Welcome to All things Scotland
Welcome to November at LGIU. Next month’s content will include our regular updates on key policy, consultations and legislation from Westminster and Holyrood as they affect public services in Scotland. In addition, we continue to look at how the energy crisis is affecting everyone in 2022 and what the impact will be in 2023.
November is COP27 in Egypt and LGIU will bring you all our relevant briefing in a jam packed Global Local edition one year one from Cop 26. Finally, finances we are covering all the budget issues as they affect you in preparation for Scottish Government budget publication.
Reports and updates
This week, Improvement Service released a a new paper on Delivering a future for Scottish local authorities: the challenges they face, the questions that need asking and a model for the future. This comprehensive paper proposes a new approach for the future operating model of Scottish local authorities and covers the context, challenges, opportunities and the journey for how local authorities might transition to a model of service delivery that supports effective partnership to deliver the outcomes needed in communities.
Supporting collaboration between the third and public sectors: evidence review. This report presents findings of research conducted by Scottish Government researchers to better understand current barriers to effective collaboration between third sector organisations and the public sector – particularly focusing on relationships between the third sector, local government and national government.
Active Healthy Kids Scotland released their fourth Global Matrix. Comparative analysis with 56 other countries graded organised sports and physical activity for Scottish kids a B- against the global average of D-. Real the full international context here.
Scottish Government provides £3 million funding to extend the reach of Gaelic across Scotland. The Gaelic Capital Fund 2022-2023 provides funding to Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, Glasgow City Council, Highland Council and Renfrewshire Council. You can find Highland Council’s response here.
A new national public energy agency was launched this week to accelerate the delivery of climate-friendly heating and improve energy efficiency across Scotland’s homes and buildings. Working collaboratively across the public and private sector, COSLA is seated on the new agencies Strategic Board. Read more here.
From LGIU
- Stepping forward: how councils are responding to the cost-of-living crisis. This briefing looks at what local authorities are doing to help residents through the cost-of-living crisis. Councils have devised, or are backing, schemes that help people to keep warm, save energy, and feed themselves and their families.
- Addressing fuel poverty: locally and nationally, immediate and long term. This briefing looks at how local and central government across the UK should respond to the urgent issue of fuel poverty in both the short and long term.
- Moving the reform of children’s social care from rhetoric to action. This briefing sets out the current context and challenges while highlighting a range of innovative solutions that local authorities could prioritise. It will be of interest to everyone working the social work and education services.
- Housing and planning round-up October 2022. The latest round-up of housing and planning news in the UK includes, as usual, government announcements, statistics, major reports and ongoing consultations.
- Scottish policy round-up October 2022. Covering August and September 2022, this latest policy round-up includes an informative summary of key documents that impact local government in Scotland.
- Devolution update October 2022: Is there a Johnson legacy? This briefing considers whether there will be continuity or radical change as the Truss administration begins – and what the priorities and responses might include for local authorities and their partners.
- Community Wealth Building meets Community Economy: scaling-up local collaborative action that delivers. Building on previous LGIU briefings on Community Wealth Building, this briefing offers practical and aspirational examples to support cross-sector action.
- Working at home or in the office? The growth of hybrid working in local government. This briefing looks at home and hybrid working, exploring how it has evolved over the past two years and includes examples from local authorities who have risen to the challenge.
- Leading out loud – Local climate leadership. This briefing identifies some of the challenges around leading and delivering local climate action through effective leadership case studies, outlines how strong local leadership can help deliver infrastructure projects and service changes that contribute to reducing carbon emissions.
This week in Holyrood
On Tuesday, the National Care Service Plan faced intense scrutiny from the Scottish Government’s own MSP’s. The main contentions concerned the risk of the £644m and £1.3bn financial memorandum. Read the Official Report here.
On Wednesday, we saw a report tracking the work of the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee from 2021-2022. Providing an in-depth recap of the Committee recent work, the reflective analysis of this report provides a baseline for all future reports. Find out more here.
On a lighter note…
The Scottish Highlands has been named as one of National Geographic’s ‘Best of the World’ destinations for 2023. The travel list, which is created, researched, reported and written in collaboration with National Geographic Traveler’s international editorials teams, celebrates Scotland’s rewilding efforts, which aim to restore the original landscape of the Highlands by replanting and restoring native species.
Responding to the Highland’s newest claim to fame, Highland Council Leader Cllr Raymond Bremner remarked,
“What is really pleasing is to receive recognition from National Geographic for the efforts in restoring the Highlands’ ecosystems through projects like Affric Highland in the rewilding of 500,000 acres, re-introducing native species, improving biodiversity being carried out in areas like the Alladale Wilderness Reserve, and in the rewilding planned to improve biodiversity across 500,000 acres as part of the Affric Highland Project.”
Coming up…
Stay tuned to LGIU Scotland as we kick start with regular updates on key policy, consultations and legislation from Westminster and Holyrood and how they affect public services in Scotland. In addition, we continue to look at how the energy crisis is affecting everyone in 2022 and what the impact will be in 2023.
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