Chamber and committees

That is clear.

10:15

We will resume the meeting with panel 2. We expect three witnesses to join us. One of them is running a few minutes late, but we need to get the meeting under way to make best use of the time. We hope that Lynda Campbell, head of business and strategy at Glasgow Life, who will be attending on behalf of Community Leisure UK, will join us presently.

For the time being, I welcome to the committee: Councillor Maureen Chalmers, community wellbeing spokesperson, COSLA; and Matthew Sweeney, chief officer for communities, COSLA. Thank you to both for joining us.

You will be aware of some of the issues that the committee has already considered in its pre-budget scrutiny. One thing that members have shared concern about is that, in the context of a worsening national budgetary situation for culture, there is the risk—and potentially some early indications of the reality—of a squeeze at local government level on culture spending. I want to explore with you the extent to which that is reflected in the national picture. Is the situation playing out in the same way in different local authorities, or is there evidence to suggest that it is impacting different areas differently?

City of Edinburgh Council will have a story to tell about its use of funding from the visitor levy, but, so far, it is the only local authority to have implemented the levy. Other authorities will explore that option, but not all of them will see it forming part of their tax base. What is the picture as regards variation in culture spending? To what extent is the national uplift resulting in the loss of local spending?

From the provisional outturn figures for 2025-26, if we leave aside libraries, museums and galleries, we can see that the decline has been in other culture and heritage spend. The figures that we have at the moment for 2026-27 are the budget estimates. We do not have any information about what is happening on the ground. Do you anticipate there being a similar reduction when we see the outturn figures for 2026-27, or is there reason to think that what happened in 2025-26 was a one-year phenomenon?

I thank you both for your time and for answering the committee’s questions.

We will move into private session for the rest of the committee’s agenda.

11:39

Meeting continued in private until 12:11.

Under the next item of business, we will continue our pre-budget scrutiny with a focus on culture. We have two panels. With our first panel, we will discuss the report “Local Culture Scotland: Culture is infrastructure for place-based working”. We will hear from the author of the report and two of the project partners. I give a very warm welcome to Matt Baker, artist and author of the report; Pauline Smith, chief executive, Development Trusts Association Scotland; and Kate Wimpress, director, North Edinburgh Arts. Thank you all very much for joining us.

I believe that Matt Baker will kick things off, with a few minutes of introduction to the report.

Thank you very much for introducing the report. Can you say a little more about how you see the model working alongside the existing structures? Let us say that the green light has been given, we are into year 3 and there is a national roll-out. What is the relationship between the structures, strategies and frameworks that you are proposing and, say, Creative Scotland and the existing structures at local government level? Are you proposing something that replaces or takes functions from those existing systems, or something that sits alongside them? How do you see them interacting and co-operating?

I might follow up on some of that at the end, but I do not want to step on others’ toes.

I want to pick up on one point, as I do not want to leave an implication hanging. I am concerned that somebody listening in to the session with our first witness panel, and then to this session, might take from some of what you have said that some of the approaches proposed in the “Local Culture Scotland” report are already happening at a local level. That seemed to be the implication.

Did COSLA feed into that report? Do you believe that that report proposes something genuinely additional, or is it, from your point of view, simply a different way of delivering what is already happening?

It is unfortunate that we have not had Community Leisure UK on the panel. I and some members had some questions for it. We will see whether there is an opportunity to get some written input from it before the committee finishes its pre-budget scrutiny.

I will finish by asking a question about the issues that I might have explored with Community Leisure UK, in order to get the local authority perspective on them. My question is particularly about premises and venues. Councillor Chalmers said that community facilities have not had the investment that they should have had over decades, and there is an issue about which ones to keep on and which ones we can invest in to meet modern standards for energy, accessibility and so on.

We have discussed in particular the situation in Glasgow, where, as I mentioned, some high-profile culture spaces have been lost or are under threat. Creative Scotland no longer wants to be a landlord, 50 years after taking on a high-profile culture space and making it available. Other spaces are managed by arm’s-length organisations—not necessarily Glasgow Life—and are portfolio managed.

We understand the pressures and why local authorities need to increase the rental revenues that they get from such premises, particularly but by no means only in Glasgow. Do we need a new way of delivering and ensuring the provision of affordable culture premises and venues, given that many public bodies do not necessarily want to take on more property at the moment and a lot of community bodies see it as a risk to take on the ownership of buildings in the current context? How do we solve that acute problem so that there are spaces for the work that rising budgets should be able to fund?

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the seventh meeting in 2026 of the Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee. We have no apologies to record for today’s meeting.

Our first item of business is to decide whether to take items 4 to 7 in private. Do members agree to take those items in private?

Members indicated agreement.