Author: JRF

Joseph Rowntree Foundation – OVERCOMING DEPRIVATION AND DISCONNECTION IN UK CITIES

 Summary report and key findings

The poorest areas of towns and cities do not always benefit from periods of economic growth in their wider regions. In some important ways, they can remain disconnected from the prosperity experienced by residents of wealthier neighbourhoods. This research looks at these issues from the perspective of housing and labour market interactions in the UK’s most deprived neighbourhoods. It finds that there is a need to reconnect economic growth strategies with poverty alleviation initiatives. The research is based on an analysis of neighbourhoods across the UK that are in the 20 per cent most deprived in each nation’s most recent deprivation indices.

Key points

 • Not all ‘deprived’ areas are the same: there is a great deal of diversity across the UK.

 • In some areas, there has been a tendency for conditions to worsen over time.

 • Local jobs do not mean local employment for residents of deprived areas – in many poorer areas jobs are filled by residents from more prosperous areas.

 • Some areas experience ‘double disconnection’; they are not well connected to jobs or housing in their cities – there are 524 of these areas across the UK.

 • The geography of poverty matters. There is often a mismatch between where people live and where jobs are located.

• Skills also matter: sometimes skills, and not geography, are the main barrier to employment.

• Successive waves of area-based urban policies have helped some areas, but they cannot ‘solve’ the problem alone – wider poverty alleviation strategies are needed.

 • Inclusive growth strategies which address poverty and economic growth in combination may offer a way forward.

Author: George Monbiot, The Guardian

This is how, in a democracy, you win when you’re outnumbered: you purchase the results. It’s how politics now works: the very rich throw money at the parties, lobby groups and think tanks that project their demands. If they are clever, they keep their names out of it.

Here’s an example: a campaign fronted by the former England cricket captain Sir Ian Botham, called You Forgot the Birds. It appears to have two purposes: to bring down the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and to get the natural history presenter Chris Packham sacked from the BBC.

This is what it claims to be: “a network of people who are passionate about bird habitat. Some of us are conservationists or self-confessed birders, some are farmers and landowners, some work full-time in the countryside while others are volunteers from the cities.” And this is what was revealed by a footnote at the bottom of one of its press releases, that has since vanished from the web: “The You Forgot The Birds Campaign is funded by the British grouse industry.” Ah, the grouse industry. Who would have guessed?

To shoot grouse you have to be exceedingly rich: it can cost around £7000 per person per day. The owners of grouse moors, who are also exceedingly rich, justify these fees by ensuring that there are vast numbers of birds to shoot. This requires, across great tracts of our uplands, the elimination of almost everything else.

Grouse are wild birds, but cosseted at the expense of other lifeforms. Predators and competitors must be eliminated, either legally or, in the case of protected species such as peregrine falcons, golden eagles, red kites and hen harriers, illegally. Many grouse moors are black holes for birds of prey. They disappear and their satellite tags stop working in the same places, again and again. Alien abduction? Russian black ops? No: shooting, trapping and poisoning by the gamekeepers employed to maximise grouse numbers, most of whom, on these remote moors, get away with it.

Producing as many grouse as possible also means burning and draining the land, to create a monoculture of the young heather the birds eat. Sure, this releases the carbon in the soil,pollutes rivers and helps to flood the towns downstream. But to hell with the plebs.

To rub our noses in it properly, we pay them for the privilege: grouse moors are subsidised by us. At the height of his austerity programme, as essential public services were cut to the bone, David Cameron’s government raised the subsidy for grouse moors by 84%, to £56 per hectare. Some owners now harvest hundreds of thousands of pounds of our money every year.

Cameron also tried to close the police wildife crime unit, which would have pleased his friends no end. It was saved only by a public outcry. Conservationists have called for a law of vicarious liability, making the owners of grouse moors responsible for the wildlife crime they commission, rather than leaving only the gamekeepers to take the rap. But this proposal was struck down by Cameron’s environment minister, Richard Benyon. I’m sure it had nothing to do with the fact that he owns a grouse moor.

But through the efforts of wildlife campaigners (like Chris Packham and the RSPB) and people whose homes have been flooded downstream, the grouse industry is now being called to account. Last week, the petition posted by the conservationist Mark Avery, calling for an end to driven grouse shooting, passed the 100,000-signature threshold: the issue is now likely to be debated in parliament.

The result is You Forgot the Birds, championed by the Daily Mail, which describes it as “a grassroots campaign by farmers and conservationists”. It is of course coincidental that Paul Dacre, the Mail’s editor, owns a grouse moor.

We know who’s in front of this “grassroots campaign”: Sir Ian Botham, who runs a shoot in North Yorkshire. But who’s behind it? Only one funder has so far been identified: the billionaire hedge fund owner Crispin Odey. We also know that the campaign is run by a lobbying company called Abzed. It boasts that “a besieged grouse moor community turned to Abzed. Our approach was to turn the spotlight onto the RSPB”. Very grassroots, I’m sure.

The claims the campaign makes keep falling apart. Last year the Telegraph had to issue a humiliating correction and apology to the RSPB after it repeated statements in a You Forgot the Birds press release that seem to have been conjured out of thin air. Last week, in the Mailand on the Today programme, Ian Botham recited figures for the rare birds found on grouse moors during a survey by the British Trust for Ornithology. The BTO says it has conducted no such survey.

The purpose of the countryside, for people like Botham, Odey and Dacre, is an exclusive playground for the rich. Authentic country people are those who own or rent significant tracts of land, many of whom live in cities, and those who work for them, as long as they wear tweed instead of Gore-Tex. As for the RSPB and its members, they’re bipedal vermin. Never mind that many of them live and work in the countryside; they are interlopers with no right to a voice in rural life.

The media collaborates. News reporters describe shooting and hunting lobbyists as “countryside groups”, anointing them as the authentic rural voice and casting those who oppose them – who often seem to possess a far greater love for and knowledge of the countryside – as interfering townies. Documentary makers seek a stereotyped rusticity which, though politically charged, is presented as the neutral and immutable spirit of rural life. The co-presenter of the series Clarissa and the Countryman was Sir Johnny Scott, a baronet who owns 5,000 acres in the Scottish borders: that’s what the BBC means by countryman. Where is he now? Ah yes, fronting up You Forgot the Birds with Sir Ian Botham.

When opposition is seen as illegitimate, it’s legitimate to cheat and bludgeon. That’s how the lords of the land have long maintained their pre-eminence. Today you can no longer call out the yeomanry, sit in judgement then have dissenters hanged. But there are other means of bypassing democracy. You buy yourself a crowd, or at least an outfit that looks like a crowd. You demand, from your position of comfortable anonymity, the silencing of people who contest your claims, like Chris Packham. You use a corrupt and partisan media to hound them.

This is how politics works these days: astroturf groups (fake grassroots movements) and undisclosed interests are everywhere. The same forces are at play in the tobacco industry, fossil fuels, junk food, banking, guns, private health provision, in fact throughout public life. They recruit celebrities to front their campaigns. They confuse and obfuscate, make up stories and grant their anonymous backers plausible deniability.

They are a threat to democracy. Call them out, expose them to the light, and don’t believe a word they say.

www.monbiot.com

Author: Sir Peter Housden

Sir Peter Housden’s paper Rethinking Public Services is published by the Centre for Public Impact.

As the Labour leadership contenders debate the role of private providers in the NHS, and the new education secretary reflects on the forced march to academy status, people working in public services will again be wondering which planet they are on.

At a time when resources are so constrained and demand is rising, why does the state rely on crude forms of performance management, take a gladiatorial stance toward anyone dealing in evidence, and preside over systems exhausted by policy churn and structural change?

The reality is of course more complex. Practitioners on the ground have often used their autonomy to work with service users and communities to understand their needs and pool their resources. But the perceived reality remains of two tribes at war.

I came out of a career in government and public services certain that we could do better. Adrian Brown at the Centre for Public Impact was similarly puzzled at how stuck governments had become in their devotion to systems of improvement whose time had passed.

But what would the world look like if our approach to public services improvement began at the grassroots?

Think of a child learning to read, a care worker engaging with a house-bound couple, or a physician discussing treatment with a patient. This is co-production. The abiding purpose is to enable people to be in control of their own lives. Practitioner and citizen bring their knowledge, creativity and resilience to bear on the issue at hand.

In their hearts, ministers and officials knows this is where the solutions lie. They engage with this form of practice and are inspired by it. But there is cognitive dissonance at work as their intelligence is ground under the wheels of government and recycled into a narrative of a never-ending struggle against inertia in the self-serving public sector.

If we look outward from the co-creation of value, a new set of imperatives emerges. Government focuses its efforts on nurturing the fundamental relationship between the citizen and practitioner. The attrition of energy and morale in the workforce becomes a prime issue, rather than collateral damage accepted in the pursuit of structural change.

But the nature of the practical, empowering and collaborative leadership required at ground level is absolutely at odds with the iconoclasts that governments have preferred to honour. Performance management and accountability is constructed in partnership on a platform of common endeavour. New forms of political narrative and practice are adopted to replace the sword-in-hand model adopted by successive ministers (some of whom then complain about the scars on their back).

None of this requires a sacrifice of rigour or rowing back on commitments to social mobility or mealy-mouthed consensus. It is a hard-edged partnership for improvement, building on what really works. The knowledge and commitment is out there. The challenge for government is to grasp it.

Sir Peter Housden’s paper Rethinking Public Services is published by the Centre for Public Impact.

Sir John Elvidge’s paper The Enabling State is published by Carnegie UK

Author: Ericht Trust

Earlier this year we reported that The Ericht Trust in Blairgowrie were locked in a lengthy battle with Perth and Kinross Council over the transfer of a former school building. From the most recent account, it appears that relations between the community and Council have become even worse

Most recent report from Ericht Trust

Author: Scottish Government

A Scottish Land Commission is to be set up in terms of the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2016.   The members will be five “Land Commissioners” and a “Tenant Farming Commissioner”.

The Commission will conduct studies and research into the effect of law, policies and practices which will help form the evidence base for any future land reform measures to be introduced by the Scottish Government.

The Commission’s remit will extend to urban and rural land in Scotland and will cover all matters relating to land, including ownership, land rights, land management and the use of land.  The establishment of the Scottish Land Commission will contribute to the Scottish Government’s ambition to ensure that the nation’s urban and rural land delivers prosperity and sustainable growth for all parts of Scotland.

As a Land Commissioner, you will have the opportunity to help shape and develop the way that policies on matters relating to urban and rural land are researched, reviewed and understood, and how advice is given to Ministers and the Scottish Parliament.

This is a non-executive post that will be supported by a small team of full-time staff. 

The Scottish Land Commission is due to open on 1 April 2017 with appointments to Commissioner posts expected to be made by the end of December 2016.

Experience and expertise sought

If you have experience or expertise in any of the following areas, as well as the ability to think strategically and lead an organisation, then we want to hear from you:

•             land reform,

•             law,

•             finance,

•             economic issues,

•             planning and development,

•             land management,

•             community empowerment,

•             environmental issues,

•             human rights,

•             equal opportunities,

•             the reduction of inequalities of outcome which result from socio-economic disadvantage

Scottish Ministers are keen to recruit people from a variety of backgrounds and professions and welcome applications from Gaelic speakers

The five Land Commissioners and the Tenant Farming Commissioner will be appointed by Scottish Ministers and the appointments will be subject to approval by the Scottish Parliament.

Time commitment

You will be expected to be able to commit to working 2 days per month in this role (up to a maximum of 24 days over a year). It is envisaged that additional days may be needed during the initial operating period of the Scottish Land Commission.

Remuneration and expenses

The appointment attracts a fee of £200 per day plus expenses incurred as a result of carrying out the duties of the appointment, including reasonable travel and subsistence outwith travel to Board meetings.

Dependent carer and childcare expenses will be reimbursed.

Term of appointment

Initial appointment terms will be staggered and will be for no longer than 5 years. It is likely that Ministers will offer appointments for 3,4 and 5 years and this will be discussed with applicants at the interview stage.

Successful candidates will be eligible for reappointment at the end of their term, subject to a fair and open appointments process.

Application Information

Apply for this Vacancy

Author: Simon Bain, The Herald

The Social Stock Exchange, offering investment with a social impact, is to cross the Border and open in Glasgow.

Launched as part of the Big Society Capital initiative three years ago, the SSE now has 35 member companies worth over £2billion, who raised some £400m last year on the exchange.

Mike McCudden, who has joined SSE from Interactive Investor to open the first Scottish office, said he hopes to recruit up to 30 company members over the next year or so.

Companies have to pass stringent checks on the social and environment impact of their business, and investors can buy and sell their shares as on any exchange. It is part of the ISDX platform, accessible from the most popular share brokers and trading platforms.

McCudden said: “There used to be regional stock exchanges throughout the UK, in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, Aberdeen. The Glasgow stock exchange closed in the late seventies, and we are bringing it back.”

But this time around only local companies making a distinct and measurable contribution to regional well-being – in areas such as social housing, clean energy and charitable projects funded by bonds – will be listed.

“Since the financial crisis there has been a realisation that capital markets aren’t working the way they should for local investors,” McCudden said. “Local businesses can’t go to a local exchange any more and find local investors to support them, that is something that has disappeared.”

The SSE’s first regional branch opened recently for Liverpool & The Wirral, and Scotland is close behind.

McCudden said: “It is not crowdfunding. We offer an actual exchange and an underlying price. It is a secondary market so if you are an investor you can sell your shares at a live price, unlike crowdfunding where you have to find a buyer.”

McCudden said it is a movement for the young. “Right now your typical retail investor in these stocks is slightly older and slightly more savvy and sophisticated. But the market is changing. Statistics show that millennials for instance want to know where their money is being invested and are taking more care about the impact of their investments. There will be a broader demographic in future.”

He went on: “Glasgow is where we want to be based. There’s a lack of quality housing stock, one in five children in poverty, a life expectancy of 57 in the Gallowgate. Scotland also has aggressive carbon reduction targets and is always trying to be ahead of the curve, leading the world in renewables. We want to bring some positive impact not only to Glasgow but to Scotland.”

McCudden has been sounding out potential partners such as Social Enterprise Scotland, umbrella group for Scotland’s social enterprises, the Scottish Community Re:Investment Trust, which pools the collective resources of the Scottish third sector, and Community Shares Scotland, which says almost 100,000 people have invested over £100m to support 350 community businesses in the UK in the past seven years.

“The feedback has been fantastic, “ McCudden said. “They really welcome somebody who brings a different flavour to the investment side and raises the profile of what we are all trying to do.”

The main exchange has seen fundraisings of anything from £30m to £300m. Glasgow’s is likely to attract small firms who want to raise their profile and gain endorsement for their model, along with charities or local authorities seeking support for social bond issues – debt could make up around a quarter of capital raising, McCudden said.

He also hopes to get the message out to the chambers of commerce and other business groups. “In the current economic climate it’s difficult for companies to go out there and do capital-raising. By bringing this to the market we can help them case their net wider and attract a bigger audience who care about their mission and their business.”

Gavin Francis, founder of Worthstone the UK’s leading social impact investing consultants, commented: “Intelligent capital is already being drawn to social investment opportunities. The early adopters have been purposeful, entrepreneurial and community-minded individuals and Scotland has demonstrated a pioneering spirit in much of this progressive development.

“We welcome this launch as a further step towards building a thriving market where social capital can be deployed effectively and meet the compelling objective of the majority of investors to generate a defined and measurable social impact as well as a positive economic return.”

At government level, the UK is currently seeking EU approval for the raising of social investment tax relief from £250,000 to £15m, in a move that Francis has said could channel investment into “a myriad of potential enterprises tackling some of the most hard-to-reach problems in the country”.

Author: Anonymous, Guardian Voluntary Sector Network

There is a pervading belief in the charity sector that because we all turn up to work to increase the good in the world, we cannot criticise each other. After 10 years I’ve had enough. The mantra “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” is holding me, my colleagues, and charities back.

This inability to criticise and accept criticism hurts our goals – we accept incompetence, so we raise less money and help fewer people. Then we moan to that one close colleague, fostering resentment and disillusionment. It means we don’t fight for what we believe in. This is absurd in a sector that exists to fight for what we believe.

One day, I even left work at lunchtime. The boss looked at me quizzically for a moment, but that was it.

At one charity my colleagues and I were never held to account for our actions. One colleague had a reputation for “telling it like it is”, which meant storming out of one-to-ones with her boss, slamming doors as she went. On one occasion I remember her making offensive comments as though this were normal behaviour in the workplace. Her boss and my colleagues dismissed this as “just the way she is”.

Another colleague had a habit of singling out individuals for long tirades in staff meetings. Not once did anyone suggest to senior staff that her behaviour constituted humiliating bullying. The offensive comments and bullying continued. Resentment that certain staff could behave appallingly with no consequences built, andconfidence, including mine, was shattered. Staff motivation was low and the charity suffered.

It’s not only other people either – looking back at my career I wish I had been held to account more. I did an offensively small amount of work in one role – I would walk to a colleague’s desk with a piece of paper in my hand, so it looked as if I was going to discuss work matters, but instead we’d have long conversations about what we were doing at the weekend. One day I even left work at lunchtime. The next day the boss looked at me quizzically for a moment, but that was it.

Today I cringe at how poorly I performed. I wish someone had given me a kick up the arse for wasting charitable time and money with idle chit-chat, and set out what was expected of me. I could have achieved so much more.

This doesn’t happen in the corporate sector. Friends there tell me that when sales are down or the organisation’s reputation is attacked, those responsible know all about it. And they come out fighting to fix it. The charity sector should be no different.

We’ve been nurtured to value amicable consensus above all else, even when we should be fighting for our cause and the value of our work. If we change this we could improve hundreds, maybe thousands, of charity careers and launch huge, brilliant campaigns.

Author: Amy Davidson, The New Yorker

I’ll just give you a few statistics,” President Barack Obama said in a speech Wednesday in Washington, D.C. He had a lot of them, demonstrating America’s growing economic inequality (“The top ten per cent no longer takes in one third of our income—it now takes half”) and the concurrent loss of mobility (“A child born in the top twenty per cent has about a two-in-three chance of staying at or near the top. A child born into the bottom twenty per cent has a less than one-in-twenty shot at making it to the top”). Inequality hurt the economy, making growth more fragile and susceptible to speculative bubbles—and unfair. “Rising inequality and declining mobility are bad for our democracy,” Obama said, leaving “a bad taste that the system is rigged,” and “bad for our families and social cohesion—not just because we tend to trust our institutions less, but studies show we actually tend to trust each other less when there’s greater inequality.”

One of the people watching Obama’s speech was Robert Putnam, a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, who is intimately familiar with such studies. (He is working on a book on the topic, to be called “Our Kids”; he is also well-known for his book “Bowling Alone.”) He and his team have done some, and he cited others by Sean Reardon, of Stanford; Tim Smeeding, of Wisconsin; and Sara McLanahan, of Princeton. Putnam has met with and talked to Obama about inequality for some time; before he became a senator, Obama took part in Harvard’s Saguaro Seminar, on civic engagement, which Putnam runs. “The President is convinced that this is the defining problem of our age—and he’s not the only one,” Putnam told me. He added that he had talked to other politicians, too, in both parties. (“Paul Ryan, for example.”) There appeared to be some resonances from those talks.

“The part about democracy is relevant,” Putnam said. There was a cohort of “lost kids we see in our data, who have no opportunity for economic mobility”; what’s more, “those kids know.” They also know, he said, that there are other people who do have those chances.

“The data show that not only is there declining trust in government, there is declining trust in other people”; although it wasn’t exclusive to them, this shift was “concentrated among these poor kids, the kids who have been left out,” Putnam said. “They are deeply, deeply cynical about the whole world.… Basically, they don’t trust anybody. And for good reason.” This was not some “wave of adolescent paranoia,” but a recognition of having been let down. Everyone really is against them.

These young people, Putnam said, were becoming “extremely alienated from democratic politics.” (That is, democratic with a small “d.”) A generation was not being put “in a position to be contributing democratic citizens.” And that was, or could become, dangerous.

“There are a number of studies that show that correlation. It’s strong and very robust, in the sense the pattern shows up not just in the U.S., but around the world, and not just today, but across time,” he said. “There remains a serious academic debate about causation—does inequality cause low trust, or does low trust (or rather, low social solidarity) cause inequality, or are both the effects of some as yet undiscovered third variable?”

Some of the causes were, Putnam said, best spotted through “blue, progressive lenses” (working-class wages) and others through “red, conservative lenses” (absent fathers). But from any angle, the situation was “morally objectionable to me, and, I think, to all Americans,” he said. “Americans don’t care how long or tall the ladder is,” he said. “Historically, they’ve cared a lot if they’re getting on the ladder at the same rung.” The central question was, “Is it O.K. for poor kids with talent not to have a chance?”

Obama had the outlines of a program—raising the minimum wage, early childhood education, Obamacare, help for the long-term unemployed, protecting food stamps from more cuts—but a main point of his speech was the idea that government had a role at all—“the elephant in the room here, which is the seeming inability to get anything done in Washington these days.” That had been under attack, in part because of the problems in implementing Obamacare. Obama was less apologetic about that than he’s been in a while: if you don’t like Obamacare, he said, “and I know you don’t,” come up with something better.

From Putnam’s perspective, “any of those things is helpful”—including solutions outside of government—“but most important is a national understanding of the problem by ordinary people.” He compared the present moment, statistically and politically, to the Progressive Era, which also had a convergence of wealth, inequality, and a sense that the country had somehow become corrupt.

“And then, in about ten years, America fixed those problems,” Putnam said. “Child-labor laws, support for mothers, not to mention regulation of business, clean food. Government did it, in the face of a prevailing ideology of laissez-faire—social Darwinism, as it was called.” What made the difference was a moral shift: “People said, ‘This is not the way it should be. This is not America.’ ” He thought it was happening again. So where in that ten-year pattern might we be? Putnam wasn’t sure, but hoped it could be speeded up.

Author: Planning Democracy

Last week community campaigners from across Scotland gathered in Edinburgh, urging MSPs to challenge the Government’s approach to planning reform. Many community groups say their views have been ignored in a recent high-level review of the Scottish planning system. The community network spearheaded byPlanning Democracy is now urging the Scottish Government to involve community groups in deliberations as well as rethink its position on Equal Rights of Appeal.

Planning campaigners backing the calls are meeting and represent the interests of communities from across Scotland including Ayrshire, Aberdeenshire and the Highlands and Islands. The campaigners have all challenged planning issues in their areas, relating to fracking, an incinerator proposal and developments on greenfield sites. They are urging the Scottish Government to engage them directly in newly-established working groups and consider more deeply the case for Equal Rights of Appeal.

A Government-appointed review panel recently dismissed the calls to reform the planning appeals process, but analysis by Planning Democracy reveals that the majority of the respondents who expressed a view on Equal Rights of Appeal, supported the reform measure. Despite this, the review panel reporting to the Scottish Government sought to close the door on it, by giving disproportionate weight to developer concerns, who are fearful of the policy’s implications.

The campaigners argue that an Equal Right of Appeal is an approach widely adopted in other countries to check corporate influence and help ensure that communities are not side-lined during the planning process. An equal right of appeal would give communities the option to challenge bad planning decisions, but as the law stands, only developers who make an application have a right to challenge the substance of a planning decision. Communities can only challenge local authorities on a technicality in a costly process known as Judicial Review.

Community network coordinator Daya Feldwick said: “There is still a groundswell of discontent about the planning system and commitments to more ‘community engagement’ – as welcome as they are – are not enough. A good way to start this would be for the Scottish Government to invite community representatives onto the working groups to learn first-hand how Scotland’s planning system can be improved.”

Planning Democracy convenor Clare Symonds said: “The history of Scotland is littered with examples of planning injustice: Trump’s development at Menie estate, Craighouse – many of which have only been exposed and challenged by the efforts of local communities. Sadly Scotland’s villages, town centres and cities are now saddled with bad planning decisions, which go against the wishes of local people who have to live with the consequences, often for generations to come. Equal Rights of Appeal would help to address this.  We urge the relevant Committees in the Scottish Parliament to consider commissioning a comprehensive cost benefit analysis on the introduction of an Equal Right of Appeal in Scotland.”

Author: Zero Waste Scotland

Environmentally-focused communities across Scotland are being urged to apply for the title of Scotland’s third Zero Waste Town, by demonstrating how their efforts could contribute towards a more circular economy

Zero Waste Scotland is asking communities to put forward their case as to how their residents and businesses could work together to reduce their overall waste, increase recycling, and use resources more efficiently.

Applicants will be expected to provide details of innovative approaches they would take to help their communities to achieve ambitious Scottish Government national targets, including a 70% household recycling rate and a 33% reduction in wasted food by 2025. Measures to increase re-use, repair and resource efficiency should also form part of the bids. The town that’s chosen will receive funding from Zero Waste Scotland’s Resource Efficient Circular Economy Accelerator Programme to help it implement its ideas.

The town that’s chosen will receive funding to help it implement its ideas. Predominantly urban areas are being urged to come forward this time round, in order to focus on a different type of community from the ones currently funded as Zero Waste Towns in Dunbar and Bute. The communities that come forward can be actual towns or parts of larger areas. The proposed projects of the selected area will be led by organisations with a track record bringing partners together to deliver change.

Iain Gulland, chief executive of Zero Waste Scotland, said: “This is a really exciting project for Scotland as it looks to increase momentum with innovative new ideas to deliver a zero waste society.

“Ultimately, we are looking for new ideas and approaches on reducing waste and making better use of the things which we no longer need which will help us identify models that could be replicated in communities throughout Scotland.”

The selected community will join Dunbar and the Isle of Bute as Scotland’s two established Zero Waste Towns. They join a growing network of Zero Waste municipalities throughout Europe and across the world, including towns in Holland, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Slovenia and Romania.

Zero Waste Dunbar has already completed two years of a three-year funded project, and is delivering a wide range of local initiatives to increase recycling in schools and households, support for businesses to become more resource efficient as well as plans for a local community re-use shop in the town centre.

Zero Waste Bute has been working to increase the amount of materials that householders can recycle, piloting food waste collections, engaging with schools and supporting local businesses to be more resource efficient.

For more information, or to submit an expression of interest in becoming Scotland’s third Zero Waste Town, visit the website

The Resource Efficient Circular Economy Accelerator Programme Fund is administered by Zero Waste Scotland on behalf of the Scottish Government. It is part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).