Chamber and committees

Priorities for Session 6: Scottish Community Development Centre

Letter to the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee, 29 July 2021

Dear Sir/Madam,

Please find below our response to the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee on SCDC priorities in relation to the Committee’s remit, particularly the implications of the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on communities.

Introduction

Scottish Community Development Centre (SCDC) supports policy and practice for community development in Scotland. We work towards an active, inclusive and just Scotland where communities are strong, equitable and sustainable. We work directly with:

• Community groups and organisations
• Community development practitioners
• Government and other policy makers
•  Local partnerships and agencies across Scotland to involve communities in their work

We work across sectors and professions and use what we learn to help shape policy for strong, influential and inclusive communities. 

SCDC priorities

In considering priorities in relation to the Committee’s remit we have drawn on our programme delivery and links to extensive community networks. Our key priority areas continue to be:

• Community and Public Participation – support for Participatory Budgeting and continued development of broader participation through citizens assemblies, citizens juries, etc.
• Community Empowerment – particularly through support for Participation Requests and community involvement in Community Planning but also through improved community engagement by public bodies and implementation of the National Standards for Community Engagement.
• Community Capacity Building – particularly support for community-led action planning and involvement in other local planning processes such as Local Place Plans; and the development of locally-led place based approaches.

Learning from our Programmes

In relation to these priorities, we would like to highlight the key learning points from one of our programmes – the Supporting Communities programme – as these reflect the learning from across our other programme and contract work. This programme has the following main strands of support:

• support to groups and organisations to develop community-led action planning activity
• support for community-led place-based approaches
• support for intermediaries to stimulate and develop community-led action planning or place-based working
• Although these strands can have very separate and different characteristics, in many areas there has been a substantial overlap and, in some cases, the development of a community-led action plan has led naturally to a focus on place-based working.

This overlap is recognised in the key learning points from our programme and are as follows:

Community Capacity Building

Local groups are still finding it difficult to access community capacity building support which is:

• Trusted
• Appropriately skilled
• Consistently available when it is needed
• Able to work to enable involvement from different population segments locally to address inequality and include the broadest possible range of local voices.

This has an impact on the effectiveness of community anchor roles which are essential to:

• Stimulating and growing community infrastructure and dialogue with services.
• Effective community action planning.
• Community leadership in place-based activity with community planning partnerships.

Community Empowerment and Participation

The Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act is being implemented, but very slowly in many places, with knock-on impacts on the participation environment and the confidence of local people in the process. The evidence of local services acting in empowering ways is very patchy leading to potential for partnership activity being lost.

Links between engagement duties in different contexts are poorly developed e.g. health and social care planning, community justice, and children and young people services planning.

The Place Principle is in the very early stages of implementation in most locations and not well understood in terms of its expectations or potential for supporting community empowerment.

Local Place Plans have the potential to link to the work of the programme, but much remains to be done to raise awareness of these and explore their connections to community led action planning.

COVID-19

COVID-19 has highlighted the potential for high quality community responses to augment and/or fill gaps in public service provision in ways which made the core public health messages workable.

This needs to be improved by:

• Reflection on the experience and its implications for communities.
• Improving links between the existing community, resilience organisations and wider community and third sector infrastructure, who mobilised during the pandemic.
• Addressing real challenges in coordination of services in this kind of context across sectors.

Kyle and Lochalsh – Case Study

To illustrate the community response to the pandemic and the issues that community organisations face we are including this short case study from Kyle Community Trust in Wester Ross.

SCDC has been supporting place-based work in Kyle and Lochalsh since 2018, as part of the Scottish Government-funded Supporting Communities programme. Kyle and Lochalsh Community Trust (KLCT) was established in August 2012 and is committed to instigating and delivering social, economic and environmental regeneration projects and local services. Kyle and Lochalsh has been identified as one of the most economically fragile areas in the Highlands.

SCDC initially began supporting the Trust in October 2018 to develop a Lochalsh-wide consultation to find out the issues and priorities of all the communities within the Trust’s area of activity. This work naturally developed into support for a broader place-based approach and a deeper collaboration across the whole of Lochalsh. The Collaboration began a Lochalsh-wide conversation on local needs and priorities, and involved regular meetings supported and facilitated by the SCDC. Work also started on designing a community-led consultation for Lochalsh. The consultation will form the basis of seven local community action plans as well as a Lochalsh-wide plan.

The support has led to the Collaboration increasing in influence, and the Collaboration has received a written commitment from the local Community Planning Partnership that it will use the results of the community action planning engagement to directly inform the Locality Planning process.

Kyle and Lochalsh - response to Covid-19

As is the case for many community initiatives across Scotland, the Collaboration’s work in 2020 has focused largely on the emergency response to Covid-19. Having an effective place-based partnership in existence has, in turn, helped to establish a strong cross-community response to the Covid-19 pandemic. KLCT partnered up with a number of other organisations, including newly set-up Covid-19 support groups, to form the Lochalsh Community Response network, which has been meeting regularly to discuss ways to support the local community through Covid-19.

The network set up a website, Facebook page, phone helpline and produced a leaflet providing information about available support. It also established a programme to distribute surplus food and launched a food voucher scheme for those in need. A variety of virtual activities were organised using Zoom, and a community newsletter was established when the local newspaper stopped printing its weekly paper. The partnership working on the food share scheme has recently led to the development of a Community Fridge project, working with a local church that has provided their hall.These activities are reviewed regularly by the network via weekly video conferences, which considers the progress of projects, local need and what additional support may be required. The calls are attended by a local councillor and a member of the local Third Sector Interface to ensure that local volunteer effort is linked to wider support from public and other services.

The strength of the place-based partnership work is evidenced by the fact that the network has also recently been supporting the Covid-19 emergency response within the neighbouring Kyleakin and Kylerhea Community Council area.

Summary

The issues and responses highlighted through our programmes and illustrated by the Supporting Communities programme and the Kyle case study are generally reflective of the experiences of community organisations and the wider voluntary sector across Scotland. There have been genuinely positive and innovative responses from our communities and we have seen that support for and investment in strong community infrastructure is an essential element of the building back process. This process needs to be supported through long-term investment. This includes supporting strong, sustainable and inclusive community organisations as well as the locally-led, collaborative and responsive structures which can not only provide a speedy response during times of crisis but can also be the means by which communities themselves can plan and play a part in their own on-going regeneration and development.