Author: STV Local

Leithers are on the brink of being able to fly their historic coat of arms again almost 100 years after ownership was lost to locals when the Burgh was merged with Edinburgh.

Leith ward Councillor Rob Munn has revealed that a division of the Scottish Courts has written to tell him that Leith will once be allowed to use the coat of arms freely after a gap of 92 years. It follows a long running campaign, led in part by local resident and historian Alex Wilson, who has drummed up support for this campaign from various organisations to see the Leith flag return home.

According to the Lord Lyon’s office, the Arms of the Burgh of Leith were first granted in 1889, based on seals dating from the 16th century. But when Leith became part of the fabric of Edinburgh it left a vacuum as to just who should have the rights to the Arms.

Granting the rights to use the Coat of Arms to the local community council was looked at, but because Leith was served by more than one community council the idea was abandoned. The breakthrough came when Leith Academy was granted a coat of arms by the Court of Lord Lyon in 1952 to feature on the blazer of the school uniform.

Mr Wilson seized on this opportunity as a chance to try and find a solution to the long running problem. And the biggest boost came in June 2010 – the 450th anniversary of Leith Academy – when the school was allowed to use the Arms as the basis for their own design which includes books at the bottom of the shield.

This flag representing Leith was flown above the City of Edinburgh City Chambers during the week when the school received the right to the flag. But, the mission was not complete for Mr Wilson until Leith as a whole regained the ability to use the Arms properly.

With the support of Councillor Munn and a petition signed by 582 people the process began to reinstate the flag under the charge of Leith Neighbourhood Partnership. Mr Wilson said: “It is the right of the people of Leith to fly the flag unrestrained and unprohibited. Its history stretches back 1000 years and from then on was a cohesive force in developing Leith as it was.

“It was the premier port in Scotland and was cosmopolitan as a hub of all the northern European cities. We do ourselves down in Scotland by not celebrating our history, I think it is important but it is also a very good read and it needs to be out there and visible. Having the flag will also act to re-brand and remarket Leith, it could be a very different place in a few months time.”

Councillor Munn explained that the desire to have the coat of arms returned to Leith has stretched back many years and praised the efforts of Sandy Campbell the former chair of Leith Festival as well as Noel Spencer for their efforts in bringing the issue to the fore.

He said: “It is a symbolic thing but some people might say, ‘why bother’ but as someone who is not originally from Leith it is my home and part of the city that I represent and I like how older Leithers as well as younger value their identity and you can see it in lots of different ways. In the last ten years or so the creative identity of Leith has really grown through Sandy Campbell’s efforts to build up Leith Festival, the Leither magazine started up as well as Leith FM. All of these things can help to reinvigorate Leith.”

The return of the flag to Leith is also hotly anticipated by local businesses. The owner of the Victoria Park House Hotel on Ferry Road is Davide De Gaetano whose father is Italian and his mother is a born and bred Leither from Constitution Street.

He said: “I’ve got three flag poles and I’m just waiting to put something up there. One will definitely be the Leith flag. In business you need a sense of community which is lacking in other areas of society. It’s about promoting your area.”

The Lyon Clerk from the Court of Lord Lyon confirmed that the coat of arms are now those of Leith Neighbourhood Partnership. She said: “They are not precisely the same as those of the former Leith borough. That is because they cannot be reinstated if it is not to the same organisation or derivative of it.”

Throughout history, flags have been put to many uses. The earliest flags assisted military coordination on the battlefield. Over time their use evolved into various forms of signalling and identification – most commonly by nation states and the military as potent symbols of patriotism, inspiring loyalty and acts of bravery.  Over time, flags of more local significance have been lost -many as a result of the old historic burgh councils being dismantled.  These old, but not entirely forgotten flags can help restore civic pride.

Paisley based community drumming group The Buddy Beat has won a national voluntary art award. They have been announced as the winners of The Scottish Epic Awards 2011 for their inspiring film “Keep the Beat…Our Journey in Rhythm.” To view film, click here.

The Buddy Beat is an adult drumming group for people with mental health issues, born out of a music making social inclusion project at Paisley’s Dykebar Hospital and was created by Lead Occupational Therapist Jeanette Allan, Karen Auld, Senior Occupational Therapist and Community Musician Dr. Jane Bentley. Created to promote social inclusion, its aim has always been to involve people at all stages of their mental health journeys, from the hospital ward to the wider community.

Buddy Beat group has gone from strength to strength and have played at more than 100 events from as far as London to Edinburgh. The group decided to tell the story of its members by means of a short video documentary, hoping this would not only tell their own story, but encourage others to get involved in arts activity for the sake of their own mental health.

The entire process took five months to complete and the film was privately shown to the group in December 2010 and then at a premiere event and in April 2011 attended by around 100 invited guests including councilors, health workers, family & friends.

The film has taken on a life of its own, leading to further partnerships between the group and several organizations. It has been sent out in newsletters and shown at conferences (of both health and arts organizations) and used in professional training to broaden engagement with arts practice.

Jane Bentley, Community Musician, responded to the award: “Buddy Beat was initially set up as a social inclusion project –– and you can’t get more inclusive than winning a national arts award! It’s a real testament to the tenacity and enthusiasm of the group members, who funded the film project by their own efforts, as well as developing the courage to tell their own stories.”

Buddy Beat member Tom Chalmers was heavily involved in the film making process. “I have never done anything like that before. There was a tremendous amount to take in, I was interviewer, interviewee, narrator, location manager, producer, wardrobe- you name it I did it! When I first heard about the awards I was told we had made the final six which stunned me, but then when we got that magic call to say that we had won The Scottish Epic Award I just couldn’t believe it and I was on such a high. My head was somewhere between Saturn and Mars, and I don’t think I have come back down to orbit yet. When I see the film I am immensely proud of it, and it was the willingness of my fellow drummers to take part that makes it so special. Like the rest of our great group, I am totally thrilled at this honour.”

Jeanette Allan, Lead OT is “Delighted that Buddy Beat has gained the recognition it deserves and is especially as the award is in main stream arts not mental health! The Buddy Beat model has been highlighted as a good practice example in a report ‘Realising Potential: our Own and Others’ being produced by Scottish Government. The model has also been adopted in Dundee, a city that now hosts its own group now called ‘Drumdee’. Buddy Beat are musicians in their own right, raise awareness by sharing their recovery stories and are an amazing group of people who continue to support new people into the group.  Some members are now workshop assistants coming back into Dykebar Hospital to deliver sessions.”

Tom reported that the Epic Award Night in London on January 30th was something very special. “It was a real honor on behalf of my drumming friends to accept this award and it feels like we have been recognised for all the outreach work we do in the community. It is something we will never forget.”

Apparently over half the adult population are active participants in the arts. That means over 2 million Scots are actually doing something arty (or crafty) on a regular basis ie more than just buying tickets at the box office.  Next month sees a week-long celebration of the rich diversity of arts and craft activity that goes on all round the country – often under the national radar.  Groups like Buddy Beat from Paisley who have just scooped a national award for their work.

Despite stock transfers to community controlled housing associations, Glasgow Housing Association remains one of the UK’s largest landlords (45,000 tenants).  Often criticised for being remote and unresponsive to its tenants, GHA is clearly trying to change. A simple but radical idea has been trialled in four area offices.  Frontline staff have been actively encouraged to respond with a YES (rather than NO) to any queries from tenants. Each member of staff is empowered with a small personal budget. The impact has been transformational.

GHA is one of the UK’s largest Housing Associations.  It currently owns and manages 45,000 domestic properties and provides a factoring service for a further 24,000 customers.   

Over the past 3 years the organisation witnessed a significant improvement in its performance  involving statutory performance indicators; employee satisfaction levels and customer satisfaction levels – with customer satisfaction levels of between 80% and 83% being recorded.  However by 2011, the trend in improving customer satisfaction was slowing and disparity was seen in satisfaction levels in its customer groupings with  both the 16-44 age group and also BME tenants less satisfied than its older tenant base.  This was despite considerable effort on the organisation’s part using a range of tried and tested training and induction methods to train staff and key suppliers to adopt a customer perspective and act accordingly. 

Between July and October 2011 a ground breaking initiative was undertaken by the GHA to generate a step change in the mindset of four teams of its employees with face to face contact with tenant/customers.  The Think Yes Experiment was designed to move employees into a “Yes We Can” and “Yes We Will” mindset. 

Liberating employees with a direct interface with customers was a key element of the experiment, one introduced without extensive pre-training or comprehensive guidance; but where employees reacted positively and embraced their new role.  Creating emotional engagement between staff and tenants drove improvements in staff AND customer satisfaction to exceptional levels in a short space of time.

A Referendum Road Show – taking the arguments out onto the highways and byways of Scotland

There is a danger that the debate around Scotland’s most contentious political and constitutional issue in living memory will be contained within the sterile environment of television studios and the parliamentary chambers of Westminster and Holyrood.   In response to this legitimate concern, the establishment figures within ‘civil society’ – SCVO, various think tanks, the churches, STUC etc – are trying to extend that debate into a wider national discussion which they have called The Future of Scotland. Whether or not they are successful in stimulating that discussion within their respective memberships, we can be fairly confident that it will not extend to the average man/woman in the street. The general population will be left to make what they can of the respective arguments for and against independence (and everything in between) from whichever media outlets they care to use.

Scottish Community Alliance wishes to coordinate a national road show of ‘events’ designed to explore what all the various options on the table would actually mean for the daily lives of Scotland’s communities and whether they would lead to the realisation (or otherwise) of local plans and aspirations. It would be crucial that this initiative was not perceived in any way to be advocating any particular side of the argument – simply encouraging that debate and exploring what lies behind some of the rhetoric. The road show would operate at a variety of levels but predominantly and ideally it would take place at the most local level possible – the village hall, the miners’ welfares, the mothers and toddler groups at the local community centre. The precise format of how the events would run has still to be established but one proposal is that there should be two tiers of event – one being a series of larger scale events with a focus on a particular theme (housing, health, education etc) and the other being much more local with a focus on specifically local priorities ( a community plan)  so that the invited speakers are required to contextualise their arguments (as opposed to just running through the well-rehearsed and more general arguments)   

Lesley Riddoch, broadcaster and political commentator,  is keen to become involved and has several ideas as to how it could happen. For instance, each event could be recorded with edited extracts posted through YouTube and other social media which would over time become an evolving picture of this national discourse. She has indicated she could recruit a ‘stable’ of well-known media folk that would commit to chairing the events which would add to the profile of the road show programme.  This initiative needs to be resourced. It would require a part time member of staff to coordinate the programme of events for the next two years plus a budget to hold the events and to publicise them. A number of potential funders have been contacted although it remains to be seen whether funders are prepared to support such a venture.

To visit the website for the Code or to sign up as a supporter, click here.

Senscot has created a new code of conduct for social enterprises, claiming previous guidance set the bar too low. The code is designed to be self-regulating, with members deciding whether other members should be signatories.

Each organisation that joins must have two sponsors from the social enterprise community.

Among its guidance, it rules out the payment of profits to shareholders and says that every social enterprise should be set up with a clause that would transfer all its assets to another social enterprise or charity should it be wound up. It also says a social enterprise should be a good employer, with a pay ratio between the highest and lowest paid staff of no more than 5:1.

The code has been launched as an alternative to the Social Enterprise Mark, which is used as an identifier for social enterprises across the UK, but which Senscot feels is not sufficiently rigorous.

Aidan Pia, executive director of Senscot, said organisations in Scotland felt that when the Social Enterprise Mark was introduced in the UK as a means of identifying social enterprises “the bar had been set too low. The mark allows anything up to half of profits to be paid out to shareholders and owners in the form of dividends.”

Senscot had initially supported the mark during its trial period, when only 35 per cent of profits could be distributed, but withdrew when this was increased.

Aidan Pia said: “In England, in particular, there has been a lobby to keep definitions blurred, with the result that essentially private enterprises are masquerading as social enterprises and devaluing our brand. In response to this, the Scottish social enterprise community has set down the values and behaviours by which we recognise each other.”

Lucy Findlay, managing director of the Social Enterprise Mark Company, said her organisation welcomed the code and that it was broadly in line with the mark’s criteria.

“Any social enterprises that adhere to the new code would automatically qualify for the mark,” she said.

Peter Braniff, who manages Social Employers in Ayrshire (SEA), a social enterprise placing people with learning disabilities in paid employment, said the code would strengthen the sector.

“There is too much interpretation of how a social enterprise should operate and this brings it in line,” he said. “Some get too business like, putting profits before motive and that’s just wrong. Hopefully it will be as successful as the Fundraising Standards Board’s voluntary code which has been a proven success. Self-governing codes are always the most successful as it’s basically a democratic consensus instead of prescription.”

The move comes a few weeks after First Minister Alex Salmond pledged Scotland would become an international hub for social enterprise, announcing a new scheme to support global social business.

Salmond said he wanted to “continue to provide the most supportive environment in the world for social enterprise”.

To view a short video explaining the concept click here.

The Wisdom Council is an approach for facilitating whole-system change in very large systems — like corporations, cities, unions, professional associations and government agencies. With little cost or time, it promises to establish a system-wide “choice-creating” conversation, where everyone thinks together on the most difficult issues. The process:

• Builds trust and community

• Creates new options, and develops near-unanimous shared visions 

• Sparks a participative management style … and a Circle Organization

• Brings people together with one voice

What does a Wisdom Council look like?

Every four months or so, eight to twelve members of the organization, city or large system are randomly selected to meet for a short period, like two days. This group meets with a “dynamic facilitator” to identify key issues, work on them creatively, and develop a unanimous message. This message has symbolic authority as a voice of everyone, which is presented back to the whole system. The entire system is invited to hear the message, visit about it with others in small groups, and report back their level of support. In practice, we’ve found that most everyone supports both the message generated by the Wisdom Council and the process. 

The point of the Wisdom Council process is to generate a creative, system-wide conversation that reaches specific conclusions, the will to implement them, and builds the spirit of community. The goal is to have everyone talking in a thoughtful, creative, heartfelt way about the big issues and to for near consensus views to emerge. 

In the next three months, a new Council is randomly selected. Each subsequent Wisdom Council is free to choose its own issues, but each cycle tends to build upon what was done previously. Each new Wisdom Council may follow up on previous conclusions, monitor actions, or modify the previous message. Over time the whole system evolves positions that most all support. Action happens voluntarily by individuals or through the normal channels, which might include standing committees, management, or elected officials.

The Wisdom Council has no formal authority, yet the integrity of the process gives it great symbolic weight. It’s a way to utilize diverse perspectives to raise the level of collective intelligence and action that all support.

What makes the Wisdom Council unique?

At first glance the Wisdom Council process seems similar to other forms of democratic councils where randomly selected groups work together on issues and make pronouncements. But these deliberative polls, citizen advisory groups, Citizens Juries, Citizen Assemblies, or citizen deliberative panels use a carefully selected group of people or a stratified sampling, rather than a pure random selection. They work on a pre-selected issue rather than the participants choosing the issue themselves. The process of thinking is “deliberation” where people carefully weigh specific options, rather than “choice-creating,” where people seek creative answers that work for all. They result in a negotiated agreement or a vote, seeking action from the authorities, rather than a unanimous perspective that sparks a conversation among the whole population. And, they are one-time events rather than ongoing. 

The Wisdom Council process empowers each person in the system to become involved and take responsibility for the actions of all.

Where are Wisdom Councils being used?

Wisdom Councils have been facilitated in numerous communities and organizations. From cooperatively-run businesses to large government agencies to cities and states, Wisdom Councils are offering new hope for the future of democracy and self-governance at many levels.

Note Assist Social Capital are working in partnership with Manfred Hellrigl from Austria to bring dynamic facilitation training and Wisdom Councils to Scotland at the end of this year.

The last two days of my trip (18/19th Nov) involved even more rushing around, but thankfully more of it on the brilliant El trains/subway rather than Shanks’ pony. 

First up, Phil Nyden at the Centre for Urban Research & Learning at Loyola University, one of those academics that makes you acutely grateful for education, for allowing people like him to be working collaboratively with communities like those I’ve glimpsed in Chicago. He’s even done some work back here I discovered – for our own Locality member, Birmingham Settlement, which was founded in 1899 in partnership with Chicago’s Association House. 

So we got talking and here are a few of my notes:

Why is the Government resourcing the Community Organisers programme? I try out Toby Blume’s theory that it’s to promote “creative disruption” to local vested interests, especially local authorities. Phil says Johnson’s War on Poverty in the 1960s was a federal intervention aimed to deal with city political systems that were “ossified at best, more often corrupt”. Of course the cities didn’t like it and they closed it down. Those community organisers became heads of non-profits. There was a demographic shift as cities became majority black and a political shift as they elected their first black mayors. The economy was doing well but the cities were starved of resources. Federal government intervention and $$$ have made a difference. But the credibility of elected officials is now at its lowest ebb ever.

One of the important aspects of ABCD (asset based community development) is its focus on land, buildings and money (the things that power is made of). For as long as the community sector spends all its energies on direct service provision, on social support, and on mitigating the impacts of decisions about land, buildings and money, it will never have any power in the proceedings. The sector often does have ‘skin in the game’ but it always plays by someone else’s rules. For me, community organising is a way to make that ‘skin’ real – to bring the mandate to life through mobilising.

We talked about the common ground and differences between development trusts and community development corporations. This has come up over and over during the visit, although because I was focusing on community organising I didn’t explore it properly on the ground. From what I can tell, CDCs have a chequered history with highs and lows a bit too closely attached to mainstream politics and economics for my liking. I think that in general (and it’s a big generalisation) DTs are more independent, agile, community rooted, innovative, less able to rely on aldermen’s handouts or a widespread public programme. The common ground might be the focus on rebuilding the physical neighbourhood and making real gains in facilities and amenities, as part of a commitment to social and environmental justice.

But Phil says CDCs were riding high but never super-strong and many have collapsed. They were focused on affordable housing and understood how to do it in a rising market. What to do with no resources? In El Salvador “NGOs are doing stuff with virtually no resources, stretching super-minimal budgets”. How to tame gentrification? Set up the asset lock when the neighbourhood is down, then buy and build – not housing for the poor but housing people will want to stay in. CURL works on diverse, stable neighbourhoods. Phil says the lock-in has to be founded in organising as well as legal. How do you get the community organising to feel good enough that people will do it over and over – “every generation has to win it again. ”

What about settlement houses? Gentrification is an issue for them too. Should they stay in an area once the low-income people who need them most have been displaced? Provide mixed income services? Or sell and move to where the poor have gone? Association House moved, so did Hull-House. Others stay put and serve a wider catchment of low-income people throughout satellite services.

Just like everybody I met in the States, Phil gave me loads of contacts and resources – only his were sociology books and I feared I may be overweight! But the best thing he gave me was just two words – “grounded theory”. This is apparently a legitimate sociological approach in which “you go in as a trained sociologist [or a trained organiser] with no hypothesis, just a sense of what’s going on, and set out to discover.” All day that resonated. It seemed to fit with the wilful unpredictability of organising, the refusal to bring messages, the rejection of specified outcomes. We need to make this case to our foundations – the grounded theory of grant-making!

Other blogs from Jess Steele on the same trip :  Oodles of Inspiration   All kinds of walking   Generations of organizers  Last day in Chicago

To see a copy of the report click here

“Sharp elbows”: Do the middle-classes have advantages in public service provision and if so how?

Who gets what from local public services has never been such an important and contested issue. Fiscal austerity and the large scale budget cuts across the public sector mean that services are being remodelled, pared back and even deleted. The encouragement of ‘localism’ by the Coalition Government may lead to new forms of service delivery, but it may also lead to some groups securing a bigger share of the remaining cake than they might otherwise have been able to. This report provides a short synthesis of the academic research on how the middle classes fare in relation to local public services – research which was conducted prior to the spending cuts and localism. It addresses concerns in both academic research and in the policy and practice community that a demanding middle class can skew the benefits of local services to their own needs. The report should be of interest to anyone concerned with how to deliver public services according to need in the current financial and political climate.

Research Findings

• There is evidence that middle class, affluent individuals and groups are often advantaged in their use of local public services. However, there is only limited evidence on the scale of this advantage and the extent to which it ‘matters’ in a fundamental sense both for the winners and losers.

• Middle class advantage is secured via a variety of means. It can be gained as a result of the deliberate actions and strategies of affluent individuals and groups. However, it can also be an unintentional consequence of the actions and attitudes of service providers, as well as a product of broader policy and practice.

• High profile service areas such as schooling, health and neighbourhood planning can provide advantage to middle class service users. There are some commonalities as well as differences between the services in the means by which this is achieved.

• Middle class service users tend to have the kinds of ‘cultural capital’ (education, networks, skills and resources) which are useful in practical sense for negotiating with service providers. Importantly, this cultural capital also corresponds with the value set of bureaucrats with power and influence. There is the potential for an alliance to develop between middle class service providers and users which is detrimental to the interests of less affluent service users.

• There is a clear need for middle class advantage to be afforded more prominence as a policy problem – we are perhaps too used to seeing disadvantage as the problem and not considering its flip side. It may become more urgent to do this as public service contraction gathers momentum.

To see a copy of the report click here

Author: David Ross, Highland Correspondent, The Herald

A LEADING expert has called for the extension of a controversial initiative to bring Scottish land under community control.

In a new book Highland historian Jim Hunter, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of the Highlands and Islands, makes the case not just on social but also on cost grounds. 

He says the limited amount of public money invested in schemes to buy up land for communities has been well spent, particularly compared with the outlay on major public infrastructure projects, and concludes the initiative is providing a solution to the age-old Scottish problem of chronic depopulation in the hinterlands.

He challenges First Minister Alex Salmond to demonstrate the SNP Government’s commitment to community ownership by visiting an area where the initiative is thriving and taking advice from local people. 

He also throws down the gauntlet to Highland Liberal Democrat MP and Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander to make it easier for communities to buy land by relaxing Treasury rules on public land disposals. 

He reveals all of the public money spent on helping take over half-a-million acres of land into community control was equivalent to the bill for only 600 yards of Edinburgh’s trams. 

Also, the £30 million total, from public and lottery sources over two decades, that went to help communities buy their land from Assynt to Eigg and Knoydart to Gigha and South Uist, amounts to less than 7% of the cost of the five-mile M74 completion stretch of motorway in Glasgow. 

The £30m investment matches the subsidy farmers and landowners receive in Britain every three or four days. 

Mr Hunter says: “Community ownership’s price-tag is by no means excessive [and] at least as justifiable, on any cost-benefit basis, as other forms of state spending.”

He tells persistent critics of Eigg, which now enjoys virtually full employment and boasts a nationally acclaimed green energy grid that, of the £1.5m purchase price, only £17,000 came from public funds.

Community buyouts have been described by critics as waste of public money, serving only to increase subsidy dependence. To Mr Hunter, however, they are vitally important and have already achieved much, critically in job creation and halting, or in some areas reversing, the chronic rural depopulation which has blighted the Highlands and Islands for generations.

Knoydart, where there has been a 60% rise in population since the buyout in 1999, is a case in point. Taking account of these successes, he says he is perplexed by the minimal engagement of by the four men who have held the office of First Minister since 1999. He calls on Mr Salmond to put that right.

Mr Hunter believes a full First Ministerial visit would send out a positive message: “People on the community ownership front line would be given a chance to explain to the man in charge of Scotland’s Government just what is needed by way of policy initiatives if the community land sector is to grow further.”

He wants Mr Alexander to find a way of relaxing the Treasury rules on publicly owned land disposals which mean communities have to pay the market value for the likes of parcels of Forestry Commission woodland.

The historian recognises that one or more of the local land trusts in the Highlands and Islands could face financial difficulty, or even go under. 

“If or when this happens, critics and opponents of community ownership will insist the community ownership concept has thereby been invalidated. They will be wrong,” he said. 

“If the record of private land ownership in the Highlands and Islands was to be judged by the number of landlords who have gone spectacularly bust … then time would have been called on such ownership very many years ago.”

A Scottish Government spokesman said: “Community land ownership can bring tremendous benefits both to communities themselves and Scotland as a whole. 

“Land ownership is key to building independent, resilient rural communities and creating a sense of confidence and community empowerment.

“That’s why the First Minister and other Scottish Government Ministers continue to fully support buyouts and are committed to providing opportunities for rural communities to acquire land.

“The £6m Scottish Land Fund launched by the Scottish Government last month is designed to give more rural communities these opportunities.” 

The Carnegie UK Trust commissioned Mr Hunter to write the story of community buyouts over the past 20 years. He tells it in The Low Tide of the Sea to the Highest Mountain Tops, to be published by the Islands Book Trust next week on Mull at the annual conference of Community Land Scotland.

For copy of SAC Report click here 

Scotland is a step closer to having its own rural parliament to empower rural communities and give them a greater opportunity to influence decision-making, network and share expertise.

A report, published today, highlights the experiences of countries which already have rural parliaments, including the benefits and potential pitfalls, success stories and the various formats used.

And an initial meeting took place earlier this month to consider what Scotland’s rural parliament could look like and ensure it provides meaningful engagement for people living in rural communities.

The next step will be a meeting in May with representatives from existing European rural parliaments.

Rural Affairs Secretary Richard Lochhead said:

“Scotland’s rural areas have a vibrant and dynamic community spirit borne from a strong sense of place. Surrounded by the magnificent landscape for which our nation is famous and with so much of our world-renowned natural larder on the doorstep, there are many benefits to living in Scotland’s more rural areas.

“But the distances involved bring with them different challenges from those faced in less remote parts of the country. Scotland’s Rural Parliament will empower our rural communities, giving them a stronger voice and genuine access to decision-making. By doing this I am confident that our resilient and entrepreneurial rural communities will get the support and opportunities they need to flourish and grow.”

The Rural Parliaments in Europe report was produced for the Scottish Government by the Scottish Agricultural College (SAC) Rural Policy Centre. 

Dr Mike Woolvin, researcher with the Rural Policy Centre, said:  

“Our study found that Government involvement and commitment to setting up a Scottish Rural Parliament is important but that it must be done in partnership with others. Enthusiasm, engagement and drive from the grassroots is vital, as a Rural Parliament cannot be imposed from the top-down.  It is particularly vital that the Parliament is well resourced from a variety of sources and that recommendations are quickly translated into actions by policy-makers and politicians. There is great willingness from others involved in Rural Parliaments in Europe to share expertise.”

Welcoming the initiative, Vanessa Halhead, Director of the European Rural Community Association (ERCA) said:

“Rural Parliaments have proved themselves to be an excellent vehicle for giving the rural communities a strong presence and voice on the national stage.  For rural Scotland, this is the start of a very exciting initiative, and will have full support from ERCA.”

Background

The Rural Parliaments in Europe report by the Rural Policy Centre is available here: http://www.sac.ac.uk/ruralparliaments or for a PDF please call Chris Keddie on 0131 244 2598. The report looks at Rural Parliaments in six countries – Sweden, the Netherlands, Estonia, Finland, Hungary and Slovakia.  

The creation of a Rural Parliament for Scotland was included in the 2011-12 Programme for Government. A Rural Parliament is a facilitation process that will bring Government closer to rural Scotland, it is not the introduction of a further layer of Government.’

Organisations who attended the initial meeting to discuss the creation of a Scottish Rural Parliament included: Association of Scottish Community Councils, Development Trusts Association Scotland, Community Energy Scotland, Community Land Scotland, Community Woodlands Association, Scottish Community Alliance, Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations, Southern Uplands Partnership, Carnegie UK, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Scottish Enterprise, COSLA, NFUS, Scottish Youth Parliament, Rural Policy Centre.  The second meeting will take place on May 29, 2012 and will also include representatives from existing European rural parliaments.

The European Rural Community Association (ERCA) is the network for the 23 national rural movements of Europe, who pioneered the Rural Parliaments. Sweden developed the Rural Parliament model in 1989, and its success has inspired many other countries.