Author: Matt Ritchie Charity times

The public are more likely to trust local community organisations than national or international charities, according to new research.

An online survey of more than 2,000 adults found 56 per cent of respondents trusted local community charities. National charities were trusted by 29 per cent of respondents, and international charities were trusted by 17 per cent.

The Vitreous survey for the Open University Business School’s Centre for Voluntary Sector Leadership (CVSL) found local community charities were second only to doctors in the list of organisations or professions respondents trusted.

Forty-two per cent of respondents said they were likely to volunteer for a small and local community charity, compared to 29 per cent who would volunteer for a national charity and 19 per cent who would give time to an international organisation.

Forty-three per cent would donate to small and local community charities, while 17 per cent would donate to national charities and 14 per cent would donate to international charities.

Author: Planning Democracy

Extract of a blog from Planning Democracy in response to the Scottish Government launch of Places, People and Planning : A consultation of the future of Scottish Planning System

Getting More People Involved in Planning.

This section starts out by recommitting to the goal of ‘front-loading’ or early engagement. This is unsurprising since the Government have consistently promoted the idea. It’s also a decent principle but the debate about it is infuriatingly evidence-free: this is another example of a change that has been consistently promised for nearly fifty years but never actually delivered, and yet there is no attempt to question what might be learned from all of that experience or what might need to change to make it a realistic goal.

The most broadly positive suggestion is to develop a system of local place-plans capable of being afforded statutory weight as part of the development plan. This mirrors provisions for ‘neighbourhood planning’ in England and could, as the consultation suggests, provide a proactive way of engaging people in the development of their local area, in keeping with the wider community empowerment agenda.

The details of any such scheme will matter a great deal. In England more legal boiler-plating (there’s another theme emerging there) has produced a long, slow and expensive system that is inaccessible to many communities who do not have the requisite levels of social, cultural and financial capital to last the course. This needs somehow to be avoided. Likewise, it’s hard to avoid the feeling that local place plans would be better as a single expression of a community’s aspirations, rather than land-use plans duplicating existing and emerging processes in relation to community planning, community land rights etc.

Throughout, there is a distinct and disappointing note of skepticism about the role that community’s play in the planning system. This is evident when the consultation talks of avoiding ‘unreasonable protectionism’, and only welcoming the engagement of those who back development and growth. This smacks of a willingness to get people involved provided they agree to pre-approved answers: a strangely bowdlerized version of public participation and democracy.

Another potentially promising commitment, to community capacity building and innovation in engagement techniques, does little more than reiterate existing government support for the charrette programme. Charrettes are not necessarily a bad thing. They are, however, expensive, principally expert-led and were developed to find design solutions (less ‘do we need a power station?’ and more ‘would it be better if we used a different render on the façade of the power station?’). There is a real danger that continued commitment to charrettes is blocking wider experimentation with alternative deliberative and participatory techniques that could be both more effective and better value for money.

The third proposal in this section is entitled ‘getting more people involved in planning’ which would obviously be a great thing. Oddly the consultation tells us we need to wait for the results of recently commissioned research into barriers to engagement before saying too much- if this research and the issue itself are important why didn’t the consultation wait until it was complete? Beyond that there is a strong and slightly peculiar focus on how to engage children better in the planning process. We have nothing against this aspiration, but it seems like a potentially nice extra rather than a core issue and does nothing at all to address the huge inequality of arms that exists between concerned citizens and the highly-professionalised planning and development processes. It also distracts from the massive challenges involved in empowering people to understand and engage effectively with how plans and decisions affect their lives. Sadly such issues are barely even acknowledged, let alone seriously addressed.

Suggestions for increasing public trust in the system offer some welcome acknowledgement of the problems communities face when trying to engage in plans, including when faced by repeat applications or failures of enforcement. These are both issues PD raised during the review. Having said that, the proposed solutions don’t suggest any desire to radically improve accountability to the public or the accessibility of planning processes. Moreover, the consultation goes on in the next recommendation to reject the introduction of an equal right of appeal – the key mechanism PD and others have campaigned to see introduced.

This was not unexpected. The Government already took the extraordinary step of listing a commitment to not introduce ERA as one of the ten key ‘actions’ promised in their initial response to the panel’s report last July.

Familiar and entirely unevidenced arguments are trotted out to support this position: ERA will undermine frontloading and the role of locally elected decision-makers; lead to delay and scare off investment; centralize decision-making. We have consistently presented evidence and arguments that illustrate why these claims are without foundation. We won’t repeat them here, you can read them for yourself if you haven’t already done so. Interestingly, the consultation goes on to immediately propose a means of dealing with its own objection about centralisation of decision-making by proposing to extend the use of Local Review Bodies (though it stops short of considering how community representatives might be incorporated into such bodies, or even into nationally heard appeals). 

Ultimately what all of this serves to reveal is an underlying view that people get in the way of planning decision-making and the workings of the development sector and should not be given equal rights to participate (meaning PD’s work is not yet done and our volunteer staff aren’t going to be able to take early retirement any time soon).

Author: The Guardian, Tracy McVeigh

Dylan Thomas had one. So did Roald Dahl, Arthur Miller and Norman MacCaig. Virginia Woolf wrote her last words in one and Gabriel Oak had one in Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd.

Fishermen and shepherds have long recognised their value and between the wars they were promoted as boltholes, a means for the working classes to escape toxic cities for the good of their health. In Scotland, the hut, whether a mountain bothy or forest retreat, has long been part of both the scenery and the cultural landscape, immortalised in the “but an’ ben” of the Broons cartoon strip – a tiny two-room, one-storey holiday cottage.

But a toughening up of land access rights and a change in attitudes by landowners led to the tradition of the rustic getaway almost disappearing, leaving just sheds for those with gardens, and holiday lets for those who could afford them.

Now a ‘hutting’ revival is predicted after the Scottish government signalled that later this month it will change legislation to exempt huts from building regulations, allowing people to put up these most simple of second homes in the countryside wherever they can rent or buy a plot of suitable land, subject to planning permission.

It is the end of a long campaign by enthusiasts and conservationists, who have been battling for years to re-establish the hutting tradition in Scotland. Karen Grant, from environmental charity Reforesting Scotland, has been working to promote the group’s Campaign for a Thousand Huts which has attracted interest from people all over Scotland and beyond. The group is working on good practice guidelines for the burgeoning trend. New groups of enthusiasts are springing up and architects specialising in small eco-buildings are reporting high levels of interest.

“Some people will just want to quietly build their own hut using whatever they can reclaim in wood and materials,” said Grant, “while others will want to have something designed and built. I know one chap who built his for £200 while others will come in at £15,000 – it’s a sliding scale in terms of cost. And so is the kind of hutting people want – part of a community, maybe, or else out on their own. The important thing is that it’s a simple human dream, to have a place of tranquillity, close to nature, and it’s absurd that it has been outlawed.

 Richard Lochhead MSP, left, at the launch of Reforesting Scotland’s planning guidance for new hut developments, with Richard Heggie and Karen Grant of the Thousand Huts campaign. Photograph: Michelle Lowe

“We’ve got a great level of interest from people who have just been waiting for this move so they can go ahead and establish their hut. Building regulations are likely to be relaxed for huts designed for recreational use that are of 30 sq metres or less, and using low-impact materials, generally off-grid.

“If you’re going to want a flushing toilet you’ll still be looking to apply for the right permissions, but we’re hoping most people will be thinking of compost toilets or similar low impact ideas, in keeping with the ethos of hutting.

“We will have to be careful and make sure this freedom isn’t abused: but our primary goal is improving people’s relationship with the forest and the environment while improving mental health and wellbeing.”

Already a pilot project with the Forestry Commission has started in Fife, on Scotland’s east coast, while a community of hutters in Carbeth, which has been established since 1918, has successfully bought the land it occupies to be held in community ownership.

Richard Lochhead, the Scottish National party MSP for Moray, was the cabinet secretary for rural affairs, food and environment until last year and played a key role in pressing the Scottish government to act on easing regulations after meeting with diehard hutters and seeing the impact on their lives.

“A renewed hutting culture in Scotland would be hugely beneficial because it would encourage people, particularly in our towns and cities, to connect with the countryside and our spectacular natural environment. This can only help the nation’s health and wellbeing,” he said.

“There are clearly different models of hutting and we can learn from other parts of the world, such as Scandinavia, where having access to a hut or smaller countryside property is very common. In Scotland, there is potential for both private developers and community groups to play a role in establishing hutting communities, which would also help ensure their sensible use.”

And for those south of the border with a lust for a basic rustic retreat, there is no obligation to live in the country of your hut – “although we would hope their hut would be something people would use regularly, to build a deeper understanding of place, and so you’d maybe not want to live too far away,” said Grant. “It’s a lovely thing that many people dream of: we’ll just have to hope enough sympathetic landowners think so too.”

RAMSHACKLE SHELL TO GREEN GETAWAY

Chris Cunningham runs a guitar shop in Edinburgh during the week. At the weekend he is a hutter. He bought his getaway in a small off-grid colony of 23 huts on farmland near Peebles in 2011 when it was a ramshackle shell.

“It was a cold January day when my girlfriend and I went to look at it, it was falling to bits and had birds living in it. She turned to me as we were leaving and said, ‘you’d have to be mental to buy that’, but I was already sold. It’s given me something I never thought I’d have, I have a greenhouse and a little allotment there, and you have to constantly think outside the box about how to manage things off-grid. I’ve just devised a solar-powered watering system for the greenhouse.

“There is an ideology, the hutter growing veg and reading by candlelight, but also some who do use their huts as a bolthole for drinking and leaving rubbish about so I do worry there is a risk of how manageable sites will be if hutting is opened up to the masses. We’ll have to see how it pans out”

This article was amended on 18 January 2018 to make it clear that while building regulations are to be relaxed for huts, planning permission is still required

Author: What Works Scotland

Full report of research What works in Participatory Budgeting – Taking stock and thinking ahead

Key Points from the research are:

·         Participatory Budgeting (PB) is a democratic innovation that is becoming central to community empowerment and public service reform in Scotland.

·         WWS has developed a programme, including research and capacity building activities, to generate insight and inform the strategic and operational leadership and delivery of PB.

·         WWS has reviewed available evidence on the 1st Generation of PB in Scotland (58 cases).

·         This grassroots growth within Scotland’s communities has been accelerated by increasing political, legislative and policy support.

·         These developments point towards the ‘mainstreaming’ of PB, moving beyond the community grant-making model that has been predominant, and opening up space for more complex models that involve mainstream public budgets.

·         For PB to make a substantial difference in the lives of citizens and communities, democratic innovators across Scotland will have to overcome a range of challenges related to culture, capacity, politics, legitimacy and sustainability.

·         WWS has highlighted various areas for improvement in 2nd Generation PB, including the need to increase the deliberative quality of PB processes and their focus on tackling inequalities. The transformative potential of PB depends to a great extent on those two dimensions.

Author: Gerry Braiden, The Herald

CAMPAIGNERS in the long-running battle to save an inner-city woodland from development have won their fight as ministers rule against the plans.

Opponents of the plan to build around 100 town houses on the site in Glasgow’s west end have been informed by the Scottish Government that it has refused planning permission, marking a victory in the five-year campaign for residents and their high-profile supporters.

The Government had the role as final arbitrator in the scheme as Glasgow City Council, the owners of the North Kelvinside Meadow, would have stood to gain from its sale to developers. A two-day inquiry by the Government’s planning ‘reporter’ weas held in the summer.

The decision marks the culmination in almost two decades of high-profile opposition to building on the west end site. It was declared surplus in the mid-1990s, and since then a number of attempts have been made to develop the site.

But the campaign group, the Children’s Wood, now plan on buying the plot and retaining it as a community asset.

In a letter to all parties issued on Tuesday, the Government said: “Ministers have carefully considered the report. They accept and agree with the reporter’s overall conclusions and recommendations and adopt them for the purpose of their own decision.

“Accordingly, Ministers hereby dismiss the application and refuse planning permission for the erection of residential development with associated parking, landscaping and vehicular access and demolition of existing structures at Kelbourne Street/Sanda Street/Clouston Street, Glasgow.

It added that the “decision of Ministers is final” but allows the developers, Irish-based New City Vision, the right to take the decision to the Court of Session.

It said: “On any such application the Court may quash the decision if satisfied that it is not within the powers of the Act, or that the appellant’s interests have been substantially prejudiced by a failure to comply with any requirements of the Act, or of the Tribunals and Inquiries Act 1992, or any orders, regulations or rules made under these Acts.”

The campaign has become a major cause celebre in Glasgow and one of a high-profile series run from the west end which has caused the city council considerable turbulence in recent years.

As well as a being run by a highly-organised and articulate group, supporters of the meadow campaign have included leading children’s author Julia Donaldson, Turner Prize-winning artist Richard Wright, Franz Ferdinand’s Paul Thomson, musician RM Hubbert, writers Bernard MacLaverty and Alasdair Gray, comedian Frankie Boyle, and various individuals from academia, the arts and civic Scotland.

The Scottish Government report states the main reasons for rejecting the plans for housing were loss of open space, inappropriate mitigation for all the multi-functional uses such as schools and community groups and the loss of biodiversity.

The campaign and outcome could set a precedent for other areas and could help to change the policy around land and community empowerment.

Emily Cutts, chairwoman of the Children’s Wood, said: “This is brilliant news. I think the result shows that fatalism need not prevail and that communities can make a difference.

“I hope that our success today will show other communities that they can succeed too. It’s great that the government recognise that this is not nimbyism and that we have created valuable and sustainable activities like our work with 20 schools, our outdoor clubs, community events and other growing projects which tackle some of the most urgent 21st century needs.”

Game of Thrones actress Kate Dickie, a long-term supporter of the campaign, said: “I’ve just heard the wonderful news that the Children’s Wood and Meadow has been saved. Bravo to our community for all of their tireless campaigning.It’s the best Christmas Present for the kids ever.”

Strontian Community School Building Limited

This innovative project has evolved from a number of community consultations over the past 4 years: the Strontian Community Consultation & Action Plan by Cadispa; the Highland Council Strontian Primary School Consultation Report 2014 (statutory consultation); Community Housing needs survey and Strontian Masterplanning exercise which has just been completed.

Throughout this extended period of community consultation two elements of community provision essential to the community’s sustainability and growth have been highlighted as areas of major concern. A primary school fit for the 21st century, and affordable housing both for key workers, and to attract new and retain existing families, who struggle to find affordable secure tenancies.

The existing primary school was assessed as inadequate for both educational suitability and building condition by the Highland Council in 2014, and the statutory consultation resulted in initial proposals being put forward to the community which failed to reassure them that the replacement facility would provide their children with the educational environment they deserve.

The situation has been complicated by the future potential for the primary school to be accommodated within the existing High School sometime after 2027 (the existing High School, which also houses the nursery and community facilities was built under a PPP contract which ends in 2027, at which point the Council ‘inherits’ the building). However prior to this, as a result of the PPP arrangement the Highland Council is unable to vary the contract, for example to alter the building, without attracting heavy penalties.

Prior to the statutory consultation an area of land adjacent to the High School, and affording easy access to allow for the use of community facilities, was identified as the perfect position on which to build the required replacement primary school. Further, it is in an area that is being developed to provide housing and amenity land for the community. However, the Council’s preferred option of using the site to house modular units for the new school did not meet the community’s aspirations for a high-quality, long-term solution. As a result the community have come forward with their own proposal to address the need to upgrade the primary school.

This innovative proposal provides one solution to a number of immediate and long term community needs: design and build a primary school fit for the 21st century incorporating community office space, based on the footprint of a terrace of 3 or 4 houses which would allow for the efficient and economical conversion to community owned housing or other identified community use if and when the building is no longer required by the Highland Council as a primary school.

The community owned housing could then be provided to suit the needs of the community at this point e.g. as sheltered housing provision for an ageing population, keyworker housing, community resource, or whatever need has arisen at that time.

Importantly, Highland Council would continue to provide the education service under this proposal, as they are required to do: the community would provide only the basic building.

This proposal has been developed by the community, has the support of the Highland Council and has attracted an offer in principle of both development finance and long term loan from a major ethical bank and is recognised as having the potential to provide a template for future service provision within rural communities by replacing the PPP’s and PPF’s with ‘Community Public Partnerships’.

Author: Shapinsay Development Trust

‘Sew Shapinsay’

 is all about a community project to sew a map of our island which came about via the creation of a new community facility and with expert input from Dierdre Nelson – mostly though, it’s arisen from the energy and drive within Shapinsay.

Watch this short movie created by Lynne Collinson to describe the project as part of her work with Shapinsay Development Trust

Author: SURF

A SURF proposal for a Scottish Index of Multiple Assets and Aspirations (SIMAA)

Author: The Ferret

Private finance schemes to fund roads and hospitals have blasted a £932 million hole in the Scottish Government’s budget and are to be investigated by public spending watchdogs.

Audit Scotland and the Accounts Commission are planning a joint examination into whether privately funded building projects overseen by the Scottish Futures Trust – which replaced previous governments’ discredited Private Finance Initiative (PFI) schemes – are “value for money”.

Ministers have been told that four of the biggest Non-Profit Distributing (NPD) projects have to be included in the government’s budget under new European Union accounting rules because they are mostly under government control. Ministers had previously been planning to keep them off the public balance sheet.

According to Audit Scotland, the Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route, completion of which has been delayed until winter 2017-18, will now cost taxpayers £469m in capital investment. The new Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary will cost £213m, the new Edinburgh Sick Kids Hospital will cost £150m, and the new centre for the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service at Heriot Watt will cost £33m.

A joint investigation by The Ferret and The Guardian has discovered that a fifth NPD project – the new £67m Balfour hospital at Kirkwall on Orkney – is also likely to end up on the public balance sheet. This will increase the total amount of capital lost from public sector borrowing to £932m.

The Scottish finance secretary, Derek Mackay, is due to announce his draft budget for 2017-18 on the 15th December. He will have to explain how the government is going to cope with the missing £932m, which amounts to nearly a third of the Scottish Government’s £3 billion capital borrowing allocation.

The announcement at Holyrood is expected to be greeted by protests from trade unionists, who are angry about spending cutbacks and privatisation. Private finance schemes have brought job losses and “exorbitant” 30-year contracts, warned Unite’s deputy Scottish secretary, Mary Alexander.

“The funding model rolled out by the Scottish Government is nothing other than a public relations repackaging of the private finance initiative, with zero transparency and minimal accountability,” she said.

The Ferret can also reveal that the Dumfries hospital will earn its private consortium backers – including the insurance group Aviva and the building firm Laing O’Rourke – £160m in interest and fees on a capital cost of £213m, from loans totalling £242m. In recent weeks the hospital has been picketed by the construction workers’ union UCATT in a dispute over union access.

Figures released under freedom of information law show that the National Health Service (NHS) is paying interest rates of 5.12 per cent and 11.29 per cent for the Dumfries hospital. Although this is lower than the interest rates charged under the initial PFI schemes, it is much higher than the 1.6 per cent it would be paying to borrow from the state-run national loans fund.

A table released by NHS Dumfries and Galloway gave summary financial information on the hospital project, including some figures that were so poorly redacted they could be read by cutting and pasting the text into another document. The health board did not respond to requests to comment.

Other documents obtained during our joint investigation show that the NHS is paying private contractors three times the hourly rate for electricians, joiners and plumbers working at the new Royal Edinburgh psychiatric hospital in Morningside.

Contractors Galliford Try will charge NHS Lothian £33 an hour for an electrician and £26 an hour for a painter, excluding overheads and VAT. An NHS electrician’s wage starts at £9.82 an hour, while a painter’s starts at £8.59

Leaked documents also show Galliford Try wants to charge £250.58 to install an electrical socket and £395.58 to move a fire exit sign – also excluding overheads

For more see: The Ferret

Author: Martin Sime SCVO

BARELY a day goes by without new revelations about the crisis in social care. Across the UK, national and local governments are struggling to cope with growing demand and rising costs at a time of budget cuts and public sector austerity. Something has to give.

Here in Scotland, care is big business. Billions of pounds are spent on adult social care and many thousands of staff are employed by local authorities, charities and private companies to deliver services to people who need help to live as independently as possible. Social care services are a lifeline for many people.

The case for reform is urgent. Each year more people are assessed as needing social care support, at least in part because we are all living longer and our population is ageing. But the debate about what to do for the future has hardly started since crisis management is the order of the day. Finding more money for social care may sound like an answer but raising taxes and charges is unlikely ever to be enough.

Over the next decade our demography and rising life expectancy will outstrip what any government or taxpayers could reasonably offer. Estimates suggest that soon every school leaver would be needed for the care industry. That was before Brexit threatened to reduce the workforce. It’s clear that more of the same won’t do.

A good starting point for the future is that care is personal. It’s what people feel they need that matters most. There is a growing coalition that believes that personalised, person-centred and self-directed are the principles which ought to prevail in the future. The nanny state needs to retreat.

Care is also social. We could build a rather different system from the bottom up which enhances and supports the role friends, relatives and neighbours could play. A stronger society will be better equipped to cope with the future of social care and, one way or another, we will all have to take some responsibility for that. More needs to be done at the prevention end of social care, helping people to stay active and independent for as long as possible.

An entire generation of recently retired people could be encouraged to help with community transport, lunch clubs, care and repair projects, befriending schemes and much else. These need to become the bedrock of our future system rather than the afterthought they are at present.

Of course, some people will still need professional support and formal social care services. Reform is needed elsewhere so these vital services are not jeopardised. A new slimmed-down bureaucracy based on a single assessment formula and aligned with social security would also help.

At the very least it would be fairer and transparent; people who need social care might even understand their rights rather better than at present. The biggest challenge to more self-directed social care is psychological. People will need to be convinced that taking personal responsibility is right and doable for them, their families and their friends.

They will need trusted support and access to information and independent advocacy. Various vested interests will need to be convinced that jobs and budgets cannot be guaranteed. Politicians and regulators will need to recognise that all human interactions involve degrees of risk but enabling people to make judgments for themselves is the right thing to do.

The big message is that helping ourselves and helping each other are two sides of the same coin. We know from pioneering work by people with long-term conditions that self and mutual help really does work.

With modest investment, these community networks reduce demand on formal services, including the NHS. If more people can come together to meet their social care needs in a similar way then everybody wins.

Our public services need to adapt to the demands of a much changed world, including a greater expectation that people want more control over their own lives and more say over what is done for them.

As a country we surely want to live within our means. A more personal and sustainable approach to social care needs to be at the front and centre of that ambition. There is no Plan B.