1. We bring this to your attention. It’s an issue that has been current for a long time but never adequately resolved. How it moves on from this point isn’t clear, but we’ve put down a firm marker.

2. On 12 February, the EACC Board submitted to the City of Edinburgh Council (CEC) Executive proposals for renewed, committed Council support of the city’s community councils. The paper leads with the request that the support programme has a dedicated and empowered anchor point within the Democracy and Governance Division, by way of the explicit appointment of a Community Council Liaison Officer (CCLO).

3. Coincidentally, the CEC Finance and Resources Committee of 3 February, in a very brief reference (Item 8.1), speaks of provision for such an appointment, ‘to support Community Councils play their role as key community representative bodies across the city’. That is standard wording but this is a welcome development. We won’t quibble about lack of detail at this point.

See:https://democracy.edinburgh.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=140&MId=7978&Ver=4

4. The EACC proposals ask for wide-ranging reinforcement along three pathways. The foundation is the argument that community councils, while staffed as volunteer agencies, should be funded, equipped and encouraged to run as energetic ‘small enterprises’. They should be business-like, efficient and professional in approach, allowing them to stand alongside Elected Members and Council Officers as their joint partners in what we term the city’s ‘civic triangle’.

5. The civic triangle captures how local authority policy is both shaped and set for the city. It captures how services are structured and delivered to the people who live and work here. The role of community councils is to deliver the message on end-user experience to City Chambers and to CEC HQ at Waverley Gate. That message is there to trigger acknowledgement and prompt an active response.  

6. Tied to the ‘Enterprise Anchor Point’ of the CCLO, we define the three areas in which we ask for committed Enterprise support as: Administration, Development, and Collaboration. We set out detail on ‘office practice’ and on expanded remit. We stress the ‘Enterprise’ tag because community councils need to be reinvigorated, cloaked with a new sense of purpose and direction.

7. Realistically, this will be an ‘open conversation’ with CEC Executive for some time. CEC has other, more immediate, priorities. Big budget considerations dominate the landscape. The Parliamentary picture is set to change. The long saga of ‘Democracy Matters’ will have a new airing. There is talk of ‘local government reform’. Who knows where ‘local democracy’ is headed? Consequently, we aren’t looking for any ‘big breakthrough’ on the back of our paper, but we do expect to be taken seriously and we do expect to see signs of progress over the course of the year.

8. There has long been talk of reinforcing community councils as the ‘eyes and ears’ of the Council. This is a hierarchical view of why the community councils are there, easily quoted, maybe a little lazy. It has certainly been a long time since their explicit case for realistic, practical, deliverable support was tabled with the Council.

9. The argument hinges on boosting community councils ability to work more purposefully together, as the front-line, ‘end-user’ reporters for their communities and neighbourhoods. We want to see a setting where community councils:

a) Have the energy to deliver, to Elected Members and to the Council Executive, respected ‘impact assessments’ of both CEC policy framework and service delivery; and

b) Have the agency to bring about local adaptation and change where that is needed.  

10. In short, we want community councils to be seen as more accustomed to demonstrating an effective grip on what is happening around them, than to voicing frustrated grievance. That said, new heft will bring with it new commitments. For the moment, though, we’ll have to see what emerges. We’ll keep you in touch.   

Note

The timeline on this goes back to a May 2025 meeting with Paul Lawrence (CEC Chief Executive), Gavin King (Head of Democracy and Governance) and Gillie Severin (Head of Strategic Change and Delivery). It extends through the Council’s survey of the Community Council Elections in mid-2025, the related EACC survey shortly thereafter, the conversations at the EACC Forum last October, the subsequent CEC survey report to the Culture and Communities Committee in early December, and the recent EACC online meeting with Gavin King at the end of January. We moved thereafter to compile the review.