How important is it for people to engage with their communities?

David Cameron first mooted his Big Society plans in the Conservative election manifesto in 2010. Taking power away from decision makers and putting it into the hands of the people would allow them to improve their own lives and play a more active part in society, the Tories argued. Since then, the plans have become part of the legislative programme in England and the Big Society has divided opinion. North of the border, advocates of community engagement have been working tirelessly for years but just how important is it for individuals to engage with decision making in their own communities?

The Scottish Government states that its role is to help communities to work together to fulfil their potential. It is committed to communities being supported to do things for themselves – community empowerment – and to people having their voices heard in the planning and delivery of services – community engagement.

The Government states that where communities are empowered it would expect to see a range of benefits – local democracy boosted; increased confidence and skills among local people; higher numbers of people volunteering in their communities; and more satisfaction with quality of life in a local neighbourhood. Better community engagement leads to the delivery of better, more responsive services.

A strand of this is community planning, a process which helps public agencies to work together with the community to plan and deliver better services that make a real difference to people’s lives. Community planning has a myriad of aims but it intends to ensure people and communities are genuinely engaged in the decisions made on public services which affect them, allied to a commitment from organisations to work together, not apart, in providing better public services. Community planning is the key over-arching partnership framework helping to co-ordinate other initiatives and partnerships and where necessary, acting to rationalise and simplify a cluttered landscape and the ability of community planning to improve the connection between national priorities and those at regional, local and neighbourhood levels.

David Martin, Chairman of the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers (SOLACE) Scotland, believes community planning has greater scope than it has yet achieved so far in Scotland. He said: “There is a lot of potential for building on the good work which is already being achieved across Scotland. The Scottish Government now recognises that the public sector is a complex beast and there is a need to work together. John Swinney has said that partnership is one of his pillars of public sector reform and Nicola Sturgeon has recently talked about health and social care integration being really important. I think that applies generally to public services.

The key agencies in any given geography need a shared vision, most of them have it and the Government is now saying that they expect us to work hard and well together to try and make the best of the scarce resources we have all got at our disposal.

“However, multi-agency working is only part of community planning. The community part is just as important. Finding ways of engaging communities and getting them involved in community planning is a key priority for us all. There are some parts of Scotland where people are engaged but it is hard work and you tend to get activists and people who want to be involved in the community attracted to community planning. The real challenge is to get much broader and deeper engagement with the whole community, particularly older people and youngsters. We could do more work on that. One possible improvement is if community plans aren’t just done at council level but also at a locality level. If you take Renfrewshire as an example, we have Renfrewshire-wide community safety priorities but you might find slightly different issues in Johnstone, Renfrew and Paisley. It is much easier to get citizens engaged at a local, community level than in a more abstract basis in a bigger geography. An element of localism is needed in community planning.

“The other issue is you need to be in it for the long haul. One of the things which public agencies need to do generally is to be more willing to listen to ideas which come from people. Of course, they are political organisations and of course, elected members need to run them but you can have participative democracy as well as representative democracy.” The Local Government in Scotland Act 2003 contained a package of measures intended to support local determination and to deliver better, more responsive, public services. The three core elements are interlinked, best value, community planning and the power to advance wellbeing.

Community planning is intended to provide “trust within a framework”, empowering local government, with its partners, to take ownership and drive forward improvement in local services.

Community planning was not a new concept, partnership working had been under way for many years before community planning was given a statutory basis in the Local Government in Scotland Act and this experience informed the legislation. The Act places duties on local authorities to initiate, facilitate and maintain community planning, including consulting and cooperating with communities.

The Scottish Community Development Centre (SCDC) is the national lead body for community development, with over 17 years’ experience in the field. According to the SCDC, community development is defined as action which helps people to recognise and develop their ability and potential, and organise themselves to respond to problems and needs which they share. It supports the establishment of strong communities that control and use assets to promote social justice and help improve the quality of community life, and enables community and public agencies to work together to improve the quality of government.

So what are the benefits of community development to individuals? SCDC director Fiona Garven believes there are many. She said: “What we would advocate is that if people and communities are supported to respond independently to their own issues and concerns, they become less reliant or dependent on services which are run by public authorities which could be withdrawn at any point, particularly in this financial recession. By communities being supported to respond independently to their own issues or concerns, this makes them more resilient and gives local people more control and more confidence about their future.

“Also, if local communities are involved, meaningfully, in shaping and delivering services then the kind of local activities and solutions which are delivered are much more likely to directly respond to local needs. Community development is not just about delivering services to people, it is about engaging local people.

There is a whole variety of activities which take place using a community development approach.

It uses an asset-based approach and taps into knowledge, skills and expertise of people in communities to try and create local solutions.

The process of community development, by its nature, creates stronger social networks which lend themselves to helping people feel safer in their communities, happier about where they live, less isolated and less vulnerable especially at times of crisis.

“We are seeing the emergence of language around community development coming through in a lot of new and emerging policies.

Community development has relevance in all aspects of modern, participatory governance processes. If we look at the debate around public service reform and the recommendations of the Christie Commission, about community-led regeneration, reshaping the care agenda and also the impending Community Empowerment and Renewal Bill, community development approaches are going to be necessary for statutory authorities to meet new legislative requirements. At the moment, there is no distinct policy locus for community development because it crosses into a number of boundaries. That is a strength but it is also a weakness. Because we don’t have a distinct policy locus, it means there is nobody directly supporting community development as an approach. It might be beneficial for the Scottish Government to create a distinct space for community development at a policy level, while still respecting that it crosses several boundaries in order to enable [to] support [its] promotion.

“It comes down to what the Scottish Government could do to influence local decisions around investment and community development. There is possibly a role for the Scottish Government around guidance to local authorities and their partners on the importance of investing in community development as part of a longer gain. Because of the current financial crisis, we are seeing people making hard decisions at local level; what we are seeing is a withdrawal of funding from community-based organisations, or community development activity. Actually, if the investment was protected and maintained, it would mean we could reduce reliance later which would lead to better outcomes for people and cost savings in the long term.” Communities are also at the heart of the Scottish Government’s new regeneration strategy.

Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure and Capital Investment Alex Neil told Holyrood last month that community development trusts are vital. He said: “I believe community development trusts, there are about 400 in Scotland, are by far the best way to regenerate local communities and particularly those which have identified ways of raising money for themselves. If you look at Neilston Development Trust, for example, it used the Land Reform Act to community right to buy the disused Clydesdale Bank offi ce.

Th ey bought that for a token amount and have turned the ground fl oor into a community café and upstairs into offi ces. Th ey have now got a deal together with a private sector wind farm developer to create a community wind farm which will generate income of hundreds of thousands of pounds for them over 20 years.

“In the longer term, they plan to reinstate a disused small hydro power station, which has been disused for 50 years. Th at can generate substantial additional income. The community development trust can then use that money to not only fund itself but to use it to attract other investment into Neilston. Th ey can use the money in 101 diff erent ways of benefi t to the local community and that is a very classic example of what I want to see, and the Government wants to see, happening across the country where communities, urban and rural, take regeneration into their own hands and take the lead, with outside help from local authorities and government.” Another vital way to benefi t Scotland’s communities is through the development of social enterprises – businesses which trade specifi cally for social and/or environmental purposes. Social enterprises exist to make a profi t just like any private sector business but instead of paying dividends to shareholders, any profi ts or surpluses they make are reinvested into social and environmental purposes. Th ey also provide local people with employment and training opportunities. Duncan Th orp, Parliamentary, Policy and Communications Offi cer at Social Enterprise Scotland, said: “Th e purpose of social enterprises is to serve their communities.

Every single social enterprise is a business but the crucial point is they have a social or environmental purpose in every example. In terms of regeneration, helping people back into work, every single social enterprise has that kind of remit. When we talk about a social enterprise we are talking about a wide range of organisations, we are talking about housing associations, credit unions and many more.

Th eir purpose is to serve their communities, they are not driven by a simple profi t motive, however, they want to make money and the more money they make, the more they can invest in that social purpose.”