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Economy and Fair Work Committee 18 May 2022

18 May 2022 · S6 · Economy and Fair Work Committee

Item of business

Town Centres and Retail

Martin Avila (Community Enterprise in Scotland) Watch on SPTV

I thank the committee for giving me the chance to speak this morning. How we engage the less listened to communities is a wicked problem. Communities in which individuals and families spend more of their time working, in order to earn the wages that they need to survive, obviously have less time to be involved in civic pursuits and engagements. However, there is a track record in Scotland—which is shown through the Scottish Government-funded social enterprise census—of there being more social enterprises and community enterprises based in areas that are higher on the Scottish index of multiple deprivation list. There is a willingness to get involved in civic life in all communities, especially when it is focused around place. Part of the problem is that the emphasis is often placed on the communities and the problems that they face themselves. There has to be an understanding that institutions are often based far from the communities in which they want to engage. There is recognition that community engagement does not necessarily work. That sounds like a controversial statement: what do I mean by saying that community engagement does not necessarily work? If there are not links to and social capital in a community, it is difficult to make any sort of progress in that community. Members of the committee who have arrived new in any situation will recognise that: as your social capital and network of relationships build over time, it becomes easier to gather the political will to get things done. Institutions are faced with exactly the same problem in engaging with communities. If they are not based in those communities and do not have existing ties with them, they find it much more difficult to know where to go and to have the credibility to engage with them. A programme of community development is therefore needed. I listened to the committee’s last evidence session and noted that Euan Leitch from SURF—Scotland’s Regeneration Forum mentioned how community development work seems to have fallen by the wayside over a number of years. However, working with an agenda that seeks to build relationships, capacity and links within and between communities gives us the best chance. One of the biggest changes that I would like to see would be a result of the hybrid working environment that has been made possible through the changes of the past couple of years. That is the direction of travel in which I feel that we are going. We cannot have the levers and institutions of power so separate from our communities. We must embed in decision-making processes, and in officers and others, the possibility of progressing issues within the communities themselves. I think that it was Euan Leitch—it might have been somebody else—at the previous committee meeting who mentioned that having planners based in Inverness when making decisions about islands that are quite far from Inverness does not work. We now work in an environment that is much more conducive to institutions being spread throughout the communities that they are supposed to serve. I would like to see that change in the near future.

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Economy and Fair Work Committee 18 May 2022

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