Thread by @AlysGreens

This week it was Policy & Sustainability Committee at @Edinburgh_CC which is good news for fans of monitoring and evaluation, workers' rights, and long twitter threads 🙃

We started the day with deputations, both of which related to motions coming up later in the day.

First up, we heard from @StreetAssistEdi about the important work they do to support people and reduce vulnerability at night in Edinburgh. They spoke about how the city could benefit from a Night Time Economy Coordinator - a key pledge from the @EdinburghGreens manifesto.

Next, reps from @unisonedin and @ScottishTUC Edinburgh spoke to us about the ongoing crises in Edinburgh's adult social care provision. It was a really powerful deputation which spoke about the (understandable) lack of trust from workers and residents towards the council.

This deputation related to the very last item on the agenda - a motion from @rsmcksg which we seconded about the current consultation on care homes. The debate around this was a doozy, so worth hanging on for.

But first, we had lots of reports to get through...

We start with minutes, actions log & workplan. Eagle-eyed Councillors need to be on the lookout & @CllrBenParker is always on form here, asking why a climate adaptation plan update had disappeared, & raising that some reports are due in Nov when we don't have a meeting scheduled.

(These things can seem very pedantic to raise, but they are really important - too often things can slip off agendas for various reasons and if nobody notices, it can take a long time trying to trace what's happened to a particular piece of work afterwards!)

The first 'proper' agenda item was on the Local Government Benchmarking Framework. This shows how Edinburgh is doing compared to other local authorities for the year 2021/22, in a whole host of different areas. You can see all of Edinburgh's data here: scotland.mylocalcouncil.info/Data.aspx?id=S…

There was a good discussion about the data, exploring the impact of Covid, & where we are doing better/worse than before.
But we also spoke about how the data uncritically records 'cost savings' as a good thing, whereas in reality we know that cuts lead to worse outcomes.

Similarly, climate data is analysed in the context of geography rather than demographics - this is completely contrary to our understanding of climate justice and what needs to happen for a just transition. As this is Scotland-wide benchmarking, we can't do much to change it,

but we had a Green addendum saying that the report should be sectioned up and sent to other committees for scrutiny. While P&S Committee covers lots of different things, it makes sense that the data on e.g education is sent to the relevant Committee who will know more than us!

Next was a report on the Impact of Poverty on Women and Girls in Edinburgh (read it here: democracy.edinburgh.gov.uk/documents/s574…).
This was the result of a motion I'd previously brought to the Committee so I was really pleased to see it come back.

The report draws on expertise from @SWBG @closethepaygap @PovertyAlliance and @jrf_uk among others, & shows that women are disproportionately impacted by poverty in Edinburgh (and globally). I asked questions about how we will be mainstreaming this in our wider anti-poverty work.

The next item we were looking out for was about the night-time economy coordinator. This was a report in response to a motion from @Alex4Craig_Dudd in November and provided an update on the work that's going on to make this happen.

It's a really exciting opportunity to learn from other cities in the UK & make sure we are protecting people enjoying, enduring, & working in Edinburgh at night! Both us & the LDs had amendments saying that we need the full report earlier, in time for budget discussions next yr.

This is a good example of what's sometimes needed to make change as a Councillor; 1) motion to full council, 2) an update to committee 3) a fully costed proposal - & only then (or even later at budget-time) do we vote on whether or not to have a Night-Time Economy Coordinator.

The next big thing for us was about the Council's policy on telematics and tracking of drivers. Fans of Policy & Sustainability Committee will remember that this previously came up for approval but we deferred it because it turned out that Trade Unions and workers were unhappy.

This updated policy had addressed some of the concerns raised, but not all of them, and so there wasn't a 'local collective agreement' between the council and unions.

After speaking with unions, we submitted an addendum which tried to make sure the policy couldn't be misused.

We asked for:
- steps towards an overarching policy on digital surveillance
- a briefing setting out which other policies were impacted by this, and
- dashboard reports every 2 months for the first year of the policy so we could check it wasn't being used to bully staff.

We'd been told that Labour weren't supportive of our ask for dashboard reports, so thought it might have to go to a vote, but we were clear on the importance of this for workers & in the end it was agreed. You can read @UniteCECbranch's thread on it here

https://twitter.com/UniteCECbranch/status/1661378761072181252

Next up was #CommunityWealthBuilding where again we had an addendum that passed. We were discussing the Council's submission to a consultation on whether or not there should be a new Duty from the Scottish Government on CWB.

This consultation response had been sent in without committee approval due to tight timings, and we were arguing that there actually had been time to have had a discussion about the broad principles of CWB in a previous committee, even if not the detail.

The Council has a broad policy against having new Duties on Local Councils, as there's already a lot of reporting that we have to do. Officers also said that because Edinburgh already does lots towards Community Wealth Building, we didn't need a Duty imposed on us.

Our addendum suggested that we might need to revisit this policy on Duties. While reporting can be onerous, and the Scottish Government *definitely* needs to do more to streamline this, Duties can also be an important way of signalling what's important to the country.

For me, the fact that Edinburgh is leading the way on CWB is not an argument against having a Duty - it means that we have good things to report on, and a Duty would mean other local authorities and public sector bodies would have to do work on Community Wealth Building too.

We were pleased that both Labour & the SNP accepted our addendum. In the end we voted with SNP who had asked for the answers in the consultation to be changed retrospectively to support the Duty. This didn't pass, but our addendum means we'll revisit the issue of Duties later.

(this is the first time a Committee has taken me over the limit of tweets for a thread. Part 2 coming soon...)

Ok! So that takes us to about halfway through the agenda. We also discussed adopting a definition of islamophobia, had an update on the 'keep safe spaces' initiative from @IammeScotland, and approved the Council's response to the Government's draft Gaelic plan.

Then we were on to the Council's drug and alcohol policy. The policy itself was fine, but @Alex4Craig_Dudd noticed a worrying clause which said that currently, testing for substances would be premature - but it opened the door for this too happen in future.

We believe that drug and alcohol testing at work is invasive and unnecessary, and so said that if Edinburgh council ever wanted to introduce testing, it would have to be by a decision at Full Council (or because of a legal requirement).

Despite the tories opposing our amendment with a speech that came dangerously close to "if you've got nothing to hide you've got nothing to fear", our position won out and we're really pleased to have taken action to defend the civil liberties of our workers.

Next we had a report on harassment policies. Again, this was in response to a previous request I had made to look at how we are protecting people against sexist and sexual harassment, as well as other forms of harassment.

We were really pleased to support Labour's amendment on this, which echoed our previous calls that Edinburgh Council should have a standalone policy on sexual harassment, in line with recommendations from @EngenderScot and the @ScottishTUC and are delighted it passed.

Another report on Gaelic (this time about the Gaelic Implementation Steering Group) where our amendment about membership passed unanimously, and a report about Self Directed Support, and we were on to the home straight.

We had 2 reports about women's safety, in addition to the work about women's poverty and the sexual harassment policy earlier in the agenda. The first was again in response to a motion I had brought to Full Council (are you spotting a theme?!) and was about gender-based violence.

This focused on violence against women in politics & the importance that power has in maintaining & deepening women's inequality.

Despite the fact that some parties (1 guess) objected to the idea of having a campaign about how to report VAW, we're pleased this will now happen!

The second report was about women's safety in public space. This was an update about a really exciting project to understand where women and girls feel safe and unsafe in Edinburgh, what would help to improve their safety, and to make sure that Edinburgh is ‘safe by design’.

We had a simple addendum to make sure this project links with @KayleighFONeill's motion to make Edinburgh a feminist city, & my previous work to support the @unisonscot Get Me Home Safely campaign. Similarly, the LD addendum called for it to link with work around park lighting.

During the discussion, the role of Police Scotland in women's safety campaigns was raised, as many women and girls have very good reason not to trust the police given their repeated failures to tackle misogyny and sexism in the force.

Given latest reports (bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotla…) I'm pleased I pointed out that women of colour, trans women & women with a history of
state violence & harassment (among others!) may always need other ways of accessing support & our response can't only be "report it to the police"

And then (with some quickly-dealt-with items about international travel where we emphasised that the council has to set a positive example and where train travel or other public transport is possible it should be the first option) we were on to the motion about care homes.