James Mitchell, Jonathan Sher, Dr Sue Northrop, Dr Katherine Trebek, John Carnochan.

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror  and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.

But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.

James 1:22-25.

The Scottish Parliament’s Finance Committee is once more considering prevention. It has issued a series of questions starting with,

Why has the progress of reform proposed by the Christie Commission been so slow?

This is a good question and one that deserves a response. It goes on to ask about the varied and enduring impediments standing in the way of its own express desire for ‘the decisive, large scale shift to prevention’.

The Committee’s members might do well to start by asking themselves not what they have heard and said, but rather what they have done. A large part of the answer about the barriers to transformational change and sustained progress is to be found therein.

While the Committee’s work in this area over some time has been commendable, its members operate in a series of discrete arenas. Woodrow Wilson’s comment made during his more distinguished career as a student of politics (rather than his less distinguished period as a politician) comes to mind:

Congress in session is Congress on public exhibition whilst Congress in its committee-rooms is Congress at work.[1]

Some of the best work of our Parliamentarians is done collaboratively in committee. But, members do not always live up to this in the Chamber and outside Parliament. Even within the Finance Committee’s own deliberations and decisions, e.g. in relation to its scrutiny of each year’s draft Scottish budget, it is not evident that preventative spending is the real priority. We need consistent leadership from Members inside and outside Committee.

For every committee report on prevention, there are countless statements in the Chamber and beyond that undermine Christie principles. Manifesto commitments, party conference speeches and news releases focus on promises that undermine the ‘radical shift towards preventative public spending’ that was called for by the Christie Commission.[2]

A case can always be made for the ever-popular commitments to spend more in easily understood and seemingly desirable ways, such as 1000 more police officers or nurses, more A&E staff, a reduction in waiting times – not least in the knowledge that they might attract a helpful headline. But what crucial problems these headline grabbers will actually prevent, whether they are the best ways of allocating resources toward preventative spending has been far from clear.

This brings us to a recommendation for the Finance Committee. First, the Committee must be explicit about what ‘counts’ as prevention. That is because the great majority of existing governmental actions and expenditures can be rebranded as having some type and level of prevention element to them. For example, it can legitimately be argued that spending extraordinary amounts of money on residential care prevents further maltreatment at home. But, the logic of the Christie Commission and the Finance Committee is that priority should be given to keep such maltreatment from happening in the first place. Thus, the Committee should be clear and consistent in placing primary prevention front and centre. This has not yet happened in the Committee Room, The Chamber or the actual behavior of Scotland’s public sector.

It should also address how prevention should be counted. Prevention disappears amongst the myriad of KPIs and targets. The Committee should encourage all public bodies to consider and report on how they contribute to primary prevention and to report on how prevention fits with existing targets, priorities and agendas. Each organization should take key documents and performance indicators and critically consider line-by-line whether, if at all, they contribute to a ‘radical shift to prevention’. It is always worth remembering that not all prevention is created equal; so, there must be rigorous attention paid to the evidence about whether the good intentions here are matched by good (genuinely preventative) results.

The Finance Committee has the potential to be an influential committee in the Scottish Parliament. It should begin to judge itself by what it does. That then gives the moral authority to judge the rest of Scotland’s public bodies by what they do, too. Committee members should also trawl through their own speeches and statements (and those of their parties) and consider where primary prevention truly sits right now – and where it will sit in the forthcoming manifestos for the 2016 Scottish elections and the 2017 local elections.

There is a tremendous opportunity for the Committee’s Members to lead by example individually and collectively. As the passage from John I:25 reminds us, the challenge and the goal is: ‘ . . . not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—[then] they will be blessed in what they do’.

[1] Wilson, Woodrow (1981 [1885]), Congressional Government, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, p.69.

[2] Report of the Commission on the Delivery of Public Services, 2011, p.x.

Lesley Riddoch, The Scotsman

The latest round of UK government cuts will devastate the community energy sector.

This Friday signals the end of growth in the UK’s thriving/fledgling community energy sector. It’s the last day claims can be made for tax relief on investments in community renewables and the last in a series of blows by Westminster that virtually ends new community wind, solar, hydro or biomass projects in Scotland.

Ironically, this comes a week after one of the most astonishing community energy achievements.

Last week, a remote Highland community of 228 people hit its target of three quarters of a million pounds invested in a small community-owned hydro scheme in just five weeks. The Applecross Community Hydro project – run by the aptly named “Apple Juice” Community Benefit Society – will now produce hydro electricity from one of the short but dependable and vigorous rivers in remote Lochalsh.

According to Alison Macleod, Society Secretary, the hydro will give a steady income to the tiny community, virtually cut off by the famous Bealach na Ba (Pass of the Cattle) whose steep zig-zag road deters all but the hardiest visitors. When the longer northern coastal road opened in the 1970s, the peninsula’s regular ferry link with Kyle of Lochalsh was mothballed.

Now restoring that link is back on the cards – just one of the projects community hydro income makes possible along with accommodation for the elderly, improved energy efficiency and small grants for local business. Re-opening the Toscaig to Kyle ferry link would mean Applecross children who currently board at Plockton High School might get back home every night. An infrastructure improvement like that could be a game-changer for this fragile community – but it wouldn’t be possible without the Apple Juice cash. Yet, if it was being launched today, the community hydro scheme would have no chance of success – despite the phenomenal support just demonstrated by the public.

The reason is depressingly familiar – UK Government cuts. The Treasury used to offer tax breaks for community renewable investors. Those who were part of the first £150k got 50 per cent tax relief – the remainder got 30 per cent and although the average Apple Juice investor put in around £3k, the tax relief encouraged crucial larger investors (the biggest was £40k) – vital when it became clear the scheme would be scrapped in November.

This is just the last of three blows delivered since the May election ended the coalition government and the mitigating influence of Lib Dems such as Energy Minister Ed Davey. Far more destructive was the end of pre-accreditation in September of this year. Before that date, community energy projects which had crossed the “Big Three” hurdles (having ownership or a long lease of land, planning permission and a grid connection) could register with Ofgem and get a guaranteed price for their energy if the project was completed in two years.

Getting all that done was a very tall order for communities – but they could then construct a business plan safe in the knowledge that feed in tariff subsidies wouldn’t change – a bit like fixed rate mortgages. In September though, that certainty vanished. Community energy schemes which hadn’t reached the pre-accreditation stage could no longer get a fixed, agreed feed-in tariff for their projects – at a stroke that made it impossible to construct realistic business plans.

This came on top of the earlier blow to community projects – the ever dwindling prices being offered in Ofgem tariffs since the Tories’ victory in May. This triple whammy delivered by the UK Government has made it next to impossible for new community energy schemes. Landowners and farmers with land and financial reserves may feel it’s still worthwhile forging ahead without tax relief or an agreed price for their electricity. But community projects spend so much time getting these basic resources in place that extra work and uncertainty is probably fatal.

In the case of Apple Juice, negotiating a lease from the Applecross Estate took years. The community project came at the same time as other proposed commercial energy projects by RWE/Npower and the estate was slow to accept different rental terms for the community scheme, even though the small project has hardly any physical imprint on the land, save the location of a small hydro house in the corner of a field grazed by deer. The burn must still run, according to Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) regulations and the water returns to the burn once it’s been through the hydro. Additionally, since none of the Applecross Estate trustees lives locally and there’s normally only one local meeting a year, negotiating a viable lease and reasonable rent took much longer than first envisaged.

Establishing a grid connection was another lengthy and unpredictable task. The desired 99.2KW connection proved unaffordable – but another application later 90KW was offered at a much reduced price. The community based their business plan on this – but in the end SSE only offered a 50KW connection. So 40KW will now be used for a local district heating scheme which took extra time to devise, design and cost. To complete the work within the two year limit the Hydro had to be financed and built simultaneously. If Highland Eco Design – the hydro engineers – had not put up the money themselves, the project would have run aground.

And of course, before any of these Herculean tasks could be tackled, Applecross volunteers had to fund a feasibility study of eight burns, pay for an SSE grid survey, produce initial design studies and select the best burn, then make an application for cash to fund more work on local hydrology, community consultation, acquiring a SEPA licence and employing a local worker. This preparatory work took three years and without a Scottish Government Climate Challenge Fund grant and guidance from Community Energy Scotland (CES) staff the project would not have begun. Sadly many CES staff are now facing redundancy.

Exhausted readers might wonder why community volunteers persevere. One reason is that cash from energy projects gives communities real clout with supersized councils the Scottish Government will not shrink and community councils Ministers will not empower. The community hydro schemes that have battled through all these hurdles are probably safer investments than houses and a website’s been set up to guide would-be investors to projects than can still beat Friday’s deadline.

But until energy policy is devolved to Scotland it seems that, shamefully, is the end of that. 

Author: SMSA

Men’s Sheds Association Road trip Your FREE ticket links and info below.

Glasgow 7th December – Click here

Oban 8th December – Click here

Inverness 9th December – Click here

Fife 11 December – Click here

The Scottish Men’s Sheds Movement is spreading across Scotland helping communities live in a more integrated and healthier way. Since the first Scottish Men’s Shed opened in 2013 many have been asking for support in creating their own local Community Men’s Shed. Out of these increasing requests for support across Scotland the learning which has been gained by our trustees since 2009 in starting the first Men’s Shed in Scotland is now being made available through the charity to this expanding sector.

Communities will no longer have to reinvent the wheel so to speak when starting on the road to creating their own Community Men’s Shed.

If you are someone who wants to hear more about Scottish Men’s Sheds, a third sector, council or community development officer who supports local communities, a health professional and any other category which supports our aims, we look forward to meeting you on this exciting road trip around Scotland.

Book your tickets now, when they are gone they are gone!

LONELINESS should be treated as a public health priority on a par with poverty and poor housing, MSPs have said.

Social isolation is linked to malnutrition and dementia, with the stigma of admitting to loneliness driving people into desperate situations, according to campaigners.

The Scottish Parliament heard heartbreaking cases of older people who visit their GP every Monday because they have “no-one else for company” and of one woman who was so ashamed to seek help that she lived in her house without power for six months and scavenged sandwiches from a skip.

Stephen McLellan, chief executive of Paisley-based Recovery Across Mental Health (RAMH), said the woman’s case only came to the attention of support services after a neighbour noticed movement in her home.

Meanwhile Natalie McFadyen White, of Glasgow community outreach charity, Impact Arts, told MSPs how one of their clients had previously resorted to sitting on a bus all day and travelling around the city “because that was all he had to do with his day and it was free with his bus pass”.

The stories underpin a report by the Scottish Parliament’s Equal Opportunities Committee which calls for the development of a national social isolation strategy, including public health campaigns to raise awareness and tackle the stigma of loneliness.

It is believed to have been the first parliamentary inquiry anywhere in the world to analyse the health and social burden of loneliness.

The ‘Age and Social Isolation’ report is published today.

Brian Sloan, chief executive of Age Scotland, said loneliness should be tackled as a “public health priority”.

He said: “Age Scotland believes that no-one should have no-one. Everyone needs social connections and company, and an absence of these can be devastating for our mental and physical wellbeing.

“There should be no stigma about it – feeling lonely is as natural a reaction to isolation as hunger is to lack of food or tiredness is to lack of sleep.

“Older people are often more vulnerable, especially those who live alone and find it difficult to get around.

“Family, friends and neighbours should take the initiative and reach out to those most at risk.”

The problem is not restricted to older people, however.

Anela Anwar of Roshni, an organisation that works extensively with minority ethnic communities, said that reliance on social media meant some young people “can forget what it is like to be in the company of other young people”.

However, there were also examples of positive intervention.

Sandra Stuart, of Glasgow Disability Alliance, told how a woman left housebound and depressed after a leg amputation was learning to drive with the help of the charity.

“She now has a full diary,” said Ms Stuart.

Befriending services can also offer elderly people a new lease of life.

Michelle McCrindle of charity Food Train said: “People in their late 90s come to our befriending groups. They thought that their lives were over. They are on their own because their partners have died, and they have been grieving for a while.

“Their lives have been deteriorating and they have hardly been out of the door for four or five years, but they discover a whole new life because somebody is there to take the first steps with them and encourage them to come along and give things a try.”  

Margaret McCulloch, committee convener and MSP for Central Scotland, said: “The report highlights the stigma people currently face, and how difficult it is to admit to loneliness.

“Whatever your age, it is unacceptable to feel you cannot seek help. The health impact in Scotland is too great. But currently a lack of awareness of the impact of isolation allows it to be ignored.”

To get a taste of some of that Apple Juice all the way from Applecross click here

Author: Dr Margaret Hannah

Summary.

To see full report by Dr Margaret Hannah click here

This is a note of my six day visit to Southcentral Foundation (SCF) healthcare system in Alaska. SCF is a remarkable healthcare organisation. It operates within the US healthcare system, with federal government financing, to meet the health needs of Alaskan Natives – a group with high levels of drug and alcohol dependency, high rates of depression and suicide, domestic and other abuse compared to the US average. Yet over 15 years it has achieved remarkable improvements in population health at significantly lower cost for similar populations elsewhere – and is attracting international attention for its success.

I was one of a small team of four health practitioners from Fife, Scotland introduced to SCF last summer and invited to Alaska to experience SCF in practice, to attend and present at a two day conference exploring and developing their model of care, and to undertake the three day Core Concepts training given to all SCF staff embodying the core competencies that underpin their model of care.

The “Nuka System of Care” is the name given to the whole healthcare system created, managed and owned by Alaska Native people to achieve physical, mental, emotional and spiritual wellness. Nuka is an Alaska Native word used for strong, giant structures and living things. The bare bones of the model, its structures and underlying principles can be gleaned from the SCF website at www.southcentralfoundation.com and are reproduced in the appendix at the back of this report. It reads like a vision statement, a utopian ideal that we have often conjured with in our ‘blue skies’ moments but rejected as wildly idealistic and impossible to achieve.

But in Alaska we experienced the system as reality and were given every support to realise it now in our own context, here in Scotland. I can say that for the four of us who went, the experience was transformative. We discovered that it is indeed possible to manage a healthcare system to promote the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual wellness of the population; to do so by combining western medical expertise with the wisdom of our common humanity; to provide such a service at less cost and with far better outcomes than our existing model; and to start – even now, within ourexisting organisations and structures – from Nuka’s simply stated truth that “good quality relationships equal healthy people”.

What follows is a brief and inevitably partial record of my time in Alaska – written in order to encourage others to explore this model in more detail. If anyone is interested to learn more, please get in touch: my colleagues and I would be very happy to talk to you. We also want to broaden and strengthen the web of relationships between health services in Scotland and SCF. And we are committed to one day being able to invite visitors to our own part of the world – to see Fife Nuka in action, inspired by the model the following pages describe.

Author: Community Energy Scotland

Rt Hon George Osborne MP
Chancellor of the Exchequer
4th November 2015

Dear Chancellor

The Conservative Government has made some positive strides to live up to its claim ‘to be the party of social enterprises’. The Conservative Manifesto boldly states that it would ‘give more people the power and support to…start their own social enterprise’.

 Yet, radical and wholly unexpected changes to the Finance Bill will decimate the area that has shown by far the greatest potential for community share issues – community energy.

 The proposal to deny community energy investors access to both Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) tax relief and Social Investment Tax Relief (SITR) is seen by many in the sector as the final nail in the coffin for future projects; especially given numerous recent assurances on admissibility and coming on top of proposals to significantly reduce Feed-in Tariff rates, remove access to pre-accreditation and remove Climate Change Levy exemptions.

 Your previous support for community energy had resulted in real growth and confidence. The sector was at last taking off: with dozens of projects leveraging tens of millions of investment from local communities. Community projects are supported by ordinary people across the UK in a way that is almost unique.

Please reconsider the decision to exclude community energy from this essential support and help communities build a competitive, popular, clean energy system for the future.

Yours sincerely

Signed by 120 community sector intermediaries from across the UK

Author: Malcom Fraser

Scotland’s emerging confidence from the 1990’s onward had its stars, those who embodied the end of the cultural cringe and the beginning of a new era. Architect Malcolm Fraser shone in that number, producing buildings detailed by the Scottish tradition while international in appeal. Feted by colleagues and politicians, his practice nonetheless closed this summer. For the first time, he reflects on that experience.

My name is Malcolm Fraser and I’m a recovering businessman.  I’m an architect, and ran a successful practice for 22 years, that was lauded with awards, and made buildings that people loved and were economic successes.  We had good clients that wanted us and what we did was beautiful and important, but it was not profitable and the business creased trading in August, going into voluntary liquidation.

There is, then, the bleakest of humour in launching my career as a Rattle columnist in response to my editor’s request to write about “what Scotland needs to do to nurture and sustain talent”.  We are familiar with such advice from the successful businessman; but here’s some from a different place.

First, I should be clear that no blame accrues to my former clients.  We had beautiful work on our computers, for clients who appreciated us, and it breaks my heart to have lost those relationships, as well as my work colleagues.  But all our work was tricky, challenging and high-profile, of the sort that some might see as “loss-leaders”, so we had to compete on fee levels with that perception.  And, despite strenuous efforts, we never managed to land the sort of larger projects whose fees would underpin our smaller, high-profile ones.

Winning those challenging, high-profile and mid-sized public projects was also a terrifying, byzantine process.  Huge efforts were poured into extraordinarily-complex official “procurement” processes, that had us write endless screeds about technical and procedural irrelevancies while never approaching the simple question of “are we any good at making good buildings?”

So, while our record on such simplicities was exemplary – all our significant projects still flourish and we never, in our 22 years, made an insurance claim – our business model was very marginal: challenging, mid-sized, procurement-heavy projects in a very competitive fee climate.

My direct competitors feel the same pressures and it is a huge problem that the innovative, craft-based end of an industry that is so critical to the nation’s health, wealth and happiness, is so insecure.  Further, the box-tick nature of these procurement processes militates against the emergence of new practices, without long lists of projects they have already completed, so we are in the unhappy, infertile position of having produced no major new architectural practices this century.

It’s easy to blame this on architecture’s procurement processes but I’d like to look behind them, to understand a wider malaise that affects all our endeavours, not just our architectural ones.  The core problem is a British one, that, in the second half of the last century, we lost the joy in making things and then, from the late 1970s, turned decisively away from a culture of making and substituted a service one. The primary business of modern Britain is the slew of financing and financial instruments, deals and legal structures, asset-trading and bundling, marketing and spin-doctoring that underpins our neo-liberal economy;  and that if we might label that Thatcherite, then what New Labour added to it was a maze of consultation and micro-regulation (for after deregulating the big, important things, it’s a simple displacement-activity to over-regulate the small).

In the building industry, The Private Finance Initiative that the Conservatives invented and New Labour went gaga for, is a prime exemplar.  Schools, Hospitals and other buildings supplied through vast, complex and extremely expensive private finance whose only virtue was ideological awe for the wisdom of bankers over the public interest, and where the simplicities of delivering healthy buildings full of light, air and connectivity appear nowhere and are, at best, incidental to the process.

We sometimes fondly imagine that we do things differently in Scotland, and the Government has put in place a non-profit version of Private Finance, which works through the Scottish Futures Trust and awarding large public “Hub” contracts, on locked-in monopolistic deals, to large (and usually English-headquartered) contractors.  Such upscaling bypasses local firms and, again, substitutes process for craft – with architects’ services being described as a “supply chain component” where, presumably, the cheapest and most basic service, rather than the most caring and beautiful, is required, producing the most basic school or hospital.

It seems to me that most of what has gone awry in our new Scotland has been through “upscaling”:  our single police force, for instance, and the closing-down of local courts with justice withdrawn to the cities.  The initiatives that hold the most promise are those that spread-out ownership and decision-making, such as through the Community Empowerment Bill, The Land Reform Group and new initiatives in Housing.

A national focus on “downscaling” – on subsidiarity, as devolving responsibility and decision-making down to its most local level – would probably also start with a revived local democracy.  Scotland has the most disconnection between an ordinary voter and their political representatives of any European democracy, and badly needs reinvigorated community or parish councils to care for us locally – as well as larger Local Authorities, with cities reconnected to their hinterlands under areas similar to the Health Board ones.

So my proposal for creating a climate for the nurturing and retention of talent in Scotland is big and ambitious, involving critical national renewal:  a culture that recovers joy in the craft of making things, and rewards the skills that requires; and that avoids creating big, dumb structures when, instead, it should be devolving down power and decision making, trusting its people and communities.

Author: The Herald

SCOTLAND’S leading conservation charity is trying to register the names of two of the country’s most historical locations as trademarks in a bid to protect the sites against commercial exploitation.

The National Trust for Scotland’s application to register Glencoe and Glenfinnan has sparked concern over how the move will affect local communities.

The organisation has stressed that it is to protect the beauty spots against any attempt by businesses with no local, or sometimes even Scottish, connections to exploit their commercial potential.

But community leaders in both locations said they knew little or nothing about the NTS move and how a trademark might restrict local commercial life.

Alister Sutherland, chairman of the Glencoe and Glen Etive Community Council, said: “It is not widely known the NTS is doing this. When it is known, I would think there will be local concern. For a start the NTS only owns part of Glencoe. There are several other significant landowners.

“We are having a community council meeting on Wednesday night and this issue is not as yet on the agenda, but I will be raising it under Any Other Competent Business (AOCB).”

A local businessman, who wanted to remain anonymous, said: “We just don’t know how this might impact on us using Glencoe in our promotional material for example.”

Duncan Gibson, a local hotelier who is also chairman of Glenfinnan Community Council, said: “I knew nothing about this at all. The community council would certainly want to learn more, and be kept in the loop.”

Three years ago there was major row between the NTS and the Western Isles Council when it emerged that the local authority had registered St Kilda as a trademark.

The charity said at the time that trademarking a geographical place name (owned by the NTS) set a “disturbing precedent”, however subsequently a cordial accommodation was reached.

Like St Kilda, Glencoe is known the world over. It is the site of the infamous massacre in February 1682 of the MacDonalds, on the orders of the Scottish Government.

Meanwhile Glenfinnan was where Bonnie Prince Charlie raised his standard in August 1745 at the head of Loch Shiel. The NTS has a monument to the event there, a lone kilted highlander atop 60ft high column.

More recently the Glenfinnan viaduct also gained international recognition as the dramatic film setting for the Hogwarts Express which carried Harry Potter off to school.

An NTS spokesman said the charity already held trademarks for sites as the Battle of Bannockburn, the Soldier’s Leap at Killiecrankie and Culloden, the scene of Prince Charlie’s defeat in 1746.

He added: “We have recently made applications to register the names ‘Glencoe’ and ‘Glenfinnan’ as a trademarks.

“In recent years, practice in the trademark registries affecting Scotland has changed and it has become apparent to us that other parties, often based outwith Scotland, have registered trademarks or sought to register marks over place-names for some of the key heritage locations owned by the Trust.

“After much thought, we consider that it is more appropriate for the Trust to hold these marks given our long-standing obligations to care for and protect these places.

“The alternative is to risk rights over these names being acquired by commercial organisations with interests that may not align with those of the Trust’s conservation and charitable purposes, nor with the wellbeing of local residents and businesses.”

He said registering the trademarks would “categorically not hinder” the use of the name by local businesses which wished to refer to their geographic location or to businesses which had already been trading with the place names. They would have accrued prior rights.  

However, it would give the NTS “the right to protect the names in respect from inappropriate exploitation or use by parties who are not located in or near these places”.

He added: “Holding these trademarks gives our charity the chance to make the most of these special places in terms of marketing, increasing public awareness of the site itself and the Trust’s role in caring for them, hopefully resulting in more support for our charitable cause and in attracting visitors, who in turn contribute to local economies.”

Author: Evening Times

PARENTS across Scotland should be given the right to set up community schools outside council control, according to a new charitable trust.

The Hometown Foundation said recent international comparisons showed Scottish education was no longer a world leader and called for alternative ways of delivering it.

The Scottish Government already funds several schools which are not run by local authorities including Jordanhill, in the west end of Glasgow, and a number of specialist schools.

However, the move would be highly controversial because a previous attempt to allow schools to opt-out by the Conservatives was seen as an attempt to undermine the power of councils.

Free schools and academies south of the Border have also proved unpopular with teaching unions who argue they are divisive and a waste of money.

The issue has come to the fore because First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is currently looking at proposals for a community school drawn up by families from East Dunbartonshire after the council decided to close St Joseph’s Primary School, in Milngavie, last year.

Bill Nicol, director of the Hometown Foundation, who is helping St Joseph’s parents prepare a business case, said the model could apply equally to communities across Scotland.

He said: “Serious concerns about Scottish educational standards are now being expressed by employers and academics as well as worried parents and these concerns must be addressed.

“A significant part of Scottish education’s problems relate to areas of responsibility. At present, direct responsibility for raising standards and improving education does not reside with the school or the headteacher.

“Funds are passed from the Scottish Government to local authorities to provide education and raise standards yet coucnils are not present at the “coal face” and cannot be made fully accountable. This adds bureaucracy and cost as well as….. conflict over fundamental issues.”

Mr Nicol said there was “clear and growing evidence” autonomous schools delivered a range of benefits from giving headteachers greater control to bringing parents, teachers and the local community closer together.

He added: “This makes the provision of education much more of a combined effort.”

Educationalist Keir Bloomer backed the call for change stating: “Greater school autonomy is a pre-requisite for improvement.”

However, Stephanie Primrose, education spokesperson for council umbrella body Cosla, said council schools had proved very successful.

She said: “Education is good with standards rising, exam results improving and more of our young people than ever before going into a positive destination.  

“Comprehensive education has stood the test of time and it is vital that we do not throw the door open to things that will do more harm than good.”

The Hometown Foundation is a registered charity based in Lanarkshire and backed by local businesses.