Community Development and Poverty

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The Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 places a responsibility on Community Planning Partnerships to produce two types of plan, outlining local priorities, required actions and timescales.

The first is the Local Outcomes Improvement Plan (LOIP), which encompasses the entire local authority area. The second type is a Locality Plan and covers smaller areas, usually focusing on the areas requiring most improvement. Each CPP will produce at least one Locality Plan although some produce a few; there is no limit on how many can be produced. As the main aim is to address local needs and ambitions, it is important the views of the community are heard and incorporated into any plans.

The Outer Hebrides Community Planning Partnership (OHCPP) have agreed two priority areas, one of which is Stornoway West – with a particular focus on the Cearns, who have the poorest health outcomes to be overseen by the Stornoway West Locality Group made up of NHS and local authority officers as well as community representatives.

North Uist and Benbecula was identified as an area that was ‘vulnerable’ and the ‘least improved’ which instigated the creation of the North Uist and Benbecula Locality Partnership group. The group, made up of many partners within the locality work on identified areas following community consultation. The Outer Hebrides is an economically fragile area with wages lower than Scottish average. Added to this are the number of households in fuel poverty demonstrating low levels of energy efficiency.

Eilean Siar (Western Isles) has no ‘data zones’ or geographical areas within what are defined as Scotland’s most economically deprived. The Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) is used to target interventions and tackle the effects of socio-economic inequalities in communities across Scotland. However, there are difficulties in using the SIMD in rural areas. Areas such as the Western Isles are sparsely populated, socially heterogeneous and less sensitive to area-based measures such as SIMD. This can lead to a situation where households in rural areas are omitted from policy and targeting by national interventions designed to address poverty and inequalities on to address health and safety risks.

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