Author: Friends of the Earth Scotland

Environmental campaigners have hailed the news that plans for a major incinerator at Stonehouse in South Lanarkshire have been cancelled after sustained community opposition.

Viridor, one of the UK’s biggest waste management companies, has cancelled plans to build what would have been Scotland’s largest incinerator. The decision comes as the Scottish Government’s independent review considers the future of incineration.

The Overwood incinerator could have burned 330,000 tonnes of rubbish and would have led to a substantial rise in vehicles on the road in the area and subsequently a rise in air and noise pollution too.

Kim Pratt, Circular Economy campaigner at Friends of the Earth Scotland said

“This is a huge victory for the Stonehouse community and they should be proud of their efforts. Viridor have made this decision before the findings of the Scottish Government’s review into incineration are published next month, signalling that even large waste management companies know that time is up for incineration in Scotland.

“This decision shows that the current moratorium on new incineration applications should be extended immediately and that Scotland needs an exit strategy from incineration if it is to meet its climate goals. We need to see a greater focus on reducing waste and recycling, and we must stop burning our valuable resources if we are to bring down the consumption levels that are wrecking the planet.”

Dovesdale Action Group have led the local campaign against the project, blocking earlier plans for a similar incinerator nearby and leading the huge community response opposing the Overwood plant. John Young, from the Dovesdale Action Group said,

“The announcement by Viridor to withdraw their proposal for the largest incinerator in Scotland is testament to the strength of the campaign here in South Lanarkshire to protect our communities from the impact it would have had on our rural landscape, public health, the environment and climate change. This is the second time we have fought and defeated proposals for such a development.

“This campaign has raised the issues of incineration to a national level in understanding the threats such proposals have on our climate targets, recycling targets and protecting communities across Scotland. Today ‘nature’ is telling us the time has come to think differently about how we manage our waste and produce goods.

“Dovesdale Action Group and communities want to see a national policy in Scotland that reflects our aspirations of a cleaner, greener society and we hope that the national review of incineration reflects the need for change and sees Scotland take an international role in leading that change globally.”

Scottish household waste data shows that incineration rates have risen rapidly over the last decade. In 2011, households burnt 70,000 tonne of waste but by 2020 that figure had risen to 606,000 tonnes.

Over the same period the amount of waste recycled has fallen and Scotland now has the worst recycling rates in the UK. Scotland currently has six working incinerators for household waste and a capacity to burn 1.6 million tonnes of waste per year.

From Inverurie to Irvine, a further six incinerators are due to start operating in the next few years with the capacity to burn a further 1,506,000 tonnes of waste a year. There are at least four other incinerators under consideration.

Author: Lesley Riddoch

LET’S talk ferries, because there’s no getting away from them.

No matter who signed the contracts and who is threatening whom with defamation actions, the two ferries languishing on the Clyde, five years late and massively over-budget are an embarrassment, a waste of taxpayers’ money and a wounding insult to marooned islanders.

But the procurement process went wrong long before the controversial contract awarded to Ferguson Marine and even before the SNP government revolutionised island travel with Road Equivalent Tariff (RET) in 2007, halving Hebridean ferry fares, but increasing competition for car deck places between locals and tourists.

The big problem appears to be CalMac itself and CMAL – the holding company created in 2006 to lease ferries to CalMac. This difficult duo has long designed its own ships, even though other ferry operators across the world have shifted to “off the peg” designs perfected by the shipyards that construct them.

According to one expert “the CalMac approach is like asking Ford to build a car you’ve designed when that’s their area of expertise. It doesn’t work and it may be no coincidence the last four shipyards CalMac have used to build their own ferry designs have all gone bust”.

What’s the design problem? It seems to be CalMac’s unshakeable conviction that big, “bath-tub”-style, monohull ferries – versions of the steamers first used by David MacBrayne in the 1870s – are still the only game in town. They’re not.

Back in 2008, Dumbarton-born Stuart Ballantyne was flown in from Australia to advise the new SNP Scottish Government on ferry design.

Ballantyne is a naval architect whose catamarans have been used in 47 countries. He’s highly rated by other maritime experts as the inaugural chairman of the worldwide ferry umbrella group Interferry and co-founder of the World Ferry Safety Association.

More importantly, though he designed the Pentalina, which has plied the choppy waters of the Pentland Firth since its founder Andrew Banks decided to break with tradition in 2009 and buy a 350-passenger catamaran with space for 58 cars. The company has since bought a second catamaran and offers more subsidy-free sailings to Orkney than the state-subsidised sailing from Scrabster. How?

According to the Orkney-based, retired professor of maritime businesses Alf Baird, it’s the catamaran design. “The operating costs are less than half of a CalMac ship – half the fuel, half the crew costs and half the capital costs.”

So why have these cheaper, more versatile vessels not even been considered let alone commissioned by CalMac/CMAL on the west coast?

After all, Norwegian companies use them on three-hour Arctic crossings. And the Pentland Firth is frisky enough.

Yet the two delayed ships on the Clyde and the two Islay ferries being built in Turkey are variations on the old “bathtub design” – like “triple-decker buses” with restaurant, catering and crew cabin decks stuck on top of the passenger deck.

Of course, the prospect of fresh fish ‘n’ chips is always appealing – but even if that doubles the physical size of the ferry?

CalMac/CMAL stands accused of designing over-large ferries that are too big to berth overnight in island ports – partly a function of CalMac’s determination to provide full restaurant facilities even on 50-minute crossings and partly because those crew members must sleep onboard overnight.

If their ferries were smaller catamarans, with less catering, based in island ports with crew able to live locally, none of that would be necessary. Lower costs would allow more crossings and the first sailing every day would take islanders to jobs, hospital appointments and onward travel – a simple change that could transform struggling island economies.

Except it won’t. Because CalMac won’t consider the catamaran or other designs that produce smaller easier to manoeuvre vessels which are cheaper and more ecologically friendly to run.

And that’s damaging island life.

Take Mull. According to maritime expert Roy Pedersen, an HIE official and the architect of RET – the current Mull ferry is “too big to berth overnight at Craignure, so the earliest mainland arrival is noon (for half the winter) and the last return boat is 4 pm. Hopeless”.

He invites instead to imagine “two efficient 80-metre catamarans, berthing overnight at Craignure, taking 80 cars apiece, with smaller crews who live locally. They could provide an hourly service from 6am till 10pm in summer and a two-hourly service in winter. That would revolutionise Mull’s connectivity and economy since crews and families would be based on the island.”

And, he calculates, “they would be cheaper in terms of state subsidy than the present set up”.

But that won’t happen if the decision stays with CalMac/CMAL.

OR take Islay. Two new CalMac ferries for the whisky island are now being built in Turkey.

Each will have 27 crew, 11 of whom will handle catering and sales.

A longer, open Atlantic crossing with less catering is made every day in Arctic Norway by a same-sized catamaran with a third of the crew.

And in Caithness the Pentalina packs in more crossings per day than any large CalMac vessel – with just half the crew. It cost £14m. The two Islay replacement ships will cost £110m.

But this argument isn’t just about price.

It’s about the awful possibility that the controversial ferries may be too big to dock reliably on their preferred routes – even when finally completed.

Take Arran. According to Roy Pedersen the new £30m terminal at Brodick is hard to use in easterly winds, while the terminal at Ardrossan involves a tight turn that may be hard to negotiate for the £100m Glen Sannox, currently languishing at Ferguson’s yard. Again, two catamarans, with their lower profile and superior turning capabilities, would resolve those potential problems.

Except they won’t. Because CalMac is dead-set against the catamaran design or indeed any other “off the peg” solution, the Scottish Government won’t intervene, islanders are excluded from the process (there are none on the CalMac Board despite protests) and experts are routinely ignored.

Which means Scotland has an outdated “our-way-or-the-highway” approach to ferry procurement that was meant to have gone out with the rubber sandwiches on British Rail.

It could be so much better.

Cycling around the Finnish Aland Islands one summer, I was stunned to discover relatively unpopulated islands with just a few hundred inhabitants and two different ferry routes – packing half a dozen sailings per day with a third of the car places reserved for locals.

Meeting Irish folk from the Aran Islands 15 years ago, I was equally stunned to hear they’d just bought their own ferry so the first daily journey would start from the islands – not the mainland.

That small change of direction has made a huge difference – the survival of the Aran Islands.

Meanwhile, the Scottish Government is spending millions on island bonds for wannabe islanders to reverse population decline, whilst overlooking the simple action of requiring CalMac to supply island-first ferries.

So, the big problem with those half-finished ferries in Ferguson Marine is not Derek Mackay’s signature or Jim McColl’s threatened lawsuit.

Neither ferry will transform their islands and neither will correct CalMac’s inflexible approach whereby islanders, ports, routes, timetables and island economies must all bend themselves out of shape to accommodate the company’s vessels – when it should be the other way around.

What next? If I had a magic wand I’d create an Island Citizens’ Assembly to hear evidence, decide the best design for the Mull, Arran, North Uist and Harris runs, decide if the ferries half-built and already ordered fit that bill or should be scrapped. I’d co-produce a new long-term ferry strategy with CalMac, or other operators, which is open to the use of catamarans and other ferry designs – all proofed by the lived experience of islanders. Yes, tomorrow is indeed April Fool’s Day. Ochone.

Author: Martin Williams, The Herald

THE finance secretary has warned that major offshore wind farm developers could face financial penalties or lose their right to valuable leases in the new round of offshore wind projects if they fail to deliver on supply chain benefits to Scotland.

Kate Forbes has said that remedies were in place to ensure delivery on offshore wind work and jobs through the multi-billion-pound ScotWind development for Scotland.

But she has come under fire after she stated that it was only “hoped” that the nation would benefit from certain key supply chain gains.

It comes after the Herald revealed that Scotland is to set to lose billions in profits every year from the latest round of offshore wind projects hailed by the First Minister as a “truly historic” opportunity for Scotland’s net zero economy.

A failure to create a state-owned energy company which could have sold the new ScotWind electricity to the grid and retained operating profits, led to concerns that the nation will lose between £3.5 billion and £5.5 billion every year – about a tenth of the current Scottish budget.

Seventeen ScotWind projects across 14 sea areas, with a combined potential generating capacity of 25GW, have been offered new rights to specific areas of the seabed for the development of offshore wind power.

Kenny MacAskill, the former justice secretary, and deputy leader of the Alba Party who sought the supply chain assurances from ministers said the financial penalties resulted in maximum fines of £250,000 and were “small change” to the major energy corporations and he slammed the “lame position” that the supply chain work will “hopefully” come.

While the total impact on the associated supply chain and on the number of jobs created will not be confirmed until later in the process, the First Minister said in January that their estimates suggest as much as £1 billion could be generated for every gigawatt of power. A gigawatt equates to roughly two coal-fired power plants and is enough to power 750,000 homes in Britain.

Nicola Sturgeon said companies had to set out in statements what they will do to support our supply chain saying it offered “massive potential to Scotland and it’s potential we intend to seize with both hands”.

She said the project will “help deliver the supply chain investments and high quality jobs that will make the climate transition a fair one”.

Some believed the Scottish supply chain spin off was an “overpromise” with current bids currently excluding any firm commitments.

In a letter surrounding the ScotWind announcement, Kate Forbes said tthat component parts for turbines “will hopefully come from Scotland” and gave a warning about supply chain promises.

“While lease awards were not contingent on the content of the SCDS [Supply Chain Development Statement], checks and balances are in place to ensure developers deliver on their commitments, failure to do so can trigger remedies ranging from financial penalties to an inability to progress to a seabed lease,” she said.

“These statements are not only an indication of what Scotland can achieve, they are our expectation of what the winners will deliver for Scotland.”

She added: “We are determined to maximise the economic opportunity for the Scottish supply chain from our offshore wind potential. ScotWind puts Scotland at the forefront of the global development of offshore wind and represents a massive step forward in our transition to net zero.

“Our position is that the component parts for turbines will hopefully come from Scotland. We are working hard to attract inward investment whilst collaborating with the ScotWind leasing round developers to ensure we utilise facilities such as the proposed tower facility at Nigg.”

The biggest winner in ScotWind was Scottish Power, now a subsidiary of Spanish utility firm Iberdrola, which won the seabed rights to develop three new offshore wind farms with a total capacity of 7GW.

They also included a joint venture with British multinational Shell to develop the world’s first large-scale floating wind farms at two sites with total capacity of 5GW.

A joint venture between BP and Germany’s EnBW was successful in bid for a 2.9 GW wind project which BP previously said would result in £10bn of total investment.

Mr MacAskill said: “The supply chain was bragged about as being a boon for Scotland with businesses flourishing and jobs aplenty. Yet the reality is that contracts have failed to specify and ensure work will come to Scotland and the promised jobs will ever materialise.

“Energy rich Scotland but fuel poor Scots sounds like an April Fool but it’s the reality. “As electricity prices rocket Scottish wind energy is neither delivering the revenue it should nor the jobs that were promised.

“Instead, we’re left with the Government simply ‘hoping’ that they’ll come.

“The Scottish Government must ensure the supply chain work is based in Scotland and work is available for Scots.”

Scotland’s net zero and energy secretary Michael Matheson has told the offshore wind industry that supply chain pledges are more than simply “indications”.

Mr Matheson said the Scottish Government view is that the local content commitments made as part of the ScotWind process are “expectations” of what should be delivered.

But there remains scepticism as the Scottish Government was predicting 12 years ago that there would be 28,000 Scottish jobs in the offshore wind industry alone by 2020 as the nation takes advantage of its benefits – but official workforce data for 2020 shows it stood at just 1500.

Highlands and Islands Enterprise, the Scottish Government’s economic development agency faced the loss of up to £4.3m of taxpayers’ money through the collapse of offshore wind tower firm CS Wind, the only UK facility for manufacturing onshore and offshore wind towers and seen as a key part of Scotland’s green revolution.

When opened in 2002, then First Minister Jack McConnell declared his ambition to make Scotland a world leader in renewable energy.

In December, 2020 administrators were formally appointed to take control of part state-owned Burntisland Fabrications (BiFab), the insolvent renewables manufacturer run from Canada seen as a key part of the future of Scotland’s wind farm revolution.

Deloitte took control of affairs of BiFab after it collapsed when the Scottish Government did a u-turn in backing the firm.

Two of the three BiFab fabrication yards – Methil in Fife and Arnish on Lewis – were subsequently bought out of administration by London-based firm InfraStrata.

Scotland gains from the initial Crown Estates Scotland auction of the seabed plots around the Scottish coast, netting a one-off £700m. Its profits are given to the Scottish Treasury or split between some local authorities.

But based on proposed project rents outlined by seabed managers Crown Estates Scotland, the ScotWind projects operating at its full capacity would be estimated to bring Scotland between £50m and £90m each year – a tiny fraction of the billions expected in profits.

Author: Community Land Scotland

To read the full summary and in particular, an analysis of social enterprise and other community activity by local authority area, click here

Introduction

Community Land Scotland, with the support of the Scottish Government, has been working to get a better understanding of Scotland’s “community land cold spots”. The process started with desk-based research and the results have informed this paper. We researched the following areas: 

• Urban – rural split 
• Deprivation on an SIMD and local authority level, including child poverty levels
• Concentration of social enterprise or other community-led activity 
• Social capital 
• Transience / inward and outward migration

Author: Senscot

CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW

The Senscot Story – 1999 – 2020

Author: Caroline Wilson, The Herald

Scottish Government response is located at the end of this Herald article

Scotland’s stubborn health inequalities could be reduced if more funding was directed to the community groups that are directly saving lives, experts say.

John Cassidy, chairman of an organisation that represents third sector groups, said the country had an “amazing resource”of knowledge and expertise that was not being used to its full capacity because it is continually under threat.

He said there were “many case studies” of suicides being averted after patients were referred by GPs to community-led mental health groups.

A major £1.5million research project, led by Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU), will evaluate the impact of such initiatives on public health.

The three-year study, which is the biggest of its kind, will look at a wide range of community-led projects across the UK. These include walking groups, cookery lessons, community gardens and cafes.

“Despite having a world-leading NHS, a great health system, it’s a still a fact that if you are born into a particular set of circumstances, you live a shorter, less healthy life than if you born into a more affluent circumstances,” said Rachel Baker, a professor of health economics at GCU, who is leading the project.

“We’ve not solved that problem and it’s not going in the right direction.”

She went on: “One of the reasons this work is important is because it directs the attention away from a health system as being the solution, to communities, where health and wellbeing are created or where barriers are in place for people to achieve as much as they can in terms of living a good life.”

Researchers from GCU will work with the Glasgow Centre for Population Health, Queen’s University Belfast, Bournemouth University and the University of East London.

They will study projects in Glasgow, Bournemouth, Belfast and East London.

John Cassidy, who is chairman of Scottish Communities for Health and Wellbeing, has described the project as “critical”.

He said: “For too long scientists, officials and planners have decided what is good for communities.  

“We are so determined to ensure that governments, local and national, recognise the capacity, the expertise, the experience of community-led organisations to make a significant difference to health and wellbeing.

“Scotland has this amazing resource that is not utilised because it is always under threat.

“They are under threat because there is no consistent support. It’s an after-thought.

“It’s really an extreme situation where government does not recognise what a major resource and this project is critical to us.

“If we are building this case for investment in community-led approaches to improving health and wellbeing then we need to have that kind of evidence, that Rachel and the team will provide, to make that argument stronger.”

He said mental health was a key area where community groups were “responding to local needs.”

He said: “GPs have increasingly found it difficult to response to a lot of the mental health issues.

“Groups like Healthy N Happy [a community development trust based in Rutherglen and Cambuslang] and a lot of others are doing that, day in and day out.

“There are so many case studies of folk who have got near the point of suicide – and have credited the organisation with drawing them back.”

Professor Baker, who is Director of the Yunus Centre for Social Business and Health at GCU, said public health has evolved from infectious diseases to risk factors and behaviours to the “complex community space”.

“How does social connectedness affect health and wellbeing? 

“How does a sense of purpose, a sense of value affect your health and wellbeing?

“Hopefully, we will be able to extract some general messages and say to governments, if you really want to make a difference, this is what works.”

A Scottish Government spokeswoman said:“We are committed to addressing the underlying causes of health inequalities – we are committed to ending poverty, increasing equitable access to fair employment and improving our physical and social environments.

“Alongside action across government to improve the determinants of health, we are adopting a place-based approach to local health improvement.

“We will target actions in areas and communities most in need to ensure equity in our approach, thus avoid widening inequalities further.

“We will focus on cultivating community-led health improvement activity as we know how vital these organisations are in addressing health inequalities.

“We are looking at how we can better integrate community-led health organisations within local health and social care delivery.

“This will be achieved by working more effectively in partnership across government and with our local partners across all sectors. Community partners will shape what we are doing and steer long-term solutions and we intend to set out key priorities and approach in the coming months.”

Government Response to Herald article 2/3/22

A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: “We are committed to addressing the underlying causes of health inequalities – we are committed to ending poverty, increasing equitable access to fair employment and improving our physical and social environments.

“Alongside action across government to improve the determinants of health, we are adopting a place-based approach to local health improvement.

“We will target actions in areas and communities most in need to ensure equity in our approach, thus avoid widening inequalities further.

“We will focus on cultivating community-led health improvement activity as we know how vital these organisations are in addressing health inequalities.

“We are looking at how we can better integrate community-led health organisations within local health and social care delivery.

“This will be achieved by working more effectively in partnership across government and with our local partners across all sectors. Community partners will shape what we are doing and steer long-term solutions and we intend to set out key priorities and approach in the coming months.”

Author: Paul Dobson Petra Matijevic, The Ferret

The owners of Scotland’s onshore wind farms will only pay “loose change” to communities this year, despite producing electricity with a market value in excess of £3 billion and soaring rates of fuel poverty in the country.

Analysis by The Ferret has found that in 2022, Scotland’s onshore wind farms could together produce electricity valued at over £3.5bn, but just over £22m will go to the communities which live nearest these wind farms in payments to support local initiatives.

Developers usually pay an annual community benefit fund to local areas when they apply to build a new wind farm. This is often seen as recompense for the impact and disruption caused by wind farm projects.

The figures mean that locals will receive just 0.6 per cent of the value of the electricity produced on their doorstep. At current market prices, it would take the wind farms’ owners just two days to produce electricity worth as much as communities will be paid in a year.

Energy campaigners and politicians said the findings showed that multinationals are still seeing “the vast majority of financial benefit from our renewables” while “fuel poverty soars in sight of some of the most profitable wind farms in the world”.

More Scots are due to be pushed into fuel poverty by the UK Government’s decision to increase the energy price cap from April.

Some of the country’s most energy rich areas have particularly high rates of fuel poverty. The Highlands, Dumfries and Galloway, and the Borders – all of which are in the top five for installed onshore wind capacity – have higher fuel poverty rates than the Scottish average.

The renewable industry told The Ferret that the £22m of “voluntary community benefit payments” was money that would not otherwise be available in “some of the country’s most remote rural areas”.

The sector pointed out that wind farms are key to tackling the climate crisis, and are reducing Scotland’s reliance on expensive natural gas, the main cause of the current energy price crisis

Our analysis used the average generating capacity of onshore wind farms in the UK – which is 26.46% – to calculate how much electricity Scottish turbines are expected to produce this year.

This total generation was then multiplied by the forward price of electricity to calculate the current market value of the energy produced by Scottish onshore turbines. The amount of money paid to communities was taken from Local Energy Scotland’s community benefit register.

Onshore wind farms often enter into power purchase agreements with suppliers which mean that most of the energy they produce will be sold ahead of time. This is known as price hedging and means that owners of the farms are protected from volatility in the electricity market.

SSE has sold 60% of its electricity for 2022-23 at a price of £49 per megawatt hour, for example.

Even if all the electricity produced by Scottish wind farms is sold at this lower price, The Ferret’s analysis found that developers would still pay just 2% to locals, and earn the annual payment to communities in a week.

Locals missing out on benefits

Developers normally pledge to pay a community benefit fund to local areas when they apply to build a new wind farm.

This money is often viewed as a form of compensation for the visual impact on local environments that wind farms have, as well as the disruption experienced by residents when wind farms are being constructed.

Community benefit payments are made voluntarily by the developers and are paid each year at a fixed rate set when the project is built. The current industry standard – established by the Scottish Government’s Good Practice Principles – is an annual payment of £5,000 per installed megawatt lasting throughout a wind farm’s lifetime.

The money is controlled by communities and used to pay for local initiatives. Projects supported by the funds include refurbishments of community halls, befriending programmes, and bursaries for further education.

But even given the positives these schemes deliver, the huge renewable generation on their doorstep is yet to help tackle the soaring rates of fuel poverty faced by ordinary Scots.

Despite being responsible for a quarter of Britain’s total renewable generation and actually exporting renewable electricity to the rest of the UK, Scotland has double the rate of fuel poverty of England and Wales.

The Scottish Government predicts that one in three Scottish households – 824,000 homes – will be living in fuel poverty by the start of April, when a rise in the energy price cap is expected to increase bills by 54 per cent.

Frazer Scott, chief executive of Energy Action Scotland which campaigns to end fuel poverty, told The Ferret that renewables companies should “consider their social responsibility”.

“We believe that far more targeted support to enable communities in proximity to new generation capacity to reduce fuel poverty has been a consistently missed opportunity over the last 20 years,” Mr Scott said.

“We support the right of communities to determine how best to benefit their communities but with fuel poverty rising we believe that they need support to help people in greatest need and where existing public funded or energy supplier programmes are unable to help.”

Community alternative?

The debate over how best to maximise Scotland’s bountiful renewable resource has ramped up since the start of 2022. There are concerns in some quarters over who is benefiting from the boom in both onshore and offshore wind power.

January’s ScotWind leasing round — which auctioned sections of Scotland’s seabed for the development of offshore wind farms — prompted some to claim that the country’s renewable capacity was being sold “on the cheap” to multinational energy companies “with questionable human rights records”.

The Ferret reported last year that a third of Scotland’s biggest wind farms are owned by companies with links to corporate tax havens.

Community ownership of wind farms has been touted as an alternative to the current system which could unlock greater economic benefits for people living near turbines.

There are already a number of developments run in this way across the country. A study last year found that community-owned projects deliver 37 times as much money to locals when compared with privately-owned alternatives.

Fraser Stewart, an energy campaigner and researcher at the University of Strathclyde, said The Ferret’s findings were “important work” and further evidence that “the vast majority of financial benefit from our renewables is still making its way into the pockets of multinationals”.

“Meanwhile, fuel poverty soars in sight of some of the most profitable wind farms in the world,” Mr Stewart said.

“With community benefit and community energy more broadly we can do so much to bring power truly back to people — especially in light of the current crisis — but only if we are willing to get our priorities straight and put those communities at the forefront of a truly just energy revolution.”

Scottish Labour MSP, Monica Lennon, pictured below, described community benefits as “a rotten system” and criticised SNP and Green ministers for “failing to keep their promise to build a publicly-owned energy company”.

“The cost of living crisis didn’t happen by accident; it’s a product of years of market failure and political neglect. We need a new system where clean energy is a public good, not an exploitative commodity,” Ms Lennon said.

“Wind farm operators in Scotland are making billions from bill payers and only giving back loose change to local communities.

“A publicly-owned energy company that supports local energy cooperatives and smaller public energy companies would help to provide a level playing field for energy pricing and investment.”

The Scottish Government pointed out that it has “no direct powers to mandate renewable energy businesses to pay community benefits or determine their arrangements”.

A spokesperson said: “That is why we produced, in partnership with industry and communities, good practice principles for community benefits from onshore renewable energy developments.

“The guidance sets out national standards on community benefits and we encourage all developers and communities to make use of it.”

Mark Richardson, a senior policy manager at trade body, Scottish Renewables, noted that renewable projects are “inherently capital intensive” and enter into long-term power purchase agreements, using hedged prices, to “secure long term financing”.

“For that reason, what a project actually receives is not necessarily linked to the daily, weekly and monthly swings of the wholesale market,” Mr Richardson said.

“More than £22m of voluntary community benefit payments are made by renewable energy projects to communities across Scotland – money which would not otherwise be available, in some of the country’s most remote rural areas.

“Communities are therefore able to plan and invest in the knowledge of secure funding alongside renewable energy developers, who often play an active role in local economies beyond simply the provision of community benefit funding.

“As we increase our clean energy generation capacity to tackle climate change Scotland’s renewable energy industry looks forward to continued engagement with communities to ensure the full package of benefits delivered by renewable energy is maximised sustainably.”

Author: Anna Donath, Social Europe

Amid the argument over the rule of law in certain EU member states, civil society needs strengthening as an embodiment of European values.

The European Union is built on democracy, the rule of law and fundamental rights—three mutually reinforcing pillars. At the heart of democracy, freedom of thought, freedom of expression and critical thinking shape the functioning of our societies.

What makes a democracy vibrant is public debate: ideas are articulated and confront each other. And one of the important sources of this articulation of ideas is civil society.

Civil society not only nurtures freedom of expression and association as intrinsic values but relies on these rights to function properly. The work of civil-society organisations (CSOs), often seen (or made to be seen) as controversial, is an essential ingredient of democracy, just as are free speech and elections free from interference.

But civil society needs a safe and enabling environment. That civic space has been shrinking in parts of Europe was widely documented even before the pandemic hit. The adoption this month by the European Parliament of my report on this theme is crucial in the current political environment. We need to act now—or some countries might divert way too far from the path of European values.

Key role

When fundamental rights, democratic principles or the rule of law are eroded or even under attack, CSOs play a key role in raising awareness, advocating for their protection and mobilising in their defence. Civil society is thus critical to realising the values underpinning the European Union, as enshrined in article 2 of the Treaty on European Union.

Yet in acting to defend or elaborate these values, CSOs often become the targets of policies and measures trying to limit the space in which they operate. This shrinking of civic space has many forms and takes place at many levels—from unintended administrative obstructions to deliberate assaults on the very existence of civil society and its representatives.

Time and time again, CSOs have stood up when democracy has been under threat. We have seen their resilience in Hungary or Poland or wherever democratic backsliding has happened in the EU. This role in defending our democracies cannot however be taken for granted: some governments continue to pursue policies fundamentally at odds with European values and can marginalise the most vulnerable groups in our societies—just by introducing discriminatory laws or decisions, or initiating smear campaigns against organisations that dare to speak up for these groups.

Shy in standing up

Unfortunately, the deterioration of civic space can be directly linked to the EU’s shyness in standing up for these most basic values. This diffidence is also responsible for the concern that ‘hybrid regimes’ could evolve and become cemented in Europe.

From the outset, the EU should have adopted a strong political response, instead of hiding behind a legal approach. Two phenomena are particularly insidious.

We see increasing recourse to measures and narratives which have a chilling effect on civic space, bullying CSOs, activists and citizens into self-censorship—often the mere prospect of their application is enough to obtain the desired effect. And government-organised non-governmental organisations (GONGOs) emerge, undermining the very essence of civil society while misappropriating public funds.

Neither of these features can be fully grasped within a narrowly legal approach. Outwith their capture, governance systems such as that of Viktor Orbán in Hungary have consolidated. They have become laboratories for policies and narratives stigmatising and silencing independent and critical voices. Restrictions on civic space and pluralism are becoming increasingly normalised.

Fragmented and incomplete

It is not that the EU is not doing anything. What it is doing is fragmented and incomplete and serious gaps remain. 

For example, the European Commission’s rule-of-law report mentions civic space but does not go as far as to dedicate a structured chapter to it. The commission needs to elaborate a civil-society strategy, which would bring all tools together and summon up new ones.

Also required is better and systematic monitoring, establishing a civic-space index which would feed into the rule-of-law report. We must ensure that EU law cannot be used to undermine civic space, by including a civic-space check in impact assessments.

Attacks on CSOs must be prevented and, when this fails, those responsible must be prosecuted accordingly. It is also critical to protect civic actors from strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs).

We need too to provide financial protection for civil society. While exposing GONGOs and making sure no EU funding goes to them, it is important to unlock various sources of support—private, philanthropic and individual, including cross-border—and ensure CSOs can be legitimate recipients of all types.

Last but not least, we must adopt at the EU and member-state levels coherent policy frameworks to enable meaningful CSO participation in, and access to, decision-making.

As a political organisation, the European Parliament needs to focus on the political answers to these and coming challenges and must press the commission to act promptly when civic space is being threatened. Meanwhile, in our member states, we must keep fighting for a more democratic, just and humane Europe.

Author: Ailsa Raeburn, CLS

Ailsa Raeburn , Chair, Community Land Scotland                                                                                 Màiri McAllan MSP, Minister for Environment and Land Reform

Via Email

3rd March 2022

Dear Minister,

Forthcoming Land Reform Bill

I hope this finds you well. I’m writing in my capacity as Chair of Community Land Scotland to outline our ambitions for the forthcoming Land Reform Bill which the Scottish Government has committed to introducing to Parliament by the end of 2023.

Community Land Scotland warmly welcomes that commitment and the stated focus of the forthcoming Bill on tackling the scale and concentration of land ownership across rural and urban Scotland, including provision for a public interest test to apply to transfers of particularly large scale landholdings, with a presumption in favour of community buy-out when the test applies.

We recognise that such a public interest test offers considerable scope to take forward Scotland’s land reform agenda in a progressive way, depending on how it is constructed. Community Land Scotland is developing our policy thinking regarding the design and implementation of such a test and we look forward to sharing that with Government and other stakeholders in due course.

Community Land Scotland is clear that the forthcoming Bill must go beyond these welcome commitments to maximise its effectiveness in addressing the structural barrier that large scale and concentrated land ownership presents to the sustainable development of Scotland’s rural and urban communities. The pressing need to eliminate that barrier is underscored by the crucial role of land in helping to ensure a just transition to net zero and in providing a foundation for community wealth building.

As you know, Community Land Scotland published Land for the Common Good, our manifesto for a sustainable Scotland in November 2020. It contains a number of proposals to address issues of scale and concentration of land ownership; provisions for which we wish to see contained in the forthcoming Land Reform Bill. In addition to a public interest test on significant land transfers, our proposals include:

• Introduction of a public interest test on existing significant land holdings in terms of their scale and/orconcentration of ownership to ensure such land holdings serve the public interest and support sustainable Development;
• Introduction of a related power for Scottish Ministers to apply a Compulsory Sale Order to require the sale of part or all of such land holdings – including by lot – in the event of the public interest test not being met;
• Introduction of a duty on Public Authorities to apply a public interest test when disposing of land assets over a set value/threshold to assess whether prospective purchasers’ future plans for the assets serve the public interest and support sustainable development;
• Introduction of a mechanism to regulate the creation of monopoly ownership(s) of land by any individual acting alone or in consortia with specified beneficial interests by permitting a control on the total amount of land in Scotland that can be held in such ownership;
• Amendment of the Land and Buildings Transaction Tax to include an escalating supplement on sales of land holdings over a specific scale to private purchasers as a disincentive to creation of monopoly land holdings;
• Introduction of a statutory Land Rights and Responsibilities review process for landowners where there is evidence of adverse impacts on the sustainable development of their land holdings, with scope to apply a range of sanctions as appropriate;
• Granting a right to communities to take ownership of the foreshore within their communities which is currently owned by the Crown;
• Introduction of Compulsory Sale Orders to enable public authorities to bring derelict or unused sites or buildings into productive use;
• Introduction of a requirement that receipt of all land management grants be contingent on preparation of an approved land management plan involving community consultation for land holdings over a given threshold;
• Introduction of a Community Right to Buy to further Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation.

Aside from the above, we are also keen to explore the legislative scope within the forthcoming Bill to enable public agencies to enter into joint ventures to assist in expanding community ownership of land and built assets.

Community Land Scotland will continue to advocate publicly for provisions in the Land Reform Bill to address the above proposals to enable a genuinely transformative step change to occur regarding Scotland’s ongoing land reform journey. To that end, we therefore consider it essential that the Bill be sufficiently widely framed to accommodate such provisions when it is introduced to Parliament.

On a related point, we see the forthcoming Land Reform Bill as an opportunity to amend the existing suite of Community Rights to Buy as appropriate to ensure that they are fit for purpose. We note the Government’s commitment to review the Community Empowerment Act in the Programme for Government. We would welcome more information on thenscope and timing of that proposed review and, particularly, whether it will encompass consideration of Community Rights to Buy within its remit, as we believe it should.

Community Land Scotland is conscious that the policy agenda propelling the need for further land reform is evolving rapidly. Our policy thinking regarding the potential of the Bill to address that agenda is similarly continuing to evolve. We also recognise that the rapid pace of that changing agenda may necessitate urgent policy interventions prior to the anticipated introduction of the Land Reform Bill. We will therefore keep you and your officials appraised of any further proposals that emerge from our thinking, both in relation to the Bill and regarding potentially earlier policy interventions, that address the requirements of that fast-moving policy agenda.

In closing, Community Land Scotland would be pleased to discuss any of the above issues in more detail with you and your officials as appropriate.

Yours sincerely,

Ailsa Raeburn

Chair, Community Land Scotland.

Author: Andy Ricketts, Third Sector Jornal

The social sector faces an “existential threat” if it does not rethink its approach to power and partnership working, according to a new report.

It’s All About Power, published today by the Sheila McKechnie Foundation, has been produced as part of a two-year inquiry into civil society, social change and people’s experience of poverty and inequality.

The foundation said the social sector must “embrace a new way of thinking about power if it wants to create deeper solidarity for social change”.

The report says the inquiry found a genuine desire among the social sector to create better, more equitable ways of working with people, but too often they lack the culture, finance or strategies to build equitable relationships.

It says that as a result, partnerships can be “tokenistic, or even exploitative”.

The report says that many people do not find the social sector – which it defines as formally constituted organisations including charities, faith groups and campaigning groups – a welcoming or useful place and are therefore choosing to work apart from each other.

“It reduces our collective potential to create change because it misses the opportunity to combine people’s first-hand knowledge with the resource, capabilities and reach of social sector organisations,” says the report.

Sue Tibballs, chief executive of the Sheila McKechnie Foundation, said: “Without a change, we believe that social sector organisations face an existential threat – alienated from the people they were created to support, they risk losing legitimacy and even perpetuating the very inequalities they work to tackle.

“So, we are issuing a challenge but also an invitation. It’s time to move on from outmoded ideas of charity and philanthropy and reshape how we work for social change.

“By starting a new conversation about power at the very heart of social sector organisations, we believe that wider civil society can become far more than the sum of its parts – and unleash our collective power to create change.”

The foundation said it would spend the next two years helping social sector organisations and individuals to explore the ideas in the report and what it means to put them into practice.

Organisations interested in taking part are invited to email info@smk.org.uk.