The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities are currently running a commission on Strengthening Local Democracy. I have made a submission based on my experience promoting the value of community development and the devolution of civic powers to the lowest appropriate level. You can make your own submission by 29 Nov 2013 here http://www.cosla.gov.uk/commission-strengthening-local-democracy-call-evidence
Submission
to the Commission on Strengthening Local Democracy
November 2013
Introduction
My evidence is informed by a 4 decade career in community
development, working in a variety of local authority posts, including
neighbourhood community worker, Community Learning & Development Team
Leader, and policy and strategy officer. Across all of those posts I have been
able to observe local democracy at different levels.
Main
recommendations
Based on my professional experience, I believe there are
a number of ways in which we can easily begin to Strengthen Local Democracy.
All of the following measures would bring decision making closer to local
communities, give citizens a greater stake in their own community and make
democratic structures more accountable to voters.
1. Commit
to the provision of an effective community development service properly
equipped, to support communities in need, to follow their own agenda.
2. Engage
more citizens in community development, through tackling social inequality and
alienation, by providing sustainable resourcing for community initiatives in
communities of greatest need.
3. Review
and allocate powers to all levels of government so that decisions are taken at
the lowest level needed to ensure locally responsive and locally accountable
public services. This particularly means clarifying the division of
responsibility between local and national government; devolving limited local
powers to Community Councils; and reducing the geographic size of local
authorities.
4. Creating
a very much stronger link between tax payers and public service provision to
enhance public accountability.
5. Creating
a legal right, for communities, to participate in decision-making.
6. Strengthen
Community Planning legislation to enhance the requirement for collaboration
between communities, and the public,
voluntary and private sectors; and creating a greater emphasis on 'place'.
What
is Community Development?
Community Development (although often used as a 'spray
on' label to make any initiative appear community orientated) is a professional
discipline with expertise in working alongside local communities to connect
local people, identify local issues, strengthen local voices, and to build
community spirit, organisations, and leadership. Such an increase in community
capacity enables communities to engage with public services, to seek effective
improvements in living conditions, through action ranging from self help, more
responsive local services, and collaborative community planning.
Community development, if it allows local people to stay
in control, can have positive outcomes in terms of community cohesion, citizen
participation, more effective use of public resources and enhanced interest and
engagement in democratic processes.
Reflections
on past initiatives
Community
development initiatives: There have been many successful
community development initiatives over the past 40 years but there has been a
consistent failure to sustain, replicate and mainstream their advances. A
representative selection of successful Scottish community projects that I am
aware of includes: the community buy-outs in Eigg and Assynt, Cranhill Credit
Union, Canongate Youth Project, Drumchapel Men's Health Project, West
Whitlawburn Housing Cooperative, Edinburgh Tenants Federation, and many other
lower profile projects. They have all demonstrated that local people can
identify local needs and then work together, negotiate with public services,
and provide local services. What many
projects have failed to do in the long term is continue to sustain the
community development process, of local people organising around the issues
that most concern them. Many have either ceased or have drifted into service
provision, which whilst worthy in itself, does not engage people in the
democratic process.
Many projects fail to sustain community engagement
because local people are overwhelmed by bigger issues including poverty,
unemployment, poor health, drug misuse, etc. The first step in improving
citizen and community engagement is to work at more fundamental improvements to
social equality.
Many projects also fail because they have no secure
funding stream. Temporary funding initiatives and interminable fund raising
eventually sapping the ideas and enthusiasm that had showed such promise.
Most of all projects have been deflected away from local
political decision making into service
provision and/or towards priorities set outwith local communities.
As a result local
and national government have helped demonstrate successful community
development approaches and then consistently failed to mainstream them. We have
a well developed Community Learning and Development infrastructure but there
are two problems with the provision of community development workers. Firstly
Local Authority CLD services have been run down during this period of
austerity. Secondly CLD workers employed by Local Authorities tend to face a conflict
of interest in that the communities they are supporting are negotiating,
challenging, and/or disagreeing with their employers. Perhaps the most
successful situation is where communities are funded by bodies outwith local
government to employ their own community development workers.
Initiatives
to enhance local democracy
In addition to 'bottom up' community development there
have been many initiatives introduced by successive governments and local
authorities to enhance citizen and
community engagement in political processes.
These have included Community Councils, Decentralisation
Schemes, Public Consultation processes, Community Planning, and many others
targeted at specific sections of the community (such as ethnic minorities,
women, older people, young people, disabled people). I have worked on
implementing all of these and in each case found that conditions and attitudes
militated against progress.
Community
Councils are caught in a catch 22 position. They are not
representative or well supported and so Local Authority councillors consider
them to be an annoyance. Consequently the Local Authority do not adequately
fund or encourage Community Councils and so local people perceive them to be of
little value in democratic processes and so they are not representative.
The Council I
worked for agreed to a process of gradually empowering community councils but
would not actually implement it. Community Councils need to be given more
powers and influence in order to attract greater support from their constituents.
This seems to work in England where Parish Councils have a budget and specific
appropriate powers. If Scottish Community Councils were given a very small
proportion of Council Tax income and responsibility for some very local
provisions and services they would become more accountable to and of more
interest to the people living in their area. They would engage more people in
the democratic process
The Decentralisation
Scheme was introduced soon after local government
reorganisation. It was meant to encourage the devolution of powers to the
lowest appropriate level from National to Local to Community levels. In fact
each level of Government was more interested in retaining or even recovering
powers from the lower levels. All of these schemes consequently fizzled out.
Any move to Strengthen Local Democracy must tackle the
allocation of powers to the lowest appropriate level across all levels of
government from the the Scottish Parliament, through Local Authorities and
other public services, to Community Councils and communities in general.
The powers of Local Authorities are also greatly
undermined by the small proportion of income which they collect for themselves
(ie 20% of Council Tax is retained by local councils). There should be a much clearer
link between tax payers and government al services. Tax for each level of
government should go directly to that level.
Community
Planning is meant to make local governance more joined up and
therefore more effective. It is meant to respond to community priorities and to
facilitate collaborative work. Very little of this actually happens because
public sector partners are hamstrung by the nature of their own accountability
to the Scottish Government, National Management Structures, and inflexible funding
streams.
This produces scenarios where for example NHS Boards
would support community planning initiatives that remove responsibilities for a
provision from themselves to the Local Authority but not vice versa, or where
Local Authority Education Departments will participate only in initiatives that
will directly impact on their own targets. These positions of course obstruct
the development of preventative initiatives and of establishing the most
appropriate form of service.
For Community Planning to facilitate collaborative
service provision and the development of preventative social measures the
partners must have a greater level of accountability to the Community Planning
Partnership. This in turn would also require a greater level of democratic accountability
to be built into Community Planning Partnerships.
Public
Consultation. Frankly, I was hitting my head off the
proverbial brick wall trying to encourage councillors and service managers to
adopt more effective public consultation. Whilst public consultation became a
requirement and whilst it increased in
frequency, and in some cases improved its methods, it did not increase public
influence on decision making.
A simple two pronged approach would improve the situation.
Firstly, to do less public consultation and to only consult where some
influence was on offer and to demonstrate how that influence was exercised.
This could avoid the public cynicism that prevails about public consultation -
that it has no meaningful influence on decision-making. Secondly, to give
communities the right to participate in local decision-making, making it a
legal requirement for organisations to respond, so that local people themselves
could decide which issues they wish to be involved in
Summary
My main conclusion is that, in spite of many well
intentioned policy developments, little progress has been made in strengthening
local democracy because of a continual failure to allocate power and
responsibility at the appropriate level. Consequently the most important aspect
of any drive to strengthen local democracy, is the devolution of powers to
different levels, including national government, local government and
communities; supported by a community development input to communities in need. I believe that once resources and
responsibilities have been properly allocated by government a community based
approach can deliver growing citizen and community engagement in civil society.
I believe this could be done by adopting the recommendations I have outlined
above.
