Chamber and committees

Thank you—the point on timing is understandable.

I turn to my final question in this area. Councils will have the unenviable task of setting a budget in the next few months—it is not far away. How do you see the sequencing of that? We have the ongoing three-month consultation on local government reform, which will be closed by the end of the year, but councils will, in very short order, be setting a budget for the coming financial year. Do you see any conflict, or does it feel like things are on hold? Is the coming financial year just a holding pattern until we hear from Government, or through consultation, about what is going to happen?

I will pick up on the issue of non-competitive funding. Will local cultural organisations decide how the money is divvied up? Who else will be part of that process?

Do you have concerns about representation, particularly in terms of class? Who is likely to be in the room when decisions are made? Who is likely to be active in their communities and involved in community development trusts or cultural organisations? In my region, that is largely a middle-class pursuit but, as I am sure we would all agree, culture should be for everyone. I appreciate that it is difficult, but have you thought about how to bring a range of voices, particularly those of working-class communities, into the decisions?

I will pick up on some of what Colin Beattie said about capital funding and what a huge issue that is. I represent a region with a huge number of buildings that have had to be closed. For example, the Bo’ness recreation centre was in such a state of disrepair that it was closed and then demolished, which was a loss of a leisure facility that was important to the community for all sorts of reasons.

The answer to the situation might simply be that a stitch in time saves nine. It would be better if we had capital funding to maintain buildings and not let them get into that state. I do not think that Bo’ness is about to have a new building for a swimming pool or for facilities like that. Could you talk about capital funding in that regard?

So, at the moment, you are planning for the coming financial year based on local authorities having the same form that they currently do.

That is helpful. There is a problem with saying that we just need to make a service statutory or make sure that people have a right to something, if, on the ground, there is no money to provide the service or it is not realistic to do so. There is a mismatch between raising people’s expectations that they are going to get something as a right and the funding situation, particularly in local government, which is such that, with the best will in the world, that is just not feasible.

I want to turn to the issue of public sector reform, you will be shocked to hear. In the past few weeks, the Scottish Government has discussed proposals around having six regional authorities and 120 to 160 community authorities. I am sure that COSLA will be contributing to the consultation and will be in discussion with the Government on the issue. Obviously, nothing is set in stone, as the Government keeps saying, so it appears to be a bit of a moveable feast at the moment. However, if we were to move to six larger bodies and lots of little ones, what impact would you foresee that having on the cultural activities that local authorities support?

You favour culture being closer to communities. If we were to end up with a model of 120 or 160 community authorities, I would have concerns about the capacity of those organisations. We hear of councils where the capacity is quite small because the staff has been hollowed out at the level of officials. Do you have any thoughts on how smaller organisations might be able to cope with the administrative activities as well as facilitating cultural activities?

Would there be local authority representatives?

Thank you very much; that is really helpful.

Councillor Chalmers, you raised the issue of statutory versus non-statutory services. We hear time and time again from local authorities about the dire financial straits that they are in. Around budget time, they are looking at whether they can deliver the statutory services, which, a lot of the time, is as far as they can go. There have been calls from some in the culture sector to make cultural activities and cultural spending statutory as well. I have my own thoughts on that, but what is your reaction to it?

Lucy Casot, on Museums Galleries Scotland and the issue of capital funding, I was concerned to read some of the statistics in your written submission, which showed the percentage of buildings that are behind on maintenance, and of the issue of caring for a building the condition of which is graded as poor or bad. We can well imagine that situation in relation to some of the buildings that house our museums and galleries. What risks are posed by the lack of, or gap in, capital spending? That is quite a broad question.