Listening to each other - learning from Scotland’s Community Empowerment Act
The meeting considered Scotland’s Community Empowerment Act which places a responsibility on central and local government to listen, and asked ‘What can we learn from the experience so far?’
The Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 was designed to empower community bodies through the ownership or control of land and buildings, and by strengthening their voices in decisions about public services. Provisions include:
A set of national outcomes drawn up by government.
Community Planning Partnerships (CPPs) for each local authority area, to produce a local outcomes improvement plan (LOIP) with 'locality plans' at a more local level for places experiencing particular disadvantage.
CPPs are required to support community bodies to participate in all parts of the process, ‘in the development, design and delivery of plans and in review, revision and reporting of progress.’
Participation requests: where a community body believes it could help to improve an outcome which is delivered by a public service, it is able to request to take part in a process with the public service authority to improve that outcome.
Measures to achieve more community ownership of land and buildings, including the right to request asset transfer from the public sector to communities.
The Community Empowerment Act is part of a longer story in Scotland, including the earlier Community Right to Buy legislation, the Christie Commission, etc, all broadly pushing in a similar direction, i.e. a shift in the role of the state towards an enabling function, empowering local communities and citizens to do more, and to encourage partnership working.
The speaker was Maddy Halliday, CEO of Voluntary Action North Lanarkshire.
Here are some of the key points made by speakers and in discussion:
The Act is regarded as successful in several respects. It has been widely implemented, and has produced some improvements. For example, it has led to somewhat greater investment in capacity-building at local level, and it has produced a more nuanced balancing of interests in local planning activities, with more community influence in decision-making, and a growth in participatory structures (e.g. participatory budgeting for small grants schemes).
However, as a Caledonian University assessment found, there has been some public sector resistance, and progress has been strongest in rural areas, and less so in some urban areas. Moreover, the impact in areas experiencing disadvantage has not been as great as hoped for.
Overall, participants in our meeting felt that this type of legislation does not necessarily advance the practice of ‘radical’ listening. A key test is what happens when those in positions of authority hear something they don’t like, or which doesn’t fit.
For radical listening to flourish, a formal set of structures or practices, as set out in the Act, may be necessary but is not sufficient, when what is also required is a shift in culture and behaviour that allows relationships to flourish, including among people who may disagree.]
Critically, public bodies need to signal an intention to really listen, not just to confirm or negate a hypothesis.
A shift in culture and behaviour may require a significant and sustained investment of effort, including training in new skills.