Action Plan: Scottish Parliament Election 2021

The Scottish Civic Trust represents Scotland’s civic sector and strives to ensure our amenity groups are active, empowered, and educated to make a difference in their locality. Our mission is to celebrate Scotland’s built environment, take action for its improvement and empower its communities.

Ahead of each Scottish Parliament election, we release our actions points for the incoming government. The Scottish Civic Trust believes that the new Scottish Government must prioritise:

  • Planning that genuinely benefits all communities

Ensure that voices from across our communities can influence planning decisions by promoting the Place Principle, by embedding the Place Standard, by providing support and time to allow meaningful participation, and by upgrading Scotland’s online planning portal to facilitate use by non-specialists.

  • Safe-guarding Scotland’s built heritage

Achieve VAT parity for maintenance, repair and adaptation of existing buildings and settings, and incentivise investment in the preservation, restoration and re-use, especially of nationally important buildings at risk.

  • Homes and environments for well-being and climate change resilience

Enable owners and occupiers of Scotland’s traditional buildings to carry out timely maintenance and to make affordable adaptations by supporting appropriate legislation such as law reform on Tenement Maintenance and by providing targeted advice and investment.

  • Education that builds civic pride

Inspire life-long involvement in shaping and protecting our environments and built heritage by strengthening the focus on civic participation in the Curriculum for Excellence (including the Place Standard for Scotland) and also in lifelong learning, making it more relevant to people’s lives and spaces.

  • A place for everyone

Support more and greater diversity in the way our Scottish heritage is created and shared and ensure that there is a meaningful and accessible platform for everyone to engage, for example by enabling Historic Environment Scotland to support more digital access projects for people either culturally or physically unable to engage with Scotland’s environments and built heritage assets.

Download the Scottish Civic Trust’s Action Plan for the Scottish Parliament Election 2021.