Scottish Government Consultation: Community Empowerment Bill

2014

2018

This report offers an overview of key dynamics, challenges and accomplishments from the perspective of community planning officials (CPOs) across the country through the comparative findings of the first two surveys of CPOs in Scotland, conducted in 2016 and 2018. The timing of these two surveys is significant because it covers the first two years of implementation of the Community Empowerment Act, and the 2018 survey is one of the first pieces of research to capture some of the early impacts of this legislation on community planning practice. The report summarises some of the key findings related to the CEA, community engagement, partnership work and evidence mobilisation, with particular attention to how the two surveys together create a fuller picture of CPOs as frontline policy workers. The report has sections on: CPOs in the context of the Community Empowerment Act Methodology and the 2018 participants Understanding the CPOs workforce Understanding the work of CPOs Using eviden...

International Journal of Public Sector Management, 2018

PurposeIn Scotland, the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act represents a significant development towards greater localism in the way public services are designed and delivered in Scotland. This also represents a different approach to that adopted in the rest of the UK. The purpose of this paper is to explore the stakeholder perceptions of localism within a council ward.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is based on an in-depth exploratory case study of a single council ward in East Scotland. The fieldwork involved 61 in-depth interviews with multiple stakeholders including local councillors, public service managers and residents.FindingsThe findings highlight that, whilst the discourse of community empowerment represents policy divergence, there remain some significant structural and social barriers to meaningful community empowerment in practice. Finally, it is argued that there are three key factors to consider when developing community empowerment: a shared strategy, shared r...

People, Place and Policy Online, 2015

This paper employs Gaventa's powercube framework to examine how the Scottish community land movement has woven together different forms and sources of power in pursuit of local development. It finds that, while localism is a strong element in community land action, connections to institutions operating at wider spatial levels have been vital to the growth of the movement. It explores the specifically Scottish and Highland context that has facilitated these connections. It also discusses the movement's relationship with states and markets, noting both its emergence in the context of their perceived failures, but also analysing its engagement with them. It draws on primary research carried out by the author in Scotland, including ethnographic research into the working of two community land initiatives at local level, and into the community land movement more widely. It concludes with some remarks about community-led development, states and austerity; and contemporary developments in Scotland.

2014

Public Policy and Administration, 2008

Community Planning Partnerships (CPPs) are a central feature of a programme of local government modernization and public service reform in Scotland. CPPs are intended to ensure that local authorities, other local public agencies, the voluntary, community and private sectors develop a shared vision for their area and work in partnership to implement this. CPPs therefore have much in common with similar initiatives in other parts of the UK, such as communities strategies, Local Strategic Partnerships, and proposals contained in the 2007 Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill in England. This article discusses how the development of CPPs relates to devolution in Scotland. It identifies systemic dilemmas, if not contradictions, encountered in implementing community planning in Scotland. Tensions exist reconciling partnership working with local authority leadership; between community planning as an additional or core duty of public agencies; between community engagement and the practical demands of policy making; and between central government direction and local partnership autonomy.

"The purpose of the paper was to give a flavour of the great land debate which has been raging in Scotland for some years, and of which the most tangible outcome so far has been the Land Reform Scotland Act. This Act, passed by the Scottish Parliament in January 2003, contains provisions permitting general public access to land, and allowing for the community purchase of land. Before moving on to the land debate, the paper considered a number of preliminary points: the history of commons or 'commonties' in Scotland; whether anything approximating to an allemansrett might be said to exist in Scotland; the Trust concept; and two myths regarding ownership and access."

This ethnological perspective of Community Care in Scotland will focus on historical, political, and social contexts and their influences on the community care arrangements for individuals within various types of communities in Scotland today. Community Care represents both a philosophical and policy approach to care. 1 The provision of care by Scottish communities since pre-industrial times evolved to its more formal and institutional culmination during the modernist thrust of the twentieth century. Since then, major changes have occurred within the delivery of health and social care, particularly over the last twenty years. The dismantling of the twentieth century institutional structures accompanied the post-war era and the consolidation of contemporary Scottish culture in the latter half of the last century. The enactment of the National Heath Service and Community Care Act 2 (1990) in post-modern times was the beginning of a political endeavour to respond to economic, demographic and professional pressures about the welfare of its citizens within their own communities. An explicit aim of these community care reforms is to maintain people within their own homes whenever possible. Family members and the development of other community agencies are therefore important service providers in achieving this objective. This new framework of delivery with the creation of quasi-markets has redefined the boundaries of responsibility between state provision, family, voluntary and private sectors. The consequence of such radical reforms on those requiring care has provoked a vigorous debate. For example, critics of changes in health and social care delivery 4 5 have questioned the congruency of policies which claim to advance the principles of choice and empowerment when family members are expected to play a central role in the delivery of care. The nectar to be drawn from these reforms was the apparent shift from a service-driven to a more needsled social and health service within Scotland and Britain. The sting attached to such a vision of utopia was the shape of these reforms, which divided health and social needs and introduced a means-testing mechanism to assess peoples' ability to pay for specific services.

Variant, 26, pp10-13, 2006., 2006