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Okay. Thanks very much. Emma—do you want to come in on either of those points?

Frankly, Scottish Enterprise has resource constraints, so it needs to prioritise. To be honest, it will probably not add any value to the stuff that we are talking about.

My questions are around the requirement for planning authorities to notify owners and occupiers of land about neighbouring development sites that are identified in a proposed plan, where that proposal might have a significant impact on their land. What consideration have you given to the resource implications of that requirement? Is there any thinking about additional resources being made available to support that?

Thank you for that.

I want to touch on two areas. The first is the third sector. I am new to the committee, so I have had a look back through Official Reports. To pick up on the work that Paul McLennan was investigating, it is fair to say that community anchor organisations and third sector development trusts have expressed quite a number of frustrations about community planning.

I know from my experience in Glasgow that the community planning partnership there, although it has the word “community” in its title, is very far from communities. In fact, there are two layers below it, at sectoral level and area partnership level, before we get to anything that we would fairly describe as engaging with a community. I suppose the question is what can be done to ensure that the frustrations of third sector organisations—anchor organisations and development trusts—are allayed, and that they have more input to the work of CPPs.

It was interesting to hear Councillor Heddle’s comments on Orkney, which is a community of 20,000 people. That is very different from a community of 650,000 people. Perhaps there is a structural issue that prevents CPPs from doing the job that they should be doing and getting close to what happens on the ground.

Absolutely.

Before I start on that, I have a brief supplementary to Mark Griffin’s question on evidence. The minister went through a number of examples of work. However, the 2015 Scottish household survey showed that 24 per cent of people in Scotland felt that they could influence decisions affecting their local areas, but in the 2019 survey that had dropped to 18 per cent. I believe that that is also reflected in our worsening performance on the community empowerment indicator on social capital in the national performance framework. That hard evidence suggests that things have got worse rather than better, so I would like to hear the minister’s reflections on that. Is that on the radar, and does it drive the approach to understanding whether or not we are making progress?

It is absolutely fair to say that HIE and SOSE have a different remit—that is well recognised—but I was surprised that there was no role for Business Gateway, which I would have thought would have been much more engaged with local business communities than seems to be the case.

That is a fair comment. I think that it was described in one of the papers as the “glue” behind the scenes. However, that does not take away from the fact that, when I engage with local community organisations that do great work on the front line and which have many frustrations in many areas, their work tends to coalesce organically, but there is not the sense that that is something that the CPP or any other structure is adding value to. In fact, the area partnerships are seen largely as a mechanism for funnelling funding to local organisations, rather than as something that pulls things together strategically and coherently. Indeed, community councils also have an important role to play in that.

I suppose that I meant to reflect on the frustration that was expressed by the third sector about not feeling part of that process. By the time you get to it, it is the third sector interface, which again is quite far removed from the people on the ground who are delivering real stuff in real communities.

Does Councillor Heddie have reflections on any of that, bearing in mind that Orkney might have a different experience due to its size? I think that his screen has frozen, so I will move on to my next point.

Engagement of the business community in delivering community empowerment is also a very important strand at a local level. What steps can be taken to ensure that it is effectively involved? As part of that, I am going to reflect on the work of Scottish Enterprise and other enterprise agencies that is referenced in the written evidence. I was not engaged with any of the work that is referenced, but I want to give a perspective on it from my previous work with businesses and enterprise agencies.

I was surprised to see Scottish Enterprise referenced—it is mentioned as one of the stakeholders—because, in my experience with it, its work was much more placed at a national strategic level to build world-leading industrial and technology clusters that make Scotland competitive, rather than being involved in the nuts and bolts of what happens at a very local level. I would have thought that that local role was more for Business Gateway, frankly. I would welcome any reflections on that point as well.

Okay. Following on from that, when the cabinet secretary announced the accord, she said that, if necessary, she would

“make full use of the powers available to us to bring parties to the table, including if necessary, using legislation to do so.”

Do you think that it is time for the Scottish Government to look at the legislative route?

Is it necessary to have the accord in place to deliver on that?