They have been with us for 50 years, coming into existence in 1975, through the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973. Their value is becoming more important as local authorities funding is cut, local services are being withdrawn with local community groups picking up the slack.
What are they?
They’re the most local implementation of governance in Scotland, designed to be non-party political and non-sectarian, and inclusive regardless of gender, race, age, disability, nationality or sexual orientation.
Their effectiveness can be shaped by their geographical nature and fit into three types.
- Urban Community Councils: In cities like Glasgow or Edinburgh, community councils may represent densely populated neighbourhoods with complex issues.
- Rural Community Councils: In remote areas, such as the Highlands and Shires along with smaller coastal areas, their focus will be on issues like broadband access, transportation links and the sustainability of local schools.
- Island Community Councils: On islands like Orkney or Shetland, community councils often tackle unique challenges, such as seaboard transport links, access to healthcare, and depopulation.
Why do we need them?
Their role is to provide:
- Consultation: Local authorities by law are required to consult with communities on planning and licensing applications, roles where community councils provide that interface. Community councils also have a role in gathering residents’ views on local authority initiatives.
- Advocacy: Community councils act as advocates, championing improvements and drawing attention to issues ranging from transport and housing to public safety and environmental concerns.
- Initiation of Projects: Many community councils initiate and manage local projects, organise events, maintaining community spaces, supporting local clubs, and developing community plans.
- Information Source: They have a role in keeping residents informed about local issues, changes to services, and opportunities for engagement through newsletters, social media, public meetings, and notice boards.
- Partnerships: Community councils work with local authorities, police, health boards, and voluntary sector organisations to deliver services and enhance community well-being.
In truth not all community councils will fulfil these roles, their level of community activities will be shaped by the community’s profile and demographics
What challenges do community councils face?
- Recruitment and engagement: Some councils struggle to involve younger people and attract new members, existing on small groups of participants, leading to a lack of diversity and risk of stagnation.
- Influence: Although statutory bodies, they have no statutory powers. Their influence depends on the strength of relationships with local authorities and the skill of members. It is possible to influence decision makers, but only when true community engagement and involvement has taken place and can be evidenced.
- Resources: Funding and training are concerns, especially for councils in deprived or remote areas. In Moray the admin support grant totals £17K for potentially 20 community councils.
- Visibility: In some communities, awareness of the council’s existence or role is low, limiting its effectiveness.
- Changing Demographics: Local resident populations are changing and realignment of community identities impact participation and relevance.
Regardless of these challenges, Community Councils have survived the last 50 years, but going forward they need to evolve, and their funding needs to reflect their growing significance to local communities.
Why are they important, and how to encourage participation?
Getting local communities to participate with Community Councils requires that they are seen as relevant. For some they are small, parochial and based around a group of aging participants, not all, but some.
By addressing the challenges, primarily resourcing and encouraging younger blood into the mix their relevance can be brought to the community’s attention. The ‘body politic’ has lost confidence in the political system. Community councils although non-political have a significant role to plays in building confidence in activism and the governance model across Scotland.
The second and third tiers of governance must recognise the effectiveness of localism, of empowering people to solve their issues, and by making sure that the power to solve issues is closer to the people being impacted.
That will require not just an establishment scheme for community councils that works, but a grass-roots review of funding, by making the funding of local authorities more equitable and locally driven through a review of land-values or local income taxation.
As Liberals we favour localism, and local actions. Community councils have the potential to build a better society, and have the potential to break the popularist mentality.
“Alone, we can do so little; together, we can do so much.” — Helen Keller
* Les Tarr is a member of Banffshire and Buchan Coast Liberal Democrats.
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9 Comments
I’m afraid my experience of being a member of a community could be summed up as ‘a good way to find out what is happening, but nothing more.’ We did have one councillor who attended meetings regularly but only because a local journalist usually attended and then wrote articles about all the councillor was doing! We were informed about local planning applications but I don’t believe us submitting comments were ever influential – even requests and suggestions regarding updated Local Plans were largely ignored.
In truth, the main function for community councils – in my opinion – is to be a forum where those aspiring to become local authority councillors can get a degree of training, hone skills, and decide if sitting through hours of council meetings is really for them…
Sorry..”of being a member of a community council…”
Brenda sums up my concerns community councils talking shops not decision making shops .leave the decisions to “over allowanced ” at unitary level .
Attendances at a rural council can be boosted by a local issue, by recent incomers seeking to integrate into the community, and by the knowledge that one of the three or four elected representatives on the local authority will find the time to attend and kindly offer to take up matters and report back.
But recruitment and attendance remain patchy, raising doubts about how much a community council reflects local feeling.
Interest can be boosted and the principle of subsidiarity followed in two respects. Community councils ought to have limited spending powers, as in parish councils in England, so that priorities can be debated and decided locally instead of (as often happens) by an official. And they should have the right to appeal decisions of the local planning committee with limited financial help to do so. This latter power would help counter the bias in favour of developers, who can appeal a refusal, while no one can appeal an approval except at great legal cost. Such a power will inevitably trigger cries of being a handicap to potential economic growth, but planning delays can be reduced by, as we once had, efficient and speedy processing of applications.
Brenda & Neil: We have been lucky with the Cullen and Deskford Community Council, in that the three local authority councillors do attend each meetings and work with us to resolve issues. We have been successful in ventures like the Save Moray Libraries campaign which kept 7 rural libraries open and was led in part by the community councils in the area. It can be something that people see as a step toward higher bodies, but in the most part the non-political aspect is maintained. Our community council does engage in consultations with residents, see http://www.culendeskford.org. We see our role as to picj up issues, and take them to the councillors, but rural communities are changing and aging, recruitment is a huge issue.
Robin. We have used in Cullen and Deskford some local issues to generate interest, The threatened library closures was one issue where we got the local community out to a public meeting and to some demos, and we are continuing to use issues round parking and traffic.
The big blocker for recruitment has been long-term disagreements between people who were on the community council but broke away to form other groups. Mending fences is proving difficult. Getting residents to Ficus on the core reason for the community councils existence which is the area of Cullen and Deskford is a challenge. It comes down to relevance, making residents see the relevance in what the community council does. Its going to take a very carefully walked path of not being political yet employing liberal values to overcome the problem.
Thanks for this. LibDems in England need to build on the mixed experience of Scotland, as the Labour government drives through the abolition of the remaining district councils and gives ‘devolved’ powers to elected mayors and combined authorities distant from ordinary voters – as is set our in the ‘Devolutions and Community Empowerment Bill. all of 300 pages, just published and starting in the Commons this autumn. LOCAL democracy will depend on strengthening town and rural Councils, if we can, against a Labour government which does not seem to understand that direct contacts between voters and locally elected representatives is an essential part of democracy.
Looking back on my 10 years as a community councillor, when initially many other members of my local community Council were those defeated council candidates from many parties. As a Liberal Party member with no particular ambition to be elected, but who did enjoy campaigning, I was then asked to stand for election to the Edinburgh City Council. After two terms as a City Councillor and as the election agent when the Liberal Democrats eventually won Edinburgh West in 1997, I was then selected and elected as the MP for Edinburgh West in 2001. Since retiring undefeated in 2010, I am now back campaigning locally in the community where it all began. To be honest, I find it much easier to achieve things locally as an active individual rather than being a member of what is very much a talking shop for vested interests, and which is usually ignored by the Council, who go through the motions of consulting the community without ever changing any decisions as a result of that meaningless consultation.
More from Edinburgh! Before becoming a district (then city) councillor I was the Lib. Dem. representative on my local community council – some allowed reps. from e.g. local churches.
As a city councillor I was able to use that role to support community councils:
– by attending my local community council regularly, working with it on local issues, and being returning officer for its elections
– ensuring their work was noted, and supporting the all-Edinburgh community councils’ regular meetings and education sessions
– being on a COSLA (Convention of Scottish Local Authorities) group on community councils. In the 1990s there was even a Community Council Resource Centre housed in Glasgow District Council, whose ruling Labour councillors gave it financial and other support. As a professional librarian I rated it highly and mourned its demise.
As a generalisation, I’d say that in my experience the ethos of public service was perhaps purest in community councillors – untainted by the career political ambitions of some elected to “higher” office.
Sadly the reality for too many years in this city is that there are few contested elections to community councils, and some have struggled to survive.