Ms Karly Greene:

Yes, as I said, one of the benefits of having a big department is that I am sure the officials can work within the department. We were able to access colleagues in the area of housing for that particular project. However, there is the issue of the lack of an executive. I know this is one of those things that we say over and over again, but it really does stifle the ability to move forward or doing anything new. With no executive, civil servants cannot do any new programmes or projects. Our head of the civil service was speaking to the committee at Westminster to say that it should not make decisions on public funding because Ministers should do that. We can do all of this and have all the evidence, but the challenge is in moving forward and implementing it.

One of our successful engagements has been in the rural deliberative forum. We have a minority, ethnic and migrant deliberative forum as well. The whole idea was to try to get people involved in those decisions. Some of the conversations about access and trying to spread the investment further have been really useful. These are practical things. Sometimes, this is regarding when a programme launches and looking to see if we can keep it open for six weeks rather than four, or looking at whether we can make the language easier for people who do not speak English. It is a matter of people feeling involved in that process. That has been a good way of doing it.