In 1987 Wooplaw Community Woodland became the first community woodland buyout in Scotland, leading the way in the formation of a national movement that now boasts over 200 community woodlands in Scotland. On the 1st and 2nd of September CWA will celebrate these people, their places, their progress and their passion during our national conference. The conference will be held alongside the planned celebrations in Wooplaw Woods, working with the Wooplaw Wardens to deliver an inspirational, informative and fun weekend worthy of celebration. 

Information about Wooplaw Woods:

Wooplaw Woods is an area of woodland that is dedicated to community use. That means it is there for people like you to visit whenever you like.

Within Wooplaw there are four distinct areas –Axehead Wood,  Big Wood,  Easter Park and Gullet Wood which lies within easy walking distance on the Lauder to Galashiels road. 

At the moment, there is a mixture of  hardwood trees and conifers. The long-term aim is to harvest most of the conifers and replant them with  hardwood trees, thereby adding to the wildlife potential of Wooplaw Woods.

Wooplaw Woods are owned and managed by Wooplaw Community Woodlands – a charitable organisation run entirely by volunteers who believe it is important to promote woodland culture and keep traditional woodland skills alive.

Our aim is to manage the woods for the benefit of the local community – in particular education, training, recreation, and the sustainable production of forest products. That includes providing a year round programme of events aimed at promoting a woodland culture, making the woods available as a free venue for other organisations to run events associated with music, arts, woodland skills, wildlife studies and other cultural studies, and also providing completely open access for members of the local community.

The CWA Conference will be held at Tweed Horizons Centre, Newtown St. Boswells TD6 0SG and the Dinner/Ceilidh will be at the Buccleuch Arms Hotel, St Boswells, Melrose TD6 0EW. Booking forms and conference schedules will be sent out to members shortly, but keep checking our events webpage for updated information.

Email from a community activist in Beith, North Ayrshire to Lesley Riddoch, journalist  

Hi Lesley

We are a load of football teams, sports clubs and normal folk who just got so fed up with derelict sports facilities in our village that we worked and nagged for 3 years to take them over, we reckoned we couldn’t make a worse job than the KA Leisure, North Ayrshire’s leisure trust

In the spirit of partnership we agreed to invest 85k of in-kind works and the local authority  invested 250k  prior to a lease of the facility to the community ( a Big No to ownership).  They then used all our participation figures to apply for a Sports Scotland grant of £100k which eased the pressure on their required contribution

The Leisure Trust moved out, the works were completed in January to create a new synthetic pitch, and since then the community development trust  have been successful in grant funding bids of 130k from Climate Challenge Fund a further £25K from Community Energy Scotland and £20k from assorted extras  ( add this to the original £85k and you will quickly work out who has brought in the most money to the partnership)

Despite countless meetings with the local authority 6 months later there is still no sign of a lease, no one is running the facility, we are effectively squatting there, they have reduced the lease term from 50 years to 25 years and have imposed conditions upon us that their own subsidised leisure company didn’t have, I could go on and on!!

We are close to Linwood Development Trust too, hundreds of members, a community plan in place, a consultation exercise which spoke to over 3000 people and the council officer in charge of property told them their plans for the future were ‘simply aspirations ’

All the chat about community control etc, hmmmmm, we are exhausted with the process, business plans no one reads, working full time, attending endless meetings, community engagement, we were even expected to pay for the council project manager to manage the works on the facility – so the community pay the council to do the work on a community facility which they are actually paid to do through our taxes

Phew,

Rant over

Community activist from Beith 

Names of individuals have been removed

Saturday Guardian . Money 7/7/12

The banks are “shit”. According to Dave Fishwick, a Burnley businessman who has made millions as the biggest minibus supplier in Britain, “all they have done is shit on people”. It’s a crude assessment, but it’s one probably now shared by millions as the Barclays scandal unfolds and NatWest picks up the pieces from its service meltdown.

As he drives round his home town, all Fishwick sees are the relics of an industrial past, boarded-up shops and one To Let sign after another. But unlike almost everyone else, he has done something about it. In a unique model, that links savers in his home town earning paltry interest on their deposits with local businesses starved of cash, Fishwick has opened “Bank of Dave”. It’s already lending £25,000 a week, with hundreds of happy local customers and many more on the waiting list.

Pensioners earn 5% on their money – better than any best-buy deal on offer from the high street banks – while small business borrowers pay 8.9% to 14.9% a year interest, or less than the rates often charged by conventional banks.

All profits go to charity. “This is not about adding more zeroes to my net wealth. After all, you can only drive one car at a time or go on one holiday at a time. Sometimes you just have to stand up and make a difference.”

It’s not really called Bank of Dave, despite Fishwick’s best efforts. It’s the Burnley Savings and Loans and it will stay that way until City regulators, who have approved only one new bank in the last 100 years, grant the maverick 41-year-old a banking licence.

It will be a Herculean task, and not just because there are 8,000 pages of forms he has to fill in. Documentary makers for a Channel 4 series starting next week followed Fishwick around the City of London last year as he tried to make his case – with results that were as depressing as they were, perhaps, predictable.

One City expert after another battered and blunted Fishwick’s ambition. “They told me that if I use the word deposit or say I’m a bank then I will go to prison. Yet not one single banker in the City, the people who have pocketed millions in bonuses and let us all down so badly, has ended up in prison. God forbid that I should try to offer pensioners 5% interest.”

David Buik of City brokers BGC Partners, swiftly dismissed the idea of Bank of Dave obtaining a licence, saying: “You don’t have a chance.”

Another expert told him that, in the past, “if you went to the right school and had the right parents you might be considered a fit and proper person to go into the banking industry … there is no evidence you are.”

But there’s no bitterness from Fishwick, whose cheeky chappie, straight-talking Northerner schtick appears to come direct from central casting, although it’s no less real for that.

“I was bullied when I was 12 to 13 but then I started to fight back and learnt you can beat the bullies.”

The idea for the “bank” was sparked by the sudden withdrawal of bank loans to his customers in 2009 that almost wrecked Fishwick’s minibus firm. His own firm’s balance sheet was fine, but the small businesses who make up the bulk of his buyers found they could no longer obtain finance. “All of a sudden it just stopped. The banks kept declining my customers. The customers weren’t doing anything differently and were still able to repay. It was the banks who were having problems, and lowering the bar.”

So Fishwick started lending his own cash to minibus buyers, on his own terms. After six months, and with not a single customer defaulting on their payments, it struck him that running a bank couldn’t really be that difficult.

But, in reality, the hurdles are enormous. Obtaining a consumer credit licence to lend is relatively straightforward – after all, it’s the lender who is putting their money at risk. But obtaining a deposit-taking licence is an altogether different matter. Regulators are understandably concerned that any business seeking to take deposits from the public meets strict criteria, above all the ability to repay on demand.

In Fishwick’s case, he was told he needed to keep a minimum of £10m in reserve. “They said I needed that amount in reserve but that I could never, ever use it. How come? Surely it should be pro-rata to the size of what you’re doing?”

Yet he managed to open for business in September 2011. “The world and his wife were telling me I couldn’t be a bank if I didn’t have a banking licence, that preserve of the stinking rich and the banking elite. I was determined to show that I could,” he said in a book he has written on his experiences.

So how did he do it? He rented a vacant shop in Keirby Walk in the town centre for under £100 a week, determined not to have the huge overheads that traditional banks pass on to customers. He gave his time for free, as did local enthusiasts who helped paint, decorate and fit out the branch. Above the entrance it says Bank on Dave! but it’s an advertising slogan, not the firm’s legal name.

He could have opted to open a credit union, but he feels they remain hamstrung by rules and regulations about who, where and how they can lend. Instead, Fishwick adopted a peer-to-peer crowdfunding model, of the type pioneered by Zopa.com. It’s why he talks about “achieving” a 5% interest, rather than paying it as interest on a deposit.

As his website explains: “You lend your savings to a borrower, and that borrower then becomes responsible for the paying of the loans. Burnley Savings and Loans does the administration around this and is responsible for vetting applicants for loans.” So, legally speaking, savers are not actually putting down a deposit in BS&L, they are just being channelled by it to someone who needs the money as a loan.

Savers are allowed to lend from £50 to £1,000 on 30-day notice, or up to £15,000 with one year’s notice. There’s no protection through the Financial Services Compensation Scheme so savers have to rely on Fishwick. Every £1 put in, he personally guarantees. In other words, he puts down £1 of his own cash for every £1 brought in by a customer. Borrowers are credit checked in the usual way through agencies such as Equifax.

His borrowers are not, he insists, the more desperate types who would otherwise resort to payday loan merchants. “We’re all about helping real businesses. I had an accountant who came to us needing to borrow £10,000, as he was buying his partner out. Yet, even though it meant his income would rise and his record was impeccable, the banks wouldn’t lend him the money. So we did. If a local accountant in Nelson (Lancashire) can’t borrow from a bank, what hope does Mark the builder or Gary the plumber have?”

But has it all been about the TV cameras? Fishwick’s layer upon layer of northern grittiness versus southern sniffiness will be grating for some. His assertion in interviews that the borrowing rate is 8.9% to 14.9% is also a little bit cheeky. That’s only if you calculate it as a flat rate (ie, you pay £89 interest on a £1,000 loan over one year). On an APR basis, used by the banks, the interest rate on his loans is a decidedly less attractive 17.4% to 29%. But, to be fair to him, that is stated upfront on the BS&L website.

“This is not about trying to be bigger than the banks or about lining my pockets. Someone, somewhere has to take the first step and take them on,” said Fishwick. He dreams of many more independent savings and loans across the UK. “Other people up and down the country can do the same as me. We could have something like Burnley Savings and Loans in every community. You just need like-minded individuals to come together.”

But if you’re dreaming of 5% interest, guaranteed pound-for-pound by Fishwick, dream on. The Burnley Savings and Loans is open for business, but having reached its £25,000-a-week target, is only accepting new customers on to a waiting list. Unlike Northern Rock, people are queuing to put money in, rather than take it out.

• Bank of Dave starts next Thursday 12 July, 9pm on Channel 4. A book to accompany the series is available now (Virgin) £12.99.

Rationale  – The New Road: Charting Scotland’s inspirational communities. Carol Craig

In the face of huge challenges such as climate change, resource depletion, financial melt-down, globalisation, falling living standards, rising inequality and mental health problems,  it is becoming increasingly clear that western societies will have to make huge changes. In short, we cannot go on in the same vein: we need to envision and enact a radically different future.

Scotland is well-placed in some respects to make a significant contribution to this new thinking: we played a major part in the 18th century Enlightenment and many of the factors which facilitated Scotland’s leading role are still in place. Namely, we are a small, networked society with high levels of education and commitment to social improvement where it is easy to have conversations across subject disciplines. 

In the Enlightenment period Scotland had ‘settled politics’ thus allowing energy to be channelled into non-constitutional issues. This is not true today. The case for and against Independence may absorb a lot of the country’s intellectual energy. But then again it may release it – giving Scots the first opportunity to really consider what we want Scotland to become independent for. In short, the independence debate may encourage us to consider what kind of society we want to be. 

This juncture in western culture and Scottish political culture requires outlets for new ideas across a whole range of topics – environmental, social, organisational, political, cultural, psychological, economic and spiritual – as well as new frameworks and ways of conceptualising.

Postcards from Scotland aims to help develop this new thinking in a readable and accessible format and publicise, to a much greater audience, some of the projects in Scotland which are already aiming to help bring about a new way of living.

When I finished working on the new edition of The Scots’ Crisis of Confidence last year I felt a certain sadness that I had come to the end of my working relationship with Derek Rodger from Argyll Publishing who I found a joy to work with.  He had published The Tears that Made the Clyde and then proposed to republish my first book. So as I handed over the last rewritten chapters of The Scots’ Crisis of Confidence I wondered if there might be another book that we could work on. 

I was increasingly interested in materialist values but didn’t think this a particularly likely topic for Argyll nor did  I envisage myself writing a substantial book on the topic. So this is why I started to think about a series of small books relevant to Scotland but also about the big issues of our time – hence the series we have announced today called Postcards from Scotland.

So when I started to think about this book series I knew I did not want a series of books written by isolated, abstracted thinkers sitting at their desk somewhere divorced from reality. I wanted a series which was more ’embodied’ and connected to human experience. I also didn’t want to have a precise template which would then dictate the shape of each volume. No I was keen to have a series that had some recognisable form but which also had space for individuality. After all few things in the natural world are consistent; diversity is the norm. 

I also wanted to put collaboration and relationships at the heart of this series. This is why we are so keen on the idea of having at least two people contributing to each volume. Ideally this will be an older person with a young person who makes up for their lack of writing skills or expertise in the area with their energy and freshness of perspective

As there is very little money in publishing I was also aware that most of the contributors would have to participate knowing that they would get no financial recompense whatsoever for their involvement. The Centre is putting some money into the first six volumes and all authors’ royalties will come to us to invest in future books. 

Very early on I knew that one of the books I wanted to commission would recount some of the great work which is currently happening in Scottish communities – particularly environmental and social enterprise projects.  The problem was who could I commission to do this?  Who could I ask to go round Scotland visiting projects and then writing this up when (other than expenses) they would not get paid one penny? 

This is when I realised that the answer lay close to home – my husband Alf Young to be precise.  Alf is often described as the best living Scottish journalist. He is particularly gifted at writing about what is going on in organisations and many readers used to love his weekly profiles of Scottish businesses. He is now semi-retired and so has some free time. However, I am still not sure if he would have accepted the commission if I hadn’t then added another dimension to my request. Would he undertake this journey round some of Scotland’s most inspirational community projects with our son Ewan? Ewan is passionate about sustainable development. He has a degree in the subject, lives a low carbon life in a cabin in the woods and works for the Ullapool Community Trust. This is Ewan’s world. He could help choose the projects and would be a knowledgeable and helpful travelling companion and collaborator in the writing phase. As soon as this was agreed the title became obvious: A father and a son go on a journey – that sounds like ‘the Road’, except it is a hopeful journey hence the title ‘The New Road’.

The Dept of Work and Pensions has published proposals for providing around £50 million in grant funding to credit unions If implemented, the cash will be offered to a ‘carefully’ selected group of credit unions, for lending and expansion – provided that they comply with changes to their business and culture, recommended in the feasibility study. 

Credit unions are not-for-profit, fully autonomous financial co-operatives which are committed to the service of members, promoting small savings and access to low cost credit. The DWP proposals, which are at total variance with these objectives, have not been welcomed by many Scottish credit unions. 

The report recommends, among other things, that the rate of interest charged on loans should be 3% per month; currently most Scottish credit unions charge a maximum of 1% per month on the outstanding loan balance. Its authors believe that interest rates must increase to at least 3%, if credit unions are to be sustainable. 

They ignore the evidence in Scotland of many large, successful credit unions which have never exceeded the standard 1% per month – St Johnstone, Newarthill, Castlemilk and Cranhill all spring to mind. 

While regulated by the FSA, credit unions are free to exercise control of their own policies and procedures. It is a model that has served credit unions well throughout the world. 

More people, across all income levels, are currently turning to credit unions as financial providers because they appreciate and trust their ethical nature. It is the duty of Government to provide a reasonable standard of living for all of its citizens and to address issues of social and financial exclusion. 

The DWP is the appropriate department through which to attempt change. However, credit unions should not become a vehicle at the disposal of Government to utilise in the process. 

Undoubtedly, there is a greater empathy within the credit union movement for those on low incomes than we would expect to find among other financial service providers.

However, capacity to repay is a consistent criterion for ethical lenders such as credit unions. Adding to the debt burden of the impoverished will not solve their difficulties. Government has shown little urgency in tackling the exorbitant rates, legally charged by home credit providers and the pay-day loans industry. 

Global economies are still reeling from a banking crisis which grew out of sub-prime lending at high interest rates to the poor in the United States. I fear that the Westminster Government will seek unilaterally to re-brand credit unions solely as instruments for tackling financial exclusion. In my view, this would be commercially damaging to an image which our members have been carefully nurturing in Scotland; that credit unions should attract and serve members from across all income groups in the Community. 

When Labour came to power in 1997, Chancellor Gordon Brown, established a ‘Credit union Task Force’ and appointed Fred Goodwin to chair it. 

The Coalition has demonstrated a remarkably consistent insight in its selection. To advise the Credit Union Movement on interest rates, it chose as Head of the Project Steering Committee, Deanna Oppenheimer, a senior executive of Barclays Bank.

John Patton is Secretary of the Scottish League of Credit Unions (SLCU). He writes in a personal capacity.

Intro Paper for: “A Policy on Architecture and Placemaking for Scotland – Public Consultation 2012”

The Scottish Government is undertaking a public consultation to inform the shape of future policy. It was launched on 29 May 2012 and responses should be submitted to the Scottish Government by 7 September 2012.

The architecture and design industry contributes about £1.3 billion per year to the economy of Scotland. The design of buildings and places supports the economic and social well being of all our communities as well as mitigating the effects of climate change. As such good quality architecture, urban design and place making is pivotal in shaping Scotland and it communities. The consultation poses a number of related issues as well as seeking comments on any other relevant areas that have not been specifically identified.

Click here to view consultation paper.

Big Lottery press release 

Funded by the Scottish Government and delivered in partnership by the Big Lottery Fund and Highlands and Islands Enterprise, the new Scottish Land Fund today (29th June) opens its doors for business.

With £6 million to invest over the next three years, the Scottish Land Fund will support rural communities throughout Scotland to become more resilient and sustainable through the ownership and management of land and land assets.

The Big Lottery Fund and Highlands and Islands Enterprise have developed a programme which will provide not only grant assistance but also expert guidance to help Scotland’s rural communities realise their ambitions of community ownership.

Launching the Scottish Land Fund at Crossgates Community Woodland in Fife, Environment Minister Stewart Stevenson, said: “Crossgates Community Woodland is an excellent example of what can be achieved when a local community, with a clear idea of how best to develop land for the benefit of its community, is supported to buy land. And today is an historic day for community land ownership in Scotland – I’m delighted to announce that our Scottish Land Fund, which will empower rural communities to help them acquire land, is now open for applications.  Both Big Lottery Fund Scotland and HIE will ensure the fund makes the best use of existing resources and expertise to maximise the land fund’s potential.”

The Scottish Land Fund has £1 million  to spend by the end of March 2013, £2 million by the end of March 2014 and £3 million by the end of March 2015. Groups can apply for grants of between £10,000 and £750,000.

 The Scottish Land Fund is a competitive single stage application process. If you are interested in making an application you should contact BIG’s Enquiries Line on 0300 123 7110 or email us at enquiries.scotland@biglotteryfund.org.uk to discuss your project idea.

You can also find out more information about the Scottish Land Fund here.

Citizen spotlight shines on West Lothian Council 

Extract from Governance International website.

Citizen Inspections: 

The project aims to achieve three primary outcomes: 

• better designed services that meet customer needs and preferences;

• community inclusion;

• and a greater level of co-production between the council and the people living in West Lothian.  

The initiative was launched because the Chief Executive championed it as a way to strengthen customer focus throughout the organisation and as a practical mechanism to involve customers in review and redesign of services. 

West Lothian Council has a strong sense of the community in which it operates and has developed multiple and varied forms of consultation and engagement over the years. It has also been striving to find new ways to engage citizens in the process of delivering and improving services.   Since 2005, West Lothian Council has collected survey data (as part of a standardised approach across all services) on customer satisfaction levels with council services, in particular related to the quality, choice and accessibility of service provision.  This type of data has been valuable as a useful indicator of the local council’s ability to meet the basic needs of customers. However, its use was limited because it restricted customer involvement to commenting on and providing feedback on services received.  The council wanted a more involved form of engagement, where the customers actually directed improvement activity.  

In 2011 the council reviewed the corporate approach to community engagement as part of the development of a new Improvement Strategy, and as part of its overall strategy to be a progressive and inclusive council.  This identified the customer-led inspection (CLI) process as a new engagement method, involving customers in challenging and reviewing services. 

The aim was to complete two citizen-led inspections in the summer of 2011 that would: 

1. give citizens a voice in the shaping and prioritisation of services;

2. inspire confidence in the community that West Lothian Council operates openly and transparently and is accountable for the services delivered and the use of resources;

3. manage the organisation’s reputation in the local community by engaging directly with citizens and involving them in improving services;

4. establish a two-way dialogue that will assist the building of a stronger, mutually beneficial working relationship between the council and the community forming a model that could be replicated across all service areas;

5. ensure priorities and decisions are driven by customer needs through a forum for the decision makers to hear alternative viewpoints.

West Lothian Council set up a project team of 2 members, led by a Depute Chief Executive as the project sponsor, each working part-time on the process.  Because it was delivered within existing resource, the two project team members were selected for their knowledge of this type of activity (one in customer participation, one in quality assurance), as opposed to bringing in dedicated resource.  It is anticipated that, as the project matures, the inspection team will increase their control and autonomy, with a corresponding reduction in the council resource required to deliver inspection activity.  At present each inspection requires around 8-10 FTE days from council staff.  This includes recruiting, training and supporting the team. 

It was clear to the project team that the process had to be robust and challenging, but also accessible and understandable for the citizen inspectors. Furthermore, the project team had to ensure that it could be replicated across the authority.  In particular, if public money was to be used to implement improvements from the inspection recommendations then it was important to ensure they were structured and based on facts. The project team developed a robust inspection process with a comprehensive inspector’s toolkit of materials, including the creation of an inspection framework, adapted from the EFQM Excellence model. This involved a 5-point rating system (1 unsatisfactory, 2 weak, 3 adequate, 4 good and 5 excellent). Citizen-led inspections were also capped at 6 days (not including training) to make it more convenient for the citizens and minimise any negative impact on service delivery.  For each inspection, timescales are agreed between the service and the inspection team to identify the best dates and times for both parties. 

Furthermore, the team at West Lothian Council created a bespoke 2-day training course to provide citizen inspectors with the skills, knowledge and capabilities to carry out the inspection and reporting activity effectively and the confidence to critically evaluate services. The training was designed to be engaging and participative, and focused on providing the inspectors with an understanding of the council; and knowledge of the inspection process, framework and scoring, report writing and how to deliver feedback. It also explained the inspection techniques available to them, such as interviewing; shadowing; mystery shopping; desk top audits; surveys and focus groups and site visits.  

At the early stages of the development of the CLIs, it was important that the areas to be inspected captured the public interest.  Therefore, following a difficult winter period and a challenging school placement process in 2010, winter maintenance and pupil placement were selected as the first inspections. 

The council was keen for inspectors to come from a representative sample of people from the community. As a result, it launched a multi-media information and recruitment campaign. This involved: 

• the creation of CLI pages on the council website;

• articles in the local media and council newsletters;

• Twitter and Facebook updates; direct mailings and emails to participants in existing forums and community groups, including the parent councils, tenants groups, older and younger people forums and the disability and race forums.

Interest built as information was cascaded through the different media.  There was a high volume of telephone and email enquiries and an open evening was held. The intention was to raise awareness across the community but it was recognised that the initiative should start from a low base to build experience and knowledge of the process, on the part of both the inspectors and the council. The recruitment generated 35 notes of interest/applications, from which 15 were placed on a Register of Interest.  From the Register, 8 people were trained, making 2 inspection teams of 4 people.  These 8 people ranged in age fromearly 30s to early 60s, with three-quarters being female.  There were representatives from 4 different towns in West Lothian, with 5 inspectors coming from Livingston, the largest settlement.  For future inspections, the council aims to ensure balanced representation on the Citizen Inspection register and particularly hopes to ensure more involvement from young people through greater engagement with the Youth Congress in West Lothian. 

The citizen inspectors are volunteers, receiving no payment and are only compensated for out-of-pocket expenses, such as travel costs.  

The winter maintenance and pupil placement services were fully engaged in the development of the process and welcomed the inspectors, giving them full access to any information, staff or sites that were requested. This open acceptance was in large part due to West Lothian Council’s strong culture of self-assessment and mature, honest critical evaluation of practice and performance.   

The two inspection teams completed their inspections in June and July 2011.  Across the inspection process the teams reviewed hundreds of pieces of information, interviewed Deputy Chief Executives, managers, staff, partners and customers, conducted on site visits and carried out research and online mystery shopping. The teams each produced a feedback report that critically evaluated the services, providing challenging scores and recommendations for future improvement. These reports have since been used to create improvement actions that make significant changes to service provision. 

Improvements to winter maintenance include increasing salt storage, developing new gritting routes with greater clarity on prioritisation of routes and developing a more effective communication strategy for periods of severe weather. 

The pupil placement process will in future involve a simplified pre-school admission policy and guidelines, improved quality of information provided to customers, strengthened links with the council’s contact centre and newly-developed customer satisfaction performance indicators (as the inspectors felt there was a lack of cost/efficiency performance indicators that were meaningful to customers, in terms of demonstrating that the service provides value for money). 

Open letter response from Scottish League of Credit Unions  to DWP’s  ‘Credit Union Expansion Project’ Feasibility Study Report 

To whom it may concern 

The Scottish League of Credit Unions welcomes the initiative to “examine the feasibility of expanding and modernising credit unions”. However, after much reading and careful consideration, we cannot support the overall position of the report as we believe the assertions contained within are based on misrepresentations of the credit union sector, including a serious misconception of un-sustainability. 

Furthermore, we believe that acceptance and progression of the report recommendations conflicts with the credit union co-operative operating principles of Democratic Member Control and Autonomy & Independence, and we therefore oppose the ‘case for investment’ and reject ‘the way forward’ as suggested in the report. 

As an alternative way forward, the Scottish League of Credit Unions invites the Secretary of State, who commissioned the report of the Project Steering Committee, to engage in further meaningful discussion in order that the future expansion and modernisation of the credit union movement is determined directly by credit unions and not conceived and imposed by stakeholder organisations. 

To aid such discussion, please see some questions/comments/considerations, listed in the sequential order as they appear in the body of the report, and on which we welcome and await your response. 

Kind regards 

Dermot O’Neill 

CEO, Scottish League of Credit Unions

One of SLCU’s members, Johnstone Credit Union has submitted a response to the proposals. Tom Kelly, who has managed this credit union since it was formed in 1979, makes a compelling case in favour of community based  credit unions . Read Tom’s response here. 

Guardian Newspapers, 20th June

The community activist credited with opening Iain Duncan Smith’s eyes to poverty and inspiring him to embrace compassionate conservatism has called on the minister to resign. 

In a sharp attack on Duncan Smith, Bob Holman sets out how far the work and pensions secretary has drifted from his commitment to tackling poverty, and urges him to leave office. 

Duncan Smith’s visit to the Easterhouse estate in Glasgow in 2002, when he was leader of the Conservative party, sparked his determination to tackle societal breakdown. Holman took him around the estate’s community project, staffed by unemployed volunteers. The occasion became known as the Easterhouse epiphany and in 2003 Duncan Smith announced he wanted the Conservatives to become the “party for the poor”. 

“It is fully recorded that he was shocked by its social conditions. Less well known is that he responded to poor people in a positive manner,” Holman writes. “He met families on low incomes who coped well with their children … I thought him a decent man.” 

In 2004 Duncan Smith set up the Centre for Social Justice thinktank to analyse the roots of poverty and come up with strategies for addressing it. “More than anyone else Bob Holman has opened my eyes to the problems and pockets of poverty across the UK,” Duncan Smith wrote in an introduction to a CSJ report. 

Since becoming minister, Holman believes Duncan Smith has been constrained by the pressure to make cuts. “Within two years he was claiming that poverty was not directly due to a lack of money but was the result of bad parenting, drug and alcohol addiction, laziness, and the breakup of families,” Holman writes. 

“When I went to Westminster last year to challenge him, he acknowledged that he was under pressure and had to make trade-offs and compromises. My understanding is that to divert blame away from his policy failures he directed it at the poor themselves.” 

He suggests that Duncan Smith should resign and “become a campaigner for the end of poverty”. A spokesman for the Department for Work and Pensions said there would be no comment.