Introduction: What Is Community Empowerment?

BRIEFING

Community Empowerment

1

Introduction: What is community empowerment?

The Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015[i] (the Act) aims to improve outcomes and reduce inequalityfor communities:

• through the ownership or control of land and buildings, and
• by strengthening their voices in decisions about public services.

“Within a Scottish policy context, outcomes based approaches are promoted to improve public services in a range of ways including by focusing on the concerns of individuals and communities and demonstrating accountability” (emphasis added).[ii]

Disabled people face some of the starkest inequalities of any characteristic group in Scotland, in terms of access to health, social services, work, the environment, etc. The Equality Advice Support Service(EASS)regularly shows the majority of inquiries from disabled people. 70.1% of calls in 3 months this summercame from disabled people whereas the next highest level of calls regarded race at 11.56%[iii]. Of course disabled people can have multiple characteristics that make up our identities and so may live with multiple levels of inequality.

11 topics are covered by the Act

These are:

National Outcomes

Community Planning

Participation Requests

Community Rights to Buy Land

Asset Transfer Requests

Delegation of Forestry Commissioners’ Functions

Football Clubs

Common Good Property

Allotments

Participation in Public Decision-Making

Non-Domestic Rates

An explanation of all 11 topics can be found here:

This briefing explains four topics of the Act because we think these processes are of most interest for improving outcomes and reducing inequality for disabled people. The topics of focus are Community Planning, Participation requests, Asset Transfer Requests and Participation in Public Decision-making.It looks at what these topics can mean for disabled people as a community of interest in our local areas.

Community Planning

Community Planning is how public bodies work together and with the community in each council area to make life better for people. The Act changes the rules about community planning to make it work better.

Community planning partnerships will have to make plans for local areas which may need different things.The Community Planning Partnership ismade up of people from the local council, health, police, fire andtransport services. They are responsible for making sure that there are good servicesprovided in the local community. These plans describe the local priorities, what improvements are planned and when these improvements will be made.

These are called Local Outcome Improvement Plans and the Community Planning Partnership within any local authority must make sure they involve as many local people as possible in making these plans.

Community Planning aims to meet the needs and ambitions of local people so the voices of local people are especially important.

They also have to ask Communities of Interest.Disabled people in any local area are a community of interest because they experience barriers to inclusion in their communities.

The legal duty to recognisethese is set out in the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015, part 2 Community Planning Guidance, which emphasizes the need to acknowledge communities of interest in its detailed supporting guidance on tackling inequalities:

‘31. Inequalities are not always experienced in neat concentrations of people in communities. They may apply to particular communities of place, communities of interest or even individual households. So the CPP will need to use its understanding of the distribution and extent of such inequalities to be able to tackle these effectively and efficiently…’

Research compiled for the Equality and Human Rights Commission[iv] suggests that while equalities groups live in the poorest areas, they do not always benefit from place based policies.This is because the reasons for disabled people’s poverty may differ from those around them – for example a disabled person may need specific support with transport to enable them to work. However if disabled people’s specific problems are not addressed, but those identified by the majority community are, then their disadvantage may actually intensify rather than be reduced.

Guidance for the Act also sets out how Community Planning Partners should engage with communities:

“The Community Planning Partnership must use engagement with communities… to establish their perspectives; both of needs and opportunities within the area and how they differ for particular sections of the community. Strong and up-to-date evidence as a result of community engagement and participation is powerful in shaping decision making that improves outcomes and tackles inequalities”.[v]

Community Learning and Development (CLD) (2013) regulations also provide clear link with this duty to fully engage as they give details on how CLD can provide the capacity to properly include communities in planning.

“5.5. In the course of developing their Single Outcome Agreement and Community Plan, each local authority will have developed a good understanding of the demography and socio-economic make-up of its area. This data will be helpful in deciding how to target CLD provision”.

5.6 In addition to this, it will be important to work with partner organisations and services – both providers of CLD and non-providers – to draw on…[all kinds of] evidence they hold to ascertain who is most likely to benefit from CLD provision”.

In sum, this means that community learning and development must be provided to those who need it so that they can fully participate in community planning.

Since 2015 What Works Scotland has been working with four community planning partnerships (CPPs) in Scotland developing collaborative action research projects, organising research seminars and events, and building capacity in collaboration and evidence use.[vi]

Participation requests

Public bodies should work with communities to make sure their services do what people need. If a community group has an idea to make services better, they can make a participation request to the public body that runs the service. The public body has to listen to the community group’s idea and talk to them about how it might work. Afterwards the public body must write a report to say what happened, if the service worked better and how the community group helped.

Any community participation body (or community organisation) can make a participation request. Your organisation is a community participation body if it is a:

• Community controlled body (has a constitution, has a defined community, is open to any community member, has a majority of members from that community, has a purpose for the benefit of that community).
• Community body without a written constitution (providing the public service authority is satisfied it meets requirements of the Act)
• Community of interest (people sharing an interest or characteristic)
• Community council
• A community body or class of community bodies designated by order of Scottish Ministers.

Applying for a participation request involves filling in a form. An organisation can contact the public service authority and discuss its proposals with them before making the formal request. Some authorities may have a pre-application process in which they will consider outline proposals and, if approved, will support youto develop your detailed request. This is not a legal requirement however.

The community participation body can suggest improvements to a service, or might even suggest taking over and providing the service itself.If the public service provider does not agree to talk to the community organisation they must explain why.

Participation Requests are not the only means of getting involved in setting local priorities or pursuing ideas.Public Authorities must ensure they continue to provide other opportunities for local people to engage, including consultation on their LOIP and equality outcome setting.

Disabled Peoples Organisations (DPOs) do a great deal to build the confidence and capacity of disabled people. Empowering disabled people enables them to contribute to the civic and economic life of their community. It also makes genuine coproduction possible, for example improving services through partnerships between planners, providers and service users.

However, DPOs have not been immune to spending cuts, and few have the resources and capacity needed to meet the increasing challenges of welfare reform, health & social care integration and community empowerment. Therefore Inclusion Scotland have asked Scottish Government and Local Authorities to recognise the value of DPO’s by funding them appropriately.

Asset Transfer Requests

A community group can make an asset transfer request for any land or buildings which a relevant authority owns, or rents from someone else. They can ask to buy or lease the land or buildings or have other legal rights, for example to occupy or use the land. This could be for things like taking over a building for people to meet and socialise, or helping people learn new skills.Relevant authorities include the Scottish Government, local councils, health boards and some other bodies.

The relevant authority must listen to what the community transfer body wants to do with the land or building. If their plan will help people more than other ways of using the land, they will be allowed to do it.

If your community organisation is interested in making an asset transfer request, guidance can be found here:

Funding is also available for asset or land transfer, and more information can be found here:

Inclusion Scotland have expressed concerns that because disabled people are more likely to live in poorer areas, there may be fewer community assets available to them or these assets might be of lower quality which would make them harder and more expensive to maintain and manage.

However, there is an opportunity here for disabled people and our organisations to take over assets in order to provide our own services.

Participation in Public Decision-making

People should be able to have their say in decisions that affect them. The Act allows the Scottish Ministers to make laws so that public bodies named in the law have to let people take part in some types of decisions.

Disabled people have shown that they are interested in having a say in decision making. Inclusion Scotland’s Highland project recent stakeholder survey asked how much time people were willing to commit to decision making. Overall 195 stakeholders responded to it of which 58% were from disabled people and their organisations. One finding of note is that half of disabled people, and almost a third of DPOs were willing to give up to four hours a month to influence decision making. This contrasts with a national poll of the general population by Our Democracy where less than a quarter of Scots responding were willing to give up the same amount of time[vii].

Public bodiesshoulduse the 7 National Standards for community Engagement. These are good-practice principles designed to support and inform the process of community engagement, and improve what happens as a result. The 7 standardsare Inclusion, Support, Planning, Working together, suitable methods for Engagement, and Communication. A full explanation of the national standards can be found here:

Inclusion Scotland would like to see the law changed so that Community Planning Partnerships (CPPs) include disabled people as Participant and Empowerment Advisors who can bring disabled people’s views and issues to the Partnership and take part in community planning and decision making. Currently disabled people’s organisations and other community bodies must request involvement in the CCP, while statutory services are automatically included. Including people from equalities groups could improve outcomes for those communities of interest.

Our Highland Policy and Engagement Project has engaged with disabled people and other stakeholders (their organisations ‘of’ and ‘for’ disabled people, and decision makers) in the region to ask them what could be done to improve disabled people’s influence locally.

As a result of that engagement, we were invited to a Highland CPP meeting to share three asks. One of the ‘asks’ identified by stakeholders was to have a disabled person (Participation and Empowerment Advisor) on each of the 9 Highland community partnerships (these are the local and feed back to the CCP). Progress is currently being made on co-producing what those advisors will do and how they can be supported. For further information on this and other work of the project, please contact John Beaton, our Highland Policy and Engagement Officer (contact details at the bottom of this briefing).

Participatory Budgeting(PB) is a way for people to have a direct say in how local money is spent.It complements the Scottish Government’s aspirations for community empowerment. Where PB works well, “people don't just 'vote' for what they want money spent on but think together about the consequence of what money therefore wouldn't be spent on”[viii].

You may have heard of opportunities in your local community to vote for how community grants are allocated to localprojects, for example. It is not part ofthe act but is part of a wider approach to advocating for participatory democracy in Scotland.“Different PB models exist, although it normally involves members of the community deciding through a voting process how to spend part of the budget of a public agency such as a local authority”.[ix] It is rapidly gaining popularity across Scotland.

Inclusion Scotland are interested to hear if our members have experience of participatory budgeting in their communities, and if this has had any impact on their organisations or services (see section on our Community Empowerment and Engagement Policy Panel).

Some examples of both place based community PB projects and community of interest PB projects can be found here:

Leglislation in this document and other related legislation

The Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act of 2015:

And more information and summaries of different parts of the act can be found on the Scottish Government website here:

In the Scottish Government’s Programme for 2017-18 the Local Democracy Billwill aim to decentralise power to a more local level. The government wants to focus on “delivering local decision making, not on behalf of a community, but by a community itself”[x]. Although there is not much detail on this right now, Inclusion Scotland will consult our members when Scottish Government publishes the consultation.

The Child Poverty Bill and Fundwill set targets to address child poverty and make funding available to support innovation in tackling child poverty.

The Public Bodies (Scotland) Joint Working Act of 2014[xi]required health and social services to work together to deliver integrated health and social care. Integrated Joint Boards were established at Local Authority level and Integration Authorities oversee the process. Inclusion Scotland have concerns that social care is not being prioritised and a medical model of care is overriding it. Our ‘Routes to Inclusion’ Health and Social Care Integration Engagement project provided valuable feedback from disabled people about what was important to them, and how they wanted to be engaged. It found that disabled people were not being engaged with over decisions on their health and social care at a local level.

The Land Reform Bill[xii]will, among other things, introduce a Scottish Land Commission for decision making on land use in communities, provide forengagement with communities in decisions relating to land, andenable people and communities to buy land to further sustainable development.

The Scottish Government has recently closed a consultation on enabling the Socio-Economic Duty in the Equality Act 2010 in Scotland.[xiii] This would place an expectation on a list of public authorities “to focus on communities within particular disadvantaged places; but also within particular communities of interest- such as young people leaving care; disabled people; or people from minority ethnic communities”.

Strategy and related documents

On Participatory Budgeting:

A Fairer Scotland for Disabled People[xiv]is the Scottish Government’s action plan for delivering the UN Convention on the Rights of Disabled People (UNCRPD). In particular, part five sets out commitments to active participation for disabled people in Scotland.

In 2017 Scottish Government launched a national strategy to combat social isolation and loneliness (see, the 2016 Programme for Government[xv]).

1

[i]

[ii] Dr Ailsa Cook for What Works Scotland, April 2017, ‘Outcome based approaches in public service reform’

[iii] EASS Statistics June – August 2017

[iv] ‘Hard-to-Reach’ or ‘Easy-to-Ignore’?, Mathews, Netto et al, Institute for Housing, Urban & Real Estate Research, School of the Built Environment, Heriot-Watt University for EHRC, September 2012

[v] The Requirements for Community Learning and Development (Scotland) Regulations 2013:

Guidance for Local Authorities

[vi]

[vii]

[viii]

[ix]

[x] P.109, Scottish Government 2017 ‘A Nation with Ambition: Programme for Scottish Government 2017-18’

[xi]

[xii]

[xiii]

[xiv]

[xv]