Scottish Government

Who we are and what we do

Dundee's community regeneration forums are community-led organisations, sponsored by the Dundee Partnership. They are supported by staff from the city council's regeneration team. The aim is to put local communities at the heart of urban regeneration in Dundee, bringing together active residents living in the more deprived parts of our city. It has been a significant success.

Each of our forums involves up to 15 elected residents, with one of them acting as chair. With up to 75 local people now involved, the forums provide an important focus for community views on regeneration. But we do much more than that. We also decide how money should be spent on our own local priorities; the forums sound out residents and make bids for the finance needed to put their ideas into practice. It has been an empowering process.

How we got going

The network of five forums was set up in 2004, following the work of the social inclusion partnership. Dundee now has eight community planning areas. In the five most deprived of these, the idea was to bring residents representatives together to give people a real say in how their neighbourhoods should change.

Council staff took the lead in the early stages, helping to build up the capacity of residents on the new Forums. They offered an extensive training and development programme. Our forums have the ultimate say on how the Dundee Partnership's Community Regeneration Fund should be divided up at neighbourhood level.

How we organise ourselves

The forums each have a code of practice which sets out important issues such as who can vote, how decisions are made and who can be a member. Our new members receive induction packs which are tailor-made for them personally and explain what the community regeneration forums are all about.

We bring all five forums together every quarter at 'The Gathering', events which provide a useful opportunity to share news, ideas, lessons and good practice. They are also used to review progress and plans for the future. Many of our forum members have also visited community regeneration projects elsewhere in Scotland, to share their experiences and learn from others.

How we organise ourselves

Our forum members are elected locally in an open, democratic process. Each forum covers three main neighbourhoods; five residents are elected to represent their neighbourhood so each forum has 15 members. In some areas, up to 40 people took part in elections.

Everyone stands down at the end of each year, but individuals are able to stand for re-election. In practice a quarter of each forum's membership changes each year. This helps us to both maintain continuity and keep the forums regularly refreshed with new members. Our partner organisations, particularly the police and housing providers, have generally been very good at attending Forum meetings and supporting the process, alongside city councillors.

Where our funding comes from

Our main funding comes from the Fairer Scotland Fund. Each forum has an annual Community Regeneration Fund allocation, which is worked out by population size. Significant sums of money have been involved, in previous years ranging from £200,000 to £400,000. Each forum highlights how Dundee City Council would like to spend this money on local priorities. Provided our proposals fit with the community plan and the city's Single Outcome Agreement this is not usually a problem; bids are only turned down if they fall foul of technicalities or legal complications. Local priorities are almost always respected.

Our involvement with partners like the police also helps us draw in extra money for local priorities; employing neighbourhood police teams is a good example.

Murray Webster is a member of the Central Community Regeneration Forum. He feels strongly that, without their own funding, the forums would have had little impact…

"Having access to funding has been very important - it has enabled us to find practical solutions to community priorities; we certainly wouldn't want to lose our seat around the financial decision-making table."

What we've achieved so far

Our forums have been very active over the past five years. Our decisions have meant that investment by the city council and others has usually been in line with resident's priorities. The range of improvements has included employing youth workers, environmental improvement schemes, new street lighting, art projects, new children's playgrounds, new resource and information centres and improvements to local parks.

One of our major achievements was a partnership arrangement with Tayside Police to share intelligence and employ a neighbourhood policing team. Our decisions on funding got this team up and running; the police now meets all the costs. The forums have also helped to improve neighbourhood service delivery, particularly how public housing is managed and the bins collected.

We work very hard to ensure that our communities have a real say about what happens locally. We organise regular door-to-door surveys, community newsletters and youth walkabouts. A recent evaluation of community engagement in the city by Dundee University, concluded that the way we involve our communities in decision-making is widely regarded as effective. It also concluded that our ability to make decisions about the way community regeneration funds are spent seemed to be working well. We feel these are our most important achievements so far.

The problems we've overcome

Despite our successes, the forums have not been all plain sailing. Being a forum member involves a hefty time commitment and a lot of responsibility. It also involves a steep learning curve for newly-elected residents. Sometimes this has meant we have struggled to maintain the 75 resident representatives from one year to the next. Getting young people elected has been particularly difficult - most of us are middle-aged and quite a few are retired. We have had to find other ways of making sure young people's voices are heard.

Some residents remain sceptical about the forums, but most people are behind us. Nevertheless, coming to an agreement on local priorities can be difficult. There have been criticisms that some Community Regeneration Fund schemes should really have been financed through the city council's mainstream budgets. Our view, however, is that sometimes residents give specific actions a higher priority than the council does; so we use forum funds to get things done.

What we've learned

Residents on the forums often have to make quite difficult technical and strategic decisions; the process can be quite slow and even bureaucratic. It can be quite onerous for some of the people involved, but we are learning new skills and gaining confidence all the time - which we feel is empowering in itself. We have certainly become more knowledgeable and politically astute.

Most community-led organisations find that communications with their council can sometimes be a problem and we are no exception; there are endless documents to read and the jargon can be highly confusing. Simply keeping up to date is a real challenge. So we have been determined to find time for on-going training and support sessions which improve our knowledge and understanding.

We have learned what we always really knew - that local residents know local needs best. Perhaps more importantly, we have gone some way to convincing public agencies about this too and they are responding.

What's next for us?

We would like to set up a forum website, so residents can be kept up to date and be more actively involved in our discussions and decisions. We are also at a financial crossroads, with the Fairer Scotland Fund coming to an end, but we feel the new emphasis on community empowerment will help us to keep going. We certainly don't intend to give up our seats around the decision-making table in Dundee!

Want to find out more?

You can find out more about the Dundee Community Regeneration Forums at:
Dundee Partnership, Dundee City Council
21 City Square
Dundee DD1 3BY Phone: 01382 438892
Email