The Scottish Government must stop rearranging the deckchairs and give power back to local communities – Lesley Riddoch

Building a Local Scotland has called on the Scottish Government to halt further top-down restructuring of public services and use its proposed local government reforms to begin reversing decades of centralisation.

The campaign group says the Scottish Government has an opportunity to fundamentally rethink how Scotland is governed, rather than further centralising existing structures.

Building a Local Scotland argues that Scotland should examine and adopt the approach taken across much of Europe, where public health, primary care and social care are delivered through smaller, locally accountable councils, while larger strategic organisations oversee major hospitals and wider regional functions.

Lesley Riddoch, Director of Nordic Horizons and Building a Local Scotland representative said:

“The Scottish Government should be asking how we put decisions and services back into the hands of the communities they serve. This is a missed opportunity to reverse decades of centralisation in Scotland.

“Across much of Europe, smaller local councils have responsibility for essential services such as public health, primary care and social care. Larger organisations deal with strategic functions and major hospitals. Yet in Scotland we have progressively concentrated responsibility further and further away from local communities.

“The Scottish Government has inadvertently demonstrated that small integrated councils are capable of running these health functions by exempting Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles from this massive top down two board structure. The islands show another model is possible. We should be asking why the same principle cannot be examined across the rest of Scotland.

“The creation of the Scottish Parliament was supposed to herald a new era of democratic renewal and decentralisation. Instead, Scotland has seen many powers and responsibilities become increasingly concentrated in national institutions and quangos.

“This reform programme is therefore an important change moment. Bit we should not be rushing into another top-down reorganisation of government. We need to stop thinking of decentralisation as an administrative exercise. It is a democratic question.

“Now is the time to give communities a greater say, restore genuine local accountability and deliver the decentralisation that was promised before the Scottish Parliament was created.”