Borders council slow to give 'power to the people'

EWAN LAMB concludes our series on Audit Scotland's investigation at Scottish Borders Council

The preparation and completion of locality plans for the Scottish Borders under the 2015 Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act are well behind schedule while asset transfers to local groups have also been slow to take off.

This sluggish implementation of community powers comes in for criticism in Audit Scotland's Best Value Assessment report - the first detailed look at Borders local government services since 2010.

According to the auditors: "The CPP (Community Planning Partnership) has been slow to implement the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015. The Act aims to give communities more influence over how their council and its partners plan and provide services. It also establishes ways for residents to get more involved in local decision-making and service provision.

"A council is required to work with its community planning partners to engage with community bodies and improve local outcomes. Joint efforts and resources should be targeted on areas of greatest need to reduce inequalities." 

In the Borders case the CPP’s local outcomes improvement plan was produced late. The CPP’s locality plans are two years late and incomplete. 

"The CPP’s strategic board decided to commission a locality plan for each of all five Borders localities simultaneously. It did not prioritise localities or communities with the worst levels of deprivation or the poorest outcomes on issues such as health and education. All five locality plans remained in draft when they were considered by the CPP’s strategic board in June 2019. 

"Although they reflect the themes of the community plan, they will not be integrated with the community plan until they are finalised. Ambitions in locality plans have not been costed and are therefore not yet reflected in budgets of the council or its CPP partners. The strategic board was not advised when the locality plans would be finalised."

Meanwhile, Community Asset Transfers (CATs), participation requests and participatory budgeting are all at an early stage. 

Since January 2017 community groups have had a right to ask relevant public authorities to transfer land or buildings that they feel they could use more effectively. The council developed its own guidance on CATs in 2011. 

"Council officers and the council’s CPP partners have worked with community groups over the past two years to build capacity to encourage CATs", says the report. "The CPP has also funded a Men’s Shed Development Officer to build capacity on this specific issue. Nonetheless, the scale of CATs has been limited.

"There have been over 30 enquiries regarding CATs during the past two years. Of these, three have progressed to the submission of a formal application and one has been approved. The council recognises it is responsible for ensuring that CATs are viable and sustainable. They recognise that progressing CATs is at an early stage and will require further promotion and support by the council and its CPP partners."

And the report continues: "The CPP has been slow to empower and engage communities.

It is difficult for the council and its partners to determine progress because some indicators and measures in the community plan are not measurable or lack short-term and medium-term targets.

"Progress reporting includes little analysis of how activities drive performance or deliver improvements for local people. There are no arrangements to track the implementation of locality plans and these are not linked to either the CPP’s community plan or the council’s plans. A comprehensive performance management framework is needed."