Author: Rhiannon Davies, CommonSpace

Ahead of COP26, Scottish Community Alliance raises concerns over the Scottish Government’s approach to engaging local communities with the climate emergency.

REPRESENTATIVES from 17 members of the Scottish Community Alliance have written (see letter here) to the Scottish Government raising concerns about its approach towards the community sector’s contribution in the fight against the climate emergency.

The Scottish Community Alliance (SCA) is composed of 24 networks, comprising over 2000 community-based organisations and enterprises working across Scotland.

The letter highlights the worry that “the Scottish Government has closed down lines of communication with the sector and may be about to present us unilaterally with a new ‘strategic approach’.”

The groups further state that this appears to represent a top-down form of governance as opposed to “a more open, collaborative approach based on co-production with the sector and one that is consistent with the principles of localism and subsidiarity.”

The SCA have requested a meeting with Roseanna Cunningham MSP, the Cabinet Secretary for Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform, to discuss how communities might be better supported to play a stronger part in the fight against climate change in Scotland.

This letter follows the Communities Call for Climate Action campaign, launched towards the end of last year, which called on community groups to sign a pledge stating that, while they support the Scottish Government’s declaration of a climate emergency, it could do more to recognise and support the role of communities in facing this challenge.

The campaign has made three demands upon the Scottish Government:

Support for Community-based Climate Action: Establish a long term strategy setting out how government will involve and empower communities to plan and take climate action.

Renewal of Local Democracy: Rebuild local democracy from the bottom up by ensuring that local decision-making and sufficient resources are shifted irrevocably towards local people and away from the existing institutions of power.

Prosperity without Growth: Place climate resilience, climate justice and the well-being agenda front and centre of Scotland’s economic policy by embracing a new economic paradigm of prosperity without growth.

Responding to these demands, a Scottish Government spokesperson told CommonSpace: “Communities will play – and already are playing – a fundamental role in Scotland’s response to the global climate emergency.

“We must ensure our transformation to net-zero takes place in a just and fair way – no-one should be left behind – that is why we established the Just Transition Commission and why our approach to building a Wellbeing economy is so fundamental to ensuring Scotland’s future success.

“We undertook The Big Climate Conversation last year, announced the creation of a network of community climate action hubs, and will shortly establish a Citizens’ Assembly on Climate Change.

“This year we will launch a network of regional community climate action hubs which will help communities to take meaningful action, and our Climate Action Towns initiative will empower and support communities to take action on climate change in a way that takes account of the unique challenges and opportunities each town and region face.”

In the 2020/2021 Scottish Government budget announced yesterday [6 Feb], plans to create Climate Action Hubs and establish a network of Climate Action Towns was set out as one of their climate change priorities.

However, SCA director Angus Hardie told CommonSpace that he feels any changes that are made need to be in done in conjunction communities.

Hardie said: “It feels like someone’s had a good idea in an office but now it’s down to civil service to figure out how to turn it into something.

“Over the years, you see so many initiatives like that, with cash thrown at them, at a time when there’s not enough money. If they’re going to do that, they need to do it jointly with the sector. As it stands, everyone’s being kept in the dark. It feels very odd contradiction; a centralised, top-down approach while they talk about community empowerment and co-production.”

What are communities currently doing to tackle climate change?

There are examples of communities making grassroots efforts to set their own priorities and tackle climate change in their area right across Scotland, in rural and urban communities. In Angus, members of Sustainable Kirrimuir are already working on many fronts, looking at land use, transport, energy, sustainable consuming, growing and waste.

Talking about the practical difference that communities can make Kate Munro, chair of local action group, Sustainable Kirrimuir said: “The advantage of community is the collective knowledge. Many minds are better than any one.

“We’ve had a whole series of events, from food waste and recycling workshops to Swishing (clothes swap), Eco-Christmas and a make your own Pad Workshop, to tackle period poverty. We are working to establish a walking bus for kids to get to school and looking at how to get more people cycling in and around the town.

“Many in our community already know how to live well with less. Growing food and sharing skills and resources are the skills our grandparents taught us. It is a lovely process to rediscover this across the generations.”

The group is planning on going one step further. In March, they will hold a ‘Route to Zero’ meeting, inviting policy makers, specialists and those with expertise in housing, farming, business, waste management and more to come together and map out some of the structural changes needed.

For Munro, communities play a vital part in the fight against climate change: “We live in a period of unprecedented change… Yet, individually we feel powerless to do anything. Communities have a role in creating a space to connect, discuss, learn and most importantly take action on all of this. Taking collective action is the thing that restores what we need most, hope.”

Further north, in the coastal community of Burghead, a small peninsula town that juts out into the Moray Firth, residents recently came together for an event called to discuss possibilities of using alternative energies. A lot of the housing in this area is not energy efficient and there is no gas supply, leading to a reliance on electricity and high fuel costs.

The event followed a survey carried out by Burghead and Cummingston Community Council and Rural Wisdom, a project which supports older people to make positive change to their communities. About 200 local people responded, with more than half saying they found their homes cold and hard to heat.

Fi Thomson, community worker at Rural Wisdom, told CommonSpace: “Given the growing concerns around climate change and the impact that this has, the event felt particularly timely. The fact that so many people in the local community turned out goes to show that this is an issue on people’s minds, and there’s a clear line drawn between the need to move to renewables and the current issue of fuel poverty.”

The impact of climate change on communities’ health and wellbeing was the subject of a recent briefing paper by Andrew Paterson, Policy and Research Officer at CHEX (Community Health Exchange – an organisation that supports and promotes community development approaches to health improvement).

Speaking to CommonSpace, he said: “If you’re not already thinking about climate action at the same time as your other work which his focussed on local community development and influencing change to tackle inequality, then you should be. The main issue is getting the government to do more. And there is more recognition need of the role the community sector has to play – because it has a way into so many parts of society that others don’t.”

The paper centres around the social model of health which ‘recognises that health and wellbeing results from factors including work, education, housing, leisure and the way we organise ourselves as a society’.

Paterson explained: “This gets away from idea of individual responsibility for health and takes the approach of supporting people in communities who are working to identify their own priorities. Sometimes that includes aspects of health to do with lifestyle, but it could be around resilience, from simple things from having community holding events to addressing issues, influencing decision that affect the community.”

There are also proposals for more radical change. The green new deal plan set out by Common Weal, ‘Our Common Home’, is one such path put forward. Tiffany Kane, Operations Manager at Common Weal believes that local communities will play a key part:

“Our Common Home plan doesn’t start with targets. It starts with working out what is creating the most damage to the environment and then figuring out how to fix it and how long it will take. We found local solutions to these problems. Whether it’s transport, buildings, consumerism, land, trade or food – Scotland can control how we manage, organise and plan all these aspects of our life so they have zero negative impact to the environment.”

“2020 is a crucial year to affect change. We know what needs to be done, and perhaps communities have an opportunity to stand up and show the way forward.” Kate Munro, Sustainable Kirrimuir

Kate Munro of Sustainable Kirrimuir also believes that action cannot be effected by any one section of society alone, saying: “Solving the climate and ecological emergency, cannot be left to the actions of individuals or for that matter, community groups. The changes required demand engagement and action from all sectors, at all levels.

“2020 is a crucial year to affect change. We know what needs to be done, and perhaps communities have an opportunity to stand up and show the way forward. They can unite all kinds of people and show what sustainable living looks like.”

With the UN Climate Change Conference, COP26, set to take place in Glasgow in November of this year, all eyes will be on Scotland to lead the way in tackling climate change. Community groups and organisations have access to people that the government does not. They are now working to make sure that the Scottish Government provides them with a seat at the table.

Author: Jon Henley from Helsinki

How Finland starts its fight against fake news in primary schools

Country on frontline of information war teaches everyone from school pupils to politicians how to spot slippery information.  You can start when children are very young, said Kari Kivinen. In fact, you should: “Fairytales work well. Take the wily fox who always cheats the other animals with his sly words. That’s not a bad metaphor for a certain kind of politician, is it?”

With democracies around the world threatened by the seemingly unstoppable onslaught of false information, Finland – recently rated Europe’s most resistant nation to fake news – takes the fight seriously enough to teach it in primary school.

In secondary schools, such as the state-run college in Helsinki where Kivinen is head teacher, multi-platform information literacy and strong critical thinking have become a core, cross-subject component of a national curriculum that was introduced in 2016.

In maths lessons, Kivinen’s pupils learn how easy it is to lie with statistics. In art, they see how an image’s meaning can be manipulated. In history, they analyse notable propaganda campaigns, while Finnish language teachers work with them on the many ways in which words can be used to confuse, mislead and deceive.

“The goal is active, responsible citizens and voters,” Kivinen said. “Thinking critically, factchecking, interpreting and evaluating all the information you receive, wherever it appears, is crucial. We’ve made it a core part of what we teach, across all subjects.”

The curriculum is part of a unique, broad strategy devised by the Finnish government after 2014, when the country was first targeted with fake news stories by its Russian neighbour, and the government realised it had moved into the post-fact age.

Successful enough for Finland to top, by some margin, an annual index measuring resistance to fake news in 35 European countries, the programme aims to ensure that everyone, from pupil to politician, can detect – and do their bit to fight – false information.

“This affects all of us,” said Jussi Toivanen, chief communications officer for the prime minister’s office. “It targets the whole of Finnish society. It aims to erode our values and norms, the trust in our institutions that hold society together.”

Finland, which declared independence from Russia in 1917, is on the frontline of an online information war that has accelerated markedly since Moscow annexed Crimea and backed rebels in eastern Ukraine five years ago, Toivanen said.

Most campaigns, amplified by sympathetic far-right, nation-first and “alternative” Finnish news sites and social media accounts, focus on attacking the EU, highlighting immigration issues and trying to influence debate over Finland’s full Nato membership.

Resistance is seen almost as a civil defence question, a key component in Finland’s comprehensive security policy. Toivanen said: “We are a small country, without many resources, and we rely on everyone contributing to the collective defence of society.”

The programme, piloted by a 30-member, high-level committee representing 20 different bodies from government ministries to welfare organisations and the police, intelligence and security services, has trained thousands of civil servants, journalists, teachers and librarians over the past three years.

“It’s a broad-based, coordinated effort to raise awareness,” said Saara Jantunen, a senior researcher from the defence ministry who has been seconded to the prime minister’s office. “Like virus protection on your computer: the government’s responsible for a certain amount, of course, but ultimately it’s up to the individual to install the software.”

For Kivinen, who returned to Finland after a career in international education to head the French-Finnish school in Helsinki and pioneer the information literacy programme in schools, no one is too young to start thinking about the reliability of the information they encounter.

“Kids today don’t read papers or watch TV news, which here are OK,” he said. “They don’t look for news, they stumble across it, on WhatsApp, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat … Or more precisely, an algorithm selects it, just for them. They must be able to approach it critically. Not cynically – we don’t want them to think everyone lies – but critically.”

Fake news, Kivinen said, is not a great term, especially for children. Far more useful are three distinct categories: misinformation, or “mistakes”; disinformation, or “lies” and “hoaxes”, which are false and spread deliberately to deceive; and malinformation, or “gossip”, which may perhaps be correct but is intended to harm.

“Even quite young children can grasp this,” he said. “They love being detectives. If you also get them questioning real-life journalists and politicians about what matters to them, run mock debates and real school elections, ask them to write accurate and fake reports on them … democracy, and the threats to it, start to mean something.”

He wants his pupils to ask questions such as: who produced this information, and why? Where was it published? What does it really say? Who is it aimed at? What is it based on? Is there evidence for it, or is this just someone’s opinion? Is it verifiable elsewhere?

Even quite young children can grasp this. They love being detectives. Democracy, and the threats to it, start to mean something

On the evidence of half a dozen pupils gathered in a classroom before lunchtime, it is an approach that is paying off. “You must always factcheck. The number one rule: no Wikipedia, and always three or four different and reliable sources,” said Mathilda, 18. “We learn that basically in every subject.”

Lila, 16, said she had grilled local politicians for a live panel discussion on the local radio station. Alexander, 17, said he had learned a lot from devising a fake news campaign. Asked why fake news mattered, he said: “Because you end up with wrong numbers on the side of a bus, and voters who believe them.”

Priya, 16, said education was “the best way to fight it. The problem is, anyone can publish anything. There’s not much a government can do when they’re faced with big multinationals like Google or Facebook, and if it does too much it’s censorship. So yes, education is what’s most effective.”

Part of that continuing education is also provided by NGOs. Besides operating an effective factchecking service, Faktabaari (Fact Bar), launched for the 2014 European elections and run by a volunteer staff of journalists and researchers, produces popular voter literacy kits for schools and the wider public.

“Essentially, we aim to give people their own tools,” said its founder, Mikko Salo, a member of the EU’s independent high-level expert group on fake news. “It’s about trying to vaccinate against problems, rather than telling people what’s right and wrong. That can easily lead to polarisation.”

In the run-up to Finland’s parliamentary elections last April, the government went so far as to produce an advertising campaign alerting voters to the possibility of fake news, with the slogan “Finland has the best elections in the world. Think about why”.

Similarly, Mediametka has been developing and working with media literacy tools since the more innocent days of the early 1950s, when its founders were motivated mainly by fear of the irreparable damage that comic books might do to the minds of Finnish children.

These days, the NGO, part-funded by the culture ministry, organises ed-tech hackathons with inventive Finnish startups in a bid to develop “meaningful materials” for schools and youth groups, said its executive director, Meri Seistola.

“We work with pictures, videos, text, digital content; get our students to produce their own; ask them to identify all the various kinds of misleading news,” said Seistola: from propaganda to clickbait, satire to conspiracy theory, pseudoscience to partisan reporting; from stories describing events that simply never happened to unintentional errors of fact.

Finland has something of a head start on information literacy, ranking consistently at or near the top of international indices for press freedom, transparency, education and social justice. Its school pupils have the EU’s highest PISA score for reading.

“The level of trust in national institutions, in the media, in society as a whole, does tend to be higher in the Nordic countries than in many others,” said Faktabaari’s Salo. “But that means we really need even greater vigilance now, to prepare ourselves for the next phase. Because we have more to lose.”

Author: Kevin Peachey, BBC

In one respect, Hawes – a small market town in the Yorkshire Dales – shares the plight of many rural communities. The last bank in town has closed.

HSBC moved out in 2016. Last summer, Barclays shut premises which had hosted a bank branch for more than 150 years. It blamed customers’ switch to digital banking. Civic leaders said Hawes had been abandoned.

Now something unusual has happened in this picture postcard town, the home of Wensleydale cheese. A new branch has just opened.

This time it is a building society, the Newcastle. It does not have its own building. It is just an eighth of the size of a normal branch and occupies a corner of the community office alongside the local library and Post Office.

Its size belies some bigger ambitions – a financial services industry trying to work out how to reach customers who are not online, and a community setting a template on how to reinvigorate local provision.

Branch networks are shrinking fast. There were 3,372 closures by banks and building societies in the four years to the end of 2019, according to consumer group Which?.

Banks say fewer are needed, as customers open accounts and manage their money via apps. Consumer groups and less populated areas express outrage each time closures are announced.

Speak to anyone in Hawes, from businesses and clubs to a selection of its 1,000 residents, and they say the departure of the final bank branch was a blow. The name Hawes means pass between mountains, and you pretty much have to do that on the 17-mile journey to Leyburn to find the nearest Barclays branch. That is not easy in the winter months, even for the most mobile. Most customers accounts were moved to Settle, even further away.

Hawes – driven for years by John Blackie, a force of nature and local councillor, who died last year – has introduced a community bus service to the nearest railway station, an outreach post office service and even runs its own petrol filling station with a turnover of £2m a year.

Joe Pilling, the new chairman of the Upper Dales Community Partnership and a retired senior civil servant, says: “The whole economy of a place like this depends on having comprehensive services. If there is a big gap, people are going to have to go elsewhere. That reduces the chance of other services prospering.

“It is important for the shops, it is important for every form of local activity that a building society is here helping to fill the gap left by the banks that have closed.”

Barclays has left a free-to-use, functioning ATM here, the Post Office serves the need to process cash and cheques, so the building society – which does not offer a current account – has stepped in to meet savers’ needs and advise on more complex financial matters, from mortgages to retirement planning.

Emma Blades, one of a trio of new staff at the branch says customers “prefer convenience to rates”. You can find more generous interest on savings from various providers online. They also like a friendly face, she says.

“Not everyone is into internet banking, not everyone has a computer. They feel comfortable and relaxed because they know me and I know them. They can open up more,” she says.

Her boss, Andrew Haigh, the Newcastle’s chief executive, says: “I do not envisage a time when people do not want to talk to other people face to face for their biggest financial decisions. The challenge for us is how to deliver that in a cost-effective way.

“It has to be commercially viable. We are sharing costs, and have a very small footprint. In a town like Hawes it is all about the reputation you build, and you do that over time. We are here for the long-term.”

The society is, he points out, owned by its customers, so it needs to be close to those customers. Another similar branch has just opened in a community centre in Wooler in Northumberland.

There is still a lack of options for residents. A lack of competition may mean they are not getting the best deal, but they are not lost in cyberspace.

Branches like this are overhauling their look, but also their feel. Slowly, the sector is shifting its focus.

Further south, in Leeds, a branch of Yorkshire Building Society (YBS) is also changing the way it operates, for a very specific reason.

It is one of 20 YBS branches that dims the lights, cuts any music, puts the telephone’s ringer on low, and switches off screens for Quiet Hour – the final hour of opening on a Wednesday afternoon.

Some people, particularly those with autism or hearing difficulties, find the constant bombardment of noise distressing, or at least a distraction.

One customer visiting the Leeds branch during the quiet period says it is a good idea.

“I’ve just lost my husband and I find it easy to talk to them. If elderly people come in who don’t like noise and bright lights, it is really good to have it,” she says.

Janis Hambling, who leads the vulnerable customer support team, says that the quiet hour is designed for anyone who appreciates a calmer environment to talk to the staff.

“It is not just the customers, but also colleagues who like it. We just want to remove a barrier for anyone,” she says.

There is a sense of calm in the branch, at odds with the busker outside who has just been belting out, with no sense of irony, The Sound of Silence by Simon and Garfunkel.

But, for something billed as popular, one hour at the end of a quieter day in the week seems a token effort.

Ms Hambling argues that the experiment is still in its early stages, in just 20 of 143 YBS branches.

“For now, we want to get it to more branches and learn from it. There are people who are worried about waiting at the counter or need longer to articulate themselves, so we make sure we have a private space in the branch for them too,” she says.

Every individual is different, but those with some mental health conditions or disabilities can find a calmer environment helpful. Noise can prompt anxiety.

Mike Adams, chief executive of Purple, which aims to highlight the spending power of people with disabilities, also argues that quiet hours can be attractive to non-disabled people. He says that they have been introduced formally in a number of sectors, to specifically help those with autism or Asperger’s.

Everything from switching off music to silencing hand dryers in toilets can help people with these conditions, he says. Yet initial trials, in places such as shopping centres, missed the mark.

“A quiet hour on a Tuesday morning was not quite working,” he says. “Nights can be quite chaotic for these people, so they won’t be shopping early after a sleepless night. We are working with them to switch quiet hours to lunchtime or early afternoon.”

Another change, as businesses with bricks and mortar premises realise they must adapt to survive.

Author: David Bookbinder, Director GWSF

After Wheatley Group chief executive Martin Armstrong outlined the advantages which can be gained if social landlords grow in size, Glasgow and West of Scotland Forum of Housing Associations director David Bookbinder offers an alternative view.

The housing association sector has always been a diverse one, with room for many different views, perspectives and ways of delivering for tenants. So I understand and respect why Martin Armstrong would be keen to emphasise what he sees as the advantages of his organisation growing in size – and particularly with his organisation in the throes of absorbing a 10,000+ unit association into its structure, taking the Group to owning or managing 93,000 homes.

I don’t doubt that this kind of size means being able to do some really good things which others might struggle to do in the same way. But, whether in Scotland, England or elsewhere, being that big and stretching across so many council areas also has other implications.

One is around the degree of standardisation of services nationally. Let’s be honest, few organisations expand and then leave the newly joined group member(s) to decide exactly how local services will be run. A major reason for absorbing other associations is the view that economies of scale will partly be achieved from a predominantly uniform approach to policies and services.

Don’t get me wrong, that uniform approach might entail much that’s very good, but let’s not pretend it’s decided locally. Throughout our sector’s history, we’ve seen stock transfers promising – amongst other things – to keep things local. But invariably the capacity for this becomes increasingly limited as the absorption and standardisation take effect over time.

A stock transfer may well bring some tangible gains for tenants, but real ownership of the how the association operates, and indeed of the assets, is out of the window when you’re taken over by a much larger organisation.

Only true community ownership can bring decision making really close to the people receiving the services and make those services a bespoke solution for that community. Good ways of involving and engaging with people aren’t to be sniffed at, but they’re not a substitute for genuine community ownership and empowerment. Our members have been doing this for more than 40 years and our movement is still going strong despite all the pressures to ‘go big’ in our globalised world.

We know statistics never tell the full story, but year on year the Charter outcomes highlight the efficiency and responsiveness of the services local associations provide. In a sector where overall performance is strong across the board, local, community controlled associations do even speedier repairs, have even greater satisfaction levels – and lower rents – than the average for the larger regional and national associations.

The ability to act as a community anchor body – to work with community groups and other very local partners from the statutory and third sectors – is another thing which independent local associations are uniquely placed to do.

And being the local association means being more likely to want to do something about the poor private housing in the area – housing which can blight the community if left to crumble. If you don’t have a particular patch you can call your own it’s a lot less likely you’ll be getting your hands dirty with this messy business of improving private tenements.

I’m certainly not wanting to polarise the discussion – different approaches bring different benefits. And there’s room for us all. But the Scottish housing association sector’s strength lies in its diversity, and we’re in more danger of that being eroded now than at any point in the 27 years I’ve been lucky enough to be part of it.

Author: Andy Wightman MSP

The growth in short-term lets is out of control in Edinburgh and of increasing concern across Scotland. The conversion of much-needed homes into commercial lets is happening with virtually no oversight and is causing significant distress to residents. Homes First is a campaign to resist the commercial forces that are being unleashed by the expansion of short term letting, to uphold the value of the homes and communities we live in, and to demand reform in housing and planning law so that homes come first.

This website is a tool for people across Scotland to report short-term lets operating in their communities. We will use this data to build a better understanding of short-term let hotspots and the impact on the people around them.

What is a short-term let? A short-term let is any whole flat or house that is no longer anyone’s permanent home. We are not concerned about home sharing or the traditional self-catering industry.

What is Homes First? Homes First is a campaign to resist commercial forces putting profit before people’s homes.

What will you do with the data collected through this survey? We will plot the locations of short-term lets on an interactive map, available on this website. We will also use the data to better understand the scale of the problem, helping central and local government tackle the issue.

Author: Norette Ferns

An interactive map has been created to encourage community groups to think about how they can tap into the potential of the North Coast 500 tourist route.

The Scottish Land Commission funded an internship, to help support the North Highland Initiative’s (NHI) next action to encourage community projects that will build on the increased numbers of visitors and interest in the North Coast 500 area.

The intern, Sam MacKinnon, used his time at the Scottish Land Commission to create an interactive map that identifies land owned and manged for non-profit purposes in Caithness, Sutherland and Ross-shire to help support local community ventures.

The map will now be made widely available throughout the Highlands to encourage local groups to think about what they might be able to create, who they could work with and how to tap into the international reputation of the North Coast 500.

Shona Glenn, Head of Policy at Scottish Land Commission said:

“The Land Commission’s work programme covers a wide range of issues – everything from land value tax to community ownership – and as part of that we’re looking to the academic community in Scotland to help us gather evidence, spark debate and develop new approaches, to make the most of Scotland’s land.

“Working with Sam to create this new map, has allowed us to build a valuable new relationship with a young and talented researcher and also helped the NHI in providing a starting point for communities interested in developing tourism-based initiatives.”

Sam MacKinnon, who is from Harris but now living in Glasgow said:

“The internship with the Commission has provided invaluable experience enabling me to apply my skills in strategic studies to address real life situations.

“Having grown up on Harris, I am very aware that one of these is the demographic decline of the Highlands and Islands.

“With visitors coming to the Highlands to explore the popular driving route, it has been great to create a resource that will hopefully help the region continue to build and benefit, on that success.”

David Whiteford, Chair of NHI commented:

“This map provides a valuable tool to communities in the North Highlands to identify potential opportunities to build on the success of the NC500 and develop a sustainable infrastructure and employment opportunities around the route.”

The map is intended to provide a starting point for communities interested in developing tourism based initiatives along the NC500 route by helping them either to identify public assets that might be available for transfer or partners who may be interested in a collaborative project.

The map includes all land and other assets owned by community groups, public agencies and charities operating in the North Highlands region. It can be used to see what assets may be available, where, who owns them, and other information such as the area it covers.

The maps can be accessed via this link: http://www.northhighlandinitiative.co.uk/land-ownership.

Author: Mark Smith

THE first time she saw the site, Louise Witter wondered what she’d let herself in for. But an idea was taking shape. A place to escape from towns and cities for a while. A community in the woods for people who want to get away – and give something back. And a new addition to one of Scotland’s growing environmental movements.

Eighteen months on from that first visit to the site near Lanark, the community envisaged by Ms Witter is now starting to take shape – the planning permission is entering its final stages this week and applications are now being invited to build and occupy the 14 huts that will eventually form the heart of the site.

It is called the Encampment – after the remains of the Roman fort that once stood in the forest – and the plan is to offer long leases on the huts of at least 15 years. Like the hundreds of other huts spread around Scotland, they will be pretty much off grid: no wi-fi and no toilets. They will also offer a chance for the hutters to get involved in the management of the 32-acre wood and contribute something to the local community.

Ms Witter, from Aberdeen, who works as a legal advisor in the chemical industry, says she first became interested in establishing the community because she was drawn to the idea of hutting as an escape from some of the more stressful aspects of life.

“It’s the ultimate mindfulness,” she says. “You can spend hours in the forest and realise you haven’t thought about anything other than putting one foot in front of the other.” However, Ms Witter was also looking for an investment and will spend around £120,000 getting the wood ready for the huts, one of which will be set aside for the use, free of charge, of community groups and charities.

The Encampment also appears to be part of a growing trend – the first residents of another new hutting community near Saline in Fife have just been selected and the campaign group A Thousand Huts has successfully lobbied for a change to the planning rules which has made it easier to establish hutting sites.

One of those interested in taking on one of the huts at the Encampment is Karen Smith from south Lanarkshire. The 44-year-old single mother of four says she would like her and her four children to spend more time in nature and a hut is the ideal way to do it on a tight budget.

“It’s been a lifetime ambition,” she says, “but I’ve had a recent change in my living situation where I was going through a divorce and I’m now in quite a pokey wee flat so this is an obvious way to have a place to get away and de-stress.

“Being part of a small community was also a huge attraction for me – the idea of being part of a new group of like-minded people. We could enjoy the space and look after it too. I’d like to be involved a bit in the management of the wood. It’s a unique opportunity. It’s also affordable – I’m a single parent of four and I can’t afford to buy a house. The hut is something that can be a little more long-term.”

Donald McPhillimy, who works for the Thousand Huts group, says the Encampment is part of a definite trend towards more hutting in Scotland, helped by the group’s campaign for the planning regulations to recognise the concept of a hut, although he says the approach of individual councils to the idea is still patchy.

Mr McPhillimy also believes there’s room for a range of hutting projects, from an individual hut on a patch of land to much bigger projects like The Encampment and one of the most famous sites in Scotland, Carbeth north of Glasgow. But he emphasises affordability is important. The idea of hutting developed from a working class movement that sought to provide people with a patch of land they could call theirs and Mr McPhillimy thinks hutting should stay in touch with that ideal.

Affordability is also important to Louise Witter, although she too was looking for a change of gear in her life after many years working in the chemical industry. And now she’s looking for like-minded people to join her.

“A lot of people have said to me they played outdoors when they were kids and they want to spend more time outside and want their kids to play outside,” she says.

“Now they will get the opportunity to put their hut up in this lovely forest. Some people will just want to sit in their hut and mind their own business and they’re welcome to do that, but really I’m looking for people who want to put a bit of energy in the project and get out into the wider community as well.

“I’m looking for people who want to sign on, commit to the project and get going.”

Author: Foundation Scotland

A Toolkit has been launched aimed at helping communities who are seeking, or are set to receive, ‘community benefits’ from renewable energy projects.

The new resource provides guidance to communities looking to secure, set up and deliver community benefits. It is made up of six separate but linked modules offering advice for each stage of the community benefit ‘journey’. The aim is to help communities plan for community benefits in a way that brings about real impact based on the community’s own priorities, and to help them manage community benefits in an accountable way.

Community benefits are a voluntary yet commonplace offer from developers of renewable energy projects who wish to put something back into communities. They often include an annual fund, though other benefits may also be provided. The searchable Register of Community Benefits in Scotland, hosted by Local Energy Scotland, showed that at January 2020 nearly £19million in community benefits were paid out by the owners of 284 renewable energy projects across Scotland over the previous year.

Local Energy Scotland has produced the toolkit on behalf of The Scottish Government, as part of their Communities and Renewable Energy Scheme (CARES) programme. It was written by community benefit experts Foundation Scotland and builds on the Scottish Government’s Good Practice Principles for Renewable Energy Developments.

Ken Johnstone, Community Councillor for Girvan & District, an area that has received several community benefit packages linked to renewable energy projects, said: “It is always a daunting task to respond to community benefit opportunities. There are always many issues to consider, a lack of experienced help, and time constraints with a looming deadline. This Toolkit will be a valuable resource and help for anyone in a community to engage with the process for the first time, or even for communities more experienced with community benefit, to improve their arrangements.”

Chris Morris, Local Energy Scotland Manager, said: “We know that community benefits make a real and transformational difference to communities, but we appreciate it can be hard to know where to start if groups are thinking of taking advantage of them. That’s why we developed the community benefits toolkit in partnership with Foundation Scotland. It’s designed to make it easier for communities to secure, set up and manage funds and wider packages of community benefits from renewable energy schemes. It’s a great addition to the package of support that we can offer communities through the CARES.”

Rachel Searle, Foundation Scotland’s Head of Communities, said: “Community benefits represent a huge opportunity for communities, enabling them to plan for and meet their own priorities. However, managing these resources in a way that is both accountable and brings maximum impact locally can also be a challenge. Securing a benefit package, putting in place the right governance and administration structures, and ensuring they can measure and report back on what has been achieved with community benefit are just some examples. The Toolkit provides advice and examples of good practice, from those who have been there and done it, so that communities who are new to this don’t have to re-invent the wheel. It may also be of interest to communities who are already receiving community benefits”.

This latest publication is one of several toolkits offered by Local Energy Scotland. Others in the series are aimed at communities looking to build their own renewable energy projects, and cover Technology Options, Business Planning, Setting up an Organisation and Project Development.

Interested communities can download the Community Benefit Toolkit at www.localenergy.scot/communitybenefitstoolkit

Author: Miranda Smythe. 

In May last year, a friend of mine was elected as a first-time district councillor. When I asked her what she had found to be biggest challenge in her role, she immediately replied that it was the unexpected and unremitting amount of material she was expected to read.

From my own experience of helping members to develop their reading effectiveness, I know that this is not an untypical response and many of you will be emitting waves of empathy.

Reading is often described as a “hidden skill” because we absorb so much written information without noticing it. There are few studies which have been able to evidence how much time each day the ‘average’ person amongst us spends reading, although one American survey (apologies for not being able to find a UK-based equivalent) carried out by CNS News in 2018, claimed that Americans spent an average of 17 minutes each day reading, versus 163 minutes watching television. What they didn’t factor into this calculation is that even watching television involves processing on-screen text.

Of course, there is a major difference between reading and seeing. True reading involves the conscious decoding and processing of visual information whereas seeing means just running our eyes over words. Many of us will have let our gaze run through a document and, after putting it down, have thought: “Do you know, I haven’t taken one word of this in!”.

Even those of us who have been reading quite happily and competently for decades can develop our reading skills and you may find some of the following ideas useful.

Develop a reading strategy

1. Maximise your Circadian rhythm: when you can, plan to read complex information when you are at your perkiest and most absorbent.
2. Read regularly so that your reading file does not build up and become unmanageable.
3. Be realistic about how much information you will be able to take in at one sitting. It is better to read little and often.
4. Book an appointment with yourself in your diary so that you ring-fence a specific time for the study of major documents, eg. committee papers.
5. Avoid leaving the reading of important documents to the last minute as it can be difficult to process information when under pressure.
6. Prioritise your reading: work out which documents are most urgent and/or important and choose these first. If you are not sure which are most significant, do a quick skim.
7. Choose your reading place: avoid reading in bed in favour of sitting upright in a chair, with a decent reading light.
8. Choose your reading environment so that you are not constantly interrupted.
9. Background music can be conducive to concentration. Some research suggests that orchestral or acoustic music can work best.
10. Preview the structure of a document before diving into read it. Look at its Contents page and skim through its major chapter/sub-headings.
11. You don’t need to read in the order the author has prescribed.
12. Remember that it can be better to read a document twice, quickly than to read it once and slowly.
13. Vary your reading speed within a document. If you are familiar with an area, or if it is less relevant/important, then skim over it. Slow down for key passages which contain new or important. information.
14. Remember that you are reading for information: you are not proof-reading so learn to ignore rogue apostrophe’s(!)
15. Dry documents may benefit from being read in shorter bursts, with more active highlighting and note-taking on your behalf.
16. If you experience “reader’s block”, read on and see if you can back-fill. If the passage is pivotal to your understanding, sleep on it or ‘phone a friend.
17. Summarise each section within a complex report before moving onto the next part.
18. Use an eye guide to reduce eye strain and speed up your eye movements.

Using an eye guide

Although our brain and eye are designed to work together, our eyes are not always able to keep their place. It can feel natural to run a finger along the bottom of each word to guide our eye and many of us would have done this as children.

Using an eye guide is the fastest and most effective way to immediately increase reading speed. Many people report a dramatic 50% immediate increase in speed, just by running a stick under a document’s text.

The best tool to use is a chopstick because it is long and pointed, without the ability to write. At this stage we are reading for speed, which means that we are not interested in highlighting or taking notes.

To use your chopstick:

• Hold it at its longest length so you don’t have to constantly move your hand.
• Start at the beginning of the text, and read at your normal speed, moving the chopstick under the line of each word as you read.
• Allow your eye to follow the stick.
• As your eye becomes ‘calibrated’ to the speed of the stick, gradually increase its pace.
• Keep following the pointer and go at its new speed, not at your natural eye speed.
• Once you are in tune with the stick again, move it slightly faster.
• Keep repeating this until you hit your optimum speed.
• When you see short bullet points or lists, run your stick down the middle (your brain will re-stitch them into the right order).
• If a paragraph has just one or two words on its last line, just run your stick backwards and, once again, your brain will re-order them.

Skimming a document

Skimming is a technique which will enable you to gain an immediate overview of a document’s key points, without committing yourself to a full read. Whilst it doesn’t replace a detailed study, you will have an impression of the writer’s intent.

To skim a document:

• If it has a list of contents, run your stick down this
• Then read major headings, plus any sub-headings in the order you find them
• Read the first part of each paragraph, stopping as soon as you have isolated its main point, so that you are effectively jumping from the start of one paragraph to the start of the next paragraph.

Once you have skimmed the document for its main messages, serpentine your eye through the text in a snake-like shape, looking for any key words or pieces of information you didn’t spot when you carried out your initial skim.

By employing a good skimming technique, you will find that you can reduce your detailed reading burden quite considerably.  There will be a decent percentage of materials which cross your desk where a high-level overview is fit for purpose.  Based on the main points within the document, you can now judge whether you need to go back and read it in more detail, or whether you can file it away for future reference.

If you do need to read the document again and more carefully, you will not have wasted your time as your initial skim will have provided you with a good, contextual overview of the paper’s key points.

Careful reading and SQRW

Reading for detailed comprehension requires a different technique and will usually involve a slower reading speed. It is recommended that you continue to make use of your chopstick so that your eye can keep its place within the document. The stick will also help to reduce eyestrain. SQRW is a four-step strategy for reading and analysing written information. Each letter stands for one step in the process:

Skimming, Questioning,  Reading, Writing

Skimming

To skim a document, follow the advice provided earlier in this Blog. Make sure that you read the contents page and any introduction or summary before you dive into its body. Take time to examine any visual information including pictures, tables, maps, and graphs and read the caption that goes with each one. Once you have a feel of the document’s key points, you can make a decision on how best to approach your reading. This may mean choosing to read the document out of order or selecting certain sections to return to later for careful study.

Questioning

As you skim, develop questions that you need the document to answer. A clever trick is to turn every heading into a question. For example, if you were reading a planning document which has a heading “Impact on Street Scene”, your questions might include: “What is the impact on the Street Scene?” and “What analysis of current Street Scene was carried out by the author?”

Questions give you a purpose for reading and help you to stay focused on the reading assignment. You will not usually need to form questions for the report’s introduction, summary or conclusion. Use the “five bottoms on a bed” model to build your questions:

Reading

Now that you have your questions, read the document to find the answers to your questions. As you do this, you may decide you need to change a question or turn it into several questions to be answered. Stay focused and flexible so you can gather as much information as you can. You may find that some of your questions are not answered. You can make a note of any omissions and these may form points for questioning or scrutiny.

Writing

Write each question and its answer in your notebook. Re-read each of your written answers to ensure that they are legible and contain the important information needed to answer the question.

Reading from your tablet or computer

Although many people say they prefer to read from a piece of paper, the modern trend is to deliver documents electronically. This means that we are spending more time reading from computer, tablet or phone screens.

Whilst some of us miss the kinaesthetic experience of holding or annotating paper documents, the major issue of “e-reading” tends to centre around eye fatigue. When we work at a computer, our eyes have to focus and refocus all the time: they move back and forth as we read and are constantly reacting to minute changes. Unlike a book or piece of paper, the screen adds contrast, flicker, and glare, which challenge our eyes, which is why it is so important to take a break every 15 minutes or so.

Screen brightness and background tint

A simple fix is to decrease the brightness on your device’s screen to the lowest setting you can, based on your reading environment. This will allow you to read with more comfort.

Dedicated e-readers which have “ink” screens are specially formulated to reduce light emissions and are designed for prolonged reading, but if you are using a tablet or computer, it is worth looking through the settings to see if you can change the background tint to something more sympathetic. If you are reading a Microsoft Word document on a computer or laptop you can change its background colour by clicking on “Design” and then selecting “Page Colour”.

Some tablets, and Apple iOS and Google Android mobile telephones, have a built-in blue light sensor which reduces the impact a screen’s glow on the brain’s production of melatonin.  You can choose to have this setting automatically applied within the hours you specify, eg. between 10.00pm and 8.00am.  The control for this will show as an option within the device’s settings, usually under “display”.  Apple refer to this as “Night Shift”.

Document layout and typography

If the document you are reading is long and/or complex and you are able to change its formatting, you might consider making a number of changes before you start reading. This takes less than a minute to do and will make your reading experience more comfortable and effective.

Reformatting can include:

• Changing the document’s font to one which is easy to read on-line, eg. Arial
• Enlarging the font size to whatever size works for you
• Changing a document with a justified right-hand margin to a ragged, uneven one
• Making margins larger, so that the text is not so broad on the screen.

On a PC/laptop, all of these formatting changes can be made in one go. In Microsoft Word, once you have opened the document you want to read, press the “control” and the “a” key at the same time.  This will highlight the whole document. You can now easily change its font, font size and margins. For PDF files, if you don’t have access to an editing programme where you can make these adjustments, you may be able to copy and paste the text into an editable Word document.

Reading distance and conditions

The distance you sit away from your computer matters. Ideally your eyes should be a bit further from the text than in comparison to reading from paper. Work on the basis of your eyes being 50 cm or 20 inches away from the screen. If you want to read faster, then you should read from slightly further back so that you have more text in your field of vision.

Proper lighting conditions are also important and there should be enough background light in your room. If you are sitting behind your computer in the dark, there will be a big contrast between the screen and its surroundings, which will cause your eyes to tire quickly. This will slow your reading speed and cause your eyes to strain as they compete with the difference in light levels.

Although it may feel intuitive to read from a tablet in “landscape” mode, it is usually better to hold the device upright, particularly when reading reports and business documents which are usually formatted into “portrait”. You can also take the same approach when using a hybrid laptop/tablet

Using a pointer

In the same way that a chopstick can be used to improve reading from paper, the same stick can also be used to guide your eye across the screen of a tablet. Some tablets are supplied with an e-pen, which can double as a highlighter.

On a desktop or laptop PC the mouse can be used for keeping track while reading from computer screen. To do this, place the mouse at the start of the piece of text you want to read. Press the left or right-hand mouse button and then drag the mouse across the line of text. The mouse will then highlight the text which keeps your eyes moving. This will improve reading speed and minimise eye strain.

Scrolling text can waste time and distract your attention, so to reduce the need to move a document around make use of the full screen mode when you are viewing a longer document. A larger sized monitor can make reading faster and more comfortable, so if you carry out most of your reading on your main PC, you could consider trading up to a larger screen when you next upgrade.

In summary

The ability to absorb information quickly and accurately is such an important skill and I hope that this short introduction to speed reading has provided you with some ideas on how to make the reading you do as part of your councillor role easier and more productive.

Author: Tom Gordon. The Herald

Billions of pounds are being poured into Scotland’s cities and regions without clear goals or checks to ensure value for money, public finance watchdogs have warned.

The Accounts Commission and Auditor General for Scotland said high-profile City Deals and regional growth deals worth £5.2 billion lacked transparency and bypassed local communities.

Chances to align the projects with the Scottish Government’s policy goals had probably been missed.

The long-term projects were also threatened by budget cuts across Scotland’s councils, which supply many of the key staff involved.

In a new report, the watchdogs urged the Scottish Government and councils to set clear aims, clarify lines of responsibility and explain their financial planning. However, the report also found benefits from the deals, which are still in their early years.

The Scottish Greens said it showed the current system was “opaque and directionless”. The Scottish Government accepted the findings of the report, and pledged to reflect on them in conjunction with the UK Government and local authorities.

The UK Government introduced City Deals in 2011 as a way of spurring long-term economic growth in councils and regions.

In Scotland, four deals – Glasgow City Region, Aberdeen, Inverness & Highland, and Edinburgh and South East Scotland – have been signed off, with eight more in development.

In total, the deals involve £5.2bn committed over 20 years from the UK and Scottish Governments, councils and partner organisations such as business and universities.

Most of the money will go towards transport infrastructure, as well as centres of excellence for business, skills training and academia.

Auditors found the deals had enabled projects that might otherwise not have gone ahead, and been a catalyst for collaboration between councils and their partners.

However, despite the huge sums involved, there were also basic flaws in the system.

The report said that, five years after signing the first deal, SNP ministers had still not set “clear objectives or outcomes for the deals programme”, or explained “how it will know if deals are value for money”, or if they will help deliver the Government’s own goals.

It said: “Opportunities to maximise the impact of deals on Government priorities may have been missed,” it said, although it noted that later deals were better aligned with policy.

But a lack of transparency and public data meant it was “not clear why some projects are selected and approved for funding and others are not”, and made scrutiny harder.

Local communities had “very little involvement” in the process, and accountability was “untested”, with uncertainty about what would happen if a partner failed to deliver.

There was also a fear that “shortages of staff, money and skills across councils are risks to the successful delivery of deals”.

The report concluded: “There is a need to clarify what the overall programme of City Deals is expected to achieve, how individual deals will take account of national and local economic development priorities, and to provide more information on the funding of deals.”

Auditor General for Scotland Caroline Gardner said: “The Scottish Government needs to show how it will measure deals’ long-term success and work with councils to improve transparency around the approval process for individual projects.”

Accounts Commission chair Graham said: “City Deals have had a positive effect across Scotland, strengthening relationships between councils, government, business, our universities and other partners.

“It’s early days, but it’s important lines of accountability for deals are now made clearer and that the right staff are in place.”

Labour MSP Colin Smyth said: “While investment from growth deals is welcome and badly needed, the process for developing deals is ad-hoc, negotiated in secret, with little input from local communities.

“Why certain projects are chosen over others can be a mystery. It’s also clear investment in growth deals does not compensate for Scottish Government cuts in council budgets.”

Scottish Greens co-leader Patrick Harvie said: “While it would be hard to spend £5.2bn without some kind of positive impact, this troubling report reveals just how opaque and directionless George Osborne’s City Deals have turned out in Scotland.

“No doubt some worthwhile projects have been funded, but in many places old proposals that just never made sense have been dusted down and given the green light.

“This report should be a wake-up call to the Scottish Government. Scotland’s city and region deals need to stop financing failed old models of city planning like bypasses and flyovers and be re-profiled to prioritise efforts to lower emissions and build the sustainable, inclusive cities of the future.”

The Scottish Government said it welcomed the report’s comments on “the positive effect” deals were having, including “strengthening relationships between councils, government, business, universities and other partners.

A spokesperson said: “The Scottish Government’s commitment to deals now exceeds £1.8bn and we are already taking steps to improve how we measure the long term success of our deals programme.”