Author: Scottish Government

Executive Summary

Headline findings

This research identifies areas of Scotland that are expected to be most vulnerable to the consequences of Brexit; and what drives those risks to support local authorities and other organisations in understanding local risks around EU exit. It analyses data on eight variables and produces a Brexit Vulnerability Index score for nearly 7,000 different areas (datazones) in Scotland. An accompanying interactive map allows for more granular analysis of each datazone in Scotland. It can be accessed from https://bit.ly/30W1UVQ

Key findings are that:

• The risks presented by Brexit are anticipated to have significant social and economic consequences for all areas of Scotland.
• Many of the areas most vulnerable to Brexit are in rural locations, in particular on the Scottish islands. Around half of communities in Shetland Islands, Na h-Eileanan Siar, Argyle & Bute and Dumfries and Galloway are amongst the most vulnerable communities in Scotland (20% most vulnerable datazones).
• On Na h-Eileanan Siar there are nearly 14,000 people in the most vulnerable datazones in Scotland. Likewise, on the Shetland Islands there are more than 11,000 people in the most vulnerable datazones.
• A smaller proportion of areas within cities and large urban areas are found to be in the most vulnerable 20% of datazones in Scotland. However, because the urban population is substantially larger than the rural one, there are still high numbers of people in urban and suburban areas who live in such locations. For example, there are 186,000 people in Glasgow alone and nearly 170,000 people in Fife, North and South Lanarkshire and Edinburgh combined who are living within the most vulnerable datazones in Scotland.

Background

The UK’s departure from the European Union (Brexit) poses a complex range of challenges for communities across Scotland. This paper identifies a number of factors which will influence a community’s vulnerability. The analysis does not anticipate a specific Brexit scenario. Instead, it starts from the assumption that leaving the EU will create a number of challenges, and that whilst different Brexit outcomes may influence the scale of these challenges, the underlying drivers will be similar. The research takes the following approach: firstly, the factors which make an area vulnerable to Brexit are identified; and secondly, these individual factors are combined into a Brexit Vulnerabilities Index highlighting across Scotland the areas that may be most at risk.

Factors contributing to Brexit vulnerability

Previous Scottish Government analysis has set out the short-term impact that would be caused by a No Deal Brexit and the long-term implications that future trading arrangements post Brexit could have on the Scottish economy.^[1] This analysis demonstrates that a No Deal Brexit would risk causing a significant economic shock, whilst any agreement is likely to result in GDP, disposable income and business investment all being lower than if we remained in the EU.

The trends driving these impacts are often operating at a UK or international level. However, they will have local impacts and consequences which will vary significantly across Scotland.

Constructing a Brexit Vulnerability Index

Scotland’s communities are not homogeneous, and it is important to understand the different implications and transmission mechanisms via which Brexit will impact on different parts of Scotland. This can be done by assessing the extent to which the characteristics of different communities makes them more or less vulnerable to the implications of Brexit.

The Brexit Vulnerability Index has been constructed for nearly 7,000 different datazones in Scotland.^[2] This index groups together a number of different indicators of exposure to the risks associated with Brexit to provide an overall assessment for each community in Scotland.

Eight variables are used to construct the index, capturing the following factors:

• Access to Services;
• Share of the population of working age;
• Income deprivation;
• Population Change;
• Workers in Brexit sensitive industries;
• EC Payments received (a) CAP,
• EC Payments received (b) ESF/ ERDF; and
• EU Worker Migration.

The variables are then weighted and combined together to form a single indicator for each datazone in Scotland – the Brexit Vulnerability Index.^[3] The results can then be used to identify the datazones which are believed to be most vulnerable to the challenges which Brexit represents. An interactive map is available at https://bit.ly/30W1UVQ which allows the results for individual datazones to be easily identified. The underlying dataset used to produce the analysis is also provided online to allow users to understand how varying underlying assumptions can impact on the overall results^[4]. The interactive map is designed to support local authorities’ and other organisations in understanding local risks around EU exit and to complement their wider knowledge and analysis. Whilst results are provided for individual datazones, these should not be viewed in isolation. The risks that an individual datazone faces will depend on a range of wider factors such as the vulnerability of the wider region in which is it located, commuter patterns and unique local characteristics.

Author: Jim Waterson, The Guardian

The BBC is asking private companies to pay the salaries of reporters who will scrutinise local councils in another sign that there is currently no commercial business model that can support much of traditional regional journalism.

While the US has a culture of wealthy philanthropists funding not-for-profit public interest journalism, the UK has been slow to adopt a similar model. The BBC’s director general, Tony Hall, is now calling on private companies and civic-minded individuals to pay the salaries of reporters who will “hold those in power to account” by covering local government and institutions such as the NHS.

His plans are part of a major expansion of the Local Democracy Reporter scheme, through which the BBC pays the salaries of about 150 journalists across the UK who share their work with commercial news outlets. Under the proposal, unveiled earlier this year, the BBC would give responsibility for the scheme to a not-for-profit charity, which would be able to seek external funding.

But Hall said the ambitious expansion would only work if companies start providing hard cash and challenged them to cough up: “I want businesses and other institutions to join with us so we can get even more reporters into communities – and give people the local journalism they deserve.”

There are already plans to allow publications aimed at minority ethnic audiences to employ reporters through the scheme, on the basis that they provide news to underserved communities.

Google and Facebook, which together dominate the online advertising industry and take much of the revenue that previously flowed through other forms of media, already have their own schemes which respectively provide millions of pounds of grants to news outlets for innovation projects and cover the costs of some regional journalism jobs. Both companies expected to come under pressure to donate to the new scheme, which could have the added benefit of ensuring news outlets are not swayed in their coverage of the businesses.

The vast majority of local newspapers in the UK are owned by just three companies: Reach, JPI Media, and Newsquest. This could soon become just two, as Reach is in negotiations to buy the majority of the 200 titles owned by JPI Media – including the Yorkshire Post and the Scotsman – on the basis that competition regulators are unlikely to block any deal due to the news industry’s terrible finances.

Not all local news outlets are facing oblivion. Some newspapers based in major cities, such as the Manchester Evening News, have managed the transition to online publishing while retaining loyal audiences for their output. At the same time, new hyper-local outlets – often run by a single member of staff – have built loyal audiences by focusing closely on communities and making enough money to maintain the operation.

But mid-sized outlets serving smaller towns and cities have been particularly hard hit as they attempt to maintain reporting standards in the face of continued cuts, while still meeting the financial targets set by their corporate owners. This year Newsquest’s York Press laid off three experienced journalists who provided the newspaper’s sport and culture coverage, shortly before putting much of the site behind a paywall in the face of a dire online advertising market.

In February the government-commissioned Cairncross review of the local news industry concluded that the decline of local media posed a threat to the “long-term sustainability of democracy” and called for public funds to revive the industry.

Author: Julia Unwin

Nobody doubts that we are entering a turbulent and damaging decade. The deep social divisions which have grown in the last decade seem likely to fester and wreak even more havoc and the volatility expected of both the economy and the climate are going to bring massive risks to us all. As we argued in Civil Society Futures  a year ago, we need a renewed and re-energised civil society to step into its historic role : to help heal our dented democracy by enabling participation and deliberation, to stitch together our torn social fabric, and to enable us to respond to the devastation and challenge of the climate emergency.

To do this we need leaders who are different from the leaders of the past. We need people who are deeply connected to communities, who can work nimbly across institutional boundaries, and who are not afraid of their own vulnerability. We need leaders who are, as I said when I launched the Inquiry, both humble and bold. We need to encourage and enable a whole new generation of people who will almost certainly not look like the leaders of the past. People who will bring different styles and approaches. And we will need to change our mental picture of leadership away from the all- singing, all-dancing heroic figure, to people who can both challenge and support, build a team, bring different approaches to the task of what we loosely call leadership.

This new and different kind of leadership will be about how we thrive in the next perilous and frightening new decade. It will be about fairness, and about diversity – of course. But is also about our futures – and the risks of failing in this challenge are massive.

Are our current practices for designing roles encouraging applications and making appointments up to this challenge?

It seems to me that they are not.

We have had decades worrying about where the supply of new leaders will come from. There have been programmes to support women, and people from black and ethnic minority communities in their quest to develop as leaders. (As if there weren’t thousands of already brilliant and experienced black and female leaders). And we’ve had decades of fretting about the demand side – do our boards really have the intent and the courage to appoint people who break the mould?

And yet, too often senior roles are described exactly as they might have been thirty years ago. The same sets of words – about gravitas (a quality that I’ve never understood, and have always associated with a certain sort of rather pompous entitlement), about administrative and financial acumen, (even though these skills need to be throughout the organisation) about deep and wide networks, (meaning particular and recognised ones) about inspirational leadership, about intellectual prowess – appear with monotonous regularity to describe exactly the sort of person who might have been ideal for the organisation of the past. And then, after the role has been described, we ask professional recruiters, or our own networks, to find someone who fits the bill. And we put them through a selection process that asks the same sorts of questions, makes a judgement about their performance on the day, and, with the same monotonous regularity, fails to really change the nature of leadership.

Now of course there are excellent leaders throughout civil society. There are people – paid and unpaid, acknowledged or not – who are leading complex and contradictory organisations with skill and flair. And they report, privately, that their roles are increasingly challenging, hard to get right and are stretching the very competence that they once presented so beautifully to a selection panel.

But the times are too dangerous for us to simply do what we’ve always done. That way lies real, and I think, existential risk. If we are to thrive in the second decade of the 21st century, we need different approaches to leadership – to job design, to selection, to appointment.

How would it be if we did things differently? Could boards of trustees invite tenders from possible leaders – propositions of what they could achieve for the organisation, but also what they would need? Could assessment criteria include the depths of connections?  The personal experience? Could boards bring in people to help them identify the potential, not just the reputation, of those in front of them? Could boards themselves learn to evaluate beliefs and values as much as they value track record? Could we start to see tenders coming from teams of people who describe what they offer collectively? Could the interview process include you-tube videos of work in a particularly challenging situation? Could we devise more inter active ways of thinking about organisational fit and challenge? Could appointment negotiations include a discussion about who else is needed on the top team, and what external support is required? Could we, in short, revolutionise the process of appointing leaders, and build the sort of flexible, deeply connected, agile teams that we always say we want?

The skills and behaviour many of us learned as we progressed through our careers are turning out not to be the skills that are needed. Isn’t it time we re-thought how we go about finding the people who will help civil society make its historic contribution in the hazardous times ahead?

If we don’t, we will fail in our historic role to contribute most when times are hardest. And that would really be unforgivable.

Author: Gill Murray, GCU

Workshop: Offering Material to the Social Enterprise Collection

GCU Archive Centre

28^th January 2020

9.30am-10am: Registration 

10am: What is the Social Enterprise Collection (Scotland)?

• Introduction to the Social Enterprise Collection (Scotland)
• Group discussion: relevance and value of archival material for social enterprises

10.30am: Offering material

• Types and formats of records
• Filling out an offering form
• Group discussion: material currently held by social enterprises

11.15am: Tour of archive holdings

11.30am: Records management     

• Advice on managing records
• Q&A

12noon: Lunch

12.30pm: Close

To book your place please email Gill: gillian.murray2@gcu.ac.uk

Campus map: https://www.gcu.ac.uk/theuniversity/howtofindus/campusmap/

Author: Bertie Russell, The Conversation

At the recent conference organised by Community Energy Scotland, Development Trusts Association Scotland, Scottish Community Alliance and Scottish Communities Climate Action Network, Eva Schonveld introduced the new Communities Call for Climate Action, encouraging activists and community organisations to sign up. The Call is for the Scottish Government and local authorities to do much more to harness the potential of community organisations to take climate action. There is now growing public support for more radical action and for the step-changes in behaviours, attitudes and lifestyles that must come about if we are to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

The call also encourages community groups to pledge to increase our collective efforts to respond to the climate emergency. Only local people can mobilise and sustain grassroots climate action, but we also need support from all levels of government to do this.

The Call asks the Scottish government to address the following key areas:

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.

Conference participants discussed this Call for Action and identified areas that they are already active on and would like to scale up or would like to do new work on including:

Land

1. Increase in community land ownership x3
2. Better usage of derelict land
3. Work with large scale land owners
4. Promote land reform as leading policy to unlock value of land

Food & Farming

1. Encourage use of local, seasonal food
2. Local allotments/tunnel greenhouses/food growing spaces x6
3. Encourage new local smallholders in local community x3
4. Promote meat-free diet x3
5. Mapping to show supply chains in food production system
6. More food resilience and crofting projects
7. Use verges and neglected places for food growing

Forestry & Tree Planting

1. More tree planting x6
2. Fruit tree planting in individual gardens to provide local orchards
3. More composting
4. Rewilding x2
5. Protect and repair peat bogs
6. Reduce grazing pressure
7. Biodiversity awareness x2

Transport

1. Community transport in remote areas to feed into more joined up public transport
2. More promotion of active transport clubs
3. ULEU car clubs/people transporters x2
4. More electric car chargers needed in rural areas
5. More teleconferencing and Cut out unnecessary travel
6. Shared cycle paths
7. Electric community buses

Education on Climate Change

1. Supporting areas of deep deprivation to understand climate change
2. Local climate literacy training and engagement x3
3. Climate chat café x2
4. Empower people through education x4
5. Public meetings with practical solutions x2
6. Increase awareness of how climate change affect migration and impacts on the poorest communities

Waste Reduction & Recycling

1. Reduce waste & encourage recycling x4
2. Use green alternatives
3. Circular economy at island/local level
4. More recycling information at point of contact by council
5. Stop using post-its – they cannot be recycled
6. More repair facilities

Housing & Buildings

1. Retrofitting flats and houses x3
2. Protect local ancient buildings
3. More engagement with private sector e.g. house builders
4. Demand eco-villages and alternative masterplans

Local Democracy

1. Community groups develop their own climate/env. policies against which all their actions should be measured
2. Genuine community empowerment from local government
3. Build citizenship so that people are encouraged to accept responsibility / play their part x2
4. More involvement with local politics by way of lobbying, responding to consultations and holding councillors to account x3
5. Local emergency response planning using citizen assembly approach
6. Support development officers to take forward local schemes
7. Alyth Town Council re-instated
8. Reinvigoration of local democracy

Finance

1. Make funding available for community action
2. Identify funding models from other countries
3. Create a nation of “citizen investors”
4. Circulate local financial resources for local use/Keep investment local
5. Community investment in renewable energy
6. Encourage investors to use lower interest rates so more income goes back into communities

Community Energy

1. Community owned renewable energy generation x8
2. Feed-in tariffs to support local hydro and small scale solar & wind turbines x2
3. Local energy schemes properly funded x5
4. Support community buy-in/benefit
5. Expert, tailored local energy advice x2
6. Energy efficiency for tenements in mixed tenure feasibility
7. Smart power networks
8. Telling positive stories e.g. examples of jobs in fossil-free future
9. Preparing for future energy system changes
10. Switch energy providers to carbon-free tariffs

Sustainable Employment

1. Identify a sustainable tourism model
2. Create local jobs using community ownership income

Community Organisational Support

1. Link with other communities to provide support to each other/ create wider community x3
2. Support for community spaces to enable events, discussions, coming together x5
3. More awareness raising and project development programmes for communities
4. More co-working hubs and community owned workspaces x2
5. Bigger/national community led organisations taking the lead/empowering members
6. Joining up with climate activists in arts, culture and heritage

Media      Media to be held accountable for distribution of misleading content

Author: Kerri Whiteside

At Fauna & Flora International (FFI) we strongly believe that the people best placed to protect biodiversity – and the resources it provides – are those who live closest to it. That’s why we put particular emphasis on supporting in-country organisations and investing in their capacity for conservation. Our work with coastal communities is no exception. Read on

Author: Bùth Bharraigh

An award-winning community social enterprise is under threat from Comhairle nan Eilean Siar because the local authority is insisting on demolishing its premises.

Bùth Bharraigh, a local producer co-operative, visitor information provider and community hub in Castlebay, is under orders from the local authority to move from its current location in the former Co-op building close to the ferry terminal – but directors of the Bùth claim the new site would put them out of business as it is not located where newly arrived tourists can find it.

They say the unit they are being offered half a mile away is much smaller, more expensive and is not a good location for tourist information. They would have to reduce the amount of services they provide and stock held.

They also say the Comhairle has refused to engage with them, ignored pleas for a meeting, ignored lawyers’ letters on behalf of Bùth Bharraigh, ignored a Freedom of Information inquiry probing the legality of the demolition plan, and failed so far to publicise comments in response to an asset transfer request for their building, which closed on November 22.

Bùth Bharraigh directors are growing increasingly concerned ahead of a meeting of the Sustainable Development Committee at the Comhairle tomorrow (December 4) where their fate will be discussed. A report is to be given to the committee by the Head of Economic Development and Planning but was not made publicly available on the Comhairle website ahead of the meeting. Also, the item will be taken in private – a move which raised concerns still further, as Bùth Bharraigh has not even been informed by the Comhairle that it is on the agenda.

According to the agenda, the item was to be in private because of “information relating to the financial or business affairs of any particular person (other than the Comhairle)” – but Bùth Bharraigh say the only financial information that might be disclosed is the accounts, already contained in the asset transfer documents, and claim the Comhairle is taking it in private “so they can keep it behind closed doors”.

Director Sarah Maclean said: “Nobody has been in touch with us from the council. They didn’t tell us it was going to be discussed and they didn’t the last time, either. That’s twice now they haven’t informed us that we’ll be a topic of discussion.

“Taking the item in secret is deliberate so that we can’t find out what they’re up to, frankly. I think it’s so that it will be a done deal until it is too late.”

Three years ago, the community of Barra wrote to Comhairle chief executive Malcolm Burr and the then council leader Angus Campbell to try to save the building.

In that letter, dated December 5, 2016, they said: “We are writing to confirm that we, the people of Barra, do not want the old Co-op building in Castlebay demolished.” There were 137 signatories.

The debate about whether to demolish the building goes back to 2012 when it was lying vacant and suffered storm damage. However, since 2013 it has been occupied by Buth Bharraigh who have architects plans and costings to refurbish and renovate it. Bùth Bharraigh believe demolition would contravene council strategies and programmes aimed at tourism, creating employment opportunities and encouraging social enterprise.

In the 2016 letter, the community also said: “We have tried since 2014, without success, to make CnES officials understand that residents now want to keep the building.”

Five years on, the message has still not got through to the Comhairle.

After a meeting with Malcolm Burr in May 2017 at which the directors laid out the case for the Bùth remaining in its place, the Comhairle chief executive never got back to them.

Recently Calum Iain Maciver, Director of Communities at the Comhairle, was asked for a meeting but he failed to respond.

In its current central location in the old Co-op building, Bùth Bharraigh fulfils multiple functions.

As well as acting as a route to market for around 80 local producers, Bùth Bharraigh serves as a visitor information centre, laundrette – laundry contracts include social care – as well as bike hire, Hebridean Way pit stop and community hub cafe with free WiFi.

They won the title of UK Social Enterprise of the Year in the 2016 Rural Business Awards and were highly commended in the category of Rural Enterprise in the 2017 Scottish Rural Awards, winning the Scottish Rural Parliament Innovators Award for Business 2015/16 and reaching the finals in numerous other awards including Scottish Social Enterprise of the Year, Community Ownership Awards (Scotland) and the Highlands and Islands Food and Drink Awards, as an Independent Retailer. Bùth Bharraigh Ltd is also an Accredited Living Wage Employer.

Despite these achievements, the Bùth Bharraigh directors claim the Comhairle is “desperate to get rid of us” and move the enterprise into unsuitable premises.

Residents of Barra who are keen to keep Bùth Bharraigh in its current home gathered for a picture at the weekend, to show their support for their community social enterprise.

Sarah said afterwards: “They were shocked at the fact that Malcolm Burr just didn’t get back to us and they want the building to continue. Regardless of what the council says, most of the people on the island do think the shop is a good thing and doing an important job, but not everybody is going to write a letter or jump up and down about it.”

She also stated the Comhairle were onto their third supposed reason about why the Bùth had to vacate the building.

Their first reason, she said, was that the building was not structurally sound. However, a structural survey proved that the frame was “structurally sound” and drew up plans for a complete renovation in the future. Complete renovation quotes had come in at around £400,000. If allowed to remain, Bùth Bharraigh hopes to raise some of that through crowd funding.

The Comhairle’s second reason, she stated, was that it did not have community support.

“Then when we disproved that, they said it was about road safety – but a Police Scotland report showed there has never been an accident outside the shop.

“They are grasping at straws. It’s the sheer desperation they have to get rid of us. That’s the frustrating thing – that, and their failure to engage.”

With the issue due to be discussed at the Sustainable Development Committee, Sarah expressed concern about what might be in the report due to the content of the previous one which went to the Comhairle’s meeting in September.

Directors of the Bùth were not notified in advance of that meeting either and given no opportunity to correct the inaccurate content of the report.

“It was just wildly inaccurate and wrong – and that was what councillors had in front of them to base their decision on,” she said. “In that report, it said nothing about what we’re doing, how much money we’re bringing in, nothing.”

Since this meeting, Bùth Bharraigh has hired lawyers to fight its corner and the legal firm sent its second letter to the Comhairle last Friday. The Comhairle has not yet replied to the first lawyer’s letter sent in September and has also failed to answer a Freedom of Information inquiry about the legality of the Comhairle’s process, within the set timescale.

Sarah said: “They should be working with us to get the best outcome for Barra and our business. We’re a successful community business and we’re under constant threat. We haven’t been able to develop and barriers have been put in our way. We’ve been held back. We have even won Rural Social Enterprise of the Year – and that was a UK award – and it just doesn’t make a bit of difference.

“They will be putting producers’ takings and jobs at risk if they force us to move.

“We’re open when the ferry comes in and we’ve taken on the tourist information and we don’t get any money for that. That is a big service that we provide and if we move half a mile it’s going to be so difficult for visitors to get accommodation and information on arrival.

“The big thing for me is the frustration that the council don’t recognise what a great thing we are doing. Plus, it’s the frustration that they just don’t get back to us. We asked them for a meeting recently and it was just ignored.”

In their original lease application, Sarah said they asked for a “20 year lease with an option to buy” and were then given a five year lease by the Comhairle in 2013. Problems began afterwards.

She said: “In these premises, we have been trading and established our business over the past six years. If we moved, we’d have to reduce the amount of stock we carry and we couldn’t do the laundrette. We would probably have to shut the Wifi cafe. But the location is the biggest thing.”

Turnover has been around £750,000 over the past six years but Sarah said the Comhairle’s attitude remains dismissive. “The council have never taken us seriously. We’ve always just been a bunch of women in Barra with a wee project but we’ve grown from strength to strength and we’ll continue to do so if we stay in the same spot.”

Bùth Bharraigh is due to hold its Annual General Meeting on Thursday, December 12, amending its Articles of Association to ensure it will fully comply with the conditions for an asset transfer, should that be approved.

It is understood that demolition of the building is one of the conditions attached to a Regional Capital Grant which the Comhairle received from central government. However, Sarah said they had been advised that the Comhairle could negotiate with the government about redirecting that money into refurbishment or another project as the situation had changed.

Sarah stated: “We have tried to engage. It has got us nowhere. When we saw that report in September, we knew we had to get a lawyer. They are trying to destroy a community business and they don’t care. Nobody knows what’s going on; the council are doing it secretly so people don’t know how sticky our position is.

“We make most of our income from tourists. What other council would move a successful business somewhere that it can’t develop? The council should be supporting us. It’s ridiculous.”

Author: Sustrans

Streets and public spaces are the connective tissue that hold communities together. The quality of these spaces can be the difference between a place you consider to be ‘home’ ending at your front door or extending to your entire neighbourhood.

The last century has seen car ownership become the norm. With that, streets have changed from this connective tissue of communities to large, vascular routes helping to enable a steady flow of motor traffic. This has impacted on the way we use our streets, from the way we travel, to where we and our children spend time, to our health and wellbeing.

Our streets should be more than carriageways for vehicles. They can be green corridors for urban wildlife, informal playgrounds for children walking home from school, and places where bumping into neighbours can turn them into friends.

Creating high quality public spaces that prioritise people over cars can encourage people to take more journeys on foot, bike or other active transport modes, reducing their carbon footprint.

Something as simple as a bench can help to create a sense of place. It is somewhere to read a book or have a conversation with a friend. And when people spend more time on their streets, they’re also more likely to stop and shop, which is good news for local economies.

Sustrans Scotland’s Street Design team has been working directly with communities for over a decade, reimagining streets to create more liveable neighbourhoods for everyone. Their approach hinges on involving communities from the beginning of the design process and the result is a legacy that extends far beyond the completion of the design.

By enabling communities to take an active role in developing their own ideas for how they want their neighbourhoods to look and feel, Sustrans’ Street Design projects empower local people to make improvements to their local area. This also has the benefit of helping people play a more active role in their community after the project has ended.

A great example of this is in Dumfries. Taking part in on-street events and design workshops as part of the project inspired residents and businesses to work together and form a constituted community group that is still maintaining and improving their street environment to this day.

When streets are created for people rather than vehicles, they provide opportunities for better social connections, thriving local economies and more sustainable living. More than that, giving people a say in the design of their streets can produce more active and empowered communities.

Applications for the Street Design Programme will open again in early 2020. It is looking for applications from organisations that can demonstrate an identified problem to solve, aspirations, governance structure, and opportunities.

For more information, please visit https://www.sustrans.org.uk/our-blog/projects/2019/scotland/street-design-in-scotland/ or email streetdesign@sustrans.org.uk

Author: Vice chair of a Community Development Trust

Early June was a busy time for our volunteer board this year. Amongst the usual development trust business we had our grant application to finalise for the Scottish Government’s exciting new Investing in Communities programme. Having come late to the community ownership game, we wanted to catch up by securing the funding to employ our own development officer, as well as carry out feasibility studies on a couple of projects.

With four of us working on the different parts of the 24-page form, we just managed to upload our application by the 6pm deadline on June 14.  Then we imagined the scene at Grant Towers as legions of shirt-sleeved civil servants piled eagerly into the masses of applications flooding out of the ether.

And so we waited. While we expected the bulk of the available cash to go to CDTs with existing staff commitments, we thought we had assembled a good case. Then we heard that the promised decision-day of the end of September had, er, slipped a month.

The end of October passed, with silence. Then we started to gather from other trust contacts that word was seeping out to the successful CDTs, though they were sworn to secrecy. Still no word, so we investigated further and found the list of successful applicants: by default one was supposed to realise that we had failed.

As of the last week in November we have had no formal communication about the fate of our application. The CV that we had drawn up for a staff job, and the tenders we had received for feasibility studies, lie in the desk drawer. We’ve resigned ourselves to continuing to push the community ownership wheel up the mountain through part-time volunteer effort.

We know we’re not alone in our frustration. We understand that SG was overwhelmed with more than 700 applications. What’s most annoying though is the sheer incompetence, lack of foresight and discourtesy demonstrated by SG’s grant-making machinery. A primary school pupil could have worked out that when you wrap several grant schemes together into one, and invite Scotland’s near-300 CDTs to bid, the inbox will bulge.

We’ve spent the last two years foraging through the dense undergrowth of the bureaucratic jungle that SG has allowed to flourish around its imaginative community empowerment legislation. Starting from far behind those creative, energetic trusts that have led the way on this important agenda, it’s been dispiriting to find out that, like hill-climbing, each peak crested merely reveals another obstacle.

It doesn’t and shouldn’t have to be this way. The Investing in Communities grant shambles should be the end of the first stage of this potential revolution. The experiments have been made, the lessons hopefully learned. Let’s sit down with SG and help them (because they need help) to work out a sensible long-term way of funding Scotland’s important community development trusts movement.

Enough is enough!

This piece was contributed by the vice-chair of a CDT who necessarily must remain anonymous, given the risks of silent retribution.

Author: Jamie Hailstane, New Start Magazine

Nine out of ten people would prefer public services were outsourced to social enterprises rather than the private sector, according to new research.

A survey by the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) and consultancy group E3M found most people consider social enterprises to be more suitable public service providers on the grounds of value for money, expertise, trust and lower levels of risk.

The YouGov survey of 2,000 adults showed nearly half of respondents that public bodies should not outsource any services at all.

Although 84% of respondents said they were aware that some services are contracted to other businesses.

Just one in ten people thought private enterprises were suitable health and social care providers, compared with more than one third (36%) who were comfortable with social enterprises taking this role.

For physical services such as waste and recycling, social enterprises were regarded as more suitable than private enterprises – 29% versus 23%.

When asked to choose a preferred provider between private enterprises and social enterprises, 59% of respondents said they preferred social enterprises, while 9% chose private enterprise and 32% did not express a preference.

Of those who expressed a preference, nine out of 10 preferred social enterprises.

A survey of public finance professionals for the report found 84% said social enterprises have been very or quite successful in delivering these services.

And six in ten said they thought social enterprises would play a greater role in public service provision in future.

Only 3% believed social enterprises had been unsuccessful or very unsuccessful.

‘The high levels of public trust in social enterprises revealed in this study demonstrates the viability of social enterprise as an option for delivering public services,’ said CIPFA chief executive, Rob Whiteman.

‘We would encourage local authorities to look beyond conventional private sector partnerships, and explore how social enterprises in their areas could support greater citizen engagement with services and investments in place.’

Jonathan Bland, managing director, social business international and coordinator of E3M, added: ‘Local authorities need to take this research seriously. The mood has changed: the public wants a different model of outsourcing that they trust, one which uses profits to benefit society rather than building shareholder value.’

The full report – A shifting landscape: attitudes to social enterprise service delivery – is available to read here.