Author: Martin Williams , The Herald

Objectors fighting plans to block a controversial £30m development at Loch Lomond say they will stage a campaign of civil disobedience in a bid to prevent it from going ahead.

The warning comes as The Save Loch Lomond campaign group unveiled moves to begin crowd-funding for a legal challenge in an attempt to block the proposed Flamingo Land holiday resort.

The move was announced by Scottish Green MSP Ross Greer as more 250 people packed Alexandria Parish Church in a two-hour meeting to discuss the project, renamed Lomond Banks which is being considered by the Loch Lomond and the National Park Authority.

The development, a joint venture between Scottish Enterprise and Yorkshire-based Flamingo Land features a water park, 60-bedroom apart-hotel, a craft brewery, boat house, leisure centre and restaurants.

The development came as West Dumbartonshire councillors were today expected to consider what response to make to the project as a consultee.

Officers have suggested a response that says the resort would be “real boost” to the local economy but could exacerbate traffic problems.

The public meeting last night began with a request from the chairman, Rory MacLeod of Save Loch Lomond to remember that they were in a “house of God, so moderate your language”.

He said the national park authority intimated felt it was “inappropriate” to attend the meeting while it was a live planning application.

And he said he was “amazed at the numbers” attending, which he claimed amounted to 267 people.

The potential judicial review was raised after one resident asked if legal action could be taken to prevent the project from happening.

Mr Greer, who launched a protest petition signed by 56,225 people, said he and Labour MSP for Dumbarton Jacquie Baillie wanted the Scottish Government to intervene before the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park make a final decision.

But the West of Scotland MSP said that a judicial review, which he described as a legal challenge to the process costs £100,000 describing the process as “cripplingly expensive.”

After one resident suggested that it be crowdfunded, Mr Greer asked if people would support that.

After a loud shout of “yes”, Mr Greer, who had earlier described the proposed development as the “most unpopular planning application in Scottish history” added: “On behalf of the campaign, I am more than happy to commit.

“Save Loch Lomond will launch a crowd-funder for the next stage if required,” said Mr Greer who said he believed a judicial review was an option. “We will go all the way.”

Earlier there was applause for Jim Bollan, a Community Party councillor on West Dunbartonshire Council who suggested that civil disobedience was also an option if the authorities do not listen to the public

“It will destroy the southernmost tip of Loch Lomond.

“When you live in a so-called democracy and the establishment don’t listen to you, it is a well-known principle that you are allowed to be involved in civil disobedience,” he said

“Not only civil disobedience but you are allowed to get involved in non-violent direct action to state your case.  We need to bear that in mind and hope it doesn’t come to that and we win the argument.

Ms Baillie raised concerns about Scottish Enterprise potentially selling the 20-hectare site at West Riverside, Balloch, for the development for £200,000 when it was previously purchased for £2m.

“It is ridiculous that you the taxpayers are paying for a development that you potentially don’t want,” she said.

“I asked whether the Scottish Government would call it in, because I have more faith in the Scottish Government than to leave it locally because it is such a significant application.”

In answer to a resident who questioned why the land could be sold so cheaply, she said: “Ideally I would have wanted them to stop the sale of that land, particularly at a bargain basement price.”

One resident, Sid Perrie, a 55-year-old musician, got up and faced the crowd and said: “I have been driven to despair. My health has suffered for trying to fight this.

It is a disaster. It is the worst thing to happen to this area.

“We need to take this on Wednesday to the council offices to let them know how we feel.”

Another resident said: “We have to unite as a community to oppose this because what we are doing if we do not is killing the goose that lays the golden egg.

“It is not just precious to us locally, it is precious to the whole of Scotland and this world.

“There are no words can come out to describe the anger I feel and the emotion that other people feel.  This planning application is bonkers and it is driving people like me to despair.”

Maurice Corry, the Conservative MSP for West Scotland, said that it was important to take an alternative plan to the National Park board.

“I am a local lad. I was born and bred in Helensburgh. All my children were born in the Vale of Leven Hospital.  I love Loch Lomond.

“I have run around it and been up Ben Lomond,” he said.

“So, therefore, it means a lot to me and I think it is excellent that we are trying to preserve the goodness and greatness of Loch Lomond.” 

Author: Oliver Wainwright

‘Is this going to be a joyous place?’ … the architects asking revolutionary questions

How do you build the perfect town? You send for Public Practice, the initiative that’s tempting architects back into the public sector

 “Developers keep looking at me as if I’m a total nutter,” says Ione Braddick. “I’ve got into the habit of asking them if people would feel joy when walking around their developments. I ask them to think, ‘Is this going to be a joyous place?’”

Braddick is an urban design officer at Epping Forest council in Essex and her nuttiness is important. Her question is one that is rarely asked in the making of new places, when the forces of finance often trump any interest in the quality of the streets, buildings and spaces being created. And it is particularly crucial in this part of Essex, where a new “garden town” of 10,000 homes is currently being planned around Harlow – a scale of new development not seen there for a generation.

In 1979, 49% of qualified architects in the UK worked in the public sector. That figure is now 0.7%

“Planners here are more used to dealing with applications for house extensions, but suddenly we’re facing masterplans for thousands of houses at once,” says Braddick. “There needs to be a shift from just talking about the impact on neighbours, to the needs of future residents – what will it feel like to walk down one of these new streets?” 

Braddick arrived at Epping Forest district council last year, having left her job in an architecture firm, to join the first cohort of Public Practice, an initiative launched in October 2017 to inject design expertise into local authority planning departments. It is a service that has been sorely needed for years. In 1979, 49% of qualified architects in the UK worked in the public sector, designing schools, hospitals, parks and council housing, like the innovative schemes built throughout Camden in London under pioneering borough architect Sydney Cook. Following decades of cuts and outsourcing, that figure is now just 0.7%. Walk around any British town and the effects are all too visible in the kind of thoughtless developments that are happily waved through the system.

Public Practice is bucking the trend. So far, it has seen 54 associates, with backgrounds in architecture, landscape, sustainable urbanism and economic development, placed in 24 different authorities – initially for a year, although the majority are staying in. They have provided design advice on hundreds of planning applications, commissioned masterplans and facilitated conversations between different council departments, simply by asking the kinds of questions that only an innocent outsider would consider. 

“I’ve come in with fresh eyes,” says Braddick, “so I’m asking naive questions about why things are done in a certain way – which sometimes makes people think of doing things differently.” In fact, her work has made such an impact that the council has decided to make her position permanent, and hire three more associates including a landscape architect and a sustainability expert. “We’ve had trouble recruiting people for these roles in the past, but Public Practice has attracted a whole cohort of people with these skills,” says Epping Forest’s assistant director of planning, Alison Blom-Cooper. 

With its running costs covered by the Mayor of London and a range of private and third-sector partners, and salaries paid by the local council, Public Practice doesn’t charge the hefty retention fees that an agency would charge, and it brings the added benefit of being part of the collaborative network. Once a fortnight the associates meet to share their experiences and troubleshoot, and each will produce a practical guidance note by the end of their year-long placement. The first, by Rachel Hearn, is a guide to managing design-led pre-application discussions – which may sound like arcane jargon, but the no-nonsense checklist has already proved a boon to the east London borough Havering. 

The Conservative-led borough hadn’t had an urban design officer until Hearn started there last year, with a broad remit to improve design quality. It proved a steep learning curve for both sides. “It took me about three months to figure out what I was supposed to be doing and who anyone was,” says Hearn. “It was quite hard to do anything, from getting software to organising projectors for meetings to even making tea – you have to bring your own mug and teabags. Everything is a challenge.” 

Practical issues aside, she has carved out a role that ranges from running design training for elected council members to writing new procurement guidance and commissioning a masterplan for Romford. “I had a certain freedom, because no one knew what I was supposed to be doing,” she says. “I was a bit of a loose cannon, but I think that’s paid off.” 

Her bosses agree. “Councils can be terrible silos,” says Mike Kiely, planning and development advisor. “Rachel brought design expertise that simply wasn’t there. Public Practice has opened up what seems to be a rich stream of people with placemaking skills – and an interest in working in local authorities, which we didn’t know existed. It’s been a fantastic surprise.”

 For many associates, the planning department of a local council has been a culture shock, beyond the quest for teabags and stationery. One architect describes how she recently went for a drink with her council’s planning team, who were amazed she had come because she was from the regeneration department. “The two teams had never socialised before,” she says. “We introduced our bosses to each other, who had both worked at the council for 20 years but not spoken.” 

Other surprises have been equally positive: many cite the refreshing diversity of ages, ethnicities and backgrounds of their new colleagues, compared to life in the predominantly white, middle class and male world of architecture. The salaries are competitive too, along with the added benefit of a healthier work ethic, without the expectation to work late nights and weekends that is familiar in the masochistic culture of private practice. 

Tom Sykes joined Transport for London’s property team to help with the huge number of housing projects being planned for TfL sites (10,000 homes across 300 acres). “The biggest change was going into a place where design wasn’t thought about as a verb, but as a noun,” he says. “TfL talks a lot about its design heritage, but it has been quite difficult to persuade people that it’s a process, and that design can be used to create value. Proposals for a site needn’t be led by metrics, but the quality of the place. It’s very exciting when you start to see that shift in mindset.”

He describes working in the public sector as “liberating” compared to life in an architecture practice, where four days out of five you’re stuck at your desk. “If I come up against a problem, I’ll talk to someone who will recommend three people who might help, and a solution will evolve collaboratively. It’s less about having total certainty about how to solve something, and more about testing ideas. It feels open to innovation, which might not be what you’d expect.” 

“None of the associates really knew their job description until they started,” says Finn Williams, who co-founded the initiative with Pooja Agrawal at the Greater London Authority. “They’ve ended up forging new connections, making conversations happen and effectively rewiring the internal structures of the councils in some cases.”

We might never return to the heady days when councils had their own in-house architects’ departments, but Public Practice is a step in the right direction, injecting fresh expertise and energy into local authorities, putting the quality of places at the centre of the planning process. With interest in expanding the network coming from councils across the country, and as far afield as Stockholm, New York and Sydney, it feels like it’s never been a more promising time for architects to serve the public good.

Author: Felicity Burton, LGiU

Sixty-three events on forty-six islands in twelve weeks is the challenge which Erica Clarkson has set herself for Scottish Government’s consultation programme for the National Islands Plan and islands communities impact assessment guidance. Erica, the Islands Lead on the Scottish Government’s Islands Team, is averaging four islands a week on an odyssey that demands a military level of planning coupled with boundless enthusiasm. It’s a punishing schedule, but Erica is someone who runs ultra-marathons in her leisure time, so we can have every confidence that her stamina will be up to the task.

Support with the logistics of the operation is being provided by the Scottish Islands Federation, while specialist help with the research has been commissioned from the Strathclyde Centre for Environmental Law and Governance. Co-director of the Centre, Dr Francesco Sindico, and researcher Nicola Crook are accompanying Erica on her travels, and a full listing of all the scheduled consultation events can be found on their website.

Under the terms of the Islands (Scotland) Act 2018, Scottish ministers are duty bound to lodge a draft National Island Plan before the Scottish Parliament within a calendar year of the enactment of the Act, giving a deadline of 4 October 2019. The purpose of preparing a National Islands Plan, according to the Act, is “is to set out the main objectives and strategy of the Scottish Ministers in relation to improving outcomes for island communities that result from, or are contributed to by, the carrying out of functions of a public nature.” The Act is specific about the consultation process itself, stating that it must “have regard to the distinctive geographical, natural heritage and cultural characteristics (including the linguistic heritage) of each of the areas inhabited by island communities”. Scottish Ministers are required to consult:

1.            each local authority listed in the schedule,

2.            such other persons as they consider represent the interests of island communities, and

3.            such persons (including members of island communities and other persons) as they consider likely to be affected by or have an interest in the proposals contained in the plan.

The consultation exercise is focusing on two elements of the Act: the National Islands Plan itself, and the requirement that Scottish Government, local authorities and relevant authorities undertake Island Communities Impact Assessment (ICIA). The purpose of ICIA is to “island proof” legislation, policy, strategies and services where any of those are considered likely to have an effect on an island community which is significantly different from its effect on other communities. ICIA will ensure that the specific perspectives and concerns of those who live in island communities have been taken into account. Guidance on island impact assessment will be laid before Parliament in the autumn, alongside the National Islands Plan.

The process was launched formally on Canna on 7 April by the Minister for Energy, Connectivity and the Islands, Paul Wheelhouse MSP. An account of the ceremony can be found on the Scottish Rural Network’s website, along with a short video by the Minister which is played to start off each event. Canna, with a population of around a dozen, is one of the smallest islands on Erica’s itinerary. I had to check the map to see where it was, which inspired me to track the whole route.

Join the dots – the National Islands Plan consultation programme

I caught up with Erica and her team on the island of Sanday, island number 11 and one of Orkney’s north isles with a population of around 500. Sanday was the third of the Orkney events, following visits to Westray (9) and North Ronaldsay (10) earlier in the week. Orkney will benefit from a second visit in the first week of July, taking in Kirkwall and Stromness on the Orkney mainland (35), along with the islands of Hoy (36), Stronsay (37), Egilsay (38) and Wyre (39). This will be the final week of the official consultation period, which closes on 6 July. Visits to Foula (45) and Fairisle (46) had yet to be scheduled when we met but will surely be fitted in somehow, even if this might have to be later in July.

Sanday’s meeting was held in Heilsa Fjold, a modern community centre in the middle of the island. The turnout of 17 was respectable for a beautiful spring evening at only a week’s notice. North Ronaldsay had done proportionately better the night before, with its 15 attendees being around half the island’s population. Preamble was kept to a minimum, with the team noting that the National Islands Plan was a first for Scotland, and many other islands around the world were watching with interest to see how it went. While the plan would be national, the aim was to make it meaningful for every island.  They were all different, with their own concerns and priorities, which the consultation would attempt to capture.

It was a little disappointing to hear the overused cliché that this consultation would be “different”, given that it quickly took on the familiar form of small groups coming up with lists of issues to be posted up on the wall. What was great about being, living and working on Sanday? What would make it even better? Unsurprisingly, economic development, digital connectivity, health, environment and transport were on everybody’s lists – unsurprisingly, because the islands have been consulted repeatedly in recent years to inform a host of other plans with very similar results. The Local Outcomes Improvement Plan, the Locality Plan, the Council Plan, not to mention the indigenous Sanday Plan itself: it was hard to escape the feeling that much of this effort was being expended on reinventing the wheel, not least because a very similar list of priorities had already been identified through last year’s consultation on the Islands Bill and was to be found in Section 3 of the Act.

The team was challenged robustly from the floor on this point and also asked why the consultation was not being conducted through the democratic framework already present in the isles, given that Orkney in particular has a famously strong community council structure. The answer given was that local councils and community councils had already responded to the preliminary consultation and would doubtless do so again with regard to the present one, but the Act specifically required consultation with individual members of island communities in addition to their representative bodies. A strong evidence base “from Arran to Unst” would add credibility to the plan. As for “the list”, it was never intended to be exclusive and there was scope to add to it, depending on the outcome of the consultation.

A final point was the need to avoid confusing “rurality” with “insularity”: many islands have issues in common with the more remote parts of mainland Scotland but insularity presents distinctive challenges on which the plan should be sure to stay clearly sighted. This was as close as we got to the subject of ICIA, which was probably too technical for a community meeting but will certainly be a key issue for the islands councils in responding to the consultation.

Unusually, Scottish Government decided to pre-empt the ICIA guidance by conducting an Islands Impact Assessment on the Fuel Poverty (Targets, Definition and Strategy) (Scotland) Bill, currently progressing through the Scottish Parliament. The decision acknowledged the crucial importance of fuel poverty on the islands. Concerns raised by island communities included the island uplift to the Minimum Income Standard, part of the proposed definition of fuel poverty, and how this reflected their experience on the ground. In addition, they called for flexibility around the delivery of funding schemes in island communities in order to exploit their unique circumstances, as well as recognising their challenges. The exercise identified a number of necessary mitigating actions that will support Scottish Government’s aim of reducing fuel poverty within island communities. All in all it was a promising dry run and Scottish Government is to be commended for getting in early on ICIA.

Conclusion

While the rationale for the islands tour has been made clear, the consultation events are really only gathering information that is already well known to local authorities and documented in their Local Outcomes Improvement Plans. By far the more significant part of the National Islands Plan will be Scottish Government’s commitments in support of local aspirations. Transport, digital connectivity and economic development all need a concerted and co-ordinated national programme to deliver transformational change, backed by serious investment. The National Islands Plan could be the instrument of change, but time is short if a meaningful plan is to be written and delivered by the autumn. None of the key messages are likely to be affected by the findings of the islands tour. While embarked upon with the best of intentions, it might yet prove to be a sideshow to the essential business in hand.

As soon as she has lodged the Plan, Erica will be embarking on her next challenge – running twelve 50km ultra-marathons in twelve days in support of Wellbeing of Women menopause research. In her sights are two Guinness world records for the number of marathons and number of ultra-marathons run on successive days. It could be that the team has already set a record for the number of Scottish islands visited in twelve weeks but, record or not, this odyssey deserves recognition as the most dedicated commitment to a consultation exercise we have seen in a long time.

Author: What Works Scotland

The community sector and its relevance to public service reform

The community sector, including community anchors, can have a key role to play in the development of public service reform in Scotland – partnering, leading and challenging. Here we outline why we think the community sector has that potential and prompt further reflections from others as to what that means in actual practice.

Contents of community section:

§  What is the community sector?

§  Building capacity and resilience

§  What does this mean for public services?

§  Our community sector inquiry

§  Related resources

Author: ScotRail

ScotRail has announced the shortlisted nominees for its first annual ScotRail in the Community Awards. 

The ceremony will take place on Friday 7 June at the Grand Central Hotel, Glasgow, which coincides with the last day of National Volunteer Week. 

The awards will thank and celebrate the hard-working volunteers across Scotland’s Railway, recognising their contribution to the wider local community and railway.

Awards include Adopt a Station of the Year, Station Adopter of the Year, Community Project of the Year and Community Volunteer of the Year.

There are over 1200 volunteers across Scotland contributing to their local communities in a variety of different activities and projects – from community classes to station adopters.

More than 275 ScotRail stations across the country are part of the Adopt a Station programme, which sees local volunteers assist in keeping our stations looking good through planting, local art and environmental initiatives. Our ten Community Rail Partnerships cover 95 stations and have delivered numerous projects providing local community, environmental and economic benefits. 

ScotRail Head of Economic & Community Development James Ledgerwood said: 

“We are delighted to host our first annual ScotRail in the Community Awards. 

“These awards are a great opportunity for us to showcase the fantastic work our many volunteers do across Scotland’s Railway.”

Shortlisted nominees

Adopt a Station of the Year nominees 

Dalry – The Dalry Station Gardeners Group (DSGG) has been station adopters for over five years. They continually strive to improve the station environment by creating an oasis for nature to thrive. With funding from the ScotRail Biodiversity Fun, the DSGG has installed bug, bird and bat boxes as well as bug hotels, wildflower habitats and bee friendly planting. 2018 saw the introduction of six wall murals, by artist, Leo du Feu depicting ‘Nature of Dalry.’ This project was funded by the ScotRail Cultural and Arts Fund. 

Kilpatrick – Action Old Kilpatrick (AOB) joined the adopt-a-station programme in 2018 and wanted to have an immediate visible impact on the station. The group initially installed three large planters with the help of volunteers and their friends and families.

Dyce – The Dyce Gardening Club / Dyce in Bloom have involved the wider community in their activities for nearly a decade, which included nursery children assisting with bio-diversity planting.  Redundant planters were donated by Aberdeen City Council, which the volunteers immediately set about recycling and installing at the station. They have engaged with the local Men’s Shed, and pupils from Dyce Academy designed art deco posters to be installed at station this year. 

Adopter(s) of the Year nominees 

Grow 73 have adopted Rutherglen station for the past three years. The volunteers are true ambassadors for community rail, supporting the local community by making the station a welcoming place for customers. Grow 73 have increased biodiversity and reduced pollution through flowers and herbs, as well as creating an interest for local heritage through art projects and food growing. 

Rosie Oberlander was head of North Berwick in Bloom station adopters’ group and ensured the annual planting schedule was followed. Rosie watered all the planters at the station – a time-consuming task that was necessary at least three times a week in the summer. In 2018 the station was one of three shortlisted for a national station award. The appearance of the station has made a significant contribution to North Berwick in Bloom’s success in Beautiful Scotland and Britain in Bloom. The excellent and much-admired displays at the railway station are due to Rosie’s hard work, dedication, leadership and enthusiasm. 

 Community Project of the Year nominees 

New Kids On The Platform – 6VT Edinburgh City Youth Café became the first ever Youth Community Rail Partnership (CRP) in the UK in June 2018. Since then, the group has delivered a variety of events including The Big Y Thingy – a showcase of youth talent in Edinburgh Waverley station which was attended by over 600 people and thousands more passers-by.

Moving On – Kilmarnock Station Heritage Trust. The Moving On provision is an outstanding social prescribing project which assists over 200 people in the local community per year. The project delivers physical and mental health wellbeing activity to assist those struggling with adversity including recovery from addiction, isolation, mental health issues or bereavement. 

Remembering Rutherglen Heritage Mural – Rail74. The mural and bio-diversity garden provide a warm welcome to all visitors to the station. This project brought together intergenerational voices and memories and translated them into a modern-day social documentation of local Rutherglen life, both past and present. It provides a visual impact of art alongside an environmental theme which has truly brightened the station entrance.

 Community Volunteer of the Year nominees

Roy Brown – Roy is a member of the Highland Mainline Community Rail Partnership, representing Carrbridge station which is also his adopted station. Roy helps raise the awareness of CRP via social media sites including Facebook, Twitter and website. He ensures that information provided is accurate and is a real champion for community rail.

Suzi McCheyne of Rail 74 – Suzi is a true ambassador for community rail, supporting the communities of South Lanarkshire and the whole of Scotland. Suzi brings passion, direction, drive and influence to ensure the continuation of community rail in South Lanarkshire and Scotland. She is always willing to represent the community rail movement through – video, press, radio, presenting and of course lots of chatting through networking.

Author: Daniel Kopp

From September 2019 onwards, the German-speaking community of Belgium is to have a permanent system of political participation using citizens’ drawn by lot, next to the existing parliament. Daniel Kopp spoke to David van Reybrouck who, with experts from the G1000 organisation he co-founded, has been instrumental in designing the so-called “Ostbelgien Model” – and has advocated for the use of citizen participation through sortition since the release of his book “Against Elections: The Case for Democracy”.

In your book, you criticise that representative democracy has basically been equated with elections since the late 18th century. You call this ”electoral fundamentalism”. So why do you think electoral representative democracy is in such a crisis today?

You see a lot of symptoms. To start with, there’s a growing disenchantment with the way democracy is working now. I mean, the number of people voting has gone down dramatically all over Western established democracies.

Haven’t we seen an uptick recently, in the national elections in Finland for instance, or in Spain.

Well, having one cooler summer does not mean the end of global warming. I’m sure there are variations, but the overall tendency is pretty clear.

At the same time, across established democracies, one third of voters change parties. The difference between parties might be very small, but the migration movement underneath can be massive.

But that could also just be a sign of a healthy democracy if voters do change parties more frequently.

Oh yes, but it makes politicians very nervous. It may be that voters change parties more in line with their political affinities, but the whole idea of rational voting behaviour turns out to be empirically a very, very different one. Very few people know who’s minister of what, very few people know who’s in government, and very few people remember the party that they voted for five years ago.

I mean, the whole theory is beautiful. People have needs, people know their needs, people find politicians that respond to their needs, they vote them into power, they monitor them during their tenure, and then at the end, they are sanctioned negatively or positively. That’s the whole idea of representative democracy.

But in practice, do they rationally choose politicians and filter their own needs? Why did poor people vote for Donald Trump then? In systems with many parties, do they always effectively remember whom they vote for and do they keep track of what people are doing?

All these are assumptions from political theory, which just do not hold empirically.

So the fact that people shift from election to election between parties might be a sign of a full political maturity and political freedom. You’re no longer born within one political family and spend your entire life there. That might be a sense of freedom but it might also be seen as a form of political “shopping”. Whatever the motivation, it makes politicians very nervous. Their base is no longer solid.

So people also just tend to vote against rather than for something – for instance anti-establishment parties which are not necessarily representing your interests?

Exactly. Regardless of whether the vote is positive or negative, rational or irrational, this electoral volatility is a fact – and it has an impact on politicians. If less and less people go to vote, if less and less people trust political parties, if the volatility is so high, it means that political parties do realise that running a government can have massive negative effects on your popularity afterwards.

In Belgium the electoral fever has become permanent. We’re seeing a form of paralysis. We’re seeing politicians who know what should be done but who do not dare to move because they fear that another political party might benefit too much from their decision.

What I realise now is that of all the challenges representative democracy is facing, climate change is by far the biggest one. Climate change is too big for the way we do democracy now, and it can kill democracy. It can also heal it.

Like some of the more radical climate movements like Extinction Rebellion that are calling for citizens’ involvement to deal with climate change?

That’s right. Much to my surprise, they are still trying to improve democracy. They might as much call for authoritarianism. I once gave a talk in Copenhagen, Denmark being one of the most established democracies in Europe, where university students were basically pleading in favour of benign authoritarianism because the climate challenge was too important to be left to democracy.

So we need to reinvent democracy?

Yes, and it’s happening in Belgium. It’s mostly small countries that are experimenting with new forms of democracy: Ireland, Belgium, Holland, Estonia, Denmark.

Arguably, Emmanuel Macron tried to involve citizens in political decision-making after the yellow vest protests broke out. In one of our recent interviews, Loïc Blondiaux called Macron’s Grand Débat national a formal concession to the protests – but without any substance. Would you agree with that?

The least you can say about Macron is that he’s aware of the fact that democracy should innovate. If all sectors of public life should innovate – business, arts, sports, academia – it’s quite right to say that democracy should innovate as well.

Actually, I was much intrigued to see Macron’s reaction to the yellow vests, saying that when it comes to climate change, there should be a permanent citizens’ assembly drafted by lot as a climate council.

I’m sure if he would have done that before launching the idea that the petrol tax should go up, citizens would have said “we understand the problem, but you have to remember that people living in the countryside do not have the same access to public transport.”

I spoke with Macron when he was visiting Belgium in November. Three weeks later, his prime minister started to talk about civic lotteries for the first time. In the Grand Débat National, they’ve done it for the first time. I’m not quite convinced whether the method they used was the right one, but at least for the first time in Europe, one of the major countries, one of the bigger countries, dared to work with sortition, that is: public deliberation with random samples of ciitzens.

The Grand Débat National was right to include so many citizens, but it had two major drawbacks: first, people had to decide for themselves whether to go or not.  Self-selection typically favours men above 50 with a college degree. Maximal diversity was therefore not guaranteed. Second, the agenda was not set by citizens but by Macron himself! In his letter to the French people, he basically said “I see we have a problem, we should talk about this and this.” Well, if you have a problem, you might ask people what they define as a problem. And he said from the very beginning: we’re not going to talk about taxation for the rich.

Besides lower voter turnout and electoral volatility, you mention falling numbers in members of political parties as the third symptom for the decline of representative democracy. How can political parties stop this trend?

I think it’s interesting for political parties to start experimenting with new forms of citizen and member engagement.

The Flemish Liberal Party has been drafting citizen panels by lot, both from their members and from non-members. After a couple of days or weekends, the first thing these participants say when they present their results to politicians: we respect you more than ever before, we didn’t realise your job was so complex. It’s an incredible form of democratic schooling.

There’s also new research about what this involvement does to participants. First and foremost, deliberative democracy makes citizens happy. Citizens who participate in it go home and feel happy and respected, not only in the evening but for weeks, months, years later. It’s quite a contrast with the current system where frustration, even humiliation is dominant.

We need to find ways of making democracy a less frustrating business, a happier experience, a more respectful experience.

In your book, you also argue that social media has a detrimental effect on representative democracy because it puts politicians in permanent electoral campaign mode – and gives citizens the impression of being able to influence politics.

Every second, you can follow what’s going on. You can even react upon it. There’s an acceleration of speed with the flow of information. But the rate of genuine political involvement is still the same as in the late 18th century: you can tick a box every four or five years. That’s creating a lot of that frustration. There’s such a gap between the speed of knowledge and then the speed of expressing yourself.

The second thing is that our system comes not only from an age where information was moving more slowly. It also comes from an age where people were quite willing to delegate power.

A citizen has power one day every four or five years. The thing you do on that day is to give that power away. That’s it. And it has worked reasonably well for the past two centuries. We forget some unpleasant people who got prompted into power, but overall score of six out of ten, let’s say.

Now, the basic idea of representative democracy is an idea of delegation. You give your power away and you can sanction the person who got your vote four or five years later. But people are not willing to give their power away anymore. We’re so different from our great-grandparents.

We have democratised education since the end of the Second World War. We have democratised information with television and radio and internet, and then we have democratised communication with social media. The only thing we have not democratised is democracy itself.

So how do we do that?

In the past, we democratised the aristocratic procedure of elections by giving more and more people the right to vote: factory workers, farmers, women in the in the 20th century, migrants, teenagers.

So never before in history have so many people had the right to vote – and the democratic hunger is still not stilled. This means we need to broaden democracy. Today, it’s no longer about the right to vote. It’s about the right to speak, too. The next step in the process of democratising democracy is making sure that next to the right to vote, people also obtain the right to speak.

Let’s talk about Belgium then. You’ve been instrumental in designing the so-called “Ostbelgien Model”. In the small German-speaking community of Belgium, there will now be a dual structure of a permanent Citizens’ Council and a Citizens’ Assembly operating in parallel with the regional parliament. How exactly will it work?

You have the Citizens’ Council, the Bürgerrat, with 24 people who are there for 18 months and would change every six months. One third goes away, eight people go away to avoid that it becomes like a real parliament.

They have two jobs. The first job is that they set the agenda, that is, they ask the questions. The second one is they take care of the answers, but they don’t give the answers. They are going to determine the size and the duration of the Citizens’ Assembly, which might be around 50 citizens drawn by lot working for three weekends over three or four months on recommendations for, let’s say, the isolation of school buildings.

Then when these are ready, they go to the parliament to present their recommendations together with the Bürgerrat. Parliament has to receive them, has to engage in debate with them. After that, parliament and government, the relevant commission and the responsible minister, need to reply.

A year later, the parliament has to say what it has done with the citizens’ recommendations. And if they will not follow up on them, they have to motivate it in written form.

But in a system with non-binding recommendations, the citizens could just be ignored, or politicians engage in cherry-picking what they like.

Yes, true. But the Belgian constitution literally says that all power comes from the nation, that is the parliament. So it’s impossible to have a binding recommendation. We’ve gone as far as was possible within the Belgian constitutional context. I trust that within the next twenty years, the constitution will be adapted to make deliberative democracy even more substantial.

Arguably, the model does increase citizen’s involvement, but it’s still only a fraction of the people that actually participate, even if they rotate.

According to our most careful pessimistic guesses, 60 per cent of people will sooner or later participate. It might easily go to 80, 90 per cent once it’s running. This is with only three assemblies a year.

Still we’re running a prototype. Prototypes are expensive. I can easily imagine that this will become five, six, ten assemblies a year. Then you’ll see even more participation.

The president of the parliament in East Belgium himself said that he wants it to become the laboratory for democratic innovation in Europe. Let Europe learn from us, he said.

If you scale this up and try having citizens’ assemblies on the national, maybe even European level, this seems to become more complicated as you’ll have a smaller and smaller fraction of people who are actually involved.

That’s right. In Ireland, 99 citizens debated about constitutional issues like abortion and gay marriage, and afterwards it came to a national referendum, for the simple reason that the Irish constitution cannot be changed without a referendum. This helped to include the rest of society, even when a referendum is not ideal. The informed opinion of a subset of your population is often better than the uninformed opinion of the entire population, or the must less informed opinion at least.        

The bill to introduce this in Ostbelgien was approved unanimously by all political parties in the regional parliament. Why was there such an openness – and appetite – for this kind of democratic innovation?

I was really moved to see that the six political parties, from across the spectrum, agreed upon the fact that they should do this. The fact that we as an organisation went to talk to every single political party individually and collectively, that really helped. Our role is to be politically neutral and nonpartisan. We speak to everybody basically.

I think the main reason why it worked there for the first time is that it’s a very small community, and it’s a high-trust society. They have a parliament with 25 members who are only doing this in the evening. For them, citizens are not these idiots who are shouting irrational demands or trolling or whatever. They’re people they work with during the day in their offices and schools and hospitals.

So this trust between politicians and citizens makes the difference – and do we lack that elsewhere in Europe?

Yes, actually what I see now is that there’s little trust in citizens in European democracy. There’s very little love for the white proletariat. With the rise of populism, with the rise of radicalism, with the rise of xenophobia, we’ve been pushing people in the hands of the extreme right by blaming them for behaving badly. A big, big, big, historical mistake.

We have to make a distinction between populist voters and populist leaders. I know a lot of populist voters who are fantastic people, you can talk with them. It’s basically taking people seriously, even if they express their demands or their grievances in sometimes unpleasant or ugly ways.

I spent a lot of my last 30 years working on nonviolent communication: read the message behind the message. I think European politics, and especially the left, has become very poorly equipped in terms of emotional intelligence. The left has been chasing people away.

And it frustrates me massively to see how Germany is repeating exactly the same mistakes Belgium and Holland made in the 1990s when we were faced with the rise of the radical right. It’s the demonising of citizens.

There’s been growing compassion for migrant workers and asylum seekers. And once the factory worker can travel to Spain or to Marbella or to Antalya in Turkey, they no longer seem to receive a lot of compassion.

Author: Janet Mountford-Smith, Scottish Government

Killin – More than a Post Office

Killin nestles under the Lawers range at the west end of Loch Tay. I’ve got an invite to the opening of the community’s new premises for their postoffice/newsagent. It’s wet wet wet, and has been for days, the weather resuming something like normal summer service after last year’s heatwave.

The verges are frothing with cow parsley, and hawthorn is having a moment, with here and there great fountains of its creamy flowers. Through Callandar – normally a buzzy wee place – but today a bit subdued by the rain. Still, the gardens of the elegant Victorian stone houses make up for it. A riot of rhododendron colour splashes against the dark copper beeches, it makes me think of a 1950s jigsaw puzzle, or maybe a cover of the People’s Friend.

On up the side of Loch Lubnaig. No foxgloves yet but bluebells are having their last few glory days, febrile against the unfurling green ferns. Past Lochearnhead and up Glen Ogle, I briefly recall the two simultaneous landslides that trapped cars here a few years ago. An engineer once told me that slopes about to slip are known to be ‘at a critical angle of repose’. Fortunately the earth slumbers on quietly and I arrive uneventfully at Killin.

I pop into the shop to say hello to Theresa Elliot, project manager for the Killin and Ardeonaig Community Trust, who is busy getting everything ready. As in many rural villages their shops are struggling, so the plan is for the Trust to buy this one and relocate three businesses into it. With the SLF funding the purchase they’ll save on the rent and hopefully be able to turn a profit. The post office is an essential local service, particularly for those who don’t drive, and their range of local and speciality foods should go well.

One shop that does look to be thriving is the old-fashioned sweetie shop, so I contribute by buying a bag of soor plooms to take back to the team. At the risk of breaching the civil service code on impartiality, I’d say there’s only one thing to beat a soor ploom and that’s a pineapple chunk.

I’ve time for a quick tootle round Killin and a look at the Falls of Dochart. It’s a famous location for photos, postcards and films – here is Kenneth More, consulting his map on the bridge, as he escapes the baddies in the 1958 remake of Buchan’s “Thirty-nine steps”:

Every cloud has a silver lining, and as the Dochart rushes towards its confluence with the River Lochy, the Falls are spectacular – water water everywhere, crashing, spouting and foaming over the black rocks, under the handsome bridge and past the ancestral burial grounds of clan MacNab on the river island of Inchbuie. The road over the arches is narrow, almost single-track, but it’s the best viewpoint, so tourists struggle to hold up their umbrellas, take photos with their phones, and keep an eye out for caravans. Over the continuo of the river there’s a constant musical patter of water dripping from the trees.

There’s a tiny museum upstairs in the old mill by the Falls, it contains the Healing Stones of St.Fillan.  St Fillan is much associated with Killin and Glen Dochart, and also with water. Not far up the road is his Holy Pool, where in mediaeval times folk who were showing signs of mental distress would be thrown in and told to bring up stones from the bottom.

In the 19th century some people flung in a cow, presumably in a spirit of scientific enquiry – and with that act of disrespect, it’s said that the healing power of the pool to an end. Still what goes around comes around, and today many advocate wild swimming as a sure cure for the blues. So perhaps St Fillan was on to something, though I daresay there’s more benefit to the sufferer when they take the plunge by choice.

Ruby is presented with a bouquet

The opening happens at 2pm, and brings together young, old and inbetweeners.  Ruby Fulton, a Killin local resident since the end of the second war, cuts the ribbon.

Chair of the Community Trust Liz Stevens says a few well-chosen words, and the shop is declared open. It’s great to have a chat with Ruby, I find out she has four children, and fifteen grandchildren. Before she retired she was a cleaner at the village primary school. “There weren’t that many jobs around here in those days”, she says, “but… I did enjoy it”. She’s 96 and as sharp as a tack. She might have found more opportunities now, what with Brexit making it hard to fill a range of jobs in rural areas, not only the obvious hotel/restaurant vacancies, they’re even struggling to recruit vets.

 A competition for local children to come up with  a logo for the new shop has been won by Lily Hill.  She’s a worthy winner with ‘Och aye the News’, which wouldn’t disgrace a fancy advertising agency.

A very decent spread has been laid on so I enjoy one of the major perks of this job – home baking.

Killin’s a lively village, among other happenings over the summer they’ll have Highland games, a folk music festival (14-16 June), the Bob MacGregor Memorial Motorbike Trials, an Agricultural show and a 10k marathon.

The event comes to a close. As I take my leave, the gentle rain droppeth still from heaven, upon the place beneath. It’s as if St Fillin himself is looking down and bestowing his watery blessing on the community’s latest enterprise.

Author: TFN

In response to an article published in the Daily Record on the suspension of European Social Fund grants in Scotland, SCVO Chief Executive Anna Fowlie said:

“SCVO has been working with Scottish Government and colleagues in the voluntary sector since this potentially devastating situation emerged. We have had concerns about the process for managing European funding for some time and have been pressing Scottish Government to address them.

“Third sector providers have been working in good faith with the most vulnerable people in our communities who desperately need support into work. While the delay or even loss of this funding hits local authorities hard, it looks increasingly likely that long standing and successful third sector organisations will go out of business. That is not only awful for those organisations and their staff, it has a huge impact on the people they support.

“The situation has now become urgent and Ministers need to intervene and find a solution now, keeping the sector included and informed at every stage.”

Author: Julia Unwin

VOLUNTARY TRUSTEES – ARE WE PAYING A PRICE FOR THIS PRINCIPLE?

Every few years a minor argument breaks out in civil society about whether or not we should allow trustees to be paid. Every few years, someone laments the fact that it’s hard to attract people to trustee roles and every few years someone else says that public trust is helped by voluntary trusteeship, that the voluntary principle is at the heart of who we are and that it would make no difference to the number and quality of trustees anyway. And at some stage we point smugly at the FTSE companies and the NHS trusts that do pay, and tell ourselves that they don’t have inclusive boards either.

And every few years after the row subsides again, I’m left feeling deeply uncomfortable. Partly because I know how hugely I have personally benefited from being a trustee. (I will always treasure the memory of a Very Important Person in the charity world portentously reminding me that no-one should ever benefit from their trust, while I reflect on the personal, professional and generally life enhancing benefits I have received from trusteeship).

But also because the voices of those saying that payment for trusteeship is wrong nearly always come from people who are already trustees. It’s a bit like those people who have already easily negotiated the rickety stairs and narrow doors of a meeting room describing the room as absolutely accessible. Those of us lucky enough to have salaried roles which allow time for trusteeship, or those who earn enough to enable them to give their time, need to be very cautious about advocating a model that may not always work for everyone.

I’m interested in hearing from someone on very insecure earnings, who loses pay every time she goes to a trustee meeting. And yes, advocating for time off (as NCVO does), is important, but it only seems to apply for those in secure, salaried work. I’m interested in hearing from the many people I have met who wanted to join a housing association board but knew that it might imperil their benefit payments because they were no longer deemed available for work. I’d like to hear from young people, scrabbling to piece together an income in really difficult times who would like to take on a role – and are so desperately needed by charity boards – but cannot risk the possibility that they thereby miss out on a shift or a freelance contract that takes them out of town.

I’m not comfortable with a debate that doesn’t ask the views of people who are currently not sitting round the trustee table.

Are we content for our trustee boards to be staffed by people who are either salaried, or on a final salary pension schemes or who otherwise have sufficient income to allow them to make what is in effect a substantial donation to their charity of choice? It’s also worth remembering that many of the same arguments were used to justify MPs not being paid, a stance which ensured that people were only represented by ‘men of means.’

Now I actually believe that on balance there are really strong – indeed compelling – arguments for keeping trusteeship voluntary. Theoretically, it allows trustees to demonstrate some necessary independence, knowing that their income is not on the line if they present a dissenting view. Non-payment of trustees is still a distinguishing feature of the sector, which recognises the voluntary impulse at the heart of voluntary action. It’s important that people who can afford to, can give back in this way. What is more, for the largest charities which don’t seem to have any challenge recruiting trustees, it’s simply not necessary. And of course the vast majority of charities are not paying anyone anyway. Some would also point out that payment of trustees is a poor use of charitable money, (although if you think good governance is central to the success of the charity it seems odd that this is the one thing we can’t justify paying.)

But we should recognise that all of this does come at a cost. It does restrict the pool of people who can afford to do it. And the price we pay as a sector may be having governing bodies which are less inclusive than they might be. That’s quite a price.

But if we are going to reaffirm, yet again, the voluntary principle, then there are things we ought to do much more seriously. We ought to be much more explicit and much less embarrassed about the benefits received from trusteeship. How about recognised professional accreditation? We ought to be much more open about payment for loss of earnings. (And I don’t mean barristers having their fees reimbursed. I do mean the barista having her wages replaced). We definitely ought to be arguing forcibly for time off, but in an increasingly freelance economy perhaps we ought to also be asking for tax relief on time given.

And perhaps we need to think more about the future pool of trustees. As the ‘job for life’ disappears, we cannot expect employers to continue to release people for trustee duties as part of their development programmes not because they can’t but because they won’t have the same investment. And as the last generation of recipients of final salary pension schemes hang up their trustee boots, and as demands on trustees get ever greater, are there new and better ways of making sure that a charity set up today will be able to recruit a diverse, knowledgeable, supportive group of people to steer the next generation of charities?

Just arguing that non-payment of trustees is a system that has served us well for the last century may not be the best possible answer for the next one.

Author: Planning Democracy

Dear People Powered Planning Conference delegates

Thank you all so much for coming and taking part in our conference and for being so engaged and interested.

I attach a conference report for you, which has links to the workshop presentations and summaries of the talks by our speakers. We will endeavour to put as much on our website in the near future. Andy Inch’s presentation is being turned into a blog post which should be out next week. To receive our regular but not too often blog posts you can sign up to receive emails on our website.

IMPORTANT NEWS

The Minister has this week posted his amendments to the planning bill online.

This means it is likely the planning bill will be finalised in a parliamentary debate in mid to late June.

We need to act now to keep pressure up.

We know that the developer lobbyists have been working very hard indeed to get what they want out of the Bill and have been wining and dining ministers and having numerous meetings. It is essential we try and keep up the pressure from the community side.

We urge you to write and go and see your MSP’s (remember you have 1 constituency and 7 regional MSPs), but also to contact the Minister Kevin Stewart (Kevin.Stewart.msp@parliament.scot) You can tweet him on @KevinStewartSNP or send a message to his facebook page https://www.facebook.com/KevinStewartSNP. It is also good to contact Nicola Sturgeon and Ruth Davidson (especially asking them to consider equal rights of appeal).

Key things to say to MSPs

1) Planning is a big issue for communities is not going to go away unless they address fundamental problems. You can remind them that their own research and independent research demonstrated a shocking lack of trust and lack of influence over decisions that affect people. Many topics were covered at our conference. Please tell them that the community was sending a clear message that we need a more transformative bill that addresses the problems of a market driven approach to planning, which favours and listens to the developers it is supposed to regulate.

2) Climate change, biodiversity loss need to be addressed through the planning bill and in its current form is not good enough.

3) Community engagement mechanisms such as Local Place Plans and development plan consultations will never be adequate without a right of appeal and are unlikely to empower communities.

4) The Government should be listening to communities asking for stronger, better planning, not developers asking for less planning and de regulation.

I have attached our briefings on Equal Rights of Appeal. Please do quote them, or send them on to your MSPs.

Please do let us have a copy of any responses you get and don’t hesitate to get in touch if you need more information.

You may find these blog posts useful as well

http://www.planningdemocracy.org.uk/2019/the-best-laid-schemes-o-mice-an-men-gang-aft-a-gley/ and

http://www.planningdemocracy.org.uk/2019/part-2-them-us-or-why-we-might-need-a-dose-of-populism-in-planning/

Many thanks for taking the time to come to our conference, please do continue to support Planning Democracy and importantly right now to make a real noise about planning and what we want. (We have some plans for a bit of fun action in June, we will keep you informed if you have indicated or signed up to our blog posts). If you do not wish to be kept up to date you can let us know too.