Democracy Matters: route map to reform

Annex B proposed workstreams

1. Legislative Reform - New rights in legislation and a coherent legal framework for local empowerment

This workstream will:

• Identify the legal basis for taking these reforms forward and how to strengthen and streamline the existing legislative framework for community governance and empowerment. It will also bring forward draft provisions for inclusion in a proposed Local Democracy Bill.

• It will specifically consider changes that could be made to ensure that communities have stronger democratic rights to participate in decisions about local services and to request transfer of further power or functions - such as control over specific local decisions and budgets, where there is capacity and this is supported by the wider community.

2. Governance Design – representative and participatory community governance structures

This workstream will:

• Examine the potential for changes to the way that community councils, CPP-led Locality Planning arrangements and other locally specific community-led approaches to decision-making work are supported, in order to strengthen the way that they represent communities and enhance their role in local decision-making.

• Consider how they facilitate inclusive and democratic participation within local decision-making and their ability to work with local government and other relevant public bodies to take on any future transfer of power and resources.

• Design (legislative if necessary) scrutiny and regulatory measures including mechanisms for dispute resolution.

• Ensure that there are effective routes for all to participate and interact with governance structures – including children and young people.

3. Funding Reform – developing sustainable funding models

This workstream will:

• Explore options to streamline and integrate where possible the funding that is provided nationally to support community capacity and how to increase the impact and efficiency of resources provided to support local delivery.

• We will also work with local areas and public bodies to better understand what it what it takes to align funding across the public sector – including across different organisational systems and siloes - to deliver the priorities set by communities and what approaches to community planning and leadership can better enable that.

• It will also consider mechanisms for transferring delegated authority over public sector budgets to deliver the priorities set by communities as part of new community governance arrangements.

4. Community Capacity – increasing investment in community support and development infrastructure

This workstream will:

• Consider how capacity support provided at national, local and regional level might be increased and more strategically designed and deployed – including through grant-making and investment in community development support.

• Investigate how we can better co-ordinate existing support to make it more accessible and how models of effective support might be promoted, shared and embedded across all public bodies, including to ensure community bodies have the required governance, finance skills, and capacity to take on greater rights and functions.

Equalities and Human Rights

All of the workstreams will consider how the design and implementation of proposals for reform can advance our equality and human rights commitments, and work to address or mitigate any risks, through continued engagement with equalities organisations and greater local engagement.

Accountability

We will also examine potential models for accountability that can best enable communities to participate effectively in processes including to agree local outcomes and monitor, scrutinise and support improvement in how public funding is being used and how our local services are performing.

Deliberative Democracy

A cross-cutting priority will be to embed participatory and deliberative approaches to local governance and decision-making, and to consider the digital and physical supports required to ensure that the principles of participation, trust and transparency are put into practice through the design and implementation of reforms.

Local Governance Reform

We will also ensure that community decision-making reforms align with the development of enabling legislation that will further empower Regional Economic Partnerships and support the delivery of Single Authority Models, so that we have a coherent approach and an effective legislative basis for enhanced local governance arrangements at a regional, local and community level.