Ms Annmarie McHugh:

I thought I would share that. I thank the Chairman. I was the one who coined the phrase "volunteer burnout" and what has been interesting for me today has been to meet all the different people who, like myself, are passionate about the towns. There is a fantastic range of expertise and interest in the room and the good thing is that we are all on the same page, we all want to try to make our towns better. That is a very positive start.

What I have taken from today is the newly-coined phrase "town centre first". That should be copied and pasted. It is working for Scotland and if that became the agenda for every Department, that would be a big plus.

I am concerned about burnout for volunteers. If we want to continue making our towns better in the future, we will have to come up with all these different funds and ideas. It would be a big plus if we were to get the solution of having a town centre expert positioned in the town. All the different schemes are out there are fantastic but there are so many of them. We have talked about people reinventing the wheel. Those schemes should be gathered together to make it simpler for people. The town centre expert could then guide us to help us go for that funding and that would significantly reduce burnout.