Scottish Rural Communities Policy Review: East Moray case study

What could be improved?

Timescales

The biggest challenge identified by participants was unmanageably short timescales for both project applications and delivery. Participants said this threatened the success of capital projects and greatly constrained the use of revenue. In turn, this threatened staff recruitment and retention, and was considered by participants to led to a piecemeal, reactive and individualist approach to project development:

“The challenge that comes is that capital projects of the scale that we're aspiring for require time. They're not going to be turned around with the year cycle funding that everybody is at the mercy of right now. So along with that comes project stability. You know, the ability to see something through and communities need to know that if they're going to put the energy and effort into starting something, we've got to have the capacity to take it through to the end.”

Participants requested better prior notification and more time for application and delivery, ideally on a multi-year basis.

Revenue funding

The balance of funding between capital and revenue was also considered to be a constraint, with participants emphasising the need for more of a focus on revenue funding. Participants said this would offer opportunities for attracting further grant and traded income beyond the end of the Community Led Local Development funding:

“There's often, for example, not very much core funding at all available. So that's really hard to find. And often if I'm successful, and I am generally pretty successful at finding grant funding, but finding a way to support the core operations of the business is always a head scratcher.”

“You will not get community-led development without some revenue support. The main thing for me is trying to get Scottish Government to understand the need for continued revenue funding.”

Participants were also interested in the potential to use the funding for core costs and existing projects, although it was noted that this would need to be connected to making a shift change in the future towards greater sustainability.