Extract of Jimmy Reid’s inaugural speech as Rector of Glasgow University  (A copy of the full speech )

…The concentration of power in the economic field is matched by the centralisation of decision-making in the political institutions of society. The power of Parliament has undoubtedly been eroded over past decades, with more and more authority being invested in the Executive. The power of local authorities has been and is being systematically undermined. The only justification I can see for local government is as a counter- balance to the centralised character of national government.

Local government is to be restructured. What an opportunity, one would think, for de-centralising as much power as possible back to the local communities. Instead, the proposals are for centralising local government. It’s once again a blue-print for bureaucracy, not democracy. If these proposals are implemented, in a few years when asked “Where do you come from?” I can reply: “The Western Region.” It even sounds like a hospital board.

It stretches from Oban to Girvan and eastwards to include most of the Glasgow conurbation. As in other matters, I must ask the politicians who favour these proposals – where and how in your calculations did you quantify the value of a community? Of community life? Of a sense of belonging? Of the feeling of identification? These are rhetorical questions. I know the answer. Such human considerations do not feature in their thought processes.

Everything that is proposed from the establishment seems almost calculated to minimise the role of the people, to miniaturise man. I can understand how attractive this prospect must be to those at the top. Those of us who refuse to be pawns in their power game can be picked up by their bureaucratic tweezers and dropped in a filing cabinet under “M” for malcontent or maladjusted. When you think of some of the high flats around us, it can hardly be an accident that they are as near as one could get to an architectural representation of a filing cabinet.

If modern technology requires greater and larger productive units, let’s make our wealth-producing resources and potential subject to public control and to social accountability. Let’s gear our society to social need, not personal greed. Given such creative re-orientation of society, there is no doubt in my mind that in a few years we could eradicate in our country the scourge of poverty, the underprivileged, slums, and insecurity.

Even this is not enough. To measure social progress purely by material advance is not enough. Our aim must be the enrichment of the whole quality of life. It requires a social and cultural, or if you wish, a spiritual transformation of our country. A necessary part of this must be the restructuring of the institutions of government and, where necessary, the evolution of additional structures so as to involve the people in the decision-making processes of our society. The so-called experts will tell you that this would be cumbersome or marginally inefficient. I am prepared to sacrifice a margin of efficiency for the value of the people’s participation. Anyway, in the longer term, I reject this argument.

To unleash the latent potential of our people requires that we give them responsibility. The untapped resources of the North Sea are as nothing compared to the untapped resources of our people. I am convinced that the great mass of our people go through life without even a glimmer of what they could have contributed to their fellow human beings. This is a personal tragedy. It’s a social crime. The flowering of each individual’s personality and talents is the pre-condition for everyone’s development……

Their influence diminished after they took on responsibility for provision, according to study by Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Baring Foundation

Voluntary sector organisations that run public services should be aware of the pitfalls encountered by housing associations, according to a report from Charity Commission board member Andrew Purkis.

The study was jointly published by social research charity the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and grant-maker the Baring Foundation and written by Purkis, whose tenure the commission’s board was extended for three months in July.

It says housing associations have lost their independence and their role as campaigning organisations has diminished as a result of assuming responsibility for housing provision and the need to respond to government targets and demands.

“It is a very long time since individual housing associations saw themselves as campaigning bodies,” says the report. “Here are voluntary organisations that are in day-to-day contact with 2.5 million families, including many towards the bottom of the social heap. They see their vulnerabilities and are shocked by neglected needs, but you will rarely hear a squeak about these from the vast majority of housing associations.”

The report says that, in most cases, not even a “tiny percentage” of associations’ operating surpluses is used to fund campaigns on behalf of tenants other than part of the membership fee associations pay to housing association umbrella body the National Housing Federation.

Purkis said voluntary organisations that “go the same way as housing associations” with regard to running public services could lose some of their independence.

“There is a lot of pressure on the voluntary sector in terms of delivering public services,” he said. “But each voluntary sector organisation should look at the experience of housing associations and consider the implications of becoming too dependent on government.”

http://www.baringfoundation.org.uk/HousingAssociations.pdf

Author: Lorraine Connolly, Community Newswire

People across the country believe the decline of local newspapers has disempowered them, according to research published today.

Meeting the News Needs of Local Communities, commissioned by Media Trust, said the decline of local newspapers had left many people feeling disempowered, unheard and irrelevant and may significantly hinder the emergence of the much debated “Big Society”.

The report, written by Professor Natalie Fenton from Goldsmiths Media Research Centre, highlights the link between strong local media and proper accountability and democracy.

Caroline Diehl, Media Trust founder and chief executive, said: “This report undeniably makes the case for a vibrant local media as a cornerstone of democracy, accountability and social enterprise.

“If communities are to respond to the Government’s call to hold the authorities to account, there needs to be an effective independent mechanism for doing so.

“Transparency is meaningless without free and easy access to information and the means to test, challenge and debate it.”

The research showed members of the public wanted to get their local news from old-fashioned newspapers.

Ms Diehl added: “There is a latent demand for the rapidly disappearing, truly ‘local’ newspaper, for quality investigative journalism that can represent and reflect local concerns, underpin accountability and arguably, be the key tool in bringing back a sense of community.

“The respondents and focus groups involved in this research wanted to see and know local journalists, wanted them to ‘walk the beat’ and engage face-to-face.

“They want journalists, local news and local newspapers back at the heart of their communities.”

Those interviewed for the report said that while online news could provide a solution to local accountability and information, it was still a long way from filling the gap left by local papers.

Even communities that had local and hyperlocal websites still wanted a local paper with news about their neighbourhoods and communities.

In the report’s executive summary, Prof Fenton called for local news hubs, supported with funds from local authorities and foundations.

Media Trust said it believed such hubs could act as a local catalyst, bringing together communities and professional journalists alongside training, volunteer mentors and technical support for communities to engage in identifying, investigating and reporting local news.

Such hubs could act as a new and accessible source of news stories for existing local and regional media, and they could possibly start a new layer of local papers – run as commercial, or not-for-profit, social enterprises.

Ms Diehl said she believed this solution would be positive for the wider media industry: “We have long believed the BBC should take positive action to increase the range of services, viewpoints and engagement accessible to communities and citizens.

“The BBC could play a vital role in setting up and resourcing such hubs – especially in mentoring and training staff, and promoting attachments and secondments.

She also said news must, by its nature, be independent: “There is no place for local authority newspapers and ‘news’ websites. This direct control of the local news agenda is not only undemocratic but an unsustainable and ineffective use of taxpayers’ funds.”

Ms Diehl said she felt a fraction of the £450 million local authorities spend on communications could be matched by funds from Big Lottery and local community foundations to provide seed funding for news hubs, which would provide a new source of dynamic local news content, freely available to all media.

She concluded: “They would hold local powers to account – the new GP fund-holders, local authorities, parent-run schools and post offices – and encourage local participation in decision-making and democracy.”

Author: Gerry Hassan, The Scotsman, August 13th 2010

The prevalent reaction of many people I know in Scotland to David Cameron’s idea of ‘the Big Society’ is to pour scorn on to it, and dismiss it as window dressing for the forthcoming cuts.

This has a similarity to the haughty dismissal of ‘the Con Dem Nation’ prevalent in centre-left chattering circles. Whatever you think of the coalition, there is a smugness, self-satisfaction and unattractive sense of certainty in this mindset.

Politics often involves the knee-jerk, tribalism and the instant dismissal of opponents, but there is a huge danger in being too closed minded about everything which comes from the coalition government, and in particular damning the potential of ‘the Big Society’ out of hand.

‘The Big Society’ might not be completely worked out, and might well be part fig leaf for the tough times ahead, but it does have something interesting in it. There is even a degree of intellectual muscle derived from Phillip Blond’s eclectic ‘Red Toryism’ which has created a centre-right niche critiquing the failures of economic and social liberalism. There are weaknesses in ‘Red Toryism’, but it has managed to create something more interesting than left-wingers have for decades.

What the ‘Big Society’ is trying to address is the sense that the state has over-reached and across numerous areas of our lives crowded out other individual and collective ways of organising and expressing oneself. This has aided a feeling of passivity in people, looking for top-down solutions, and atrophying localism. Where it falls down is the practical issue of who funds and supports initiatives, its fixation just on the state as the problem, and blindness to corporate over-bearing power which equally makes people feel powerless.

Is there a progressive version, and in particular a Scottish variant of ‘the Big Society’? Labour seem to have retreated into oppositionalism – on the Alternative Vote, law and order, public spending, and ‘the Big Society’. This reduces what is centre-left to the idea of statism, an altogether impoverished, depowering vision.

Labour has an alternative, pluralist tradition: one of co-operatives, friendly and mutual societies, and the origins of trade unions. Maurice Glasman, self-styled ‘Blue Labour’ has stressed that Labour needs to be neither statist or big corporatist: the two overbearing approaches which New Labour combined in government.

What of Scotland? This is a country which prides itself on its inclusive, compassionate character, and yet the reality is very different. This is a land of institutional capture, gatekeepers and a nomenklatura across public life. Whether in the public, private or voluntary sectors, there are institutions and cultures which block change and are part of the forces of conservatism which shape so much of Scotland.

Civil society isn’t just a warm, cuddly collection of well-meaning people. There is still in Scotland an over-romanticised view of civil society – often from middle class people – which disguises a different reality, of a civil society reliant on the state, and controlled or limited by Labour place people, particularly in the West of Scotland.

Scotland has been a land which for all the progressive rhetoric has been immune to radical ideas for decades. The poll tax disaster is the major exception. Thatcher’s council house sales did dramatically change life for hundreds of thousands of Scots, but that wasn’t specifically Scottish, and was bitterly resisted by Labour councils.

Devolution itself has proven to be the vessel of institutional Scotland, rather than one of shifting power. It has been characterised by the politics of continuity and the self-preservation society.

This is where a Scottish version of ‘the Big Society’ could be powerful and potent. One which is fashioned by our own priorities and ideas, and the need for imaginative thinking and practice, challenging and dispersing the concentrations of power which exist in our public life, and giving people both choice and voice.

It does not matter if you call this left or right. What Scotland needs is a cultural shift – and rather than just the rhetoric of change we have had in recent years – this requires political change and a different way to thinking about power and public life.

Scotland’s ‘Big Society’ could entail bringing together a new sense of responsibility and community, with a vision of freedom, hope, imagination and emancipation. We would need to give it a name which captured its vision and boldness.

This isn’t anti-state or pro-market. It is neither. It would say lets stop thinking in such simplistic binary terms. We need a strong, responsive state. And we need a different kind of state. We need strong, open, dynamic markets. But we don’t need oligopoly or Tescopoly.

We need to be against concentrations of power wherever they come from. This is apposite, given that the forthcoming age of austerity and cuts will bring about new configurations of power and centralisation, mergers and take-overs in both the public and private sectors.

Who will give voice to this new Scotland? Labour could tap into its radical roots of mutualism and the co-operative movement, but there is no sign of any febrile activity anywhere in Scottish Labour.

The leaves a huge opportunity for the other parties – who have less to gain from clinging to the defence of the remnants of Labour’s extended state across Scotland.

The biggest opportunity here is for the Nationalists. Can the SNP gather together the beginning of an idea of a different vision of society in Scotland? The state isn’t their state; the forces of big business aren’t their natural constituency. So far this state of affairs has produced caution and lack of radicalism from the SNP as they have attempted to not make enemies of institutional Scotland.

And yet, the prospect of a politics of genuine self-determination could inform and make real a politics of self-government, linking change in society to constitutional change.

With the coming together of public spending cuts and fiscal autonomy in political debate, there is room for bold national leadership of the kind rarely seen in modern Scotland. Who will first speak and dare to capture a different Scotland, not anti-state or anti-market, but posing a different state and different kind of market, could shape Scotland for years to come.

The Scotland of the last decade has been one of the forces of conservatism presenting themselves as the tribunes of the people, while real, radical voices have been marginalised. The coming storms will open up all sorts of opportunities for radical ideas – which ‘the Big Society’ for all its weakness – touches on. Scottish radicals need to start being daring and dreaming of a different nation.

Background

The new Antisocial Behaviour Framework, Promoting Positive Outcomes, was published in March 2009 (http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2009/03/18112243/0)
with the outcomes of the policy review collated under the headings of prevention, integration engagement and communication.

Within the category of engagement, a commitment was given that,

The Scottish Government and COSLA will establish, by autumn 2009, a participatory budgeting pilot exercise across three CPP areas as part of the community empowerment agenda.

To support the establishment and delivery of these pilots Scottish Government agreed to provide match funding up to a maximum of £100,000.

In addition, as a way of embedding the new framework within local operational activities,

The Scottish Government, COSLA and other review partners will work with a number of local agencies throughout 2009-10 and 2010-11 to pilot specific new approaches and demonstrate the effectiveness of realigning services with the principles of this Framework.

Participatory Budgeting Pilots

Following an extensive application and selection process, 5 pilot sites were chosen:

The objectives of each of the pilots include:

• Bring diverse people together and support community cohesion
• Enhance the ways in which local people, elected members and council officials     work together
• Promote empowerment of individuals and communities
• Promote active citizenship to create better public services
• Promote community development and capacity-building within communities
• Support the Scottish Community Empowerment Action Plan that has been developed by the Scottish Government and COSLA

The local authority involved in each pilot have match-funded the Government’s investment, effectively doubling the awards.  The local authority areas are Fife, South Lanarkshire, North Lanarkshire, Shetland Islands and Stirling.

Fife Community Safety Partnership

The pilot will enable Fife to develop projects in the Glenrothes area, based on the needs and preferences of local people. Participatory budgeting will use both existing methods of community engagement used by the police and council, community profile information and new means of getting people involved in their local area. It could include projects to provide positive activities for young people, address health issues, or improve safety – anything which helps tackle antisocial behaviour. 

South Lanarkshire Council

This pilot will enable South Lanarkshire’s to further develop the ‘Positive Communities’ model, engaging with a range of community and tenants’ groups to identify and prioritise local issues and influence the direction of resources. 

Shetland Islands Council

This pilot will enable the North Staney Hill Community Association, supported by Shetland Islands Council, to build on its efforts to renew a sense of community within the area and overcome the negative assumptions that are made about it, increase understanding between groups in the community and allow the community to solve its own problems.

Stirling Community Safety Partnership

This pilot will focus on the Dunblane area and will engage young people who are currently involved in aspects of antisocial behaviour as well as those who are on the fringes of such behaviour. It aims to encourage young people to take ownership and responsibility for their behaviour and to build the capacity of young people to positively engage, both with community planning partners and with the wider community they live in. 

North Lanarkshire Partnership

The pilot aims to strengthen local community planning structures through offering the residents of one area the opportunity for the first time, to make decisions about the distribution of public funds, at the same time strengthening relationships between residents and agencies operating in the area. North Lanarkshire has already identified how participatory budgeting might be sustained into overall Community Planning processes. 

Supporting the pilot sites

Scottish Government has contracted with the (PBU) to provide ongoing support to the pilot initiatives. PBU, a project of Church Action on Poverty, is exclusively concerned with the promotion, development and support of participatory budgeting and is recognised as the main delivery organisation for such initiatives in the UK. The Unit has extensive experience of working with local authorities, housing associations, police authorities, schools and community groups to deliver participatory budgeting projects. Key activities include researching initiatives across the world, developing practical tools and other resources, co-ordinating and networking participatory budgeting activity regionally and nationally, providing advice and guidance to practitioners and giving hands-on support to projects.

It is the hideaway which George Orwell famously described as “an extremely un-get-at-able place” and where he wrote his acclaimed novel 1984.

Now it appears Orwell’s statement about Jura will ring even truer as its direct ferry to the mainland is under serious threat.

Although the Prime Minister likes to take his holidays on the island – where 210 people live today – a lack of other visitors means that unless £12,500 can be found soon, the first direct ferry service to the mainland in almost 40 years will have to cease in the middle of next month – six weeks before the end of a three-year pilot.

If that happens nobody knows whether the ferry, which runs from the beginning of April to the end of September, will ever start again.

The fast passenger route was launched by a community company in 2008 with grant aid from Argyll and Bute Council.

For the first time islanders and tourists could get to Lochgilphead in an hour, compared to a journey three times as long going via the neighbouring island of Islay to catch the Caledonian MacBrayne ferry to Kennacraig from Port Ellen or Port Askaig.

But the islanders based their figures on a projection that on average seven of the 12 passenger places would be taken on fast crossing between the island’s main settlement of Craighouse and Tayvallich, five miles from Crinan.

These proved rather optimistic and only five and a half seats were taken on the average trip.

Deborah Bryce, community plan co-ordinator with the Jura Development Trust, said the direct ferry was vitally important to the island.

“It has carried over 6000 passengers since it began in 2008 and generated around £30,000 per annum to the local community supporting and helping to sustain local businesses,” she said.

“If we lost the ferry we would not be going back to where we started, but further back. Since the ferry began we have a new award-winning restaurant, The Antlers, a privately owned hotel and more visitor accommodation. The community have now lost their sense of isolation and look forward to what and who the ferry brings.”

She said the trust would be contacting the council to ask for help funding the shortfall so the service can finish its trial. “We now have accurate figures that indicate the ferry needs 55 to 60% subsidy, which I understand is less than the average subsidy given to most transport services in Argyll, but would certainly make it viable,” she added.

A council spokeswoman said any request would be considered but added: “The Jura Passenger Ferry has been allocated £27,457 for 2010/11, made up of £24,196 allocated two years ago and an extra £3261 allocated in March.

“Due to budgetary constraints, the council was unable to award the full £5624 requested by the Jura Development Trust in March.

“The other eight community transport projects also only received a proportion of the funding they had asked. They were all informed of the funding which had been allocated to them at the time. So it was known from the start of this year’s season that the Jura Passenger Ferry would have a shortfall, which it was hoped could be made up by increased fares, increased patronage on the ferry or the trust receiving funding from elsewhere.”

David Cameron is a fan of Jura having had holidays on the Tarbert Estate owned by wife Samantha’s stepfather Viscount Astor. But direct access has been a problem ever since 1972, the last time a MacBrayne’s ferry provided a service to the mainland.

For decades there was debate over a ferry crossing between Jura and Argyll that Islay drovers used to get cattle to market 200 years ago. Many feared it would turn Jura into a busy thoroughfare for its more populous neighbour.

Policy-makers have identified that community and mutual ownership can make a significant contribution to the economy, welfare and society more generally. A historical analysis of social change can inform contemporary understanding, policy and practice.

This study charts the historical development of ownership of land, resources, businesses and services. It identifies models of community and mutual ownership and draws out implications for addressing social problems and meeting new needs.

Key points
•  Modern ideas and practices of ownership took a long time to develop, and were based on the enclosure of common land, the emergence of concentrated private ownership and the enlargement of state activity, both through regulation and the direct ownership of resources and services. These long-term historical transformations were not inevitable processes with a fixed outcome.
•  The project identified five models of ‘community and mutual’ ownership:  customary and common; community; co-operative and mutual; charitable; and municipal and state ownership.
•  There is a contemporary opportunity for community and mutual ownership to help meet needs relating to the economy, welfare provision, society in general, and the environment.
•  However, new forms of democracy, membership and belonging cannot be created overnight. In the past, community and mutual ownership was built up over a long time and depended upon the growth of popular participation and associated feelings of ownership.
•  Nurturing community and mutual ownership requires a coherent and systematic approach, based on a clear set of values, if it is to realise its full potential.
Summary  Download as PDF, 4 pages, 0.11 MB

Key Findings (Download a copy of the full report)

The aims of this research were to find out who was buying community shares; what were their
motivations when they bought the shares; what was most important to them – the financial, social
or environmental returns on their investment; and, informed by the findings, what marketing
techniques would be best suited to this form of capital raising. An internet questionnaire to 11
Societies which had recently issued Community Shares was emailed out to 1785 members and 240
respondents completed the survey (a healthy response rate of 13%). This was followed up with 30
semi structured interviews by telephone. Data was also analysed from the share register of Societies
on amounts of individual shareholding and location of members. From this research we have been
able to build up a picture of who is buying community shares.

There are 4 categories of investor

– The Local Community Investor – an individual who wants to create or maintain local
facilities for social return, can also include those with connections to, but no longer living in
the area (e.g. investing in a community owned shop or pub); “…seemed like a good idea to
own the store between us and maintain it…”

– The Community of Interest Investor – an individual who wants to create or maintain
facilities they have an interest in for social return (e.g. investing in a community owned
railway); “..purely out of interest! I am interested in railways and railway management…”

– The Social Investor – an institution or high net worth individual interested in receiving a
blend of social and financial return, possibly social investment is only a small part of a larger
investment portfolio (e.g. investing in a co-operative wind farm); “…the finances have to
stack up or we won’t invest, but if the social impact and mission isn’t there then we won’t
invest either…”

– The Ethical Investor – an individual with no obvious connection to a Society other than
approving of its social aims, sometimes motivated by democratic structures and ideology,
and wishing to invest as a means of receiving primarily a social return (but not foregoing
financial compensation – a small amount of interest or a tax incentive); “…When we have a
bit of extra money we’ll put a £1000 in something if it seems good…”
 

Two guides also launched at seminar : Investing in Community Shares 

                                                 Community shares: A practitioners guide to governance and offer documents

Two recent articles offering different perspectives on the future of community councils

Hugh Docherty – The Herald

One of the first jobs I did on joining Strathclyde Regional Council’s public relations department in 1985 was to help breathe new life into the region’s ailing community councils.

That was 10 years after they had been established as part of local government reorganisation in 1975, and a visit to the community council resource centre in Glasgow, plus some press releases to the 52 local papers covering Strathclyde, wasn’t encouraging.

It soon became clear that no-one was very interested in involvement, while the cornerstones of tenants and residents’ associations and neighbourhood watch committees were the same people as those on community councils.

Most were retired, some obsessed with a particular single local issue, and others were members of that peculiar class of people, many seemingly suffering from an adult version of attention deficit disorder, bestowed with the over-dignified title of ‘community activist’. No wonder ordinary residents shied away.

Today, the picture is similar in the majority of Scotland’s 1,200 community councils. Now that axes are being sharpened for the cuts to come, community councils should be first in line for the chop. For they squander enormous amounts of expensive and precious council officer time pandering to the whims and moans of members, who generally don’t represent anything but the particular obsessions of those who are generally co-opted to them. The majority of community councils never have enough candidates for membership to run an election. Getting on is easy, staying on is easier and it becomes a closed shop.

Of course, there are some community councils doing an excellent job, but they only seem to work where the first line in their title actually exists – a community itself. I’ve come across examples in Neilston, where the community council has worked with the local council and other agencies to start an effective regeneration of the village, while Portpatrick’s community council publishes an excellent newsletter and effects physical and attitudinal change in the community. In both cases, vitally, there’s a community to start with.

But the majority of community councils in urban and suburban areas labour under the disadvantage that no real community exists. They tend to be dominated by older people who often make little effort to communicate with residents and whose personal interests tend to dominate proceedings. Local news agendas also tend to be distorted by them, for young reporters head to the community council meeting for guaranteed stories criticising the local council for the neighbourhood’s every ill.

Community councils are legally constituted bodies, have a right to be consulted on planning issues, and have a duty to work with the local council for the good of the community. But, far too often, members vent their rage on councillors who attend and their first response is often ‘No!’ to any proposal. In-fighting can also be destructively brutal.

The problem is that councillors can be over-influenced by community councils, whereas the average citizen isn’t interested in spending an evening in a school hall discussing issues such as littering, the latest application for a take-away, or that ‘the area’s not what it was when I moved here 40 years ago’ – a common community council discussion topic. Most people are far too busy getting on with their lives.

None of this is to denigrate the work of genuine people who run effective community councils, nor the efforts of the Association of Scottish Community Councils which has worked with COSLA to bring out a model code of practice.

We have to ask if we can afford community councils. They were launched 25 years ago as the cornerstone of what was then a more active local democracy with more participation by voters in elections and when more people belonged to churches, clubs and other organisations.

None of that applies today. It’s time to say goodbye to community councils as a touching anachronism.

Lesley Riddoch, The Scotsman

Mini-councils will energise Scotland’s communities

The Tory MEP Daniel Hannan recently made the case for localism in this paper: “Give councils more power and you will attract a higher calibre of candidate, as well as boosting participation at local elections.

“In Britain, local authorities raise 25 per cent of their budgets and turn-out is typically around 30 per cent. In France, those figures are, respectively, 50 and 55 per cent; in Switzerland 85 and 90 per cent.”

Interesting comparisons – and not just because Gallic councils raise more cash and enjoy higher voter turn-out. They also have tiny units of local governance compared with big, remote, clunky old Britain.

France has 22 regions, 96 départements and 36,000 communes with an average population of just 380. The Swiss have 7.6 million people in 23 cantons and 2,900 communes with an average population of 2,600.

Norway – same population as Scotland – has 431 municipalities responsible for primary and secondary education, outpatient health, senior citizen and social services, unemployment, planning, economic development and roads.

The average Norwegian municipality has 12,500 people – the average Scottish council serves 162,500.

North or south, Baltic or Mediterranean, most European states are micro-sized at their local tier. That means more councillors and more cost. It also means more connection, traction, trust, effective service delivery and involvement than our disempowering and distant “local” government.

Since the majority of MPs start as councillors, their early experience of community really matters. In municipal, small-scale, active and co-operative Norway, an expectation of local competence and involvement has informed national policy-making. The opposite has happened at Holyrood.

Politicians of all parties like the idea of involving local people, but in practice wouldn’t trust them to run the proverbial in a brewery.

So we are stuck with the biggest “local” government in Europe – too large to connect with actual communities, too small to achieve genuine efficiencies of scale. Kind of the mummy bowl size in Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Betwixt and between.

Take Highland Council, which covers an area the size of Belgium with a population the size of Belfast. Councillors drive hundreds of thousands of miles a year to create a sense of connection through meetings, surgeries and local events. Despite such superhuman efforts, many remote communities feel largely negative, reduced to questioning, suspecting and vetoing whatever emanates from Inverness.

Meanwhile, Europe’s fastest growing city also lacks a dedicated council of its own. One size doesn’t fit all – in fact, it doesn’t fit very much.

Those who run Scotland’s overlarge authorities are on big salaries and a losing wicket. Many struggle valiantly to keep their ears to the ground. But the ground is simply too large. Ironically, this means more money spent on consultation, which then decreases confidence in community capacity because few locals bother to respond.

A recent Rotary event in Fort William was packed with retired planners, civil engineers, project managers and council chiefs despairing about the lack of vibrancy in their town. What had this talented, practical bunch done about it? Nothing.

Our disempowering, paternalist system of local government has stifled localism for decades – why should anything change now?

Local confidence, capacity and management skills come from running real assets and sweating over real decisions with real neighbours able to really help or really obstruct. Not from box-ticking consultation exercises.

So as life in Scotland looks set to become even more centralised in the name of efficiency, could it also become more localised at the same time? Should our current local authorities become the tier to scrap or – given Scotland’s penchant for failing to grasp the thistle – circumvent?

Prominent Scots have already been thinking the unthinkable.

Former Inspector of Constabulary Paddy Tomkins has called for a single police force in Scotland which communicates directly with beefed-up beat patrols. Labour’s education minister Peter Peacock has proposed scrapping Scotland’s 32 education authorities, allowing ministers in Edinburgh to fund headteachers directly.

Local police and municipal schools – why stop there? Why not ultra-local mini-councils à la Europe? Why not – because there’s no cash, no spare energy, no appetite for local government reform and no real belief that the massive distance between people and power in Britain actually matters. Happily, there may be an ad hoc solution.

Powerless community councils are so toothless they can’t legally own an asset. So development trusts have been set up to handle community orchards, lochs, pubs, libraries, bridges and wind turbines – and in the process a very practical, capable and focused set of people have been gathered together and let rip.

Community-owned or joint-venture wind farms will soon be netting millions (not peanuts) for their areas. Already in Fintry near Glasgow, community wind cash has paid to insulate homes and replace axed bus services.

It’s a silent revolution. There are 4-500 development trusts in Scotland – community-led, multiple-activity, enterprising, partnership-oriented and keen to move away from reliance on grants. Working with local housing associations, they could become a powerful force for local good.

Could they help to run Scotland? They soon will be.

Cost-cutting councils are already closing libraries and village halls. Development Trusts are ready to take them on – pigs in pokes excepted.

Joint procurement, shared backroom functions, local energy companies and district heating must become the norm in Scottish life, not the praiseworthy exception.

That can only happen if little and large combine powerfully to improve governance. Cometh the hour, cometh the community

Our approach

We want to provide long-term help that supports and joins up with the valuable work already being carried out at a community, local and national level to help disadvantaged and overlooked neighbourhoods.

To do this we will set up a new independent Trust and give it up to £200 million to invest and spend over about 10 years. This Trust will support local funding schemes in specified urban and rural neighbourhoods that will help meet local need and build skills and confidence in the communities.

An independent Trust brings with it many benefits. A Trust can plan for the long-term and ensure that money committed cannot be diverted for other uses. It can be flexible in the kinds of local spending it supports, including giving out grants, setting up microfinance schemes and neighbourhood endowments, and organising social investment bonds. It can help local partners attract further investments for neighbourhoods. A Trust may also recruit staff or contract with other organisations to carry out elements of its work, and raise money from other sources, to add to the money from us.

Another important benefit the Trust can bring is its ability to work at neighbourhood level to provide support to communities: building confidence, developing skills and helping them to identify and tackle issues they prioritise.

How the Trust will work

The Trust will be set up to achieve the aim of our Big Local Trust programme:

To enable people to make their communities better places to live in, now and in the future, by helping them develop the skills and confidence they need to identify priorities that matter to them and to take action to change things for the better.

The Trust will focus its work on between 100 and 150 disadvantaged and overlooked urban and rural neighbourhoods in its lifetime. The targeted neighbourhoods are all places where many people face multiple barriers to meeting their needs, and which have not had great success in gaining resources to help. We have already selected the first 50, based on extensive analysis and discussion in each of our nine England regional areas, and we will also select a further 50-100. Details of the first 50 neighbourhoods are available on the Big Lottery Fund website www.biglotteryfund.org.uk/biglocaltrust

The Trust will have its own objects, which describe what it is set up to do. It will also have powers that set out the ways it can achieve its objects, for example, by giving grants, providing loans or tendering for services. These will include the power to seek other income to add to its endowment from the Big Lottery Fund.

For more information on the Trust click here