Author: DTAS

So you want to set up a Development Trust? (2022)

A guide for those looking to set up a trust, that answers some of the main questions such as: What is a development trust? How can a development trust benefit your community? What steps can you take to start a development trust?

Download as a PDF here 

Author: Point and Sandwick Trust

Recent high-level report finds Scotland’s community owned wind farms have provided, on average, 34 times more benefit payments to local communities than privately owned wind farms.

The report, produced by Aquatera Ltd on behalf of Point and Sandwick Development Trust, compared nine community owned and four private wind farms in Scotland and found that returns from the community owned wind farms average £170,000 per installed MW per annum, far exceeding the community benefit payment industry standard of £5,000 per installed MW per annum.

A spokesperson for Community Energy Scotland, said:

“This valuable study confirms what our sector has long-known; that the benefits from community energy vastly exceed those from privately-owned generation. The report reaffirms the importance of communities retaining control and ownership of renewable energy, to maximise the benefits to local people. I believe the same principles will apply to other areas that community groups are now engaging in, such as energy storage, EV car clubs and flexibility provision. This report shows renewable community energy is a vital part of our journey to an equal and fair Net Zero.”

Community benefit payments have become well established in the realms of commercial wind farm development in the UK and have progressed over the last 30 years to a rate of £5,000 per installed MW per annum (a rate which has been adopted by the Scottish Government in their guidance on community benefits within the onshore renewable energy sector). 

Unlike private wind farms, community-owned wind farms’ monetary contributions are based on the turbine’s financial performance instead of a set yearly stipend. For the purposes of the report Aquatera analysed the figures to get a £ per MW per annum basis.

One case study within the report showed that the 0.9 MW community-owned turbine on the Orkney island of Westray has returned to the community approximately £299,057 per MW per annum and is expected to contribute £6.8 million to the community over its 25-year lifespan. 

Norman Mackenzie, Chairman of Point and Sandwick Trust, which owns the UK’s largest community wind farm, said:

“We are very pleased to have been able to contribute to this groundbreaking research into the tremendous economic impact of community energy. We are just one of a number of community wind farms in the Western Isles which together represent over £30 million of capital investment and which is returning a net income of £2 million a year into good causes in the local economy.

“Community energy punches way above its weight in financial and economic terms and if governments really want to ‘level-up’ and to spread the benefits of the green economy to all parts of the country, then they need to make community energy a central pillar of their climate policy and not just a ‘nice-to-have’.”

Private wind farm community benefit payments (separate from the normal operational benefits like the generation of local jobs) can be a valuable source of income for communities located near renewable developments. Some private developers also offer an opportunity for the local community to invest in the development and, in return, receive a share of the profits generated.

Results from this report, however, highlight the obvious increased long-term financial benefit that communities who own and operate their own wind farm have experienced.

Author: The Herald

ONE of the UK’s largest community-led nature and climate projects based in Scotland is “hanging in the balance” due to issues over raising the necessary money.

Led by a local charity the town of Langholm is battling to raise £2.2m for a community buyout of 5,300 acres of Langholm Moor from one of the UK’s most famous grouse moors, owned by one of the UK’s most powerful hereditary landowners, the Duke of Buccleuch.

It would double the size of the new community-owned Tarras Valley Nature Reserve.

Despite hopes for a £1m donation from a major funder – and a surging public crowdfunder attracting donations from thousands of people from across the world – there are fears the project could face a £450,000 shortfall at the original May 31 deadline.

If the £1m donation does not come through, which the Langholm Initiative charity thinks is unlikely, the shortfall will rise to £1.45m.

Buccleuch Estates has now offered an additional two months for The Langholm Initiative to pursue donations from large funding bodies, meaning the total funds now need to be raised by July 31.

Some 2,300 villagers of Langholm, a few miles north of the English border, have been working to turn Langholm Moor into a model for climate-friendly and sustainable ecological restoration, powered by small-scale wind and solar farms, spurred on by an upsurge in community buyouts across Scotland.

A year-and-a-half ago they managed to agree  after what was then one of the most ambitious community fundraising campaigns ever seen – with the community raising the final funds needed in the nick of time.

That involved spending £3.8 million for over 5,000 acres of land in a deal between The Langholm Initiative charity and Buccleuch – paving the way for what was described as “the creation of a huge new nature reserve to help tackle climate change, restore nature, and support community regeneration”.

The Tarras Valley Nature Reserve was established last year, after the first stage of what is south Scotland’s biggest community land buyout.

Since then discussions continued over the remaining land the community has expressed an interest in buying.

Jenny Barlow, Tarras Valley Nature Reserve’s estate manager said the extension of the deadline by Buccleuch gave them “breathing space” to ensure the landmark project for people and planet does not fall at the final hurdle.

“Despite the wonderful outpouring of support from people worldwide, there was a real risk we might have been some £450,000 short on deadline day – putting at risk our ambitious plans for tackling the nature and climate emergencies while boosting community regeneration. We now need all the support possible to get this historic buyout over the line and safeguard this land for future generations,” she said.

The moves for Langholm Moor, famous among conservationists as the site of a 25-year-long research project into the survival of widely persecuted hen harriers on grouse moors, has been seen as significant for Scotland’s land reform movement.

On the reserve, globally important peatlands and ancient woods are being restored, native woodlands established, and a haven ensured for wildlife including hen harrier, short-eared owl and merlin.

The charity says community regeneration and the creation of new jobs through a nature-based approach is a central aim of the project.

Benny Higgins, a former banker, who is chairman of Buccleuch Estates, said: “We’re pleased to be able to extend the timescale for the Langholm Initiative to raise the funds necessary to make this second-phase community buyout a reality.

“We have worked closely with The Langholm Initiative in recent years and have been impressed by their tenacity, vision, and cooperation to bring their plans to fruition. We hope this additional time will help them in their quest to double the size of Tarras Valley Nature Reserve and build on the success achieved so far.”

Leading charities which have backed the buyout include Borders Forest Trust, John Muir Trust, Rewilding Britain, RSPB Scotland, Scottish Wildlife Trust, Trees for Life, and the Woodland Trust.

The Duke of Buccleuch, a hereditary title dating to 1663, was once the UK’s largest private landowner, and the family still holds 217,000 acres of moorland, farms and forestry, and a £250m urban property portfolio.

The family’s homes include Drumlanrig castle, an estate dating back to the reign of Robert the Bruce, and the Boughton estate in Northamptonshire.

Author: GAF

The Parliament Allotment Inquiry

Here are drafts of Glasgow Allotments Forum answers to some of the key questions just to give you an idea of the kinds of issues we are raising. The four questions are numbers 7,8,11, and 12. 

Question 7. What are the benefits to individuals and communities of having adequate allotment provision? 

Allotment plots have a unique value in that a plot is a garden for the individual who rents it. It is a space where they and their family can come, which they design, create and nurture. As a garden – like all other gardens – a plot is a space to grow food, and flowers, to undertake physical exercise, to make contact with the natural world and to relax from the stresses of daily life. 

For the wider community allotments contribute to:

Resilient and sustainable lifestyles. There is an important change taking place in people’s attitude toward growing your own food which has become an aspiration of many more people, fuelled by a desire to bring about real change in the way they live. 

Local food culture. Allotments and other forms of communal gardening provide a basis for making a local food culture meaningful to people. Engaging in growing provides a practical basis for valuing fresh vegetables and fruits, for learning how they can be cooked, stored and eaten, for spreading knowledge about cultivation and about the natural environment.

Education: Whilst access to growing is of importance in schools and further education this is not an adequate response to the problems we face. We need to find ways of engaging and educating the adult population about the value of local food. Communal growing on allotments and community gardens is an important way of supporting the cultural and behavioural changes that are required to mitigate climate change. 

Health:There is a wealth of evidence showing that gardening and growing your own produce is beneficial to both our physical and our mental health. Close contact with the natural environment, with soil and local habitats for biodiversity help to support a healthy microbiome and a tranquil mindset. 

Social value Growing food and flowers provides a communal activity that enables different ethnic groups and classes to mix in pursuing a common goal. This function is vital in our increasingly diverse population. For many New Scots allotments provide an instantly recognisable reminder of home because they bring the practice of strong local food growing cultures with them whereas for many urban white Scots food growing is no longer part of their culture.

Question 8. Is local authority provision of allotments adequate in your local area? 

No 

 0f the 23 wards in the City 10 have no local authority allotment provision. Glasgow’s Food Growing Strategy commits the council to providing new ‘growing spaces’ in every ward. What constitutes a growing space is not defined. 

I hectare of land would provide roughly 40 standard plots. In Linn Ward the latest update of Glasgow’s Food Growing Strategy Action Plan (Feb 1st 2022) specifies that there will be 14 additional entry level plots bringing an additional 0.037 of a hectare into productive use, in Anderston/yorkhill it states there are to be 47 raised beds on  a new site covering  0.12 of a hectare. The amount of new land earmarked for food growing in this document over the period from 2021 up to the end of 2023 adds up to 1.6 of a hectare. With a waiting list for allotments exceeding 1331 (since this total does not take account of a good third of the GCC allotment sites or the waiting lists of 12 private sites) this represents a very limited response to demand.

It is also our contention that in many areas of the City the lack of the opportunity to engage with food growing or gardening of any kind means that many people have no experience on which to base their ideas about how available greenspace might be used. It may not occur to them to apply for an allotment and the Council website offers them no real advice or encouragement to do so just a list of site names and contact e-mail addresses.  

Question 11. What has been the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the demand and supply of allotments? 

It has had a dramatic effect on waiting lists. Waiting lists for many sites have nearly doubled over the period. In affluent areas of the City people were already waiting 7 – 12 years to get a plot prior to this increase in demand. There were 1331 people on the waiting lists of the 13 GCC allotment sites that had submitted their data to the local authority at the end of April 2022 (8 sites had yet to respond).

Covid led to greater attendance at many City sites during the lockdown as they were one of the few places where people were allowed to carry on with an outdoor activity where social distancing was built into the normal usage of the space. Many plotholders, who were not required to shield against the virus, greatly valued this element of freedom which made their experience at this time far more bearable than it would have been otherwise. It also strengthened the social cohesiveness of many allotment communities because of increased attendance.

This experience will have contributed to the considerable expansion in interest in this form of gardening that has now become apparent in the media etc – the Chelsea Flower show including vegetable gardens, articles in newspapers, greater research interest in the environmental and health benefits of allotmenteering.

Question 12. The 2015 Act assumes a standard allotment plot of 250 square metres (plus or minus 5%). 

We have said in response to question 7 that the unique nature of allotments is that they provide a garden – a space which has room to sit, to store tools and to grow a variety of vegetables, fruits and flowers as designed by the plotholder. As a garden it is also somewhere where the family and friends can also come to help or share the space. It follows that a plot is not equivalent to a raised bed (or 2) in a community garden 

A full plot allows for all the functions listed above including the capacity to meet a family’s needs for vegetables and fruit over the year.

Most allotments sites provide plots of varying sizes depending on demand. On most sites the majority of plots are large with half size and smaller starter plots being in the minority. Allotment associations can divide full plots to make half plots or create full plots by combining half plots. This flexibility allows for meeting the changing needs and demography of an area. For instance an increase in the number retired people/ informal and formal groups may  raise the demand for full plots whereas at another time more people who have less time or have become less able may prefer smaller plots. The Community Empowerment Act specifies that people can choose the size of plot they need. 

Author: Richard Harries, Institute for Community Studies

Social capital is back in fashion and that can only be a good thing.

Of course, for a certain class of analyst and policymaker – of which I am one – it never went out of fashion, but for everyone else it is a curious concept that can often seem like the miracle cure for all our social ills. Worried about youth crime?  Concerned about health inequalities?  Want to level up the country?  All will be well if we just ‘invest in social capital’.

The reason the fortunes of this enticing academic concept have waxed and waned over the years is down to the difficulty of translating it into practical actions with a causal logic that can be clearly defined and empirically measured.

The Levelling Up White Paper could change everything. The term appears more than 25 times and is a core part of the government’s new “framework for evaluating geographical disparities”, alongside five other capitals: physical, intangible, human, financial and institutional. Indeed, according to Levelling Up Tsar, Andy Haldane, “of all the capitals that collapsed during COVID-19, social capital was the one that stood tall”.

The acknowledgement of a link between social infrastructure and social capital, the commitment to experimentation and the development of new measurement methodologies all cohere at a moment when the country most needs it. Perhaps this time, social capital is here to stay.

Background

An excellent introduction to social capital can be found in this recent IPPO blog by Sir Geoff Mulgan, Dr Rachel France and Professor Joanna Chataway who together explore the role it played during the pandemic and ask how it might be ‘harnessed’ for the recovery. Their tl;dr takeaway is this: social capital comes in three flavours (bonding, bridging, linking), there is plenty of evidence connecting it to improved socio-economic outcomes, and it is most effective when drawn on by local communities themselves rather than being micro-managed from above.

This is not the first time that social capital has been lauded by policymakers. It first rose to prominence in the early years of New Labour, when “things could only get better”, before catching a second wind in the heady Big Society days of the 2010 Coalition government. Yet, despite repeated appearances on the policymaking landscape over the last 20 years, little is really known about how social capital is generated, maintained or distributed. Loose talk about ‘investing in social capital’ and ‘harnessing it’ for policy ends remain just that: loose talk.

This is important. The Levelling Up White Paper commits the government to investing its £2.6 billion UK Shared Prosperity Fund “in the places where social capital is weakest”. Yet elsewhere the same document suggests that “The distribution of social capital depends on how it is measured and experienced by people.” If levelling up is not to go the same way as so many previous government attempts at regeneration, then someone needs to find a way of reconciling these two irreconcilable statements.

What happens next?

There are, however, at least two reasons to be optimistic this time around. First and foremost is the clear commitment in the White Paper to experimentation; a recognition that while there are “legitimate reasons to avoid randomisation in some areas of government policy … there is clearly room to make greater use of experimental methods.” If ministers are serious about this, their officials could profitably review the methodology originally developed by the grant maker Power to Change and now curated by the Institute for Community Studies for robustly measuring population change at the hyper-local level.

This quasi-experimental approach, based on the long-established and well-respected Community Life Survey, allows evaluators move beyond traditional statistical measures of association to make strong statements about the presence (or not) of causal relationships. It adopts some of the same techniques for analysing data from natural experiments that were developed by last year’s Nobel Economics Prize winners and takes two clear steps up Judea Pearl’s ladder of causality, from the associational to the counterfactual. Perhaps more important in these circumstances, it is fully compliant with the Treasury’s Green Book guidance on project appraisal and evaluation.

The other reason to be cheerful is a long-overdue recognition of the vital importance of ‘social infrastructure’ as a key generator of social capital. Just as economic development depends on the provision of roads, railways, sewers and other forms of physical infrastructure, so our social development depends upon the spaces and institutions that facilitate relationship building within and between communities. While demands to ‘invest in social capital’ make no sense at all, it does make sense to invest in social infrastructure.

The government’s announcement that it’s Levelling Up Advisory Council will be supported by an expert sub-committee for “local communities and social infrastructure” is therefore a most welcome development. The Institute for Community Studies and Bennett Institute for Public Policy, under the guidance of Dame Julia Unwin and in collaboration with the British Academy and Power to Change, is gathering evidence right now about different countries’ approaches to social infrastructure as well as learning what real communities in the UK think matters most. This evidence will be essential if investment decisions are to be targeted to the areas where they will have greatest impact.

Author: Lottie Hood, Press and Journal

People should be given the right to turn road verges, lawns around hospitals and underused public spaces into vegetable gardens and orchards, a campaign group has said.

Incredible Edible, a network of more than 150 community growing groups, has revealed plans to get local authorities to keep a register of public land suitable for vegetable and fruit growing.

Local groups could then apply for access and use of the land.

The campaign group – which has members in Orkney, Inverness and Moray – are pushing for a “right to grow” law and say it would give people better health and access to fruit and vegetables.

The “right to grow” campaign has cross-party support from Lords and MPs.

Pam Warhurst, co-founder of Incredible Edible, told The Guardian: “This is a no-brainer if we really think we’ve got to give people better health, wellbeing and access to good food.

“It’s really simple and we don’t have to invest millions – let’s just better use land that taxpayers are already paying for.”

The community first began growing food on neglected public land in Yorkshire in 2008. It is now a blooming community and has spread to hundreds of places around the UK and across the world.

Scotland has 12 Incredible Edible groups with several based in Moray, Inverness and Orkney.

Ms Warhurst said: “There is an appetite for finding unloved bits of land, rolling up sleeves and growing food on it but we’ve found a very uneven playing field for people getting access to land in their community.

“Currently, if you have a local authority who isn’t supportive for some reason then you’ve got a bit of a problem.”

One of the issues that sometimes stops local growers is councils mentioning health and safety concerns. However, Ms Warhurst added: “We haven’t killed anybody yet and we have no intention of doing so.”

Under the proposals, the new law would require councils to have a list of public land available for suitable “community cultivation”.

This would include land owned by the NHS, government agencies and possibly water utilities.

Local residents and groups would be able to apply for a certificate of lawful use to grow produce on the land for an agreed time period free from rental charges.

It was also proposed land that was too contaminated for growing produce could be used for things such as bee-keeping.

Author: Robin McAlpine

Common Weal has been up at the STUC Congress this week. The range of issues discussed over the three days show that the trade union movement in Scotland remains as essential as it ever was with everything from the safety of railways, to a just transition, to a green future being matters on which workers’ voices are absolutely essential.

But it is impossible not to note that the public awareness of the trade union movement and many of the struggles in which it is involved is not what it used to be. If we think back to the 1980s and 1990s, the work of the trade union movement was influential in setting the political agenda in Scotland. It is difficult to argue that this is still the case.

This decline in influence can’t be placed on the head of the trade union movement alone (which is not to be uncritical of, for example, the impact of ‘super mergers’ among unions on the vibrancy and diversity of the trade union movement).

In fact the STUC has been making some powerful and well-judged interventions in the public agenda recently. But the decline of the influence of trade unions is a trend that can be seen across the western world since the Thatcher/Reagan revolution. As trade unions had their power restricted by legislation, the media (which is drawn to political power like a moth to a lightbulb) lost interest.

Were this just an issue for the unions, it might be less of an issue for Scotland – but it isn’t. The decline of the voice of the trade union movement has been paralleled by the decline in other voices in Scotland. If you again think back to the 1980s and 1990s you would recall a whole range of voices which have become quieter.

Think of that period and try to imagine it without the political power of and the agenda set by for example regional government in Scotland. Strathclyde Regional Council, and in particular the way it frustrated and resisted the Thatcher revolution, was a very significant influencer of the direction of public debate. 

Glasgow or Edinburgh City Councils make the news but only on fairly narrow local issues. They are not playing anything like the same role in public life that their regional predecessors did, centralising politics further in Edinburgh.

It is impossible to think of that period of Scotland’s history (the Tory years from 1979) without also thinking about ‘civic Scotland’. That in part means the trade unions but it also means the diverse range of big voluntary organisations. Those used to play a significant part in shaping wider discussion in Scotland.

Now? In the period since, many of the same bodies have been transformed into pseudo-consultants for government, delivering services on behalf of government and so keeping their head down and avoiding being critical. They have swapped public influence for insider influence and income.

And if you tried to explain to a young adult today the kind of influence that the Scottish churches had in the past (for good and ill) they would barely believe you. 

These are only some examples of voices which have declined in Scotland (academia, the cultural sector and the media have also lost prominence). But it hasn’t resulted in a vacuum – other voices have become more dominant over the same period. Perhaps above all, the arrival of the Scottish Parliament has boosted the voice not of political parties but of political leaders. Scotland has suddenly become a political culture dominated by individual personalities.

In fact if you count up the faces in the photographs on the website of a Scottish newspaper on any given day, subtract the sports figures and celebrities and then look at the balance between ‘this person is the leader of a political party’ and ‘this person is not the leader of a political party’, you will find telling results.

But it is not just the politicians who have proliferated – there is a distinct shift towards two other groups. One is what you might call ‘agents of government’. This is in part the flip-side of the number of NGOs which are now directly delivering aspects of public services but is also the result of the proliferation of government agencies and their significance.

Look at say the ongoing CalMac scandal. If you were arriving at this from outer space you’d think it was an extended debate between CalMac (a public agency), CMal (another government agency), Audit Scotland (not a government agency but a statutory government body), the now-publicly-owned shipbuilders (and the industrialist hand-picked to do that work before it was nationalised) with politicians arguing with each other and the media asking the difficult questions.

What we don’t hear as equal voices in this affair are organised bodies representing the communities impacted (their enormous ‘local’ authorities often have more interests in common with the Scottish Government than with the communities concerned), representations of the workers involved or many independent experts.

The other big shift in where Scotland’s voices come from is towards the commercial world. It isn’t like Scotland’s business bodies didn’t have a strong voice in the past – they did – but that voice has grown louder and louder as others have become quieter.

You can tell this from who is now on the average body set up by the Scottish Government to do, well, anything. This shows you whose voices are believed to matter. They got into trouble in the past for completely ignoring the STUC and so now a trade unionist often sits as a single token representative of all interests other than commercial profit on a working group.

It is the seemingly unstoppable rise of the Big Four accounting and consulting corporations (KPMG, PWC, EY, Deloitte) and their influence on public policy and the brazen relationships between the Scottish Government and the networks around the big commercial lobbying firms (particularly Charlotte Street Partners) which shows you where Scotland is really going.

Because if we set aside the ‘nicer, cuddlier, more lovely, less horrible’ rhetoric that dominates politics, in reality the politics of Scotland are shifting sharply to the right. The ScotWind auction is the case study outcome – a cut-price fire-sale of enormously valuable public assets as brazen and as dodgy as any of Thatcher’s privatisations of the 1980s.

In fact, we at Common Weal quite often wonder if the Scottish Government would have got away with it had it not been for our intervention. By the Sunday when the Herald ran a story on our report on ScotWind that sharply changed the debate, all the commentary in the media seemed to see this as a success story.

That is the point; Common Weal is one of the few organisations in Scotland which is able to look at public issues without having to look through the lens of vested interests.(Scotland’s trade unions are almost always on the side of the angels – until you get to say arms manufacturing where some big unions have influential members.)

If Scotland allows the continuation of this shift from civic values in a more decentralised nation to commercial values in a highly centralised nation, the gap between government and its doings and the public will grow larger and larger. 

With notable individual exceptions, some of the large organisations in civic Scotland shot themselves in the foot in the early days of devolution by failing properly to support the nascent Civic Forum. It was originally seen as an inherent part of the new devolved Scotland, a standing forum to sit next to the parliament precisely to ensure that this loss of civic and community voice didn’t happen.

Some powerful civic voices undermined this initiative because they believed it diluted their own influence and so eventually the McConnell administration pulled the Civic Forum’s funding and it died.

If Scotland cannot restore balance to the voices which are heard in its public debate, the nation will fall further into the grasp of the pinstripe suits which are mining it for commercial gain. 

Author: Gerry Hassan, The Scottish Review

Local democracy is not in a good way in Scotland: the atrophying of local government; the relentless centralisation of the Scottish and UK Governments and the fact that all mainstream parties fight these as ‘national elections’.

On Monday, I went to my first ever Dumfries and Galloway local election hustings, for the Dee and Glenkens ward. This large rural ward encompasses my home town of Kirkcudbright, and a number of small towns and villages including Gatehouse of Fleet, Lauriston, New Galloway, Borgue and Dalry.

Held at the impressive CatStrand social enterprise and community hub in New Galloway, there was a near-capacity and engaged crowd of over 100, mostly of senior age, but with a good sprinkling of 40-somethings and even the occasional young person.

Five years ago, this ward elected one Tory, one Independent – neither standing this time – and Dougie Campbell, then SNP who is now standing as an Independent. On paper this could be a very open contest.

The questions and exchanges over the next two hours and 15 minutes (take note, BBC Question Time) ranged across the key local issues for rural Galloway: housing, employment, tourism, young people, farming and forestry, renewables, digital connectivity, transport and the lack of a rail link between Stranraer and Dumfries.

The questions were serious and informed. One, on the issue of short-term housing lets and licensing rules coming in later this year, brings forth a nuanced debate about second homes, empty properties, Airbnb, tourism and more. All candidates recognised the need for regulation, and a ‘balance’ between competing demands, in an area which has a ‘fragility’ as one candidate said as well as many attributes.

There was a concern about employment prospects, education and retaining young people who face the ever-present temptation of moving away for more opportunities. A young person in the audience asked politely about the inadvisability of adults telling young people what to do and was listened to respectfully.

Independent Dougie Campbell mentioned being taken aback by a survey of young people in the region, ‘which showed that none of them saw their future in the area’. Green Laura Moodie used her example of young people in Kirkcudbright Primary saying they wanted a skate park, and so ‘Kirkcudbright skate park was created because young people said they wanted one and had been listened to’.

One discussion bemoaning the lack of internet connectivity drew out differences across the ward; between living in a town like Kirkcudbright as opposed to more remote places that can be blighted by appalling internet coverage with all that implies for work and life.

The most passionate debate of the evening and a subject referenced throughout the night was transport, and the lack of a rail link between Stranraer and Dumfries. This was the totemic issue which caused Dougie Campbell to resign from the SNP – and in particular the glaring lack of support in the Scottish Government’s 20-year Transport Strategy, for anything significant for the region. This included a lack of progress on a rail link via, for example, a serious feasibility study (the UK Government having spent a ridiculous £900,000 on the ‘Boris bridge’ between Scotland and Northern Ireland which was never going to happen).

People talked of the potential of the rail link as ‘transformational’; of the challenge the region faced post-Beeching when it closed in 1965; and of the massive opportunity to galvinise enterprise, commerce and tourism, and in particular, with ‘Stranraer being a major hub port due to Brexit’. This is generally seen by most candidates as more important than the A75 dualling, beloved of the UK Government, but a couple of the candidates such as Lib Dem Anthony Bond indicated that to them it is not an either/or.

Underpinning this is a positive belief in the potential of Dumfries and Galloway if it has infrastructure investment and if people here have the power to lead. Laurie Moodie stated that the area has a huge advantage in terms of tourism and attracting people as ‘it is close to England, not that far from Wales and close to Northern Ireland’.

Given the challenges the area faces, there is a tendency sometimes to talk it down. It is understandable that people call Dumfries and Galloway ‘the forgotten Scotland’, but Tory John Denerley bizarrely stated: ‘It is just not an attractive place to come to’; while the Lib Dem Anthony Bond commented: ‘When people come to the area there is nothing for them to do’ – which is patently untrue. He did, however, come up with the memorable alliteration that defines the region’s economy by three Ts: ‘timber, turbines, tourism’.

There were no real altercations or heated disagreements. The SNP candidate Andy McFarlane made what sounded like an implausible claim that the council were committed to building over 100,000 homes in the next few years. This was then corrected by a Tory councillor from another area in the audience who stated that this was a national figure – the D&G figure being ‘about 7,000 homes’.

The Tory candidates John Denerley and Susan Murdoch were personable and came across as locally committed. At numerous points in the evening, they stated a position, for example, supporting a tourism tax and restrictions on short-term lets, at odds with the national Tory Party, and seemed very unmotivated by the prevailing winds of populism and stigmatising minorities which are the hallmark of the UK Tory Government.

One striking factor in the evening was the total lack of personal disagreement and rancour. People more often than not agreed with each other or indicated that there was merit in what a previous speaker had just said. Tory Susan Murdoch said on more than one occasion: ‘I agree with Laura’, meaning Green Laura Moodie, which almost became the evening’s equivalent of ‘I agree with Nick (Clegg)’, all those years ago. This happened so many times that the chair Alan Smith eventually said: ‘Maybe you are in the wrong party’, to which Murdoch replied: ‘I am a woman, I like to co-operate’.

There was a search for common ground, consensus and desire to find solutions found across all the candidates. People here – candidates and audience – were characterised by a desire to do things and be co-operative. Most of the audience, tellingly, were genuine members of the public wanting to find out more about local issues, and not, as is often the case, political activists looking to point score and needle opponents.

There was little evidence of trying to pass the buck so beloved of national politicians everywhere. There were no major criticisms of the Scottish and UK Governments; indeed both hardly got many mentions. The names Boris Johnson and Nicola Sturgeon and the buzz word ‘Partygate’ were not cited once by anyone, which was a relief.

Over two hours later, we staggered out of the CatStrand into the New Galloway night impressed with the mutual resilience we had all shown. This was my first D&G hustings and overall I was very impressed by the quality of debate and the good intentions of the candidates and audience.

Two big thoughts struck me reflecting on the above. First, the entire experience had a sense of goodwill and bonhomie, acknowledging the common commitment all the candidates have to Dumfries and Galloway, community involvement and public life.

I compared this to my many years living in Glasgow and the many bitter, raucous, partisan party squabbling usually between Labour and SNP and sometimes within each, often between what were obviously mediocre men trying to cover their inadequacies by invoking heated argument. All of this badly served the city, but my D&G experience leads me to the conclusion that there is something poisonous, or at least very damaged, in the politics and psyche of Glasgow.

Second, there was little to no dwelling on the constraints local government faces, such as the remorseless cuts and centralisation from Edinburgh. While that was illuminating, what was even more striking was the energy, motivation and want to make life better of all of these candidates and the belief that they could do so.

Local democracy, and even more, local community involvement, engagement and empowerment, is out there up and down the highways and byways of Scotland alive and kicking. Wouldn’t it be great if the powers that be listened and acted? Recognised that Edinburgh does not know best; that Glasgow and Edinburgh maybe are in many ways the problem. Are you listening Nicola Sturgeon, Anas Sarwar, Douglas Ross, Alex Cole-Hamilton, Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater? Are you really listening or prepared to listen to the Scotland beyond your comfort zones?

Author: Pioneers Post

More than 100 members of the international social enterprise community have signed an open letter asking Scottish ministers to call off the decision to defund SENScot, one of the two representative bodies for social enterprise in Scotland.

In March, Scotland’s social justice secretary Shona Robison announced that the Scottish government would give core grant funding worth more than £400,000 a year only to Social Enterprise Scotland with the aim of that organisation becoming the sole representative for social enterprises in the country.

In response, SENScot said it expected to close its doors, highlighting that the loss of funding would cause the “loss to the sector of some of our most experienced and passionate people”.

Social Enterprise Scotland emphasised that it wanted to work in partnership with SENScot and others to create the new organisation. 

The open letter, published today, said: “Our sincere hope is that the move towards creating a single enhanced intermediary for social enterprise in Scotland will be immediately suspended pending a rigorous review… Scotland already has a world class infrastructure, which requires to be nurtured and supported, rather than being placced in jeopardy at this crucial time.”

The letter has been signed by 126 people from 28 countries. They are principally drawn from the academic community and they include James Austin, the co-founder of the Social Enterprise Initiative at Harvard Business School, Riccardo Bodini, the director of the European Institute for Research on Cooperatives and Social Enterprises in Italy, Kerryn Krige of South Africa’s University of Pretoria, and David Upton, CEO of Common Good Solutions, the Canadian host of the Social Enterprise World Forum 2021. 

Professor Michael Roy of Glasgow Caledonian University’s Yunus Centre for Social Business and Health (pictured), organised the letter. He said: “SENScot, which acts as an important support body for social enterprise, is a genuine Scottish success story. Their work over the last 20 years has helped place Scotland at the forefront of the social enterprise movement internationally.”

He said: “Not only is the decision based on the false premise that the diverse social enterprise sector in Scotland has been crying out for a single support body, but the timing really couldn’t be any worse.” He added that the impacts of the pandemic and the cost of living crisis meant support for grassroots social enterprises was needed more than ever.

The work of SENScot was admired around the world, Roy said. “My colleagues around the world were especially shocked at the decision, given Scotland’s hard-won reputation as a leader internationally on social enterprise. I have colleagues in Canada that teach about SENScot’s approach in their university degree programmes. I’ve had emails of support from senior professors in England and across Europe who have worked with SENScot over many years on different projects. They consider SENScot’s approach and leadership to be an example of international best practice.”

Responding to the open letter, Robison said: “We set out our plan last year to fund a single intermediary body with responsibility for representing and advocating for the social enterprise sector.

“There was an open and transparent selection process by an Independent Assessment Panel but of course we can understand there will be disappointment from the candidate who was not appointed.

“The decision has been well communicated and the sector has also been clear that it wants transformational change. 

“I want the diverse voices of the sector to influence the future direction and set the priorities for the new single body and for it to become fully representative of, and responsive to, the social enterprise sector.

“The Scottish Government is working closely with both current organisations to ensure the successful development of a single organisation.”

An open letter to Shona Robison MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government, Scottish Government

We are members of the international social enterprise community and wish to express our considerable concern at the decision by Scottish Ministers to defund SENScot.

Scotland has an enviable worldwide reputation for the quality of its infrastructure and support for social enterprise, and for the quality of its leadership in these respects. Many countries around the world such as Canada, New Zealand, and, most recently, Australia, have looked to Scotland and sought inspiration from “the Scottish model” to construct their own policies in support of social enterprise. This includes networks inspired by SENScot’s approach. The quality of Scotland’s infrastructure has been recognised time and time again by transnational actors such as the European Union, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and United Nations agencies such as the International Labour Organisation (ILO). Scotland’s hard-won reputation is due, in no small part, to SENScot’s work over many years to ensure that Scotland resists (at least somewhat) the dominant Anglo-American model of social enterprise, to remain closer to a European social economy tradition rooted in social democratic ideals. This set of values underpins a diverse network of grassroots-level organisations, and SENScot has had a long history of vital work to ensure that their voices are heard. The Voluntary Code for Social Enterprise, co-developed by the sector in Scotland under SENScot’s leadership, epitomises this distinct set of values; this is not universally found, and certainly should not be taken for granted.

Moreover, we find the timing of the recent defunding decision puzzling, to say the least. Just when countries around the world are relying on their networks of grassroots community-led civil society organisations such as social enterprises to help rebuild post-Covid, Scotland is putting their own Covid recovery needlessly under threat by jeopardising vital support networks that are uniquely both thematic and geographic in nature, which have helped co-ordinate much of the vital work throughout the present crisis. We understand that considerable resources and energies have been spent to date in choosing the favoured organisation on which to build the new “enhanced” single intermediary, and unfortunately such work has encouraged a culture of competition rather than co-operation between the intermediaries along the way. The significant work now required to unravel and “tidy up” an infrastructure that has developed and grown organically to suit the specific needs of Scotland would surely be far better devoted to rebuilding post-Covid, supporting the sector to address the social inequalities that recent crises have so vividly and cruelly exposed.

Rather than being “representative of, and responsive to, the changing needs of the diverse range of social enterprises and social entrepreneurs across the country”, this decision is far more likely to have the opposite effect. The equality implications of this decision are profound, and yet we were astonished to hear that an Equalities Impact Assessment on such implications had not been undertaken. Research shows, for instance, that women are far more likely to set up and lead small community-led social enterprises of the type championed by SENScot over the last two decades. This is presumably why there are now so many female leaders of social enterprises in Scotland. The prospect of the all-female team at SENScot being made redundant and their inspirational leadership potentially being lost to the social enterprise movement has angered many of us.

Finally, at a time when scientific expertise has proven to be invaluable across the world in shaping policy responses to the Covid crisis, we were especially dismayed to hear that Scottish Ministers did not draw upon the expertise of its own world-leading community of social enterprise researchers – particularly at the Yunus Centre for Social Business and Health at Glasgow Caledonian University – for advice and independent counsel related to this decision. We understand that fieldwork undertaken by them has found that a single intermediary is not considered necessary, nor wanted, by the social enterprise sector in Scotland. Quite simply, according to our colleagues there, no “long-standing and repeated calls” have been made for a single intermediary body for social enterprise in Scotland, as the Cabinet Secretary intimated to the Scottish Parliament recently.

Our sincere hope, therefore, is that the move towards creating a single “enhanced” intermediary for social enterprise in Scotland will be immediately suspended pending a rigorous review that draws on sound scientific evidence on the implications. Scotland already has a world class infrastructure, which requires to be nurtured and supported, rather than being placed in jeopardy at this crucial time. We look forward to the news that Scotland is keen to regain the trust of the international community on matters relating to social enterprise support and look forward to assisting you in those efforts.

Author: Jimmy Reid

Reid’s inaugural address took place in Glasgow University’s Bute Hall on 28 April 1972, the same day as the government approved the rescue deal for UCS. Although some previous rectors had used professional speechwriters, Reid wrote his speech himself the day before the event. The address formed part of a grand ceremony with the university court present in academic dress; Reid wore the rector’s robe and, for the first time in his life, white tie. Some disruption was caused when two students dressed as a pink pantomime horse attempted to enter the hall but otherwise Reid was not interrupted during his address, except for rounds of applause from the audience. Reid spoke in his usual working-class Clydeside accent and presented his address as a reasoned argument, not as a rabble-rousing speech. At its conclusion he received a two-minute standing ovation.

Reid’s address was entitled “Alienation” and its primary subject was Marx’s theory of alienation. Marx described social alienation as a consequence of the capitalist mode of production which he claimed seeks to divide society between professions and remove the individual’s connection to the product of their labour. Marx thought alienation led to the working class having little understanding, control or influence of the world in which they lived, leading to indifference and passivity.

When this speech was reprinted (in full) in the New York Times, it was described as ‘the greatest speech since President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address

Jimmy Reid’s Glasgow University Rectorial Speech