SCDC's view: Democracy Matters Route Map

This article was featured in the SCDC Weekly - 22nd April 2026

The Scottish Government has published its Democracy Matters Route Map, setting out the current progress and next steps around what new community governance arrangements could look like.

We’ve been carefully reviewing these proposals and welcome the commitment to greater community control of local decisions, including how budgets are used and improvements in the ways public services respond to community priorities.

This kind of partnership is vital to really make the shift to more prevention-based work in communities that improves the lives of more people, and with a longer-term impact.

We’re also pleased that the route map sets out the importance of community development support to underpin good community governance, particularly in supporting communities who face the biggest disadvantages, so that they can truly benefit from the opportunities being proposed.

Clearly, there's still a lot of detail to be worked out, but the route map is an encouraging staging post to build on the community-led planning and regeneration which many communities are already doing.

We’ll be exploring these proposals further and continuing to emphasise the importance of communities being able to take action on the issues important to them.