Martin Sime, of SCVO, asks whether abolishing local government would increase accountability and reduce bureaucracy.

Maybe I’ve just been over-exposed to it recently, but I can’t be the only one who’s fed up with the sterile debate between local and national governance. Who knows whether there should be one fire service or eight police uniforms? Boundaries between health and care for people who use services don’t exist so why is there an endless discussion about which tier of government should orchestrate services? It’s obvious to me that we are over-governed and waste too much energy on this stuff. It’s not just the task in hand but the need to engage with each other that soaks up time, energy and money. We’ve built a whole ’community planning‘ infrastructure – a real misnomer – to orchestrate this public agency ‘partnership’ at a local level. There are interminable complexities of process and ideological debates about accountability which sustain this elaboration and which produce… almost nothing of use. In China, Scotland as a whole probably wouldn’t qualify as a single tier of government let alone the three we’ve got –
we’d simply be too small.

Well, the party’s over. A lot of the noise just now is the various vested interests trying to preserve their role at the expense of others. But these really ought to be the last cries of a dying regime. We’ve run out of money and there are some really pressing needs to be met – real people needing real help. My idea is to abolish local government. With one less layer we can have a more rational conversation about what we need, how to make our public services more accountable and how to plan for a sustainable future. We’d save a tidy sum too in not having 32 council tax bureaucracies and all the other paraphernalia of this so-called localism. And we could, at a stroke, close down the whole conference industry set up to discuss (but never to deliver) shared services. Of course we’d need new ways for people to express their views about the things that matter to them in their communities. But, like Norway and Finland, these could be very small and more concerned with engagement than delivery.  And we’d need to beef up the accountability processes for major services such as health and education – but we need to do that anyway.

Subsidiarity – taking decisions at the lowest possible level – was a buzzword of the 1990s but we’ve learned a lot since then. As the flawed Scotland Bill process shows us, power devolved is really power retained. We can call our politicians to account if we can get a clearer sight of who is responsible for what.

Extract from Thinking Differently – a collection of think pieces published by SCVO

The biggest news about the government’s community organisers programme, a major part of its big society concept, is who didn’t win the £15m contract to run it.
 
A consortium headed by Locality, an organisation formed by the merger of the Development Trusts Association and Bassac, the umbrella body for community organisations, has been selected to train 5,000 community organisers and set up an independent Institute of Community Organisers after 2015. But they weren’t the favourite to get the contract – another organisation seemed likely to canter home.
 
Citizens UK, which has been training community organisers for 25 years, was widely assumed to be the obvious choice. On the day the big society manifesto was launched in March last year, the Prime Minister, David Cameron, even visited the group’s offices in east London.
 
Neil Jameson, executive director, Citizens UKLondon Citizens, a member of Citizens UK, was also named by Cameron as an “independent group” that was a candidate to train the organisers. His policy adviser, Steve Hilton, had been seen taking notes at London Citizens’ public assemblies. “We believed the tender was written for us,” says Neil Jameson, executive director of Citizens UK.
 
So what changed? Citizens UK says it lost out on price, but there is evidence to suggest that the government’s expectations of community organising might have shifted.
 
When the initiative was unveiled last year, the plan was that the 5,000 organisers would all be full-time professionals and the programme would be based directly on the US community organising movement founded in Chicago by Saul Alinsky, who died in 1972.
 
In the event, 4,500 of the organisers will be part-time volunteers and the methodology they will be trained in owes as much to the Brazilian thinker Paulo Freire (1921-97) as it does to Alinsky.
 
Citizens UK works on ‘Alinskyan’ principles. The method is very specific: creating a ‘power organisation’ made up of other groups. Most commonly, these member groups are faith organisations – churches, mosques or synagogues. But community groups, schools and trade union branches can also be members.
 
Member groups identify the issues they want to campaign on and the main group then tries to establish a relationship with people in power, in the public or corporate sectors, to achieve the desired changes. Since 2001, London Citizens has worked in this way to convince the Greater London Authority and more than 100 companies, including KPMG and Barclays, to implement a living wage for their employees.
 
The method is confrontational and political. “It’s not about partnership working – it’s about establishing new relationships with people in power,” says Mark Waters, participation and empowerment programme manager with Church Action on Poverty, which has sponsored community organisers in Manchester, Stockton and Bradford.
 
Though groups negotiate and compromise, separation and independence are cherished. There is no collaboration with other voluntary and community organisations. The idea is not to run services, or to get local people to take them over, but to challenge those in the corporate and public sectors that deliver the services.
 
This Alinskyan version of community organising does not mix well with Conservative big society aims, such as encouraging people to bid to run local parks or take over public services where the state is retreating or leaving gaps. The 5,000 organisers who will be trained in the government programme will follow a more consensual, broader concept of community organising.
 
Steve Wyler, chief executive designate, LocalityLocality has promised a “modern, indigenous English version” of community organising, and its chief executive designate, Steve Wyler, says it is particularly interested in the approach of Freire, author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed. He was opposed to traditional education and saw the learner as a co-creator of knowledge. His thinking emphasised critical reflection and the self-confidence that marginalised groups gain by achieving social change.
 
“Freire tends to use concepts about community animation rather than organisation,” says Wyler. “It’s a way of bringing out those things that are suppressed and hidden within the lives of ordinary people. The reason that basic approach feels right for us is based on our experience of working with community organisations around social action and community enterprise over many years.”
 
The group that will train people as community organisers is RE:generate – the Action to Regenerate Community Trust, working as a partner of Locality. RE:generate describes its work as community organising and animating. This involves listening to a community’s concerns, building trust between members, developing projects that might involve setting up social enterprises and writing a charter that clarifies a new power relationship with public agencies. The method is a combination of Freire and Alinsky that avoids the polarisation of the Alinskyan approach.
 
“Part of our enthusiasm for doing this is that we believe we can combine some community organising practices with what we see within our movement – the positive, problem-solving, entrepreneurial, can-do approach of development trusts and other organisations,” says Wyler. “Community organising might involve challenge, but it will also involve finding solutions and working constructively with other agencies, service providers, people in power and people in local authorities.”
 
Mike Harrison, a community organiser with Together Creating Communities in Wales, says he suspects that the kind of community organiser the government is looking for would fit into the model of councils for voluntary service. “They would become the animateurs, effectively supporting new, small organisations to provide services where the government is leaving holes,” he says.
 
This wider concept of community organising permits a role for the community sector. Alinsky-style community organising groups form discrete organisations, such as London Citizens or Thrive in Stockton. Community organisers are employed by these groups and the relationship with the voluntary and community sector is minimal.
 
By contrast, the people to be trained as community organisers under the government’s programme will be found by existing community groups, such as Community Links in east London or the Barton Hills Settlement in Bristol. They will, however, remain independent. Community groups will provide assistance to the organisers through practical help, such as office space. “To be effective, they have to be seen as non-aligned,” says Wyler.
 
“But it’s nevertheless important to them to have some structure and a base to operate from. There are certain kinds of community organisation that can provide that kind of base.” And after the financial support for the 500 full-time organisers runs out after the first year, they might be funded by local community groups or charities.
 
The effect the organisers will have remains to be seen. Waters of Church Action on Poverty says that if 5,000 were trained on the Alinsky model “you’d have a very potent political force in the country”.
 
He says: “I’m not sure the government has got its head around that yet, although whether what they call community organising and what they want out of it is the same as us, I don’t know. I don’t know if they know.”
 
Jameson of Citizens UK says he wishes Locality well, but anticipates teething problems because the organisation has not been involved with community organising before.
 
“The statement put out by the Cabinet Office would have alarmed us had we won,” he says. “To imply that the organisers are part of the government big society machine wouldn’t have been our intention.
 
“We are very serious about civil society, not about delivering the government’s programme. We deliver what our members want – that’s bottom-up organising, not top-down delivery of the government’s big society programme. There’s a contradiction there.”
 
The Chicago Connection – How Obama worked with an Alinskyan group
 
Community organising “agitates individuals to get off their butts and act”, says Greg Galluzzo, senior organiser with the Gamaliel Foundation in Chicago. “We challenge people to act in concert with others. We help people to understand how the public process works and create actions that will force public officials or corporations to listen to the people.”
 
As founding director of the foundation, which follows the principles of Saul Alinksy, Galluzzo worked with Barack Obama in the 1980s. “When Barack was 22 years old, we recruited him to come to Chicago and be trained as a community organiser with one of our projects,” he says. “He worked for us for three years.”
 
Gamaliel has a presence in 18 US states and works with Church Action on Poverty to train community organisers in the UK. Galluzzo says community organising in the US is responsible for local and national policy changes. “It wins simple victories such as getting abandoned buildings torn down, and national victories such as forcing banks to lend in the communities in which they do business.”
 
He is not convinced that the UK government’s community organisers programme is real community organising. “You can do almost anything and call it community organising,” he says. “We have a very specific definition. It is clearly different from what the UK government is talking about.”

Election Hustings – Housing, Regeneration and Community Empowerment
Glasgow, 7 April 2011

Sponsored by : 
Scottish Community Alliance,
Glasgow and West of Scotland Forum of Housing Associations,
Chartered Institute of Housing, 
Scottish Federation of Housing Associations

What kind of policies do you want the next Scottish Government to put into action on community empowerment, on local regeneration and on housing?

The Scottish Parliament elections take place on 5 May.  This “Question Time” meeting is the ideal chance to put some straight questions to five of Scotland’s political parties. 

We have a great panel lined up:
Robert Brown, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Patrick Harvie, Scottish Greens
Johann Lamont, Scottish Labour
Alex Neil, Scottish National Party
Martin MacIntytre, Scottish Conservatives

In the chair will be Stephen Naysmith, of The Herald newspaper.

When and Where?
Thursday 7 April 2011, 7pm to 8.30pm at the Reidvale Neighbourhood Centre, 13 Whitevale Street, Dennistoun, Glasgow G31 1QW.   Refreshments available from 6.30pm.

You can get directions to the Centre at
www.reidvaleneighbourhoodcentre.org.uk

The hustings meeting is open to all.  The meeting is not ticketed, so come early to get a good seat!

This is a great chance to put the politicians on the spot – don’t miss it!

Urban areas of Scotland are being urged to take advantage of up to £60m of lottery funds through a similar scheme to the one which helped transform the island of Gigha.

Gigha was bought by islanders nine years ago after the lottery funded Scottish Land Fund gave them £3.5m made up of a grant of £2.5m and a loan of £1m which was subsequently repaid.

The Big Lottery Fund in Scotland is now launching the second phase of its Growing Community Assets (GCA) fund, which is designed to have the same transformative effect in Scotland’s towns and cities. An event in Glasgow on Friday will bring key figures in the area of community asset development together with existing GCA grant holders.

The first phase of the programme saw more than £48 million spent between October 2006 and April 2010, funding 127 projects, and Big expects to hand out another £60m by 2015 after applications for GCA reopen in June 2011.

Existing successes include Glasgow’s Whiteinch Centre, which was taken over by members of the local community after they received a grant of £116,092 in 2009 to help the centre support 80 local organisations and offer learning, health and employability services to 850 people each year.

Jackie Killeen, director of Big in Scotland, said: “These projects work because local people themselves are best placed to identify what their own community needs to develop. Our job is to support them in doing this, not just through awarding funds, but also by using our experience of supporting communities through the Scottish Land Fund and Growing Community assets programme.”

However she urged public bodies to see the bigger picture and support communities to take over local assets. Ms Killeen said: “It’s clear that Lottery funding should be used to directly help communities and people most in need, and not to fill the coffers of councils and public landowners.”

Glasgow City Council, for example, has embraced the opportunity by enabling buildings such as the Whiteinch Centre and Maryhill Borough Hall to move into community hands, she said. “We want communities to have the best deal possible. If councils can help ensure communities take full ownership at a significant discount or no cost, that means funding from Big is not swallowed up before the community gets to work.”

Other councils have been less quick to take advantage of the funds, Big says. Awareness of GCA-funded projects remains highest in rural areas, reflecting perhaps the success of the Scottish Land Fund, and while Glasgow received one of the highest number of grant awards in the first phase, Aberdeen, Dundee and Edinburgh received relatively few.

Friday’s event aims to showcase successful projects so others can learn from them. “Urban and small town Scotland can learn a lot from the successes in rural areas,” Ms Killeen added. “The important thing is that communities we support can make sure what they are taking on really is an asset, not a liability in disguise.”

In an increasing number of cases, GCA is funding renewable energy schemes such as windfarms, which can help generate an income and make a project more sustainable. “This is about not only ambition and confidence, but the best projects are like a slow-burning chemical reaction–in time they can bring social, economic and environmental benefits,” Ms Killeen said.

One advantage is that urban communities will often be taking over assets from some form of public ownership, which can mean the existing owners are more proactive – or as Big’s director puts it: “Dialogue is much more possible when the owner is a public body, rather than an absentee landlord registered in Lichtenstein.”

 

In 2009, Development Trusts Association Scotland received grant funding from the Scottish Government to deliver the Promoting Asset Transfer programme. The broad aim of the programme is to increase the flow of assets into community ownership. It aims to do this by encouraging and supporting local authorities and community groups both to gain a wider appreciation of the benefits and risks associated with asset transfer and by developing an understanding of the processes involved.

In March 2011 Mr Neil, Minister for Housing and Communities, spoke at one of the last seminars in the series highlighting emerging findings from this programme of work. The most striking of which was the need for further guidance and support, not only for community groups who wish to acquire assets but also for local authorities who may wish to transfer an asset into community ownership. A full report from the two year programme will be available here from May 2011.

In order to meet this need, the Scottish Government has announced £250k of grant funding in 2011-12 to enable the Development Trusts Association Scotland to set up a community ownership guidance and support service.

The new service will offer information, advice, resources and practical support around asset transfer/acquisition activity, with the objective of increasing the level of sustainable asset transfer activity taking place in Scotland.

As we experience a growing and widening interest in community-led regeneration, the availability of information and support on community asset ownership, has the prospect of becoming an ever important element of sustainable regeneration activity.

Further information on how to access the new service will soon be available on the DTAS website.

The Route 81 eco-friendly activity centre in Garelochhead is a £1.6 million scheme to provide facilities for young people in the village and surrounding areas.

As in many rural communities, there was little on offer for young people in the area, with only an all- weather pitch, which was hard to book, and an hour a week in a youth club provided for them.

Local adults and young people have worked together to deliver the new centre, which has been eight years in the making.

According to the project’s chairman, Rev Alastair Duncan, the centre is the so-called Big Society in action. “It is, in terms of where it came from,” he said. “It is entirely down to the efforts of local people.”

The activity centre offers extensive facilities for local young people and community groups, including a climbing wall, indoor sports hall and gymnasium, IT suite, cafe area, and outdoor activity amenities. A community cinema will show the latest films – until now, the nearest cinemas in Paisley and Clydebank were nearly an hour’s drive away.

“The all-weather pitch was there, but not in some respects, because of the difficulty accessing it, and the youth club was fine but only for an hour a week,” Rev Duncan explains.

Although he is the local minister, Rev Duncan says Route 81 is not a specifically religious or Christian centre. Instead it has been led by its members, a group of local youngsters now numbering about 65, who have helped drive developments and chose the name. The latter is a reference to the A814 which serves the village, and the local phone codes which begin 810 or 811. 

It is housed in a former East Dunbartonshire outdoor education centre, which was purchased in 2009 after that council closed it down. The derelict building included a William Leiper-designed Victorian primary school which is also incorporated. 

The building’s green credentials are down to a £10,000 grant from the Scottish Power Green Energy Trust which was used to install a ground-source heat pump on the premises, helping to minimise the building’s carbon footprint.

The project also received financial support from the Big Lottery Fund, the Scottish Rural Development Programme, Climate Change Fund and the Scottish Government and the community had “invaluable” backing from Community Link Scotland, Rev Duncan said.

Officially opened yesterday, the centre also includes dormitories, with space for up to 45 people, which will provide accommodation for residential groups from further afield. These will be available for youth groups, businesses or others to hire. Inquiries have already been received from a young carers support organisation, and a slimmers’ boot camp.

Author: Guardian Society

 

As communities get the power to run their own public services, Jessica Shepherd attends a workshop on the art of influence

The faces around the table are growing redder as both sides become exasperated. A council leader has agreed to meet with a local campaign group that wants to change his mind about shutting a centre for disabled people in the borough. “I’m afraid difficult decisions must be made,” the council leader says. “I have another meeting now so we’ll have to wrap up…”

Desperately, the campaign group’s leader searches for a trump card. “We are inviting you to visit the centre. Will we have to tell the local press you won’t be coming?”

“That’s it! Use tension. Make specific demands. Speak to his self-interests,” the session leader calls out.

No real council leader is present and the scenario is fictitious. I am at a two-day training event for would-be community organisers run by Citizens UK – the biggest alliance of community groups in Britain – and we’re learning, through role-play, how to negotiate with, and win over, individuals in authority, such as council bosses.

“Don’t forget how effective it is to use testimony,” the leader of this session, Stefan Baskerville, tells the campaigners.

“Oh yes,” one says. “We’ve brought along Fred, who uses the centre, and he’d like to tell you what a difference it makes to his life…”

“Good,” says Baskerville, a recent graduate and a former president of Oxford University Student Union. “You have to practise this. Next time think: ‘Have I got a plan, have I thought about their interests, what is their agenda?’

“Think about which of you is going to be in charge of keeping time, which of you will tell the story and which of you will be in charge of telling the media … We are talking about the importance of a caucus.”

Community organising is a way in which local groups can unite along shared interests to improve society and stand as a long-term force to be reckoned with against powers, such as the government, the City and the media. It was a technique that Barack Obama used to secure victory in his 2008 US presidential campaign.

The popularity of community organising is growing in the UK. David Cameron made the idea a centrepiece of his launch of the “big society”. He has said the Treasury will pay 500 full-time community organisers £20,000 a year each and foot the bill for a further 4,500 to be trained to work part-time all over the country.

The importance of community organisers will be reiterated in next week’s white paper on public service reform. Private companies, voluntary groups and charities will be given the right to run almost all of our public services. Meanwhile, Labour’s Movement for Change is charged with reconnecting the party with its traditions of grassroots activism.

Citizens UK has tapped into this civic mood. It trains about 200 people a year on two-day courses, such as this one, or five-day residentials for “local leaders”. The number of organisations that belong to Citizens UK has risen from 60 to more than 200 in the last six years. The courses are free for those who belong to a member organisation, but cost between £400 and £2,000 for those that don’t.

In my group, there is a headteacher of a Muslim school, a detective inspector for Greater Manchester police, a head chef, a synagogue youth worker and a vicar.

After our masterclass in negotiation skills, it’s time for a session on “power”. We are asked to think of a definition of power. “The ability to compel,” someone says. “The ability to act,” says another. Later, we do a “power analysis” of London and are encouraged to do this before meeting people in authority. “There are two forms of power – organised money and organised people,” says Bernadette Farrell, a lead organiser for South London Citizens, who is taking this session. “Power targets the weak … Disorganised people have least power; organised people have more power,” she says.

Then it’s back to community interests. “If you don’t understand the interests of those you are standing up to, then you are just people with placards and bumper stickers and those in power can say, ‘They don’t understand what it is like to make hard decisions and to have a limited budget.'”

Next, we are taught “the secret weapon” of citizen organising: face-to-face meetings. Citizens UK says this is the way to probe another person’s vision, talent, energy and interests.

Over two-thirds of the people in my group are from churches, mosques, synagogues and temples. Why have so many of these religious organisations joined Citizens UK when they already have an umbrella group, such as the Church of England, to represent them?

Father Steven Saxby, of St Barnabas church in Walthamstow, east London, says his church joined in December to benefit from the network of organisations that Citizens UK engages with in the field of social action. He wants to help immigrants who have been in this country for years, but are paid below the minimum wage and have no permanent right to remain.

Chris Connelley has come on the training course because he is a founder of a community action group in Seven Kings, near Ilford in Essex. He has been campaigning against the closure of a local library and when I catch up with him a few weeks after the course he says he has used the techniques we were taught to good effect. “The threat to Goodmayes library has been lifted as Redbridge council has removed it from its cuts prospectus after the most massive local campaign – 5,000 signatures in three weeks,” he says.

“I used a number of the methods and ideas from the course. Our sense is that they worked and established powerful new relationships … which we are all now resolved to build upon and strengthen.”

Could the establishment come to rue its newfound commitment to community organisers?

 

Berwickshire Housing Association (BHA) is poised to become the first Housing Association in the UK to develop a community scale wind farm. 

“We are very keen to ensure local residents are fully consulted on our proposed development” said Helen Forsyth, BHA Chief Executive, explaining that the Housing Association has already distributed two editions of a wind farm newsletter to all households within the vicinity, written to all local councillors, MSPs and MPs, and attended a meeting of Cockburnspath Community Council. “We’ve also sought a meeting with East Lammermuirs Community Council in neighbouring East Lothian since the development is very close to the East Lothian boundary. A meeting will be held with Michael Moore MP later in March”. Berwickshire Housing Association will also commission a telephone survey of local residents after the public exhibitions in order to gauge the overall level of public support.

Partners in the development are registered charity Community Energy Scotland (CES), a specialist organisation providing support and advice to communities across Scotland seeking to develop renewable energy projects. “This is a very attractive project” commented Nicholas Gubbins, Chief Executive of CES “and we are delighted to be involved as a junior partner to BHA. Whilst we have provided support to many housing associations, this is the first time we have joined with a housing association as a partner in a revenue generating scheme. It’s a very exciting prospect.” On completion CES will own one third of the project and BHA two thirds, each organisation receiving profits in proportion to their ownership.

Based on average energy use the wind farm will generate twice the electricity used by BHA’s tenants. Given that approximately 1 in 5 of all Berwickshire residents live in BHA homes Helen Forsyth considers this is a very significant development, both for BHA and for Berwickshire. “At a time when public expenditure on new social housing development is being squeezed, yet demand for affordable rented housing remains at record levels, it is important for us to develop sustainable and significant sources of revenue beyond the rentals paid by our tenants. Hoprigshiels Community Wind Farm provides the potential to greatly improve the Association’s environmental impact and to provide much needed funds for investment.”

Beyond the community benefit arising from BHA and CES ownership of the project, the two bodies also plan to establish a community fund contributing approximately £30,000 per year to community projects in the immediate vicinity of the wind farm. Given the proposed scale of the development (6 megawatts) this is a significantly higher level of community fund contribution than that typically made by commercial wind farms. “All profits for community and charitable benefit. That’s the reality of community ownership, that’s the reality of Hoprigshiels Community Wind Farm” said Helen Forsyth.

 

The Grow your Own Working Group Report  (for full report click here) was sent to the Minister Roseanna Cunningham on February 14th . The members of the Working Group trust that she will endorse their recommendations.

 

The Working Group was set up by the Scottish Government to take forward that part of the  Food and Drink Policy relating to growing your own food. 

* Ensure that allotments and “grow your own” projects are strategically supported. 

* Produce practical advice and best practice guidance that will appeal to public bodies, communities and individuals to help them develop local “grow your own” initiatives . 

 

The Working group had a strong input from  community growing initiatives – allotments, community gardens and orchards, together with involvement from the public agencies, local government, NGOs and the private sector.  The report reflects the interests and concerns of a wide range of organisations. The initial remit of the working group was to produce the Report but the members have agreed to continue meeting to work on implementing the recommendations of the Report.

 

Recommendations from the working group

Planning

1 A Planning Conference to be staged involving senior planners from

Government, Local Authorities and Health Boards jointly with the

professional bodies to produce improved policies and guidance for GYO

initiatives.

2. Identify best practice food growing policies and practice from local authority

Open Space Strategies, and use this to encourage other local authorities to

support the protection of existing and establishment of new allotments and

community food growing projects.

3. The Working Group and all members to feed into consultation on Permitted

Development Rights (due spring 2011).

4. Promote the benefits of Grow Your Own to planning authorities, making them

aware of the need to identify locations and encourage their establishment to

meet community demand for growing spaces.

5. On land scheduled for development but delayed, planning policies to

dictate the “meanwhile use” of the land.

6. Local Authorities to use Section 75 Planning Agreements to support GYO

projects.

Legal

7. An amendment to the Allotments Act that specifies a timescale for allotment

provision and number of allotments per head of population.

8. A change to Public Finance Manual Rules that allows the Scottish

Government, its agencies, and government-related organisations to

lease or sell land at less than market value for local GYO initiatives.

9. GYO communities to make use of the Freedom of Information facility to ask

Local Authorities how they are dealing with meeting the duties imposed on

them by the Allotments (Scotland) Acts and disseminate this information.

Skills

10. Training in horticultural skills should be recognised by an awarding body

where appropriate and such training should be progressive i.e. each course is

certified and builds to higher qualifications.

11. Local Authorities should consider training needs as part of their

Allotment/Growing Space Strategy.

12. To review commonality across education bodies to set standards and offer

similar courses.

13. Bank of information and learning material to be held and managed by a

central organisation linked to the web site.

Community Land

14. The establishment of a community land bank service developed to facilitate

access to land for GYO initiatives and provide specialist support to

landowners and food growers.

15. Government to instruct its agencies, Local Authorities, Health Boards,

government related organisations and other public sector bodies, to examine

their land assets and determine what surplus land will be made available for

local GYO initiatives and to publicise this information.

16. Public bodies to use the Forestry Commission Community Leasing Scheme

as an example of long term leasing of public land and other land for

establishing GYO projects.

17. Every local authority to produce a strategy for community growing that

establishes policy and planning. They will address the need to meet demand

with appropriate supply and agree land and management issues.

Guidance

18. “Allotments, A Scottish Plotholders Guide” covers the basic culture of

allotment gardening and allotment law. Completed

19. Production of a landowners’ and land users’ guide, including development and

template leases, collating those that are available.

20. Production of a users’ and providers’ good practice guide on design and

development of new and existing allotment sites that links to the improved

planning policies.

21. Production of guidance on understanding soil contamination and how to grow

on contaminated land.

22. Encourage organisations to set up a central web site or develop existing site/s

to collect and disseminate information to the community GYO sector.

23. A travelling seminar to raise awareness at local authority level to identify and

promote the benefits of community growing.

Funding

24. Provision of a “Soft Loan” scheme such as a Community Credit Fund for GYO

initiatives.

25. Continual mapping of funding streams to be available on a central site.

26. Request that the administrators of funds are trained and briefed on the

needs and limitations of those applying for funds for GYO projects.

27. Request Central Scotland Green Network (CSGN) management board to

consider funding needed (via the CSGN development fund and any future

funds) to deliver the CSGN target of a threefold increase in the area of

growing spaces in the CSGN area

 

 

Membership of group

John Beveridge Greenbelt Group Ltd

Peter Duncan Fife Council

Elaine Gibb greenspace scotland

Bill Gray Community Food and Health (Scotland)

Stan Green Growforth Ltd

John Hancox Commonwealth Orchards

Antonia Ineson NHS Lothians

David Jamieson City of Edinburgh Council

Sarah-Jane Laing Scottish Rural Property and Business Association

Eleanor Logan Soil Association and NOURISH

Jenny Mollison Scottish Allotments and Garden Society

Catriona Morrison Scottish Natural Heritage

Helen Pank Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens

Julie Proctor greenspace scotland

Heidi Proven Landshare (Keofilms)

Wayne Roberts Elmwood College

Mike Strachan Forestry Commission

Scott Walker National Farmers Union Scotland

Judy Wilkinson Scottish Allotments and Gardens Society

David Wood Planning Aid Scotland

Peter Wright Scottish Allotments and Gardens Society

 

 

 

 

 

The 8th Principle, published by the CREATE Consortium recognises the “community dimension” in tackling worklessness. Without this principle DWP risk not only missing out on an important part of the problem and the solution but David Cameron’s vision of all government departments supporting the development of the Big Society.

Louise Winterburn, Director of the CREATE Consortium said: “The 8th principle addresses David Cameron’s challenge to all Government departments to support communities to develop local solutions. With £1.5 billion already guaranteed to be spent by the Government on welfare to work next year, it is vital that a “Big Society” principle is included in Welfare Reform to ensure that deprived communities will benefit from this money for the long term.”

Recognising the relationship between individuals on benefits and the communities in which they live, would also give a major boost to Iain Duncan Smith’s plans to get long-term unemployed people back into work. The Create Consortium are proposing a “Community Allowance” which offers a practical and affordable way to create new jobs in the most deprived communities. This could create the paid “stepping stone” jobs envisaged in the 21stCentury consultation document, while enabling communities to ensure vital community work is done – showing how Big Society and Welfare Reform could work together.

The CREATE Consortium draws on the direct experience of community-led organisations working with individuals in some of the most deprived communities across the UK. St Peter’s Partnerships, in Ashton-under-Lyne (described in August by David Cameron as “inspirational”) is one such organisation that has been supporting local people to get back into employment. St Peter’s Partnerships want to be able to offer the Community Allowance – developing new part-time jobs in the community with wraparound training and support for long-term unemployed people. Their work with Micky, a local resident in the area shows why a Community Allowance could help those who want to get back into work and out of the ‘benefit trap’.

Micky’s attempts to move off incapacity benefit and into work have proved confusing, time consuming and unproductive. Despite this, he is still desperate to get back into work in a fulfilling, high value job that supports his community. He is determined that he will get a job. Unlike the majority of people on incapacity benefit who are more likely to die or retire than find a job after being on incapacity benefit for more than two years.

In his own words;

Community Allowance is for people like me who want to get out, want to work, want to get on. Real people, who aren’t doing anything wrong, who are getting kicked from pillar to post. It’s that step up – the pride that you need back, the commitment, everything really… All I want to do is to get on the ladder but it’s impossible at the moment – you need that step up first.”

With over 100 organisations, from large international NGOs to small local tenants groups, supporting the creation of a Community Allowance, CREATE’s ‘8th Principle’ is one that the Government cannot afford to ignore.

To read a full version of the 8th principle click here