Local Government

Scotland has one of the most centralised systems of government. Just 32 authorities are used to run local government from Shetland down to the Borders. The problem with centralisation is a lack of accountability or more accurately a lack of the ability to listen to local concerns. That problem is taken to the extreme with Highland council. It is the 7th largest by population but takes up 32% of the area of the mainland. Concentrating the running of services for this vast area in Inverness generates a one-size fits all approach to policy with very little effort made to take local conditions and needs into account. A future independent Scotland could easily return to the more devolved county and town council structures that existed before the reforms of the 1970s. This small thing called the internet could be used to revolutionise government. You could have the provisioning of the infrastructure for services centralised but the delivery and decision making would be done locally, with a fraction of the bureaucracy and a great deal more efficiency than has historically been the case.