Scottish Rural Communities Policy Review: East Borders case study

Key learning and recommendations from the Borders

Firstly, all participants emphasised the need for longer-term funding covering both capital and revenue, to ensure stability, strategic planning, and improved outcomes.

There were several strategic recommendations from this case study regarding how Community Led Local Development aligns with other rural funds and structures, including South of Scotland Enterprise. A specific suggestion was to harness the engagement already conducted through the development of Local Place Plans to inform future plans:

“I would like to see more of an alignment. So for example, we have structures of strategic partnerships. We have Community Learning and Development, we have the Community Planning Partnership, local employability partnership. Yeah, I can go on and on and on. Nothing seems to be aligned and all of those partnerships having the identified priorities, some of them are lucky enough to have budget allocated towards others don't.”

A recommendation was made to increase collaboration with the Third Sector Interface (Borders Community Action) and develop better networks of peer support between Local Action Groups in order to share knowledge and experience:

“I basically find that anytime I speak to another LAG, I learn something useful. The idea of how to deal with underspend that came from another lag our legacy document was inspired by another lag. So anything that improves networking opportunities and us to understand what other areas are doing.”

Finally, many felt that the Youth Local Action Group in the Borders was doing impactful work and should receive further support, including increased annual budgets, confirmation of multi-year funding, and additional support for the youth facilitator at Youth Borders. In addition, there were calls for greater integration between the Youth Local Action Group and Local Action Group:

“We're trying to get one of the young people to kind of become like an ambassador for the YLAG to kind of sit on the LAG to kind of allow that relationship to be a bit more fluid and kind of like the YLAG know and the LAG know what each other up to. But it's a little bit daunting for some of the young people. So I'm trying to persuade one of the older ones basically.”