Community Empowerment and Renewal Bill
CONSULTATION QUESTIONS
Part 1: strengthening COMMUNITY participation
Community Planning
Q1. What would you consider to be effective community engagement in the Community Planning process? What would provide evidence of effective community engagement?
Effective community engagement (in all situations, not just Community Planning) should be an ongoing process, with full feedback of results to those involved. It should be linked to decision making and to an improvement agenda for the services concerned. Engagement must extend beyond the CP process and Partnership activities to the planning and delivery of public services and the activities and policies of the partner agencies.The first step is communication – people need to know what the structures are and what they can do. Accountability for delivering community engagement is vital – perhaps through an agreed community engagement plan. The full spectrum of activity from being informed to decision making power is required for effective engagement. People must be able to make informed choices on what they want to influence.
The process must be based on effective community capacity building/ community development support. Support must be well resourced and strategically placed to allow communities to engage with every partner.
Within Community Planning, effective community engagement will be demonstrated by extensive community involvement in identifying and addressing the priority issues for communities, and a bottom-up approach to developing the SOA. Local Community Plans will be developed and implemented. Evidence of wider outcomes will include a growth in the number of active and informed citizens, and in community ownership of assets. Resources devoted to supporting community engagement will be shown to lead to savings through improved decision making.
Q2. How effective and influential is the community engagement currently taking place within Community Planning?
There are examples where engagement has influenced the development of the SOA, overall Community Plan, and local Community Plans; led to community participation in the planning and delivery of public services and the allocation of resources; and involved community representation at all levels of a Partnership.But across Scotland such engagement is patchy, and sometimes weak. Mechanisms for effective engagement at a more local Community Planning level do not exist in all areas. Engagement may be offered in decisions on peripheral budgets, not knitted together with other decisions. Agendas are often set by agencies and their staff. Ongoing involvement, including participation in agenda setting, is required, not just consultation on isolated issues, which in reality cannot be decided in isolation anyway.
Q3. Are there any changes that could be made to the current Community Planning process to help make community engagement easier and more effective?
Communities should be involved both in establishing the vision, and particularly the SOA, as well as in working on the implications for their own locality or group.Guidance to CPPs must make clear the centrality of community engagement and community capacity building to achieving their outcomes.
A co-ordinated approach to community engagement is necessary (expressed through a community engagement plan). This must look at how to involve communities in key themes and the delivery of outcomes – not just shared consultation timetables.
Community engagement must always involve some opportunity for dialogue – for talking – and should not be purely survey based (and when surveys are planned, there should be engagement in planning them).
There must be flexibility and innovation in the approach to offering opportunities for dialogue with groups of people who might not otherwise take part – including young people.
In addition wider changes, including those proposed below, should feed back into the CP process, particularly:
· A broader duty on public bodies to engage communities
· Greater clarity on the role of community engagement in the future delivery of public services through its contribution to prevention and early intervention
· Refreshing the National Standards for Community Engagement
· Clarifying the relationship between community capacity building and community engagement.
An overarching duty to engage
Q4. Do you feel the existing duties on the public sector to engage with communities are appropriate?
The existing duties under the Local Government Act are often not applied broadly enough. There are examples of good legislation in particular fields, for example: in Planning law the need to set out clearly the approach and stages for engagement and who will be involved; and in tenant participation the need for a clear structure.Q5. Should the various existing duties on the public sector to engage communities be replaced with an overarching duty?
Yes No
Please give reasons for your response below.
Duties on all public bodies should be raised to the standards of the best practice enshrined in existing individual legislative provisions, in order to provide a clear, understandable right to involvement in decision making on public services, budgets and plans.If you said ‘yes’ to Question 5, please answer parts a. and b. –
a. What factors should be considered when designing an overarching duty?
A clear picture of who needs to be engaged, taking into account the diversity of the ways in which people come together in communities.Clarity about which existing provisions are replaced and which remain.
A general presumption that there is a need for community capacity building to support effective community engagement.
Joint and several responsibility of all public bodies for engagement and capacity building.
b. How would such a duty work with existing structures for engagement?
It would set a high minimum standard on which further engagement could be built.It should not prescribe a new ‘statutory’ alternative to existing structures that work well, but be worded so that a variety of approaches can be taken to fulfilling the duty.
Existing resources such as the National Standards can provide the basis for guidance on the interpretation of the duty.
Community Councils
Q6. What role, if any, can community councils play in helping to ensure communities are involved in the design and delivery of public services?
Arguably, the current statutory basis for Community Councils has limited rather than enabled them. In the right circumstances, Community Councils can play a key role in identifying and representing community views and an important role in representing communities on CPP's. However it is essential to recognise that Community Councils are not the only community groups who have an important role to play in the design and delivery of public services, and legislation must reflect the wide range of types of community groups and structures that exist and are possible, strengthening Community Councils where appropriate, but also recognising the role of community anchor organisations, and other community groups. Community activity is a cluttered landscape and no particular structures should be uniquely privileged.Nevertheless it is good in principle to have representative bodies that are legally obliged to represent all views and which people can raise any issues with, which may be more difficult with groups that are established for a specific purpose or constitutionally based on the participation of a specific membership.
Q7. What role, if any, can community councils play in delivering public services?
The role of Community Councils can play in delivering public services is not limited by the powers granted through current legislation, though in some areas they have taken responsibility for managing public buildings and the delivery of public services. However the current Act limits their ability to attract additional funding.Community Councils should themselves abide by the National Standards for Community Engagement.
Q8. What changes, if any, to existing community council legislation can be made to help enable community councils maximise their positive role in communities
The ‘schemes of establishment’ should be allowed to be made much more flexible, for example sometimes enabling other community anchor organisations to fulfil existing Community Council roles; perhaps these schemes should be integrated into the overall community engagement plan. This could then clarify the different representative and participatory roles that various bodies play, offer funding and support, and require adherence to standards, including the need to address inequalities and discrimination.Some of the learning emerging from the work of the previous CCWG should be revisited and further developed where appropriate. There is a need to establish what limitations there are (if any) that stop CCs from taking on wider roles e.g. lack of eligibility for charitable status.
Third Sector
Q9. How can the third sector work with Community Planning partners and communities to ensure the participation of communities in the Community Planning process?
The third sector is one of a wide range of partners that have a responsibility to provide support to and assist the development of communities, and should not just be seen as a potential service provider.The Voluntary Sector Interfaces have not yet all developed far in their potential to facilitate this, but could make appropriate connections; help to represent communities of interest, especially, and facilitate the involvement of disadvantaged groups; and contribute to community capacity building and the development of skills and knowledge.
National Standards
Q10. Should there be a duty on the public sector to follow the National Standards for Community Engagement?
Yes No
Please give reasons for your response
They should provide a best practice template for people to develop their own plans and practices. But engagement works best if people take responsibility themselves for defining its terms. In addition to such a duty probably being too difficult to enforce, we do not want a situation to arise where the National Standards could become the subject of litigation and engagement activity has to be planned defensively with this in mind. Flexibility is needed to allow front line staff and community development workers themselves to work with communities without formalising every encounter.However people should be required to adopt a strategic approach which takes the National Standards into account (see q11).
Community engagement plans
Q11. Should there be a duty on the public sector to publish and communicate a community engagement plan?
Yes No
Please give reasons for your response
There is a need for a clear statement of responsibilities for delivering community engagement, providing accountability at the same level as the Key Performance Indicators for services, and agreed across partnerships.If you said ‘yes’ to Question 11, please answer parts a. –
a. What information would be included in a community engagement plan?
· A commitment to engagement that applies both jointly and severally to the partners· Lines of accountability for delivery
· Sets of outcomes, indicators, baselines, targets
· Models and structures for community engagement – for both geographic communities and communities of interest, and including proposals for local community engagement strategies
· Definitions of the different types and purposes of community engagement
· Demonstration of how the National Standards for Community Engagement will be applied
· A clear recognition that none of the aspirations can be implemented successfully without the availability of community capacity building/ community development support where needed, and a commitment to making this possible
· A clear link to the Community Planning Partnership’s strategy for meeting Community Learning and Development needs.
Auditing
Q12. Should community participation be made a more significant part of the audit of best value and Community Planning?
Yes. Best Value audit already provides standards to some extent, and needs to be integrated with the proposed community engagement plan approach and with monitoring of compliance with the proposed general public sector duty. Accountability for self-evaluation needs to be built into the process, in line with existing Best Value principles.The expectation that auditing and assessing the impact of engagement should be carried out with the involvement of the communities concerned should be strengthened.
Community Planning Partnerships need to demonstrate clearly how they have taken account of the Strategic Guidance for Community Learning and Development and have embedded planning for CLD in their processes.
Named Officer
Q13. Should public sector authority have a named accountable officer, responsible for community participation and acting as a primary point of contact for communities?
Yes No
Please give reasons for your response
The Chief Executive (or Leader/Chair) of each organisation should be responsible for ensuring community participation and empowerment. The idea of a single ‘primary point of contact’ would be disastrous and lead to the side-lining of community engagement, which should be a widely shared responsibility. It would certainly be helpful for someone to take a strategic lead in each organisation, as appropriate to their structures. But these people should not be the only locus of accountability, let alone contact.Tenants’ right to manage
Q14. Can the Scottish Government do more to promote the use of the existing tenant management rights in sections 55 and 56 of the Housing (Scotland) 2001 Act?
Yes No
Please give reasons for your response
Q15. Should the current provisions be amended to make it easier for tenants and community groups to manage housing services in their area?
Yes No
Please give reasons for your response
Community service delivery
Q16. Can current processes be improved to give community groups better access to public service delivery contracts?
Yes No
Please give reasons for your response
Public bodies need to look at how contracts are organised to make them more accessible to community groups. A more strategic approach to making this happen is required. There should be better engagement between public bodies and social enterprise networks and additional support to develop the social economy sector. Community benefits and where appropriate duties of community engagement should be allowed for in Procurement Policies.Q17. Should communities have the right to challenge service provision where they feel the service is not being run efficiently and that it does not meet their needs?
Yes No
Please give reasons for your response
The right to raise issues and obtain a response is an integral part of effective engagement. Mechanisms need to be established to enable communities to be more involved in the planning and delivery of public services. Any more specific rights to challenge the delivery of services, where appropriate engagement and complaints processes have been exhausted, should not be written with the assumption that the outcome will be that an alternative provider should take over. They should assert a right to community involvement in decision making and co-production in service delivery. Communities should be enabled to make appropriate choices from the range of options from engagement in decision making through to direct service delivery, participatory budgeting etc.Community directed spending – participatory budgeting