Chamber and committees

Okay—I will not labour the point.

With regard to flood defence systems being fit for purpose, we have already spent a huge amount of money, with costs doubling or trebling from original expectations. Of course, new schemes are in play, and we know how expensive they are, but one of the big tests will be whether they actually do the job that they are intended to. The proof of the pudding will be very much in the eating, because what local communities really care about is whether a system will protect them, their homes, their businesses and their high streets.

The Brechin example is interesting. That scheme, which cost £60 million and was completed in 2015, was described to the people of Brechin at the time as a one-in-200-year defence system, but it lasted only eight years before it was breached. I appreciate that the answer to my question will be, “Well, it was an unexpected and extraordinary weather event that caused the breach”, but you have been talking about all the money that is spent on consultants and how few people with world-class expertise there are. How can we spend tens of millions of pounds on a defence system that does not do its job after less than a decade? My concern is whether it will happen again, and I do not think that simply blaming the size of the waves and the force of the wind is good enough.

Thank you for allowing me to join remotely this morning. It is much appreciated.

I have listened very carefully to the questions that have been asked, and I have a few other areas to cover, but I want to clarify a few things that have been said. First, I want to press on the issue of gaps in information and data, which came up earlier in the meeting and was raised in the report by the Accounts Commission and the Auditor General. The report is clear on the matter in referring to specific circumstances. Paragraph 35 says:

“there is currently no consistent, comprehensive national monitoring system in place to assess the condition of existing flood-protection schemes.”

The report then goes on to explain that, in practice, that means that, because information about whether the existing schemes are performing effectively is not available, it is not clear if they are providing the protection that they were presumably meant to provide. It is an open question, but who wants to address that specific criticism?

You will all—[Interruption.] My apologies—it is difficult to see who is speaking because I am not in the room. I have a lot of questions and not everyone needs to answer every question.

I want to point to the Bellwin scheme, which is one example of where a bit more work could be done. The Government could have a contingency fund available to local councils, because, as we have heard, it is often local councils that bear the brunt of dealing with the issues first-hand—and that get the most criticism. As you will see if you read some of the news reports on recent storm events, it is local councillors and officers who get the first wave of criticism from local residents—perhaps rightly so in many cases, but equally their hands are often tied when there is simply no capital funding available. Perhaps this is therefore a joint question for the Government and COSLA.

Use of the Bellwin scheme funding has gone up massively over the years, presumably as a by-product of requests for funds, due to more incidents. Is there an argument for having a bigger pot of cash sitting there, which is not necessarily agreed up front for the council but which could be used by any local authority in the country at any point to support communities on a small-scale and immediate basis? I will talk about compensation in a moment, too.

In that case, I hope that my question was positive and has inspired the possibility of looking again at the scheme.

That brings us to a wider issue, namely what people expect in communities that are affected by a flooding event. It is fair to say that, in some areas, the response has been quick and has got better over the years, as a result of a change in direction and focus. In other areas, however, communities have absolutely felt let down.

The example of Brechin was raised earlier, and there are anecdotal stories about specific households and businesses there that felt that they were treated very poorly, not just by local government, but by national Government. In Cupar, after storm Gerrit, which unleashed havoc in that community, some businesses were waiting five or six months for compensation, and many were not even eligible. Even for those that were eligible, the level of the compensation grants was extremely low.

I appreciate that there is no open-ended pot of cash for compensation and that the scheme must be focused and targeted at the communities that are most affected by flooding. However, is the money getting there fast enough, and is there enough of it? If the answers to those two questions are no and no, what representations will officials make to ministers on improving that? After all, we need to do better for communities.

Thank you for those answers, which go some way to addressing the point about how you are responding to the audit report, which is welcome.

Paragraph 39, on the next page, has another specific critique that I would like to point you to. It is about the joined-up approach to managing flooding both within and between organisations. Specifically, the report says:

“there is a lack of joint action within and between organisations.”

It refers to a

“separation between engagement with communities on flood schemes and engagement on broader resilience issues”,

as well as

“a lack of long-term strategic planning”

and

“disjointed delivery”.

Those are all fairly negative comments on what is supposed to be a joined-up approach. The fact that we have so many agencies represented on the panel, and that there are many others involved that are not on the panel, is testament to how complex flood management is. Ultimately, whose responsibility is it to ensure that all those disparate organisations are working together, communicating well and agreeing a joint national plan, which clearly does not exist at the moment?

Time is tight, so you will excuse me for not bringing in any more responses, but thank you for the responses that you have given me.

I guess that what has hit me most from your comments on the nature of flood defence systems is that the one-in-200-year efficacy model is based on historical data. Most people will be quite surprised by that. Historical data is of course helpful and useful, but surely we should be designing things based on our knowledge of what the future is going to look like. That is not actually that difficult to do these days—I know that SEPA, for example, has done some good work with the University of Strathclyde on artificial intelligence models—but my point is that if you base your plans on what has already happened, you will be designing a system that is not fit for the future.

But you cannot do that at the moment.

I thank Mr Beattie for covering many of my areas of questioning, which will save some time. I want to ask two specific questions: one is about the college’s deficit and the other is about its capacity to produce reports.

I was struck by paragraph 15 of your report. I am perhaps reading between the lines, but can you explain to me what happened? I am intrigued by the board’s role in all of this. It seemed to be reluctant or unwilling to produce a budget that showed a deficit. There was an appetite for producing balanced books, but that was obviously impossible, because there was a huge deficit. Did you get the feeling that there was any conflict in relation to the management data with which the board was presented? Where did the unwillingness to be honest about the numbers come from?

I look forward to that. There has been a lot of discussion about the wider sustainability of the college sector, and the SFC has reported that 22 out of 24 colleges have an unsustainable financial future. Does that reflect what you saw at UHI Perth? Is this just a small piece of a wider jigsaw of more systemic issues with college funding?

That said, this is not the first time that Audit Scotland has come to the committee with a section 22 report on a college that has had a commercial subsidiary. We can point to numerous examples. The evidence that you produce shows that a pattern is emerging and that there is a direct relationship between some of the commercial subsidiaries that colleges operate and some of the financial issues for colleges or the bodies that are partners to those entities, so there is an effect on college accounts and audits.