Local Government and Communities Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, February 17, 2021

Official Report 667KB pdf

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Climate Change Plan (Update)

Agenda item 5 is an evidence session with representatives of COSLA on local government’s perspective on climate change and the green recovery.

I welcome Councillor Steven Heddle, environment and economy spokesperson, COSLA; Silke Isbrand, policy manager, COSLA; Aubrey Fawcett, chief executive, Inverclyde Council; and Paula McLeay, policy and insight senior manager, the City of Edinburgh Council. Thank you all for being here today, and for your written evidence.

We have allocated just over an hour for this session. There is a pre-arranged questioning order, and I will call each member in turn to ask their questions for up to nine minutes. It would help broadcasting staff if members could indicate who their questions are addressed to. I suggest that we make it our working assumption that questions are directed in the first instance to Councillor Heddle, and he can pass them to others if he wishes. We may have a short amount of time for supplementary questions at the end.

Witnesses should indicate clearly if they wish to answer a question—for instance by raising their hand—and should not feel the need to answer every question fully if their views are generally in line with points already made.

Finally, please give broadcasting staff a second to operate your microphones before you speak.

I invite Councillor Steven Heddle to make a short opening statement.

I thank the committee, on behalf of COSLA and my colleagues, for the opportunity to give evidence on the Scottish climate change plan update, as set out in “Securing a Green Recovery on a Path to Net Zero: Climate Change Plan 2018–2032—update”.

Climate change is a global emergency that will need a cross-Government planned response over many decades. COSLA is committed to rising to that challenge with an overarching objective across all our policy areas of a just transition to net zero by no later than 2045.

There is no precedent for what we are seeking to achieve during the next 20 to 30 years in decarbonisation of society and the economy. Although the pandemic response has given us a glimpse of what is needed, and, indeed, possible through co-ordinated effort. The just transition to a net zero economy and society will take all our collective effort and ingenuity to achieve. It will require unprecedented co-operation between different parts of the public and private sectors, communities and all Scottish civic society.

10:45  

Part of the reason why we are glad to be here today is that we cannot see a pathway to achieving our net zero goals fairly that does not include a central role for local government. That is recognised in the Paris agreement. We believe that that role must extend beyond being only a delivery partner for national programmes. We must build on the strengths and capabilities of local government, which have been exemplified during the Covid-19 pandemic response. That role must also build on the best examples of joint working between local government and its partners, including, notably, the Scottish Government.

In short, I believe that local government needs to be trusted to govern wisely and lead the carbon reduction response locally within the framework of the plan. That will require a positive decision to invest in local authorities, in addition to national programmes, if we are to make the biggest possible impact, with genuine co-ordination of local and national contribution being achieved through genuine partnership.

We fully support the ambition shown by the climate change plan update. Although many of the targets will be hugely stretching, they must be led by science and we should not settle for what seems achievable now.

We are also of the view that, while refining the climate change plan update is important, we must now focus on delivery and making important investment decisions that can take carbon out of our economy as quick and as fairly as possible. If there are barriers to achieving the targets, we need to talk about them honestly to identify what can be done to alleviate the constraints.

The update plan is a lengthy and detailed document, and we are still learning about its implications for local authorities. Therefore, there might be some questions that we cannot fully answer today. If that is the case, I am happy to commit to providing more detailed responses on specific points.

We will now move to questions. I will kick off. Does the climate change plan update recognise the roles of councils in the climate change agenda?

It is difficult to summarise the position in a few words. It is a 255-page document and makes copious reference to the public sector, of which local authorities are part. However, I would say that it recognises the role of the public sector, although we feel that it could further develop the role of local authorities, as we are major employers and run vehicle fleets in the way that we do.

The main thrust of our evidence today is to convey the absolute belief that, when it comes to tackling climate change and achieving net zero in the timescale that is set out in the climate change plan—or, ideally, ahead of that timescale—we can achieve more by working more closely with the Scottish Government in developing the detailed response that is the next step than we can by simply being a delivery agency for it.

That was a yes-and-no answer, but the main thing that we are trying to convey is that we are up for tackling the existential challenge of climate change and are approaching the climate change plan update with open arms. We are saying “Come and work with us. We are happy to do our share in tackling this problem.”

How well do you think councils take the need to reduce emissions into account in their spending plans? Are improvements needed in that area?

Councils are being pulled in many directions with their spending plans. My colleague Gail Macgregor has given evidence to the committee and has explained that we feel that we are underfunded and that the funding that we get is ring fenced to the extent that we cannot innovate or maintain the services as we would like to.

We feel that we could do more to tackle climate change if we had more funds. However, it is likely that we will have to do less because services such as economic development, which are active in supporting innovation and activities around climate change, are non-statutory. We also fund areas such as public transport, which make a contribution.

Local authorities are committed to tackling climate change. I find that reflected in the attitude of the COSLA environment and economy board that I chair. Members have a good attitude to the issue and are very well informed.

I can see that you are keen to do your bit. I also accept that it will sometimes be difficult to follow through on reducing emissions because of other pressures in your spending plans. Are those pressures taken into account when you look at those plans? Is reducing emissions part of your thinking about how you will spend money, even if, in the end, you cannot always do what you need to do?

The internal reporting structures of local authorities, and the ways in which they deal with the issues that they face, vary across the country.

I am certain that local authorities are achieving a reduction in climate change emissions. That is statutorily reported, so I can tell you that there was a 23 per cent reduction in 2018-19 compared to 2015-16. There is awareness and enthusiasm. Many of our members set climate change reduction targets that exceed those set by Government. I could happily give you a list of them.

That is the high-level perspective. Aubrey Fawcett can give you a more informed picture.

You asked about council spending plans. Since 2015, my authority has reduced its carbon emissions by about a third. We have facilitated that by a range of activities: revamping and renewing our school estate; introducing electric vehicles, with the effect that, by next year, 75 per cent of our light vehicles will be electrically powered; and significantly reducing our use of oil to heat buildings.

A number of local authorities have moved towards net zero plans. My authority has set aside £100,000 to prepare for that. As you may know, we had a letter from Roseanna Cunningham requiring us to declare by November 2022 when we expect to achieve net zero. Glasgow City Council has set aside £1 million to prepare for that. Significant work has happened in the past five or six years and there is an enormous amount to do in the coming decades.

There is obviously a lot of good practice in your local authority and some others. How widespread is that? Are all local authorities approaching that in the same way, or is there a range of strengths and weaknesses?

As far as I am aware, the conversion to using LED lighting has happened across local government. Many local authorities are proactive in dealing with that.

We recognise—it is critical that local government, not only Government, recognises—the importance of that agenda and the huge task that lies ahead. My response to the question is that all local authorities are absolutely taking that approach. Steven Heddle might want to add to that.

I chair COSLA’s environment and economy board, in which the views of all 32 local authorities are represented. The views of various professional associations involved in housing, planning and transport are also fed back into the board. In preparing COSLA’s submission to the committee, we canvassed them all for their views. With that in mind, I would appreciate it if you could bring in Silke Isbrand from COSLA, who can summarise some of those views.

I mentioned that some local authorities are committing to targets in excess of the national targets. They include the City of Edinburgh Council, Glasgow City Council, Highland Council, Dumfries and Galloway Council and my friends in Comhairle nan Eilean Siar. Another example is Renfrewshire Council, which has committed £1 million in the current financial year to examine opportunities around that.

The answer to the convener’s question is, essentially, yes. Of course, there are local authorities of different sizes, with different capabilities to respond to those issues. My local authority is investing in another climate change officer, and in resource for renewable energy projects. That is a big thing for us, but it would be a small thing in the context of other local authorities’ work. Proportionately, however, it could allow us to decarbonise probably about 80 per cent of our current carbon excess in one project.

We believe that that approach is replicated across the country. Having taken Edinburgh’s name in vain, I suggest that you ask Paula McLeay for a more detailed response.

On the back of what Councillor Heddle said, it is true, or fair to say, that the 32 local authorities are, across the board, very engaged in that area. As Councillor Heddle pointed out, we had an active debate on those issues with our 32 members at the last board meeting, and there is a clear commitment there.

It is clear that local authorities are doing things differently in different places. Rural authorities have slightly different approaches from those in urban authorities, because their challenges are different. Agriculture plays a different role in the Scottish Borders, for example, than it does in the middle of Edinburgh or Glasgow, where there will be other opportunities in areas such as congestion. Nonetheless, we can reassure the committee that we are working strongly with our 32 local authorities.

I am aware that, by the deadline for responses to the climate change plan update on 12 January, not many local authorities had fed back to the committee. I think that everybody is aware of the very short deadline. COSLA wrote to all the local authorities to actively seek their observations on the climate change plan update. For example, we asked them what they would need to step up their action, and so on. It is fair to say that there is active dialogue across the 32 local authorities, and we engaged with them on those issues.

I want to kick off by asking Steven Heddle about community renewables and the community co-operatives that local authorities can set up. You mentioned in answer to a question from the convener that your local authority is looking at that. There are obviously different opportunities in different authorities—for example, as we have heard, there are differences between urban and rural authorities.

What is your take on that? Work has been done in the past; I know that the Edinburgh Community Solar Co-operative, which is not for profit, has had a big impact, and Aberdeen Heat & Power has been operating since 2002. In addition, North Ayrshire Council is setting up a solar farm. Those companies all invest back into the local community. What is the capacity of local authorities to do that? We have spent the past hour or so talking to cabinet secretaries about finance and coming out of Covid, but it must be a green recovery. Where do such projects, which involve councils using their land and buildings but getting other people to invest in them, with the money being recirculated back to local communities, fit in? What is the appetite for that? What capacity do authorities have to do that?

11:00  

That is a very good question. The appetite is certainly there, but the capacity is variable. We have had a range of experience in that area. Initially—five or six years ago—we supported community development trusts to put up community wind turbines, which seemed to generate a return for the community. However, we realised that there were issues there, because some communities have greater capacity to do that, which can lead to inequality across our area. Therefore, our focus has shifted more towards an all-Orkney approach, whereby the local authority invests in a community wind farm. We are exploring the possibilities of wider investment by communities and community organisations, as well as the return coming straight back to the local authority.

Although I think that most local authorities would be keen to pursue such projects, financial capacity is perhaps the main obstacle. There is also the element of risk. As the committee will be well aware, the transmission regime is discriminatory for the more rural areas; there is a huge up-front cost in being able to access the grid. The ability to de-risk such investments would enable more local authorities to pursue community renewables, as, indeed, would the wider ability to de-risk investment in action to address climate change and move towards net zero across the whole gamut of local authority activities, including, for example, the Hatston scheme and adaptations for changes of use from current carbon-intensive practices. Having that ability would be enabling for local authorities and would be most welcome.

What would be the game changer in practical terms? Would it be kick-start funding or networking, for example? You are right that different local authorities have different geographies. The Heat Networks (Scotland) Bill, which Parliament is about to consider at stage 3, will not work for everybody. Whether in relation to heat or power, what would be the game changer to enable all local authorities to have a leadership role, and to ensure that they create green jobs and that nobody gets left behind?

You have highlighted the two very important issues of equalities and green jobs. We have mentioned the issue of capacity. Local authorities need to have not just the financial but the organisational capacity; they need to have the right skills available. We are very aware of that, particularly when it comes to housing, planning and building standards. There will be a requirement for a fairly significant upskilling of staff so that they can look at everything through the net zero prism. My personal take is that the main enablers here would be access to finance and the ability to upskill our staff, but I would be happy for my colleagues to augment that perspective.

I will briefly cover one or two of the previous questions before coming to Sarah Boyack’s question about capacity and what would be the game changer for us.

On the budget issue, there was a question about the extent to which councils are taking seriously the net zero challenge and aligning their budgets and spend to address it. In the City of Edinburgh Council, we have made sure that it is not about the additional project funding that comes to deliver change; it is about how we spend everything that we have and how we align all our budgets, policies and strategies with the effort towards net zero. That reflects the fact that addressing the net zero challenge cannot be done by one project in one policy area; it is multidimensional across all that we do.

Whether we are talking about our city centre transformation plan, our city mobility plan, the local development plan, which will fundamentally shape the development of the city over the next 10 years, our housing investment plan or our capital programming, which includes the school building programme, all those budgets are now being driven by the priority of delivering net zero. What we spend in the round must be aligned with that, then we need to think about additional capacity to upscale in speed what we want to achieve. As a council, we are developing capacity to inform our decision making in a much more meaningful way through the development of the carbon scenario tool, but I will not touch on that too much just now.

On what is a game changer for us as a council and whether we have the capacity to drive change to the required degree, the work that the City of Edinburgh Council is doing at the moment is supported by the council’s reallocation of resource and by additional European capacity to enable the thinking and the planning that need to go into a complex sustainability strategy to take the city to 2030. It is not just about an approach to renewables for our buildings; it is about the deep retrofit of those buildings, the heat networks in those buildings, the active travel around those buildings, the development of green space, the sense of community beyond that and sustainable communities. Being able to think about all that and design it operationally, and then stitch together the funding to deliver it is a huge and challenging task.

We need to invest in the core capacity income source to do that work. It is not just about project delivery and individual projects; it is about planning the whole-system response to a net zero challenge. We do not yet have sufficient capacity and skills to do that at the speed and scale that are required to deliver our net zero ambitions, whether for 2030 or 2045.

My only other point on the capacity question is that although the Scottish Government has lots of projects and has put in a great deal of project funding, which is welcome, the onus is on local authorities to stitch that together. That is incredibly challenging for us to do at the same time as we are trying to innovate and drive the speed of change.

Thank you. I will give Sarah Boyack an extra couple of minutes for questioning, because the answers have been pretty long so far.

That last answer is dead helpful, because the issue is about taking a system-wide approach as well as doing projects. That is the challenge, is not it? You have your overall policy, but how do you get those extra projects up and running? I think that it took the best part of a decade to do that with the Edinburgh Community Solar Co-op. How do local authorities share knowledge and experience so that you can cut to the chase and use other people’s experiences, whether good or bad, to move forward with some of the projects so that we get that change? Does Steven Heddle want to kick off on that?

We share our best practice through COSLA and its boards and the professional networks. Mr Fawcett is a representative of one of the professional networks, so I am sure that he can elaborate on that.

I will pick up on Sarah Boyack’s query about how we get new ideas and give an example. In Inverclyde, we took forward a hydro scheme with Scottish Water, but one of the challenges was that the level of return was not adequate from Scottish Water’s perspective. Steven Heddle mentioned de-risking projects. I also help local community groups if they want to move into those territories, but we have a capacity issue in local government around the ability to hand-hold and provide guidance. In my many years in local government, the areas that have been most affected by the cuts that have had to be made have been on the environmental side. There is no getting away from that. All local authorities will need to explore how we can increase capacity in that area. Funding will obviously be an issue, but I will not reiterate that, because Steven Heddle covered it well.

In helping local community groups, it is critical that we are at the forefront in engaging with them and trying to stimulate ideas. We discuss good practice in our various networks; it is also important to work with civil servant colleagues to understand what is happening elsewhere, both nationally in the UK and across the board globally. We need to learn from those things. There is certainly an issue in terms of capacity and the ability to reduce risk. From working with other colleagues in the Scottish public sector network, I would say that the whole issue of taking on risk is something that the public sector should be looking at.

Thank you. Before we move on to Jeremy Balfour, I ask for answers to be shorter. We have a lot to get through, so I ask the witnesses to curtail their responses a wee bit.

I will limit myself to one quick question. Local authorities provide key services to many vulnerable individuals—disabled people, older people and people with other health issues. As we roll out the programmes over the next number of years, what effect will climate change thinking have on those services? Will they have to be redesigned in the light of that? My concern is that in striving to reach the climate change targets, which are really important, people who are most vulnerable will be affected the most. Do the witnesses have any comments on that?

Does Steven Heddle want to start?

Yes. It is another very good question. The issue is one that should perhaps be more to the forefront of our thinking. Any policy that is brought through the local authorities is run past our equalities officers and considered in the context of whether an equalities impact assessment is required. If so, that will be prepared and the impact will be assessed. Beyond that, there is perhaps not exceptional provision, and perhaps there should be. That is a question for national as well as local government.

I am aware of the time, so I will just add that COSLA’s support for the commitment to net zero is completely in line with the just transition. We absolutely have a focus and an eye on that.

11:15  

For the communities that have suffered worst because of Covid, there will be a challenge as we go forward in dealing with climate change areas. I can think of funding issues for those communities. There is a significant issue for properties that will be retrofitted and how residents will be accommodated because, in some instances, it might not be possible for buildings to be retrofitted without individuals having to be decanted. I can see challenges with regard to those communities; there will certainly be a need for substantial financial support for them.

Clearly, we want to reduce the number of cars on the road, and one of the issues around climate change is the way in which we provide public transport. However, as we try to limit the number of car users, my concern is that people who need to use their cars because of disability or old age might be caught up in that, with unforeseen consequences. When we do our thinking on the environmental economy, do we always think about the consequences that it will have for people who might not be able to vocalise their concern?

Aubrey Fawcett did a useful service in widening the discussion to inequality in general. Absolutely—we are looking at the issue in terms of reducing inequality in the context of the just transition. As you know, we will return to that again and again, as we talk about issues around housing and how adaptations to housing will be funded. Do we singularly look at that to reduce inequality? Yes; laying on top of that is consideration of the impact on protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010.

Okay; thank you.

Councillor Heddle, you rightly mentioned the constraints on financial and organisational resources that local authorities have with regard to what they can do on climate change but, thinking about the high point of municipalism, when councils also owned power companies, do local authorities need further powers to help them with climate change action?

It is difficult to single out a specific power. In the islands, we are in the perhaps fortunate position that, through the Islands (Scotland) Act 2018, the Scottish Government has committed to explore affording powers that would help us to deliver our activities and goals as local government. Perhaps that would be usefully extended to all areas of local government.

At present, the main obstacles to progress that we have identified are the obvious ones, such as finance and flexibility to deliver or develop our programmes. We can look at the specific example of heat networks. Heat networks are an extremely laudable goal but, to date, local authorities have a chequered past in developing heat networks for district heating. That also applies to authorities’ ability to achieve the decarbonisation of housing with the resources that have been directed towards that. It would perhaps benefit us if those resources could be more flexibly adapted to meet the needs of different local areas.

For dispersed populations, district heating will not make a big impact, but it would be helpful if local authorities could apply their resource to air-source heat pumps, for example. That is an effective way of decarbonising heating and moving towards electrical heating, which can be wholly green. It has been adopted to a great extent in the northern isles but, for whatever reason, it has not been supported through any of the schemes. Those schemes are aimed more at ground-source heat pumps, on which, again, authorities in some areas have a chequered past.

With regard to more powers, flexibility around the way that we apply planning and housing rules would be useful. Whether or not it would stray into areas of legislation, I would not be averse to elaborating on that.

Your last point, on whether councils could impose further constraints on developers to ensure that all the housing that they build has higher-level climate change qualities, is interesting.

I have one other question. It might be best if Aubrey Fawcett answers it, but I am happy to hear from any of the witnesses. How are councils’ procurement policies helping to support the net zero ambition? Perhaps the witnesses could address that with regard to how procurement policies have changed since Brexit.

Currently, procurement restrictions are probably more restrictive. That is not pre or post Brexit, but it has been the case with some of the tenders that we have done in recent times.

At times, we still face quite a challenge in going through very stretched-out arrangements. If procurement rules and regulations were made less restrictive—if they were still open and transparent, but without the same level of restrictions—that would make it easier for local authorities to move faster with some of our projects, and it would allow local companies more opportunities to access work locally.

When we go out to the market, it is an open arrangement in comparison with the situation many years ago, when we were made to have select lists, which we are not now allowed to have. Government could look at certain areas in which it could be made easier for public bodies, in particular local authorities, to move forward with the climate change agenda and the projects that come out of that. That would be useful.

To go back to your question to Councillor Heddle, we probably have quite a lot of powers in respect of facilities around community wellbeing. Local authorities were involved in creating powers, and they ran with police and fire and so forth. From our perspective, we looked at the opportunities for doing hydro, and we will look at it again, as we think that there are opportunities there.

The critical point is that it all boils down to money, whether we like it or not. We will get more innovation if there is capability from a local authority perspective—if there are funds that we can work on, and if we can engage with the Government in that regard.

You can see from the climate change plan update that Government has provided a fair level of funding across the board in many areas. Whoever has to pay for it will have to pay for it, whether it is Government, local government or the man and woman on the street. There will be a significant burden on us all, whether we like it or not, and the challenge that lies ahead for us all will be seismic.

As Councillor Heddle said, local government is keen to work with central Government to ensure that we deliver on the agenda. We have done that with Covid. You heard from the two cabinet secretaries earlier—particularly the Cabinet Secretary for Finance—about how important that has been. I would say that we have a significant role to play.

I am sorry for going on again, convener.

Councillor Heddle wishes to contribute, I believe.

Yes—I might be more terse.

Keith Brown identifies a good point about planning. It would perhaps be useful to have more flexibility in the powers on planning, rather than additional powers. If we could embed net zero as the central principle of the planning system, that would be beneficial. It would be useful to reframe planning performance, focusing on outcomes in quality development decisions and on addressing climate change, rather than on adherence to decision times.

That would all contribute to the additionality that local government can bring. To me, flexibility means additionality—doing things bigger, better, faster and more. That extends to the issue of local procurement. We have a great interest in community wealth building, which is primarily led by our colleagues in North Ayrshire, and procurement is obviously a key element of that.

A couple of the questions that I wanted to ask have already been asked, so I have just one question. Experience across Europe with municipalities and cities that are doing a lot of work on mitigating the climate crisis suggests that, the more work we do with communities and with people in the places where they live, the better the plans and strategies will be and the easier they will be to implement.

Starting with Councillor Heddle, and then hearing from Edinburgh and Inverclyde, perhaps, what steps are you taking to engage communities in your plans and strategies for moving to net zero?

It is good to bring in the European dimension. I should perhaps have said earlier that COSLA is engaged in European networks, which add value to what we are doing. That includes the Covenant of Mayors, Eurocities and my participation in the CEMR—the Council of European Municipalities and Regions—as the spokesperson on territorial development. I hope that it will be possible to add the local government day to COP26, at which we can emphasise the need for locally determined contributions to feed into nationally determined contributions.

To return to your question, engagement with communities is indeed key. We are acutely aware of the value that we can bring in terms of place, engaging with communities and facilitating the wider agenda. That includes 20-minute neighbourhoods and community wealth building, which I mentioned. We have already seen how we are moving towards different working practices, and we are in the fortunate position that we are able to test those practices. Perhaps that is the one good thing that has come out of the Covid pandemic.

We are working hard to engage with communities to create physically and digitally connected places in partnership with them. If we were enabled financially, we would be able to integrate things totally. We could have accessible and integrated cycling, walking and active travel measures, and we would be able to adapt the road infrastructure to suit that—putting in and sustaining the fundamental infrastructure that creates a community, with the local authority placed in the community in a more granular way, rather than just representing a central office. I would also mention electric vehicle charging points and skills development in the areas concerned.

What you describe is fundamental to our thinking and to the offer that local authorities can bring to the Scottish Government, providing intelligence around place and additionality to the laudable aims of the climate change plan.

Would Aubrey Fawcett like to add something from Inverclyde Council’s perspective, and does Paula McLeay have examples from Edinburgh?

11:30  

Some 53 per cent of emissions in Edinburgh are generated by its citizens, so behaviour change and the choices made by citizens and communities will be at the heart of getting to our net zero target. Therefore, absolutely everything that we do considers how we can inform, support, build on and engage with our communities around the actions that they—and we—need to take if we are to enable change. We also need to maintain support for the more radical step changes that we will want to make in setting policy and strategy for the city. There is no getting away from the fact that citizen engagement and collaboration on climate change must be at the heart of any plan that the council needs to make on the issue.

The focus on 20-minute neighbourhoods will help us to deliver on place. It is about natural communities within the city and how we enable people to live there more sustainably. The 20-minute neighbourhood delivery mechanism to which City of Edinburgh Council recently committed in its council business plan will be at the heart of our engagement strategy as we move forward.

Does Aubrey Fawcett wish to add anything from Inverclyde Council’s perspective?

On engaging with communities, we prepare locality plans and have held a number of town-centre charrettes. However, funding will be critical to progressing ideas as we move forward. I am sure that the committee will have heard that said many times but, when we engage with communities and ask them what they would like to happen, sadly, they do not have a lot of funds, so we have to lead the way in that regard. There will certainly be a need to ramp up further engagement as we move on with the agenda, but that is already being done through the existing networks that we have in place.

I want to continue Andy Wightman’s line of questioning. I heard an awful lot of nice warm words there. However, apart from Aubrey Fawcett saying that Inverclyde Council has used the charrette process, I did not hear anything about how councils are engaging with local communities.

We have a prime example of that in Edinburgh, where the spaces for people programme is being rolled out across the city. My mailbag has been full of correspondence from people on both sides of the argument, who complain that they have had no opportunity to engage with the council to discuss those proposals. I have not declared on which side of the argument on spaces for people I stand, and I understand that the programme’s aim is to encourage active travel, but local communities tell me that there has been a lack of engagement with them on that aspect. I am sure that the situation is similar in other council areas across Scotland. I am therefore keen to understand how you involve local communities in arriving at policies that are intended to enable us to hit our net zero target.

I can come back on that. There are two strands to the type of engagement that we need to carry out. One concerns the big picture of how we deliver climate action across the piece. As the committee might imagine, before lockdown, we were doing that in Edinburgh through carrying out surveys and holding focus groups with different types of citizens. We also have a dialogue website called “Edinburgh Talks Climate” and have been working on generating social media discussion and dialogue alongside that, so our approach is multifaceted. We also engage through schools and young people.

There is significant outreach in the round on the climate action that we will need to take as we move forward. Such an approach cannot be what we might call a one-hit wonder, or once and done; we must continue with it throughout the whole period of our work.

On individual policy areas, I will not go into spaces for people specifically but, because of lockdown, it is incredibly challenging to ensure that our outreach and engagement is inclusive, as it is confined to digital platforms. There are definitely things that we need to do to improve that, but at the same time we need to move with a degree of agility on climate action policies and change. Parliament and other democratic bodies might need to have further discussion about how we engage thoroughly and collaboratively and move at speed, because there is definitely a tension there that we need to address together.

Does anybody else want to come in on the background of lockdown and how they are contacting and engaging with local communities?

I do not have to go too far in Inverclyde for people to engage with us or, indeed, the council members, because they are not backward about coming forward with news. Internal formal processes, such as charrettes, allow people to come along to community halls or town halls and have proper engagement.

We have done a number of things during lockdown. We have had comments back from both residents and businesses and have changed things to reflect those comments. I am not sure what specific area you have in mind, but I am clear in my mind that local authorities give opportunities for communities to engage with us, through things such as statutory processes, the development plan—if it is being developed—and traffic regulation orders. Certainly, you can be assured that local ward members are actively involved in engaging with their constituents and feeding back to officers.

I do not know whether that helps.

It is helpful to understand what is happening in other areas. I can talk only about my own patch, and I have been inundated with comments about one of the council projects because of lack of consultation, which is why I am keen to learn what other areas are doing, given the background of lockdown and the need to engage with the public and get public support. We cannot do anything without the public.

I have a final question before I pass over to the convener. What are councils doing to help shift public attitudes towards climate change? If we do not change public attitudes to climate change, we will not hit the targets that the councils and the Scottish Government have set.

I will address the previous question first. Everybody asks me how I engage with the community and I just say “Come to Tesco for a walk with me and you will find out how quickly the community engages with us.” The more serious answer is that we are fortunate enough to stay in a relatively compact community and have been using social media quite a lot just to get out there what is happening with the recycling centres, the changes for schools and everything that has been happening. That has given us widespread coverage.

Spaces for people was about emergency measures to an extent, so inevitably the consultation was going to be scant for the first measures. Clearly, we will have to consult on the permanency of the measures. I can see that that is a bigger issue in Edinburgh just now.

I have forgotten your second question.

How do we shift public attitudes to climate change so that we can hit the national and local targets?

It is a work in progress. That is where partnership between local government, the Scottish Government and civic society need to come together. We have seen an example of how that could work in the sustainable renewal advisory group that Roseanna Cunningham convened, which was a cross-party group with a wide range of representation. Following the Chatham house rule, I will not go into what was discussed, but it is fair to say that party political allegiances were parked at the door and the singular purpose of trying to tackle the problem and the importance of leadership across all areas of civic society was recognised.

COSLA is up for doing our part in this, in conjunction with the national Government and the rest of civic society.

This morning, you have talked about the resources that you require to ensure that you can change plans and incorporate policies. You have talked about engagement and changing public attitudes. What is the role of councils in developing the green economy and the green recovery? Along with the resource and engagement to change attitudes, the council and its officials will still have a role in delivering the green recovery that we will need if we wish to bounce back from the pandemic and tackle climate change effectively across Scotland.

The role of councils in delivering the green recovery is twofold. We have to remember the level of investment that councils will be making in their area—for the City of Edinburgh Council, that is investment in the city. Our housing development and retrofit programmes are stimulating a market and creating a demand. That should be seen as an economic good as well as something that is delivering our emissions targets. It is about job creation, local supply chains, green jobs and green skills. When we understand that that brings multiple layers of benefit to a city, the business case for change is strengthened.

In Edinburgh, we have a role as an investor in the city and in a green recovery. We also have a role in supporting businesses in the private sector, which is largely behind us in lots of the activity that we need to take forward, to maximise the opportunity that a green recovery presents to businesses and work with partners to develop the right skills and supply chain of skills through our education and learning infrastructure. The role of local government in a green recovery is multidimensional and very important. A green recovery brings opportunity to the city as much as it is a challenge to be overcome.

It was entirely appropriate for Paula McLeay to lead on that answer because she made the point about the connectedness of everything that we are doing.

The key areas are transport, housing and the adaptation of heating in the estate that we manage. Those are the three key areas, along with the leadership that is associated with them. We are invested in transport and more peripheral things around the whole adaptation issue, like electricity production and even agriculture. At the board meeting last Friday, we heard from colleagues in East Lothian that they are suffering terrible run-off from fields that is damaging the roads, so the local authority has a role to play in integrating the response and adaptation measures. Local government must be front and centre in developing a holistic green recovery plan that is informed across all areas. We will work with the Government on doing that.

11:45  

You talked about COSLA working together to achieve some of those goals. What partnership working has there been between councils in different parts of Scotland? What has been tried or achieved? Together, a group of councils can achieve something bigger or better because of the economies of scale or the type of environment that they are working in and the goals that they are trying to achieve.

There will be specific examples of that around waste where we have had a productive dialogue with the Scottish Government, which might be an exemplar. I will defer to my colleague Silke Isbrand to elaborate on that.

We have strong partnership working on the waste agenda. We have a joint steering group to explore the most effective approaches and how we can link waste volume reduction and upping the recycling performance together with changing systems and how that leads into the wider circular economy and the job growth agenda through new technologies and so on.

A point that is pertinent to your earlier questions about what powers and changes to legislation councils would need to make a deeper contribution is that we are on a journey and we always knew that the targets were ambitious. We have not got all the answers at this time. Even in the climate change plan update, the detailed route maps behind the big targets are yet to be developed. We have gone back to ask the local authorities what they need at this time and what the big challenges are. We hear that councils need to influence regulations, incentives and delivery programmes. They need enabling policy and want to be at the table early on to influence all those things. However, we are not sitting here with a finite shopping list. It is a journey and we are in the process of developing all those things. The green recovery is very much part of that.

We are committed to the just transition but we are all on a journey together to find out what powers, enabling legislation or resources we need to run the just transition and green recovery alongside every step in carbon reduction. We believe it is a journey and some of the local authorities’ requirements will come out along the way.

That completes our questions. I thank our witnesses for taking the time to speak to us today.

We will agree a letter on the climate change plan update at a future meeting.

11:49 Meeting continued in private until 12:07.