ASSOCIATION OF SCOTTISH COMMUNITY COUNCILS
www.ascc.org.uk
Draft Policy Statement on Community Councils and Community Empowerment
July 2008
Draft for consultation; Please send any comments to the author by 30 August 2008
If the Scottish government and Scottish local authorities are serious about the idea of community empowerment they need look no further than to assist in strengthening community councils. The existing 1100 plus Scottish community councils provide a sound basis for the further development of democratic local community organisations that provide advice on local public services and community issues and which have the potential to undertake a wider range of functions devolved from local authorities to local communities.
Statutory Basis
Community councils are unique Scottish organisations established by an open public process of nomination and election under local government legislation to ‘ascertain, coordinate and express’ the views of local communities to local authorities and other public agencies whose activities impinge on the well-being of their local communities. They are well placed to be in touch with local communities since they represent, on average, local populations of about 4,500 people and their meetings being regularly attended by local authority members are a way for them to keep in touch with local communities. Community councils have special statutory representational rights with regard to development control, planning issues and licensing matters and they regularly make known local views on numerous local issues such as traffic, bus services, litter, anti-social behaviour and youth services.
In some local authority areas they are emerging as important partners in the community planning process.
Cost-effective
Typically community councils exist on a local authority provided budget of a few hundred pounds per annum. This enables them to perform their essential secretarial and representational business. Additional funding for community councils from the Scottish government and the local authorities would make them much more effective, more able to represent their communities and more capable of undertaking local services. Most importantly since they are largely staffed by volunteers and have minimal local authority staff support they are not costly and an expansion of support for them would provide by far the most cost-effective means of empowering local communities compared to the large sums (in the many millions of pounds) that have historically been provided to promote citizen participation in local communities through Scottish government and local authority programmes.
Democratic
While about one fifth of the Scottish population still does not have a community council they can easily be established by an ‘off the shelf’ kit that is provided by each local authority’s community council scheme upon a petition by at least twenty electors in the relevant area. Local authorities that are serious about community empowerment could actively encourage the establishment of community councils where they do not exist and support them more where they do exist.
Community councils are sometimes criticised for not being democratic in the sense that there are usually only sufficient nominations forthcoming to fill the number of vacancies available on a specific community council, thus obviating the need for an election. However community councils are regularly reconstituted, usually every three or four years, by a process of open public nomination. More contested elections would be welcome and ASCC expects this to be the case as interest in community councils grows but it should not be overlooked that community councils provide a publicly accountable framework across Scotland through which over 13,000 citizens are regularly involved in attempting to improve Scotland’s local communities. With 40% of community councillors being female community councils have a better performance in this regard than local authorities or the Scottish and Westminster Parliaments.
The Best Model of Community Empowerment
There is no comparable set of organisations available across Scotland to promote citizen participation. Tenants’ organisations are based on peoples’ housing circumstances. Residents’ associations do not have the framework of public accountability that governs community councils. Local authority forums are based on the agenda and priorities of the local authorities themselves. As the Commission on Local Government and the Scottish Parliament commented community councils are genuinely independent and autonomous local associations of citizens concerned to promote the betterment of their local communities. They exercise their rights as citizens and residents to speak up on behalf of their local communities. They make a significant contribution to local democracy and there is much more that they could do.
The Way Forward
ASCC is working with the Scottish Government to enhance the quality of Scotland’s community councils through the promotion of a National Model Scheme through which community councils and local authorities can promote improvements in their current ways of working. ASCC aims also to work with the Scottish Government and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities to ensure that the community empowerment agenda to which both those organisations are committed is centrally focused on using community councils as the most democratic, available and cost-effective mechanism of delivering community empowerment.
Norman Bonney
Vice-President
Association of Scottish Community Councils
e-mail; activecitizen@blueyonder.co.uk
2.7.08
