Meeting of the Parliament 10 February 2026 [Draft]
That is a very reasonable point. The land that I was talking about was private land and not publicly owned land, but the same principle applies. We have a lot of publicly owned assets in Scotland that are not being used to their fullest potential, and we should seek to promote anything that we can do to bring them back into more productive use where the community has an interest.
Given that we are going to pass the bill at stage 3—I assume that that is the case—the key question is what happens next. It is all very well passing a bill and saying that local authorities and other public bodies have to produce community wealth building action plans, but that in itself will not deliver much. What we have to do is ensure that there is delivery of the objectives of community wealth building, which will come back to the question of resources.
When the committee took evidence, some witnesses said that they have issues with, for example, what is in the financial memorandum and the lack of estimates for the implementation costs of the action plans. There will be a resourcing issue for public bodies and local authorities. When it comes to community wealth building plans, I can entirely see a scenario in which some bodies say, “Oh no, yet another bit of paper that we’ve got to produce—something else that Johnny in office 52 gets to do.” The question is whether we are confident that all those who are tasked with delivering have the resources that are required to implement the bill and ensure that something is delivered. That needs to be the next stage. The resources must be there to ensure that the objectives that everybody in the chamber wants to see can be delivered.
We will support the bill at stage 3, but, if we want community wealth building to be delivered, as I think we all do, passing the bill is only the first step. Much more will need to be done to achieve delivery.