9th June 2021

The local council elections next year will be 15 years since the introduction of proportional representation and multi member wards. As a result, we’ve witnessed all shapes and sizes of coalition administrations cobbled together to run our 32 local authorities. While there are arguments to support coalition government – it tends to encourage more meaningful debate and less partisan decision making – it undoubtedly blurs the lines of democratic accountability.  From the electors perspective, who is actually in charge and responsible for the decisions made? Interesting paper from thinktank Reform Scotland calling for the introduction of directly elected Mayors.

One of the key areas of contention in the forthcoming Scottish Parliament will be land reform. Earlier this year, the Scottish Land Commission published some proposals for further discussion as a possible focus of new legislation. A foretaste of the opposition to come from private landowners’ arrived in this response where land is still very much viewed as a free market commodity. While the SLC proposals are not particularly radical, they do highlight how flawed our approach to land has become. Former policy director of Community Land Scotland, Peter Peacock, identifies a new threat from ‘green lairds’.

Although there are still many (known and unknown) unknowns around COP26 in terms of what form it will take, the momentum continues to build. Last month the Climate Fringe Week launched (18th – 26th September) which aims to be a celebration of climate action from across Scotland’s civil society. From now until COP26 is over, the Climate Fringe website is where to find information on events, how to become a host for visiting climate activists, where venues are located, how to navigate the Green Map of Glasgow and much more about how you can become involved in this all important  event.

Throughout the pandemic, there seems to have been a constant and as yet unresolved tension between the national and local systems of response to the management of outbreaks, testing, tracking etc. And presumably these same tensions will inevitably characterise our recovery. But the lessons of this pandemic are already being fed into a global process to ensure better preparedness and responses for the inevitable next pandemic. And there is clear evidence emerging from around the world of the effectiveness of locally led strategies to combat outbreaks of disease where top down approaches have failed. We need to learn these lessons.