Views on the future of community councils, Dec 2011 - Jan 2012
N.B. This relates to the Scottish Government's request for comments on the future of community councils - click here for more information

1. Personal views of Anton Edwards, Spittalfield Community Council

• The CCs should fill local roles within their regions under a nationally implemented legal and administrative structure
  It is essential for all CCs to have at least one statutory role (such as being a planning consultee) so as to give then a real and sustained purpose and to underpin other more occasional activities
• In this respect it would be helpful to put more statutory responsibility on the CCS by giving their planning objections more weight than an individual’s objections. This would sharpen up the relations between CCs and their regional authority and would put community councillors more in the spotlight of local opinion
• CCs usually get weak support unless major issues surface
• Nevertheless it is important to keep the structure of CCs in place so that they are there to deal with major issues when they arise
  It does not matter that some CCs are composed from time to time of cosy special interest groups (our own is not!). The electorate gets what it deserves, and if a cosy group fails in time of genuine need it will be thrown out at election time
• The voluntary aspect should be maintained. I am aware that some CCs plead poverty. Our own rural CC operates easily on about three hundred pounds per year and I think to pay us more would be to taint the voluntary community composition with inevitable monetary distortions
• I am aware that some CCs claim a burden of too many consultations. This is a poorly founded complaint that probably reflects weak administration. With modern digital communications it is easy to involve most members (even if not all of them) in consultations so long as the responses are individual, or gathered by the secretary, and the process is not long drawn out by trying too hard to formulate a consensual group response. In very few cases are consensual responses needed
• The legal status of the CCS should be as bodies under the regional authority, not as independent bodies. This would ensure that even the most incompetent would not step outside safe limits. From this viewpoint, insurance cover offered by the ASCC should be withdrawn and replaced everywhere by insurance arranged by the relevant local authority; the constitution should be agreed regionally or (preferably) nationally and certainly not by individual CCs; the formal registration of the data officer for DP purposes is the responsibility of the regional authority
• The ASCC or any successor is in need of overhaul. The ASCC has acted to some extent as a national focus but with limited effectiveness for various understandable reasons. If it continues it should reflect a national need as determined by all subscribing CCs, not by central government itself
• From this viewpoint, the ASCC work (as distinct from its basic infrastructure of one administrative person, premises and equipment, which may reasonably be funded by government) should be supported entirely by subscription from the CCs and not by central government. With such funding it would answer firmly to the CCs, and would be credible as an independent representation to government. The election of officers to such an organisation should then be based on the membership of subscribing CCs, and terms of office should be limited to something like 3/6 years at a time