All things Scotland: Heading into Autumn

Welcome to All things Scotland

To help alleviate October’s darker mornings and shorter evenings, LGIU’s Scotland team has a fresh array of briefings and reports tailored for Scottish local governments.

Scotland Poverty Week 2022 produced a flurry of reports and publications outlining the strategies councils are delivering. Challenge Poverty Week is an opportunity for people to get involved and collaborate with others to strive for a just and equal Scotland. With the

2030 deadline for reducing Child Poverty looming, this week we saw a new theme each day. The themes for 2022 were:

Cost of living
Work and economy
Social security
Energy and environment
Communities
Health and care
Housing and public services

North Ayrshire Council took the lead at the year’s Challenge Poverty Week, with the Council’s Locality Chairs highlighting a new theme each day of the week.

Click here to see how Inverclyde, Clackmannanshire, Aberdeen, Falkirk, Edinburgh and Moray all got involved with this year’s Challenge Poverty Week 2022.

Resources to help with Challenge Poverty from LGIU

Councillor Awards 2022

We are counting down the days till Scotland’s 5th National Councillor awards in Dundee on October 12th. This year’s ceremony provides a useful opportunity to recognise the vital work of past and present Councillors. Representing Scotland’s only national award to celebrate the work of Scottish Councillors, check out our shortlisted Councillors and sign up to watch the ceremony live or request an invitation to the ceremony!

Reports and updates

With reports centred around Challenge Poverty this Week:

From the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s, we saw the Poverty in Scotland 2022 report reveal that nearly 1 in 5 households on low incomes in Scotland face going hungry and cold this year.
The Improvement Service’s Elected Member Briefing Note provided a contextual overview of the 2017 Child Poverty Act and outlined specific enhanced strategies for Councils in response to the Cost of Living Crisis.
A ten-year target for cycling uptake in southern Scotland. The first strategy to involve local authority areas in Borders and Dumfries and Galloway councils, the hope is to make the bike the most popular choice for shorter everyday journeys.
A companion document from Improvement Services, NHS, COSLA and Scottish Government for Mental Health and Trauma informed-practice. For more, check out the LGIU briefing on mental health support for local government workers.

This week in Holyrood

Connecting local authorities and Scottish Government, the publication of Creating Hope Together Scotland’s Suicide Prevention Strategy 2022-2032. Funded through the Programme for Government, this 10-year strategy outlines a new approach to reducing suicide in Scotland through earlier internventions and ensuring strategies to tackle poverty and debt include measures to address suicide.
The Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee met to discuss emergency rent freezes and eviction moratoriums. Click here to see the meeting’s Official Report.
Scottish Ministers are looking to make 7 appointments to the Scottish Local Authorities Remuneration Committee, as SLARC is to be reconvened in January 2023 to undertake a one-off independent review of Councillor remuneration. Click here to find out more information.
Finally, October 1st saw the commencement of the licensing scheme for short term lets, meaning anyone operating as a host has until April 1st 2023 to apply for a licence.

On a lighter note…

To get in the Halloween spirit check out the Scottish Witch trail map. Compiled by Visit Scotland, you can follow this map to find out more about Scotland’s turbulent history.

Coming up…

Looking ahead to the rest of October, next week’s topics include a full policy round up, an overview of progress with devolution and also a briefing on the future of hybrid working.

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