WE’ve GOT SOME questions…

HELP US UNDERSTAND what STRONG LOCAL DEMOCRACY means TO YOU

We are an independent Commission that has been set up to look at what democracy in Scotland might look like, whatever the result of the referendum in 2014. The Commission is chaired by Councillor David O’Neill, President of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, and we have set out its main tasks at the end of this document.

Our starting point is that we believe that local services and local accountability matter. That is why we want to begin our work by hearing your views and suggestions about what happens now, and what the future might be.

This is only our first step in listening to you. Any information that you give us now will help start the debate, but we also want this to be an ongoing conversation. Over the next few months we will be setting up different ways in which you can meet us or tell us what you think. A good way to find out about these is by signing up to our newsletter at www.localdemocracy.info and by following @localcommission on Twitter.

How to Respond

We will use the information that you give us to develop our work and explore new ideas, and so what you tell us now is really important. For that reason, we want to hear from you as quickly as possible. We are keen to hear your views by 29 November 2013, or sooner if you can. However, please let us know if you need more time.

You can complete and return this form electronically to:

You can also respond online via our website:

http://www.localdemocracy.info/call-for-evidence/

Alternatively you can post a copy of this form to:

The Commission on Strengthening Local Democracy

Verity House

19 Haymarket Yards

Edinburgh, EH12 5BH

If you are responding as an individual we would be grateful if you could also provide some other information when you give us your views. This will help us develop an overall picture of the information we have. This is optional and any information that you provide will be used anonymously and will remain strictly confidential.

If you have any queries please contact us using the above details or call us on 0131 474 9200

Respondent Information

To help us make the most of your response, please tell us about yourself and how you want us to use the information you provide. There are some questions marked * and these must be answered by all respondents, unless you are directed past this question.

Name of Organisation (if appropriate) / East Lothian Council
Forename / David
Surname / Berry
Address / John Muir House
Haddington
Postcode / EH41 3HA
Telephone / 01620 827821
Email /
Twitter name if applicable / @davidsberry
* I am responding as: / An individual
An organisation/group
Do you consider yourself or your organisation as from or representing?
a rural area / an urban
area / an area with both urban and rural parts / don’t know /
not applicable
Would you be happy to be approached by the Commission for further discussion about your submission? / Yes
No
If you are responding as an individual:
* Do you agree to your response being made available to the public on the Commission’s web site? / Yes
No
* If you have agreed to your response being made available to the public, please tell us if we may also make your name and address available. (Please select one option only)
Yes, make my response, name and address all available
Yes, make my response available, but not my name and address
Yes, make my response and name available, but not my address
If you are responding as an individual we would be grateful if you could also provide some additional information. This is absolutely optional but it will help us get an overall picture of the information we receive. You can download this sheet here and send it to us at the same time as you return this form.
If you are responding as a group or organisation:
* The name and address of your organisation will be made public on the Commission’s web site. Are you content for your response to also be made available? / Yes
No
Which of the following best describes your organisation? (Please select one option only)
Community Group
Local Authority
Other public sector organisation
Third Sector organisation
Professional body / A business
A government department or agency
A social enterprise
Other (please specify)
Short description of the main purpose of your organisation:

Tell us what you think

We have not provided a long list of questions to answer, but we do want to hear what you have to say about some themes. Please respond to as few or as many as you wish. However, it would be helpful to keep your overall response to eight pages or less.

Please provide evidence or examples in support of what you say. This will help us understand and explore your ideas further.

1.  LOCAL DECISION MAKING: Do you think that decisions about local issues and services are made locally enough in Scotland at the moment? If not, what does deciding ‘locally’ mean to you? Please illustrate your answer with any examples from your own experience.
There is a serious shortfall at three levels:
1)  Decisions that should be made in Scotland are being made at Westminster (Independence debate and recognised as being outside the remit of this consultation)
2)  Decisions that should be made at City Region level are being made by the Scottish Government (e.g. Police Scotland; Strategic Planning; Housing; NHS; Social Services)
3)  Decisions that should be made at Town/community level are being made at Council level.
No current council area is contiguous with most people’s concept of ‘community’. Even cities divide into districts with which people identify; smaller than that, people generally identify with pre-1976 burghs or even non-burgh villages.
The present neither-fish-nor-fowl arrangement of 32 ‘local’ authorities are too small to be efficient in major departments (social work; education; transport), fail to provide democratic accountability to even more major services (NHS; police; fire; transport) but are still seen as too big to be local and therefore identified with.
2.  LOCAL ACCOUNTABILITY: How important do you think it is for locally elected people to be responsible for decisions about local issues and services? Do you have any examples of why this is the case?
Absolutely essential. However, this cannot be a shop-window ‘talking shop’ as appies now to community councils who dispose of 4/5-figure sums as budgets and are generally ignored as part of council budget-setting.
The degree to which the Scottish Government has persisted in centralising more and more decisions has undercut local democracy to the point of damage. Principal among these are decisions to centralize:
·  Police Scotland
·  Housing allocation policy
·  Housing planning policy
·  Renewables planning
·  Business rates
·  Transport infrastructure below trunk routes
·  Water and sewage
On the other hand, there has been huge inconsistencies in the powers allocated to city-region scale organisations that supposedly operate similar services—compare SPT with Sustrans.
At a lower level, the opportunity to provide communities with some sense of control and therefore tap into voluntary efforts and ownership. Strategic planning is reduced to totting up a number of houses and tasking councils with finding space to build them, with no priority given to jobs/convenience of travel, civic cohesion or quality of life.
3.  LOCAL PRIORITIES: How well do you think that communities’ local priorities are accounted for in the way that national and local government works at the moment? What is effective, and if there is room for improvement, how should things change?
Almost totally ignored. Looking at my own council, the priorities for growth and economic development among the six main communities is different in each case and—looked at in an east/west split, almost incompatible.
Worse, the opportunity for local initiative if not jealously guarded by a Scottish Government department is equally jealously guarded by a council department.
Examples of the former are the manner in which sheer house numbers are made a priority when the type, location and mix of housing with other construction is ignored, or the pure statistics of class sizes and exam results are exalted above the efficacy of education and its role in building real, balanced communities.
Examples of the latter are a fixation on distribution of each area of endeavour ‘fairly’ when unequal distributions that better match the community needs/aspirations would be far more effective (social care vs economic development) and an insistence on ‘lock-step’ policy that prevents, say, allschools in a high school catchment be managed locally as a unit, allowing funds to be concentrated in, say, sports vs languages or vice versa to become a ‘magnet’ school.
Just as the SP must stop using fiscal clout to get a uniform result, so must councils empower AND FUND community equivalents.
4.  STRENGTHENING DEMOCRACY: What do you think should be done to strengthen local democratic decision making in Scotland? Do you have any ideas or examples about how this could improve people’s lives?
The present system is a compromise gerrymandered in the 1990s to address the prevailing situation and is not fit for purpose. Only a radical reorganization will address this. The mistake in 1996 was to shoot the regions and keep the districts; the reverse should have been done with revival of burghs. In addition, because it does not have all the powers of a normal parliament, the SP has, from its inception, meddled with aspect of democracy that should be under local control.
A sensible approach to provide local democracy, combined with economies of scale of larger organisations that have the power and flexibility to innovate. Present thinking declares ‘postcode lottery’ to be a bad thing. If city regions were given the option to select differing paths, the resulting competition would not just benefit business but the economy as a whole and raise the standards for the entire population. Combine this with local control of limited but decisive aspects in the power of revived burghs would boost both perception and reality of local democracy being alive and well.
City Regions would be run by councils with under 80 professional members representing:
·  Strathclyde—based on Glasgow but not including Argyll
·  Lothian—based on Edinburgh and including West Fife and Falkirk
·  Tayside—based on Dundee and including East Fife and Stirling
·  Grampian—based on Aberdeen and including Moray
·  Highland—based on Inverness and including Argyll
·  Borders & Galloway—based on Dumfries and including Ayrshire
As well as ‘large’ services that regions once controlled (education; social work; roads), these would take oversee a number of services not currently in democratic control:
·  Health—all NHS operations in its area
·  Strategic planning—setting city region plans and conservation policies
·  Police—dismantle the clumsy and unresponsive Police Scotland
·  Fire & Rescue—not just reverse the 2011 step but closer work with Coastguard/RNLI
·  Water & Sewage—despite economies of scale, SW has been major block in planning dialogue
·  Transport infrastructure—includes trunk roads and local rail/tram/bus/ferry/air/harbour services
·  Business development—including rates control, tourism, investment
They would also absorb a number of services currently in council control, such as:
·  Waste and recycling
·  Facilities management
·  Cultural services—including libraries, museums, sport
Each of these will mange services for a population between 0.5 and 2m people and should be given budget of half or less of their expenditure, with monies raised by rates and local income and other taxes providing the rest. The ‘democratic deficit’ of such large organisations would be offset by much smaller burgh councils (or, in cities, district councils) that would be run by no more than a half-dozen volunteer councillors and a small staff (manager + admin + 2-3 officials). Decisions will mostly concern the powers they are responsible for:
·  Local planning permits
·  Local housing allocation
·  Local parks and recreation
·  Local contracting (for facilities, waste, etc., either using City Region above or private)
·  Local business association and its support
Funds for the burghs would be a function of the city region income, plus possible surcharges.
5.  SCOTLAND’S FUTURE: Has there been enough discussion about local democracy in the debate about Scotland’s future? If not, what should be addressed and how might this be achieved?
There has been too little debate but it is hard to pursue this adequately when the context remains unclear. If Scotland were to vote Yes, then a radical idea to boost local democracy, such as proposed under 4. becomes not just desirable but also feasible because the necessary laws to alter taxation and benefits and address the democratic deficit all lie with the one parliament. In the event of a NO, the appetite for change will be subdued and the means to alter things significantly will have been lost.
6.  OBSTACLES AND CHALLENGES: Do you have any concerns about strengthening local democratic decision making in Scotland?
Mostly because the focus of debate has not been on local democracy for two decades now, those involved with it have tended to be the less ambitious or the long-serving. This has not imbued it with any dynamism and each time the Scottish Parliament abrogates to itself goals such as class sizes, council tax freeze or the de-democratising of police and fire, the more people lose interest in local politics as a weak and non-influential element of democracy in their lives.
This must be reversed. In Ireland, because of the relatively large local authorities and the largish list STV systems of electing TDs, local politics are more highly regarded because ambitious politicians see councils as a vehicle to become better known in the area in which they intend to become a TD.
It is also essential that compensation should be on a more adequate scale. MPs MSPs and MEPs are all paid on a professional scale, whereas councilors are paid less than most officials and less than 25% of the council SMT members. The last pay rise only gave them 80% of the recommendation.
Especially if a city region scheme outlined above is to be adopted requires a professional salary for a full-time job; company directors of £1bn operations would not scoff at £65/day as anything but insulting.
7.  We would like to keep the conversation going with you. Can you tell us about any events, networks or other ways in which we could help achieve this? Is there anything that we can do to support you?
Take some of what I have written on board to stimulate dialogue. The status quo is death to democracy.

Thank you for your submission. If you have any queries about the Call for Evidence please contact us at: