16th November 22

The justification for our banks moving off the High Street and onto our mobile phones and home computers, is that there is simply no demand for over the counter services. While that may be true for the majority of customers, there’s still a significant minority – small businesses and those who are digitally disadvantaged in various ways  – for whom it isn’t. Cambuslang Community Council weren’t content with what they saw happening, undertook some market research and became one of two Scottish test sites for the UK wide Community Access to Cash Pilot.  Out of which emerged an ingenious idea – the BankHUB.

The community based housing movement, mostly operating in and around Glasgow, is something of a paradox. Constantly producing great outcomes for its tenants and demonstrating beyond question the ability of communities to run a highly complex public service such as housing, at the same time they never quite manage to convince the powers that be, and specifically the Housing Regulator, that locally run, small scale housing providers should be the future of social housing. So it was particularly gratifying for them to see the independent Glasgow Place Commission give them such a ringing endorsement

After the financial crash of 2008 when Iceland’s politicians and bankers were found to have been in cahoots with a number being subsequently jailed, there was a popular groundswell of support to draft a new constitution for the country that would specifically address the issue of powerful vested interests subverting democracy. Similarly encouraging signs of popular democratic renewal have been observed recently in Chile – a country not without its democratic challenges in the past. In both countries, despite massive popular support during the process, somehow those vested interests managed to cling on. Lessons to be learned.