Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee
Minister for Public Finance Planning and Community Wealth submission of 5 October 2021
PE1902/A - To allow an appeal process for Community Participation Requests
I would like to thank the Committee for providing an opportunity for the Scottish Government to update it on actions called for in the above named petition.
Part 3 of the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 which concerns participation requests came into force on 1 April 2017. The Act does not currently provide a mechanism for a review or appeal of the decision of a public service authority to refuse a participation request.
Section 30 of the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 enables the Scottish Ministers to create an appeals or review process for participation request decisions by public service authorities in future should it be required. To inform that decision, section 33 of the Act provides that the Scottish Ministers must present a report to Parliament on the operation of participation requests within 3 years of the Act coming into force.
To enable this process we asked researchers from Glasgow Caledonian University YUNUS Centre for Social Business and Health to conduct a three year evaluation on the operation of participation requests, and provide a final report. Their report was published on 8 April 2020 and can be accessed here: Participation requests: evaluation report.
Glasgow Caledonian University were asked to consider an appeal process as part of their evaluation on participation requests. The Glasgow Caledonian evaluation highlighted that given the significant challenges to introducing an appeals process and in ensuring its fairness and robustness, alongside the very small numbers of participation requests completed using the legislation, this would likely be a longer-term piece of work.
An appeals mechanism is something that we are continuing to monitor and consider as participation request activity increases. In the meantime we will work with our partners to investigate how such a process could be established in a fair and robust manner, how it might operate in practice, and which body is best to lead this work. As part of this approach we have asked the Scottish Community Development Centre to explore an appeals process for participation requests and report back to us their findings later in the year.
The First Minister has also launched the Programme for Government “A Fairer, Greener Scotland” last month which sets out the actions we will take in the coming year and beyond. One of those actions is to review the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 six years on from its inception in 2015. Participation request legislation is one of many parts of the Act, and will form part of the review when it is launched in 2022.