Andy Paterson is the Policy Officer for Social Enterprise Scotland. His focus is on Environmental and Energy and EDI policy. SES have a Cross-Party Group within The Scottish Parliament and a vibrant event series. More information can be found at: https://socialenterprise.scot/events

This was my first time attending SURF’s conference and the title of the event got across exactly what the sector is all about: resilience during uncertainty.

The conference began with the pleasantries that you look forward to at conferences. But the reality of the current situation in Scotland was brought to full attention by Brian McLaren from EKOS.

Brian led a stark presentation on the environment that the culture and leisure arms of local authorities are experiencing. The lookout was not positive.

With a high turnover of staff and funding that has only decreased over the past ten years, the figures from the Local Government Benchmarking Framework 22/23 highlighted the downwards direction leisure and culture were going, with almost a 1/3 of leisure centres closed or have not re-opened since the Covid pandemic.

This made clear to the conference the challenges that lie ahead of the sector, but there is hope. Partnership working on these issues needs to be fully explored, there have been difficulties in the past with working across borders but with these extra finical pressures, renewed enthusiasm for collaborative local authority working must be achieved.

Brian finished his presentation with an incredibly poignant point, that a serious discussion about the future of funding in Scotland needs to be had and these discussions will be inherently political, with the sensitivities around how we use Scotland’s tax powers. However, if we are to build progressive taxation as a nation, the landscape may stop being so uncertain for our local authorities.

The following panel discussion with Brian, Alan Bell of the Scottish Futures Trust, Annie Breaden, Crown Estate Scotland and Pauline Smith from DTAS went into depth on McLarens presentation.

I had two takeaways from the panel. The first is the scale of damage that PFI repayments are doing to our local authorities and the Scottish Government. Highland Council alone is repaying £63 million a year in PFI loan repayments, their 3rd highest expenditure.

There must be serious moves to get the UK Government to come to terms with these deals, made over two decades ago, that are doing significant damage to our communities.

The second takeaway is the rise in awareness among the public on community benefits that they are entitled to. Annie Breaden from Crown Estate Scotland, talked about a new project they’re working on when it comes to community buyouts.

If a community is looking to buy land in their area, CES would come in, buy the land and then sell the land back for the same price in installments to allow time for the community to bring the money together. This could greatly improve and speed up the community land buying process.

Annie also pointed to the new work CES is doing with GB Energy. This, to my mind, is where community benefit really comes into play. The push towards net zero and renewable energy is a huge opportunity to allow our communities to benefit.

Every time renewable energy and community benefits come into the conversation, I need to highlight the case of Point and Sandwick Trust, who fund and promote community projects which are funded by their wind farm and its turbines – 100% community owned energy.

An independent report carried out by Aquatera, found that when community owned wind farms are compared to privately owned wind farms, community benefit is 34 times greater when community owned. For every £5000 given to communities by private orgs, in contrast community-owned ventures received £170,000. That is the benefit that our communities are entitled to receive.

The Scottish Government Minister for Employment and Investment, Tom Arthur MSP, was a welcome addition to the conference. It was a good opportunity for members to ask the minister directly about the support they need currently. He was very candid in his responses and honest about the funding climate that we’re all in.

The most interesting thing to hear was his commitment to continuing the Community Wealth Building agenda and “working to change how our economy operates”. This is exactly the message that social enterprises want to promote.

As the minister highlighted, this is a long-term plan that will take time but if we do not support that sector now, when it is needed most, I do wonder how long changing our economy will take.

The SURF Conference highlighted some of the great difficulties that we’re facing. Yet, throughout the conference hope was consistent, whether it was from members detailing their journey in the presentations throughout or the individual conversations that were had about the opportunities in energy and the need for more social housing throughout our communities.

These conferences are crucial to the sector to have the ability to get re-enthused with the work we do, with burnout growing these opportunities to share and learn are vital.

This blog is the sixth in a series of follow on blogs from the SURF Annual Conference. Read the final blog from Stephen Connolly of DC Research HERE