A More Local, Local Democracy in Scotland

Scotland has some of the largest councils in the world with an average population of 170,000, against a European average of just 10,000.

Highland Council, for example, covers a third of Scotland’s landmass and 11% of Great Britain. It is physically larger than Wales (with 22 local authorities). Six other Scottish councils including Aberdeenshire, Argyll and Bute and Dumfries and Galloway are also larger than the country of Luxembourg, (with 12 cantons and 116 communes (councils).

How can councils that large be responsive to local needs? Or give people the opportunity to take part in their own governance? Devolution in the UK shouldn’t stop at the Scottish Parliament, power needs to continue down to truly local, local councils.

In recent years, ERS Scotland has worked on a number of campaigns.

Building a Local Scotland

We joined a group of academics, trade unionists, former council leaders and journalists who’ve crossed party and constitutional divides in pursuit of a shared political aim. To tackle the creeping centralisation that has left Scotland as one of the least locally governed countries in the world.

The group launched a declaration: Building a New Local Democracy in Scotland.

Act As If We Own the Place

The Act As If We Own the Place campaign is dedicated to improving Scotland’s local democracy.

We are calling for parties to:

1. Back a new way of doing local democracy – by letting communities set up local Citizens’ Assemblies to plan their areas’ futures.
2. Introduce an ambitious Local Democracy Bill, that makes it easy for people to take power back to where they are.
3. Sign up to the Declaration on Local Democracy, enshrining a principle of local community power

Act as if Councils

If democracy is about anything it is about us running our own affairs. That is why we are asking you to ‘act as if you own the place’—if the citizens of a village, town, city or country don’t own it, then who does?

We are encouraging communities all over Scotland to hold ‘Act as if Councils.’ These are events where many local people gather together to talk about how they want to run that local place. If you like the idea of running your own community, then work out how you might do more than talk about it. If you or a group of you are interested in holding an ‘Act as if Council’ in your community then contact us. We will help you make it happen.

We hope there will be many ‘Act as if Councils’ across Scotland, building confidence in people and asking the powerful to make way for them. Communities can redesign their local democracy to work better for them, flourishing all the more by taking control of their community’s future.