As many will know, Peebles and District Community Council (PCC) organised the local hustings for the Westminster elections. I was nervous, having never been involved in anything similar before and not knowing how it would turn out. However, my concerns weren’t justified. The Burgh Hall was packed, there was only a little barracking of the seven candidates, the audience were generally well behaved and so too were our politicians. A far better example of democratic principles than exhibited in some of the televised public debates. Perhaps Peebles can provide a lesson for all the others!

Only one criticism has fed back to me and that was there were no questions on local issues, but of course local issues were not what this election was all about. We were also lucky to have an excellent Chair in Father Tony Lappin and he deserves much of the credit for a successful evening.

Now that the general election is out of the way we can return to local issues. Just how healthy is our local democracy? On the surface it appears satisfactory, I believe your community council work well with the elected councillors and indeed the elected councillors regardless of party seem to work well together and they do work hard for the community they serve. PCC is represented on the community hospitals working group, NHS Borders recently gave invites to the public to allow scrutiny of its future direction and SBC continuously issue questionnaires to collect public views on a range of subjects.

It all looks good, but how effective is this local democracy? I would suggest not very. There is a general perception that much of this interaction with the public, by public services is window dressing. I am certainly coming to believe that. The Scottish Borders Community Council Network died off, partly due to a lack of volunteers, but mostly, because the way it was originally organised by SBC could never work effectively.

Local groups including the PCC are understaffed and almost always underfunded. People demand services, want events like Peebles in Bloom, the Beltane and the Christmas Lights and they ask PCC for help when they have a problem. However, most folk consider themselves far too busy to get involved with helping and when it all falls apart, they cry about how awful it is and so sad that no one provides these things anymore. Volunteer groups all need more people to give back to the community and not just to take from it.

In England, parish and burgh councils have an average annual budget of £1m and can make local decisions on what benefits the community. Community councils in the Scottish borders have just £60,000 between them and almost no local autonomy. Scotland’s regional councils are the largest in the developed world with an average population of 175,000. Across Europe the average is 10,000. Norway, long held up as an example to us with a similar population to Scotland has nearly 400 small but powerful councils compared to our 32 overblown edifices.

Effective local democracy? I don’t think so!

As always: support or comment to Anne Snoddy (Secretary PCC) secretary@ccrbpeebles.co.uk

Peter Maudsley

Chair

Peebles and District Community Council