Proposed Community Empowerment and Renewal Bill

Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at on 12 September 2012.

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Photo of Sarah Boyack Sarah Boyack Labour

I welcome the opportunity to debate the progress of the proposed community empowerment and renewable—that is a Freudian slip; I mean “renewal”—bill. For Scottish Labour, this is very much unfinished business. Our flagship right-to-buy legislation in the first session gave communities in rural areas the capacity to utilise land to the benefit of those areas. People were attracted to move to those areas and create economic prosperity. Crucially, it enabled some of our most remote rural communities to maximise the opportunities that came from the people and the land.

We believe that it is crucial that we learn the lessons of community successes. Community development and finance were critical. To pick up on the minister’s points about Gigha, what the community there has been able to do in regeneration, attracting people to the island and developing renewables is inspirational. That has been done to the point at which the community is pretty much self-sufficient. It has made fantastic use of different types of renewable energy, and it has made opportunities for tourism developments on the island. Big money was needed to make that work.