Highlands and Islands changes
Community organisations will have to adapt to changes in the way Highlands and Islands Enterprise supports communities .
Driven by the Government’s Economic Strategy, The agency is seeking to foster a more competitive edge by taking a lead role in promoting ‘social enterprise’, and concentrating on “high-growth organisations”.
It was announced earlier this year that the new, slimmed-down HIE – operating with a lower budget and reduced workforce – would be focusing on three principal areas across the region:
• Supporting high-growth businesses and sectors.
• Creating the infrastructure and conditions to improve regional competitiveness.
• Strengthening communities, particularly in fragile areas.
Outlining HIE’s new approach, Chairman William Roe explained: “In future HIE will be more closely involved with businesses and community groups that have high growth potential and aspirations. We will concentrate on working with businesses which can operate regionally, nationally and internationally, helping them improve competitiveness and productivity. This means we target our resources towards clients that will achieve the greatest impact for the regional economy.
“The Scottish Government wants us to intensify effort on our core strengths – on promoting sustainable economic growth and on building more dynamic, successful communities – and to draw on our experience in partnership working to achieve this.”
So what are the implications for the voluntary sector at local level?
While accepting that a healthy voluntary sector is “vitally important”, HIE says it “can no longer be a lead player in supporting this activity”.
The enterprise network will eliminate the very smallest grants, as voluntary groups now have access to a wider range of external funding sources other than HIE – such as Awards for All, the Robertson Trust and the Dounreay Communities Fund.
HIE’s emphasis will be on assisting community-based social enterprises, defined as incorporated open-membership voluntary groups. Assistance will be defined as helping with “the acquisition/enhancement of assets, and the building of capacity” it would be expected for groups to demonstrate the ability to run a successful organisation. Groups would have to be constituted and prove that they have a range of skills required to deliver the project, if HIE identifies that a group has a gap in the skills necessary they would offer assistance to the group to achieve the skills.
In rural communities there will be a clearer distinction between “fragile” and “non-fragile” areas. The fragile areas – where issues such as disadvantage and peripherality are said to be most keenly felt – include north-west Sutherland. Caithness is not categorised as part of the fragile area, but Wick and Thurso, disadvantaged urban areas, are identified as areas of ‘employment deficit’.
Conditions relating to non-fragile areas include the following:
•The minimum “strengthening communities” grant to aid the acquisition of income-generating assets will be £10,000. While communities will be expected to make a contribution, the rate of HIE intervention will be governed by “appraisal of additionality and displacement”. Assistance for capacity-building – feasibility studies, start-up costs, marketing, research and so on – will be assessed on a case-by-case basis, and can be up to 100 per cent fundable by HIE intervention.
•Assistance will be offered to smaller communities wishing to acquire and develop significant income-generating assets, such as land, community renewable energy projects, community buildings and recreational/amenity facilities.
•In disadvantaged urban communities, in close liaison with local authorities, social enterprises will have the aim of promoting sustainable social cohesion and participation – examples being COPE in Lerwick; Ness Soaps in Merkinch and Pulteneytown People’s Project in Wick.
HIE will no longer be assisting small grants as noted above; social projects in larger settlements, particularly in the Inner Moray Firth; ongoing revenue costs; repeat funding; good causes; and non-revenue-generating activity.
The effects of adopting these policies will be a clearer focus on social enterprise and the contribution it makes to economic growth, to population increase, and to “solidarity, cohesion and sustainability”. For more information, please contact HIE Caithness and Sutherland at Tollemache House, High Street, Thurso, Caithness KW14 8AZ (tel 01847 896115; email ).