lets be friends

Amelia Hill finds out about Lets schemes

There are groats in Glasgow, tweeds in the Borders and reekies in Edinburgh. These are the currencies gaining strength throughout Scotland in communities determined to heal the fractures caused by poverty and unemployment.

The idea of bartering goods and services is not new, but the principles have lost popularity in urban areas where the bloke on the corner is more likely to hot wire your car than help mend its radio.

Lets, or Local Exchange Trading Schemes, is a modern, grassroots attempt to kickstart the economies of these communities by encouraging people to exchange goods and skills for a local currency instead of ''real'' money.

If a community is dealing in local tokens, the hard-currency economy of the area undergoes a boom as the participants' disposable income grows with their reduced need to spend real money on anything available through the local community network.

But the most important and far-reaching benefit of the scheme is the return to a nuclear form of community, that results from increased contact between like-minded neighbours and where people are empowered by achieving something on their own or collectively within that community.

Patrick Boase, secretary of West Glasgow Lets and co-ordinator of LetsLink, an umbrella organisation working for individual schemes in Scotland, says: ''Lets encourages people to share their resources in a sustainable way rather than constantly reinventing and repurchasing. It offers a more sustainable mode of living which involves less travelling, less packaging, less pollution and less waste.''

A central group of members compile and circulate a directory advertising the goods and services - from childcare to accountancy advice to the loan of a computer - that are offered or required by other members of the scheme.

Services are priced in the currency of the area, or in a combination of money and local currency, although there are usually no coins, notes, tokens or other physical evidence of the transaction. Instead, the members ''book'' their transactions through the central group's accounting system, which sends out a statement of each participant's credits and debits along with their final balance.

Mr Boase says: ''It is necessary to get into debt because that stimulates trade: the more you are in debt, the more you are encouraged to trade and the more money goes round the system.''

unemployment causes social exclusion which affects people in two, equally negative, ways that feed off each other, creating a vicious circle of destruction. Social exclusion undermines its victims' sense of themselves and their worth, making them more prone to depression and self-depreciation, which reduces their likelihood of securing another job as well as potentially damaging their personal lives.

Social exclusion undermines one's chances of finding a job through word-of-mouth channels by destroying networks that supply information, advice and even simple resources, such as a suit or dress that can be borrowed for an interview.

Lets acts directly to counteract these impacts.

Anita Aggarwal, 25, is one of the core group working at a Lets scheme in Edinburgh. ''This system works very well in areas of high unemployment where people are keen to experiment with the skills they have,'' she says. ''It's all about bringing power closer to the people so they can have control over their financial situation, their lives and their communities.''

Lets schemes have flourished throughout the world in the last few years: there are 200 in Australia, while France and Italy each have more than 100 active projects. But in Britain the idea has really got off the ground. Four years ago there were few active Lets schemes here. Now, however, over 35,000 people are involved in more than 400 schemes across the country and a further 30 are up and running in Ireland.

Mr Boase says: ''The overall growth of the system is spectacular. There are 35 systems in Scotland, incorporating at least 700 people. There is a shortage of money in the current system, and it's small communities that lose out.

''A lot of money in local communities is siphoned off, so the money that is spent in the local bank or the local supermarket is of no benefit to that community as a whole but is clawed back to profit whatever multi-national corporation owns that chain of shops.'' One of the main problems associated with Lets is that there is no central government legislation to help local authorities address the problem of taxing Lets transactions. The question of whether to tax participants of Lets on what they would have cost had real money been involved, remains unanswered, while inconsistent and confusing attitudes by social security offices have scared off potential Lets members and stopped schemes dead in their tracks.

Stirling was one of the first communities to establish a Lets project, and with over 300 active members, four years after it was set up it is one of the strongest schemes in the country. In 1996 Stirling council gave the scheme #2000 to employ the first full-time Lets worker in the country.

Matt Duncan, from the council's economic development and training department says: ''Problems with Social Security are the main concern of new members and main reason why some of these projects fail without leaving the ground. There is no constant approach being applied to Lets through central government.

''The social security legislation was in place before Lets took off, so the ideas of what can be treated as payment in kind are behind the times: it is up to the individual local authorities' approach to poverty and that just increases misunderstanding and confusion.

''We wrote to the government last year to ask them to amend their social security legislation and will be writing to local authorities in Scotland again in the next few months,'' he says. ''It wouldn't take much to solve the problem: just for Lets earnings to be disregarded when earnings are calculated for Social Security purposes - or for Lets earnings to be taxed in Lets currencies, which would go back to fund that same community.

''One of the negative things about most current solutions to poverty is the dependency culture they encourage. They encourage people to look to the state to supply and do things for them.

''Dealing with a problem this huge is impossible on a national level,'' he said. ''But for individual councils working on a local basis, it is different. We work pro-actively and as partners with the community. This may not be the scheme is going to be able to end this problem, but it is essential to try new methods,'' he says. ''It is a start and, for #2000, we decided that it was worth it for Stirling to try to help its communities.''