for the debate, which highlights the fantastic organisations that are doing so much across Scotland to improve our communities and bring buildings and spaces back into public use.

As a former councillor, I have seen at first hand the importance of empowering our communities. While this Scottish National Party Government has stepped back, our communities have stepped up. Following continued cuts to local authority funding, more responsibility has been passed to community groups. From planting flower beds to putting up our Christmas light displays, communities up and down the country have stepped up while the Government has failed.

Buildings that once stood proudly in our town and village centres have fallen into disrepair due to shrinking council budgets. However, thanks to the UK Government’s community ownership fund, some of those buildings are now being brought back into community use.

We Conservatives believe that we must put communities first, and that empowering communities is absolutely critical to ensuring that our towns and villages can be the vibrant and thriving places that they ought to be. The reality is that no one knows better how to achieve that than the individuals and families who live in those communities. Centralisation simply does not work: we need to see power moving downward to local communities, not moving in the other direction.

From 2017 to 2021, I was the convener of Aberdeen City Council’s finance committee, which dealt with the local authority’s community transfer requests with varying degrees of success, depending on the asset and the group that was looking to acquire it.

I will start with some success stories. The Seaton depot was an old disused council property. In 2018, it was agreed that the depot would be sold to Seaton community church for just £1. The church subsequently spent more than £0.5 million demolishing the old building and constructing not only a church but a brand-new community facility. While doing my research for this debate, I found a press clipping from 2018 that quoted me saying that the church’s work would

“make a real and lasting difference”

to the residents who live in the area, and that

“By using surplus council assets in new ways and supporting the goals of partners like the Seaton Community Church, we can make a real difference to people across the city”.

So, I do sometimes get things right. Today, the church has a full calendar of events from cage football to baby and toddler groups, and is proving to be a real asset for the community. I thank and commend Barry Douglas, who had the vision and determination to see the project through.

Another success story can be found in Footdee. Established in 2015, the Fittie Community Development Trust sought to secure the gospel hall with the aim of renovating it for the community through fundraising. It was successful in securing the hall back in 2018 and is now well on the way to achieving its goals.

Despite those positive stories, however, some challenging asset transfer projects have not yet been completed. One of those involves Westburn house, which is found in Aberdeen’s Westburn park. The house is a much-loved part of the city’s heritage but is, sadly, rapidly falling into disrepair, with the roof now having collapsed. The huge cost of making the building windtight and watertight appears to be the biggest hurdle to any revival. There is the will on the part of the local authority to transfer the asset, and the community supports the transfer and has a plan to use the building, but sources of funding are limited. About £7,000 has been raised, but that is a drop in the ocean compared with the sums that are required.

Those are a few rare examples of urban projects. Rural areas have been much more successful in implementing asset transfers. According to the Scottish Government’s figures, only 5 per cent of community buyouts have been in urban areas. The urban hub manager for Community Land Scotland has criticised the lack of progress in urban areas, saying:

“Community land ownership has been transformative in hundreds of communities across Scotland, but the potential in urban areas hasn’t been delivered yet. It should be a normal option in cities, like it is in the Highlands and Islands”.

Perhaps the minister would like to say in his summing-up how that is to be addressed.

The UK Government’s community ownership fund has significant financial benefits for Scotland. Venues that serve communities across Scotland are being supported by £2 million of investment from the fund. The levelling-up initiative sees Scotland benefiting from £2 billion of direct investment from the UK Government, and the UK Government community renewal fund provides additional financial support of £220 million to prepare the way for the UK shared prosperity fund.

However, more still needs to be done. The process of community asset transfer is hugely complicated, with unnecessary red tape before an asset transfer can be agreed. It requires, prior to transfer, a huge amount of legal knowledge and planning by community groups, which are often beyond the scope of smaller groups. Much more support is needed to enable groups to find their way through the process so that we see more buildings and assets that have fallen into disrepair being brought back to life in our communities.

The SNP says that it wants to empower local communities, but at the same time it is centralising services. It seems to be giving with one hand and taking away with the other. Much more clarity is required from the Government. Does it want local communities and councils to have more say about their destinies or does it want to centralise services, including adult and child social care?

Although I welcome the motion, I urge the Scottish Government not to rest on its laurels. Work still needs to be done. We need more community empowerment, not less. We need to cut the red tape for community groups and help them to make applications for asset transfers. We need to work with the UK Government to fund projects, and we need to stop centralisation of services away from our local communities.

I move amendment S6M-07247.1, to insert at end:

“; welcomes the UK Government’s Community Ownership Fund, which will allow communities to take ownership of local institutions that have fallen into disrepair or are under threat of closure, and further welcomes that there are projects in Scotland benefiting from this fund.”

I have a question about negative inflation, which we are due to have by the middle of the decade. Should that be universally welcomed, or does it provide any risks to the Scottish economy?

So most of that £40 billion is due to inflation, which is really a global factor anyway. Is that correct?

Would you expect interest rates to come back down as quickly as that?

We would also expect wage inflation to come down to almost zero, which might well have an impact on the forecast for income tax take.

Thank you.

Richard Hughes, you said that fiscal policy changes over the past six months will have added £40 billion of borrowing by 2027-28. Will you give us a breakdown of what has caused that? Is it due to the Bank of England having to step in on the bond market? Is it because of policy decisions such as the energy price guarantee? What is behind that rise?

Right, okay—that explains a lot. Thank you.

Earlier this year, Superintendent Murray Main retired from Police Scotland and called on health and wellbeing services to “step forward” and ease the strain on Aberdeen police officers, whose time is considerably taken up by mental health concerns. Due to the national health service crisis, police in the north-east are now the first and last resort for people with mental health issues and addiction issues and for those in need of hospital care. Is it any wonder that there are 884 fewer police officers than there were a decade ago? When will the devolved Government start listening to our police force and have the proper support structures in place, so that our police force can get back to policing?

To ask the Scottish Government when it expects police officer numbers to be restored to the previous target of 17,234 officers. (S6O-01659)