Merkinch & South Kessock (Inverness): Your Place, Your Point

Overview

Highland Community Planning Partnership, Highland Third Sector Interface, Youth Highland, Scottish Community Development Centre and Police Scotland are working together on an approach called 'Participatory Budgeting'. This will involve local people having a say over how we spend £30,000 in the local area. 

The project, called Your Place, Your Point, has been funded by Highland's share of the Scottish Government's Whole Family Wellbeing Fund. The Scottish Government have also contributed funding towards the meaningful participation of young people, supported by Youth Highland, throughout the process. This project aims to improve local democracy, ensuring that communities are more engaged with decision-making to improve safety and wellbeing.

Funded by Police Scotland, Youth Highland have been working with young people in the area over the last year to understand more about their feelings about where they live. A wide consultation was carried out which saw nearly 500 children and young people participate; sharing their views about a range of topics. 

Through this, young people told us what they need in their community to grow up loved, safe and respected. You can hear from the young people in the video below.

The project ran over Spring and Summer 2024 and we recruited a Steering Group made up of local people from the community to help. The Steering Group includes professionals and volunteers from organisations and services working in the community.

Successful projects 

We received 11 applications to our fund. The project's Steering Group agreed that all of these met the criteria and they would go forward to the public vote. The public vote ran from 27 August online and culminated with a community voting day on 7 September in Merkinch Community Centre.  

564 votes were cast in total across all 11 projects (443 online and 121 in person), with all projects receiving support from the local community. The initial budget of £31,063.32 has been allocated to all projects which received the strongest support from residents. An outline of the projects, the average rating, rank and funding allocated is outlined below. 

Successful projects

Unsuccessful projects

Participatory Budgeting gives local people the say over which projects receive funding. The above projects received the most democratic support and will therefore receive funding. The three projects below have been unsuccessful. We have shared further information with applicants about other funds that may help their ideas become reality. 

More information about the project

Police Scotland is committed to ensuring that the public, communities and partners are engaged, involved and have confidence in policing (Joint Strategy for Policing 2023-26, Outcome 3) and to our statutory purpose of improving the safety and wellbeing of people, places and communities in Scotland. Policing is visible in every community and plays a vital part in helping communities thrive.

The Divisional Commander for Highland and Islands and the senior leadership team in Inverness want to drive innovation by working with communities – bringing learning and expertise from participatory democracy, community empowerment and public engagement approaches. Recognising that to improve safety and wellbeing, we need to enable genuine collaboration with and within our communities.

Through previous research and insight Police Scotland has identified that there are key drivers of public confidence in policing:

• Police visibility, presence and accessibility;
• Values and behaviours; and
• Community engagement.

We also need a shared vision and collective response to some of the most pressing challenges such as poor mental health, drug and alcohol use and ensuring everyone has access to the right services at the right time.

Your Place, Your Point will be split into several distinct steps, with the Steering Group working with us throughout. In simple terms, the steps of this project are:

1. Develop the guidelines for the funding and how much people/projects can bid for. 
2. Advertise the opportunity in the local area so that everyone is aware and can get involved to bid for funds.
3. Review proposals that have come in to make sure they match the guidelines we have set out.
4. A public vote will take place for which projects/ideas people wish to receive funding.
5. A celebratory event in the community to announce the successful projects. This will bring everyone together through food and music.

Policy context

This work is underpinned by a number of drivers for change, to ensure Police Scotland and our partners meet public sector duties for community empowerment, delivering best value by using public insight in its decision-making and enables innovation and collaboration with communities. It is important to advocate for a co-production approach where possible, to achieve the vision set out by Campbell Christie in the ‘Christie Commission on the Future Delivery of Public Services’ over a decade ago.

Your Place, Your Point sets out an opportunity to move into a new space with policing contributing as an ‘enabler’ in local communities, bringing people together for change alongside our partners.

This project seeks to activate local communities, increase opportunities for active citizenship and work with people to solve problems and respond to local needs and concerns. Your Place, Your Point aligns with central and local government priorities in a number of areas – such as the local democracy review, green participatory budgeting and further deliberative democracy experiments and wider government commitments around community empowerment and active citizenship.

Process outline

The diagram below outlines the journey of this project from start to finish. 

Impact and learning

It is vital that throughout this next period, we maintain and improve public confidence in policing. By involving the public in a collaborative and participative way throughout this process we will learn more about what is needed and expected. We want to find out what works.

We have developed the following key lines of enquiry (KLE) to support and guide our learning as we go:

1. What is needed for effective Participatory Budgeting in the context of policing, community safety and wellbeing, and where is there maximum value for public sector funding with a legacy for the longer term?
2. How can large public sector bodies act within a space of ‘activation’ rather than ‘leading’ (a place-focused way, utilising local knowledge, expertise and other assets) – and what does this mean for the future of policing?
3. How does Participatory Budgeting affect public confidence and trust in policing?

We are working with Scottish Community Development Centre to evaluate this process in Merkinch and South Kessock, and we will share reflections and learning here as we go.

More information

Project funded by: Highland Community Planning Partnership and Scottish Government

Community delivery partners: Highland Third Sector Interface and Youth Highland

Evaluation: Scottish Community Development Centre