Graphic: copyright Gideon Cable, 2026
One in five Scots don’t have the ‘most fundamental’ form of democracy in Scotland: a community council.
According to data gathered through Freedom of Information requests in November 2025, only 80% of community councils are operating across the country. Dundee, North Lanarkshire and Falkirk are bottom of the ranking at 17%, 37% and 39%, respectively. Adjusting by population, 22% of Scots lack community council representation which is around 1 million people.
“You’ve got towns across Scotland of 20 to 50 thousand people who’ve got no self-government”, says Professor John Bachtler of Strathclyde University, who is also the Chair of Cambuslang Community Council. “I do quite a lot of work on a European level and we have the worst level of local democratic representation and self-government in Europe, and that includes England”
Scottish councillors have the largest average number of constituents of any local government system across Europe. In France, Austria and Sweden, councils average between 118 and 256 people per councillor. At the higher end, councils in Ireland and England have 2,336 to 2,603 per councillor. Scottish councils average 4,486 people per councillor.
Community councils are an important bridge to communities for local councillors to address this problem of scale. Community councils average 500 people per community councillor.
Pat Lorimer, Chair of Straiton, Kirkmichael and Crosshill Community Council in South Ayrshire, highlights the importance of this: “You can go to your MP but your very small fry. To your MSP your small fry. Go to your councillor, you’re slightly bigger fry. But to your community councillors, you’re significant and your gripe is heard more sympathetically”
Scottish community councils were introduced under the Local Government Act in 1973 as non-political locally elected democratic bodies. It describes them as being able to ‘take any action’ they deem appropriate to improve their communities, but they have no statutory powers apart from being consulted on planning and licensing applications.
Mr. Lorimer describes it as: “The start of democracy. The bottom end of democracy”
In practice, community councils that operate effectively have a close relationship with the local councillors and services, acting as a two-way conduit for information and debate prior to decisions.
“Our local councillor and an officer from the council are attending every meeting now”, says Mr. Lorimer. “The police submit a report every month and attend every second meeting so we can ask questions and talk things through”
“We have a very good councillor in Brian Connelly, who will action things, but it starts with us. For example, there’s a particularly unpleasant crossroads, which we’ve christened ‘the killer crossroads’ – because it’s killed at least two people – and that got escalated up and they took some action”
Janis McDonald, Renfrewshire councillor for Paisley Northwest, agrees that community councils are vital to local democracy and the ability of councils to be effective: “community councils are statutory and they’re there to be purposeful. They are the frontline ability to communicate with the people. I would like to see them being effective forums for feedback into the council”
Community councils are a direct and active form of local democracy that people can participate in directly but are not generally seen that way.
Very few community council elections ever have contested seats and, as the data shows, 1 in 5 fail to have sufficient members to be established.
It is thought the capacity for people to be involved in community councils is hampered by several factors. There is a time commitment that most working age people cannot undertake and it requires the ability to deal with bureaucratic systems where you only have influence and not direct power. As a result, community councils are largely operated by retired professionals who have the time and skills to undertake the work. This leads to a perception of community councils that does not encourage participation from other sections of society.
The funding of community councils and their powers to disburse funds is also seen as a major barrier to participation. It is hard to “take any action” to improve the community when you have little funding to invest directly. A 2018 survey found that most community councils had a block grant of between £300 and £1,700 per annum. They also received a per head of community amount of between £0.01 and £0.80. In contrast, Shetland and Orkney which rank highest in community council representation received £8,365 and £4,257 in their block grants and £6.81 and £3.92 per head.
Falkirk Council, which ranks second to bottom for operating community councils, has recognised its failings and is actively working on improving participation by boosting funding and granting more powers.
Crawford Bell, Communities Manager for Falkirk Council, said: “We see community councils as being a vehicle for effective community engagement and consultation”
“We got agreement from the Falkirk Council executive [ in December ] to start and 18-month project around re-establishing and investing in our community councils.”
“If we’re serious about this thing called local democracy and we want to delegate decision making into communities then we need to look at how we put structures in place that allow that to happen. Falkirk Council will come up with a system that allows community councils to have more influence.”
There are a range of possibilities being considered for local legislation: enhanced powers to submit planning suggestions rather than just responding to submissions; larger resources to invest in local projects; and, participatory budgeting where the community council acts as facilitator with the community to collaboratively build a local budget with the council rather than just selecting from a list of options provided.
Councillor McDonald also is a supporter of these ideas: “In Renfrewshire, I think more funds and more participatory budgeting could be routed through community councils. Participatory budgeting is not about the council or the council officers telling the people what they’re getting. When you actually ask the people, they don’t really want a new centre somewhere. A lot of the time they want two or three benches where they can chat to each other. This notion that we [ the council ] always know better isn’t a good thing”
According to Mr. Bell: “What we need to do is we need to give everyone a voice. We will build the capacity of those communities, through offers of support, to have some form of locally elected democratic group that represents their community within decision making and resource allocation of Falkirk Council. That’s the ambition.”
The key to revitalising community councils appears to be greater investment and participatory powers.
Councillor McDonald is clear: “We need to invest to get the best out of them. We’re not going to enable greater local participation if we don’t”
