Grant Smith , The Courier

An underground visitor centre at Broughty Ferry beachfront could attract more than 60,000 visitors a year, a study has found. But the community group behind the proposals has been warned that it faces a ”major challenge” in raising the up to £2.7 million needed.

Broughty Ferry Development Trust (BFDT) hopes to make use of the earth mound between Castle Green and the beach for an eco-friendly building that could contain a cafe/restaurant, shop, changing rooms and a gallery about local heritage and natural history.

It has received a report from the Glamis Consultancy that says market testing of the concept proved ”very positive” with people seeing it as an attractive leisure destination for family visitors. Estimates of visitor numbers range from 52,000 to 66,000 a year and it would be possible to run it at a profit, assuming income was at least close to £200,000 a year.

The report says: ”The eco building would be a focus for encouraging visitors to the beach and Esplanade area, and could play a vital role in the development of Broughty Ferry. The building would be a reception venue for visitors as well as a family attraction beside the seaside incorporating a range of facilities and services on a year-round basis.”

The consultants reckon there are now two ways to proceed: either the development trust takes on the project itself or it lets another organisation take over, although it is not clear at this stage who that might be. They say: ”The critical risk is the need for BFDT to clarify its role in the project. Assuming it does so, the lack of clear sources of capital funding represents a further critical risk to the project. A detailed fundraising strategy would be required but this would still require a mix of grant funding and commercial or corporate sponsorship. Because of this we envisage that project completion would be unlikely before 2015 at the earliest.”

The report cautions that the centre is unlikely to be attractive to a private sector developer.

”If the centre was developed as a community-based, social enterprise project, it may offer scope for local businesses or social enterprises to operate it on a franchise basis. However, it faces a very strong challenge in securing funding as the project is likely to be ineligible for the main sources of grant funding.”

The project is thought to be worthy of further study, to the point where funding support has been fully investigated. However, if no ”project champion” can be found then a Plan B may be appropriate — such as the provision of a more modest cafe and beach changing area — if this is adequate to meet customer requirements.

The consultants have recommended BFDT sets up a project group to consider the next steps in detail. This could include the city council, the Ferry local community planning partnership, Leisure and Culture Dundee and outside bodies such as Scottish Natural Heritage and Historic Scotland.

The development trust’s management committee will discuss the report at its meeting next week.

Chairman John Dobbie said last night: ”Lots of people would like to see this happen. We will consult with the whole membership to see how they would like this to be taken forward.”

He admitted the capital funding was a big issue but added: ”It’s not something that can’t be overcome.”

Julie Gilbert, Hamilton Advertiser 

A £500,000 project to revamp Castlebank Park has been awarded more than £195,000 to get things underway.

But the project hangs on the rest of the money being found, and a bid for £240,000 from the National Lottery has been turned down.

The project is being run by the Lanark Community Development Trust, a group of residents who are leasing part of the park from South Lanarkshire Council.

The £195,326 already received came from the Climate Challenge Fund, and it will be used to turn the disused tennis court area into a horticultural hub where schools and other groups can come and grow vegetables, etc.

It will also pay for a gardener to be employed for 18 months and train the community in how to cultivate correctly.

But the trust also need to renovate nearby former saw mill buildings into accompanying facilities, such as toilets, before the hub can be opened up to the community.

Although the Climate Change money is welcome it is a bittersweet victory, while the rest of the money is yet to be sourced. Sylvia Russell, who is project leader, said: “The Climate Challenge fund grant is fantastic. We’re over the moon about getting it but it’s only a part of what we need.

“We need £500,000 to take the project through.

“We’re pleased about the Climate Challenge award but we’re devastated about the lottery grant .

“We can’t bring anyone to the educational garden or the growing area without the renovation of the buildings – in particular the toilet block.”

The group also hope to install teaching rooms and a shop within the former saw mill buildings.

Castlebank Park was once the grounds of a large mansion house lived in by a wealthy family who were involved in the iron trade.

The house has been converted into flats for council tenants, but much of the parkland and gardens have fallen into disrepair.

The Community Development Trust want to breathe new life into it.

Alongside the work they are doing, South Lanarkshire Council are tidying up paths and the main house driveway, making the whole place more pleasant for the community to visit.

The Trust have got schools interested in the project and are also keen to link up with Motherwell College.

Sylvia said: “Climate Challenge money will be used for the tennis court area

“A high security fence needs to be put up around the area and inside the security fence there are polytunnels and raised beds for growing things.

“Lanark Grammar feel it would be a very useful extra part of the curriculum.

“People can come and get some sort of horticultural training.

“We’re in negotiations with Motherwell College about some way of running training courses there that would be accredited by the college.”

Lanark in Bloom will also be helping with the project.

The Community Development Trust will be working hard over coming days and weeks to source the rest of the funding required to complete the project.

David Ross, The Herald

Crofters on a Scottish island will retain the lease for sporting rights just days after an outcry greeted news they had been sold to a commercial company based in the south of Scotland.

Residents on Raasay were angered after civil servants awarded the lease to a stalking partnership instead of crofters who had held the rights for 18 years. 

But now the Scottish Government is paying South Ayrshire Stalking £9000 to give up the lease without shooting a single stag.

Alex Salmond announced the U-turn at Holyrood yesterday, saying the contract had now been “withdrawn by mutual consent”.

Raasay Crofters Association secretary Anne Gillies received a phone call earlier from Environment Minister Paul Wheelhouse to inform islanders of the decision.

The minister will visit Raasay today when he will meet crofters and hold talks with community leaders about taking over 711 acres of Forestry Commission woodland which is coming up for sale.

Mrs Gillies said: “We welcome the lease being restored in the short term and look forward to positive discussions with Mr Wheelhouse and anybody else about what happens to the lease after November 2013. 

“I think the intention is to consult the community rather than the crofters exclusively. It is important to us that these sporting rights remain in local control.”

The original decision was widely condemned, including an unexpected intervention from local Free Church of Scotland ministers. 

Many recalled the 1960s and 1970s when the Scottish Office sold Raasay properties over the heads of islanders to an absentee landlord who visited the island only twice, briefly, in 20 years.

SNP ministers are known to have been furious that comparisons were being drawn to that episode, which prompted yesterday’s developments.

Mr Wheelhouse said: “Raasay is a fragile island community and ministers recognise the sporting rights are very important to the islanders. 

“I share the concerns expressed locally about the way in which the contract was awarded and will ensure, as I have indicated previously, that in future appropriate ministerial consideration is given when such decisions are being made.

“I would like to thank Chris Dalton and South Ayrshire Stalking for their understanding and agreement to withdraw from the contract.”

However, land reform campaigner Andy Wightman pointed out the acceptance of the highest bid was originally defended by ministers on the basis of best value. He added: “So what ministerial rules justify the payment of £9000 to the tenant to buy them out?”

He suggested the rural affairs committee should conduct a short inquiry into exactly how this decision was taken.

Scottish Crofting Federation chairman Derek Flyn said he was delighted ministers had “accepted a serious error was made. We are sure lessons will be learned from this and that decisions of such gravity, affecting remote and fragile communities, will in future be taken at ministerial level”.

David Cameron, chairman of Community Land Scotland, said: “It will now be for Scottish ministers to get the word round every department of government that they favour community empowerment as a means to drive sustainable economic development and that they never want to see a repeat of this episode.”

A Free Church of Scotland spokesman also welcomed the Scottish Government acting on the concerns of rural people.

Mr Dalton, who runs South Ayrshire Stalking, said: “We were not aware we were bidding against the crofters when we tendered for these sporting rights in good faith. However, because of the strength of feeling expressed we feel it is now appropriate to withdraw from the contract.”

The trade body of Scotland’s private landowners, Scottish Land and Estates has published its response to the Land Reform Review Group.

A summary copy of the report can be downloaded from here

To see the short promotional film produced by Scottish Land and Estates to support their position in relation to the Review click here

Yvonne Roberts, The Observer,

Director Ken Loach’s new film revisits the year that Britons turned to socialism – and ushered in the NHS, public ownership and the concept of public (not private) good. We trace the spirit of ’45 and speak to some who remember the dawn of a new life.

Ray Davies, robust, articulate and dignified, aged 83, veteran campaigner, a Labour councillor in Caerphilly for 50 years, sits in a Spanish civil war beret and recalls the time, in 1945, when he was 15 and had already worked two years underground in Welsh mines.

“In those days, it wasn’t safety that came first, it was coal,” he says. “We were in the pit and the message came down – ‘Labour’s won by a landslide!’ Tough, hard miners had tears streaking down their faces, black with dust. They said, ‘Ray, this is what we’ve dreamed about all our lives. Public control of the railways and mines and banks, jobs and housing. We are going to have a health service!’ ” Ray’s voice still resonates with the thrill of it all. “We owed trillions to the Americans at the end of the war, we had nothing, but we said, ‘Knickers to the debt. We are going to put this country back on its feet.’ And we did! The average life expectancy of a miner was 42 years. Then that began to creep up. It was wonderful to see how things improved for the ordinary man and woman.”

Ray Davies is one of a number of octogenarian “stars” of The Spirit of ’45, an uplifting documentary by the film-maker and master chronicler of ordinary lives, Ken Loach. It celebrates 1945, a pivotal year, and its brief aftermath, during which socialism was proudly endorsed and openly promoted by a Labour leader, Clement Attlee. On the stump, Winston Churchill had failed to convince when he attempted to link socialism and “the gestapo”. Booed and heckled, he was then trounced by the electorate.

Labour’s 1945 general election manifesto included clause IV, subsequently erased by Tony Blair, which promised “to secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry… upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange…” The manifesto also pledged a massive and speedy housing programme so that “every family has a good standard of accommodation”. The country was broke, battered, and in parts physically flattened, but certainly it was no longer bowed.

For The Spirit of ’45, Loach has mined British regional and national archives and found deeply moving film footage and sound recordings that powerfully illustrate a country determined to build a very different community out of the rubble of war and create a new social fabric. “We had won the war together,” Loach says. “Together we could win the peace. If we could collectively plan to wage military campaigns, could we not plan to build houses, create a health service and make goods needed for reconstruction? The spirit of the age was to be our brother’s and our sister’s keeper.”

Years of poverty and unemployment after the first world war had been followed by six years battling fascism and experiencing huge personal loss in the second. In one piece of archive footage in Loach’s film, a woman says, after her house has been destroyed by a German bomb: “But I only cleaned my windows yesterday.” Peace gave birth to a country with different expectations and priorities. Seventy per cent of the population considered itself working-class and it now voiced modest aspirations with hugely radical potential.

The historian David Kynaston recalls the scale of the change in his book Austerity Britain, which covers the same period as Loach’s documentary. The book describes a “blazered, straw-hatted 14-year-old public schoolboy, John Rae” (later headmaster of Westminster School), waiting on Bishop’s Stortford station in July 1945 with his trunk. “My man,” he called to the porter. “No,” came the porter’s firm reply. “That sort of thing is all over now.”

The new prime minister, Clement Attlee, and the health and housing minister, Aneurin (Nye) Bevan, used the scale of the challenge of building a new Jerusalem and the necessity of centralised planning to justify a massive programme of nationalisation. Roads, rail, steel, docks, coal, utilities – all came into state ownership. Most triumphant and resilient of all was the birth of the National Health Service in 1948. “We realised that the only people who were going to help us were ourselves, the people,” says Ray Davies.

“One for all and all for one, homes for the many, not luxuries for the few, that’s what we wanted,” says 90-year-old Eileen Thompson, another of Loach’s interviewees. “People weren’t greedy. They just wanted a job and a peaceful home life.” She grew up in “poverty park” in the slums of Liverpool in the 1930s. “As a child,” she tells me, “my father took me to see the unemployment queues, a long, long line. He said, ‘Never let this happen again.’ ”

Loach says he was motivated to make the documentary because the achievements of the Attlee generation were at risk of being reduced to a footnote to Thatcherism. “People talk about Thatcherism all the time,” he says. “I felt it was important to record the memories of those almost written out of history who upheld the spirit of ’45. Today, the market penetrates everywhere. It’s time to put back on the agenda the importance of public ownership and public good, the value of working together collaboratively, not in competition.”

The American philosopher Michael Sandel, in the Reith Lectures in 2009, warned that the priorities of the shareholder and the “values” of the marketplace were brutally damaging the civic pulse. “A politics of the common good invites us to think of ourselves less as consumers and more as citizens,” he said. It is these themes of citizenship and the common good that run through The Spirit of ’45 like an electric charge, underlining the absence of these values from so much of public discussion and culture now.

June Hautot, 76, another of the film’s stars, still lives in the house in south London where her mother died when June was 11. Her father, a railway worker, had been wounded in the war but before the NHS was set up couldn’t afford to be properly treated, or to take time off work. June’s mother, in her 40s, developed breast cancer that spread to her spine. The family belonged to one of several thousand private insurance schemes that only partially met the cost of sickness.

“You had to pay the doctor five shillings before he’d even put his foot over the threshold,” June recalls. “My older sister and I used to care for my mother but then the NHS arrived, overnight, and we didn’t have to do it any more. A district nurse arrived. It was absolutely wonderful.” In 2012, Hautot famously confronted the then health secretary Andrew Lansley in Downing Street, shouting “Shame!” and accusing him of privatising the NHS. “Tony Benn says ‘People change things not politics.’ I believe that,” she says. “Nobody is taking the NHS away from us. Nobody.”

Sam Watts, 88, was a rigger on the docks when he and his wife and two children were moved from the Liverpool slums to a council house in Bootle, in which – 65 years later – he still lives. “We couldn’t believe it,” he told me. “We had a kitchen and a bathroom and a backyard. Now they are all sold off or rented for £550 a month. Can you believe it?” His wife, Bridie, was diagnosed with TB aged 27. “They said it would take 12 months to build her up to have her lung removed and 12 months to recover. The NHS had just come in. Before that people died of TB. In Liverpool you’d see people sitting outside their houses. You knew they were going to die. They’d been told to take fresh air. Bridie lived another 50 years. She was never the same person but she lived, thanks to the NHS.”

GPs had been overwhelmingly against the NHS, and the British Medical Association warned that the socialist health secretary would become a “medical fuhrer”. Nye Bevan dealt with their opposition by allowing consultants to continue with their lucrative private practice and, as he put it, “stuffing their mouths with gold”. However, as the Loach documentary illustrates, some doctors were great enthusiasts of a universal service based on need not income.

Professor Harry Keen, 87, a diabetes specialist for 50 years, and founder of the NHS Support Federation, which aims to protect the founding values of the NHS, still holds a clinic once a week. He recalls a visit to a boy called Billy in his home in the summer of 1948, soon after qualifying. “I received two shillings and sixpence and said I would call back. When I returned the mother informed me that Billy was a lot better. But as we spoke I heard a loud hacking cough: ‘That’s not Billy, its Johnny his brother,’ the mother said. When I offered to take a look at Johnny, she said, ‘I’d rather you didn’t, we really can’t afford it.’ I told her that today was 5 July, the birth of the NHS. From then on, my services would be free. What a great day!”

By the time the Conservatives regained power with a small majority in 1951, after six years of a socialist Labour government, the welfare state had strong foundations and more than 40% of the country’s industrial capacity was nationalised. But as The Spirit of ’45 points out, there were inherent flaws. No workers’ representation, chronic lack of investment, little long-term planning and the appointment of senior management from the pre-nationalisation era who had little commitment to state-run industries. As one union activistin the film says: “What sort of nationalisation have we got when the same old gang is back in power?”

Having recorded the scale of the postwar generation’s commitment to the new Jerusalem, its origins, triumphs and its failings, Loach’s film then tackles the rapid dismantling of it with the arrival of Margaret Thatcher in 1979. She espoused a very different ideology based on small-government, low-tax, free-market, neo-liberal, anti-union, pro-privatisation, “no such thing as society” monetarism. That “light touch” on finance and business and her desire to “roll back the frontiers of the state” was little challenged by 13 years of Labour under Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. The documentary illustrates how under New Labour, individualism gnawed at the collectivist muscle, and the private sector moved deeper into the very last of the nationalised industries, the NHS. “Economics are the method,” Margaret Thatcher told an interviewer in 1981. “The object is to change the heart and soul.”

In 1984, she took on and defeated the National Union of Mineworkers. Shortly after, British Telecom, British Aerospace and British Gas were handed back to shareholders. Steel, water, Rolls-Royce and British Airways were all privatised. Millions of jobs disappeared in steel, coal and manufacturing. In the early 1980s, cleaning and catering in the NHS were contracted out; the market moved in to universal free health care.

Karen Reissmann of Unison, and a mental health nurse in Bolton, says: “We used to have two full-time cleaners in the morning on the ward and one part-time in the evening… After contracting out, we had half a cleaner in the morning and one covering 10 wards in the evening. That’s not good economics if it leads to the cost of MRSA.”

What the documentary doesn’t cover is the March 2012 Health and Social Care bill to reform the NHS, opposed by 25 out of 26 medical colleges. Last week the government published new regulations that, according to the Royal College of Physicians, “will have the effect of forcing through privatisation regardless of the will of the local people. Once this is triggered [the deadline is 31 March], it means private providers gain rights which make halting their encroachment financially – and thus politically – virtually impossible.”

“If they privatise the health service we will lose something beyond price,” Professor Keen tells me. “It’s not all about greed. Humans have a social sense too.”

James Meadway, senior economist at the thinktank the New Economics Foundation, points out in The Spirit of ’45 that the assumption that the private sector is more efficient is not proven. He tells me that the myths that a bloated public sector and excessive spending under a Labour government are the prime cause of current austerity also need to be strenuously challenged. Up to 2008, Meadway says, Labour spent less on the public sector as a proportion of GDP (39%) than Thatcher (41%) or Major (40%). He argues for an alternative narrative as bold as that which once cradled the spirit of 1945. “There are other scripts that can be written. Ones that put the importance of solidarity ahead of competition and the need to defend the common and the public from the incursion of the private. We need a credible alternative story to disintegrating Osbornomics. Or we can say goodbye to the welfare state.”

Dot Gibson of the National Pensioners Convention talks in the film of her optimism. “The older generation has an absolute duty to… start talking to young people about the vision of 1945,” she says. “How did we see it progressing? What does ‘from cradle to grave’ mean? Common ownership and sharing? We have a real chance to understand better what kind of life we want – and to start to rebuild.”

Loach says the left has always been fractured. “If you have a society where a large section believe they are not part of the political discourse, that is a situation for trouble. The Labour election of 1945 was a tremendous victory for democratic ownership of the economy. We need to remember and learn from the lessons.”

In the years immediately following the end of the second world war, the British public refused to return to the desperately unequal past. Loach’s film is mainly in black and white, except that the same images of exuberant street parties on VE Day that open the documentary are repeated at the end, in gloriously vivid Technicolor. Somehow what that captures superbly well and without sentimentality is that while the people had very little, they could celebrate that, in their grimmest times, their greatest asset had proven to be each other – and they had won.

The Spirit of ’45 opens in cinemas on 15 March. There will be a nationwide screening with a live Q&A with Ken Loach and special guests at 3pm on Sunday 17 March. See thespiritof45.com for more details and participating cinemas.

Lesley Riddoch, 10th March 2013. Scotland on Sunday

HAS Scottish grassroots democracy found an unlikely champion?

Last week at the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities conference in St Andrews, Nicola Sturgeon pledged Scotland’s councils would have their role enshrined in a written constitution after independence: currently, the UK and Scottish parliaments could both abolish local government outright.

The Deputy First Minister’s pledge prompted no immediate protestations of gratitude but then council chiefs aren’t expressive people, “respect” agendas are easily forgotten and most Cosla delegates oppose the constitutional destination of independence.

Later though, shadow Scottish secretary Margaret Curran agreed “local power can’t be at the whim of the centre” any longer and should have statutory support in a devolved Scotland. She cited constitutional guarantees in France and Denmark and concluded: “Scotland and the UK are currently out of step.”

In another life, supporters of genuine localism might have celebrated the spectacle of two powerful social democrats making common cause over the important principle of devolving power beyond Holyrood. In this life, of course, that is dismissed as wilfully naïve. Of course, both “sides” will promise the earth – say the cynics – but of course neither really means it. After all, the SNP has busily centralised public services like the police and fire brigade, while the Labour Party has central control in its bones.

Maybe. But I sense change is in the air – and not just because of pledges from national politicians. Genuine localism may finally have found a champion in the unlikely shape of Cosla. Come on, I hear you say. Cosla represents the interests of local government so how can it not champion local empowerment? Simple. Until now, local government and local empowerment have not meant the same thing – far from it.

“Local” in Scotland has come to mean a strategic, regional level of governance no other nation in Europe would recognise. The average council size in Scotland (162,000) for example, would create just two councils in Iceland where fierce debate recently reduced municipalities to a “measly” total of “just” 74.

Scotland has the largest council units, the smallest number of councillors, the least competitive elections, the smallest proportion of income raised locally and the lowest election turnouts in Europe. Only 22 per cent of Scots feel they can shape their local communities. Until recently, these “inconvenient truths” were simply noted by local and national politicians as they defended their own fiefdoms against attack from above.

But speech after speech at last week’s Cosla conference expressed an intention to empower communities as well. New Cosla president David O’Neill backed the Christie Commission argument – “you cannot ‘do’ health to people or communities, you must work with them” – and continued: “If the argument is that devolution doesn’t stop at Holyrood, then it doesn’t stop at existing local councils, either.”.

Cllr O’Neill said constitutional safeguards could turn “unequal tiers of government into equal spheres of responsibility” and create powerful “local” players to check the all-powerful, unicameral Holyrood government.

But if “the community” is also an equal sphere, what about entrenchment of its powers, proper funding and mandatory inclusion in joint public service delivery – or is community not that equal? I’ll grant you, the prospect of an extra layer of democracy is not a popular one – if it costs an extra taxpayer penny. And it will. But without structure and stability, how can the community sector connect with the super-annuated tiers of governance jostling for supremacy above?

Essentially, what’s happening now is a clash of the professional titans. The two biggest local budget-holders – NHS and councils – are being required to work, plan together and pool resources in Health and Social Care partnerships (HSCPs). It’s a move everyone backs in principle. Duplication meant 17 services were recently involved in the care of one unemployed mother. Old people regularly get stuck in hospital because the NHS has beds but the local social work department hasn’t cash for home adaptations. Shared budgets can end this – if territorialism, defensiveness and proceduralism are overcome.

There’s an incentive. According to Cosla chief executive Rory Mair, the Scottish Government will transfer responsibility to a single, central National Care Agency if HSCPs don’t work. 

Where, though, is the incentive to involve, empower or drive service delivery through community projects? The NHS and Scottish councils have a joint budget of £24 billion. Scotland’s 1,200 community councils have an average annual budget of £400 each and very few formal powers. Local Development Trusts have sprung up to manage assets like libraries, new housing and wind farms. Some have multi-million-pound turnovers, but most fundraise constantly to take on premises and services off-loaded by cash-strapped councils. Trusts are not elected by the whole community so party politics rarely interferes, but they can’t claim to formally represent “the whole community”.

Local government minister Derek Mackay says the forthcoming Community Empowerment and Renewal Bill will somehow square the circle. It must. If devolution and even independence are needed to protect Holyrood against the depredations of Westminster and constitutional entrenchment is promised to defend local government against Holyrood, then how can the community be “equal” but un-funded, un-entrenched and un-elected?

John Swinney told Cosla delegates it’s not good enough to put services first and think “it’s nice if they collide with people on our journey”. He spoke of “empowering people to become equal partners in service delivery”. Great stuff – but how?

The green shoots of recovery are starting to show in some of Scotland’s communities. Have central and local government leaders noticed, and if so, how will they respond?

How can community transport systems be improved? 11.03.2013

How people are travelling in their communities outside of commercial public transport systems is to be the focus for a Scottish Parliament Committee inquiry. Launched on 11th March 2013 by the Scottish Parliament’s Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee, the inquiry wants to look at whether community transport services are able to better meet the needs of the people they serve.

More than 80% of people who use community transport are elderly and/or people with disabilities and with an increasing elderly population,  the Committee knows how important community transport is to people’s lives.

Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee Convener Maureen Watt MSP said:

“We know that getting out and about to visit friends and family, go shopping and attending appointments is vital to people’s health and wellbeing and in contrast social isolation can be detrimental. Moving from A to B is often not a simple matter of making a journey, particularly if you are disabled or infirm and may not be easy even where bus routes exist. In some places, both rural and urban community transport does fill a gap where commercial routes are not available and in cases where people find it difficult to even get to a bus stop. 

“However, the Committee is aware of concerns that these services are not supported in the way they should be and we want to know why. We want to hear from people who rely on community transport services and the issues they face. Importantly, we also want to hear from those charities, volunteers and other bodies who provide these services and identify the main obstacles they have to overcome when trying to provide these vital services.”   

The Committee will shortly announce a series of fact finding visits to experience first-hand the challenges local communities face. Members will see community-based transport services in action and identify any best practice case studies where local challenges have been overcome and community transport provision works well and meets the needs of the local community. 

Maureen Watt MSP continued:

“Across Scotland, there are examples of fantastic services, but there are also communities isolated from transport networks and for whatever reason, local communities have been unable to set up the community transport services they so desperately need.  We want to hear from people living and working in communities and their views will be the focus our inquiry and make sure we can try to help improve the situation for those often in greatest need.”

The call for views will be open until 19 April, after which the Committee will begin to take oral evidence on issues raised during the call for views. The Committee is aware of the main issues which have been highlighted in previous studies, set out below, and is keen to move the debate on, identify the main priorities and make a real difference as a result of this inquiry. 

• A lack of a strategic approach to community transport and the impact which a lack of transport has on people’s lives

• The growing demand for community transport provision

• A lack of a coordinated approach  with NHS bodies and community transport providers 

• Eligibility criteria for non-emergency patient transport and the cost to NHS of taxi use.

• Replacing community transport vehicles and funding planning.

• Access to concessionary fares schemes.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND REGENERATION COMMITTEE 

Delivery of Regeneration in Scotland inquiry – Call for Written Evidence 

The Committee is currently seeking evidence from interested parties on the Scottish Government‟s Regeneration Strategy. 

Regeneration 

The Scottish Government‟s regeneration strategy “Achieving a Sustainable Future‟ was published on 12 December 2011. The Local Government and Regeneration Committee, following its consideration of regeneration aspects of the Scottish Government Draft Budget 2013-14, have agreed to build on this scrutiny and undertake a detailed inquiry on the area of regeneration policy, with a focus upon community empowerment. The remit for the inquiry is:

“To identify and examine best practice and limitations in relation to the delivery of regeneration in Scotland‟. 

Themes of interest 

Set out below are themes on which the Committee is seeking your views. This is intended to be an open information gathering exercise. The questions set out below are intended to be a guide only. Please feel free to give us your views on any of these themes.

Strategy and Policy Issues 

1. How can the linkage between the various strategies and policies related to regeneration be improved? 

2. Can physical, social and economic regeneration really be separate entities? The Committee would find it useful to hear about projects distinctly focussed on one or more aspects, and the direct and indirect outcomes of such activity. 

3. Are we achieving the best value from investment in this area? If not, how could funding achieve the maximum impact? Could the funding available be used in different ways to support regeneration? 

Partnership Working 

4. What delivery mechanisms, co-ordination of, and information on the funding that supports regeneration are required, to facilitate access by all sections of the community? 

5. Should funding be focussed on start up or running costs? What is the correct balance between revenue and capital funding? Please indicate reasons for your views 

6. How can it be ensured that regeneration projects are sustainable in the long term? 

Practical Issues 

7. What actions could the Scottish Governments forthcoming community capacity building programme include to best support communities to „do regeneration‟ themselves? 

8. What role should CPPs play in supporting the community in regenerating their communities? 

9. How can CPPs best empower local communities to deliver regeneration? Please provide any examples of best practice or limitations experienced that you think the Committee would find useful in its scrutiny. 

10. How can the outcomes of regeneration truly be captured and measured? What are the barriers to capturing outcomes and how should the success of regeneration investment be determined? 

How to submit written evidence 

You may wish to respond to some or all of the specific questions set out above. Alternatively, you may wish to highlight issues that you consider to be of concern in relation to local Government and Regeneration. Evidence should be reasonably brief and typewritten (normally no more than six to eight sides of A4 in total). 

The deadline for receipt of written submissions is 6pm on Friday 15 March 2013. 

The Committee prefers to receive written submissions electronically. These should be sent to lgr.committee@scottish.parliament.uk 

You may also make hard copy written submissions to: 

Clerk to the Local Government and Regeneration Committee 

Room T3.60 

Scottish Parliament 

Edinburgh EH99 1SP 

The Herald,13/2/13 

A DECADE ago, in what remains one its finest hours, the Scottish Parliament passed landmark legislation giving rural communities the right to buy the land they worked.

The Land Reform Act allowed rural communities to register an interest in land and gave them first refusal to buy if and when it came up for sale.

It has been used across the Highlands and islands and, if the latest attempt succeeds, the most southerly tip of Scotland, the Mull of Galloway, will also move into community ownership.

The motivation behind land reform was to create a more equitable basis for ownership, sweep away the last vestiges of feudalism and end a system that kept hundreds of thousands of acres in the hands of absentee landlords.

Extending community right-to-buy legisation to Scotland’s town and cities is an idea whose time has come. 

Four years of recession and economic stagnation have left their mark on Scotland’s urban spaces. High streets are blighted by boarded-up shops. Unused public buildings are falling derelict. Tracts of vacant land have become dense jungles of weeds. At the same time, shrinking budgets mean council services are being cut. The lean times are forecast to continue for many years to come. Communities will want – and might need – to band together to fill gaps.

The Scottish Government’s Community Empowerment Bill is designed to give people the opportunity to step in and improve life on their doorsteps and the moribund spaces nearby. The bill is expected to include an “urban right to buy”, allowing communities to purchase land and buildings in a similar way to rural areas (though whether government money will be available remains to be seen). It also looks set to provide a “community right to grow”, letting groups take over disused land while the owner waits to develop or sell it. How splendid it would be to see people growing their own spuds on land banks aggressively accumulated by supermarket giants.

The Government’s simplified “easy read” consultation suggests there is broad support. An overwhelming 85% felt more land should be available for allotments and community gardens. Nearly three-quarters backed the right to buy, while two-thirds wanted the so-called right to grow. 

There is opposition from business leaders, who believe such rights would discourage private investment, and public bodies which are concerned about transferring power and property to untried community groups. A balance will have to be struck.

But in Derek Mackay, the local government and planning minister, the Bill has a committed and able champion. He believes the Bill will become a new landmark for Holyrood, just like the original Land Reform Act, and could effect the biggest transfer of power since devolution. If it strengthens communities and helps transform Scotland’s urban wastelands into the bargain, those claims will be justified.

Community Land Scotland

The future of an iconic landmark on one of the world’s most breathtaking coastlines has today been assured thanks to one of the first grants from the Scottish Land Fund. The 167 year-old Covesea Lighthouse on the Moray Firth will now be brought into community use and developed as a tourist hub. It is one of four projects, the others in Cowal, Wester Ross and the Borders, celebrating today (Friday, 22 February) as funding is announced for the first time from the new Scottish Land Fund.

Launched last year, the £6 million Scottish Land Fund is funded by the Scottish Government and delivered by the Big Lottery Fund in partnership with Highlands and Islands Enterprise. Today’s awards of over £3/4 million means these four communities can now purchase land and assets ensuring they are able to shape their own brighter future.

Richard Lochhead, Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs & Environment said, “I am delighted that the Scottish Land Fund is empowering four of our rural communities in Moray Firth, Cowal, Wester Ross and the Borders to take control of their own future by helping them to acquire land and community assets. These innovative and diverse projects will bring clear long term benefits, making each community stronger, resilient and more sustainable. I would urge other communities to look at these projects – three of which are achieved through the community right to buy provisions and the National Forest Land Scheme – to see how community land ownership and funding from the Scottish Land Fund can make a real difference to them.”

Scottish Land Fund Committee Chair, John Watt, said: “We know from experience that communities can achieve great things when they own and manage local land and land assets. So I am delighted to announce this first round of funding to these four projects and look forward to seeing them develop. Land ownership helps build independent, resilient and confident communities which benefits, not only themselves, but the country as a whole. The Scottish Land Fund, with funding over three years, aims to empower more rural communities, giving them the tools and resources they need so they can achieve their plans of local sustainability.”

Covesea Lighthouse Community Company will finally achieve their dream of community ownership for Covesea Lighthouse, its two keepers’ cottages and surrounding land. The grant of £301,500 means they will develop a tourism hub to promote local heritage, the area’s unique wildlife and environment and its links to the nearby airbase. The lighthouse’s location on the Moray Firth Coast has been voted one of the most breathtaking coasts in the world in a National Geographic Traveller magazine survey and community ownership presents an excellent opportunity for the project to boost the number of visitors to the area which in turn will help the local economy.

Bernard Annikin, Managing Director, Covesea Lighthouse Community Company said, “Without this funding there was a very good chance the lighthouse would have fallen into private ownership and we would have lost a vital asset for our community. When the light was switched out at Covesea a year ago we realised that here was an amazing opportunity to use this building for the benefit of all who live locally. We will now be able to use this site to provide a wide range of recreational activities from photography, painting, plane spotting and dolphin watching. Educational events and activities will be developed so people will have the chance to learn about local maritime history and the stunning natural environment that surrounds them.”

“The commanding position of the Lighthouse will offer an additional source of interest in attracting an even greater number of visitors to the area and will further enhance their enjoyment and understanding of the area and ultimately contribute to the economy of the local businesses in Lossiemouth and beyond, an area largely dependent on tourism”

A grant of £311,500 to Colintraive and Glendaruel Development Trust has meant they can buy the 615 hectare Stronafian Forest next to Colintraive and Glendaruel communities in south-west Cowal, Argyll. The community owned and managed site will be used to create new business opportunities with the development of woodland crofts and a wood fuel business, and provide employment in forest management and related activities. The local tourist economy will get a boost with new facilities for walking, mountain biking, pony trekking and star gazing. Access to cultural, historical and archaeological sites in the area will also be improved.

Achiltibuie is a remote crofting and fishing community in the Coigach area of Wester Ross. Thanks to today’s Scottish Land Grant of £160,700 the Coigach Community Development Company can purchase Achiltibuie Smokehouse land and buildings and ensure community control of any future development. Ownership of the land and buildings presents significant potential business growth and employment opportunities for the area. Plans have still to be finalised but it is envisaged that the site will be designed to provide a flexible space accommodating food and tourism industries.

Midlem in the Borders lies between St Boswells and Selkirk with the majority of its properties grouped around the village green. Today’s grant of £14,877 allows Midlem Village Hall Committee to purchase an area of land behind Midlem Village Hall. The Hall is the focus of social and community events in the village and is well used. There are no level playing fields in the village and the plan is to use the additional land to create a patio area suitable for a wide variety of sports and activities which will generate additional income to improve the long-term sustainability of the hall.