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CHAPTER THREE: STAKEHOLDER CONSULTATION WORKSHOP

3.1 Introduction

Following the literature review we used stakeholders to further investigate service prioritisation and to derive hypothetical models of co-location in order to identify relevant issues associated with shared premises. Accordingly, a stakeholder workshop was held in Perth in September 2005. The outcomes from the day are reported in this chapter.

3.2 Methods

The structure of the day was an introductory presentation and discussion, followed by a series of participatory exercises worked through in small groups, and open discussion with the whole group. Specifically, participants helped to clarify the service priorities in rural areas through a ranking exercise. Through the use of a mapping exercise, they also suggested how co-location might develop, and then during directed discussion where the next stages of the study might focus. Additionally, they offered views on the nature of costs involved in co-location arrangements. The latter discussion was wide-ranging, touching on forms of finance and the relative roles of public and private sector services. Participants involved in the day were from across Scotland and from a range of organisations, specifically, Argyll and Bute Council, Initiative at the Edge, The Moray Council, Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, Voluntary Action Lewis, Glasgow Caledonian University, Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations and Communities Scotland. These people were recruited as a result of their involvement in earlier consultation during initial information searching and scoping, through the use of the Rural Research Network and via unstructured snowballing techniques, whereby other potential participants suggested additional colleagues and contacts.

3.3 Exercise on service prioritisation

In the first exercise participants were required to work in two small groups in order to prioritise services. The groups were presented with a pack of 39 cards, on each of which was printed an example of a service. In addition they were given a template of seven columns, with a scale across the bottom that ran from 'most important service for rural areas' to 'least important service for rural areas'. This process of ranking or sorting options against a Likert scale is drawn from Q methodology where it forms one part of the approach ³⁶. This forced distribution method is particularly successful at eliciting those choices that are most important. It also requires participants to compare every option with every other option hence is very good at discovering the relative importance of a large number of items.

The objective for the groups was to arrange the services against this scale, thereby identifying their own rural service priority list. The resulting arrangements compiled by the two groups are presented below (Figure 2 and Figure 3). Services in bold are ones that were added by the groups themselves. As group one added two services of their own, two cards were unclassified. One of these was 'computer and IT training' which was added to 'computer and internet access'. The second was 'alcohol awareness and counselling', which was added to 'drug users support and rehabilitation'. We suggest that in both cases, from both a user and provider point of view, these are likely to be considered to be two different types of services. Hence they will be required by different user groups and require different provision.

During a subsequent discussion some members of group two felt that the positions of 'theatre and performance facilities' and 'alcohol and awareness counselling' ought to be switched. But for the process of reporting, we have kept the original 'sorting' scheme that this group presented.

The discussion following this exercise revealed something of a dilemma in prioritising services. The exercise reveals that both groups consider services for the elderly and the very young to be of a high level of importance. In both cases services such as 'day care for the elderly' and 'nursery' are given a high level of importance, along with services of general importance to all residents (post office, grocery shop, police office etc). However, the discussion revealed a strong sense that the continued presence of young people (here taken to mean people who are not children and probably not yet parents themselves, likely to be in the age range 16 to mid twenties), is crucial to the future of rural areas. In which case we might expect that services such as cash point, sports facilities, youth club, performing arts, further and higher education and petrol station would feature higher up the prioritisation list.

The two completed templates show that group two considered services for young people to be of greater importance than group one. This suggests that they were thinking more strongly about the future of rural areas than about meeting the needs of current populations, which may tend to be elderly and those with young children (although they clearly considered these too). As one participant stated, having a primary school in the village will not keep the young people there. However, it was felt that in some cases young people who leave to study, work and socialise in towns and cities often come back once they reach the next 'lifestage' of being parents themselves. Hence the continuing presence of a primary school was considered vital (as revealed by the fact that it is the most important service of all). Another participant stated that "all healthy rural communities have a primary school".

Group one raised the point that this exercise depended on whether they were considering relatively affluent, mobile, IT literate residents in employment, or the less well-off, less mobile, perhaps elderly or in some way disadvantaged groups. Assuming that most rural communities feature a combination of the two, we would expect services to be prioritised with all residents in mind. We believe the results reveal that this, to a large extent, was what both groups did.

Figure 2: Group one service prioritisation

Figure 3: Group two service prioritisation

If we consider that column one 'most important service' scores 7, and column seven 'least important service' scores 1 then total scores for all 39 services are presented in Table 3. This exercise reveals that the ten services considered by the participants at the workshop to be most important to rural areas are as follows:

• Primary school
• Post office
• Grocery shop
• Health centre / surgery
• Day care for elderly
• Police office
• Parent and toddler group
• Nursery school / playgroup
• Computer and internet access
• Public house

It is interesting to compare these results to existing prioritisation lists. Clearly, there are both similarities with and differences to previous categorisations. Notably, primary school features in all lists, as does a shop of some description. Post office also regularly features as being among the most important services, so too does health centre / GP surgery. There are a number of notable additions to the list arising from the workshop that do not commonly feature in other prioritisation lists. These include computer and internet access, police office and public house.

Table 3: Service prioritisation

Note: Services in bold were either added by one of the groups or only classified by one of the groups.

3.4 Hypothetical models of co-location

Participants at the workshop were also required to complete an exercise concerning feasible models of co-location. The aim of this exercise was to encourage participants to pick one of the services that they identified in exercise one as being 'most important' and add a limited number of services to draw up feasible models of co-location. Outcomes were somewhat more complicated as revealed by the models reproduced below.

The two different groups of participants identified different potential 'hubs' as the starting point for feasible co-location models. These were primary school and village hall. They subsequently formulated different approaches to outline how they envisaged 'co-location' might develop in these cases.

Group one

Group one chose to begin with a village hall as their hub and then demonstrate various potential 'routes' to a combination of services (Figure 4). Although the resulting model looks to be rather complicated the group intended that this would demonstrate the many different ways that a village hall could provide a starting point for co-location of provision. Through the model the group demonstrated how routes to co-location could develop around closely linked or similar services. The three red lines (added by the report authors) should help to demonstrate how a village hall might develop a particular 'route' to co-location by combining certain closely related activities. For example, one route in their model was a 'social' route that saw the hall being used for parties as well as clubs such as the WI. Another route that was built around different user groups explored how different users would use the space at different times. A further example of one of their routes demonstrated how the provision of advice services could involve employment services, CAB and professional learning. Overall, this 'village hall' model was presented as offering a potential 'hub' for all manner of rural services.

Readers should be able to identify other possible routes to co-location based on other similar groupings of activity. However, it should also be relatively easy to imagine how a village hall could actually provide more than one of the red-circled groups of activities. Items within the green line (the line has been added by the report authors) describe the facilities that a village hall is likely to provide.

The group also added various comments to their model, including the following questions:

• How do we make this financially viable?
• How do we manage contributions / human resources?
• How do we avoid failure?

One suggestion to the latter question was that the co-location venture would need to be a business run by communities. They also suggested that upkeep would require two FTEs to be employed, at a cost of £30k plus National Insurance equalling £40k per year. The upkeep of the village hall would also require a maintenance person. They suggested that what was needed was a programme (not a project) with a ten-year time horizon, and suggested that investment from enterprise companies would be a strength. They noted that what was needed was a core income stream and additional sources of income. They felt that another important point was the potential problem of volunteer fatigue. In response to the question 'are there potential conflicts between some of the co-located services?' they came up with a number of issues as follows:

• Timings in terms of space
• Security (Post Office and shop and computers)
• Child safety
• Health and safety
• Confidential space (discreet as well as communal)
• Management and supervision
• Caretaking and storage
• Accessibility management
• Infrastructure, e.g. parking
• Charging
• Priorities e.g. investment, maintenance
• Management in terms of hours of access

Figure 4: Group one co-location model

Group two

Group two chose 'primary school' as their hub service. Their model is displayed in Figure 5. Their approach differed to group one. Starting on the left hand side they built 'layers' of additional services that could be added to the school, beginning with those that would be 'easiest' and most obvious to co-locate with a primary school (for example, after school club and community education) to those that would require more resources to develop (for example, theatre and health centre)..

They went on to identify a number of issues of potential concern, as follows:

• Security of children would be paramount
• Public opinion may be in opposition
• There would be problematic access issues: cars, time, the need to keep some client groups apart
• How much inclusiveness would be feasible?
• Environmental conflict: recycling facilities can be a potential health and safety hazard, car parks, traffic, noise
• Paying for shared use e.g. cleaning, janitorial, supervision, heating bills, design
• Child-size furniture would not be appropriate for all user groups

For this exercise, groups were also asked to consider the question 'positive spin-offs from sharing premises'. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, both groups concentrated on the conflicts and problems. For the purpose of the project this covers the issue of non-monetary costs but fails to address the important issue of benefits arising.

Figure 5 : Group two co-location model

3.5 Recommended case studies

As a final discussion exercise at the Perth workshop participants were asked to suggest case studies for consideration in our selection process. The following is a list of examples of both co-location projects and areas where there is currently nothing but where communities may be open to involvement in the research.

1. Westray - Orkney.

2. Mid Argyle Hospital - Lochgilphead

3. Mull - progressive care centre ( NHS). Also similar on Jura

4. Shetland - just opened centre similar to Voluntary Action Lewis

5. Healthy Living Centres e.g. Islay, Bute, Mull of Kintyre

6. Old Manse (church property) Ardnamurchan. There was a plan to turn this into a care centre.

7. Gigha - similar problems to Westray

8. Amenity Trust, Lochboisdale

9. Cairndow Community Trust

10. Oyster bar buy out. Community Trust.

11. Southern Uplands Partnership

12. LEADER projects e.g. Nadair Trust, Argyle islands, Three island. However, these are development projects, not necessarily co-location.

3.6 Conclusions

The stakeholder workshop provided an up-to-date rural service prioritisation list from a varied group of participants, many of whom are currently working in service provision. Further, the day resulted in useful hypothetical models of co-location and subsequent discussions revealed many of the problems and issues associated with providing co-located services. These outputs served two main purposes. First, exercises on service prioritisation and hypothetical co-location models, and the associated discussions around these issues, provided vital background information, context and direction for the whole study. Second, the information on possible case studies were added to the co-location examples identified earlier and included in the case study selection process. This process is described in Appendix 1.

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