Scottish Rural Communities Policy Review: Youth case study

Introduction

In 2024, the Scottish Government asked a research team to review three core elements of funding and support for rural communities:

• Community Led Local Development, which gives communities the power to tackle their own local challenges. Local Action Groups are made up of local people and organisations manage funding in their area.
• Scottish Rural Action, which works to build and champion a grassroots rural movement in Scotland.
• The Scottish Rural Network, which supports and encourages rural development by connecting communities and sharing information, ideas and good practice.

During 2025, researchers worked with people and organisations across Scotland to understand experiences of engaging with these initiatives. Evidence was gathered from many different people and sources through interviews, surveys, workshops and the analysis of existing data.

The experiences of residents of rural and island communities were fundamental to this work. Six case studies were selected in order to gather perspectives from a range of locations and contexts:

• East Borders
• East Moray
• Harris and Scalpay
• Lochalsh and South Skye
• Orkney
• West Lothian

In addition, a case study focused on the experiences of young people, aged 18 to 30, living or working in rural and island areas of Scotland.

The findings from these case studies are being published as short standalone reports. All reports from the research can be found online here.

This report presents findings from the youth case study. An online survey, complemented by three place-based youth workshops, investigated young people’s understanding and experiences of the initiatives under review and their aspirations for the future of rural and island support.

We are grateful to all of the young participants who took part in this research.

Other Case Studies

• East Borders
• East Moray
• Harris and Scalpay
• Lochalsh and South Skye
• Orkney
• West Lothian