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Good Practice in Rural Development
No.8
Innovative Methods of Service Delivery in Rural Scotland:A Good Practice Guide
1. Introduction
The provision of services is one of the key issues facing people living in rural areas. It is often more difficult to provide services in rural areas due to a combination of economic and geographical factors. It may be economically unsustainable to provide services to small, remote communities due to the lack of scale-effects and high unit cost of provision. Travel costs, in time and money, can be economically preventative for service providers and users.
The benefits of effective service delivery obviously go beyond the realm of economics. Access to services ties in with opportunity, quality of life, and social justice. People in remote or rural areas are vulnerable to marginalisation and, consequently, social injustice. Social exclusion could be exacerbated by a wide dispersal of population, infrequent public transport and/or a lack of social support networks provided by friends and families - particularly in the long-term due to the outward-migration of young people. Making services more accessible can be seen, therefore, as a positive step towards tackling social exclusion. In recognition of this, the Scottish National Rural Partnership (SNRP) set out to:
"identify innovative approaches to providing services in rural areas and to consider how these examples might benefit and be replicated in other parts of rural Scotland… also offer recommendations on how local rural communities might be helped to identify their realistic service needs and to work with providers to achieve these". 1 |
In practice, innovation is a difficult concept to define. It is often described as the introduction of a new idea, method or device. Innovation can perhaps be interpreted in practice as generating a new idea and making it productive.
This guide does contain some genuinely innovative projects but many case studies presented here are representative of examples of good practice throughout rural Scotland. Projects do not stay innovative for long before imitators take note and, subsequently, there is a trade-off between the concepts of innovation and good practice transfer. The report is set out into thematic sections, each containing case studies that illustrate different ways to get funding, consult with local people, meet the needs of local people and provide effective, sustainable services.
Thus, this guide should be seen more as presenting alternative ways of delivering services in rural Scotland. Statutory bodies such as Councils and Local Enterprise Companies are no longer seen to be the sole providers of services, there is a growing recognition of the work that voluntary organisations and community groups do. Moreover, more onus is increasingly placed on the third sector as substitutional rather than additional providers of key services. This is due, primarily, to the economic factors outlined above.
This guide will be useful for organisations:
- In the public or private sectors;
- Already providing or developing services in rural areas;
- With little or no rural experience but wish to expand their activities into rural areas; and
- Local rural community groups.
Practical advice is illustrated by using case studies that depict the different methods of providing a service, including the pros and cons of each approach. The thematic sections are based on the key methods of delivery as identified by the SNRP's consultation with people living across rural Scotland. These are:
- Shared premises,
- Mobile facilities,
- The use of new technology,
- Community-run services.
These are not mutually exclusive and case studies more often than not fit into a number of categories. Case studies were selected to illustrate:
- Different types of services,
- Different locations in rural Scotland from small towns to isolated, island communities,
- Different service providers from small village hall committees to local authorities,
- Different delivery mechanisms, from the use of internet facilities to mobile vans.
The case studies were identified by the SNRP working group and also through consultation with local authorities, Social Inclusion Partnerships and CADISPA. Case studies were constructed from documentary sources, web-searches, interviews with representatives of the organisation and, where possible, field visits to the projects.
Whilst there is no first-best solution to providing services in rural areas, the case studies highlight a range of different possibilities to encourage thoughts on how services can be supplied in a range of areas.
This guide does not provide advice on good practice in general management since many guides on this are already available. Of particular interest to readers wishing to learn more about general project development will be the SNRP's Good Practice in Rural Development No. 6: Project Development and Securing Funding, as well as other guides in the SNRP series.
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