….and I’ll PB in Scotland afore ye !! by Vince Howe
Last Thursday I was one of a small team from the PB Unit who travelled to Edinburgh to meet colleagues to develop the first PB work in Scotland.
We had been invited by COSLA (The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities) who are coordinating the programme and working with Scottish Local Authorities and Community Safety Partnerships to deliver PB work on the theme of Anti Social Behaviour. Our role is to work with COSLA to provide support and guidance to the pilots.
The pilots are part of a series of proposals in the Scottish Governments Community Empowerment Action Plan which was approved in 2009.
Five LA’s have been chosen for the work following an initial submission;
- North Lanarkshire (Forgewood)
- Fife (Glenrothes)
- Stirling (Dunblane)
- Shetland Islands
- South Lanarkshire (Overton)
Four representatives from each of the areas was present and included officers, elected members, and residents . Following introductions and some initial presentations from the PBU the rest of the day saw lively discussions taking place about how best to take the work forward. By the end I feel sure that our Scottish colleagues had found out more about PB and how it might be applied to their situations and we found out more about how things work north of the border. Of particular interest to us was the Scottish Performance Measurements and the National Standards for Community Development that will help shape the work.
Whilst some of the pilots plan to deliver small grants based events others are looking already at connecting PB directly to their mainstream work which was most encouraging .
With Edinburgh and Glasgow looking to develop their own PB work it looks like Scotland will have considerable practice to look at by the end of 2010.
Best of luck to everyone involved.
