2001
support for local projects although views on this
among the agents were mixed.
Planning for Real - Local Plans in
the Highlands
‘Planning for Real’ (PFR) was developed as a tool
for aiding community planning by Neighbourhood
Initiatives Foundation (Ref 13) in 1977. It is a
colourful and friendly method for bringing together
first hand local knowledge with expert advice to
identify issues, ideas and priorities for action. The
method is based on maps and models of real
places - street, village, area. Through a system of
topic cards, local people can add their own
Lessons learned
Experience has shown that success in participatory
rural appraisal rests on the following principles:
Purpose driven and relevant: People will
only wish to participate if the issues are relevant
and important to them.
Inclusiveness and accessibility: Everyone
with an interest in the work should be able to
participate and the work being undertaken should
be open to everyone to scrutinise.
Legitimacy and accountability: The process,
and those organising it, must be seen to be
accountable, acceptable and do-able to the
community.
Commitment to action: Commitment to
implementing the outcomes of the process is
References
1. Scottish Office (1992) Rural Framework,
Scottish Office, Edinburgh
2. Bryden J, Watson D, Storey C, van Alphen J,
(1997) Community Involvement and Rural
Policy The Scottish Office Central Research Unit
3. Scottish National Rural Partnership (1997)
Good Practice in Rural Development, No.2:
Community Involvement in Rural Development
Initiatives, Scottish Office, Edinburgh.
4. Cernea, M.M (ed.) (1991) Putting People
First: Sociological Variables in Rural
Development Oxford University Press for the
World Bank, New York.
The partner contacts for the Rural Transfer Network are:
Prof. Mark Shucksmith, Project Co-ordinator, The Arkleton Centre for Rural Development Research, St. Mary’s King’s College, Aberdeen AB24 3UF,
e-mail: m.shucksmith@abdn.ac.uk • Torill Meistad, Senter for Byygdeforskning, N-7491 Trondheim, Norway, e-mail: Torill.Meistad@bygdeforskning.ntnu.no
• Bo Svensson, Institutet for Regionalforskning, Ostersund, Sweden, e-mail: bo.svensson@itps.nu • Pentti Malinen, Research and Development Centre, University of
Kajaani, Finland, e-mail: pentti.malinen@oulu.fi
knowledge to the map, identify problems,
opportunities and ideas. The process was designed
to be owned and run by local people. The map
goes out to people wherever they are - at school,
work or play - gathering ideas. The ideas are then
sorted and prioritised locally and form the basis for
negotiation with public bodies and making a plan
of action.
The first local PFR in the Highlands was carried out
in 1994, by 2 communities - Kyle and Kyleakin,
ferry ports faced with the construction of the bridge
to the Isle of Skye, which was likely to by-pass
them (Ref.14). PFR helped to gather all of the
critical. Communities are action focused and will
soon lose heart if no action results from their work.
Understanding and trust: Time and effort is
needed to build understanding and trust between
the different interests involved.
Respect for voluntary time: Local voluntary
time is precious and the methods used for
participation should be designed to give maximum
benefit for minimum input.
Give and take: All parties involved in a
participatory process will wish to gain from it. This
involves careful negotiation of objectives and
outputs which satisfy everyone.
Appropriate methodology: The methods
chosen for participation must reflect the purpose of
the work and the needs of the stakeholders,
5. Highlands & Islands Forum (1994) Land,
Wildlife and Community - Aiding a
Partnerships, Highlands & Islands Forum
Report 1986-1994, Highlands & Islands
Forum.
6. Pretty J, Guijt I, Thompson J, Scoones I,
(1995) Participatory Learning & Action - A
Trainers Guide, IIED, London
7. Halhead V, Say P, Downie A, (2001) Act Local
- Community Planning for Sustainability, The
Duthchas Handbook, @ www.duthchas.org.uk
8. www.iied.org
9. IIED (June 2000) Participatory Processes in
local ideas about how to address this situation.
At the same time, The Highland Council decided to Rural Development Lessons from the North
adapt the method for use in developing statutory
Local Plans. This was an interesting experiment in SCOTLAND • How can people come together to promote local development?
using a bottom-up process for a top-down purpose.
Their method used tools of local maps and topic
cards, in public meetings, to gather local ideas. The
weakness for the community is that they are not
involved in the analysis of the information. Whilst
this approach is not owned by the community, it
has enabled a significantly greater local
contribution to statutory planning than previously.
Vanessa Halhead, The Arkleton Centre for Rural Development Research, University of Aberdeen, St. Mary’s ,
The method has been used in all Local Plans
throughout the Highlands for over 10 years. King’s College, Aberdeen AB24 3UF
blanket approaches do not work.
Community agents: The process will be more
successful if local people are enabling it. Training
and payment for local community agents has
Participatory Rural Appraisal
proved to be very successful.
Capacity building: The process should be
Scotland, 2001
designed to build the capacity of local people to
replicate it in future work.
Time and resources: Community involvement
needs time to work at the pace of the community. Summary
It also takes resources for skilled facilitation and
expenses of local participants.
Communications & networking: Good
communication is fundamental for understanding of • Involving local communities in designing the policies and programmes that relate to
the work, how it is being done, sharing experience
and learning from successes and mistakes. their own areas is fundamental to effective rural development.
• The involvement of local people and communities in the planning and
the North, PLA Notes series IIED, London implementation of rural development has been an important theme in Scottish rural
10. Baxter S.H, (1996) Experiences in
participation: A review of current practice in
policy since the 1980s.
Rural Development Scottish Natural Heritage
11. Rural Inverness and Nairn LEADER II Local
• The actual implementation of this type of local involvement has however presented
Action Group (2000) Final Report, Inverness
and Nairn Enterprise, Inverness
many challenges, both in terms of the approaches adopted and the resources
12. www.leader2.org.uk allocated.
13. www.nifonline.org.uk
14. Noble P, Robb M, (1994) Planning for Real - a • This dossier looks at some of the key strands of activity in participatory approaches in
Case Study Highlands & Islands Forum
recent years and identifies some of the main lessons learned.
The Rural Transfer Network
The Rural Transfer Network exists to document and transfer knowledge on rural development in the northern periphery of Europe. The Dossiers
provide a summary of a range of current rural development approaches in each country.
Main Conclusions
• The success of rural development can only be
measured on the ground in terms of its
appropriateness to the needs of the area and
its acceptability to the local community.
• The involvement of local people in shaping
rural development policy and action is critical
to its success.
• Scotland has not traditionally involved local
Why is participation needed?
Scotland lacks the local level democratic structures,
or municipalities, which are an important part of
the Scandinavian system. Local Councils operate at
a district level. The Highland Council is the largest
local authority area in Europe (25,900km2). The
development and implementation of policy tends to
be centralised through the many sectoral
Government departments and agencies.
There are over 3,000 local voluntary groups and
organisations in the Highlands and Islands, meeting
a variety of locally defined needs and gaps in public
services. Voluntary activity is one of the most
important ways in which local action takes place in
rural communities and this ‘social capital’ forms
one of the most significant forms of investment in
Policy background
Community involvement has been a central
premise of rural policy in Scotland since 1992
(Refs 1,2,3), and has stressed the need to involve
What is participation?
Despite much rhetoric, there has been a lack of
clarity as to what community participation means in
practice. It has been taken to mean different things
by different players, depending on their
perspective. This has caused confusion and
problems of quality control.
The classic analysis of the levels of the ‘ladder of
participation’ is:
• Acting together
• Deciding together
• Consultation
• Information seeking
• Informing
people in developing policies nor in deciding on
the direction of public spending, to do so
requires a major cultural change.
• Approaches to improving the quantity and
quality of community involvement have been
growing and maturing over the last 15 years,
but are still poorly understood.
• There are now sufficient successful examples of
the region. However, there is often a wide gap
between the activities of such groups and those of
Government bodies. This is a source of concern and
efforts are being made to engage local and national
players together in designing policy and delivering
actions.
Experience has shown that top-down rural
development initiatives are the most likely to fail
and local people are less likely to give their support
to policies and actions over which they feel no
ownership. Rural policy should closely reflect the
circumstances of each area and stakeholder for
whom it is designed, and be implemented with the
agreement and involvement of local people.
communities in the development of policies and
actions which affect them. This is in part a
response to EU policy on subsidiarity, and also to
Participation and ownership increase from the
bottom to the top of the ladder. The choice of
which level is appropriate for which interest group
will depend on their relationship to the main
purpose of the work. The approach used for
participation will also vary for each level. Effective
participation is most likely when each group is
satisfied with the level at which they are involved.
Most official exercises in community involvement
have been at the lower end of the ladder. However,
over the last 15 years, there has been a growing
movement to look at participation, not as token
consultation, but in its full sense of community
participatory rural appraisal methods upon
which to build awareness and confidence, but
promotion and training are needed.
• Participatory processes take time and
resources, until this is recognised and built into
Government programmes, participation will
continue to be an imperfect or token exercise.
In the light of this, key reasons for involving local
communities more fully are:
• to improve democracy and legitimacy for public
action
• to reduce the gap between policy makers and
rural communities
• to make rural policy responsive to local
knowledge, needs and circumstances
• to engage local people more directly in
planning for their own futures
• to engage local people more directly in taking
action
• to build skills and confidence for future action.
the difficulties created by an increasingly
centralised and fragmented policy landscape.
empowerment.”...empowering local people to
mobilise their own capacities, be social actors
rather than passive subjects, manage their
resources, make decisions and control the activities
that affect their lives.”(Ref.4). Beginning with the
activities of a number of forward looking individuals
and voluntary organisations (Ref.5) in the early
1990s, community involvement has come to be
recognised as a discipline with an extensive tool kit
of principles and methods for ensuring best
practice. In particular, the skills of ‘participatory
rural appraisal’(Ref.6) gained in international
development have provided a foundation for a
whole new approach.
Who participates?
Who participates depends on the purpose of the
work and those who have an interest or stake in
the issues or area, including those who are directly
or indirectly affected, as well as those who may be
a key resource. In the case of local development,
How is it done?
“Participation doesn’t just happen, it must be
initiated, guided and sustained. The way in which
this is done can completely alter the outputs.
Participation is closely related to issues of social
inclusion, democracy and power. Its effects can be
far reaching and can also be seen as threatening to
some” (Ref.7).
Participatory rural appraisal is a term used to
describe a wide array of approaches. Its roots lie in
experience gained through international
development work and only recently has that
experience begun to translate itself into Europe,
mostly through the experiences of returning
development workers. Professional development
Case-studies:
Many examples now exist of participatory appraisal
being used as a tool for involving communities in
the development process. These range from major
Government programmes like those to develop
Scotland’s first National Parks, to very localised
development strategies. The methods used vary
considerably, and there has not as yet been a
comparative evaluation of the success of the
different approaches. The case-studies present some
different examples.
Participatory Rapid Appraisal -
Moray
In one interesting example, a PRA approach has
been used by a local enterprise company, Moray,
Badenoch and Strathspey Enterprise, to gain insight
into local conditions and build connections with its
local communities. It has done this as the basis for
planning their own work in the area and for
contributing to that of others through the
Community Plan. This is a rare example of such a
participatory approach being used by a public body.
The work has focused on gaining and prioritising
the ideas of each local community, using
participatory appraisal methods. Local community
this may include whole communities. Community
definition is important as communities have natural
boundaries, often established over centuries, within
which they prefer to work and which may not
reflect more recent administrative boundaries.
and documentation of participatory appraisal has
been focused through the medium of bodies like
IIED (International Institute for Environment and
Development) (Refs 8&9). PRA is a structured
process of learning, with and from communities,
about their own situation and conditions of life. It
requires full involvement of local people as the
main subjects and not objects of inquiry and mixes
a variety of methods to fit the situation and to
reach the most difficult to reach.
The selection of the most appropriate method is
critical to the success of the outcomes. This is more
difficult than it might seem. Appropriate methods
will vary depending on the objectives of the work,
agents have been trained to facilitate the process.
The community appraisals used 3 simple questions
to gain information about the area: ‘What do you
like and dislike about your area and what are your
ideas for improvement?’ Ideas were gained
through the medium of community workshops and
interviews. The ideas were listed in detail and then
prioritised by each community as a basis for action
planning.
Community Agents - LEADER II
Programme for Rural Inverness and
Nairn
(Refs 11&12)
This Programme area, with a population of
28,000, placed strong emphasis on working
closely with its communities to identify their needs,
develop projects and build confidence and capacity.
Central to their approach was the use of ‘LEADER
Agents’. The agents were local people, selected by
their communities. Their role was to provide a
direct link between the Programme and the
communities and to help communities undertake
local appraisals. A total of 14 agents were
recruited, from a wide range of backgrounds. They
received a small annual retainer, a fee for
Many approaches to involving communities exclude
people who are not represented by formal
institutions or groups. Approaches which are open
to all are most successful in building understanding,
capacity and collective action.
the outputs needed, the stakeholders to be
involved, the level of participation required, the
scale of the area and population and the time and
resources available. A range of methods has been
used in Scotland, some are discussed in the case-
studies below (Ref 10).
The use of ‘community agents’ in assisting the
process of involvement has been successfully
employed by many initiatives, including LEADER.
Community agents is a term used to describe local
people, often working in an informal capacity, who
mobilise of local activity and forge links with public
agencies.
attending meetings and expenses.
Agents were selected through local advertisement
and Community Council nomination and
endorsement. The Programme tried to ensure that
each agent was at least a member of the
Community Council. Some concerns were noted
about the democratic accountability of the agents
and the problem of finding a suitable agent for
each community.
The agents were a significant driving force behind
the main outcomes of the Programme. They
provided invaluable access to local knowledge by
bringing the experience of different communities
together to identify and agree needs, priorities and
resources. Experience showed that the use of
agents proved its value through the varying
amount of activity and projects coming forward
from communities according to whether they had a
LEADER Agents working with them and the quality
of the agent. The agents also helped the
communities to access information and training
and improve local management skills. Most
communities would have liked the agents to also
provide direct management and development