TENANTS are being invited to tell their own stories for a history project.

Housing organisation For All Cranhill Tenants (FACT), which manages homes in the area on behalf of Glasgow Housing Association, wants tenants and former tenants to contribute stories and pictures to build up a history of the area.

Famous sons of Cranhill include actors Gerard Kelly and Billy Boyd and footballing brothers Jim and Joe Smith.

Former resident Douglas McCreath, who moved to Cranhill in 1953 and left in 1969 after he married, is contributing to the project.

Mr McCreath said: “For many people, even if their families moved out of Cranhill, the emotional ties remain strong.

“My concern is that if the Cranhill Story isn’t told and written down, it will be lost for ever. The more we can all share stories of our past, the brighter will be our shared future.”

FACT wants as many people to get involved as possible.

Community housing manager David MacKenzie said: “There is a rich community history in Cranhill that has never been told by local people.

“What was it like when people moved into newly built houses after the war? How has the area changed over the years?

“Cranhill has changed from a once healthy population of over 6500 to less than half that today. For many children and newcomers to the area, open spaces and vacant land belies the fact many houses once existed that were built after the war at the time that Cranhill was effectively created.

“A great community spirit still exists today and past and present residents, together with other partner agencies, will work together to tell Cranhill’s story.”

The FACT housing office in Crowlin Crescent, Cranhill, is holding an open day every Tuesday from 10am to 3pm for anyone who wants to drop off photographs, and staff will record any stories visitors may have to tell.

For more information about the Cranhill project, call 0141 274 7065

LPL Land Reform Seminar
13th October 2009
The Tolbooth, Stirling

The purpose of this Seminar is to consider how to promote greater progress with land reform in Scotland.

Land reform was a defining issue when the Scottish Parliament was established 10 years ago and there have been important reforms since then.  However, there is increasing recognition that there is a need now to take stock and re-build momentum to ensure a continuing programme of land reform measures.

The Seminar will be based around presentations by Robin Callander and Andy Wightman on the history and development of the land reform agenda and priorities for the future.

The Seminar follows LPL’s initial meeting about land reform in June (Note of Meeting below) and will include feedback from two other recent land reform events– The Conference at Aberdeen University on Land Reform in Scotland (3rd September) and the Seminar in North Harris on Community Land Ownership (29th / 30th September).

Anyone wishing to attend this seminar, who has not already done so, should contact: angus@localpeopleleading.net

Key outcomes of previous LPL meeting on land reform held June 16th  in Edinburgh
Main concerns  expressed at meeting
 
·         Government enthusiasm for land reform has cooled
·         Land Reform  (Scotland) Act 2003 is not delivering expected outcomes
·         Previous commitment from Scottish Executive/ Scottish Government to  review the operation and effectiveness of Land Reform Act has not been fulfilled
·         Levels of investment in a comprehensive programme of community asset acquisition and development have stalled
·         Standard of community capacity building per CLD is inadequate to meet the demands placed on community bodies in the pre and post acquisition of assets.
·         Transfers of local authority assets into community ownership are ad hoc and lack a national strategic focus viz a viz that provided by the Quirk Review in England
·         Common Good assets remain poorly documented with persistent financial irregularities and little opportunity for meaningful community oversight.
·         A commitment from Scottish Government to produce guidance for local authorities on the disposal of public assets at less than best consideration has not been fulfilled.
·         Scottish Government’s Community Empowerment Action Plan is not currently a cross government policy priority and consequently the community asset agenda sits outwith mainstream policy thinking
 
 
What action is required:
Proposed that a campaign of coordinated action should be pursued under the auspices of Local People Leading which should include the following key areas:
 
·         Community Right to Buy.   Registration and re-registration procedures should be simplified.  Scope of the Act should be extended to cover all land in Scotland.   Significant investment is required to raise awareness and understanding of the Act.
·         Investment.  Further public investment is required to support asset acquisition allied to new regulations and guidance to facilitate greater levels of transfer of public assets into community ownership
·         Capacity building support. More effective and appropriate levels of community development support should be available to communities to assist in pre and post acquisition support.
·         Common Good. All Local Authorities should have accurate asset registers and strategic plans for management of common good assets. Communities should be provided with greater powers over their Common Good 
·         Crown Estates. The Crown Estate in Scotland should be reformed as proposed in the report – New Opportunities for Public Benefits and endorsed by HIE, COSLA  and six local authorities from the Highlands and Islands.
·         Research and development.  Commission longitudinal research into community asset ownership to study impact on community resilience, social capital and wider impacts on civil society.
 
 

Author: David Quinn, Regeneration & Renewal, 7 September 2009

The Conservative Party plans to devolve control of urban regeneration to community partnerships at the “street level” to better engage local people if elected to government, the shadow housing minister has said.

Following a speech to the Royal Institute of British Architects, Grant Shapps told Regeneration & Renewal that rather than having regeneration initiatives driven downwards from government through a series of quangos, such as the Homes & Communities Agency and the regional development agencies, the Tories would devolve control of regeneration to the “very lowest levels” of government, including at the parish and ward level. He said he wanted to cut back the “layers of impenetrable bureaucracy” and “force power down” to “street level”.

Shapps said: “Bureaucracy is a huge problem. The scale of regeneration that’s needed is so large that if you want to do it from the top down, the risk is that you don’t fulfil people’s aspirations. We want people to take control of the problem much quicker. Under a Conservative government, you wouldn’t have to sit around and wait for regeneration to come to you.”

Shapps said the strategy could involve encouraging communities to form partnerships, such as those developed by charity the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. The idea of empowering “community advocates” could be an “important additional element” in the regeneration process, he added.

Chris Brown, chief executive at developer Igloo Regeneration, welcomed the proposals.

“Where large-scale regeneration is required, the community will need partners to undertake delivery, but having local communities shape regeneration plans is undoubtedly the way to go,” he said.

Change the direction of travel – invest in community led regeneration

The consultation being led by Scottish Government on how Scotland’s share of the dormant bank accounts should be spent and the associated the debate that is has stimulated across the Third Sector is to be welcomed. This financial windfall presents a unique opportunity for Scotland to fundamentally challenge and improve upon existing orthodoxy in terms of how to tackle the deep rooted and enduring challenges in Scotland’s most deprived communities.

This proposal is based on the following propositions concerning Scotland’s community regeneration policy over the past 25 years :

• That despite a succession of targeted, area based regeneration initiatives over this period, the baseline indicators of improved outcomes for the people living in these communities show that little meaningful progress has been achieved
• That these initiatives can be characterised as being, without exception, top-down and led by the local authority in partnership with other public sector bodies.
• That these initiatives result in programmes of short term funding for community based projects that are not able to sustain themselves beyond the end of the regeneration scheme.
• That despite the evidence that this top down, short term investment approach has failed to make a sustained impact, the same approach with minor modifications, has been applied repeatedly ever since New Life For Urban Scotland in the early 1980’s.
• That regeneration policy and practice in Central/Lowland Scotland has failed to recognise the value of lessons learnt in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland in relation to the potential impact of community ownership and control and the importance of linking social and community development with economic growth.

The annual turnover of Scotland’s Third Sector is approximately £3.7 billion. In relative terms, £40m is a small amount of money and there is a real danger that if it is committed along existing patterns of expenditure, it will generate little in terms of overall impact and additional value.

It could however be used in such a way that would both signal the start of a new era in the regeneration of our most deprived communities, and provide the Government’s current policy commitment on community empowerment with a flagship initiative that would reinforce its devolutionary credentials.

The proposal – to establish community endowments

The £40m should be used to establish a £2 million endowment fund in twenty of the most deprived communities in Scotland (the index of deprivation that is used should include a rural component) under the ownership and control of a community owned regeneration vehicle. Each endowment would be set up as a legal trust and managed by a team of professional fund managers contracted to work with a nominated local anchor organisation. Each community would enter negotiations with the awarding body (BIG Lottery) as to which local anchor organisation should assume the role of ‘accountable body’ for the endowment. The nominated local anchor organisation and the management arrangements for the endowment would be subject to rigorous due diligence, with a requirement that reporting on investment decisions and any disposal decisions with regard to the income generated, have to be wholly transparent and publicly accountable.
If implemented, this proposal would fundamentally change the framework within which local regeneration could take place. It would:
• provide the community with a long term income stream that is not dependent on the continued patronage of a grant provider
• change the dynamic of the relationship between the community and other stakeholders . The power imbalance created by the ‘begging bowl’ culture would become less significant.
• enable the community to take their place at the ‘partnership table’ as a genuine partner with a financial stake to contribute towards common objectives
• enable the community to assume greater control in determining what local priorities it chooses to address
• increase levels of community self confidence and local capacity as the sense of controlling more of their own destiny grows

Underpinning this proposal is the principle that the people who live in a community are best placed to lead any process of change or renewal that occurs within that community and should always be given the opportunity to do so. Furthermore, inherent in this proposal is a recognition that when local people are presented with this type of opportunity, a hitherto untapped pool of creative energy and local commitment and effort can be harnessed and channelled towards the overall regeneration effort.

As supporters of Local People Leading – The campaign for a strong and independent community sector, the organisations listed below endorse this submission to the Scottish Government as part of the Consultation on Dormant Bank Accounts.

Signed

Angus Hardie
On behalf of
Local People Leading – the campaign for a strong and independent community sector

Development Trusts Association Scotland
Community Recycling Network Scotland
Community Retailing Network
Community Transport Association Scotland
Transition Scotland
Senscot
Employers in Voluntary Housing
Community Woodlands Association
Community Energy Scotland
Glasgow and West of Scotland Forum of Housing Associations
Scottish League of Credit Unions
Time Banking Scotland
Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens
Scottish Allotments and Gardens Society

SOCIAL ENTERPRISE AND SINGLE OUTCOME AGREEMENTS
 
Introduction and summary
 
1.  Senscot and the Scottish Social Enterprise Coalition commissioned the Pool – DTA Scotland’s consultancy service – to review the Single Outcome Agreements for 2008 and 2009 to assess how far social enterprise was reflected in them.  A SOA is the means by which Community Planning Partnerships (CPPs) agree their strategic priorities for their local area and express those priorities as outcomes to be delivered by the partners, either individually or jointly.  Overall, 21 of the SOA’s in 2009 had no or very limited references to social enterprise.  SOA’s for rural areas tend to have stronger references to social enterprise than urban ones.
 
Single Outcome Agreements: Purpose and Importance
 
2.  The Concordat between the Scottish Government and COSLA agreed in November 2007 set out the terms of a new relationship between the Scottish Government and local government. It underpins the funding provided to local government over the period from 2008-09 to 2010-2011.
 
3.  A central element of the new relationship was the ending of ring fencing of local government funding and the creation of a Single Outcome Agreement (SOA) between each council, initially, and the Scottish Government, based on the 15 National Outcomes. All SOAs from 2009-10 onward will be between each Community Planning Partnership (CPP) and the Scottish Government. A SOA is the means by which CPPs agree their strategic priorities for their local area and express those priorities as outcomes to be delivered by the partners, either individually or jointly, while showing how those outcomes should contribute to the Scottish Government’s relevant National Outcomes.
 
4.  As such, the content of SOA’s are an important indication of the extent to which the support and development of social enterprises is seen as a priority to local authorities and CPP’s. Consequently, Senscot and the Scottish Social Enterprise Coalition (SSEC) decided to commission a review of SOA’s to see to what extent and how social enterprise features in them.
 
Methodology of the review
 
5.  All the SOA’s produced in 2008 and 2009 were reviewed to identify references to social enterprise (or failing any reference to social enterprise to  community enterprise or the social economy) in the 2008 and 2009 documents.  The main information fields in which substantive references will be found in the documents are in the context of the area (i.e. the characteristics and issues facing the area), local outcomes, local indicators and actions required by either local partners or other agencies.  References across all four fields would represent the strongest inclusion of social enterprise in SOA’s and no references will be the weakest.
 
 
Main findings
 
6.  The key findings are:
 
• Only one SOA in 2009 had references to social enterprise in all 4 information fields – context, local outcomes, local indicators and actions – compared to 2 in 2008.
 
• 12 SOA’s in 2009 had no references to social enterprise in any of the four fields and 9 had only one reference ( compared to 10 and 10 in 2008)
 
• the references in the 2009 SOA’s were 12 in context (10 in 2008) ,10 in local outcomes (7 in 2008), 11 in local indicators (12 in 2008) and 6 in actions (14 in 2008)
 
• The changes between 2008 SOA’s and 2009 SOA’s are not highly significant overall given that the 2009 SOA’s were prepared in a different way.
 
• Overall, it appears that SOA’s for rural areas –especially those in the Highlands and Islands – are more likely to contain references to social enterprise compared to those in urban areas. 
 
Conclusions
 
7.  Overall, social enterprise is not strongly represented in the SOA’s.  The strongest representation is in SOA’s for rural areas, the weakest in urban areas.  There have been no overall significant changes overall between 2008 and 2009.

The Spirit Level : Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better
Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett

Dr Kate Pickett will deliver the 2009 SURF Annual Lecture on 05.11.09 in Edinburgh.

The event is free for SURF members and just £25 for non-members to attend.
Place(s) can be booked online by clicking here http://www.scotregen.co.uk/events/booking.asp. Please contact Derek Rankine on 0141 585 6879 or email derek@scotregen.co.uk if you have any enquiries.

Review by Lynsey Hanley
The Guardian

We are rich enough. Economic growth has done as much as it can to improve material conditions in the developed countries, and in some cases appears to be damaging health. If Britain were instead to concentrate on making its citizens’ incomes as equal as those of people in Japan and Scandinavia, we could each have seven extra weeks’ holiday a year, we would be thinner, we would each live a year or so longer, and we’d trust each other more.

Epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett don’t soft-soap their message. It is brave to write a book arguing that economies should stop growing when millions of jobs are being lost, though they may be pushing at an open door in public consciousness. We know there is something wrong, and this book goes a long way towards explaining what and why.

The authors point out that the life-diminishing results of valuing growth above equality in rich societies can be seen all around us. Inequality causes shorter, unhealthier and unhappier lives; it increases the rate of teenage pregnancy, violence, obesity, imprisonment and addiction; it destroys relationships between individuals born in the same society but into different classes; and its function as a driver of consumption depletes the planet’s resources.

Wilkinson, a public health researcher of 30 years’ standing, has written numerous books and articles on the physical and mental effects of social differentiation. He and Pickett have compiled information from around 200 different sets of data, using reputable sources such as the United Nations, the World Bank, the World Health Organisation and the US Census, to form a bank of evidence against inequality that is impossible to deny.

They use the information to create a series of scatter-graphs whose patterns look nearly identical, yet which document the prevalence of a vast range of social ills. On almost every index of quality of life, or wellness, or deprivation, there is a gradient showing a strong correlation between a country’s level of economic inequality and its social outcomes. Almost always, Japan and the Scandinavian countries are at the favourable “low” end, and almost always, the UK, the US and Portugal are at the unfavourable “high” end, with Canada, Australasia and continental European countries in between.

This has nothing to do with total wealth or even the average per-capita income. America is one of the world’s richest nations, with among the highest figures for income per person, but has the lowest longevity of the developed nations, and a level of violence – murder, in particular – that is off the scale. Of all crimes, those involving violence are most closely related to high levels of inequality – within a country, within states and even within cities. For some, mainly young, men with no economic or educational route to achieving the high status and earnings required for full citizenship, the experience of daily life at the bottom of a steep social hierarchy is enraging.

The graphs also reveal that it is not just the poor, but whole societies, from top to bottom, that are adversely affected by inequality. Although the UK fares badly when compared with most other OECD countries (and is the worst developed nation in which to be a child according to both Unicef and the Good Childhood Inquiry), its social problems are not as pronounced as in the US.

Rates of illness are lower for English people of all classes than for Americans, but working-age Swedish men fare better still. Diabetes affects twice as many American as English people, whether they have a high or a low level of education. Wherever you look, evidence favouring greater equality piles up. As the authors write, “the relationships between inequality and poor health and social problems are too strong to be attributable to chance”.

But perhaps the most troubling aspect of reading this book is the revelation that the way we live in Britain is a serious danger to our mental health. Around a quarter of British people, and more than a quarter of Americans, experience mental problems in any given year, compared with fewer than 10 per cent in Japan, Germany, Sweden and Italy.

Wilkinson and Pickett’s description of unequal societies as “dysfunctional” suggests implicit criticism of the approach taken by Britain’s “happiness tsar” Richard Layard, who recommended that the poor mental health of many Britons be “fixed” or improved by making cognitive behavioural therapy more easily available. Consumerism, isolation, alienation, social estrangement and anxiety all follow from inequality, they argue, and so cannot rightly be made a matter of individual management.

There’s an almost pleading quality to some of Wilkinson and Pickett’s assertions, as though they feel they’ve spent their careers banging their heads against a brick wall. It’s impossible to overstate the implications of their thesis: that the societies of Britain and the US have institutionalised economic and social inequality to the extent that, at any one time, a quarter of their respective populations are mentally ill. What kind of “growth” is that, other than a malignant one?

One question that comes to mind is whether the world’s most equal developed nations, Japan and Sweden, make sufficient allowance for individuals to express themselves without being regarded as a threat to the health of the collective. Critics of the two societies would argue that both make it intensely difficult for individual citizens to protest against the conformity both produced by, and required to sustain, equality. The inclination to dismiss or neuter individuals’ complaints may, Wilkinson and Pickett suggest, go some way towards explaining the higher suicide rates in both countries compared with their more unequal counterparts. Those who feel wrong, or whose lives go wrong, may feel as though they really do have no one to blame but themselves.

What Japan and Sweden do show is that equality is a matter of political will. There are belated signs – shown in the recent establishment of a National Equalities Panel and in Trevor Phil lips’s public pronouncements on the central place of class in the landscape of British inequality – that Labour recognises that its relaxed attitude to people “getting filthy rich” has come back to bite it on the rear.

Twelve years in power is long enough to reverse all the trends towards greater social and economic stratification that have occurred since 1970; instead they have continued on their merry way towards segregation. Teenage pregnancy rates have begun to rise after a period of decline; there is a 30-year gap in male life expectancy between central Glasgow and parts of southern England; and child poverty won’t be halved by next year after all (though it wouldn’t make as much difference as making their parents more equal).

There are times when the book feels rather too overwhelmingly grim. Even if you allow for the fact that it was written before Barack Obama won the US presidency on a premise of trust and optimism, its opening pages are depressing enough to make you want to shut it fast: “We find ourselves anxiety-ridden, prone to depression, driven to consume and with little or no community life.” Taking the statistics broadly, they may be correct, but many readers simply won’t feel like that.

However, the book does end on an optimistic note, with a transformative, rather than revolutionary, programme for making sick societies more healthy. A society in which all citizens feel free to look each other in the eye can only come into being once those in the lower echelons feel more valued than at present. The authors argue that removal of economic impediments to feeling valued – such as low wages, low benefits and low public spending on education, for instance – will allow a flourishing of human potential.

There is a growing inventory of serious, compellingly argued books detailing the social destruction wrought by inequality. Wilkinson and Pickett have produced a companion to recent bestsellers such as Oliver James’s Affluenza and Alain de Botton’s Status Anxiety . But The Spirit Level also contributes to a longer view, sitting alongside Richard Sennett’s 2003 book Respect: The Formation of Character in an Age of Inequality , and the epidemiologist Michael Marmot’s Status Syndrome , from 2005.

Anyone who believes that society is the result of what we do, rather than who we are, should read these books; they should start with The Spirit Level because of its inarguable battery of evidence, and because its conclusion is simple: we do better when we’re equal.

CREDIT unions have attacked government levies that are to be used to help fund the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.

Tom Kelly, treasurer of Johnstone Credit Union, said the UK-wide policy, designed to re-pay the UK Government for the money it gave to the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) as a result of the failure of five UK banks, is unfair.
The levies are to be collected from banks, building societies and credit unions, even though credit unions are not responsible for the financial crisis that hit the UK last year.

Kelly said: “The imposition of this levy on credit unions, is a perfect illustration of the damage being inflicted on communities throughout the UK by what Lord Turner of the Financial Services Authority describes as the ‘socially useless’ innovations of the mainstream banking sector.

“It is incredible that small voluntary organisations should be expected to pay for the misdemeanours of these socially irresponsible banks. The banking sector should be asked to relieve credit unions of this burden.”

Dr Bill Wilson, SNP MSP for the West of Scotland, has backed Kelly’s criticism of the move.

“It is unjust that these small organisations that have been lending responsibly should be penalised by the Financial Services Authority due to the failures of the big banks,” said Wilson.

“Credit unions have worthy social aims in that they generally operate on a non profit making basis, employ volunteers and extend finance at reasonable rates to those who would otherwise struggle. They should not be punished by the unsustainable business practices of the major banks.”

The £30m Community Assets programme has funded 38 projects across England, enabling local authority buildings to be renovated and transferred to community organizations.

The Community Assets fund, a £30 million programme was established to transfer public buildings to local organisations, Community Assets offered grants of between £150,000 and £1 million to refurbish local authority buildings, ensuring they were appropriate for transfer to the third sector. The programme was funded by the Office of the Third Sector and delivered by the Big Lottery Fund.

The programme was aimed at strengthening third sector organisations, to enable them to more imaginative in providing services to their communities; and benefit local people, who will be able to use high quality spaces for community activities.

Phil Hope, the Minister for the Third Sector, said:

“Community Assets is about bringing people together and giving communities control over their own affairs, not simply painting buildings and fixing roofs. Taking on ownership of an asset will help third sector organisations to develop a base of independence and sustainability, which will enable them to grow and respond better to the needs of local people.”

In advance of the Fund starting for business, the Government consulted on how Community Assets should work. A summary of the consultation and the Government’s response can be found in the consultations section of the website.

An example of the impact of the Community Assets Fund is Birtley Community Hub which opened its doors last week, the first project to completed with a grant from the scheme.

The Birtley Project, based in Tyne and Wear, received £166,755 from the scheme to help convert the town’s library into a new centre for community use.

The new hub will provide office space for charities and community groups, meeting rooms, an ICT training suite and a café.

Birtley Community Hub project leader Ian Caddy said: ‘This could not have come at a better time for Birtley – we will be able to deliver help, support and hope not only to the local community and businesses but also to the surrounding area.’

The Cestra Credit Union, Northumbria Police, Citizens Advice Bureau and the North East Council of Addictions are leasing space in the building.

The Pilot Programme

We are currently inviting community organisations with an interest in running a Community Allowance pilot for people on Employment and Support Allowance and Incapacity Benefit to send us a proposal by 1st October 2009.

Right to Bid

Last year, the Government announced that it was creating a Right to Bid scheme that would enable any organisation to propose to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) a new way of delivering any of its services.

We thought this was a good opportunity to work with the DWP to pilot the Community Allowance. We developed a Right to Bid proposal for a £2.2 million pilot programme in 15 areas across the UK.

You can read the detail of what we wanted to achieve in our Right to Bid proposal that we sent to DWP in January 2009.

In April 2009 they asked us a number of questions about our proposal, you can read our answers here.

In July 2009 they called us to a meeting where they informed us that the Right to Bid process was looking for much smaller scale pilots. They also said that the outgoing Secretary of State, James Purnell MP, had made it clear that the Community Allowance could not be piloted for people on Income Support or Job Seekers Allowance.

They rejected our bid but asked us to submit another proposal for a smaller scale pilot operating in 3 areas anywhere in the UK. They also said our bid would stand a greater chance of success if we restricted the people who could participate to those who are on Incapacity Benefit and Employment and Support Allowance.

We asked all the organisations that had already expressed an interest in piloting the Community Allowance if they would be prepared to go ahead on that basis and over 30 organisations said they would.

Aims of pilots:

• To test the feasibility and impact of the Community Allowance on participants and their communities in a range of settings across the UK
• To capture learning and evidence that could inform further development of the Community Allowance to people on other benefits (e.g. Income Support and Job Seekers Allowance)

Want to be involved in the pilot programme?

We are looking for community organisations from across the UK that are interested in becoming a partner with CREATE in order to run the Community Allowance. We would like to work with organisations that are:

• Local community based charity, social enterprise or community interest company
• Trusted locally, with a track record of working with ‘hard to reach’ people
• Capacity and skills to support the Community Allowance participants
• Ability to generate local paid work (e.g. community research or youth work) or identify and place people in paid work that strengthens their neighbourhood (e.g. School Crossing Patrol)

We’d like these pilots to be in a range of rural and urban areas. In each area we anticipate identifying and working with one or more partners, each of whom would recruit, employ and support people. We have estimated that in each area the Community Allowance could create around 80 part time jobs.

If you wish to develop a proposal for how your organisation would deliver a Community Allowance pilot programme in your area, please download this proposal form and guidance notes. Completed forms need to be back to the CREATE Consortium by 5pm on 1st October 2009.

Type of Jobs: Eligible jobs on the Community Allowance would be restricted to those that contribute to strengthening the neighbourhood. This would be defined and refined by the CREATE Consortium over the duration of the pilots through dialogue with the CREATE partners.

Real Time Evaluation: The CREATE Consortium will contract with an independent evaluator to carry out a real time evaluation of the pilot programme.

Author: Calum Macleod and Nicole Busby, The Scotsman

CREATION of a legislative and public funding framework to enable the transfer of land into community ownership in Scotland is arguably the defining achievement of the first decade of devolution.
The “community right to buy” provisions contained in the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003, coupled with financial support from the Scottish Land Fund and, latterly, the Growing Community Assets Fund, have given rural communities the means and confidence to purchase the land they inhabit, thereby securing control of the prime asset with which to shape their futures.

In the Western Isles, no stranger to ill- conceived, supersized development “opportunities” – of which a proposed superquarry was surely the most misguided – the North Harris Trust is a notable example of the economic, environmental and social benefits that can flow from collective ownership of land.

It is scarcely alone in that regard.

By the time of its demise in 2006, the Scottish Land Fund had distributed a total of £13.9 million to 188 rural communities.

This amount included a grant of £3.5m to help the Isle of Gigha Heritage Trust – headed by Willie McSporran – to purchase its island in 2001 and £1.5m to help the Assynt Foundation buy the Glencanisp and Drumrunie estates in Sutherland and Ross-shire.

Yet much of the impetus that enabled community land ownership to make such impressive strides over the past decade is threatening to drain away as the financial tap of public funds is gradually turned off.

The omens were not encouraging when the Big Lottery’s Growing Community Assets Fund failed to ring-fence money for land purchase.

Last October’s announcement that the fund was to close, when the remaining £15m of its original £50m pot was allocated, confirmed that community land ownership was slipping down the political agenda.

Of course, sceptics may argue that none of this matters a great deal.

There are grumblings in some quarters that the community land movement has largely been the preserve of the Highlands and Islands with comparatively little investment in lowland Scotland.

Others argue that, in a climate of economic uncertainty, the financial case for supporting community buy-outs cannot be reconciled with other competing demands on the public purse.

All of which rather misses the point. The current international direction of travel in rural policy is towards ensuring the sustainability of local communities within the framework of what the OECD somewhat grandly calls “the new rural paradigm”.

What this boils down to is an approach to rural development in which competitiveness is driven by local assets and resources; broadly based rural economies; investment rather than subsidy; and the involvement of local stakeholders.

The OECD’s approach is one that the Scottish Government, with some justification, can claim to be already informing aspects of what still remains a frustratingly disconnected rural development strategy for Scotland.

Key proposals contained in the draft crofting reform bill, for example, are aimed squarely at empowering communities to take decisions at the local level.

And a constant refrain from government concerns the need to utilise Scotland’s natural resources to simultaneously promote the green agenda and generate sustainable economic growth.

So, it’s particularly surprising that a Scottish Government that appears to talk the language of community empowerment and sustainability hasn’t yet seen fit to safeguard dedicated funding for future community land buyouts.

Indeed, if anything, significant cuts to the budget of Highlands and Islands Enterprise in particular, do little to instil confidence that an imminent funding black hole is likely to be plugged any time soon.

Community land ownership doesn’t offer a “one-size fits all” antidote to the economic and social disparities that continue to bedevil rural Scotland.

And there is an important seam of longer term research to be mined regarding the contribution of “buy-outs” to the sustainability of communities in which they occur.

Yet what does seem clear, even at this stage, is that the Scottish Land Fund, (and to a lesser degree, the Growing Community Assets Fund) was instrumental in giving a succession of rural communities a shot at determining their own destinies. They did this by helping local communities in Scotland turn local assets and resources to their collective advantage.

There is a clear and compelling argument for re-establishing a Scottish Land Fund given the appetite that still exists among rural communities to take responsibility for the land they inhabit.

Amid the stampede to pull Scotland out of the current economic downturn, the Scottish Government would do well to ensure that the benefits of community ownership are safeguarded rather than trampled underfoot.

• Dr Calum Macleod is senior research fellow at the UHI Centre for Remote and Rural Studies in Inverness.

• Dr Nicole Busby is senior lecturer in law at the University of Stirling.