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IMPLEMENTING SERVICES IN RURAL SCOTLAND: A PROGRESS REPORT
INTRODUCTION
Background
1. The Scottish National Rural Partnership's (SNRP) Report Services in Rural Scotland (published January 2001) was commissioned by Ministers in order to identify innovative approaches to providing services in rural areas and offer recommendations on how local communities and service providers might work together to improve access to services in rural areas.
2. As part of the Executive's ongoing commitment to improving service delivery, and access to services for those living in rural communities, the Minister for Environment and Rural Development tasked SNRP to monitor and report back on progress being made by service providers in taking forward and implementing the main findings and recommendations of the Services in Rural Scotland Report.
3. SNRP took forward this task by forming a sub-group encompassing representatives of the voluntary sector (the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations), the private sector (the Federation of Small Businesses) and the public sector (CoSLA and the Enterprise Networks). (Details of membership at Annex A.) We held our first meeting in November 2001, and met for a final time in September 2002. This paper reports on the outcomes of our work.
Process
4. We approached our task by agreeing that we needed to gather evidence from all types of service providers identified in the original report, to see how the report had impacted on the way in which they were approaching service delivery in remote and rural areas. We therefore set up a series of meetings with representatives of organisations from key sectors responsible for taking forward one or more of the report's recommendations. In addition, we sought written responses from a number of other organisations involved in service provision in rural areas. Details of the evidence we collected is provided at Annex B. To aid our work, we also drew up a table listing the service providers with an interest in each of the recommendations in the original report. This table is reproduced at Annex C.
5. The original report focussed on the provision of a number of key non-statutory services, and its findings and recommendations were targeted towards such services. However, it is clear that many of these findings and recommendations could be applied equally to the provision of some statutory services, such as the utilities, local government services, and healthcare. Therefore, in taking forward our work, we spoke to and gathered evidence from some statutory service providers. In a similar vein, while the original report focussed on the impact of service provision on individuals, rather than businesses, many of its messages were equally applicable to the provision of services for businesses. We therefore took evidence from business representatives, and will comment on the extent to which the report's messages have influenced the provision of services to businesses. Although the original report included some quite specific recommendations, many were aspirational in nature, reflecting the remit which had been set. This made our task of monitoring progress slightly more difficult, given that, in some cases, responsibility for taking forward some of the findings was not clearly assigned.
6. This report draws on the discussions we held with service providers, the written responses, and the Executive's formal response to Services in Rural Scotland which was published September 2001 1. We are extremely grateful to all individuals and organisations who spared valuable time to come and speak to us or to prepare a written submission. We found this to be an extremely useful process, and, in itself, we hope it may have contributed to raising the profile of the report within the organisations concerned. We have drawn heavily on the evidence we have gathered in preparing this report and in arriving at our main findings.
Structure
7. In taking forward its monitoring of the services report, we were keen to avoid a tick-box approach whereby progress with each of the individual recommendations was assessed in isolation of any other progress, or lack of it, in relation to services in remote and rural areas generally.
8. As a result, Section A of this monitoring report focuses on progress in implementing the overarching findings of Services in Rural Scotland, namely:
- The rural context
- Community participation and consultation on service needs
- Community Capacity Building
- Partnership working in the delivery of rural services
- Innovative approaches and the sharing of best practice
9. Section B moves on to focus on progress in implementing recommendations in the key service areas of:
- transport and access to services;
- retail and business services;
- information and advice;
- multi-purpose buildings; and
- childcare.
It both considers progress with key recommendations contained in the services report and outlines additional initiatives which are contributing to the delivery of services in remote and rural areas.
10. Finally, the report concludes by identifying particular issues which the evidence suggests may be acting as barriers, or at the very least inhibiting, implementation of some of the recommendations in the original report.
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