West Dunbartonshire: Review of Community Council Support
Overview of the Review
During 2021 and 2022, West Dunbartonshire Council has been reviewing how it helps Community Councils to represent people’s views on the issues that affect their lives.
The Council’s existing 2015 Scheme For the Establishment of Community Councils sets out how Community Councils work, how they are supported and how people can participate in them.
Through the current review, a new Scheme will be prepared. It will include a main document and appendices containing a Code of Conduct for Community Councillors, a model Constitution and Standing Orders, and Community Council boundaries. The Council is also preparing a new Handbook for Community Councils to accompany the new Scheme.
You can read more information on Community Councils in West Dunbartonshire here. There is also national legislation and guidance on how Community Councils are run. Local arrangements need to be in line with this so there are consistent democratic standards across Scotland.
How we’re involved
Scottish Community Development Centre has been commissioned to support the review. This builds on previous work to help the Council produce a local Community Empowerment Strategy and Action Plan. It also follows research we produced on Strengthening Community Councils in Scotland. We want to ensure that this work helps strengthen local democracy and that local views are taken on board by public services, including the Council.
What’s happening
To complement three formal public consultation stages organised by the Council during 2021-22, SCDC has been organising conversations with local people to feed into the review of the Scehem for the Establishment of Community Councils.
The three consultation stages are:
1. Stage one - initial 16 week consultation to gather views on issues that the revised Scheme should address and Community Council boundaries. The consultation took place between March and June 2021. A report of this first stage of the consultation was published and presented to Council elected members in August 2021. The report is available to download here.
2. Stage two - second 16 week consultation to ask for responses to the first draft of the revised Scheme, developed in response to the first stage of consultation. This second stage of consultation took place between September and December 2021. The stage two consultation documents can be downloaded via this webpage, which also includes information on public discussion events held in November 2021.
3. Stage three – final 4 week consultation on the final draft Scheme and Community Council changes. This will take place from 8th March to 5th April 2022. To find out more about this stage of the consultation, please click here. The final version of the Scheme documents will then be prepared in the light of comments received, and presented to a special meeting of West Dunbartonshire Council for approval on 25 May 2022.
We want the consultation to reach a wide range of local people and organisations. To do that, during the three stages of consultation we have been talking to Community Councils themselves and other local community groups (especially in areas where there are no active Community Councils), and organising public discussion events. We have also created a temporary working group (known as the ‘Stronger Voices’ group) comprising West Dunbartonshire Community Council Forum, Community Alliance, Equalities Forum and others to help us tap into wider views for the Review. This is particularly important as we begin to recover from the worst impact of the COVID pandemic and the challenges this has raised for us all, including Community Councils.
For more information contact mick.doyle@scdc.org.uk or paul.nelis@scdc.org.uk.