Author: ICNN

UK map of community newspapers

It is a critical time for public interest journalism. Trust in the mainstream media is a major problem as fake news spreads unabated on social networks.

One of the key issues is the disappearance of local newspapers which could prove to be “catastrophic” for some areas of the UK, according to a new government report. The report warns that the decline of the local press reduces scrutiny of democratic functions and that this is “unlikely” to improve without intervention.

So it has never been more important to support the scores of independent community publishers up and down the country. They amplify the issues that are important to their readers. Their stories could help restore public trust in journalism – but only if the government puts its money where its mouth is, and helps to fund them.

According to the Independent Community News Network (ICNN) – which has more than 120 members throughout the UK – a “hyperlocal” news service is one which typically pertains to “a specific geographic area such as a town, neighbourhood, village, county or even postcode”. Among their members are titles as diverse as Shetland News and Cornish Stuff.

The ICNN website states that the shift to online has resulted in an upheaval of the traditional models of journalism. Jobs have been lost, revenues are in decline as advertising dries up and public service journalism has been hit hardest as publications retreat from their traditional stomping grounds. It continues:

But this digital migration has also inspired individuals and communities to step up to provide an alternative source of information through social enterprises, businesses and voluntary services – delivering enormous civic value.

At a recent conference hosted by Coventry University, senior academics argued that the sustenance of this sector was vital to ensure local communities were aware of the nuances of issues like COVID-19 and Brexit. This aligned with recent evidence from the Edelman Trust, which showed that there has been a resurgence in public trust in local journalism over the past decade – and an erosion of trust in mainstream outlets.

In the UK, the BBC emerged as the most important news source for coronavirus information during the first few months of the pandemic. But survey data shows that only 45% of respondents rate news media as trustworthy sources of such information – a decrease of 12% between April and August.

Cash needed

To do their work in helping to restore public trust, these fledgling independent community publishers need money. A £2m government-backed Future News Fund was launched in England in 2019 to boost local public interest journalism. This was a good start. But the government has resisted the innovation fund for public interest journalism that was recommended by the Cairncross review last year.

The review also called for tax reliefs and a new Institute for Public Interest News.

The £35 million “All in, all together” campaign, set up by the government during the pandemic, was spent on advertising in national and regional newspapers – but no cash was allocated to independent publishers.

Matthew Abbott, the ICNN community project officer, said:

Unfortunately, 95% of ICNN members haven’t been able to access any of the government’s 11 support measures, including furloughing staff, VAT exemption on e-publications and the £35m that was allocated to save the newspaper industry via a public health advertising campaign. If the UK government continues to do nothing to address this imbalance, media plurality in the UK will disappear altogether, along with many hundreds of jobs and vital community resources.

ICNN did, however, secure funding for independent community publishers from the Welsh government and Public Health Scotland, which have set the benchmark for Westminster to follow.

A News Recovery Plan set out by the National Union of Journalists has called for “strategic investment in government advertising, including the hyperlocal sector”. Tech giants, including Google and Facebook, as well as philanthropists and charitable trusts are intervening with increasing frequency to support local journalism.

But in the era of fake news – when it is so important for the public to understand the issues around COVID-19 and Brexit – the government needs to do more to help these independent community publishers spread the truth and to keep their readers informed.

 

Author: Scottish Government

Community groups and organisations can help shape a fairer recovery after coronavirus by submitting ideas to the Social Renewal Advisory Board.

What needs to change to build a Fairer Scotland?

We want to hear your ideas and learn from the response to the COVID pandemic.

The Social Renewal Advisory Board wants to understand how groups have been supporting people and communities at risk, both before and during the pandemic.

We want to make sure that the lessons you have learned on how to support your community through a crisis, and the ideas you have from that experience about what needs to change, help us build a fairer, more equal Scotland.

Any organisation, group or community can offer ideas.

Please note there is an easy-read version of this guidance, and the relevant forms are attached to this page.

The Social Renewal Advisory Board

The aim of the Social Renewal Advisory Board is to do the ‘big thinking’ that can help bring about a Fairer Scotland as we recover from the pandemic and look to the future.

It includes a strong focus on tackling poverty, advancing equality and embedding human rights.

Call for ideas

This is an invitation for you to tell the board what needs to change to bring about a Fairer Scotland in the future, based on your learning from the COVID pandemic.

Your ideas could focus on one of the themes discussed by the board: housing and place, work, income, public services, and attitudes and discrimination. Or on something else you think is important.

We expect that some ideas will be for the Scottish Government to take up. But you might also have other suggestions for local government, business, employers, the UK Government, providers of services, or the third sector (voluntary groups).

Any organisation should feel free to send in ideas. We would particularly like to hear from groups working with people with protected characteristics. The protected characteristics are: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, or those with lived experience of the issues. All experience is valuable.

We look forward to reading what you share.

How to submit your ideas

To submit your ideas fill out the form attached to this page.

Please tell us:

• your idea
• some extra details if you know them, such as:
  • what you have learned from the COVID experience to inform your idea
  • if there is a particular group or community that would benefit from your idea
  • if your idea has any implications for equality or human rights, and
  • how your idea would help us achieve the principles of social renewal, make the country a more equal place, reduce the levels of poverty and disadvantage and help people live happier lives.
• what evidence you have that supports the idea

Send completed forms to the Social Renewal Advisory Board Secretariat socialrenewal@gov.scot

If there is accompanying evidence that would support the information you’re sharing, please attach this too.

Lived experience evidence/reports

If your organisation works with people with lived experience on the issues being considered, and has information about these experiences during the pandemic that you would like the board to know about, please provide a written summary of this work. Please send reports or other written evidence to the Social Renewal Advisory Board Secretariat socialrenewal@gov.scot

What we’ll do with your ideas

Your ideas and your learning will be shared with the board. Some ideas may be included in a document/publication being produced later this year which will summarise the work of the board.

To be clear, we are looking for ideas for change – we are not looking for costed proposals for projects. We want to take the best practice and learning and apply it to our thinking going forward.

Responses should be submitted no later than 23 October 2020.

Ideas form – Social Renewal Advisory Board

 

 

 

 

Author: Dr Danny Sriskandarajah, CEO of Oxfam GB

Big charities have become too similar to corporates in the way they operate, Oxfam GB’s chief executive said yesterday.

Danny Sriskandarajah, CEO of Oxfam GB, was speaking during a panel session at The Resource Alliance’s International Fundraising Conference (IFC Online 2020), which discussed whether the charity sector has become too self-centred.

He said that some charities have been “mimicking some of the worst practices of the corporate world” as he set out his vision for Oxfam’s own future role.

Competition and growth at all costs

Moderator Marcus Missen, director of communications and fundraising at WaterAid, asked whether the sector has been focusing too much on organisations and too little on impact, and whether the shift from big organisations to civic movements such as Extinction Rebellion could mean the end of charity as we know it.

Sriskandarajah agreed that we are at “an inflection point” and that we “shouldn’t privilege” the institutional parts of civil society “at the cost of resourcing and supporting other bits of civic life”.

He said: “We are paying the price of institutions in civil society in some ways mimicking some of the worst practices of the corporate world.

“We built these big brands that have felt like they’re only interested in self-preservation or growth at all costs, that compete with each other, that have replicated the internal bureaucracies and hierarchies of other corporate formations.”

Big charities shouldn’t ‘hog space’

Sriskandarajah added that this does not mean that big charities should be dismantled, only that they need to rethink their role.

“I think it does help to have institutions that have collective memory, that have organisational power, that can be in other corporate spaces, for example negotiating with businesses or the state.”

But he said the problem is when institutions “start to hog space, hog profile, hog resources, at the cost of wider civic action”.

“I do think this is the beginning of the end of dominant NGOs as the primary organising model for civic life.”

Passing the mike

Kumi Naidoo, the former director of Greenpeace International and secretary general of Amnesty International who is now global ambassador for Africans Rising, added that big NGOs also shouldn’t “hog access”.

He said: “For UN agencies, national governments and so on, it’s easier to go to a brand name NGO and treat it as a one-stop shop.

“One of the things that needs to change moving forward is that the big branded organisations must say: ‘Hang on. There are more legitimate grassroots formations, people dying in the Amazon, people dying in the frontlines in Syria and so on’.

“We need to find ways to get them to have voice, and we need to step back.”

Sriskandarajah agreed that “we should be passing the mic more readily”.

Oxfam to launch new strategy focusing on anti-racism

Sriskandarajah also said that Oxfam will launch a new strategy later this year, with a focus on anti-racism and climate change.

He said: “We’ve put our commitment to becoming an anti-racist organisation at the heart of Oxfam Great Britain’s future, partly because I think, especially in the development sector, which grew out of the colonial project, we have to recognise our complicity in that project.”

He also said climate change “will be one of the three thematic areas that we will focus on”.

He said that in his 18 months at the charity, his team have been “on a journey” to “reimagine our institution for the next few years”.

This includes creating a more participatory institution that goes back to Oxfam’s founding principles.

He said: “Oxfam was founded in 1942 by a bunch of volunteers. We didn’t have a first paid staff member for years.

“And yet, we’re now associated with this idea of a big bureaucratised, corporatised NGO. Maybe the future is a bit of ‘back to the future’ for us, or for the likes of us – to go back and reclaim that heart of voluntary action.”

A global network for social justice

Sriskandarajah said the vision for Oxfam is to move away from the model of a traditional NGO where “we collect money from rich people in the north and give it to poor people, beneficiaries in the south”.

He said: “It was probably never an effective model and it certainly doesn’t feel like the cutting edge of where we want to be.

“We’re trying to reimagine a global network for social justice, where we’ll build on the heritage and the power of bits of Oxfam like ours here in the UK, but we’re also strengthening other bits of the Oxfam network elsewhere.

“We’ve already got new Oxfams in Brazil, in South Africa and Mexico; in Turkey, a 30-year-old women’s rights organisation has just become Oxfam Turkey.

“Our vision over the next five to 10 years is to create a globally balanced network that can build from below, but also beyond borders, because I think there is value in that.

“Many of the biggest challenges facing our world have to have some element of global response to them. But they also need to be grounded in local civic action, in the lives and livelihoods of real people. And that’s where I think we see our future.”

Author: Hannah Lewis, The Guardian

How much space do you think you need to grow a forest?

If your answer is bigger than a couple of tennis courts, think again. Miniature forests are springing up on patches of land in urban areas around the world, often planted by local community groups using a method inspired by Japanese temples.

The idea is simple – take brownfield sites, plant them densely with a wide variety of native seedlings, and let them grow with minimal intervention. The result, according to the method’s proponents, is complex ecosystems perfectly suited to local conditions that improve biodiversity, grow quickly and absorb more CO2.

The Miyawaki method

The method is based on the work of Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki. He found that protected areas around temples, shrines and cemeteries in Japan contained a huge variety of native vegetation that co-existed to produce resilient and diverse ecosystems. This contrasted with the conifer forests – non-indigenous trees grown for timber – that dominated the landscape.

His work developed into the Miyawaki method – an approach that prioritizes the natural development of forests using native species. Miyawaki forests can grow into mature ecosystems in just 20 years – astonishingly fast when compared to the 200 years it can take a forest to regenerate on its own. They act as oases for biodiversity, supporting up to 20 times as many species as non-native, managed forests.

Local pollinators such as butterflies and bees, beetles, snails and amphibians are among the animals that thrive with a greater diversity of food and shelter.

Greening urban spaces worldwide

The popularity of Miyawaki forests is growing, with initiatives in India, the Amazon, and Europe. Projects like Urban Forests in Belgium and France, and Tiny Forest in the Netherlands, are bringing together volunteers to transform small patches of wasteland.

Urban forests bring many benefits to communities beyond their impact on biodiversity. Green spaces can help to improve people’s mental health, reduce the harmful effects of air pollution, and even counter the phenomenon of heat islands in cities, where expanses of concrete and asphalt raise temperatures unnaturally high.

Carbon sinks

But it is the potential for helping to combat climate change that makes Miyawaki forests a particularly attractive option for many environmentalists. Reforestation is a key part of strategies to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5℃, with initiatives like the Bonn Challenge, Trillion Trees Vision and the World Economic Forum’s 1t.org project setting ambitious targets.

It’s estimated that new or restored forests could remove up to 10 gigatons of C2O equivalent by 2050.

However, not all forests are equally effective in sequestering carbon. Mature forests of native trees soak up much more CO2 than the monoculture plantations that make up many reforestation projects. As scientists learn more about the role of other factors, such as carbon in the soil, it is increasingly clear that planting the right kind of trees matters as much as the number.

Conservation groups stress that Miyawaki forests should not be seen as an alternative to protecting existing native forests. Small, unconnected wooded areas can never replace the large tracts of forest that are vital to so many species, and that remain under threat from commercial plantations and slash-and-burn farming. But if you have a patch of wasteland in your local community that is sitting idle, a Miyawaki forest could be one way of doing your bit to help the environment.

 

Author: Rob Whiteman, CIPFA CEO

Local government reorganisation has been high on the agenda this month, with the resignation of the devolution minister, the delay of the government’s devolution white paper, rumours swirling of two tier arrangements being abolished and in many areas, much posturing on both sides of the fence.

Let me first say at the outset that, sadly, I share the scepticism regarding the government coming good on promises to use reorganisation as a platform for devolution. Since 1945, we have steadily but surely become one of the most centralised states in the world. Put bluntly, we don’t really have ‘local government’ in its truest sense. We have councils as local institutions running some functions, but often directed by central government.

This sits alongside most of the local state – health, welfare, criminal justice, further education, skills, academies – which is directly run by government. Current planned changes, for example with the planning system, see us heading further toward the spiritual nirvana for Whitehall of just one local authority in England… itself! Ironically, it’s only such a heavily centralised state which would argue that the problem is that there’s not enough centralism!

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a glaring example of the failures of our over-centralised state. From the absence of a functioning test and trace system and sluggishness of supplying councils with local transmission and infection data, through to central government controlling local lockdowns, we keep seeing councils and local public institutions having to wait for permission or resources to act in the immediate and best interests of their communities.

On devolution to overcome this sorry state, my experience is that we focus on the wrong question. We must replace ‘what should get devolved?’ with ‘what does government reserve?’ – a default in which everything is devolved except those few things that are reserved. It worked for Scotland and is the only way to achieve devolution, rather than mere piecemeal delegation, in England. Let’s reverse 70 years of creeping centralisation and instead give councils the policymaking and financial powers to enable a full local state.

For me, the key to unlocking a transformed English state lies in the unfettered ability of local democratic mandates to raise revenue beyond council tax and business rates, and share the proceeds of taxes that are presently nationalised. With increasing demand on local services as they currently stand, councils cannot continue to be funded by council tax and business rates alone. In Germany, sub-national areas have access to income, sales and corporation taxes that provide greater flexibility and resilience to deliver against local need.

However, when promoting a vision for a devolved English state funded by multiple tax streams, the organisation of local government, its workforce and technology dynamics, cannot continue to be based on Victorian footprints that are long past their sell by date. Many councils are too small to be strategic whilst being too big to be local.

Personally, I lean towards a two-tier model that’s both bigger and smaller than what exists now. I would argue for bolstering parish councils in all areas to enhance community capacity, engagement and hyper-local decisions, but for upper tiers to be even larger than existing counties and unitaries. Larger local authorities that cover material economic geographies would lend themselves to setting tax variations akin to Scotland. It would mean that big councils could achieve material economies of scale and would be responsible for several places, not just one.

Any conversation that involves such radical change inevitably presents a challenge. It’s very easy for us all to retreat into arguments for the merits of our own units of local government. While this is understandable, it divides our collective voice as a sector and weakens the argument against centralised Whitehall control. It’s time we come together as a sector with one voice and debate how we want to reorganise the state over the next 30 years. Let’s address the more fundamental issue of real devolution and make that the exam question that drives reorganisation.

This article first appeared in the Local Government Chronicle.

 

 

Author: The Kings Fund

Short film explaining the Wigan Deal

The need for radical change

The relationship between public services and the people who use them needs to be transformed to allow people to take greater control of their health and wellbeing. Existing ways of delivering services can sometimes disempower the people they are there to help, leaving people feeling unable to make positive changes in their lives and their communities. In the case of health and social care services, changing this means striking a new relationship that puts more power in the hands of patients and service users and emphasises ‘working with’ rather than ‘doing to’.

Financial pressures have also made it necessary to explore new approaches to delivering public services. Since 2010, local authorities in England have needed to make unprecedented financial savings in response to dramatic cuts in funding from national government.

In Wigan this has amounted to an effective reduction in the council’s budget of around 40 per cent, phased in over 10 years, and the loss of around a fifth of its workforce. Ongoing financial pressures across the country mean bold thinking is needed about how best to provide services.

These two strands of thinking – the moral argument and the financial one – came together in Wigan through the ‘Wigan Deal’ – a major transformation programme that has taken place over the last six years. The Deal has been an attempt both to manage demand for services and to transform how public servants and local people understand their roles in creating successful, healthy communities.

Our research

This report provides an independent critique of the Wigan Deal and tells the story of why it was developed and how it has been put into practice. It is based on material gathered from a variety of sources over the course of seven days of fieldwork in Wigan in the autumn of 2018. We conducted 44 individual and group interviews with people working for Wigan Council, the NHS, the voluntary sector, service users and other partner organisations. To gain insights into the perspectives of local people, we conducted four focus groups with residents of Wigan and Leigh.

The fieldwork also included an observational component – we conducted site visits, took part in an abridged version of the Wigan Deal training programme, and observed a multi-agency ‘huddle’. We reviewed internal documentation and relevant external publications and analysed routinely available quantitative data.

Core elements of Wigan’s approach

The transformation in Wigan has included four main components: asset-based working, permission to innovate, investing in communities and place-based working.

Asset-based working

There has been a major drive to work with local people in a different way that seeks to recognise and nurture the strengths of individuals, families and communities and to build independence and self-reliance. This started with social care workers being trained to have more open-ended, exploratory conversations with their clients, and has now become a new way of working for the council as a whole and, increasingly, for other organisations across Wigan. While asset-based working has been explored in many parts of England, Wigan is notable for the scale at which this approach has been adopted and for the consistency of implementation.

Permission to innovate

Leaders in Wigan Council have created a culture in which innovation is encouraged and frontline staff are permitted to take decisions for themselves and rethink how they work, based on their conversations with people using services. This has meant taking a different approach to risk – positive risk-taking is encouraged if the potential benefits for clients are believed to outweigh the potential harms. It has also involved moving away from a ‘blame culture’ towards one which emphasises learning from what has not worked.

Investing in communities

Wigan Council has invested in local voluntary sector organisations and community groups through a dedicated community investment fund. Beneficiaries have mainly been small grassroots organisations that have been helped to increase the scale and impact of their activities through financial support and access to expert advice. More broadly, the council has moved to a collaborative approach to commissioning in which voluntary and community sector organisations are seen as partners and are actively supported to develop and improve. There has also been a focus on growing citizen leadership through roles such community health champions, dementia friends and autism friends, and on supporting social prescribing using community link workers based in general practices.

Place-based working

As in other parts of the country, partner organisations in Wigan are attempting to work together in a more integrated way, working flexibly across organisational boundaries within local neighbourhoods. A distinctive feature of Wigan’s approach to this is the breadth of organisations involved – in addition to health and social care teams, multi-agency working within the borough’s seven ‘service delivery footprints’ involves the police, housing, employment and welfare services and others. This creates opportunities to tackle the broader determinants of health and wellbeing in a more coordinated and flexible way.

How the transformation happened

Above all else, the Wigan Deal is a story of profound cultural change within the council and its partners. At the heart of this new culture is a set of positive beliefs about the potential of frontline staff and local people to bring about improvement. For other areas seeking to replicate the Deal, fostering this set of beliefs and the different behaviours that go with them should be the first priority.

The process of building a new culture is still a work in progress and it has not always been an easy one. Nonetheless, there are some clear lessons to take from Wigan’s journey.

The most striking feature in Wigan is the constancy of purpose evident both in the senior leadership team and at other levels in the council. A common vision was forged early on between executive and political leaders, and a clear narrative developed about the changes the council wanted to bring about and why they were needed. This core narrative has been consistent over time, with leaders making a long-term commitment to changing how the council works with local people.

While the overall approach and the values underpinning it have been nonnegotiable, an enabling style of leadership has meant that staff have had considerable freedom to develop their own ideas about how the principles of the Deal can be put into practice in their work. Senior leaders in Wigan Council emphasise the need for humility and ‘servant leadership’. Political leadership has also played a vital role, with councillors willing to make the Deal a non-partisan issue and to find common ground despite political differences.

The changes in Wigan have been marked by a series of bold decisions rather than incrementalism. These have included training all staff across the council and partner organisations in having different conversations with service users, radically changing the composition of the workforce in adult social care, and replacing staff who were unwilling or unable to change how they work with local people. A key theme in the story has been the need to ‘hold our nerve’ in the face of significant obstacles.

A huge amount of energy has been put into communications and marketing to build a shared sense of purpose. The concept of the Deal and the principles it encapsulates are reinforced at every available opportunity. Stories from staff and service users have played a particularly important role in this, providing tangible examples of how local people have benefited from the changes under way and showing staff that the permission to innovate is real rather than simply rhetoric.

What has it achieved?

The Deal has given public servants and others in Wigan a set of guiding principles that inform how they work with each other and with people using services. The examples described in our report paint a compelling picture of professionals feeling liberated to practise in a different way, making better use of the strengths of service users and the communities they live in.

These individual case studies are given further credence by improvements seen in several key metrics. Healthy life expectancy has increased significantly, bucking the trend for stagnation seen in the England-wide figures. Care Quality Commission assessments indicate that the quality of social care services in Wigan has improved, and Wigan performs well compared with national and regional benchmarks at supporting people to leave hospital and to remain in the community rather than in long-term residential care. Staff engagement has improved, and in March 2019 the Local Government Chronicle named Wigan their Council of the Year.

While there is evidence that significant changes have been made in terms of the way staff in Wigan see their role and how they work with service users, the perception of the wider public appears to have been harder to shift. Our focus groups found that people’s concerns about issues such as crime and antisocial behaviour appear to be overshadowing progress being made on other fronts that are less visible to the majority of residents, such as social care or public health. This demonstrates how challenging it is for one local system to build a new relationship with the public in isolation.

Implications

Wigan does not offer a simple, ready-made solution that other areas can adopt overnight. The Deal has been at least six years in the making and is still a work in progress. However, it does provide a powerful example of what can be achieved when public services see communities as assets and commit to working in a different way that builds on people’s strengths.

Importantly, Wigan shows that asset-based working should not be seen as a technocratic quick fix – it is not a tool to be adopted, but rather a culture to be grown. It is about rekindling hope in our public services and overcoming fatalism about people’s capacity to change. As such, it requires bold leadership and a longterm commitment to challenging engrained ways of working.

Local authorities and NHS organisations have an important opportunity to work together to forge a new relationship with the public and agree a vision for health and care that harnesses the strengths of individuals and communities. This kind of approach is likely to have the greatest possible impact when it becomes a shared way of working across all of the services operating in a place. A key question for the NHS is whether it is willing and able to adopt a culture that gives patients more control and allows frontline staff greater freedom to innovate.

Wigan’s journey also shows that it is possible to achieve substantial financial savings in public services while protecting or improving outcomes, but only if services are genuinely transformed and upfront investment is available to help bring about new ways of working. Wigan Council was able to take an invest-to-save approach, using reserves to fund transformation. An ongoing squeeze on public sector budgets may make it harder for others to take a similar path.

Author: Billy Briggs, The Ferret

A private housing development backed financially by a government “green” fund has been criticised for destroying “cherished woodland” and not providing affordable homes.

The Ferret revealed last month that private developers have received £100m from the Scottish Government’s Building Scotland Fund (BSF) but only built 700 affordable homes. The environmental credentials of some housing projects funded were also questioned.

A row has now erupted over a development funded by BSF called Athron Hill, near Milnathort, Perth and Kinross. It is an exclusive new-build of 35 family homes, advertised as having “majestic views out over Loch Leven, the Lomond’s and the Pentland Hills beyond”.

The Athron Hill Development Company’s project involves eco-housing and the company says it is committed to “environmentally-friendly living”.

But campaigners opposed to the project claim there has been “large scale destruction of trees” and the firm has not protected the squirrel population and other wildlife such as deer and newts.

Local residents told The Ferret they were not consulted over the development and voiced concerns over the damage to the environment and the lack of affordable housing provided.

The BSF is the precursor to the Scottish National Investment Bank, which is required to finance action on climate change and tackle inequalities in housing.

The fund was announced in 2018 by ministers who committed to investing £150 million in housing for a three-year period up until 2021.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said the new bank, which is due to start lending this autumn, would be central to a green new deal for Scotland.

More than two-thirds of the sum has already been allocated. But so far all the cash, as revealed by The Ferret, has gone to private developers, with only 700 homes allocated for affordable housing.

The developer has not followed conditions imposed to protect the resident squirrel population and other wildlife such as deer and newts.

Athron Hill received a £4.6m loan from BSF. Locals opposed to the development include Alan Miller, who stays in the hamlet of Tillyrie, next to the site.

He said: “The developer has not followed conditions imposed to protect the resident squirrel population and other wildlife such as deer and newts.

“[It] has been awarded a loan of £4.6m from the Scotland Building Fund which does not appear to meet all the criteria. This is taxpayers’ money. The houses may be eco-friendly but what has been sacrificed to build them is certainly not. There is also no mention of affordable housing.”

Jane Timperley, a resident of nearby Milnathort, is also opposed to the project. She said that despite writing to a number of agencies the community has been “unable to establish” what criteria was applied to applications.

“There is a complete lack of transparency regarding this,” she added. “It is our understanding that applications should meet the government criteria of the ‘Place Principle’, in that they should have community consultation – the environment should be considered, and there should be contribution to affordable housing and ordinary people.

Timperley added: “My sentiments and concerns lie predominantly with nature and it saddens me beyond belief that a beautiful natural space on the flank of the Ochil Hills should be bulldozed and manicured in order to line the pockets of developers who do not care about the environment and its flora and fauna.

“This really should be a key government concern. The hamlet of Tillyrie is no longer a peaceful dead end but faces years of construction traffic and a lifetime of residential traffic.”

Another resident who asked not to be named, said: “It seems to me those areas, the existing places and environment, won’t benefit as it is a new build of expensive houses, taking over a wild area the people used to walk in and we have not been asked to input into what we need to make our community flourish.”

Clare Symonds, of Planning Democracy, a charity concerned with development in Scotland, said communities should be involved with projects at the planning and design stages, through to construction, to ensure develepers adhere to “good practice standards”.

She added: “While we welcome the aim to encourage low carbon housing to help tackle the climate crisis, this must not come at the expense of other important government objectives such as affordable housing provision, safeguarding biodiversity and community empowerment.

“Any government funding initiatives have to to be thought through to intelligently tackle the multiple problems we face. What is the point of incentivising eco housing if you destroy cherished woodland that supports protected species in the process?

However, Dan Multon, director at Athron Hill Development Company, defended the project and said he had contacted each household individually and is glad to discuss people’s concerns.

He added: “We fully understand the concerns of local residents, who fiercely want to make sure that this beautiful part of the world is preserved – and we’re confident that everything we are doing is in keeping with both the consents and best practice.

“Ultimately, we share this protective view of the local area. It is my own local neighbourhood – and I am committed to repurposing the old hospital site to create a sustainable, community-driven development that also brings benefit to the local environment. This is hugely important to me on a personal level.”

It is my own local neighbourhood – and I am committed to repurposing the old hospital site to create a sustainable, community-driven development that also brings benefit to the local environment.

Multon added: “We have appointed ecological experts and are undertaking an extensive replanting of native woodland to boost biodiversity. It’s in our interest to create attractive surroundings for new residents and existing residents alike.

“Clearly we are committed to this development and bringing it to market at a time when more and more of us are seeking green space and environmentally-friendly living.”

He continued: “We are now working closely with the local authority to ensure that all of our work continues to be in keeping with the most recent, detailed planning consent and over the coming weeks we will be working with our contractors to improve the road through Tillyrie.”

Kevin Stewart MSP, the Scottish Government’s housing minister, said: “The Building Scotland Fund aims to support the development of homes across all tenures where a lack of available finance in the market is preventing developments proceeding.

“Developments successful in securing funding from BSF have met the required criteria for finance, including having in place planning permission granted by the local authority. In this case, the fund is providing loan finance on a commercial basis and we continue to monitor progress of the development.”

 

Author: Lateral North

This report by Lateral North investigates a series of case studies throughout the Argyll and Bute local authority as a mechanism to raise awareness of the bioregions model.

In June 2015 Nordregio published a policy brief investigating the Bioeconomy of one region from each of the Nordic countries. The proposal investigates the opportunity to create an initiative which is primarily aimed at “replacing fossil fuels with biofuels and replacing non-degradable products with bio-degradable ones” as well as boosting the productivity and product development within agriculture, fisheries, forestry and the chemical industry; creating new jobs in sparsely populated areas by utilizing existing natural resources. The Nordic countries are hailing this idea as a “silver bullet” and believe it will be able to “avert several staggering threats to our societies: economic and demographic decline in rural areas; joblessness and the climate crises”.

The policy brief is part of a larger document which has focussed on developing case studies within each of the Nordic countries investigating the possible integration of the Bioeconomy principle. The policy brief finishes by providing a series of policy recommendations at both a national and regional level to implement the Bioeconomy principle.

SCOTLAND AND ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH THE NORDIC COUNTRIES

Commonly regarded as a part of the ’Nordic family’ Scotland has traded, been under Norse occupation and once geographically connected to these northern neighbours.

Although Scotland’s cultural heritage and natural resource may show striking familiarities to the Nordic Countries our local governance strategy is invariably different. Norway, a country of similar population of similar population and geography manages local affairs within its 428 municipalities. Similarly, Finland utilises a similar method with 320 municipalities with a degree of autonomy for each. Scotland is divided into only 32 areas designated as local authorities. These council boundaries have been in place since 1 April 1996 and provide services including education, planning and social care.

The concept of ‘bioregion’ or ‘bioeconomy’ has become increasingly prevalent in policy communication throughout Europe and in particular the Nordic Countries.

This report by Lateral North looks to raise awareness of the possible opportunities and implications revealed within Scotland from the bioregion model. The study highlights the productive possibilities of the land through utilisation of biodegradable products.

UNDERSTANDING BIOREGIONS: SCOTLAND’S POTENTIAL

Scotland’s 32 council areas have expansive parameters and encompass swathes of rural and urban landscape. What if radical reform within Scotland defined these ‘borders’ by the productivity of their landscapes and seascapes? Could Scotland activate a bioregion manifesto where individual communities are empowered politically, socially, and economically to generate their own sustainable community relative to the local landscape characteristics?

Could this community empowerment redefine Scotland’s identity as a New Northern Nation?

Scotland contains a multitude of natural resources ranging from rich agricultural resources to renewable energy opportunity and flourishing marine environments. Could Scotland develop its existing infrastructure and utilise its proximity to large conurbations, Northern Ireland, the Faroe Islands and Norway to become an accessible nation amongst its Nordic neighbours. Could Scotland redefine its local boundaries in accordance with the land’s productivity?

Bioregions could become a series of micro municipalities defined by natural resource and local concern. Bioregions could boost productivity within forestry, fishing, renewable and agricultural industries and create a multitude of jobs for sparsely populated areas throughout Scotland.

To read full report – click here

For information about the Community Learning Exchange click here

Two months into lockdown, Healthy n Happy decided to use the opportunity to design something new. Our Gathering was created: an ambitious 3-month series of plenaries, research and themed working groups, to learn, reflect and plan together.

All staff including core team and hourly rate workers, and our Board members, would come together as peers, to explore our shared and unique experiences of lockdown. Through various tools and activities, including themed working groups, reading and research, and the 3 horizons model, we produced a legacy and a series of plans for the emerging futures.

Our learning exchange event (held on 6th October) will explore the write-up of our journey, present pecha kuchas from the working groups, and give opportunity for all participants to discuss our learning and ways in which they might use the learning in their own journeys.

 

 

Author: Prof Jim Hunter

What can Scotland learn from community land ownership?  Community Land Conference, Stirling Court Hotel, 15 May 2018

When, three years ago, I was asked to join the board of Community Land Scotland, I wasn’t all that keen.

I’ve been around the land reform issue for too long, I said to Lorne MacLeod, our then chair.

And I’m supposed to be retired.

Well, that’s just it, said Lorne. We need to keep a lid on our expenses. And because you’ve got a bus pass, you won’t cost us very much.

And anyway, said Lorne, all our meetings are in Inverness. Less than half an hour from where you live. The thing’s not going to take up any time at all.

Aye, right.

The last three meetings of our board have been in … Galashiels … Paisley … Dumfries.

My bus pass, and my senior rail card, have never been in such demand.

Which is, mind you, a good sign.

An indication that community land ownership, which got going in the north, and for a while seemed limited to that area, is beginning now to take off in the southern half of Scotland.

That’s very, very welcome.

But to the title I’ve been given … What can Scotland learn from community land ownership?

Well, it’s not for me, as I bow out and get a wee bit valedictory, to be definitive on that.

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But I’ll offer one or two thoughts.

Which, by the way, are my thoughts, not those necessarily of CLS.

***

As I said, I’ve been a backer of the cause of land reform for a long, long time.

My first pronouncements on the topic, I reckon, date from more than half a century ago.

When I was still in school in North Argyll.

The occasion … one September when the Oban Times devoted columns to the guest list for the Argyllshire Gathering Ball … a highlight of the landed gentry’s social scene.

Perhaps, I said, we common folk should cut out and retain that guest list page … on the basis that, when revolution came, it might be handy.

Well, for better or for worse, there was no revolution.

But I’ve maintained a lifelong interest in the way our land is owned … and in the inequalities that stem from that.

First, writing a PhD thesis, then a book … it’s still in print … about the crofting battle for security of tenure … a battle that, when crofters won, brought clearance to an end.

Then being encouraged, during the 1970s and 80s, by signs that land reform, after a lengthy absence, might yet get back on to political agendas.

Signs like John McEwen’s work on who owns Scotland.

Or the appearance of the West Highland Free Press, with a mission to right wrongs that flow from limiting land ownership to very, very few.

Or the emergence of the Scottish Crofters Union for which I went to Skye to work.

Another indication of the way the tide was running in those years was the reception accorded to that great piece of theatre, The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil.
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At its close its cast declaim repeatedly, ‘The people do not own the land. The people do not control the land.’

The implication … one applauded up and down our country … was very much that this had got to alter.

And by the 1980s, it was possible to think that it just might … with talk of new departures in community land ownership.

***

But this was theoretical.

Until, in 1992, crofters in Assynt did what no occupants of land in Scotland had ever done before.

Bid, in the open market, for ownership of the estate on which they lived.

‘Well, ladies and gentlemen,’ said the late Allan MacRae at a public meeting held the night the crofting bid succeeded … ‘Well, ladies and gentlemen, it seems we have won the land … And in winning the land,’ Allan went on, ‘Assynt crofters have struck a historic blow.’

And so they had.

From that victory there followed a whole series of community land buy-outs.

Eigg, Knoydart, Gigha, North Harris, South Uist, Galson … and so on.

In total some hundreds of thousands of acres.

But then … and disappointingly … this progress seemed to stall.

Which is why, I think, a set of people from estates and islands in community control got together, in September 2009, in Harris.

As opening speaker at that gathering, I began with what had been accomplished.

I next said this:

‘What I want to focus on is the public policy environment in which community ownership has taken off and prospered.’
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‘For while community ownership,’ I said, ‘could not have succeeded in the absence of the efforts made by people on the ground, neither could it have succeeded without support from government and its agencies.’

‘It’s my belief,’ I said, ‘that, since the present Scottish government took office, this support, which grew steadily under previous administrations, has lessened very markedly.’

The government I spoke of was the SNP administration that took office two years earlier.

And since, let me be clear, I am myself a member of the SNP, I wasn’t motivated by hostility to that party.

I was, I think, expressing what was then a common feeling in community land circles.

A feeling that, while in the early years of Scotland’s restored parliament, land reform, community land ownership, had been way up there in bright lights … those things, politically at any rate, had ceased to matter.

No further legislation was being mooted.

The Scottish Land Fund, set up in 2001, had gone into abeyance.

At Holyrood, it seemed, there was a lack of interest.

Well, that was then. Today things look quite different.

We’ve had a Community Empowerment Act.

A Land Reform Act.

A Land Commission’s been established and is now hard at work.

The Scottish Land Fund’s been restored.

New community land purchases are being pushed in Wanlockhead, in Ulva and elsewhere.

Our show is back on the road.

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Why this transformation?

There’s no single explanation.

But one thing, I believe, is key.

A decision taken at that 2009 Harris conference.

The decision to set up what’s now Community Land Scotland … this organisation.

***

Back to our headline question … What can Scotland learn from community land ownership?

Well, one thing to be learned is this.

That change … radical change … change for the better … can be made to happen.

Too often in Scotland, when confronted with injustice, inequality … with poverty, with deprivation, disadvantage …. We’ve taken refuge in that dreary piece of wisdom, It’s aye bin.

Well, if it’s aye bin, then that’s because we’ve let it be.

And as regards our obsolescent, grossly over-concentrated, pattern of landownership … as regards that … more and more of us are of a mind that it’s aye bin has had its day.

Change, to repeat, is feasible.

But no way does it happen by itself.

Votes for women, as we’ve been recalling in this centenary year of female suffrage, didn’t just fall from the sky.

They were fought for.

Security of tenure for crofters wasn’t a kind gesture made by landlords.

It took the Highland Land League, and lots of direct action, to obtain it.

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And so it’s still with land reform … With ensuring a supportive climate for existing and prospective community land owners … It takes lobbying … Engagement with parliamentary committees … With the Scottish government … With civil servants … With the Land Commission … With other public bodies … And with the private sector.

It takes, in short, the work done by Community Land Scotland.

***

My role in Community Land Scotland, a role that ends today, hasn’t, to be honest, been of very great significance.

Though, as Lorne forecast, my bus pass has proved helpful.

But my time on our board has given me an opportunity to get a glimpse of what Community Land Scotland’s all about.

Not just putting on this annual conference … though that’s vital.

But the day-to-day stuff that goes on and on year round.

The work of our headquarters staff … our policy directors … the effort put in, voluntarily, by our chairs.

This, I believe, has helped sort out a lot of what concerned those of us who met in Harris nine years back.

Community Land Scotland’s had a hand in re-establishing the Land Fund.

In pushing for new rounds of legislation.

In influencing that legislation’s shape.

And all this on a shoe string.

I said in Harris that, in my opinion, the long-run funding for a powerful voice for the community land sector could only come … should only come … from inside the sector itself.

That’s still my view.

Though it’s one, I know, not everybody shares.
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I also know … at least I think I know … why this is so.

No community land trust is rolling in spare cash.

And trusts are focused … rightly focused … on their own localities where, all the time, there’s much, and often too much, to be done.

But the wider scene … the one where CLS has made, and makes, a difference … is one that matters locally as well.

To take just one example.

CLS devotes much effort and resource to backing groups that are still trying to buy land.

This might appear of no great relevance to trusts that are already up and running.

But that’s wrong.

Growing the community land area boosts community land owners as a whole.

By adding to the sector’s overall significance … by giving it a greater clout … with politicians and with others.

Hence my stress on the lesson that what’s basic in the business of getting change to happen is a need at all times to be organised … especially at a national level.

That’s what’s shown by the record of Community Land Scotland.

***

And what else might be learned from the community land ownership experience?

Well, it shows, I think, that there’s great merit in putting trust in people.

Ours is a terribly centralised country.

Scotland has 32 councils.

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Norway, with a similar population, has 400 communes.

France has 36,000.

Nothing anywhere is perfect.

But it’s hard not to suspect that here in Scotland, if we were to extend continental-style devolution to people living in small towns, in villages, in rural areas, we’d give to these same people an opportunity to do all sorts of good things for themselves.

That’s certainly suggested by community land ownership.

In advance of a community land purchase, folk wonder, naturally enough, if they can or will do better than what was there before.

Invariably they do.

The story of community land ownership’s a story of magnificent achievement.

The members, the supporters, of our land trusts have changed fundamentally a pattern of land ownership that once seemed fixed for all time coming.

In the process, trusts have fostered and unleashed all manner of entrepreneurial and other energies.

They’ve shown that depopulation can be reversed, businesses created and homes built in places where these things were long believed to be impossible.

They’ve demonstrated that wind power and other resources can be harnessed for local purposes.

They’ve proved that previously loss-making estates can be run at a profit.

They’ve done much else besides.

Which is not to say community land owners are infallible. They most certainly are not.

They’ve made mistakes … and, for sure, they will make more.

Sooner or later, one, or more than one, of them will get into real difficulty.
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At which point opponents of reform will say this shows community land ownership does not, and cannot, work.

But that won’t in any way be true.

A busted land trust won’t invalidate the concept of community land ownership.

Just as one company going bankrupt does not imply that companies more generally are headed for the knacker’s yard.

What matters is what’s being accomplished by community land trusts in their totality.

And that is a great deal.

Which is why we need more, much more, community empowerment.

Give people power, control, responsibility … at a truly local level … and they’ll rise to the challenge.

Gaining, as they do so, in self-confidence and self-esteem.

That’s shown by what’s resulted from community land ownership

***

And so to one last lesson … Which is that, though the story so far’s pretty good, there’s still a great deal to be done.

This summer in Assynt crofters celebrate the 25th anniversary of the formal transfer to them of the North Lochinver Estate.

In that quarter century community land ownership’s come to being seen as something we need more of.

Recognised … indeed facilitated and promoted … by various Acts of Scotland’s Parliament … backed financially by a Land Fund … aided by the work of agencies like HIE and now the Land Commission.

And yet … as between a prospective community purchaser of land on one side … a prospective private buyer on the other … there’s nothing like a level playing field.
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Communities are required … in a whole variety of energy-sapping, timeconsuming ways … to demonstrate their credentials … to prove they have support … to make public in great detail what it is they plan to do … to show that these plans are affordable.

The private buyer, in contrast, does no more than sign a cheque.

But that, it’s argued, is OK … The community, it’s said, get public money… The private buyer doesn’t.

Two points.

First, the amount of public money going into community land purchases is routinely … and, I think, deliberately … exaggerated.

In a book about community landownership, published in 2012, I worked out … with help from HIE and others … the cost to the public purse … of getting into community control … the then total of near 500,000 acres.

The cash involved … more than half of it from the Lottery … the rest from the taxpayer … was in the order of £30 million.

Sure, that’s a lot of money.

But it’s maybe put in context by the fact that it’s equivalent to the cost of each 600-yard length of the Edinburgh tramway.

My second point.

The notion that, in contrast to community land purchasers, private buyers are no drain on taxpayers is … to put the matter kindly … a little bit in error.

Agricultural subsidies, forestry grants, tax concessions … Landlords get all of these.

To further minimise taxation that might otherwise be due, they’re free to construct allegedly charitable trusts, vest ownership of land in overseas tax havens … Etcetera.

So let’s have no pretence that community land ownership soaks up public money while private landlords come at zero cost to taxpayers.

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Which is not to say that getting land into community control should be made easier.

I’m by no means certain that it should.

Big responsibilities come with community land ownership.

It’s therefore right that folk going into it should have their motives, aims, objectives made liable to stringent public scrutiny.

But so, I think, should private buyers.

This then’s another lesson to be learned from community land ownership.

The upfront tests applied to a community aspiring to buy land have more than proved their worth.

Time now to think about equivalent tests for large-scale private purchasers.