Local government is not ‘local’

I live on the outskirts of Alyth on the Bamff estate and have volunteered for the Scottish Green party for a number of years, chairing a local committee and help out with fund-raising and campaigning efforts.

Bamff is managed for eco-tourism, organic sheep farming, timber, native woodland, forest regeneration, affordable housing and renewable energy and offers sustainable holiday and long-term let accommodation in the area.

A mother of four grown-up children, I was one of the co-founders of the Scottish Wild Beaver Group.

Like my fellow Scottish Green candidate in the Strathmore ward, Michael Gallagher, I feel that the problem with local government is that it is just not local enough.

Time and again I hear about the ideas and desires of local people being ignored in favour of schemes being decided from above, yet it is the local people who know how things work in their town or village.

The pressure of development of more housing in Blairgowrie and Rattray without consideration of the infrastructure to match the increase in population growth is classic a case in point.

It seems clear to me that the Green party policy of devolving democracy down to the communities themselves is well overdue.

This idea is not new - places like Blairgowrie used to have their own provost.

Nor is it unique – all over Europe the mayors of small towns work to make their local places work for the local people and have far more real power than our community councils.

Local council systems in the UK are much larger than those in most other European countries.

We need to devolve power downwards and develop an easily worked system of local consultation – collecting ideas from local people and polling people to find out how they would prioritise the allocation of budgets.

Even Tesco attempts a version of this with their