Community Councils were established as a result of the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973, and local authorities in Scotland provide model constitutions for Community Councils in their areas. They have limited statutory rights and powers and are essentially voluntary bodies established within a statutory framework. However, some consider them to be statutory bodies, as they are not entirely independent.
Nonetheless, the existence of a community council is not mandatory and is dependent on sufficient members of the local community coming forward to form one. As a result, most communities, but not all, have one.
The key roles of Community Councils are:
- To represent the views of the community to the local authority and other public bodies operating in their area.
- To act to further the interests of their communities.
- To be consulted on planning applications within their area (The Town & Country Planning (General Development Procedure) (Scotland) Amendment Order 1996).
- To consider exercising their powers to object to the granting, renewal or transfer of liquor licences. (The Licensing (Scotland) Act 1976).
Community councillors are elected representatives and accountable under a standard set of rules (within the local authority scheme for community councils) and a code of conduct.
More information on community councils in Scotland is available from the national umbrella body Community Councils.
As the most local level of statutory representation, community councils are a critical stakeholder in the development of community benefit packages and will normally be the first port of call for a developer’s engagement in a community. Nonetheless, it is a good idea to guard against the perception that any fund is ‘owned and operated’ solely by the community council (or any other single community body), however representative it claims to be. While they can of course contribute to discussions around fund strategy and decisions on spend, the community council should facilitate wider involvement in such discussions and not automatically assume itself to be the appropriate body for holding and governing a fund.
One way of ensuring that funding decisions are inclusive of other perspectives is for the community council (or whichever local body is chosen) to set up a sub-group or even a separate Panel (see Section 6 below) which has representation from other key local groups or interests. This forum can have its own operating procedures or terms of reference, however if it is a sub-group of another body such as community council then it will be answerable to that body.
A community council may already disburse some small amounts of funding, for example, from the local authority, and so may have some relevant experience and systems in place. Again, however, rather than simply adapting these for the new community benefits by default, it is worth exploring how well they are working, including how they are perceived locally.
Generally speaking, we would recommend against community councils holding substantial amounts of funding for the following reasons:
- As they are not incorporated, community councils are subject to the same considerations around members’ personal liability as unincorporated voluntary associations (see Section 4 below). They are, therefore, not an appropriate structure for holding and distributing large amounts of funding.
- Model constitutions for community councils generally include a dissolution clause stating that should the community council be wound up, its assets will transfer to the local authority. This puts the community funds at risk of being lost to the community, even though sometimes the clause stipulates that the funds will then be held in trust for any future community council or a similar organisation.
- As they are not entirely independent (being established under a local authority scheme), community councils can’t be charities, so they aren’t suitable vehicles for the governance of funds where charitable status is desirable or required.
