With a turnover of £18,000 achieved in just six months, 45 tonnes of waste diverted from landfill and an army of volunteers recruited to deliver a community recycling scheme, business is booming at Peterhead Projects Limited’s 2ReUse scheme. But, despite the incredible success, the Buchan social enterprise has had difficulty convincing people that it is doing business at all. That should now change, however, after the project secured a place in the finalist shortlist in this year’s Grampian Awards for Business Enterprise.

Project development manager Karen Brown says the group’s links to the third sector can often mean that it is not taken seriously as a business concern. “We do suffer from the stigma that we are ‘just a charity’ and when we attend meetings with corporate businesses they do not always see the relevance of us being there. But people’s perceptions are changing and the barriers are being broken down, so this nomination will do us no harm at all in reinforcing the fact that we are actually running a business,” she says.

Finalists in the Alick Buchanan Smith Spirit of Enterprise Award must show a unique approach to performance, people development, technology and a significant contribution to the community. Peterhead Projects will face competition in the category from The Scottish Traditional Boat Festival, based in Portsoy, and Aberdeen children’s charity, Befriend a Child. 

Peterhead Projects Limited is governed by a board of eight volunteer directors and is owned and led by members of the community. It was launched in 2009 as a means to improve and promote Peterhead and the surrounding villages by initiating and developing projects to benefit the local economy, community employment and environment. Peterhead Projects Ltd recognised that there was a need to take action on recycling in the local area, which has high pockets of multi-deprivation. Statistics showed that 151,010 tonnes of municipal solid waste was being collected every year.

2ReUse was set up in September 2010 to provide a cost effective retail service to housing tenants, predominantly in the social housing market, while diverting waste from landfill. It provides tenants with basic furniture starter packs, and also sells a wide range of household items and clothes. Other services include house clearances, largely on behalf of the private sector, and retail sales to the general public. Future plans include expanding the range of products it is able to recycle, including video cassettes.

As well as tackling problems relating to social disadvantage and waste, the project has been instrumental in providing volunteering opportunities to people who want to gain new skills and experiences. An incredible 3145.5 volunteer hours were supported in 2ReUse’s first six months of operation, and at present the project has 42 volunteers on its books. Four volunteers have used the project as a stepping stone to full-time employment, one young volunteer has used the experience to obtain a Youth Achievement Award, and placements are provided to groups often marginalised by society, including people with mental health illnesses and the long-term unemployed. 

Karen says: “We would not be where we are today without our volunteers: we simply could not run or function without them. They are so important to us, and we view them as being on par with our paid employees. I think our success in being able to recruit so many volunteers is down to being able to provide a structured learning programme so that we can evidence their progression from the moment they start to where they are now. 

“We also have over 100 partners that we have encouraged to get on board to support us. They are able to help us in a variety of ways, for example one of our partners offers us free storage and free transport. But it’s not all about us taking: in return our volunteers have painted their storage centre compound.”

Planners are giving a vote of confidence to community windfarm projects, while leaving many more commercial schemes becalmed, according to campaigners. Community Energy Scotland said the news was a vote of confidence in small scale projects which use green energy to generate an income for local communities. 

The charity said community based renewable projects had a 100% success rate in getting planning approval from local authorities – while commercial windfarms are  knocked back by planning chiefs.

Speaking as the island of Hoy in Orkney celebrated the installation of its own community wind turbine, CES chief executive Nicholas Gubbins commented : ”These projects are bringing real, direct benefits at local level through improved and affordable heating for community buildings as well as opportunities to generate long term revenue”

Community Energy Scotland is currently providing detailed technical advice and financial support to over 150 community groups taking forward revenue –generating projects across Scotland. So far 30 have been brought forward, with each receiving planning approval.

To see full report click here

Foreward

Voluntary sector organisations are – rightly – highly valued for their connection and commitment to the people and communities they serve. This allows them to meet real and sometimes previously hidden needs, to speak up without fear or favour and to deliver services in original and effective ways. This independence – of purpose, voice and action – is what makes the voluntary sector special and enables it to serve the interests of those who might otherwise be left without support or a voice because they lack power or influence.

The Panel on the Independence of the Voluntary Sector has been established by the Baring Foundation because of continued concerns about that independence. 

Over the next five years, we aim to shed light on how far there is a problem and what can be done about it. We will be looking at independence in general, not just from central and local government, but also from other vested interests, such as private sector corporations or grant-making foundations. Over a number of years, concerns have focused on the potential impact of government funding, as the voluntary sector has delivered more public services and increasingly been funded through tightly drawn contracts. There is the risk that voluntary bodies become mere delivery agents, lacking independence of action or voice and being diverted from their purpose. This requires a sustained commitment to independence when contracts are tendered and funding is offered and accepted.

More recently, the impact of deep cuts in state funding has been of concern. Cuts may leave gaps in vital services, especially for the most vulnerable, and threaten the sector’s abilityto play the more active, independent role the Government appears to envisage in its “Big  Society” initiative. We will also be considering the impact and implementation of changes in government tendering and will be looking specifically at the Work Programme in our first annual statement.

The first responsibility for upholding independence lies with the voluntary sector itself. However, government and all of those who work with the sector also have an important role in respecting independence and providing a supportive regulatory, tax and financial environment.

Ultimately, this leads to stronger services and a healthy democracy. This consultation document invites views and evidence to feed into our report on the state of independence later this year – the first of five annual reports we will publish. To help us in this task, we have drawn up a “Barometer” of independence which asks questions to help us judge how far independence is being maintained and achieved. Please look at these and other points in the report and give us your views by 21 September at info@independencepanel.org.uk

Dame Anne Owers

Chair of the Panel on the Independence of the Voluntary Sector

Letter from John Swinney to all MSPs

Association of Scottish Community Councils

You will have received yesterday’s announcement by the Association of Scottish Community Councils (ASCC) that it intends to cease its work, with final effect by April 2012. The ASCC communication suggests that its decision has been forced as a direct consequence of cuts to its Scottish Government funding.

All MSPs will deal regularly with Community Councils and Community Councillors in their constituencies and I appreciate that both they and you will have questions about the implications of the ASCC decision. For accuracy I should point out that although there is no obligation for Scottish Government to fund the ASCC, it has received around £180,000 in funding from us since 2007/08. For 2011/12, it has been offered £40,000. In 2010/11 it was offered £30,000; plus a maximum of £20,000 match funds for income it secured itself.

This year’s funding is offered chiefly to deliver training and development to Community Councils in support of their role as vibrant and active voices for local citizens and communities. I should also say that the offer of £40,000 was increased by £10,000 from an earlier offer made in March, in the light of new information provided by the ASCC about the financial challenges it believed it would face this year.

I recognise the challenges faced by small voluntary sector organisations like the ASCC, which playa fundamental role in community engagement and participation across Scotland.

In the last few months we have consistently offered to work with the ASCC to help it strengthen its financial viability, focus on the key strengths it can offer Community Councils, and improve its overall efficiency and effectiveness. That offer remains, although of course I respect the decision the ASCC Board has taken.

The current economic climate, where Scotland faces unprecedented cuts to its overall budget, makes funding decisions like this one even tougher. In this highly challenging environment, the ASCC’s funding bid for 2011/12 was handled no differently from other pressing calls on public funds. Its original bid requested £98,000, almost double the amount it received last year.

This case highlights once more the pressing need to secure greater value for money, reduce duplication and think creatively about how we can pool the collective strengths of the public, third and other sectors. The findings of the Christie Commission, published last week and welcomed by this Government, only underline these points more strongly. But in this challenging context, I am also committed to growing and strengthening the role of Community Councils.

/

JOHN SWINNEY

Author: Lesley Riddoch, Scotsman

What do Ryanair and community land buy-outs like Eigg have in common? Different as they are, Ireland’s cut-price airline and Scotland’s first island community buy-out prove the same thing. 

Relatively remote places can be viable and popular once there is leadership and belief, a small investment and an end to restrictive practices. Scotland’s 17 community land buy-out trusts, however, may be able to go one step further than Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary, and offer a new model for public service delivery across rural and urban Scotland. And to realise that potential they may need a share of council tax.

Last week’s report by Dr Sarah Skerratt at the Scottish Agricultural College possibly surprised no-one by showing Eigg, Assynt, Gigha, Knoydart and the rest have become demonstrably more resilient since communities took control over the last 20 years. School rolls have almost doubled in the oldest buy-out areas. Population has increased, energy supply systems have improved and local land ownership has prompted the construction of new affordable and sheltered homes. Now elderly members of buy-out communities don’t face the unpalatable choice of life in a local house with cold water and no heating or life in a lonely, heated room in some distant town. 

On Eigg, seasonally unemployed islanders set up a building co-operative to tackle the backlog in housing improvements – they are now sought after island-building experts. On Gigha a canny partnership saw locals offer community-owned land to Loch Fyne Housing Association who built new private and publicly owned homes. The result has been ground-breaking and high quality – winning the Chartered Institute of Housing’s Excellence in Regeneration Award 2011. Life is better now. But many would ask, why should it not be? 

Private landowners of these west-coast estates varied from the well-meaning but incompetent, to the absent and the hostile. One man’s absolute control once stifled all appetite for growth or improvement. And almost all hope. The first members of the Isle of Eigg Trust were non-islanders – like myself. That way no locals could be evicted from houses or sacked from island jobs for any perceived act of defiance. 

How things have changed. Folk once too wary to attend a public meeting now cheerfully manage accounts containing millions of pounds. Confidence and capacity have been demonstrated by securing hard-to-win European funding for projects like Eiggtricity – the renewables-based local electricity grid. The mixed solar, hydro and wind energy system removed dependence on expensive, polluting, diesel generators without increasing long-suppressed energy demand. Homes trip if usage exceeds a modest 5KW and small business has a 10KW limit.

Such laudable and sustainable self restraint could only be community-regulated – Eiggtricity now acts as a model (and a magnet) for communities across Europe. 

But how much did it cost the public purse? The purchase of Eigg in 1997 was made almost

entirely through public donations – the largest was a £900,000 from an anonymous female benefactor in the North of England. The 100 people of Gigha paid back £1m of their Scottish Land Fund purchase grant by hundreds of small fundraising efforts and selling Achamore House.

The National Lottery Heritage Memorial Fund offered Eigg islanders a million pounds- as long as public bodies had 51 per cent ownership of Eigg. The islanders politely declined. The upside is that communities continue to do the heavy lifting habit themselves. The downside is that some politicians have been motivated to fund other community buy-outs through guilt (over earlier inaction) not belief (in the capacity of communities to transform themselves). This has to change.

Despite the Land Reform Act Scotland still has one of the most concentrated patterns of landownership in Europe. The force of history has not been undone and the legacy of paternalism lives on in the hearts and minds of hesitant Scots.

People in similarly battered communities survey the dauntingly successful and “solid” looking community buy-outs of Eigg, Assynt and Gigha and conclude they must be a different set of people. Others could never achieve that degree of cohesion and familiar but focused community rule. The Eiggachs would be the first to say – it wasn’t always so. It’s taken a decade for the power base of competence and mutual trust to reach its current high.

But if anyone suggested that a distant formal body like a council could run almost any service better than they could a loud collective snort would echo across the Minch. That is the sound of a real, full-blooded, empowered community. And these days the sound would not echo emptily across the glens. As councils face the grim task of saving millions from budgets, hundreds of land and wind-energy rich community development trusts are planning how to spend their investment dividends. Should they treat the cash like “pin money” – providing window boxes, traffic-calming or other marginal improvements when roads are pot-holed, energy costs are through the roof, old folk need carers and young parents need affordable child-care? Or, if they spend on badly-run council services instead, will they prompt a local authority pull-out? The solution might be to re-open the Scottish Land Fund to pump-prime new land buy-outs and transfer some council tax receipts to self governing communities once they get up and running. I can hear the howls of protest already. 

But what’s the alternative? Do we just pat successful communities on the head and continue to fund municipal failure? Real control over real assets allows communities to transform themselves.

A thought Scottish Government ministers might consider as they tuck the Christie report on public service delivery into suitcases for light holiday reading

Can Councils Lease Common Good Properties to a Third Party?

The following does not constitute legal advice but a brief outline of the powers of councils to lease common good assets to third parties, in particular to community groups. Many of the points of law are covered in Common Good Law, by Andrew Ferguson (see references)

What is the Common Good?

All 196 former burghs of Scotland have (or should have) Common Good Funds. These are the bundle of heritable (land & buildings) and moveable (cash, artworks, chains of office etc.) property of the former burghs whose Town Councils were abolished in 1975.

Common good land may be of historic origin (forming part of the original burgh charter) or more recent origin (for example, having been gifted to the burgh in the Victorian or Edwardian era or acquired by the burgh up to 1975).

The law surrounding common good is rather opaque, consists mainly of case law, and there is minimal statutory guidance. Common Good Funds are today administered by Scotland’s 32 Local Authorities under the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994, Section 15(4) of which states that “in administering [the common good] [councils shall] have regard to the interests of the inhabitants of the area to which the common good related prior to 16th May 1975.” Councils therefore administer common good assets as quasi-trustees but with wide powers of discretion.

It has been held that elected representatives have a fiduciary duty in the administration of common good funds to their constituents.

Disposal of Common Good

If a Council wishes to sell, alienate, dispose of or otherwise get rid of a common good asset there are statutory checks which may involve seeking the authority of the courts to do so. Leasing an asset for upwards of ten years has been held to be a “disposal” for these purposes.

Can a Council then lease common good property to a third party?

Yes they can but, depending on the circumstances, they may have to seek the authority of the courts. This is particularly the case where the lease is of long duration (over 10 years) and is to a third party that is not a community group but, for example, a commercial business. In such circumstances, court approval might be required and the rental agreement should be on full commercial terms so as to fulfil the Council’s fiduciary duty to the inhabitants of the burgh.

What about leasing property to community groups?

If it is agreed that common good property should or could be administered by a community group then court approval may be less imperative. The golden rule is to be transparent and enter into full and open consultation with the community. Where the lease is to a community group that is delivering benefits for the whole community, there is an argument for charging a peppercorn rent and/or a full insuring and repairing lease on the basis that the common good asset is being used for the benefit of the community. If handled appropriately, quite long leases (up to 175 years) could be granted on this basis though for leases of anything over 25 years, it may be prudent to seek court approval.

At the end of the day common good assets are the historic property of the burghs, now stewarded by local authorities on behalf of the residents of those burghs. Community benefit can be delivered via the beneficial use of a facility OR in income to the common good fund flowing from that facility’s profitable use. At one end of the spectrum are normal commercial tenants from whom should be sought the best terms to provide a respectable income to the common good fund. At the other end of the spectrum is a community association representing the whole of the community using a facility for community benefit. Here, a peppercorn rent might be appropriate and the community association can run the facility as a community business or however it sees fit for community benefit. Somewhere in between might be a lease to a community group that only provides benefits to a small part of the community and more market-oriented terms may be most appropriate here.

Advice on Best Practice

Councils have a lot of latitude in how they deal with common good. On the one hand this provides flexibility and freedom. On the other hand, though, it provides opportunities for mischief-making and possible legal challenges. Fundamentally, a council’s duty is to ensure that common good assets are a) properly accounted for, b) properly administered and managed, and c) delivering community benefits either by way of income or beneficial use.

Remember that unlike all other forms of publicly-owned assets, common good is substantially free of treasury rules, statutory frameworks and the need for Ministerial approval. Common good is the last bastion of freedom in the otherwise cluttered world of local government administration. That poses huge opportunities but also potential pitfalls.

The key to a successful working partnership between a council and a community is openness, good communications and genuine partnership. Common good assets can be leased and they can be leased to community groups. There are legal implications but most local authority solicitors should be au fait with the legal position.

If councils are open, consult widely, listen, and work closely with communities in former burghs to develop mutually beneficial solutions that respect both the spirit and the letter of the law as well as the historic traditions and role of common good, there should be few problems. Goodwill, trust and respect can deliver a wide range of successful solutions to the management of common good property.

Speak to other authorities such as Fife, Scottish Borders, Perth & Kinross and Angus which have most experience of dealing with common good. Remember that common good is not an administrative inconvenience but a valuable part of our cultural heritage to be celebrated and nurtured.

Finally, remember the Common Good Act of 1491 which remains on the statute book.

Item it is statut and ordinit that the commoune gud of all our souerane lordis burrowis within the realme be obseruit and kepit to the commoune gude of the toune and to be spendit in commoune And necessare thingis of the burght be the avise of the consale of the toune for the tyme and dekkynnis of craftis quhare thai ar

RESOURCES

Ferguson, A. (2006) Common Good Law, Avizandum, Edinburgh. 

Wightman, A. (2009) Common Good. A Quick Guide

www.scottishcommons.org/docs/commongoodguide.pdf

Wightman, A. & Perman J., (2005) Common Good Land in Scotland. A Review and Critique

www.scottishcommons.org/docs/commongood_v3.pdf

Andy Wightman

mail@andywightman.com

June 2011

Author: Brian Monteith

Give community groups budgets, give them responsibilities and they will come and they will serve, says Brian Monteith

Why can’t we let parish councils take on local planning decisions and maintain the environment?

The storm clouds are gathering over Scottish public services. Money is getting tighter while inflation is being tipped to reach 5 per cent next year. Apart from those creative thinkers at Reform Scotland, all the talk is of how we rationalise police forces, merge local councils, burn heretical quangos and look to do less – and do it centrally.

Contrast this with what will happen in England this week. As part of his localism agenda, where people can take more responsibility for their lives and their communities, David Cameron will advance his big idea of a Big Society by announcing the delegation of powers away from local authorities to local parish councils.

They will soon be able to decide upon the local parking arrangements, speed limits, the licensing hours of pubs in their villages or towns and – the issue that drives many people to distraction – local planning. They will be given cash budgets by their local councils and they will be able to consider local care for the elderly and children with special needs.

Imagine such powers being wrenched away from our 32 local authorities and given to our individual burgh towns like Peebles, Forres, Castle Douglas or Dunblane? In our cities, we could return the powers to the former burghs of Portobello, Leith or Maryhill or revitalise the neglected estates of Pollok, Hilltown and Wester Hailes.

It has been said in the past that our 1,200 community councils don’t have the capacity or leadership to take on such tasks. This is arrant nonsense. Our small towns and estates are full of very able people that already know how to run small businesses, trade union branches, church halls and local surgeries. By delivering real devolution to the people with real responsibilities, I would expect people to step forward and volunteer – the reason so many prefer not to is because our community councils have so few powers and can do so little to improve our neighbourhoods.

Give them budgets, give them responsibilities and they will come. And if there is a need to provide training, we should realise we already do it for countries like Malawi and Pakistan. It’s called “capacity building” and there’s no reason we cannot provide the same in Markinch and Plockton.

What’s to stop Scotland emulating such a change? Why can we not breathe a new spirit of local responsibility and civic pride into our communities? It may be something to do with Scotland being one of the most conservative democracies in Europe, maybe even the world.

Conservative in that our nation is resistant to change.

Yes, the people voted for devolution and a Scottish Parliament – but this was surely as a way for our nation to avoid change, rejecting the economic realities that Thatcher was forcing upon  a Britain that had in the Seventies become the laughing stock of the industrialised world. Ironically, it has meant that we also avoided many of the public service reforms that Blair delivered in England – with the evidence mounting that we have been left behind on educational attainment, cancer clear-up rates and other key public service outcomes.

Has a great deal changed since devolution arrived other than making services that were already in existence free – such as tuition fees, eye tests, bridge tolls, prescription charges, pensioners’ unlimited bus travel and personal care for the elderly? 

There has been change at the margins such as land reform, warrant sales and, after four reviews, the Scottish Arts Council changed its name, but do most people really feel empowered more, that they have a bigger say in what effects their daily lives and that they are listened to? I fear not.

Typical of this inability to confront change was the establishment and report of the Christie Commission that considered the reform of public services. It was populated by the Scottish Great and the Good holding honorary memberships of the MacChattering classes, the president of Cosla, a former moderator of the Church of Scotland, the commissioner for equality and human rights, the retired chief executive of West Lothian Council, et al. Was it any surprise that it has not shaken the tree?

The best it could do was urge the SNP government to “explore the potential” to “significantly improve community participation and design of public services” in its forthcoming Community Empowerment and Renewal bill. Explore? Why not do something?

Scotland remains trapped in its managerial culture, hemmed in by a civic society that speaks to itself and cannot stomach change unless it strengthens the hold of the managerial class.

Why can’t we let our parish councils – the community councils founded by statute – take on local planning decisions and maintain the local environment? Imagine the keen interest locally if people had a real say and real influence in the licensing hours of the local pubs and hotels. Imagine the civic pride that could return to our old burgh towns of Airdrie and Lanark.

Not only are we doing nothing, we are actually regressing. Last week, the Association of Scottish Community Councils announced it was folding after John Swinney cut its budget by 40 per cent for this year.

It’s all part of a trend – the SNP government can only think of reducing the number of police forces, to have a single state police, rather than breaking up the leviathan that is Strathclyde and making it accountable to its disparate local communities.

By devolving powers out to community councils that would not need salaried councillors or executives with expensive pay, perks and pensions, we could find savings, both in running costs and in contracting services locally.

Executed properly, with accountability to communities and checks on financial management, Cameron’s proposals have the potential to revolutionise English life. Politicians have been talking about localism and local democracy ever since the post-war state grew to dominate our lives, but it has all been eyewash. This will be David Cameron’s big test as it is not an event hitting him from left-field, but something he has put on the agenda himself. If he fails on this then his credibility will be worthless. It is an approach that we sorely need in Scotland and it’s not too late for the Scottish Government to make it their own.

Forget about independence for now, forget about centralism and think local. Give people the power to run their own communities and then their horizons can be widened. Let them change their neighbourhoods; if they feel they can do that then they might become less conservative and then, ironically, independence might not seem to so many a leap too far. Come on John, think again, think big, think local.

Review of the Climate Challenge Fund 

By Brook Lyndhurst and Ecometrica

Intro

The Scottish Government’s Climate Challenge Fund (CCF) was set up to help communities address climate change by reducing their carbon emissions. Communities were funded to encourage people to adopt new low carbon behaviours and measures (but not capital funding for the development of renewable energy). Projects covered a wide range of behaviours, including energy, food growing and purchasing, transport and waste. The CCF made 331 awards to 261 communities located throughout Scotland in seven funding rounds between 2008 and 2011, with further funding announced in March 2011 for 130 projects. To illustrate the range of outcomes achieved by the CCF, 21 projects were selected for an in-depth review. The aims of the review were to identify the kinds of impacts the projects had made, to draw out some of the key factors that make a successful behaviour change project, and to explore the role and contribution of community projects more widely in delivering sustainability goals.

Main Findings

■ CCF projects in the review successfully influenced behaviours across a wide range of actions, including take-up of energy efficiency measures, everyday energy behaviours and food growing. Some projects demonstrated effective ways to encourage take-up of renewable energy or stretch participants’ food purchasing habits. Transport behaviours were more difficult to change.

■ Projects had most success with participants who were open to change. They overcame inertia (accelerated change), opened up new possibilities that people might not have considered (activated) and supported participants in working through change processes and barriers which they may have found daunting without projects’ help (facilitated). Where participants had already made changes, the projects’ influence reinforced their behaviour (consolidated). However, projects rarely succeeded in convincing those to change who saw no merit in it (converted).

■ Participants generally had positive environmental attitudes to begin with but also significant scope for behaviour change. Participants’ motivations to change were often highly personal; environmental benefits tended to be seen as an additional ‘feelgood factor’. Projects had limited impact on participants’ environmental attitudes, other than to reinforce positive attitudes where they already existed.

■ Key characteristics of successful projects were a good understanding of the audience and how to best engage with them, and organisational competence, including a learning culture and good project planning.

■ Estimates of lifetime carbon emission savings from the installation of home energy efficiency measures were more certain than those from behavioural change interventions. Improved measurement methods for capturing the impact of behavioural interventions are needed so that priorities between different approaches can be assessed fairly, including longitudinal research into the long term evolution and maintenance of behaviours.

■ While the review suggests that community projects are unlikely alone to deliver carbon savings on the scale needed to meet national targets, they make a distinctive contribution and, perhaps more importantly, are uniquely placed to engage people in sustainable lifestyles more broadly.

■ Key implications for climate change policy were identified with respect to: the role of government in removing external barriers to behaviour change, complementing the activity of community projects; the possibility of explicitly broadening the strategic aims of the CCF to go beyond carbon savings to encompass sustainable lifestyles; and the need for long-term funding support to encourage the evolution of new social norms and help build community capacity and willingness for action on climate change.

Full report has not yet been published. For a full summary of findings click here

Author: David Ross, The Herald

SCOTLAND’S highest civil court will have to decide whether flagship land reforms can breach the human rights of landowners.

A bid by crofters to take over part of the 26,800 acre Pairc estate on Lewis could take years after a sheriff directed the Court of Session in Edinburgh to decide whether the Scottish Land Reform Act 2003 is consistent with the European Convention on Human Rights.

Sheriff David Sutherland at Stornoway Sheriff Court made the direction before he considers an appeal from the landlord at the centre of the dispute.

Critics have previously compared the laws to the regime of President Mugabe in Zimbabwe, who has forced white people from their land through violence and intimidation.

At issue is the section in the act which gives crofting communities the absolute right to buy their croft land, subject to ministerial approval, whether or not the owner wants to sell.

Nobody knows when the Court of Session will be able to set down dates for a hearing or how long an appeal would take
Barry Lomas, a Warwickshire-based accountant, does not want to sell the estate his family bought in 1924. He has claimed the act breaches his human rights and that he is the “whipping boy of land reform”.

Both sides urged the Scottish Government to release the official valuation price which was assessed by an independent surveyor but ordered to remain secret at the last minute.

Almost 400 people live on the estate, which covers a similar area to Edinburgh.

It embraces 11 townships and 208 crofts. Much of the area being fought over is boggy moorland but at stake is the control of potentially lucrative profits from a £110 million wind farm.

Residents have declined to buy out the croftland villages, opting, instead, for the houseless common grazings having been advised to take this route given the tight timescale and detailed mapping requirements buying the full estate would require.

The ground presently has little value except as rough pasture for livestock, but Scottish and Southern Energy’s application to build a giant windfarm has raised the odds.

Scottish ministers gave the crofters of the Pairc Trust permission to proceed and Mr Lomas sought to appeal that decision in court yesterday. But last year he also petitioned for a judicial review in the Court of Session on the human rights aspects of the legislation.

That had been put on hold, but yesterday Sheriff David Sutherland directed the Court of Session to rule on the human rights issues before he heard the rest of the appeal on the ministers’ decision to approve the buyout.

Some predict it could take up to a year for the Court of Session to make a ruling, and thereafter there is a right of appeal which could take even longer.

John Randall, vice-chair of the community-led Pairc Trust, which is behind the buy-out bid, said “The sheriff said it had to be referred to the Court of Session by July 21. Nobody knows when the Court of Session will be able to set down dates for a hearing or indeed how long an appeal would take. That’s my understanding, and after all that it’s back to Stornoway Sheriff Court for the rest of Mr Lomas’s appeal.”

Mr Lomas said last night: “Pairc Estate continues, as it has done for many years, to encourage members of the Pairc community to come forward to discuss how progress can be made, away from the failings of politicians and Pairc Trust.”

A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: “As the legal process is still ongoing, it would be inappropriate to comment further at this stage.”

One way of tackling the shrinkage which is currently taking place in local bus service provision in many parts of Scotland is to look at the potential for local communities to be more involved in running services.  There are numerous community run transport schemes, operating on a non-profit basis, where all funds are invested into developing local services for local people.  Though most have been set up to provide a service for people who can’t use public transport, such as elderly and disabled people, the legislation which governs them offers opportunities to provide services to the wider public too.

Changes to transport legislation in 2009 now mean that community transport services have the potential for an even bigger role in local transport, particularly the changes to Section 22 permits. In areas where services have been withdrawn and where it is difficult to run a commercially viable route, community groups can fill the gaps in local networks. The low overhead costs of community transport services can often make them more financially viable than a commercial service. However, few local authorities are looking seriously at how community groups might fill the ever widening gaps in local transport provision and the Scottish Government could do more to nurture bottom up responses to community need .  

Something which Government could do to help would be to extend the free bus concessionary fare scheme to include services run by community and voluntary groups. Many of those people who most need the concession cannot use it; instead they have to pay for the community transport services which do meet their mobility needs, which is not in keeping with the scheme’s social inclusion objectives.