Local Development Trusts and Community Initiatives
The final item of business is a members’ business debate on motion S4M-07776, in the name of Christine Grahame, in praise of local development trusts and other community initiatives. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament recognises the significance and professionalism of the many local development trusts and community initiatives across Midlothian and the Borders and Scotland at large, the many individuals who give up their time, skill and energy to improving their communities such as Auchendinny, Gorebridge, Lamancha and Newlands, community hubs, Penicuik, Silverburn and Eddleston with projects such as The Lost Garden of Penicuik, Silverburn Community Garden and Hall, The Great Polish Map of Scotland at Eddleston and many more community initiatives; considers that these are solid testimony to their efforts, and notes their encouragement for other communities to dip their toes in trust waters.
17:05
I thank the Presiding Officer for his forbearance, as it is the second time today that he has had to listen to me.
I thank all those who signed the motion that allowed the debate to take place, and I welcome to the public gallery representatives of various trusts and community initiatives from across my constituency. I remind them—not that they need reminding—of the reception afterwards, to which the Minister for Local Government and Planning has said, lest he forget, that he will come, albeit briefly.
The minister also pledged in an answer to me last week in this very spot that he would set up an information website to assist communities to establish community trusts and to access funding. There will be a questionnaire at the reception for representatives to fill in to inform the website’s structure—there is no such thing as a free nibble on my watch.
What are development trusts and community initiatives, why do they exist and what do they do? When I entered the Parliament 14 years ago I had no idea, and no answer to any of those questions, but, as my granny would say, “Ye ken noo”.
The motion refers to a sample of those trusts and initiatives that I have come across in the past 14 years, such as Auchendinny, which was building its community centre while the other building was quite literally falling down. It looks smashing now, and fit for a “Grand Designs” visit.
The same goes for Silverburn’s community hall, which was reclaimed from a disused water storage building. Silverburn is a small community, but it has a lot of get up and go. In fact, the team from “The Beechgrove Garden” has already been there to see the community garden that has been established.
The Newlands project arose when the people of Romanno Bridge and the surrounding area were galvanised when their local school was threatened with closure and they took it into their own hands to keep the school and add community facilities. They fought for funding from the lottery—which was just over £800,000; not a hill of beans—and from other sources such as European funds. That process was—as they and I know—pretty painful and stressful for them, but they got there.
There are other projects such as Gorebridge Development Trust, which is, as a community hub, well on its way from drawing board to build, and has secured more than £1 million of lottery funding. Penicuik Development Trust has its fingers everywhere, and has secured some funding to restore the lost garden of Penicuik. Not content with that, it has prepared a business case to establish a paper-making museum in Penicuik, which members should all know was the home of paper-making so long ago, and it does so much more.
I should also mention the great Polish map of Scotland at Eddleston, and the restoration project—for which, again, initial funding has been secured. All those projects not only give pride to a community but can generate income for the local community through local people working locally.
Lamancha has a community centre with an exotic barbecue hut, which I invite members to visit. When I say “hut”, I mean a posh Nordic version with a lock door, proper seating, places for candles and a proper barbecue centre. These people know how to do it and how to build within their communities—and those are only a few examples.
The projects have a lot in common. They are community based with a dedicated team of activists who are often working quite thanklessly and are in for the long haul, facing obstacles and learning pretty hard on the job, especially with regard to securing funding. Ultimately, all of them have achieved community success, and I know that those that are still at the drawing-board stage will also achieve community success. I know that they have done it through blood, sweat and tears—quite often literally, as it took huge acres of stamina out of the parties to stick with that work.
I am sure that the member will be aware that development trusts are now a firm feature in my constituency in Orkney. One of the most interesting things about the development trusts’ work is not just the projects that they help to deliver but the capacity that they build in the community, stretching beyond the usual suspects to bring in those who otherwise would perhaps have struggled to get engaged with such projects.
Absolutely. When I talk about the few working very hard, it really is the few—sometimes it is only when the building is actually going up and they are about to cut the ribbon to open it that the community realises what has happened on its doorstep and begins to become engaged with it. Of course, that is not the end for the trust. Such buildings have to be used; the trust has to get resources and it has to get revenue in from the community using the building. However, I know that trusts can be extremely successful at that. Quite often for these development trusts and community trusts, their job just continues into a different phase once the building is up and running.
I have huge regard for the people involved. I am not just saying that. I have a really huge regard for people who take up the cudgels for their community. They tough it out and they stick with it and they are not getting paid to do it; they are not getting press recognition and quite often nobody is patting them on the back. They are doing it because it is the right thing to do for their community. They give a project a kick-start and say, “This matters where I live.” They build for their communities—real buildings. I have visited Newlands community centre; I have visited Silverburn’s community centre; I have been to the Lamancha hub; and I have stood right where the great Polish map of Scotland was before they made it a health and safety issue—we are not allowed to do that now. I have been to those places.
The lost garden of Penicuik is a wonderful project but it needs a lot of work and I can see how people in the early stages in particular have a really tough time. I know that other people will speak about community trusts in their areas. All the community trusts and development trusts should take pride in what they build: it is a tangible example of their efforts. Not many politicians can say that. Even after 14 years here, I cannot point to a building that I have put up or a community that I have contributed to in that way, but the trusts have, so my congratulations to them all. I say to those communities that are a bit wary of doing such projects, speak to the development trusts and community trusts in your area, see what lessons they have learned and take something on for your community. The reward will be in seeing a building go up that the community will use for generations to come.
17:12
The motion is some 103 words—it would take nearly a minute to read it out if someone were to do so—but fortunately there are four words in it that are “and Scotland at large”. I am at large, speaking on behalf of some of the people in the north-east of Scotland who, like those in Midlothian and the Borders, are heavily engaged in trust work.
In Peterhead, we have Peterhead Projects Ltd, which is working on community woodland. That is about developing people as much as it is about putting up buildings. In Banff and Macduff, we have the Princess Royal Sports and Community Trust. It of course has buildings—it has gyms and it is making sure that people get fitter—but, more fundamentally, it is going out and engaging with schools and with young people to show the value of physical exercise.
In Portsoy, the Scottish traditional boat festival has grown under the local trust’s aegis from the first year, when it attracted 200 people, to a festival to which a five-figure number of people come. People come from Australia and New Zealand each year to participate in that festival. It has taken on the salmon bothy and the PORT’s boatshed. It is into buildings.
The Boyndie Trust just along the coast from Portsoy runs a cafe and a community bus service. It provides training for 70 people who would otherwise find it very difficult to get into employment and, in the cafe, it procures from local sources, supporting its own community.
On the borders of my constituency on the other side is the Huntly Development Trust. There is also a development trust in Keith. In Buckie, the football club there, through the Highland league and its work, is reaching out, using its facilities to reach others and ensure that their attributes are deployed and that people are getting fitter.
Of course, we have little community harbour trusts in many of the communities round the coast, some of which have been extremely successful in bringing very old facilities back into use.
I want to talk in particular about Fraserburgh Development Trust. Fraserburgh is a town of some 15,000 people where probably more than 20 languages are spoken. People have come to Fraserburgh from all over Europe and the world. The town earns its living the hard way—in the fishing industry, both onshore and offshore. It has seen some pretty tough times, but it is definitely on the way up, and Fraserburgh Development Trust is an important part of that. It has been running community markets, or super Saturdays, to ensure that people know what is good about Fraserburgh. It is not simply the place with the mainland Scotland wind speed record of well over 100 miles an hour; it is a warm and friendly place, even if in the middle of winter it is far from feeling like that.
The trust is involved in the community garden and is trying to set up a renewables project, which will help the town to go green and, fundamentally, will help the trust to have a regular funding stream. The trust is working with Social Firms Scotland to consider taking over a local bakery, which will save jobs and create the opportunity to provide others with locally sourced food of good quality. The trust is working in the town centre and with a community health development officer. Fundamentally, as Christine Grahame said, the trust works through and with volunteers. Unlike Boris Johnson, who says that the top per cent of earners in London should get knighthoods, I think that the volunteers in our community trusts should get knighthoods.
17:16
I congratulate Christine Grahame on bringing the motion to the chamber. I declare an interest and draw members’ attention to my entry in the register of interests because, tonight, I am going to tell members the story of a local community organisation in the village that I live in and that I am actively involved in. The organisation is run by the community and has a small dedicated staff team of one full-time worker and a couple of part-time workers, who bring together 120 volunteers. Those volunteers deliver a community cafe, which in 2013 had more than 12,000 visits. The cafe also helps with the delivery of meals to elderly and vulnerable people in the community, which assists more than 180 people to live independently in the community.
The organisation has delivered a village park play area, which was a £0.5 million project that the council said could not be done. That project was designed and delivered by the community on behalf of the children and teenagers in the community. The body also organises four events a year, including a gala day. This Saturday, there will be the switching on of the Christmas lights in the village square. It also operates an autumn group, of which I am a member, as it is open to anybody over the age of 50. It also assists young people to complete the Duke of Edinburgh awards and creates employment opportunities for people who live in the area.
The organisation delivers training courses, with more than 60 local people participating in first aid, flexible learning, information technology and catering skills courses. Those opportunities are opened up to community members and allow people to apply for employment in other areas. The organisation also delivers community transport in the village and the surrounding area. It has two community-owned minibuses, with the option of getting a third.
We have to ask what the future holds for communities that are actively engaged in that type of work, and I hope that the minister will raise some of the issues in summing up the debate.
Community asset transfer proposals are to come forward next year. My community wants to create a life centre that will become a hub and an anchor for the community. The activities that the body delivers would be delivered from that community hub. The organisation wants to move forward with ownership of the building concerned and taking on the commitment to deliver the services.
We must look at what the community empowerment and renewal bill will mean for communities. Some of the work that Christine Grahame and Stewart Stevenson described shows what communities throughout Scotland are doing; communities can deliver on their own when they have the correct support and the correct assets. We must allow a hands-off approach—unfortunately, local authority support sometimes comes with a heavy hand. If we let communities develop and grow, they will deliver services in their areas.
Many funders have shown confidence and trust in communities to deliver projects. The Big Lottery Fund, the Coalfields Regeneration Trust, BBC Children in Need and Radio Clyde have all given communities funding to deliver services and opportunities. I put on record my thanks to the Development Trusts Association Scotland, which provides a great deal of support for communities throughout Scotland that allows them to have imagination and vision and assists them to deliver projects that they identify are needed.
I thank Christine Grahame for initiating the debate.
17:21
I thank Christine Grahame for lodging the motion. As a West Lothian councillor from 2003 to 2009, I was there at the beginning of the developing community development trust initiative in my county. In 2005 and 2006, I saw the potential in the vast array of community groups that operated in my home village of Fauldhouse—a working-class, ex-mining community that is not without its challenges but which has great people who have a lot of initiative.
In that community, we had groups doing youth work, pensioners groups, religious organisations, sports groups and so on. They were all doing fantastic work in the community to support people and develop new projects, but they often competed for the same relatively small pots of money. Some inevitably felt frustrated and disappointed when the effort to raise funds through grant applications was unsuccessful.
What did we do? In the first instance, I got together with a then West Lothian Council officer called Paul White, who now works for the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations. I name him because he was influential in what developed. He and I looked at what was out there and saw the community development trust model as providing a potential opportunity to galvanise the community and take things forward.
A year of often tortuous development work took place, funded by a European Union grant. That allowed the concept to develop in the minds of the groups concerned, which began to see the potential benefits of the new organisation. We were grateful for the encouragement that we received, particularly from Gorebridge Community Development Trust. Archie Pacey, who is in the public gallery, was a great help and an inspiration when we really needed someone to give us a bit of a boost—he certainly did that.
Eventually, we formed a community development trust—a company limited by guarantee with charitable status. We appointed a skilled board with a wide range of people at the helm. I pay particular tribute to the chairman, Robert Russell, and the other board members, who have given up their time and put in effort over the years to make the trust a success. I served as company secretary and as a director for the first five years of the trust’s existence—I resigned this year only because of work pressures. I suppose that I should declare that as an interest.
Since the trust was established, it has gone from strength to strength. It has grown projects and income as it goes along. The point is to generate enough income for the trust to be sustainable. We employ staff. We employed about 16 future jobs fund trainees on an environmental project before the Tories scrapped that scheme, and the trust employs community jobs Scotland trainees.
With lottery funding and grant funding from the Levenseat Trust, the Coalfields Regeneration Trust and others, the trust bought and transformed an ex-council office. It now has a community cinema, a soft play area, a dementia cafe, a food bank drop-off point, a walking group, and it hosts the credit union, a fruit and veg co-op, a time bank project and an anti-sectarian project. It has meeting rooms and a conference room, it has held music festivals and organised remembrance Sunday events, and it hosts an annual fair. It helps to recruit volunteers for its projects and those of all the other community groups that operate in the area. It does that because it has dedicated staff who work at the grass-roots level to seek out the funding that can make things happen. The staff do not make everything happen themselves, because that is not the point. They help others to facilitate projects and help with grant applications that allow other organisations to grow and develop. That is part of the business plan and what they are supposed to do.
The trust is a social enterprise that works at the coalface and delivers benefits in the community. I am proud of the work that it does and proud that I was involved from the start.
Community development trusts do not and should never replace local government—that is not what they are there to do. In my area, we could not have set up the trust without local government support and I am very grateful to West Lothian Council for all its assistance over the years.
17:26
I, too, congratulate my colleague Christine Grahame on securing this members’ business debate. I am very pleased to hear of the range of successful trusts and other models of community engagement in other parts of Scotland. As an MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, I am pleased to report that there are a number of examples of successful development trusts across the region, from Callander Community Development Trust in the west across to the Levenmouth my bus operation in Fife and at many points in between.
All those development trusts are a tremendous credit to their communities and speak to the determination of local people to make a positive difference to the lives of their towns, villages and, indeed, in some cities, their neighbourhoods.
In the short time available to me, I will focus on an example that could not be closer to home: the Comrie Development Trust, which was established in 2006 in the village that I am proud to call my home. I point out that I am a member of the trust, along with more than 700 other people, and I also draw members’ attention to my entry in the register of interests, which states that I did project support work for the trust some years ago.
From its inception, the Comrie Development Trust has gone from strength to strength. It may be most well known for successfully navigating the not inconsiderable hurdles to effecting the community buyout of the former Ministry of Defence army camp at Cultybraggan, just outside the village. That was a tremendous achievement for the volunteer board of the trust, whose determination to succeed was inspirational.
I well remember the excitement when the deal was secured, very much at the 11th hour, and I remember too the quiet delight of many villagers, who had never in all their years owned land—nor had generations of their families before them. They found themselves having a stake and therefore a say in what would happen to 90 acres of land on their doorstep.
Since the buyout of Cultybraggan, progress has been made on the community development of the site. Some of the Nissen huts have been refurbished and let out to local tradesmen and other businesses and groups, and an award-winning catering company has relocated to the site.
There has also been the establishment of very successful community allotments, alongside which Comrie in Colour, another Comrie voluntary organisation, has its very successful polytunnel. We have established a community orchard and I believe that planning permission has been obtained to develop sports facilities at the camp. We have renewables activity on the site and the trust is running a carbon challenge project in the village. Work is going on to create a heritage centre to reflect the site’s history as a prisoner of war camp during the second world war and, importantly, much input from local folk has been secured to capture the stories of that time.
A lot of work has been carried out and a lot of work is still to be done. Although funding has been secured by the trust to employ some members of staff over the years, it is fair to say that much of the impetus is still with the volunteer directors and the many other volunteers who are involved in the various working groups that the trust has set up. Without their tireless contribution, very little of what I have outlined would have been achieved.
I add my praise for my very local development trust to the debate. Although at the outset it was the new kid on the block among the community initiatives in Comrie—a village where there were already some 56 voluntary organisations, in addition to the excellent and hard-working community council—it is fair to say that the trust has become part of the firmament.
There is no monopoly on good ideas; nor should any ceiling be placed on enthusiasm and the determination to make a positive difference to the lives of a community. All volunteers share that estimable goal and there is space and, indeed, demand enough for everyone, working in co-operation with each other, to make their contribution.
17:30
I am pleased to speak in the debate because it was partly my involvement as a founding member of the community development trust on my home island of Easdale that led me into politics. We were aided in our early stages by the CADISPA Trust, an umbrella organisation that continues to offer help to communities all over Scotland. I owe a personal debt to CADISPA’s director, Dr Geoff Fagan, who taught me a lot about the concept of capacity building—which Liam McArthur has referred to—and the wisdom of that approach.
Rather than giving grants or advising people on how to get them, CADISPA’s approach is unique, in that the focus is on building capacity within our communities to meet whatever challenges they face, now and in future. That is the route to resilience and true sustainability.
If community development trusts are to help to build a better future, they need to be well equipped with the skills to do so and, as they do so, to learn from, and in turn teach, others. That is a mechanism that multiplies the effect that any single community trust can have on its own. It is a method for building widespread resilience and sustainability into the fabric of our society. Sadly, in the current climate of economic difficulty, CADISPA is battling for its own survival, even as it continues to help other organisations.
It would be easy to praise the remarkable achievements of the many community development trusts across the Highlands and Islands. I would be the first to pay tribute to the many people who tirelessly and often thanklessly do so much for their communities. However, I would like to use this opportunity to deal with some of the problems that such organisations face.
In order to set that in context, it is necessary to realise that many community development trusts were first set up in order to tackle long-standing problems that public authorities had failed to tackle, sometimes for many years. It is ironic, then, that a principal complaint of many successful community organisations and development trusts is that they are often given insufficient respect or assistance by the public agencies with which they need to interact. Indeed, community organisations are often faced with barriers that are erected, I suspect, for no reason other than that their success can challenge the very authorities that failed to help them in the first place.
If we in Parliament have a genuine wish to empower local communities, we must recognise the iron-bound principle that power is neither created nor destroyed; it is merely passed from hand to hand. Empowerment of communities implies disempowerment somewhere else.
We often have debates in Parliament about the balance of power between national and local government but if we truly want to make a difference to our society, we should perhaps focus on taking power from local government and giving it more directly to local communities.
17:34
This has been a useful debate on the importance of development trusts and their place as community anchors and key organisations that deliver services and realise the local potential that exists throughout the country. The number of members who have been able to explain their local circumstances just goes to show the impact that development trusts have had at a local level. There are stories from right across the country that are inspiring and will fuel the debate around where power lies in Scotland as further opportunities emerge.
I congratulate Christine Grahame on securing the debate and the next diary commitment. I also congratulate her on securing by way of a ministerial response last week the pledge on the website—supported by civil servants who understand the task at hand, which is to ensure that development trusts are supported and made aware of further opportunities.
Christine Grahame helpfully covered many of the issues around support for development trusts to realise local potential, generate income and be a social enterprise, as well as the obstacles that organisations sometimes face. Sometimes the obstacles are bureaucratic; sometimes they are about resource; and sometimes there are other barriers in the way, which other members spoke about.
I hope that the work that the Government will undertake to support the third sector will address some of those obstacles, partly through the community empowerment (Scotland) bill and partly through a range of other actions that we are taking.
One of the key things that Christine Grahame talked about was communities doing it for themselves. It is that sense of empowerment that makes the difference, so that communities are not disempowered but have the tools to do the job. The Scottish Government wants to create those conditions. That was touched on in Liam McArthur’s intervention on the sense of local empowerment, capacity and delivery.
Stewart Stevenson, not unexpectedly, gave us a north-east perspective and explained how communities that have seen tough times have taken advantage of the opportunities that exist.
John Wilson spoke about making things happen. That is very much what development trusts do: they make things happen. They do not just debate the issues, complain and criticise; they take projects forward and deliver them at a local level on the ground. Their very responsive nature was illustrated by his description of the range of services that are provided, including lunch clubs and a host of other services. He gave the example of the council official explaining what could not be done, which was overcome by a community-led determination to make things happen.
I was asked about community asset transfers. We should behave right now as if the community empowerment (Scotland) bill was already in place, because we know that community asset transfers work. We know that community ownership works; it is an incredibly empowering device to make things happen at a local level.
Neil Findlay outlined a number of cases. He spoke of the experience in the mining community, where despair was replaced by activity and a vision to deliver.
I reassure the minister that there has never been despair in my community. There has always been grit and enthusiasm to take things forward—not despair.
I am more than happy to be corrected. I was reflecting on the words of Jimmy Reid, who said that the greatest danger to our society is despair, when communities feel disempowered and do not have the tools to do the job. When communities feel empowered and have the right conditions and support, that can make the difference. That is why the empowerment agenda is so important.
I still commend the work within the area that Neil Findlay mentioned and I agree that community trusts should not be seen as any threat to or replacement for local government services; what is being delivered by development trusts and other community anchor organisations builds on the statutory services.
Annabelle Ewing spoke about the fantastic development trust in Comrie, with which I am familiar. Empowerment supported by community ownership helps to make the difference by making projects happen. Doing things for ourselves is an aspiration often repeated when it comes to development trusts and the projects that they have delivered.
Mike MacKenzie mentioned the opportunities that have been realised during difficult economic times. That just goes to show that great projects can come from adversity, as we take advantage of the opportunities that exist.
Through the community empowerment (Scotland) bill, which will, I think, transfer further assets into community ownership, through the expansion of the community ownership support service and through the support that we provide through DTAS—I was delighted to meet Ian Cooke today to discuss the bill—we can address some of the other barriers that exist and support and enhance community development trusts across the country. By doing so, we can upscale the great local-led work that we know is making a difference, and further replicate the success stories across the country that we have heard about. Those were best exemplified by Christine Grahame—other members gave examples, too—but it is worth mentioning the communities of Auchendinny, Gorebridge, Newlands, Penicuik and Silverburn and the work on the great Polish map of Scotland at Eddleston. Those are great examples of the work of development trusts. The Government will continue to support and commend their work.
Meeting closed at 17:40.