IMPLEMENTING THE LEVELLING UP AGENDA IN RURAL AND ISLAND SCOTLAND PROCESS REVIEW

Levelling up is not a concept much used in Scotland. Stakeholders expressed a lack of confidence in the UK Government’s understanding of Scotland’s rural and island places and their strengths and challenges, especially at a micro/community level. An approach based on ‘pockets of deprivation within affluent local authorities’, for example, is not applicable across much of rural and island Scotland where poverty is dispersed rather than ‘in pockets’. Also noted was the lack of reference, in pre-fund levelling up communications, to models such as wellbeing economics and community wealth building which are frameworks used in the formulation of Scottish economic policy.