How we are plotting a quiet revolution in truly local democracy in Scotland
At a time when any politician can win a cheap round of applause by proposing fewer elected officials, one campaign group wants Scotland to have many thousands more councillors
If there is one area of broad agreement in the fractious world of Scottish politics, it lies in the general consensus that the current structure of Scottish local government is not working well. “Too small to be strategic, too big to be truly local” is the verdict of many on Scotland’s current 32 local authorities; and certainly by European standards, these councils are huge, and very distant from the people they serve.
Across Europe, the average population of a basic local authority area is 10,000; in Scotland, the average is 175,000. And where we have 1,200 elected local councillors across our 32 authorities, Norway – a country of similar population – has over 10,000, often with greater powers over local taxation and decision-making.
The truth is that by historic standards, and those of most of our European neighbours, Scotland no longer has truly local government. All across the country, once dignified town halls stand empty, or are converted for other purposes; scores of historic Scottish burghs no longer have councils to call their own.
And when central government increasingly centralises power, draining local authorities of financial autonomy and real decision-making power, it often meets little resistance because those authorities are too distant from the communities they serve to attract any real sense of local ownership.
Drive towards greater centralisation
Yet strangely, the most common response to this situation, in public debate, is to propose making local authorities even larger, to form bigger strategic authorities, reduce the number of councillors, and elect city and regional ‘mayors’, individual politicians in whom more power can be concentrated.
Our campaign, Build Local Scotland, exists to advocate for a different kind of change, resist the idea that the solution to our crisis of local government is yet more centralisation, and advocate for the restoration of the real local government powers that have been steadily removed from local communities over the last century and more.
We know this is a radical idea. In an age when elected officials are not popular – and when any politician can win a cheap round of applause by proposing fewer of them – we suggest many more councils, and many thousands more councillors, albeit more like part-time local representatives than professional party politicians.
It’s not for nothing, though, that people call strong and deeply rooted local democracy the basic building block of democratic culture; and it’s no accident that countries with strong local government, at small community level, tend to score among the best in the world for democratic freedoms and participation, and for resistance to rising tides of authoritarian populism.
For Scotland’s democracy, we should aspire to nothing less than that highest standard; and if that sounds like a quietly revolutionary proposal, well, perhaps a quiet revolution in our local government is exactly what we need, to survive and thrive in challenging times.
Next month, a new generation of MSPs will take their seats at Holyrood, in a parliament which once pledged – when it was founded 27 years ago – to strengthen the powers of local government, rather than to gather ever more power to itself; and we will be raising these ideas with our new parliamentarians, and seeking to build support both at Holyrood and beyond, as the new parliament begins its work.
Angus Hardie is chair of the Build Local Scotland Steering Group
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