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Dear Ariane, 

Thank you for the opportunity to offer some thoughts as to what the priorities for your committee’s work programme might be over the course of the next few years. Scottish Community Alliance draws together many of Scotland’s national networks and intermediaries that in turn represent and support 1000’s of local self-help groups and community organisations. Although the range of interests that these organisations pursue is highly varied, what they have in common is a commitment to increased levels of local empowerment with decision making and control over resources being devolved to the most local level that is practical - commonly understood as subsidiarity.

To this end, we would ask that you consider the following areas of work:

Continue to review the effectiveness of the 2015 Community Empowerment Act. In the last session, the sections on asset transfer and participation requests were considered and evidence taken. In both cases, further investigation and monitoring of progress would be beneficial. The National Asset Transfer Advisory Group should be able to provide evidence of progress being made in relation to asset transfer. The previous work on Participation Requests also merits further attention and it would be helpful if the Committee could consider this as part of a wider programme of development which relates to innovations in the field of participatory and deliberative democracy. These should include the implementation of Local Place Plans and other approaches such as Participatory Budgeting (and specifically the National PB Strategy Group’s draft Framework for the Future of PB) and Scottish Government’s commitment to build on the recent citizens’ assemblies. In relation to reviewing the effectiveness of other sections of the Act, we would suggest that the Committee consider the progress being made under Part 9 of the Act which relates to Allotments. Particularly since the pandemic, but beforehand as well, there has been significant increase in demand for community growing spaces and particularly for allotments. It would be interesting to review the extent to which demand for allotments now outstrips supply across the country and whether local authorities have been able to release sufficient land to develop new sites inresponse. The upsurge in the demand for growing spaces is reflected in the launch of a new grassroots collaboration -Get Growing Scotland

It would be helpful if the current interest in developing innovative approaches to democratic renewal (as noted above) could be scrutinised within the overall framework of the ongoing and crucially important Local Governance Review. In particular it would be helpful if this work included consideration of progress to date with the Local Governance Review and the conclusions reached from the analysis of the Democracy Matters national conversation. This would serve to revive a general awareness of the LGR process which has been in abeyance for various reasons, including Covid, for so long that for many in the community sector, it may well have  have been forgotten.

Over a period of many years, the way in which the community and voluntary sector has been supported by, and as a consequence, the way it has engaged with, the state has been transformed. Local authorities have become largely marginalised in this respect with cuts to CLD (Community Learning and Development) staffing and in general levels of funding that previously underpinned the local relationship with the voluntary sector. In many ways, Scottish Government has stepped into that space previously held by local authorities with a variety of funding streams directly negotiated with the sector and in particular, community anchors organisations. It would be useful if the committee could consider whether this shift in the focus of the relationship between the community sector and Scottish Government has been effective in producing better outcomes and whether it has had any bearing on the level of resources being directed to communities that suffer from the greatest social and economic disadvantage. Consideration of how the impact of Community Wealth Building in particular might not only bring local authorities back into the frame of engaging more effectively with the sector, but also redress the imbalance of resources being directed towards the areas of greatest need.

As your Committee will be scrutinising NPF4, we would ask that particular attention is paid to the way that NPF4 articulates with local and specifically community led development in relation to climate action set against the Scottish Government’s ambitious, but of late, missed targets in the shift towards Net Zero by 2045. In particular, and bearing in mind the First Minister's recognition of the importance of biodiversity loss, perhaps the committee might scrutinise the alignment of all Scottish Planning Policies and examine how the conflicting priorities for example between climate change, biodiversity loss and economic growth are reconciled (or not) when it comes to delivery on the ground. In this respect, the committee might explore the use of social and environmental tests that could be used to ensure development is better regulated in the public interest.

Furthermore, and in relation to meeting the challenge of Scotland’s housing crisis, the dominance of the volume housebuilder in the marketplace leaves very little space for community led development. We would ask the committee to explore ways that NPF4 can support greater emphasis in the provision of housing through alternative mechanisms such as cohousing, co-operative and self build models.

Should your Committee choose to undertake any aspect of the above suggestions, we would be happy to offer our support and to provide evidence to assist with your deliberations.

On behalf of the Scottish Community Alliance, I wish you every success with your work in the sessions that lie ahead.

Yours sincerely