Author: Scottish Government

For details of who got what click here

Author: Community Woodlands Association

Scottish Government is consulting on its proposals for the The Future of Forestry in Scotland. The consultation ends on 9/11/16.

Below is the draft response from Community Woodlands Association recently circulated to members for comment and further contribution.

Introduction

The Community Woodlands Association welcomes the opportunity to respond to this consultation

CWA was established by its members in 2003: it represents 200 community woodland groups across Scotland who collectively manage a hundred thousand hectares of woodland and other land, delivering very significant public benefits in a range of fields from timber production and recreation to health and education.

We support the principle of completing the devolution of forestry, by agreeing a transfer of Forestry Commissioners’ powers and duties, as they relate to Scotland, to Scottish Ministers, and recognise the need for a new legislative framework for forestry in Scotland, but have some significant concerns regarding the specific proposals.

We note that in most practical respects Scottish forestry is devolved already: the Scottish National Forest Estate is owned by Scottish Ministers and the activities of private (and community) sector forestry are funded through the Scottish Rural Development Programme. FCS and FES are funded by the Scottish Government, they work to deliver the Scottish Forestry Strategy and other Scottish Government policies, and the heads of FCS and FES report through the Scottish Government’s Environment and Forestry Directorate to Scottish Ministers. We note also that even after the proposed changes, some matters will remain reserved to Westminster, most notably many of the tax arrangements pertaining to forestry.

1              New organisational arrangements for the management of forestry in Scotland

•             Our proposals are for a dedicated Forestry Division in the Scottish Government (SG) and an Executive Agency to manage the NFE. Do you agree with this approach? Please explain your answer.

We do not agree with this approach.  We do not believe that the benefits of such an approach have been effectively articulated by the Scottish Government, nor are there sufficient reassurances regarding the mitigation of the potential disbenefits of such an approach.

In particular we are concerned at the proposal to subsume the policy and regulation functions of FCS within a dedicated Forestry Division in the Scottish Government; we note that such a division could be subject to merger or restructuring without any further public consultation.

As currently structured, Forestry Commission Scotland has successfully championed forestry in Scotland as a broad church embracing a wide range of stakeholders, delivering a huge variety of public benefits and enjoying unprecedented levels of public approval. In particular, FCS has been a strong and committed supporter of community forestry, both in terms of the developing policy context and through funding, e.g. the Seedcorn & Community funds: small pots of money which have facilitated very substantial change.

We are concerned that once FCS is absorbed into the SG it will lose the ability to maintain this broad vision and the budget to support it; and that its focus will be progressively narrowed to supporting a small cadre of industrial stakeholders.

CWA believes that Scottish forestry and the Scottish people would be best served by the establishment of a unified Scottish Forest and Land Service, charged with managing the National Forest Estate, regulating and supporting the full diversity of private and community sector forestry and retaining responsibility for policy development for the sector.

•             In bringing the functions of FCS formally into the SG, how best can we ensure that the benefits of greater integration are delivered within the wider SG structure? What additional benefits should we be looking to achieve?

The “benefits of greater integration” are not well articulated in the consultation document, so naturally it is unclear how to ensure they will be delivered.

We also see no direct link between integration within SG structures and integration of thinking or delivery against SG policies and agendas.  We note that FCS has demonstrated remarkable flexibility in recognising and delivering against a broad range of SG agendas from climate change mitigation to community empowerment and with programmes from starter farms to Branching Out. This is in stark contrast to some apparently “integrated” divisions within SG which remain locked in a silo mentality.

We would also be very concerned that there would be a drive to further integrate FCS IT and other back office systems with those of other SG divisions. The experience of SRDP has been that such integration failed to deliver promised efficiencies and has proven a major obstacle to delivery.

•             How should we ensure that professional skills and knowledge of forestry are maintained within the proposed new forestry structures?

Whilst there would be little immediate change as FCS staff would be transferred into the new SG division we believe it inevitable that forestry expertise and background would be diluted over time, even if the forestry division retains its identity.

We consider that professional skills and knowledge of forestry would be best maintained by establishing a unified Scottish Forest and Land Service.

•             What do you think a future land agency for Scotland could and should manage and how might that best be achieved?

We recognise that FES already manages very substantial (>200,000ha) non-forest assets, and we have no objection in principle to this increasing, either through acquisition (e.g. following the devolution of the Crown Estate) or the transfer of assets from other SG bodies, however we note that this may also require the transfer of budgets and specialised staff.

The more important questions in our opinion relate to the objectives of management. As the Land Reform Review Group noted, land is a precious and finite resource which must be managed in the public interest and for the common good, and this should be the guiding principle for a land agency for Scotland.

2              Cross-border arrangements

•             Do you agree with the priorities for cross-border co-operation set out above, i.e. forestry research and science, plant health and common codes such as UK Forestry Standard? Y/N

Yes

•             Do you have views on the means by which cross-border arrangements might be delivered effectively to reflect Scottish needs? E.g. Memorandum of Understanding between countries? Scotland taking the lead on certain arrangements?

We believe the most effective means to deliver forestry research and science is through the retention of a specialised Forest Research & Science (FRS) organisation.

Such a body would have responsibility for plant health issues on a UK basis, and could also take ownership of common codes (UKFS, etc)

The future FRS could be “owned” by one of the partner nations, but might better be structured as a jointly owned company or partnership.

The process for commissioning research will inevitably change, and this may have implications for research priorities in the future.  We note that Forest Research has well-established social research programmes which have gradually become more attuned to the needs of the sector – it is important that there is continuity in commissioning to maintain expertise in the organisation.

3              New legislation

•             Should the Scottish Ministers be placed under a duty to promote forestry? Y/N

Yes

•             What specifically should be included in such a general duty?

We agree with the provisions outlined in the consultation document, however we consider they are incomplete, and that the duties on Scottish Ministers should include the management of the national estate to deliver social policy agendas, notably with regard to Land Reform & Community Empowerment.

•             Recognising the need to balance economic, environmental and social benefits of forestry, what are your views of the principles set out above?

We note that the document references social benefits from forestry in this question but is otherwise silent on specifics; it appears to draw heavily on the principles of the 1967 Act, which do not adequately represent the broad range of objectives and activities which constitute modern forestry. We are therefore concerned that the statutory focus will be overly on the “economic” (understood narrowly as equating solely to timber production), and believe that there should be a much more specific elaboration of “social” and “environmental” objectives, as well a broader understanding of the economic benefit of forestry. As noted previously we consider that the guiding principle should be that “land is a precious and finite resource which must be managed in the public interest and for the common good”.

Author: Forest Policy Group

The Forest Policy Group is an independent thinktank dedicated to diversifying and strengthening Scotland’s forest industry. We believe that forestry could and should contribute much more to the economy than it presently does, particularly in rural areas and through small- to medium-scale enterprises.  It is important that it also becomes more resilient and sustainable.

We would love to see you at our groundbreaking event in Birnam, Dunkeld, on the 11th of November 2016. We will be exploring the social, economic an environmental values and benefits derived from local, small scale woodland ownership and management, as well as forest enterprises and business.

We’ll be showcasing a number of inspiring examples of local control of woodlands yielding a wide range of extra benefits for the local area, way beyond what most public or private sector management tends to provide.  The aim is to inspire and encourage local initiatives, and identify policy measures which a government interested in communities could implement to help this movement along.  From creating a firewood enterprise, to using timber sales to finance a wide range of community assets and activities, to offering woodland activities as a therapy for those with physical and mental health issues, to sourcing high quality niche timber for beautiful furniture manufacture. And lots more…

We will hear from people and groups who have been doing good things and share their experiences; what has worked and what has not worked – and what can we learn. And to ask the question, what changes in policy will assist these new approaches to forestry?

All welcome. More information on the programme here.

To register click here

Author: Reuters

Iceland’s governing Progressive Party collapsed as the anti-establishment Pirate Party, capitalizing on a wave of anger over corruption, came in second in the country’s general election on Saturday.

Iceland’s prime minister announced on Sunday that he would resign, as the insurgent, anti-establishment Pirate Party capitalized on a wave of anger over corruption to come in second place in the country’s general election.

The Prime Minister, Sigurdur Ingi Johannsson, announced his departure on national television after his center-right Progressive Party’s share of seats in the 63-seat Parliament collapsed to eight from 19 in the previous election, in 2013.

Mr. Johannsson’s predecessor as prime minister, Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, was forced from office in April amid accusations of conflicts of interest after revelations in leaked documents, known as the Panama Papers, of the hidden wealth of the country’s elite.

The conservative Independence Party, which has been in a governing coalition with the Progressives, came in first with 21 seats, up from 19 in the last election.

But the big winner in the election on Saturday was the four-year-old Pirate Party, which took 10 seats, more than tripling its showing of three seats in the last general election. The Left-Green Party also won 10 seats. The left-leaning parties — the Left-Greens, the Pirates and two allies — won 27 seats over all, just short of a majority.

The liberal Regeneration Party, which is expected to play the role of kingmaker, has ruled out joining a coalition with the current governing establishment parties. This means that left-leaning parties could potentially form a governing coalition.

While the conservative Independence Party made gains, “it is not a return to the status quo,” said Andres Jonsson, a political consultant. To form a government, the party will have to extend its hand to smaller, more rebellious groups, he said.

“The traditional party system has been disrupted,” Mr. Jonsson said. “We are not seeing big movements of people who feel that they are able to relate with the messages of the big coalition parties. Changes are going to come from the outside, not from inside the old parties.”

The election for Iceland’s Parliament, the world’s oldest, highlighted the fragmentation of the political landscape. A dozen parties fought for power over an electorate of about 260,000, barely enough to fill three American football stadiums.

Birgitta Jonsdottir, the anarchist leader of the Pirate Party, said she was satisfied with the result. “Whatever happens, we have created a wave of change in the Icelandic society,” she told a cheering crowd here early Sunday.

About 40 percent of Pirate supporters are under the age of 30. They had pinned their hopes on a party that has promised to install a more inclusive and transparent government.

The Pirates have pledged to enhance direct democracy by passing the world’s first “crowd-sourced constitution,” drafted by Icelandic civilians rather than politicians. Parliament blocked the document in 2013.

The party also wants to redistribute wealth and increase the government’s anticorruption powers. (The country is already the 13th least corrupt country in the world, according to Transparency International, a watchdog group, ahead of the United States.)

“We want to see trickle-down ethics rather than make-believe trickle-down economics,” Ms. Jonsdottir, 49, who is also a former WikiLeaks activist, said in an interview on the eve of the election.

Strong anti-establishment feeling has swept through Iceland since the financial crisis, and has been aggravated by the Panama Papers scandal in April, which sent thousands of protesters into the streets. The Pirate Party has benefited from a wave of dissent that has swept through Europe and the United States, upending traditional politics and fracturing mainstream parties.

In 2008, Iceland’s economy collapsed after its banking sector, fresh from deregulation, grew exponentially. In the years before that, Icelanders binged on credit, some becoming billionaires overnight. By 2006, the average Icelander was 300 percent wealthier than three years earlier. Cronyism became rampant.

When the crisis hit, Icelanders were plunged into debt and banks racked up losses of billions of dollars, many times more than the size of Iceland’s economy.

Today, the economy has recovered, partly thanks to booming tourism. But public anger still runs deep.

“We are a platform for young people, for progressive people who shape and reshape our society,” Ms. Jonsdottir told Agence France-Presse. “Like Robin Hood, because Robin Hood was a pirate, we want to take the power from the powerful to give it to the people.”

Author: Sally Hayden

Read more about Leith Community Crops in Pots

On a two acre patch of Common Good land in north Edinburgh’s Leith neighborhood, Evie Murray walks with pride between plots of carefully tended flowers and vegetables.

“This area used to be used by drug addicts or prostitutes,” she said. “It was full of rubbish: syringes, condom wrappers”

This is ‘Crops in Pots’, a community initiative in the Scottish capital which has seen hundreds of local residents planting marrows, potatoes, beans, chard, apples, gooseberries, and even a walnut tree.

It is one example of a quiet but significant wave of land reform that is changing the dynamic of property ownership in Scotland.

Evie Murray, 39, has spent her life in Leith. A former drug addiction worker, she was made redundant shortly after the 2008 economic crash.

She found raising children and foster children in the city difficult, she said, and finding safe outdoor play areas in a neighbourhood fraught with social problems was a challenge.

It was this that gave her the idea to create a community area for other parents and neighbours.

Murray approached the local council in 2013 and won permission to use the area at the edge of Leith Links Park – even if the lease remains a rolling, short-term one.

Now, at least 100 people tend the soil plots regularly, according to Murray, with an eclectic and intergenerational mix of people involved.

The community is now attempting to negotiate another lease for a small building on the site, to turn into a cafe using local produce.

“Land and having the access to it is hugely important for people’s health,” said Murray, gesturing towards the gardeners chatting and laughing by their plots. “It’s hard to quantify the impact it’s having but you can see it with your eyes.”

Author: Zoe Ferguson, Carnegie UK

There is a body of evidence that consistently shows that positive relationships and kindness are at the very heart of our wellbeing.  In this discussion paper Carnegie Associate Zoe Ferguson starts a process to engage directly with people who want to inject kindness back into their work and communities.  This discussion paper explores the evidence on the impact of everyday relationships and kindness on individual and societal wellbeing, and community empowerment and develops a theory of change.  Over the coming months the project aims to learn with communities and organisations involved in developing practical approaches to encourage kinder communities.

To read report click here

Author: COSS

New Rights, New Resources and Revenues

This series of five, one day events across Scotland, will cover the 3Rs that everyone involved in taking on an asset needs to think about. What New Rights do we have as communities? What New Resources are out there to help us in terms of funding? And, how will we bring in some Revenue to keep the asset sustainable?

Aimed primarily at community groups thinking about, or having newly taken on, an asset, this event is Free to attend. Maximum 2 members per group. Staff from Relevant Authorities may want to attend and are welcome to sign up. Priority will however be given to community groups.   

Use the links below to book onto an event in your area.

Aberdeen – 26th October, Aberdeen Arts Centre

Oban – 10th November, Argyllshire Gathering Halls

Glasgow – 16th November, Maryhill Burgh Halls

Inverness – 30th November, Eden Court Theatre

Edinburgh – 7th December, Out of the Blue Arts Centre

Author: Julie Simon

Whether, and to what extent you think a crowd can be wise has implications for the kinds of engagement you might advocate.

Democratic theory has tended to take a pretty dim view of people and their ability to make decisions. Many political philosophers believe that people are at best uninformed and at worst, ignorant and incompetent.  This view is a common justification for our system of representative democracy – people can’t be trusted to make decisions so this responsibility should fall to those who have the expertise, knowledge or intelligence to do so.   

Think back to what Edmund Burke said on the subject in his speech to the Electors of Bristol in 1774, “Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.” He reminds us that “government and legislation are matters of reason and judgement, and not of inclination”. Others, like the journalist Charles Mackay, whose book on economic bubbles and crashes, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, had an even more damning view of the crowd’s capacity to exercise either judgement or reason.

The thing is, if you believe that ‘the crowd’ isn’t wise then there isn’t much point in encouraging participation – these sorts of activities can only ever be tokenistic or a way of legitimising the decisions taken by others.

There are then those political philosophers who effectively argue that citizens’ incompetence doesn’t matter. They argue that the aggregation of views – through voting – eliminates ‘noise’ which enables you to arrive at optimal decisions. The larger the group, the better its decisions will be.  The corollary of this view is that political decision making should involve mass participation and regular referenda – something akin to the Swiss model.  

Another standpoint is to say that there is wisdom within crowds – it’s just that it’s domain specific, unevenly distributed and quite hard to transfer. This idea was put forward by Friedrich Hayek in his seminal 1945 essay on The Use of Knowledge in Society in which he argues that:

“…the knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated form, but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess. The economic problem of society is thus not merely a problem of how to allocate ‘given’ resources……it is a problem of the utilization of knowledge not given to anyone in its totality”.

Hayek argued that it was for this reason that central planning couldn’t work since no central planner could ever aggregate all the knowledge distributed across society to make good decisions.

More recently, Eric Von Hippel built on these foundations by introducing the concept of information stickiness; information is ‘sticky’ if it is costly to move from one place to another. One type of information that is frequently ‘sticky’ is information about users’ needs and preferences.[1] This helps to account for why manufacturers tend to develop innovations which are incremental – meeting already identified needs – and why so many organisations are engaging users in their innovation processes:  if knowledge about needs and tools for developing new solutions can be co-located in the same place (i.e. the user) then the cost of transferring sticky information is eliminated.

These assumptions about the distributed nature of knowledge underpin both concepts of open innovation and collective intelligence.  The latter was popularised by James Surowiecki in his book The Wisdom of Crowds, in which he argued that crowdsourcing is a superior method for, among other things, sampling and forecasting. Essentially, he describes the phenomenon of aggregating information in groups, where the information it aggregates doesn’t have to be perfect and you don’t need smart participants to get smart aggregate decisions. The concept of open innovation has similar theoretical foundations and is based on the idea that a single organisation can’t contain all the knowledge and skills required to develop new products and services and should source these ideas externally.

If one subscribes to the view that knowledge is widely distributed across society, then the task for policymakers is to tap into this expertise, which then has implications for the kind of engagement that’s necessary – it could mean a greater focus on crowdsourcing or collaboration with small groups of expert citizens rather than, for example, mass voting or polling. 

There is growing evidence on how crowdsourcing can be used by governments to solve clearly defined technical, scientific or informational problems. Evidently there are significant needs and opportunities for governments to better engage citizens to solve these types of problems.

There’s also a growing body of evidence on how digital tools can be used to support and promote collective intelligence. 

Nesta’s recent research on the subject has examined how innovative patient organisations are working as collectives to assemble and analyse information involved in healthcare, and in particular in managing long term conditions. Some of these patient organisations are already supporting the development of peer relationships, driving landmark research programmes, sharing skills and unlocking the energy and expertise of patients.  Indeed, our research demonstrates that where citizens are highly motivated regarding specific issues they can and do self-organise to access, interpret and distribute large amounts of complex information and take decisive action in innovative campaigns.

But what about problems which are normative or values based? Can the tools and principles of open innovation be applied to democratic institutions such as parliaments and political parties which are arenas for contestation about the public good, and not simply marketplaces for ideas?

For example, experts can tell you how to build a nuclear power station but they can’t really tell you whether you should build power stations since that isn’t a purely technical question. In these cases, it’s not entirely straightforward what a ‘good decision’ might look like.  If there is no such thing as an objectively correct answer then why not open it up to the crowd – especially where there is significant public appetite? If you take the Hayekian view, the crowd are more likely to come to an optimal decision than a group of elected representatives.

However, is the aggregation of votes really the best mechanism for getting a smart answer? As our ongoing research suggests, in some cases, it’s just as useful to understand the plurality of opinions and relative priorities as it is to understand the majority view. So, for example, if you simply ask people how a city should spend its infrastructure budget you will probably get a list of ideas and lots of comments without really any understanding of people’s relative priorities. However, if you structure a participatory budgeting process to enable people to vote and comment on their favourite ideas, and rank their priorities, then public officials will  have far greater information on which to make decisions. 

For some questions, there are no straightforward yes or no answers. Where the question is particularly complex, it might be as useful to know why people vote in a particular direction,  as much as whether they vote yes or no. In some cases, a completely legitimate answer might be ‘maybe, it depends’.  One good example of this is the recent referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU. Even though a majority of the voting public voted to leave the EU, it’s not at all clear why we voted to leave. The yes/no vote didn’t give an indication of people’s relative priorities in terms of trade, controls on immigration, sovereignty, public spending or the myriad other issues discussed during the campaign. There is currently no consensus on what brexit means and there is no mandate for one type of brexit over another since the referendum didn’t ask the public what it might want from a new kind of relationship with the EU.

So, the critical task for public officials is to have greater clarity over the purpose of engagement –  in order to better understand which methods of engagement should be used and what kinds of  groups should be targeted. 

At the same time, the central question for researchers is when and how to tap into collective intelligence: what tools and approaches can be used when we’re looking at arenas which are often sites of contestation? Should this input be limited to providing information and expertise to be used by public officials or representatives, or should these distributed experts exercise some decision making power too? And when we’re dealing with value based judgements when should we rely on large scale voting as a mechanism for making ‘smarter’ decisions and when are deliberative forms of engagement more appropriate? These are all issues we’re exploring as part of our ongoing programme of work on democratic innovations.

Author: Simon Duffy, Centre for Welfare Reform

I recently spent the day with leaders in Wales exploring the possible meaning of Citizen Directed Support, which they prefer to the term Self Directed Support. On the way home to Sheffield I reflected on the day and the importance of entitlements to citizenship.

Wales wants to create a communitarian approach to self-directed support – which it is calling Citizen Directed Support. It wants empowerment; but it doesn’t want individualism or consumerism. At a deep level this makes sense.

Many thinkers have observed that, unless we share a sense of joint commitment to collective systems of social security – benefits, education, health and social care etc. – then these systems will become unsustainable. If I fantasise that I can live in a world of my own, disconnected – not needed and not in need – then I will not play my part to build the real and shared world that we all need.

With no reference to community any call to social justice is hollow. But the question that then arises is whether individual entitlements are also part of a communitarian solution – or a threat to it. Some feel that any reference to rights and to the interests of the self is a threat to the community. But this must be wrong. My own instinct is that a credible form of communitarianism also requires robust entitlements and this is for several important reasons.

The limits of democratic accountability

First, we must not be naive about public services. Every system is a system of power and control, and every system serves its own interests. Public systems imply some kind of democratic accountability; however the degree to which this really shapes any public service is limited by major constraints:

•             Professional expertise and authority – MPs can’t just tell doctors what to do

•             Complexity and the size of systems – MPs don’t understand the tax-benefit system (neither does the DWP)

•             Time and attention – MPs have only a limited ability to ask questions and process the information they receive

•             Quality of leadership – Change in public services is hard to achieve at the best of times, large bureaucracies resist change – the status quo is much easier

Of course, by the same logic, accountability does improve where leadership is good, when there is more time to think, where systems are smaller and easier to understand, and where there is a better shared understanding of the issues. Making public services genuinely accountable to the community is not impossible – but it is highly dependent upon the scale and type of public services.

Putting public services on a human scale would be one important strategy for increasing democratic accountability and, free from Whitehall, this is certainly something Wales could explore. But it is not sufficient on its own to protect the interests of citizens and their communities.

The value of human rights

Second, many public services can have a profound impact on people’s lives. Unless individuals have the means to negotiate personal solutions for themselves then there is a grave danger that people will have to fit themselves into predefined public solutions rather than being able to act as free agents. This is a profoundly important point – but one that is often missed by those who forget the misery that can be created when other people take control over our lives.

The most important international framework for defending people from unfair and unreasonable control by others is the Declaration of Human Rights. The Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities sets out the key principles of that Declaration as follows:

1.            Respect for inherent dignity, individual autonomy including thefreedom to make one’s own choices, and independence of persons;

2.            Non-discrimination;

3.            Full and effective participation and inclusion in society;

4.            Respect for difference and acceptance of persons with disabilities as part of human diversity and humanity;

5.            Equality of opportunity;

6.            Accessibility;

7.            Equality between men and women;

8.            Respect for the evolving capacities of children with disabilities and respect for the right of children with disabilities to preserve their identities.

Social care abuses human rights

All these principles are important, but I think it is worth focusing on two in particular. The right to freedom and the right to participation. We may think that a modern Western society doesn’t need to worry about such basic human rights. But our current social care system is actually in flagrant abuse of these rights. Many hundreds of thousands of people in the United Kingdom:

•             Can’t choose how they live

•             Can’t choose where they live

•             Can’t choose how they spend their days

•             Can’t choose who supports them and how

These are not marginal issues. Losing freedom over such basic questions threatens our dignity and diminishes the respect in which others hold us.

In addition, rather than supporting people to participate in society, public services are often subsidised in ways that encourage segregation. You are not really participating in society if your support comes in the form of:

•             A place in a care home

•             A night in residential respite

•             A slot in a day centre

•             15 minutes of homecare

•             A bed in a specialist unit

Historically this is how governments have funded social care – spending people’s money on things they wouldn’t choose for themselves. This doesn’t support freedom and it doesn’t support participation. It abuses, rather than supports, our human rights.

The value of citizenship

Rights – and the specific entitlements they produce – are the building blocks of a decent society. They are not only compatible with a communitarian approach, they are required by a communitarian approach. While it is true that we need to see ourselves as part of shared community in order to support each other, we also rightly expect that any support we thereby receive really does supports our ability to lead our own life – with dignity and meaning.

This is why citizenship is such a good and useful word. To understand citizenship is to understand both our responsibilities as a member of a community and to understand our rights and freedoms within that community. Community without citizenship is tribal, authoritarian and it frustrates individuality and creativity. Citizenship without community is shallow, narcissistic and unsustainable.

How citizens spend their money

In the light of this abstract discussion it is worth looking at the data on how people actually use their individual budgets – their entitlements. It turns out that citizens do not shop for services. Citizens spend their budgets in their communities – building better lives for themselves and reinvesting back into community life.

There are several studies all of which tend to reinforce the same general lesson. The chart below describes how people with learning difficulties – who in the past had no option but to use day centres – chose to spend their own money when they had control over it. Mostly people spent money on personalised and practical support, plus using money to make better use of their community.

It is citizens – not commissioners – who should be trusted to spend money wisely. If we compare this pattern with prevalent trends in commissioning and procurement we notice that it is government, or the agents of government, who have moved money into bigger contracts, into bigger services, into private and multinational agencies – the SERCOs, the A4Es.

This is perhaps no surprise. Powerful and well paid civil servants and politicians will enjoy talking to powerful and well paid entrepreneurs and administrators. These are their peers. Nothing will seem more natural to them than to think that they know best how to spend our money; and of course spending money on people like themselves is the obvious next step. Meritocrats seek out other meritocrats.

Anyone who has visited a party political conference will notice that it is now these private companies that are subsidising many of the workshops, events, dinners and side-shows. This is a world completely divorced from ordinary people and ordinary life. The elite – on both the Left and the Right – have lost faith in the capacities of ordinary people.

Ordinary people are different. They are much more likely to focus on their own lives and their own communities. The solutions they dream up will be on a human scale – because this is what they know.

If leaders in Wales hope to see mutuals, cooperatives, community organisations and self-help and user-led organisations flourish then experience teaches us that they will need to shift funding, power and control down into the hand of citizens and smaller, local communities.

Focusing on local communities

A few weeks ago I worked with folk in Anglesey on this same question – What is Citizen Directed Support? As part of our discussion we took some time to examine the demography of Anglesey on a ward basis. It makes interesting viewing:

Number of wards                                40      

Average ward population             1,700    

                                                          Per Ward   Population share

Over 65                                                 376                     22.1%

15 and under                                          308                     18.1%

Working age on benefits                            177                      10.4%

Private home ownership                           1365                      80.3%

Limiting illness                                       383                       22.5%

In poor health                                         181                       10.6%

Deaths in a year                                      20                        1.2%

Crimes                                                   88                        5.2%

Looked after children                                  2                         0.1%

Using social care                                      78                         4.6%

Children with SEN                                      7                         0.4%

Misusing drugs/alcohol                               14                         0.8%

Average Ward Demography (Anglesey) 

When I look at this analysis I can certainly see some ‘needs’. But the needs are dwarfed by the capacities available to this community:

•             People not in paid work – but with time on their hands

•             Fit and able older people past retirement age

•             Young people and children

•             Homeowners with private assets

Perhaps this is the key to understanding what Citizen Directed Support might mean in Wales. If local people have real and meaningful entitlements, which they can use flexibly in their own communities, then there is 99 chances in a hundred that they will spend this money well – back in their own communities. There is only 1 chance in 100 that they will repeat the errors of public services and use it to fund multinational corporations to meet their needs.

The fateful choice

Wales has a lot going for it. It has more democracy than England and a tradition of mutual support. It operates on a smaller and more human scale. There is a real dialogue between the people and their politicians at the Assembly and in local government. The decision to reform social care by deploying the concept of Citizen Directed Support is encouraging: citizens have duties and rights; citizens create community solutions.

Yet there remains a danger of falling back on the paternalistic and meritocratic tradition which has done so much harm to the cause of social justice in the United Kingdom. If people think that the state knows best, that it is the ‘clever people’ at the centre who need to be in control, then Wales will simply replicate the errors of Whitehall. Individualism and statism are both hostile to community and citizenship. The size of the state is not a good proxy for the health of the community.

I don’t think this will happen. If I am ever invited back again I really hope to find a nation that has had the courage to begin to define the basic rights and entitlements required by any decent society – including our right to receive enough help so that we can be a full and active citizen.

Author: Fionn Travers-Smith

Think local banks are unprofitable? Think again.

There is a growing orthodoxy that bank branches are a thing of the past, and that mainstream banks are justified in closing them en masse. After all, when was the last time you visited a bank branch?

It’s not surprising that the demise of bank branches seems inevitable in a society that has lost more than half of them in the last 30 years.

What is perhaps more surprising is how willing we have been to believe the banks’ justifications for closing them, without taking a more critical view. It’s almost as if, as a society, we have internalised the banks’ narrative to such an extent that the mainstream has begun to parrot it back to them, and to us.

In fact, the arguments that support the massive closure programmes barely stand up to scrutiny. Conversely, arguments in favour of continued and broad-based branch provision carry great weight both economically and socially.

Firstly, bank branches are profitable. The retail operations of the ‘big five’ banks are turning multi-billion pound profits, at their current level of branch provision. Where banks are losing money, it is from their investment arms – which explains why the big five have been so keen to undermine the ringfence that would have kept them separate from the day-to-day retail activities (efforts that have been largely successful).

Another myth is that branches are only for the old, or that savvy consumers shun bricks in favour of clicks. Again, while it is undeniable that online and mobile banking have revolutionised the ways in which we interact with our financial service providers, people still prefer branches for big financial decisions.

Whether it’s taking out our first mortgage, opening a new current account, or dipping our toes into the investment market, research suggests that millennials are actually more likely than older people to use branches for such decisions, not less.

Of course, banks know this already and are continuing to open branches in urban, densely populated, and affluent areas. In such locations branches are manifestly profitable, which is why you’ll still see five or six of them tightly packed and highly concentrated in large urban centres.

The problem is in those areas that aren’t so obvious to the mainstream – rural areas, the shires, the post-industrial blue-collar belts. Branch closures have been happening disproportionately in these areas for years, and it’s not just those too infirm or vulnerable to travel to the next big urban centre who suffer.

In such communities bank branches provide access to the financial system for those that struggle to achieve it in their absence. Yes, this includes the elderly, the sick and the disabled, but it also includes small businesses who are predominantly reliant on cash, and who are the lifeblood of our economy.

Bank branch closures are a serious problem for businesses across the country that already have small margins, tight cashflows, and which provide the majority of employment in this country. Despite what the London financial bubble will tell you, cash is not a payment method in decline – if anything it is growing. Outside metropolitan urban areas, bank branches are needed to process and facilitate the cash economy, and their removal is seriously undermining businesses and employment in areas that already suffer from imbalances in employment, prosperity and wealth.

Moreover, bank branches provide and distribute lending, which is fundamental to thriving and healthy communities.Recent research from Move Your Money shows that postcodes that lose a bank branch suffer a 63% drop in lending growth, whilst postcodes that lose their last-bank-in-town suffer even more, seeing lending actually turn negative in those postcodes (meaning that banks are actually withdrawing money from those areas).

On average, postcodes that suffer last-bank-in-town closures lose around £1.6m in lending – which is a significant and often devastating drop in lending, particularly given that these are more often than not some of the poorest areas in the UK already. Similar observations have been found in the American context.

Consequently, we are seeing the development of a two-tier financial system in this country. Overprovision and ease of access to finance for the wealthy, urban and privileged – particularly in London and the south-east – and increasing destitution, isolation, and local economic decay for everyone else. In a society that is already bitterly divided in terms of affluence, opportunity and development, we need a financial and banking system that can help address and alleviate these imbalances, not entrench and exacerbate them.

Reversing the tidal wave of bank branch closures isn’t about nostalgia or rose-tinted glasses; it’s an urgent imperative to save our abandoned communities, and to prevent the social fabric of this country from splitting apart at the seams.