Hansard

Andy Brown of the Scottish Woodlot Association was in touch with the committee on Sunday and yesterday. He is pleased that we have recommended that Forestry Commission Scotland should be able to lease state forest land to not-for-profit co-operatives. I hope that that helps the Scottish Woodlot Association with what it is trying to achieve.

I have mentioned trust. With all trust comes a degree of risk; indeed, risk is at the very heart of what it means to trust. As we heard during our evidence taking on the bill, many public sector stakeholders are keenly aware of potential risks that may arise as a result of the change that the bill will help to foster. However, from the widespread community engagement that we undertook as a committee, we feel confident that the legislation will benefit not only communities, but the wider public service.

In our scrutiny of the bill, we have made great efforts to engage with the people whom the bill will affect. First, since early 2012, we have sought to use our entire work programme to take opportunities to examine community empowerment and inform ourselves of how it has developed as a mechanism for delivering change over the past decade or more. Over the past three years, the Local Government and Regeneration Committee has taken advantage of seven major pieces of work to examine the issue of community empowerment: our scrutiny of the Local Government Finance (Unoccupied Properties etc) (Scotland) Bill; our three-strand inquiry on public services reform, in which we undertook three interlinked inquiries over 18 months; our scrutiny of the 2013-14 draft budget; our scrutiny of the third national planning framework; and, most recently, our inquiry into the delivery of regeneration in Scotland.

Secondly, we have taken every opportunity to communicate with real people and communities the length and breadth of Scotland, and to do so in as clear a manner as possible. We undertook 10 fact-finding visits and held four full meetings of the committee outside Edinburgh. We visited places as diverse as Kelso, Cumbernauld, Paisley, Maybole, Stornoway, Dumfries and Fort William. During those visits, we held round-table discussions with local people and community groups about community empowerment. The clerks have estimated that more than 600 people attended the engagement sessions in person, with more joining in via social media.

Thirdly, the committee has very much taken to heart the reform agenda set forth by the Presiding Officer to engage with the people of Scotland as widely as possible using modern technology. To this end, we made widespread use of both Twitter and Facebook to engage with people and garner their views on the bill. We also recently established the first-ever Scottish Parliament committee Instagram account to make use of the visual evidence that we have collated.

During our visit to Stornoway, we held a live interactive Twitter discussion in both English and Gaelic with people in all three island areas. The discussion focused on what those communities felt they needed to empower themselves.

We also had some YouTube videos made, and I invite members to have a look at them. We have already made differences to people’s lives in the course of dealing with the bill. We visited Dumfries, and our video highlights the excellent work of a community group there called the Usual Place and the vital services that it provides in the Dumfries and Galloway area, such as a changing places toilet. I am happy to say that the committee was able to play a small role in helping that worthy organisation to secure a lease with Dumfries and Galloway Council on a property for its use. That is a good example of community empowerment at its best. I give thanks to the Parliament’s media team for allowing us the opportunity to participate in those videos.

The minister mentioned gobbledegook and officialspeak, which are a great turn-off for many folks who want to become involved. I am glad that the minister raised that point today, and I hope that he will continue to follow the committee’s line that we must eradicate them, to allow for the maximum possible amount of participation.

Let us now consider the committee’s findings and recommendations. Part 1 of the bill addresses national outcomes. Given the focus on scrutiny of outcomes, we consider that the Scottish Government should report annually on the extent to which national outcomes have been achieved. That would inform the Parliament’s budget scrutiny process. Such reports should be available before the publication of the draft Scottish budget each year.

Part 2 relates to community planning. The committee is concerned that local communities are not sufficiently and directly involved with community planning partnerships. We recommend that the Government amends the bill to require CPPs to seek involvement from a level below that of community representative, as well as to set out how that involvement will be assessed. There should be an explicit requirement on all CPPs to include community capacity building in local plans and to report on progress in every annual report.

Part 3 deals with participation requests. There can be no doubt that the bill is generally a welcome boost towards putting power in the hands of communities. However, the committee was struck by the fact that, although the bill is designed to empower, it contains a requirement that only groups with a written constitution may submit a participation request. That seems to be out of step with the whole ethos of the bill. In the words of Jeanie Mackenzie, who responded to our video on participation requests:

“Sometimes an individual has a very good idea for improving public services, but lacks the time or opportunity to find others and form a constituted group.”

We therefore recommend that the bill be amended to allow individuals to submit participation requests.

Given the need to legislate in this area, it is vital that progress on participation requests is closely monitored. We therefore also recommend that the bill requires all public service authorities to produce periodic public reports. That is covered in paragraphs 261 to 270 of our report, which sets out our recommendations for the areas to be covered by that process.

As I have already stated, part 4, on the community right to buy, was considered by the Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee, so I will leave members of that committee to speak about that issue.

Part 5 deals with asset transfers. Some of our recommendations in that area are directed at the changes that are required to public bodies to ensure that the bill’s intention is achieved in practice. That, too, will require close monitoring.

Part 6 relates to the management of common good assets. Given the approach that the minister outlined in oral evidence, we see no difficulty with the bill specifying a maximum timescale for the compilation of common good registers.