The Environmental Law Centre Scotland

The Environmental Law Centre Scotland is a charity that exists to provide legal help for people to help protect the environment. 
They are working to ensure that individuals and environmental organisations have the right to challenge decisions that will have a detrimental impact on the environment. They believe that neither lack of information and expertise, nor excessive costs should prohibit people from getting environmental justice.

Earlier this year, they were successful in gaining the first ever order, in Scotland, to cap the legal costs of an Ayrshire resident, who is challenging the decision to construct a new coal fired power station at Hunterston. Now they are making submissions to the Rules Council of the Court of Session to press for better access to justice for individuals and community groups. 
However in addition to helping people to challenge decisions, the law centre also want to know about the need for legal advice when communities are trying to bring about positive change in their environment and whether existing services are adequate for groups.
The aim of their research is to understand the barriers and challenges that community organisations or individuals may have found using legal services when establishing their sustainable development, environmental or community projects. They are carrying out a survey to help with this research and would like to invite people to complete it.
People can access the survey by clicking onto the link below.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TLKR7RX

As an added incentive they are holding an optional prize draw of a bottle of fair trade organic wine to those who complete the survey.

Senscot Legal Services

Senscot, since its launch in 1999, has played a lead role in the development of Scotland’s social enterprise community.  Our electronic bulletin, circulated to four thousand contacts, is the sector’s main connector – and we are directly engaged with regional and thematic Networks of front line social businesses.  Another Senscot activity is to conceive and incubate new mechanisms to continually develop our sector: new initiatives are identified in dialogue with social enterprise practitioners.

In September 2009, Senscot conducted a survey specifically to gauge member’s perceptions of mainstream professional legal services available to Scotland’s third sector.  Around 100 social enterprises responded.  From this survey, and other research, we found considerable dissatisfaction – in relation to two main themes: excessive fees and the lack of general understanding about the culture and practice of our sector.

Further investigation showed these problems to be linked – in that those firms large enough to support a dedicated third sector practice, also carry partners whose large salaries absorb around one third of all fee income.  Senscot believes that there is a market gap for a legal practice, itself a social enterprise, offering specialist knowledge of our sector at affordable rates.  The option of creating such a business is made possible by a proposed change in the law, expected later this year, whereby directorship of legal practices will become available to non lawyers.  In anticipation of this legislation, Senscot will create a subsidiary – Senscot Legal Services (SLS) – a new social enterprise.

SLS has four key objectives:
• To offer a wide range of quality legal services tailored for third sector organisations in Scotland.
• To create a specialist centre of legal expertise to support the development of the social enterprise movement in Scotland.
• To make quality legal services available across our sector, having regard to the ability to pay.
• To contribute to the long term sustainability of Senscot.

SLS is located in Bath St Glasgow with an initial staffing compliment of lead solicitor and paralegal secretary.  Our research indicates that our constituency purchases a wide range of legal services including: contracting, governance, company structure, employment, property, litigation etc.  Offering this range during the initial stage will involve a pool of ‘friendly’ solicitors with different specialisms.

It is intended that the service will evolve into a fully fledged legal practice should the
the alternative business structures (ABSs) in Scotland be introduced as proposed in the Legal Services (Scotland) Bill. 

Author: Gemma Hampson Social Enterprise Magazine

‘We are determined to help credit unions grow and expand into the future, but growth and expansion must be established on the basis of credibility – credibility that can only come as credit unions build sustainability’   MP Mark Hoban, financial secretary to the treasury

The government has confirmed it will ‘do whatever we can’ to help credit unions grow and provide fairer banking at a cross party meeting in Westminster yesterday.

The All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on credit unions heard from financial secretary to the treasury Mark Hoban, who set out the government’s plans for credit unions and said their growth was part of the coalition’s commitment to foster diversity in financial services, promote mutuals and create a more competitive banking industry.

He said: ‘We are determined to help credit unions grow and expand into the future, but growth and expansion must be established on the basis of credibility – credibility that can only come as credit unions build sustainability. And it is in the interests of credit unions, the members of credit unions and the movement as a whole that sustainability is built.

‘This government believes that strong credit unions will greatly enrich British society, so it is in our interest to do whatever we can to help the credit union movement to prosper.’

The APPG’s chair, Damian Hinds, said it was an exciting time for the credit union movement in light of new legislation affecting credit unions and banking, partnership potential with the Post Office and a ‘sharper focus on debt as an issue at all levels’.

‘I am sure we [the APPG] can play a helpful role in that agenda,’ he said.

The announcements were welcomed by Rev Antony Macrow-Wood, president of the Association of British Credit Unions (ABCUL).

‘New legislation will help credit unions reach out to many more people. The work we are doing to develop a back office and extend our services through the Post Office will also make credit unions more accessible and convenient and we need to work together to achieve this,’ he said.

The APPG meeting was also supported by The Co-operative Bank

An interesting statement from Alex Salmond last week in the Scottish Government’s statement on its legislative programme. The relevant part of his statement is as follows (as published on the Scottish government website).

• And we are blessed not just with an abundance of water, but with a wide abundance of natural assets and resources: I believe that these belong, fundamentally, to the people of this land.

• We stand at the threshold of another energy revolution, in renewables, and we must ensure that the mistakes of the past, when the takings from North Sea Oil and Gas were siphoned off elsewhere are not repeated.

• So we will consult on legislation for the communities of Scotland to benefit from the exploitation of their natural resources.

• Only Shetland was wise enough to benefit from the oil boom, and it currently sits on a oil fund not far off £200 million.

• Norway created a fund, and it is closer to £300 billion.

• It will be many years before revenues from offshore renewables reach that scale. However a start should be made.

•The only public body which is currently accrues a direct benefit from the offshore development is the Crown Estate Commissioners and we have worked well with the Commissioners. But the revenues go direct to Treasury and that cannot be right.

• Because the communities of Scotland – the Scottish people – must secure an endowment from our own natural resources as well as having a say in how they are developed.

Author: Stian Westlake

It seems that we are finally beginning to grasp the true value of localism: not as an R&D lab for the centre, but as a powerful force in its own right. But this new vision of localism also calls for new types of social finance.

Traditionally, local solutions to social challenges have often focussed on national roll-out. The job of the local was to act as an R&D lab for the national. If we let a thousand flowers bloom, so the theory went, one or two would be especially beautiful, and could be re-planted across the country.

But increasingly, it’s clear that localism is valuable in its own right; its real virtue lying not in the prospect of a better monoculture of public services, but in a diversity of solutions, each of which is well adapted to local needs. In NESTA’s report Mass Localism , NESTA discussed the kinds of benefits that local solutions offer, even if they never grow beyond their local area: their ability to access local resources and to understand local needs are important sources of efficiency and effectiveness.

Central government often asks how local innovation can be “scaled up” but this is not the solution to the exclusion of all other alternatives. Of course in some cases this consideration is important. But often, the question is not “how can we scale up a single solution?” but rather “how can we ensure lots of well adapted solutions flourish?”.

This has important implications for social finance. An important theme in social finance has been how to fund the expansion of successful social start-ups – the social sector equivalent of venture capital and growth capital in the private sector. This is important, but on its own it will not deliver Mass Localism. For this, we need an effective market providing a wider range of social finance products. Social Impact Bonds , with their ability to channel government commissioning into broad networks of local organisations, are one way forward.  Community Shares , which allows local people to buy into local amenities such as pubs, football teams and shops, is another.

The importance of an effective – and innovative – market for social finance to the success of real localism – Mass Localism – can’t be understated. If you are passionate about this – we would like to hear from you.
 

Full report

What about … helping communities to help themselves

With public service providers under severe financial pressures, now is the right time for fresh thinking about how to join up housing with wider agendas in disadvantaged communities.
This doesn’t need to be about additional investment – grassroots solutions can cost less and deliver more sustainable results. A commitment to support practical, community-led initiatives would be a  good place to start. This needs flexible thinking and vision from both central and local government Not every area needs community-based rooted and where local people have the desire and the capacity to take more control over the things that affect their daily lives. These approaches have worked well in housing, through community ownership.
As community anchor organisations, local housing associations can support local people to achieve more in other areas too. The possibilities are endless – ranging from health improvement  projects, to community ownership of assets, to new ways of providing some public services.

The Woodside area of Glasgow is witnessing community land reclamation. A local group of activists have taken over a piece of derelict ground on the site of a collapsed tenement and set about transforming it into a community garden.

The plot of land on West Princes Street is set to become a focal point for the local community. Plans for the land are already taking shape and the area has seen huge progress in the short time since work began.

The transformation has not happened by itself however as many people from the surrounding area have participated in the cutting down of bushes, digging up of trees and removal of rubble. The garden has seen contributions from old and young, people with expertise and people with none. Local students, workers, pensioners and unemployed have all volunteered their time to the project.

The work has been taking place on a Saturday from about eleven until four including a lunch-break. The break usually consists of a sit down in the garden to share some food. This is when a lot of the chit-chat takes place, which is a perfect way of getting to meet new folk in the community.

There have been meetings in the local area to discuss plans for the future development of the garden and how to maximise participation from the community. Plans for the garden include the building of a children’s area, the growing of food such as radishes as well as continuing to involve the local community in the developing of the plot.

So if you want to get involved meet new people and learn new skills as well as contribute to the improvement of the local environment then you can e-mail growglasgow@yahoo.com to contact the organisers.

If the coalition really wants to give power back to the people, it should look to the Alps

While sceptics in Britain worry that David Cameron’s localism agenda might create “postcode lotteries”, the Swiss rejoice in their local diversity. There are 26 cantons and 2,600 communes in the country, each setting its own policy and raising its own different taxes. Even methods of choosing representatives in the federal government are decided locally, provided the method is democratic.

Cantons have their own constitutions, their own laws and their own courts. They decide their own rates for local income tax, inheritance tax and road tax. They raise about 40 per cent of the tax take, the communes another 30 per cent and there are big policy differences between localities.

For example, cantons decide the minimum legal age for buying alcohol, a measure far stronger than Theresa May’s plan to let local authorities decide pub opening hours. Cantons set their own rules on issues such as prostitution and drugs. Some of them recognised civil partnerships well before they were adopted nationally, while others banned smoking in public long before it became national policy. Cantons even decide who is eligible to become a citizen (in one, this involved a popular vote on each candidate until the Supreme Court ruled that tests must be more objective).

Cantons decide how much autonomy communes should have, but they have plenty. For example, they are responsible for their own policing — local control that is, again, much stronger than the Home Secretary’s proposal for elected police commissioners. They also manage their own welfare, local transport and (dream on, Michael Gove) schools.

Switzerland’s federal Government, does only the things that need some measure of co-ordination. It issues the national currency. It is responsible for defence and foreign policy. It manages transport, telecoms and energy networks. But even where policy is decided centrally, the cantons and communes often decide exactly how it will be implemented.

The idea of Eric Pickles, the Local Government Minister, to allow local voters to veto above-inflation rises in council tax is another measure that would scarcely register on the Swiss scale. In all but one canton, spending proposals can be rejected or amended in a referendum. In one, all large and exceptional spending plans are approved by referendum. Some rural cantons even have a system allowing local people to meet and debate local policy — a form of direct democracy that David Cameron must envy. One such assembly of 4,000 people in Appenzell Innerrhoden banned nude hiking after efforts by the canton (Switzerland’s smallest) to tax nude hikers had failed to curb the craze.

Because the cantons enjoy enormously wide powers to decide the level of taxes and services, competition between them is sharp. In particular, they compete on low taxes to induce businesses to locate in their area. One canton, Zug, with its 11 per cent top rate of income tax and 16 per cent company tax, has proved so successful at attracting national and multinational firms — 1,600 of them last year alone — that it is running out of housing and office space. But other cantons are happy to step into the breach, such as Obwalden, which now undercuts Zug with a company tax rate of 12.7 per cent. Geneva, with its 35 per cent top rate of income tax, has been happy to welcome British hedge-fund managers who have balked at the UK’s 50 per cent top rate.

Diversity on this scale makes the UK coalition’s efforts at direct democracy look pretty faltering. When we are all paying the same taxes, postcode lotteries in public service quality are, of course, unacceptable. But it is hardly unfair if towns with ageing populations vote for higher taxes to fund better NHS care, or cities with teen-binge problems raise the drinking age or other places decide that they would rather have fewer services but lower taxes.

Full report – The glass half full

The context for this report is a growing concern over the widening gap in health inequalities across England in 2010. Its publication is timely, just six weeks after Fair Society, Healthy Lives – The Marmot Review. One of the Review’s key messages on challenging health inequalities is that “Effective local delivery requires effective participatory decision-making at local level. This can only happen by empowering individuals and local communities”. The asset approach provides an ideal way for councils and their partners to respond to this challenge.

The emphasis of community-based working has been changing. Among other aims, asset based working promotes well-being by building social capital, promoting face-to-face community networks, encouraging civic participation and citizen power. High levels of social capital are correlated with positive health outcomes, well-being and resilience.

Local government and health services face cuts in funding. Demographic and social changes such as an ageing population and unemployment mean that more people are going to be in need of help and support. New ways of working will be needed if inequalities in health and wellbeing are not to get worse.

The first part of this publication aims to make the case that as well as having needs and problems, our most marginalised communities also have social, cultural and material assets. Identifying and mobilizing these can help them overcome the health challenges they face. A growing body of evidence shows that when practitioners begin with a focus on what communities have (their assets) as opposed to what they  don’t have (their needs) a community’s efficacy in addressing its own needs increases, as does its capacity to lever in external support. It provides healthy community practitioners with a fresh perspective on building bridges with socially excluded people and marginalised groups.

The second part of this publication offers practitioners and politicians, who want to apply the principles of community driven development as a means to challenge health inequalities, a set of coherent and structured technique for putting asset principles and values into practice. These will help practitioners and activists build the agency of communities and ensure that an unhealthy dependency and widening inequalities are not the unintended legacy of development programmes.

• The asset approach values the capacity, skills, knowledge, connections and potential in a community. In an asset approach, the glass is half-full rather than half-empty.
• The more familiar ‘deficit’ approach focuses on the problems, needs and deficiencies in a community. It designs services to fill the gaps and fix the problems. As a result, a community can feel disempowered and dependent; people can become passive recipients of expensive services rather than active agents in their own and their families’ lives.
• Fundamentally, the shift from using a deficit-based  approach to an asset-based one requires a change in attitudes and values.
• Professional staff and councillors have to be willing to share power; instead of doing things for people, they have to help a community to do things for itself.
• Working in this way is community-led, long-term and open ended. A mobilised and empowered community will not necessarily choose to act on the same issues that health services or councils see as the priorities.
• Place-based partnership working takes on added importance with the asset approach. Silos and agency boundaries get in the way of people-centred outcomes and community building.
• The asset approach does not replace investment in improving services or tackling the structural causes of health inequality. The aim is to achieve a better balance between service delivery and community building.
• One of the key challenges for places and organizations that are using an asset approach is to develop a basis for commissioning that supports community development and community building – not just how activities are commissioned but what activities are commissioned.
• The values and principles of asset working are clearly replicable. Leadership and knowledge transfer are key to embedding these ideas in the mainstream of public services.
• Specific local solutions that come out of this approach may not be transferable without change. They rely on community knowledge, engagement and  commitment which are rooted in very specific local circumstances..

– a summary of an event to discuss the nef/NESTA report

Full report :  Right Here, Right Now: taking co-production into the mainstream.

Tackling the barriers

The discussion focused on the barriers to taking co-production into the mainstream of public services. There was a consensus in the room that commissioning arrangements and capturing the value of co-produced services were among a number of hurdles that need to be overcome. Workforce skills were also identified as an area for further work.

The report offers some recommendations about how to do this, and we’ll also be commissioning a series of practical experiments to test out how to mainstream co-production.

More for more

Philip Colligan outlined that co-production is not about more for less but instead about more for more, as this approach unlocks and values the “assets” that users of public services have. Garath Symonds stated that it was important to learn by doing co-production, whilst Anna Coote talked about the importance of this approach in promoting social justice and tackling inequality.

Summary

There was a sense of optimism in the room and a view that this is the right time to take co-production from the margins into the mainstream.

What is co-production?

Put simply, co-production demonstrates that people’s needs are better met when they are involved in an equal and reciprocal relationship with professionals and others, working together to get things done.

This is the key to transforming public services so that they are effective, affordable and sustainable in the long term. The ‘big society’ needs co-production at its heart – not as a marginal experiment, but as the standard way of planning and delivering services. Our aim is to establish co-production as a new paradigm for designing and delivering services.

For almost a year now we have been working with a group of innovative front line practitioners, and have gained valuable insights into the radical potential of co-production.

WELCOME to a Britain at some indeterminate point in the future – a Britain shaped exclusively by the public will and not by Prime Ministers or MPs. Scotland, for a start, has been cut loose, thanks to a decisive English majority in a UK-wide referendum.

Any immigrant who commits even a minor offence is deported without trial. Criminals can be executed if they face their third custodial sentence. A watered-down version of China’s one-child policy means the state provides Child Benefit only for a family’s first child. Bounty hunters are busy tracking down benefit cheats. Local prison inmates are powering the jail, or contributing to the National Grid, by using exercise bikes and treadmills that drive electricity generators.

Cannabis and prostitution have been legalised. The Afghan war was ended at a stroke by the UK Government purchasing the country’s entire opium crop, thus denying the Taliban vital revenue – and putting Afghan farmers on our side. Trident has been scrapped. Multi- millionaire footballers, long the figures of public envy, now see their bloated salaries taxed at 95% over pound(s)240,000. Junk food carries VAT at 50%. Army recruitment has been suspended. And the pound(s)12 million that would have been spent on the Pope’s visit in September 2010 was instead directed at medical research and healthcare, both of which have for hundreds of years been “more effective than prayer”.

Is this the rosy dawn of a blissful utopia that can’t come quickly enough? Or a stagnant post-apocalyptic vision that does not bear thinking about?

What it is, in reality, is a summary of some of the 45,000 suggestions volunteered by members of the public in response to an exercise by HM Treasury.

Most of the suggestions which might attract widespread support include reducing council spending on contracts, replacing school dinners with reduced-rate school dinner packs from supermarkets, culling further quangos, axeing further high-speed rail routes, and slashing the number of deputy head teachers and senior teachers to pre-1997 levels. Others, however, clearly reflect the contributor’s personal hobbyhorse, whether it’s the BBC, Scots devolution or immigrants.

The innovative “crowdsourcing” challenge, launched by Chancellor George Osborne on July 9, was originally open to public service workers, who responded by sending in 63,000 responses between June 23 and July 8. The department then decided to extend it to the wider public, Osborne saying: “Tell us – where’s the waste, what should we cut out, what can we improve, what’s working really well that we should be doing more of?” He said many of the ideas put forward by public sector workers are already being put into practice.

The website is now closed to ideas, but the public has until Tuesday to comb through the 45,000 submissions and rate the ones they think have the most potential to save money while impacting least on public services.

“Remember: we’re looking for ideas that can be implemented quickly to help to make savings, deliver services more efficiently and get more from less,” says the Spending Challenge website. Treasury staff are reviewing the ideas with the most potential and will investigate them in further detail to see if and how they could be taken forward for the Spending Review on October 20 and beyond.

The dozens of tags on the website range across the alphabet, from academics to zebra crossings, via other subjects, some decidedly more hot-button than others: binge drinking, banking, climate change, benefits, police and foreign aid are all represented, as are consolidation, daylight saving, magistrates and stamp duty.

The fact more than 100,000 ideas were received in a few months has plainly delighted the Treasury.

A spokesman said: “The Government is committed to engaging with all parts of society as we tackle the country’s record deficit. That’s why we asked everyone across the country – the people who use our schools, hospitals, transport systems and other public services – to send in their ideas for how to save public money and get more out of our services. We had an overwhelming response, with over 45,000 ideas submitted by the public. Now we’re asking the public to help us identify the best ideas to be taken forward and investigated in further detail.”

The exercise, however, has its critics. Laurie Penny, a London writer, journalist and feminist activist, whose Penny Red blog was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize, believes the Government cynically turns its ear to public opinion when it coincides with its own agenda.

“I think it’s a way of using the principles of direct digital engagement to legitimise the Government’s programme of cuts,” she said.

“It doesn’t offer you an option, for example, to vote for no cuts, or vote for taxing the rich, or to vote for progressive changes. It only offers you a choice that is not really, at the end of the day, a choice.”

Penny points out that the Government never sought public approval for cuts of up to 40% in some departments, but with big decisions already taken, the Spending Challenge exercise has been deemed to be good for its public image – particularly when, at times such as these, people often turn on their more vulnerable neighbours.

On whether many of the public’s suggestions will eventually be taken up by the Treasury, she said: “Because there are so many options on there, the likelihood is that some of them will match what they plan to put in the Spending Review anyway, so the Government can say it is doing what the public wanted, which is the beauty of the scheme from its point of view.”

Penny has already observed that some ideas lodged on the website reflect what she termed “ludicrously punitive” attitudes towards welfare claimants and asylum seekers: one particular suggestion was that single mothers ought to be sterilised.

A submitted idea still visible on the website says some people “should be able to renounce work and be given a free (modest) house and a modest but liveable income” if they “stay single (not even allowed to date), have no kids, are castrated/sterilised, do not drink, smoke, or have sex (so they don’t get STIs), do not take drugs or have any addictions …”

The Treasury confirmed that a team moderated the suggestions to weed out those deemed to be unsuitable.

Professor John Curtice, of the Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences at the University of Strathclyde, thinks the exercise has some political value. He said: “Those people who have views they wish to express are given a chance to do so. Insofar as the Government is trying to take people with it down a pretty difficult path, anything that might help people feel they have at least had their say in what happens, might help make some a little happier.

“I trust no minister will stand up at the end of the day and say, ‘These are the 10 most popular ideas, and these are the 10 we are going to implement’. But there might at least be, amongst all those 45,000 ideas, the odd bright one that nobody in Government would ever have thought of and might warrant further investigation.”