Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): We welcome Alderman Tom Ekin of Belfast City Council: Sue Divin, good relations officer of Derry City Council; and Angela Askin of Derry City Council. Tom, are you making the opening remarks?

Alderman Tom Ekin (Belfast City Council): Yes, Chairman, I will make a couple of remarks. I was told to keep it very short, which I will do. I am delighted that the Northern Ireland Local Government Association (NILGA) has been invited to make a presentation and answer your questions. It reflects the importance of NILGA now with the change of local government. If you want to get clarity of purpose, you speak to NILGA in future. It has taken some time to get here, but I think that all of the councils are buying into it. Thank you very much for inviting us. We have issued you with various responses, therefore there is no point in me reciting them. I assume that you have read them all.

We, in local government, realise that we are taking on a lot more responsibilities. We know that it will be a difficult time and that there is a lot of work to be done. It means that not only do the new councils have to work, they have to work in tandem with the other Departments. This is a thing that we have talked about in the past, but it has not really delivered particularly well. That is all that I am saying at this time, except "Can we get the spelling right next time?". I am "Alderman".

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): The name plate says "Aldeman". Point taken. Sorry about your sign. Is everyone else's OK? Sue and Angela, is there anything that you want to add by way of opening remarks?

Ms Sue Divin (Derry City Council): On behalf of Derry City Council community relations team, we are delighted to be here. We are happy to take whatever questions you have. We have a few key points, which we have put in our written submission. We can reiterate those if you want, but, really, we are here to give members the chance to ask us questions about the programme.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): I suppose that the first thing we need to establish is what your impression has been since Together: Building a United Community (T:BUC) was announced, the degree to which you feel that you were consulted and that your expertise has inputted into the proposal, and how it is planned to implement it.

Alderman Ekin: I will give my version, and Derry city can then make its comments. This is just another of the five generic statements that have come through over the last 10 years. They are wonderful statements of intent, but nothing seems to back them up.

The most recent one was the Stormont House Agreement, where words were written. I accept that they are written, but we found in Belfast that something more substantial needs to be put to it. There needs to be unique leadership, by which I mean single leadership. When I asked the junior Minister, "Who do I speak to about T:BUC in Belfast?", I was given the names of three people to speak to, but I wanted one name; the name of the most responsible person. Belfast has found that it has been general. There are no specific targets or goals. There is nobody in charge; it is left to the council to find its own way. The other Departments are not necessarily playing a coherent part. That is where Belfast is, broadly. I will leave it to Sue or Angela.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Just for clarity, Tom, are the three people you were told to speak to all departmental officials in OFMDFM?

Alderman Ekin: The person I spoke to was the Minister, and there were officials in the DOJ, OFMDFM, and somewhere else, I think. When I was given three names, that answered my question. The problem is that we do not have somebody who we can go to and say, "Right, let's coordinate this thing. Let's do it in a businesslike manner". It is a very difficult job to do, but it has to be done.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): OK, but were the three officials from three separate Departments, as far as you recall?

Alderman Ekin: I could not say. I was given three names, and two Departments were mentioned.

Ms Divin: Initially, I think we had some consultative input into T:BUC, but it was probably fairly limited; it was just through the district councils' good relations programme. Overall, we welcome T:BUC. We needed an updated strategic document in place from Stormont, and we are delighted to have finally got that. We are delighted to see that the district councils' good relations programme continues to be included and highlighted in that as a vehicle. A lot of good work has come out of that, but things could be improved in it.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Such as?

Ms Divin: The key one is the timing of letters of offer. They usually arrive around August or September in a given financial year. The lateness of this prohibits us in strategically planning to deliver the stuff that we need to deliver on the ground. This has been raised for about 10 years by district council good relations officers, but it is getting worse rather than better.

Ms Angela Askin (Derry City Council): We are going into a new dispensation with councils. In the past, some local authorities were willing to work at risk to mitigate this and still get the work done. Given the funding climate that we are all experiencing, that is going to be impacted on now, especially over the summer months, where a lot of our work is so necessary in dealing with key issues. It is going to be impacted on even more so if the letters are not out in a timely manner.

Ms Divin: There is a further impact in not issuing letters of offer at the start of April. Whether there is a big budget or a small one, if the letter is received on 1 April, we can prioritise strategically and deliver our work according to local needs over the year. If it does not come in, then you find that, in local councils, some good relations officers are put on notice on an annual basis. You then have a reasonably high turnover of staff; you have a drain on the expertise of good relations staff working for local councils. It is a vicious circle; it is not improving if people cannot stay in the post, stay committed and build their skills. If we cannot work strategically on things like interfaces, flags, parades and marching, which are the types of issues that come up generally, before we receive a letter of offer from Stormont, it is very difficult for us to function effectively or as effectively as we could.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): So, timeliness is an issue.

One of the themes that is emerging for me is that T:BUC should not try to reinvent the wheel. There is an awful lot of good practice out there already. To what extent do you believe that your members in NILGA have the expertise and capacity to deliver T:BUC?

Alderman Ekin: In Belfast, we have built up very considerable expertise over the years. The frustration that we have, and Sue alluded to it, is that this is a long-term project. You have to get the people on the ground to buy into this change to their thinking. Once you have done that, you have to be able to deliver something that satisfies their expectations. We are not achieving that. We have a lot of people in Belfast City Council who meet the people not quite daily but very close to daily. That must apply to all councils, because they are on the ground. They can understand what is going on, but they also know that it will probably be a two- to three-year programme to get people to change their attitudes and open a door. Once you have opened the door, how do you keep it open longer? You cannot do it in a hand-to-mouth exercise as we have been doing. Well, you can do it, but it is very unsatisfactory. Long-term financial planning is one of the keys to it.

Ms Divin: In response to the question on whether we have the capacity, I will say that it is important that Committee members are aware that there is quite a wide variation in how the various local councils apply their good relations practices on the ground. It depends on a number of things. One is whether you have staff in post who have been there for a while or, even if they are new, who have brought relevant experience. There is no doubt that good relations is built on building relations with local communities and understanding the context on the ground. So, that is a big issue.

The other factor that influences it, in my professional opinion, is how the managers in each district council react to good relations: whether proactive, creative, innovative good relations work is encouraged, as it is in our council; and whether it is supported by all political parties, which it is in our local council. If it is, the officers in the posts know that they can go ahead, take risks and work innovatively with local communities and use their initiative. We have the capacity in our council, but there is an extreme variation across district councils.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Tom, we have already heard your point that this type of longitudinal approach is very important. We heard of communities being brought together and then, when there is a kind of a seismic shock because of an event — the example used was the flags protest — the two communities immediately sprung back into their own bolt-holes, but, because the work had built up sufficient momentum, people decided, "Actually, we are not going to let this external event put us off. We are going to get back together". So, you need that time to be able to get over events, dear boy.

The other thing I am interested in is this: does best practice suggest that you will not bring people together by saying to them, "You are different, so you need to come together and work"? Is best practice actually saying to them, "You have a lot in common"? One of the examples we were given was this, "You all want to be better parents, so let us get together and talk about how we can be better parents", and you do not even mention the fact that they have a difference.

Alderman Ekin: I certainly agree with that. It is like a lot of big change. You have to sell to your audience the benefits of being different. It applies to anything. If you are going to create a discomfort for folks, you have to say to them, "You could do this. You could do that. Do you realise, for example, that your job opportunities, are diminished by your being beside a peace wall?" The Ulster University is doing a study on that and hopes to produce a report shortly to spell it out. However, we know from years gone by that it costs £1·5 billion or £1 billion — it does not matter which figure it is as both are valid — to keep us separated. Part of that is the peace walls, duplicating services and so on. You could be saying to people, "You can have 10% of that, £100 million, to spend on other things to help you to get jobs and training." It is a long-term thing. They have laughed at me saying this for years, but I will keep saying it because it is true. You have to keep selling to people the virtues of why a change should happen and get them to say, "We want the change." It is doable.

The other evening, Belfast City Council passed a resolution, which might come across your desk at some stage, to ask OFMDFM what has been the result so far of the programme of breaking down the peace walls. We are three years or something into the programme of removing peace walls by 2023. Where have we got to on that? Nobody really knows. Belfast City Council has proposed a motion, which will go back to one of the committees, and will be writing a letter to OFMDFM to ask, "How much progress have we made?" The corollary will be, "What more do we have to do to make it happen faster?"

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Tom is saying that we do not know how far we have come in that programme. That makes me wonder: what is the relationship like between good relations officers at council level and the Department? You have talked about the letters of offer, but, more generally, what is the communication flow like?

Ms Askin: It is reasonably good. We get good support from the OFMDFM officials who are in charge of the programme. It probably could be better in getting good relations officers together to share best practice on a more regular basis. There used to be a two-day conference, then it went down to one day, and now it is a half day. So, that could probably be better. However, I would say that the support from the officials is reasonable.

Ms Divin: We know them by name. We can lift the phone and ring them or email them, and they will reply.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Is the sharing of best practice an area that is ripe for improvement?

Ms Askin: I think so. There are some really good local projects going on. If it works in one area, that is not to say that it will work in every area. However, it is certainly worth having a look at it and seeing if it could be replicated.

On your original point about bringing people together because they are different, I would say that it would probably be best practice to bring them together for a reason rather than just for being different. An example that we use all the time in training is Tesco. It brings everyone together all the time to do their shopping, but they are not actually interacting. They are turning up at the one place all the time and passing one another like ships in the night. Rather than just bringing them together, we bring them together to try to get them to talk, interact and communicate more.

Ms Divin: You need to do both work on finding common goals and other commonalities and work that looks at differences and explores those constructively. The key difference that we have found in Derry/Londonderry is that people generally realise that difference is not a threat and can be a positive thing for our city and district. The most commonly cited example of that is the Londonderry bands forum and the All-Ireland Fleadh.

Alderman Ekin: I listened to the ladies talking earlier. One of the problems with some of these meetings is that staff turnover is such that, as new community relations officers (CROs) and new Civil Service folks come in, you are starting off from scratch every time. That is wasting time to a considerable extent. You have to start building on the existing knowledge and make sure that you keep the teams together.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): I feel compelled to say that other supermarkets are available.

Mr Moutray: You are very welcome. The Chair touched on a point about sharing experiences. The constituency that I represent encompasses Craigavon and Banbridge, and the issues in the two councils are very different. Surely there should be a more organised and regular sharing of experiences. Sue, I think that it was you who said that what is fed out at the bottom depends on how proactive the council's senior management are.

Ms Divin: It can; yes.

Mr Moutray: Surely sharing your experiences is beneficial and should be encouraged.

Ms Divin: In the annual report to OFMDFM, each council is required to list examples of its best practice throughout the year. However, to my knowledge, that has never been shared across councils. There is useful information sitting there. Genuinely, when CROs need to, they tend to lift the phone to one another and find ideas of best practice. However, there are not formal structures for sharing that. It is not just within the district council's good relations programme. Our council runs considerable programmes with primary and post-primary schools. The education board rarely says, "Let us look at what you are doing." Although we work at a local level with teachers and people from the education board, we are never asked to input into the educational stuff in T:BUC. There is almost an assumption that councils just give out grants. The whole breadth of what we do is not tackled or looked at.

Mr Moutray: But it would be beneficial.

Ms Divin: I think that it would; yes.

Ms McGahan: No community relations funding was used in the distribution of grants at Dungannon and South Tyrone Borough Council. What do you believe to be the pros and cons of that?

Ms Divin: Of giving out good relations grant aid?

Ms McGahan: Yes.

Ms Divin: We have tried a number of systems over the years, but grant aid is a key part of what we do, not so much in terms of workload but financially. Derry City Council usually gives out around £150,000 in grants. It is a very competitive programme. We can fund only about 50% of the applications, and this year we will have to cut that programme quite significantly in the current context. So, many good projects are being turned away, but we have an open and transparent application system — a public advertisement, and a scoring panel — and we think that that it is important.

Ms McGahan: I notice that, in my constituency, no community relations funding was used in the distribution of grants. The figure is sitting at zero, so it has obviously gone somewhere else. I am trying to work out the pros and cons of that.

Ms Divin: In terms of programme versus grant aid?

Ms McGahan: OK, yes.

Ms Divin: We have a bit of a balance. There is certainly merit in putting money out to groups on the ground that identify local needs that meet good relations conditions. However, we say that it is also important that the officers also have programme budgets. We put money into mainstreaming good relations through Derry City Council services: therefore, we look at good relations through our leisure centres, sports, heritage, museums and all of that. We also do a lot of training programmes. If we see something that we think many people in the community would benefit from, such as a load of people needing mediation or media training, or whatever it is, we will run courses. Our schools programmes are all part of what we do directly.

Ms Askin: The pros for grant aid include that it is like mainstreaming good relations through community associations. They have the contacts in and relationships throughout their community, and they can probably attract a wider audience than, perhaps, could we. So, it is also definitely positive in getting the good relations' message out wider than we possibly could.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): What impact does time-limited funding have on your ability to deliver effectively? What I mean is that you may apply for and get grants for 12 or 18 months, three years would probably be the longest that you would get them, but the issues will be around for a lot longer.

Ms Divin: At the minute, one year is the longest that we get funding under this programme; it is on an annual cycle. We would very much welcome it being on a two- or three-year cycle. That would make a massive difference in the strategic impact on the ground.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): From my work in the public sector, on the victims' side of things, it seems to me that you would make a case, and, if successful, you would get funding. You would maybe then employ somebody to deliver a service. If you were playing snakes and ladders, you would take the people you were serving up a nice ladder to a better place. However, as the funding runs out and there is uncertainty about whether it will be renewed, your key worker might see a job in the statutory sector and leave, and the programme would collapse.

The people would then hit the big snake and be worse off, because they now know that there was a better place but that the funding was not available to keep them there. Could funding be open-ended? Once you have proved the need, could government say, "Your funding is going to be open-ended. Obviously, we are going to monitor it and we want to see impacts, but rather than have you reapply and reapply, we will monitor it, and, if we reach a point where we think that this need has been met, we will give you notice that funding will stop."?

Alderman Ekin: I can see what you are getting at.

I think it is doable under the following circumstances: if a lump sum of money were made available to a council for community relations over three years, and that council was able to say, within that period and for each year therein, "These are the programmes that we are going to fund". It would then be given the responsibility to use the funds properly, reporting against targets and making sure that there is the continuity that you referred to. A point that is hard to carry out is that the council must also have the responsibility to make sure that it cuts a programme, once started. So, it is doable, but I do not know how government finance would accept a three-year commitment of £1 million a year to this council, that council or whatever.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): We commit to a National Health Service because we know that we will need acute hospitals, GPs, nurses and all the rest. Sectarianism is not going to be cured in 12 months.

Alderman Ekin: We know that. We treat it as much less than 12 months, as you have heard from Sue and Angela. You are given two months to do something. That is the slowness of the process.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Yes, and the letter of offer becomes even more of an issue because it becomes an annual process.

Ms Askin: It also makes it difficult to do strategic or progressive work. If you are starting at a low base with groups, you would like to move it forward and progress it year-on-year. If you are only getting your letter of offer on an annual basis, it is very difficult to keep that progression going and keep those relationships live.

Ms Divin: District councils tend to get the flak when other good relations-related funding cycles close and start. For example, when one round of Peace funding closes and there is a six- or nine-month gap until the next one, everybody looks at the council to fulfil all that. We are hitting the same thing at the minute with the IFI peace walls programme. So, yes.

Mr Lyttle: Thanks for your presentation. You are very welcome. Is it possible to give a brief example of one best practice piece of community relations work?

Ms Divin: One? Is there any particular type of work that you are interested in hearing about?

Mr Lyttle: Maybe something in relation to interfaces, for example.

Alderman Ekin: There are a lot of exercises going on in Belfast. I am not saying that it is good practice but it is standard practice.

You have to engage with people. As soon as you see a glimmer of people saying, "We want to be different", you have to help them and support them in that. That is happening at Alexandra Park, for example. OK, it is the only park in the world with a peace wall across it, but they have opened a door in it and you have to give them the courage to do that. You put the funding in place. It is done. There is a lot of mischief-making outside, with people saying that there is rioting there every night and that it is criminal to have opened it up. That is mischief. That is wrong. We have tried to stop that. That is coming from some councillors, and it appals me that they say those things.

The good practice there has been to listen to what the people are saying, take the idea and ask, "What can we do to help you to get there?" When they get there, you know that there will be a problem and the good practice then is to help them at the time of the problem and ask, "What can we do as the next step?" Maybe you have to take a step back. That is not a problem as long as you know that you are taking a step back for the right reasons, which is what they had to do. The city council worked very closely with those folks over time without putting undue pressure on them but still saying, "Your goal is to make Alexandra Park a normal place". The other good thing is that you get people who are prepared to come forward and say, "That gate was open. Do you know what it does? It allows me to get to Tesco without having to get a bus or a taxi. I can walk".

Mr Lyttle: And other supermarkets.

Alderman Ekin: There are other supermarkets; I realise that. Tesco needs help.

Ms Divin: From a Derry/Londonderry perspective, I would say that you cannot tackle an interface by just looking at the wall. That is the first key thing. There are a number of things that we do in relation to that, most critically the interface monitoring forum in Derry/Londonderry, which, on a monthly or bimonthly basis, as needed, brings together statutory agencies, the PSNI, the Youth Justice Agency and the council along with key community workers from all sides of our three interfaces and we sit round a table and talk about the issues. That work has progressed over the years to the point that, at the last Maiden City Festival celebrations, we found ourselves talking about where the Portaloos would be in the city and about the police reporting on a carnival atmosphere. If you wind things back five or six years, it would have been a very different meeting.

Building relationships and sustaining the structures and the relationships is important in the long term. Equally, the IFI peace walls programme has made a massive impact in Derry/Londonderry because it paid for part-time workers to be based on each side of our interfaces. Having those workers on the ground was critical. Equally, we have a programme on bonfires and alternatives to bonfires so that communities that have, do not have or are doing away with bonfires can equally benefit. That brings a lot of our interface communities together on incentive-based training programmes and helps us build relationships with them so that they know us if they need to lift the phone. We also give diversionary money.

A sum of £500 can make a massive difference to a community group or a youth group that works on either side of an interface in trying to keep young people involved in something positive rather than getting sidetracked into something negative.

Ms Askin: With shared spaces, and what are considered to be shared spaces, we do very practical things like getting a group of people on a bus and taking them into areas where they would not normally go, opening up areas to them and making them see that they are grand.

In the UK City of Culture year, we had a couple of new shared spaces — at the time, they were not considered to be shared spaces — like the Ebrington site and Guildhall Square, which were part of the public realm scheme. The programming, such as the Radio 1 Big Weekend, allowed people to go to Ebrington for a reason, and it is now considered to be a totally shared space. It is about pushing the boundaries of what is seen as a shared space and trying to make them more accessible to everybody.

Mr Lyttle: You are leading me on to a question that I am reluctant to ask, but, if I am not wrong, the T:BUC strategy sets the aim of all public space being shared space. What is OFMDFM doing to work with you to ensure that that aim is achieved?

Ms Divin: It is providing money under the district council good relations programme so that we can work with local communities.

Mr Lyttle: How is it monitoring or evaluating the outcomes of that investment to ensure that it is achieving the aims that it has set out in the strategy?

Ms Divin: I can comment on how we have to report on that. Every action plan is outcomes-based so you have to look at the target that you are aiming for and then work backwards from that as to what you will do and what OFMDFM does with the information that we send up. We submit quarterly progress reports to OFMDFM. I do not know whether those are collated, but it checks on an individual basis that a council is doing something constructive.

Mr Lyttle: What does OFMDFM do to bring district council good relations officers together to share practice or to consult on ideas?

Ms Askin: It brings us together annually for a conference.

Mr Lyttle: Is that a half-day conference?

Ms Askin: Yes. When the T:BUC consultation came out, for example, it brought us together, and our views were fed in. If there is any critical legislation that is pertinent to good relations, it brings us together.

Ms Divin: Before the RPA, OFMDFM advised that we should work in regional groupings. Derry City Council was part of the northern forum of good relations officers, along with Coleraine, Ballymoney, Moyle and Limavady. We shared good practice informally in our slightly wider areas. That does not really exist now because of the RPA, but it existed previously.

Mr Lyttle: What is the typical budget that OFMDFM gives to a council for good relations work?

Ms Divin: There is not a typical budget, unless you ask OFMDFM what the average is. Until now, it was based on the quality of your work, and you submitted a competitive bid, which was scored. If you scored very highly, you tended to get 100% of your funding. If you did not score highly, you did not get everything that you asked for. Our understanding is that that has changed, and we are concerned about that. It is no longer competitive to the same extent. When you apply this time round under the new council structures, it is either a pass or a fail, and, if you pass, the money is not based on quality but on per capita spend. Derry City Council has some concerns that, as it is a more deprived area of Northern Ireland, that disadvantages us, and we would expect quite a significant budget hit.

Mr Lyttle: What was your budget for last year?

Ms Divin: It was half a million pounds.

Mr Lyttle: With the letters of offer, am I right in saying that August/September was an early date of receipt for some of the last financial years?

Ms Divin: It is probably around average.

Mr Lyttle: Are there instances when it has been almost halfway through a year before people receive letters of offer?

Ms Divin: Yes.

Mr Lyttle: Is it an annual budget?

Ms Divin: Yes.

Mr Lyttle: How can anybody operate in those circumstances?

Ms Divin: We would be delighted if you could help us to answer that question.

Mr Lyttle: That is obviously a serious problem.

What involvement did OFMDFM have with the district councils in setting the good relations indicators? Have you had any update on the outcome of the review?

Ms Divin: We were asked to send one or two representatives to meetings in Stormont to discuss those indicators. We had input about it not being so Belfast-centric, bearing in mind rural areas and so on. So we had input, which we welcomed Three or four good relations officers from different parts of Northern Ireland were involved in that process.

Ms Askin: The indicators were communicated to us once they were finalised.

Mr Lyttle: Do you think that they are in line with the types of outcomes that we are seeking to achieve, or is there work to be done?

Ms Divin: I think that they are very high level for us to be able to measure at a local level without employing researchers. We tend to do our own consultation and write our own action plans and strategies because that works for people on the ground. That also means that we do not spend money on consultants. It would be very difficult for councils to measure those indicators, because it requires university level analysis.

Mr Lyttle: The issue with the letters of offer is astounding, in that, when councils are given an annual budget, they know only halfway through the year what they will receive to do that work.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): You have made it clear that, when a Peace programme wraps up, groups understandably put pressure on you. What about when a Peace programme is open? Is there attention at that point? How do you make an assessment when there is this cocktail, as it were, with money coming from the Department, the CRC, Peace money and philanthropy money? How does it work for you?

Ms Askin: With Peace money, we would have ensured that there was complementarity with what we were delivering versus what Peace III was delivering. Locally, it worked very well for us. We were invited to sit on their partnerships and attend their meetings. We were asked for expertise on projects that they were establishing.

We are aware of areas where it did not work so well, and there were issues between both funds. For us, however, it worked pretty well. We tried to ensure that there was always complementarity and good relations. When it is operating well, it is brilliant, and loads of money is flying about, but, when the money starts to dry up, they want a house somewhere for the good work that was initiated under Peace. That is when they tend to look to the statutory sector.

Ms Divin: I will add to that, linking in with Bronwyn McGahan's question about the value of putting money into grant aid versus programmes. When Peace or another funding programme opens up a lot of money to the community and voluntary sector, very often the expertise of councils' good relations teams is called in to sit on steering groups for those projects. That adds to our workload but also shows the value of a district council good relations programme that employs staff.

Alderman Ekin: There is always a problem in matching the sources of funds. The IFI does one thing, the SEUPB does something else, and Belfast City Council had a certain amount of money to do things. One of the problems is that the availability of this funding is never coterminous and does not start at the same time.

We have had the odd problem when we have said, "If I have money, it is there, and it has to do a certain thing". That is to help people and communities to develop, but to develop to what? You need physical cash to come in later on to do whatever physical work has to be done, and that is not necessarily available. You are asked whether you want to take IFI money to do that, not knowing where the next step will be. It is important that we know the next step.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): So you spend a lot of time chasing money.

Alderman Ekin: Yes.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): You spend a lot of time accounting for the use of money, and you probably spend a lot of time shaping your strategies to tick the boxes.

Ms Divin: In fairness, we also spend a lot of time doing practical and policy work, and our jobs are just quite busy.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Fair enough.

Mr Spratt: Thank you for the presentation. Good to see you, Tom. Community planning will now be a big issue for councils. Community engagement is obviously a vital part of community planning. I notice that Belfast has done an online survey of residents, and Mid Ulster has conducted a series of town hall-style meetings in different towns. Is that being run out across the Province for some of the issues that you are dealing with? Is Derry City Council doing anything about that?

Ms Askin: Different approaches are being taken to community planning across the Province, but, in Derry City and Strabane District Council, the town hall information sessions were rolled out last week and continue this week across the district. There will be 12 such sessions, and the chief executive is leading on them, with input from consultants. Staff are also very much involved. There is a three-pronged approach: letting the public know about the new dispensation and what will happen; what community planning means for communities; and how they can impact the new community planning, how it will be shaped and developed and what it will look like at a local level.

Ms Divin: There is a household survey, backed up by NISRA, of 1,400 households in the area and of section 75 groups.

Mr Spratt: That will play into your work as well.

Ms Divin: Some of it will but not all of it directly.

Ms Askin: Enumerators are being employed locally to do the surveys through Ilex.

Ms Divin: That will also be done through community groups on the ground. There will be trained enumerators.

Mr Spratt: We have heard about budget issues and all the rest of it, and the problem of having only a yearly budget happens right across the board. Departments and so on get only a yearly budget, and that is obviously something to do with Treasury rules. Local government, from a rating point of view, also gets its budget only on a yearly basis. Tom, you said that NILGA has been doing a good job, and I agree with you. Over the years, NILGA has done a very good job in making presentations. It did a good job in the run-up to the legislation for the new councils in lobbying across the board. Perhaps it could be stronger, and could be made stronger in the future, on some budget issues and the day-to-day workings of what we were talking about. Do you see a major role for NILGA in lobbying at Stormont? It attended regularly in the run-up to the legislation for local government reform.

Alderman Ekin: Thank you. It is gratifying that somebody other than NILGA is saying that we are doing a reasonable job. Remember that NILGA has been going through a transformation for the last few years, and the major issue now is how we are going to get a coherent view from 26 councils — down to 11 — to get them to work and how we are going to ensure that government delivers what it said it was going to deliver to the councils. Let us take the transfer of functions being rates-neutral. That did not happen, but we fought very hard to try to get all the councils to agree what we were trying to take on board and to be willing to take on the new responsibilities. Some of them did not want to take on those responsibilities. In a couple of months' time, it will have happened, and I entirely agree that the councils are now buying into NILGA more. They will be using NILGA as a conduit, which is why I was quite pleased that the Committee invited us here today. This is another step in putting responsibility on NILGA to come up with coherent views that are persuasive and that all the councils in the Province can buy into so that there is one view so that you do not have to go and listen to 26 or 11 different people. You are listening to one spokesperson. I certainly see NILGA expanding its role and influence.

Mr Attwood: From what you have said so far, quite a number of recommendations could go forward to any final report. I have only one question. You talked about uncertainty of funding and delays in getting confirmed offers of funding. Can you scope out for us as best you can what you think that the profile will be of budgetary pressures, with the rundown of Peace, with whatever happens with the IFI interface project moneys that you referred to and with budgetary pressures in government and so on? Can you anticipate now what the squeeze could be year on year over the next number of years — let us say in the life of the current council term? Is that too speculative? If our report is to be rigorous, we have to advise government on the financial profile, including what the needs might be and what might fall to government in this situation, bearing in mind that the Institute for Fiscal Studies today published a report indicating that further Budget pressures will be very significant, including for devolved administrations post 2015-16. Are you able to do that? I am not quite asking you to speculate but to give your best assessment of what your pressures will be.

Alderman Ekin: I will answer speculatively from a higher level, because I am not on the ground, as these ladies are. If you were starting this as a project, you would spell out your end result: where are you trying to get to? Nobody has spelled out just what we are trying to achieve. Indeed, we talk about a shared future, but it often ends up with people creating things that make it a divided future. You have to get people to say coherently, "Right, we are going to share the future, and that means getting rid of peace walls and working with people on the ground". This is how we need to bring people forward so that they are comfortable with their neighbour. There are also wonderful savings sitting there: it costs £1 billion a year to keep us separate. How do we find, say, £5 million a year? Is there some way that the Minister of Finance can say, "We can get £5 million a year, and, come hell or high water, we will set it aside for the next five years, and that is what will be spent over the Province". You could then go to the 11 councils and say, "Look, you have a certain issue". I am sure that somebody has already done the research on the major pressure points.

You were talking about areas of deprivation. I heard the other day that ISIS comes from deprivation. Now I do not want there to be an ISIS in Northern Ireland. You have to address the issues in those deprived areas and bring in social and economic investment and a whole heap of other things. Somebody has to start thinking their way through that and ask how much money we need. If, however, you are given only a few million quid, you then ask how you will spend it. The pressure will be felt by people at the coalface — Angela and Sue. If you were to cut their budget by 50% or 20%, they will have to juggle that and carry on doing what they are doing. Maybe you could expand on that.

Ms Divin: I will start, and you can add anything. We have already had these conversations. We lost 18% of our budget at the start of September last year. So our key message to you — we have articulated it before — is this: tell us what our budget is on 1 April, because then, whatever the budget is, we are able to plan strategically to work within it. Our style of working may change. Communities come to councils asking to work in partnership in order to get grant aid. Soon, we may be saying to them: "We have no money. However, let me come out and work with your community group at this interface or in that housing estate or in that sports club". We will work with them in kind and help them to fill in forms to get funding from Comic Relief, Children in Need or wherever we can get it. Indeed, we are already doing some of that. If we have less money ourselves, our resource, as people who understand good relations effectively on the ground, becomes even more important. That is the key issue.

We already work on a shoestring budget. The scale of funding for things like Peace III puts ours into perspective. We work on a shoestring delivering projects. Cutting that further effectively means cutting our direct delivery under our action plan. Either you cut all our grant aid or you cut all our other programmes, such as training and schools programmes, community festivals, black and minority ethnic work and our interface diversionary fund. That could all go, or you halve both and try for some kind of balance. That is how significant the funding cuts are. This coming financial year, we do not know whether we will have any money to spend after we have given out grant aid. We do not know whether we will have any programmes money at all for our officers to work from. That is the worst-case scenario, but it is not impossible. We are already looking at those kinds of things.

Ms Askin: We have heard that Peace IV may be in the pipeline, and that might relieve the pressure, although there will be a significant gap. The IFI is done: it is gone. The only other thing is philanthropic funding. As Sue stated, it is scary.

Ms Divin: Another key impact of those funders going out of existence is that the people who are employed in the community and voluntary sector end up not having those jobs. I cannot stress how important those jobs are to our sector. Derry City Council's good relations team could not do half the work it does if we did not have people working on the ground in communities. You can rely too heavily on volunteers who are trying to juggle family and work while doing all this. It is impossible for them to do it. Our city and district have moved forward, but that is partly because we have a very progressive community and voluntary sector that is willing to engage with these issues and work with us. If they go, we are handcuffed in what we can do.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Sue, you mentioned NISRA, and my final question is about NISRA's evaluation of the district council good relations programme. I think that it was completed in 2012, but the recommendations have not been implemented.

Ms Divin: That is my understanding.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Do you know when the recommendations will be implemented?

Ms Divin: No, I do not, but I am familiar with some of the key points, such as the timeliness of the letters of offer and things like that, which were raised then. We would love to see many of those recommendations being looked at.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): That has been most useful. Thank you very much indeed. Still feeling bad about the supermarkets. Clearly, from what you say, Sue, a Lidl goes a long way, but we are not yet at the point at which we can ask, "Asda programme worked?". Sue, Angela and Aldi-man Tom, thank you very much indeed. We look forward to Spar-ing with you in the future.

Mr Spratt: We will be back after this short break.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): The weather is next.

Mr Lyttle: He misses it.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): I have just had an image of Frank Mitchell. I am not well.