Tag Archives: Community Councils

As Rum community votes in ownership, Morvern looks to community buy out

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Bloodstone Hill, Run Tony Page Creative CommonsIslanders on the biggest of the Small Isles, Rum- all 17 adults – voted yesterday by 15-2 to take £15million of buildings and land into community ownership. This includes the community hall, village shop, tea room, campsite and land in Kinloch Village and Glen on the island’s west coast.

Government conservation agencies have owned the island since 1957. The Nature Conservancy Council transferred it to Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) in 1992.

The land transferred to the community is intended to enable the creation of the first crofts on Rum – up to five of them – helping to build a sustainable community and extending its size.

LochalineAlongside this development, the 300 residents of the Morvern peninsula, part of historical Argyll, are themselves considering a community buy out of land to enable them to secure the future of thier fragile community.

The end of 2008 saw 11 jobs lost as Tarmac shut down the 63 year-old Lochaline silica sand mine. These jobs represent 20% of the commmunity’s working population – a very serious economic blow.

The area’s new Community Council is setting about radical approaches to creating greater stability for the vulnerable community, looking at crofting, small business creation and affordable housing as a triple-pronged way forwards.

Making sense of this may involve a community buy out of land, not necessarily a single large land area but perhaps several smaller packets.

At the moment the community is in the research phase, studying the Land Reform Act, the Crofting Reform Act and the Forest Land Scheme to help them clarify their options and the thresholds they need to cross.

With The Herald yesterday (14th January) leading a campaign to prune Scotland’s 32 local authorities to 10 – a move championed by Tom McCabe and known, in some form, to be under consideration by the Scottish Government, community buy outs are increasingly relevant.

Changes will not happen overnight and, as in the turkeys not voting for Christmas cliche, we can expect any proposals to be fiercely resisted by every local authority in the country.

But we may well be on the edge of a progressive movement towards a smaller and much more cost-efficient local government system, backed up by far greater community self-government. The acceptance of responsibility and the growth of skills and authority coming from community buy-outs are a part of that new picture.

It may well be that the proposed re-structuring of Argyll’s community council’s into larger area councils is part of this developing scenario. If it is, its ends may be achieved by a less flawed notion than the current one.

The top photograph is of A’ Bhrìdeanach Point on Rum looking east to Bloodstone Hill, by Tony Page. The lower picture is of Lochaline by Martin Southwood. Both are reproduced here under the Creative Commons license.

Argyll and Bute to review Community Councils

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The Scottish Government is said to want to see Community Council boundaries aligned with local authority wards. Argyll and Bute Council is to undertake a review on these lines.

Part of the pressure for this has arisen from Councillors’ reaction to the introduction of multi-member wards. They feel that, with several Community Councils within one ward they cannot get to the meetings of all of them and that this is weakening their local links.

Certainly in some parts of MId Argyll, the attendance of Councillors at Community Council meetings has been described as being: ‘… like London buses. You wait for them. None turn up. Then three come along together’.

The Council is aware that this planned review may well require the postponement of the Community Council elections due to take place in April 2009.

As with all voluntary organisations, some Community Councils are active and some, as with Lochgilphead’s this week. have imploded or simply withered away. More interestingly, some – like Taynuilt, are in revolt over a lack of respect paid to the evidenced views of the communities they represent.

Given that Community Councils depend absoutely on voluntary effort, reducing their number to extend their boundaries and therefore extending their responsibilities would seem to lack practical intelligence. Making this work would require a degree of professionalisation of the Community Councils. This would change the concept on which they are based and add a more wasteful and less organic layer of local government.

In an area as large, as topographically difficult and as thinly populated as Argyll, creating fewer Community Councils with larger areas of responsibility would distance them from the communities whose very localised needs they were originally designed to speak for.

It has to be straightforward enough for a group of Councillors with collective responsibility for one ward to arrange a rota between them to share attendance at Community Council meetings within their area.

A more necessary issue than boundary revision is the development of strategies to attract and maintain community engagement with and commitment to the Community Councils as they are.

The reference above to the current state of Lochgilphead Community Council refers to a situation where its long time Chair, Mike Roberts, suddenly resigned, stalling en election to appoint new members to the Council.

Mr Roberts resigned in  anger at the campaigning focus of four candidates – Iain McCallum, Robert Millar, John Summers and Elaine Vassie. The four were collectively asking for public support for their candidacy by drawing attention to alleged failures of the current Community Council to act in support of major community initiatives. Mr Roberts saw this action as ‘childish’ and ‘the opposite of the democracy they apparently support’.

It is a simple fact that Lochgilphead Community Council has not played a part for some considerable time, even by attendance, in the Mid Argyll Partnership of Community Councils. As they say, if you’re not in, you can’t win.

Helensburgh Community Council clarifies local authority funding procedures

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With most of Argyll confused by the current arrangements for local authority funding and about the role of the Community Planning Partnership (CPP) in future funding processes, Helensburgh Community Council have provided a neat summary as an appendix to their June minutes. Director Reid Hutchinson with specialist knowedge of the procedure agreed to provide guidance in accessible language.

This guide is admirable for its lucidity and its level of information. Community Councils may see a real need for their serious involvement in the new processes. There may also be some raised eyebrows on inclusions and omissions from Argyll and Bute’s Community Planning Partnership (CPP) membership – included at the end of Reid Hutchinsons’s summary by the Editor of The Antler along with some supplementray comment. Anyway, here is Reid Hutchinson’s summary:

‘In the past, local authorities were funded from five different sources – Revenue Support Grants from government; Specific Government Grants (all of the spending on schools came from this source); Council Tax; Business Rates; and Charges for Services (eg: school meals).

‘However, the Scottish Governemnt has said from the outset that it wished both to freeze Council Tax (eventually replacing it) and micro-manage local authorities less, thereby ensuring that decisions on priorities and spending were set at a local level. Therefore the Government began negotiations with the Conference of Scottish Local Authorities (Cosla), the representative body for all local authorities in Scotland, on a new funding regime.

‘The result was the ‘Concordat’ which established the general ground rules for separate agreements by each individual authority with the Government. Some of the key areas of the Concordat are:

  • Agreement with the Government’s 15 national outcomes as the basis for priorities in public services
  • Greater local freedom for local authorities
  • Reduction in the number of ring-fenced grants to councils which restrict spending to specific purposes
  • Reduction in reporting and monitoring, replaced by a single annual report setting out progress and achievements against the Single Outcome Agreement (see below).

Each authority then negotiated a Single Outcome Agreement (SOA) with the Scottish government on its spending priorities within the context of these ground rules. (For example each has to agree to abide by the Government’s 15 national outcomes, although it can give them a different priority.) Moreover, local authorities do not have total freedom in what they do as they still have to meet their statutory obligations. In terms of schools, this means they have to abide by agreements on teachers’ pay and conditions, on class sizes and statutory obligations for school transport etc. Each SOA has to be signed off (agreed) by the Scottish Government.

‘If the process is complicated this year, by next year it is expected to be even more complicated. In 2009 the SOA wil not be agreed simply between the local authority and central government but but by the Community Planning Partnership and central government.

‘The Community Planning Partnership is led by the local authority but includes other public sector agencies like the police, private sector bodies and, in some cases, vountary sector representatives. The precise membership varies from authority to authority but the intention is to help public agencies to work togetehr with the community in order to plan and deliver better services.

‘Each of the agencies in the Community Planning Partnership naturally has different priorities. For example, those dealing with vunerable adults will have different priorities from those dealing with schools and parents. For Parent Councils and PTAs (Parent Teacher Associations) is will be interesting to see what is the impact of having this wider group of ‘stakeholders’ engaged directly in development.’

The Editor of The Antler, which has published this appendix to the Helensburgh Community Council June Minutes has added some further helpful comments and information – below:

‘Unfortunately the pressure on those who are members of the CPP Full Partnership is to ensure that they get their organisations to sign up to the Single Outcome Agreement. Failure to do so will mean that the CPP and, subsequently, Argyll and Bute Council will lose credibility with the Scottish Government and be in danger of jeopardising their funding.

‘Wisely, a new ‘virtual’ assembly, meeting as the Argyll and Bute Third Sector Steering Group, has decided to accelerate moves to ensure that they play a full part in the opportunities coming through CPP membership. (The term ‘Third Sector” is used by the CPP and others to identify voluntary prganisations.)

Community Councils still waiting for the outome of the protracted Scottish Government’s review, are re-considering their traditional advisory role in the light of new demands being placed on them by the CPP.

The role of the CPP is to: ‘Drive forward by setting a strategic diretion for Argyll and Bute and add value by working in partnership’. This is achieved by:

  • Sharing good practice and learning from each other.
  • Communicating more effectively.
  • Helping and supporting eac other.
  • Sharing resources and information.
  • Planning jointly.

The 26 planning partners (members) in Argyll and Bute’s Community Planning Partnership are:

  • Argyll and Bute Council
  • Argyll and Bute Volunteer Centre
  • Argyll and the Islands Enterprise
  • NHS Highland
  • Argyll CVS
  • Argyll, the Islands, Loch Lomond and the Trossachs Tourist Board
  • Association of Argyll and Bute Community Councils
  • Bute Community Links
  • Caledonian MacBrayne
  • Careers Scotland
  • Communities Scotland
  • Housing Associatin (Dunbritton, Bute and West Highland)
  • Islay and Jura CVS
  • Jobcentre Plus
  • Loch Lomond and the Trrossachs National Park
  • Ministry of Defence
  • Scottish Enterprise Dunbartonshire
  • Scottish Environment Protection Agency
  • Scottish Natural Heritage
  • Scottish Water
  • Strathclyde Fire Brigade
  • Strathclyde Police

For Argyll would add a note to this summary information. The operational history of the Argyll and Bute Community Planning Partnership indicates inconsistent commitment to it. Some member organisations are rarely if ever represented at meetings. Some send junior staff as no more than placeholders at such meetings.

If the CPP is indeed to be the driver of the direction, development and funding priorities in Argyll, it is imperative that all member organisations accept the basic hard wiring between rights and responsibilities. If an organisation – any organisation – has a right to membership of this key body, then it has the responsibility to be an active member. Senior management need to be there as a matter of course.

Even if minutes take some time to produce, lists of those attending (with their job titles) and apologies should be published online in short order after each meeting.