No. The statistics have been published. The latest statistics, which were published on 12 September, show that there has been a very slight increase in staff numbers for local government over the past year. That might be due, in part, to some of the additional things that local government is doing—early learning provision, for example—so you would expect to see an increase.

We need to show how desirable it is to work in local government and how it is, in a number of fields, a rewarding career path to take. We have lost that a bit, but COSLA and a range of partners are making a huge effort to highlight where there are real opportunities, particularly for young people, to progress to those careers and to have a sense of pride in what they are delivering for wider society.

I was fortunate to come in when that work was quite well progressed. A lot of work had already taken place on resetting the relationship, which is what the new deal is about.

One of the biggest issues—Councillor Hagmann talked about this—was building trust between COSLA and the Scottish Government. That has to be a two-way thing. Both of our democratic electoral mandates have to be respected. Sometimes in the past, we forgot that the other side had a mandate, too. Sometimes local government maybe does not recognise the mandate that the Scottish Parliament has in some areas, and sometimes we forget that our councillors were democratically elected by their electorate in their elections. One really important thing is respecting our two mandates and that both spheres of government have a mandate. Sometimes that is in shared areas; it is clear that there are areas in which the Scottish Government and local government both have a mandate. We need to build trust in order to do what we all want to do, which is to deliver on the three shared priorities for all our citizens.

A pretty significant advance was that all six political groups in COSLA—Scottish Labour, the Scottish Conservatives, the Scottish Liberal Democrats, the independent group, the Scottish National Party and the Scottish Green Party—were able to sign up to agreeing that the three priorities of tackling poverty, particularly child poverty, transforming the economy through a just transition to net zero, and delivering sustainable public services were things that they would all prioritise, putting party politics aside and recognising that those were areas on which we could work together across the parties and the two spheres of government in Scotland.

That is our starting point, and we are developing that. We are improving trust. That is a big change compared with how we worked in the past. In passing legislation, whether that was a Government bill or a member’s bill, the Scottish Parliament would ask COSLA, “What is this going to cost to deliver, because you’re going to be delivering it? You get no say on it.” That was the extent of the consultation with local government.

I hope that there will now be much earlier discussion between the Scottish Government and our local government partners in COSLA. One thing that the Parliament needs to work out is how, with members’ bills or members’ amendments, across the Parliament, we all respect local government’s democratic mandate and how—this will be more difficult—back-bench members’ amendments or members’ bills can involve the same level of collaboration with local government while the different democratic places that we come from are respected.

A huge amount of work is on-going to develop the fiscal framework. We are looking at where we can relax previous ring fencing and what further powers can be extended to local government.

Ian Storrie might want to say a little bit about the work that is going on in the background. That is really important. The fiscal framework is critical. The Verity house agreement is a really important part of the new deal. It is a really good success, and it is already changing the way in which we work. Getting the fiscal framework right is crucial to making it work for the long term. We are working really hard and taking the time to get that right. We have to get it right first time.

Yes, thanks very much for giving me the opportunity. It is important to recognise that local government pay negotiations are, rightly, between COSLA, as the representative of the employers—local government—and the trade unions, which represent the workforce. That said, the suggestion in your original question that the Scottish Government has chosen to stand back—I cannot remember your exact words—is not factually correct. Going right back to the start, the Scottish Government provided a further £155 million in the 2023-24 allocation to support a meaningful pay rise for local government workers. We saw that inflation was rising, and that was additional money after the budgets had been set. In addition to that, we provided reassurance that we will support councils with the £94 million increased recurring costs for future years. That was a real concern for local authorities when they made not the last offer but the one before. They were not necessarily concerned about that money but about what they would do in future years. Unusually, because of the Verity house agreement and the collaboration around that, the Deputy First Minister was content to provide that assurance, and group leaders across local authorities welcomed it.

As I understand it, the decision to make that further offer was unanimous. When it was rejected, COSLA and the Scottish Government made a huge effort to look at how additional funds could be identified without impacting on jobs and services. Scottish Government, COSLA and local government finance officials worked hard to identify and reprofile money in capital-to-revenue opportunities so that we could reprioritise £80 million from existing spend and identify emerging underspends to enable that last offer from COSLA. It was good to hear that two of the unions recognised that it met the unions’ demands. We will continue to work to ensure that the third union gets the clarity that it seeks. Councillor Hagmann has identified some joint communications that we hope will make their way to members. Ian, can you give the committee a little more understanding of where the £80 million came from?

Thank you, convener. I thank the committee for the invitation to participate in this pre-budget scrutiny session. I am particularly grateful that the committee, having invited both Councillor Hagmann and me, recognises the importance of involving both local and national Government in the pre-budget discussions, in line with our Verity house agreement commitment.

The Scottish Government recognises that local government workforce planning is a matter for each individual local authority. Although some issues are experienced Scotland-wide, each council faces a unique set of challenges that require tailored solutions rather than homogeneous approaches alone. That said, we are aware of the significant impact that workforce shortages in particular areas, such as environmental health and planning services, continues to have across Scotland. Those shortages undoubtedly impact upon our ability to achieve our three shared priorities. The Scottish Government is therefore fully committed to working in partnership with local government to ensure that the new deal with local government affords the greatest level of flexibility to councils to tackle workforce challenges in ways that work for them.

I definitely agree with what you are saying. The committee might find it valuable to hear about the experience of the Wester Hailes community—which has been a particularly deprived community, many parts of which have been marginalised—in producing one of the first new-style local place plans in the country. That plan has been agreed by the council, so it has a new status. It is one of many communities that are showing the way for others, so it might be worth the committee’s while to look at what it has done.

We are working with partners on that, and the tripartite group is one of the groups that is helping us to do that. Through that, the Scottish Government, local authorities and the Scottish Allotments and Gardens Society work together.

There has been a slowing down of that work, because of our work on the good food nation. It tends to be the same people who are doing the work, and the good food nation has been prioritised. I do not think that that is necessarily a bad thing, but you are right that there are probably some easy gains that we need to make. However, we need to do that in partnership rather than telling colleagues what to do.

The NPF is still there and still exists, but it is probably useful at this point to recognise that the new deal is not only the Verity house agreement. It is important to say that because those terms are sometimes used as if they mean the same thing.

The Verity house agreement is part of the new deal with local government and is the partnership agreement. There are three other aspects underneath that, one of which is important to what we are talking about here. The first aspect is the fiscal framework, the second is the completion of the local governance review, which we have talked about, and the final strand is the joint work programme, which has an outcomes and accountability framework. That is really important and is the big difference between the Verity house agreement and the concordat.

The concordat served a really important purpose and was transformational at the time. In our new deal with local government, we are learning from some of the challenges of that concordat. Let us be honest: the lack of an outcomes and accountability framework meant that, over time, we reverted to old ways and ring fencing was used as an easy way of ticking a box and sometimes of being accountable to this committee. It is really important that we get the outcomes and accountability framework right. It is not something that we can do overnight, but the Verity house agreement gives us a set of agreed ways of working to achieve an outcomes and accountability framework that we hope will stand us in good stead well into the future.

I have met the leaders of all Scotland’s local authorities and, as part of that, with the leaders of all the political groups. The appetite is clear. Folk see a real opportunity to reset not only for this year and next year but for the long term, and to reset the way in which the Scottish Government and local government work together to benefit our communities.

There is an appetite for change across the parties in a way that did not exist before. That may be due to the fact that there may be a little less flag waving than there was with the concordat. It is clear that we are on a journey and that there is a lot of work to do. The Verity house agreement is a really important part of that process and an important partnership agreement, but it in no way concludes the new deal with local government. It is a starting point to a deal that is about how we are going to work together while respecting both democratic mandates.