Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015: update and findings report

Executive Summary

The Scottish Government is committed to supporting communities to have more power and influence over what matters to them. The Christie Commission on the future delivery of public services recognised the importance of community empowerment and this is a key aspect of the Scottish Government’s approach to public service reform. Community empowerment can enable people and communities to shape services locally and take action to support the creation of successful places across Scotland.

When the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 (the Act) was passed by the Scottish Parliament in 2015 it provided a legal framework to promote and encourage community empowerment and participation, by creating new rights for community bodies and placing new duties on public authorities.

The Act has enabled a number of benefits, including:

• introducing a clear purpose for community planning focused on improving outcomes for local people
• implementing a legal means by which communities can have more influence in local decision-making
• widening community right to buy to all of Scotland
• shifting the balance of power towards communities by putting community asset transfer on a statutory footing

The purpose of this report is to:

• present the findings of in-depth reviews of two parts of the Act: Part 3: Participation Requests and Part 5: Asset Transfer
• present an assessment of the implementation of community planning (as covered by Part 2: Community Planning)
• provide an update on all other eight parts of the Act

The review of Parts 3 and 5 is closely aligned to the Scottish Government and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) Local Governance Review which is considering how powers, responsibilities and resources are shared across national and local spheres of government, and with communities. It is also presented within the wider context of other Scottish Government legislative, policy and funding programmes, supporting the empowerment of Scotland’s communities.

The Act has provided a legal mechanism for communities to take control of public assets to support wider social, economic and environmental objectives and supports a focus on tackling inequalities and improving outcomes at a local level. The review of Parts 3 and 5 have concluded that there has been significant progress in supporting the empowerment of communities across Scotland, with the legislation acting as an enabler to support community engagement and participation.

Part 3 legislation has encouraged greater numbers and types of public service providers to engage with their communities on a range of matters, that help improve local service delivery and support their public engagement strategies. Although participation request applications are low, much has been learned of their use by community organisations and their application by public service providers. However, the review has found that further clarification is needed on their purpose and for when their use is required.

Part 5 legislation is the first of its kind in the UK and is recognised as an enabler for community groups seeking ownership and control of public land and buildings. It has facilitated the transfer of greater numbers of public assets across multiple public service providers to local community groups; however, more work needs to be done to collate robust asset transfer data to better understand its impact.

The assessment of community planning found that there are areas of excellence where Community Planning Partnerships (CPPs) are embedding the principles of the Act, not only in what they are doing but in how they are demonstrating clear commitments to shared leadership. The assessment also found areas where community planning can be less effective, but that this is not down to any single stakeholder. The assessment found that further work to maximise the potential of the legislation will be required if CPPs are to support greater focus on, and investment in, earlier intervention and prevention as part of a wider public service reform agenda. Through the Whole Family Support Programme, the Scottish Government is prioritising action to respond to this assessment. Action is being taken with Community Planning partners to set a clear vision for community planning, strengthen collective leadership and take concrete steps to remove some of the barriers identified that prevent strong collaboration and partnership working. This complements ongoing work through the Community Planning Improvement Board and Community Planning Managers’ Network and will, for example, support work with partners to transform how funding, policy, reporting, accountability and data enable partners to collectively bring services together around families.

Nevertheless, the Scottish Government has identified a number of opportunities to strengthen the implementation of the legislation in relation to Part 2: Community Planning, Part 3: Participation Requests and Part 5: Asset Transfer and these findings are outlined in the relevant sections of this report.

The Scottish Government believes that further empowerment of communities is important for shaping and delivering sustainable, prevention-focused and place-based services that improve outcomes for local people. A key feature of the next steps in Scotland’s community empowerment journey will be delivering the Local Governance Review. Through Democracy Matters, communities across Scotland have expressed a clear desire for much greater control over what happens in the places they know best. Communities want decision-making models and processes which are flexible, with independent budgets and the right support in place to enable communities to become more resilient and deliver more.

The Democracy Matters Steering Group has been assembled to ensure that the policy development phase of Democracy Matters proceeds in the same spirit as the engagement process. The group is co-chaired by the Minister for Public Finance, Ivan McKee and the COSLA Vice President Councillor Steven Heddle. It has members from the community sector, local government, equalities groups and other local partners and is taking a co-production approach to model development, ensuring that models deliver on the ambitions set out by communities. The Local Governance Review also involves joint work, initially with local government and health and social care partners in three CPP areas, to develop Single Authority Models of local governance for each distinct geography. Place-based arrangements will strengthen and streamline decision-making at CPP level and create the right conditions to establish powerful community level decision-making arrangements, in line with the emerging findings from the Democracy Matters process.