Ideas for a Fairer Scotland

Community groups and organisations can help shape a fairer recovery after coronavirus by submitting ideas to the Social Renewal Advisory Board.

What needs to change to build a Fairer Scotland?

We want to hear your ideas and learn from the response to the COVID pandemic.

The Social Renewal Advisory Board wants to understand how groups have been supporting people and communities at risk, both before and during the pandemic.

We want to make sure that the lessons you have learned on how to support your community through a crisis, and the ideas you have from that experience about what needs to change, help us build a fairer, more equal Scotland.

Any organisation, group or community can offer ideas.

Please note there is an easy-read version of this guidance, and the relevant forms are attached to this page.

The Social Renewal Advisory Board

The aim of the Social Renewal Advisory Board is to do the ‘big thinking’ that can help bring about a Fairer Scotland as we recover from the pandemic and look to the future.

It includes a strong focus on tackling poverty, advancing equality and embedding human rights.

Call for ideas

This is an invitation for you to tell the board what needs to change to bring about a Fairer Scotland in the future, based on your learning from the COVID pandemic.

Your ideas could focus on one of the themes discussed by the board: housing and place, work, income, public services, and attitudes and discrimination. Or on something else you think is important.

We expect that some ideas will be for the Scottish Government to take up. But you might also have other suggestions for local government, business, employers, the UK Government, providers of services, or the third sector (voluntary groups).

Any organisation should feel free to send in ideas. We would particularly like to hear from groups working with people with protected characteristics. The protected characteristics are: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, or those with lived experience of the issues. All experience is valuable.

We look forward to reading what you share.

How to submit your ideas

To submit your ideas fill out the form attached to this page.

Please tell us:

• your idea
• some extra details if you know them, such as:
  • what you have learned from the COVID experience to inform your idea
  • if there is a particular group or community that would benefit from your idea
  • if your idea has any implications for equality or human rights, and
  • how your idea would help us achieve the principles of social renewal, make the country a more equal place, reduce the levels of poverty and disadvantage and help people live happier lives.
• what evidence you have that supports the idea

Send completed forms to the Social Renewal Advisory Board Secretariat socialrenewal@gov.scot

If there is accompanying evidence that would support the information you’re sharing, please attach this too.

Lived experience evidence/reports

If your organisation works with people with lived experience on the issues being considered, and has information about these experiences during the pandemic that you would like the board to know about, please provide a written summary of this work. Please send reports or other written evidence to the Social Renewal Advisory Board Secretariat socialrenewal@gov.scot

What we’ll do with your ideas

Your ideas and your learning will be shared with the board. Some ideas may be included in a document/publication being produced later this year which will summarise the work of the board.

To be clear, we are looking for ideas for change – we are not looking for costed proposals for projects. We want to take the best practice and learning and apply it to our thinking going forward.

Responses should be submitted no later than 23 October 2020.

Ideas form – Social Renewal Advisory Board