Report bemoans "gradual dismantling" of local democracy in Scotland

Local democracy in Scotland has been “gradually dismantled” over the last 50 years, with the result that the country is one of the most centralised in the western world, an independent commission has concluded.

In an interim report the Commission on Strengthening Local Democracy claimed that Scotland would be “fairer, wealthier and healthier” if local communities had control over the issues that mattered to them. 

It suggested that the country might simply have become used to a culture that did not empower people locally.

“We have an ethos where the default position is that for something to be delivered efficiently it has to be centralised, for national outcomes to be achieved, national agencies have to be created, and where local discretion is available, this is often seen as a postcode lottery rather than legitimate local choice and local democratic accountability,” the report said.

“This culture has gained such credence that only a very major initiative can alter the direction of travel.”

The report suggested that, across western democracies, local authorities had a wider range of powers and responsibilities than in Scotland and these were often increasing.

“But so too are they demonstrably much more local. We should seek the benefits of localism in Scotland, within a framework of rights and standards, but that can only be the case if it is matched by a push down of powers below the level of local authorities too.”

It added: “This isn’t something to be done uniformly, but should allow communities that want it opportunity to shape or take charge of their area.”

The Commission suggested that effective and strong local democracy must involve:

• Changing the way democracy is thought about: “Strong local democracy must be about more than a trickle of powers from national government and only then to communities all instigated and controlled from above. It should mean accepting that strong local democracy cannot be designed from the top down and that it must be empowered from the bottom up.”
• Recognising that strong democracy is both participatory and representative.
• Empowering services and decision making that is fit for communities. “Outcomes are most sensibly improved by focussing on what works locally and what communities need, and by strengthening choice and control for local people. Asymmetry – functions, powers and structures that reflect the diversity of local areas and the people that live there – is necessary because context priorities and aspirations vary across Scotland. Local variation rather than standardisation, within a framework of rights, should therefore be a positive consequence of a strong democracy.”
• Fiscal empowerment to deliver outcomes. “Greater fiscal decentralisation is needed so that local communities are empowered to participate in and inform choices about the public services they want and how these will be funded.”

The chair of the Commission, Cllr David O’Neill, said: “Scotland has a proud and important tradition of deciding on things locally. But local democracy is now under real pressure in this country”.

“Over the decades, we’ve seen a culture in which more and more services and decisions been taken away from local communities and put into the hands of distant bureaucracies. As a country, we have got so used to this approach that we’ve come to think of it as the only way to improve public services, even though that has meant that for most people decisions are now taken far away from where they live their lives.”

Cllr O’Neill added: “That kind of thinking won’t see us through for much longer. People are losing trust and confidence in democracy, and fewer and fewer are choosing to vote. Not only that, but this top down way of working hasn’t produced the results that Scotland needs or tackled the local challenges that people face.”

The Commission had identified that it was time to think about a different ways of doing things in which local people were in charge of what happens in their communities, he said.

Cllr O’Neill argued that strong local democracy needed much more than a “trickle down” of powers from national government, to councils and only then to communities. 

“Instead, we need to rethink local democracy from the bottom up,” he suggested, calling for local democracy to be empowered. “We need to recognise that variety is a healthy part of democracy, and make sure that communities themselves have the tools and the freedoms to make choices about services and about how to pay for these.”