Understanding Community Engagement

Definition of Community Engagement

Community engagement is a mutual commitment to each other. It is not simply about informing people about activities and changes outwith their control or merely consulting them to hear what they think.

It is an ongoing two-way process of communication, collaboration and co-production between local people and communities – such as bus passengers and users – and organisations and institutions providing public services – such as local authorities, bus operators and Community Transport groups – to make and implement decisions together.

Community engagement is defined by the Scottish Community Development Centre (SCDC) as ‘a way to build and sustain relationships between public services and community groups – helping them both to understand and take action on the needs or issues that communities experience’.

Community engagement can be a larger or smaller scale process over the longer or shorter term, dealing with major, complex and contentious issues or ones which are much more consensual and straightforward.

The term ‘community’ is understood broadly and inclusively. Significantly, the concept shifts the focus from the individual to the collective, prioritising inclusivity and valuing diversity. It can apply to groups of people with many common characteristics, such as a shared:

  • Affiliation (e.g. membership of a club or society)
  • Experience (e.g. bus passengers or people with disability, on low-incomes or with refugee status)
  • Demographic and identity (e.g. age, ethnicity or gender)
  • Interest and occupation (e.g. employment, hobbies or membership of a professional body)
  • Set of values (e.g. faith groups or campaigning organisations)
  • Geography (e.g. living in, or belonging to, the same places and spaces, like streets, neighbourhoods and villages, towns, cities or even regions)

These can be referred to as communities of place, communities of interest or communities of practice. Communities can communicate, connect or convene in face-to-face or online settings.

Successful community engagement is aligned with the seven principles developed by the SCDC with the Scottish Government (see Chapter 5). It facilitates an open, participatory and rigorous process which identifies the barriers, issues and needs experienced by the community in question and acts on them. It challenges mindsets, creates spaces for debate, discussion and consensus-building and helps to ‘achieve positive change’.

The academic literature and research on community engagement recognises that it ‘is not generally driven by a “model” so much as by a framework of guiding principles, strategies, and approaches’. This guide takes such an approach, providing a framework of strategic principles which can be put into action illustrated by successful examples.

In Scotland’s bus sector, community engagement takes place in a number of different scenarios. Firstly, and most frequently, it takes place when network changes, such as the alteration, reduction or removal of a service, route or timetable, are proposed or announced. Bus operators and local authorities have some statutory obligations to communicate and consult on network changes, although the level of community engagement is generally limited.

Secondly, it can take place to support strategy development or long-term planning, often alongside broader considerations around the wider transport system, understanding the aspirations, ideas and visions of local people and communities and developing action plans to make these a reality.

Thirdly, it can take place on an ongoing or routine basis as part of gathering feedback, such as through passenger experience surveys or convening specific user demographics, like groups of disabled people.

Benefits of Community Engagement

The Sub-Group believes that there are significant benefits of Community Engagement for all parties – whether national and local government, bus operators or local people and communities. These benefits have been evidenced by policy and practice in places across Scotland over many years and are also illustrated by the case studies in this guide.

For national and local government, community engagement can:

  • Ensure bus services are planned, developed and delivered according to the needs of local people and communities by gathering evidence, ideas and views to inform policy-making and decision-making
  • Improve the design and delivery of bus services, especially in terms of accessibility for older people and disabled people by listening to those with lived experience
  • Improve the passenger experience by identifying challenges to seamless journeys and opportunities for improvement
  • Improve outcomes in local communities by redesigning bus services to meet objectives related to health, housing, connectivity, the economy and the environment
  • Improving understanding of quality of life in local communities, the nature of transport challenges and the role of bus services in offering solutions
  • Identify and support the creation of cost-effective mitigations to network changes

For bus operators, commercial and non-profit alike, community engagement can:

  • Inform policy-making and decision-making about local bus services with a robust and democratic evidence base, whether for bus network changes or as part of long-term strategic transport planning
  • Support patronage growth by raising awareness and promoting use of new and existing services
  • Improve their understanding of the local community by building a more comprehensive and detailed picture of local behaviours, needs and priorities
  • Facilitate quantitative and qualitative evidence-gathering which provides useful knowledge and intelligence of new or evolving markets
  • Improve relationships with the local community by building new connections and contacts which can sustain and support other work in the future
  • Lead to new collaboration and partnerships, including with Community Transport operators
  • Signal the commitment of operators to passengers and the local community
  • Demonstrate openness and transparency and a willingness to listen and respond
  • Develop a more constructive, positive and forward-looking conversation with local people and communities which is more focused on solutions than grievances

For local people and communities, community engagement can:

  • Make local people and communities feel heard in conversations which matter to them and decisions which impact their lives and livelihoods
  • Inform local people and communities of, and support them to adapt to, network changes, including identifying ways to mitigate negative impacts, such as connecting services or new Community Transport schemes
  • Help local people to better understand local policymaking and decision-making, including the difficult choices and real trade-offs of budgetary decisions facing councillors and bus operators
  • Facilitate and promote new social connections and a sense of neighbourliness or community spirit
  • Encourage residents to become more engaged and involved with opportunities in their communities, from future community engagement processes to volunteering
  • Ensure diverse and fair representation for specific demographics and under-represented groups through direct outreach, tailored approaches and inclusive methods
  • Democratise and decentralise power and control to local people and communities at the grassroots level, empowering them to have a real and meaningful influence over the design and delivery of local transport services in line with the Community Empowerment Act (2015) and as part of the Community Wealth Building agenda

The Case for Change

Some excellent transport-related work on community engagement is being undertaken across Scotland. Community engagement and empowerment has risen further up the policy and political agenda in recent years. New legislation is in place, the use of online engagement methods has expanded to become mainstream and there is increasing experimentation with more innovative approaches to outreach.

Statutory notice periods mean that bus operators are required to give at least 70 days’ notice to local authorities, 42 days’ notice to the Office of the Traffic Commissioner (OTC) and 21 days’ notice to passengers if they plan to change or cancel a bus service, with some exemptions for unavoidable short-term changes. There is no legal requirement for passengers to be consulted.

The Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act became law in 2015. It’s aim is to empower communities by strengthening their voices in decisions about public services and making it easier for them to own and manage land and buildings. Part 2 of the Act makes Community Planning Partnerships a legal requirement and requires local authorities to involve community organisations, including Community Transport operators, at all stages of community planning.

Improving community engagement is part of Scotland’s community empowerment agenda, which represents a move away from weaker, less effective and more passive models of community consultation towards greater community control (see Case Study A).

The National Standards for Community Engagement were refreshed and updated in 2016 to be aligned with the ambition of the new legislation. These ‘good-practice principles designed to support and inform the process of community engagement’ are used as a framework for this guide (see Chapter 5).

A new Community Wealth Building Bill is being developed by the Scottish Government in partnership with the community sector and after extensive public consultation.

However, it is also clear that there is significant room for improvement and an ‘implementation gap’. Our actions are falling short of our collective ambition, which go beyond minimum statutory requirements. The picture is mixed across the country, but the Sub-Group has identified a number of critical and common challenges:

  • Poor communication with local people and communities
  • Very short timescales which deny local people and communities timely opportunities to meaningfully engage with or respond to proposed network changes
  • ‘Fait accompli’ proposals which deny local people and communities timely opportunities to meaningfully engage with or shape decisions which have in fact already been made
  • Challenges with constructive engagement, because the focus of participants can understandably be on specific complaints, experiences or grievances rather than strategies or solutions
  • A lack of collaboration and partnership working with the community, third and voluntary sectors, particularly local Community Transport operators, which misses opportunities to improve engagement, identify alternatives or co-produce mitigation efforts
  • ‘Consultation fatigue’ among local people and communities, depressing turnout at events and lowering participation levels
  • A lack of timely feedback which means local people and communities often struggle to understand their impact, discouraging future participation
  • Inaccessible processes which do not promote equity, diversity and inclusion, exclude some people and communities and lead to unrepresentative participants
  • A failure to review community engagement processes to identify successes and areas of improvement, while implementing lessons learned for the future
  • A lack of capacity in local government and the bus sector to develop and deliver community engagement processes which go beyond minimum statutory requirements

There is consensus that this is an area which requires improvement and deserves to be prioritised. Change is needed. Scotland’s bus sector needs to do more to engage with communities to deliver fundamental change. Implementing the principles at the heart of this guide offers an opportunity to do things better and do things differently. This document offers guidance of how to address these challenges over the long-term.

Significant network changes are anticipated in the months and years ahead. Bus services across Scotland may altered, reduced or cut entirely due to the current fiscal and operating environment. It is essential that community engagement is fit for purpose during this period to address, mitigate or prevent the negative impacts which will otherwise result.

Moreover, as Scotland acts to reduce car use by 20% by 2030 and achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2045, the public transport system will have to step up and the importance of a bus sector which meets communities needs will be even more essential.

Community Transport, which is all about community owned and led solutions to unmet transport needs, is one example of this agenda in action. Engaging with the sector and harnessing it’s potential should be a core part of community engagement in Scotland’s bus sector.

Case Study A: Community Planning in Aberdeen

In 2016, shortly after the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015, Community Planning Aberdeen published a new and more ambitious strategy to ‘underpin all of the activities’ of community planning partners in the Granite City, from Aberdeen City Council and the Health and Social Care Partnership to Police Scotland, local colleges and universities and other public and third sector bodies.

It committed to ‘move significantly beyond’ what it called ‘the standard approach’ which saw organisations only ‘provide information and consult on plans that have already been developed’. It vowed to move up the participatory ‘ladder’, shown below, towards co-production, empowerment and self-determination, which would give local people and communities not just a real and meaningful say, but also real and meaningful power.

Empowerment

Self-determination

People implement what they decide.

Empowerment

Organisations implement what people decide.

Engagement methods (increasing participation)

Collaboration (co-production)

Organisations seek people's involvement in identifying issues, outlining options and making decisions.

Involvement

People's concerns inform organisations' proposed decisions.

Consultation

People's views are listened to in respect of organisations' proposed decisions.

Informing

Organisations keep people informed of proposed decisions.

Figure 1: Diagram from Aberdeens Engagement, Participation and Empowerment strategy showing Participatory ‘ladder’, as described in text above
Figure 1: Diagram from Aberdeens Engagement, Participation and Empowerment strategy showing Participatory ‘ladder’.