Parents say 'local democracy isn't working' in Scotland

These weren’t just a few scattered parents who missed the memo while on holiday, however. They were parent council members and chairs, community campaign leaders and active participants in civic life.

Some didn't learn about the policy change until January 2024. Others found out in February. 

In one neighbourhood, parents didn’t learn about their buses being cut until April, having already distanced themselves from the situation after they received reassurances in February that their routes were safe.

That isn't to say the council didn't try: the messages, emails, public meetings and questionnaires all happened.

But clearly, the message is not always getting through, even when so many boxes are ticked.

And if those parents had been reached, and if the decision-making process included their voices, they would have highlighted serious safety concerns along approved walking routes and concerns about the safety assessment process, as The Herald has reported in recent weeks.

Parents have told The Herald this is nothing new.

Diane Delaney is co-founder of Give Them Time, a grassroots campaign that successfully changed the law to protect parents’ rights to defer their child’s start to primary school.

She has experience working with councils as a campaign spokesperson and North Lanarkshire parent. While working on the Give Them Time campaign, she met with multiple MSPs, Scottish Government officers, and national decision-makers.

Locally, it’s been a very different story.

“I’ve never had one formal meeting with my own local councillor or education convener,” she said.

“I can say wholeheartedly that people see the power of engaging in person. But the problem is, locally, we can’t tell our stories.”

Diane Delaney, co-founder of the Give Them Time campaign (Image: Colin Mearns/The Herald)

Instead, she has felt isolated from local decision-makers, separated by a wall of emails, Freedom of Information requests and official statements.

“There’s a big difference between our political representation and our reality. But it doesn’t have to be that way, and it shouldn’t be that way. Local democracy shouldn’t be that way.

“We complain, but always with an alternative in mind. I’d never complain about something without trying to consider an alternative. We could have working groups or more community engagement. There has to be a middle ground.”

So what to do?

Ms Delaney and others in North Lanarkshire have a simple answer: bring parents and young people meaningfully into the decision-making process.

The key word there is meaningfully, and parents’ feelings of being left out are justified since many did not learn about the policy changes until after they were agreed.

In fact, council communications show that when the change to school transportation policy was agreed during the February 2023 budget talks, the decision was made with the knowledge that a future consultation would be required.

Although the decision was made contingent on the outcome of that consultation, this still means that a major step was taken before the community was consulted.

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This, parents said, is not the proper order of events. But it’s a timeline that the council does not dispute.

In response to a parent complaint in June 2024, a council officer wrote:

“The decision to incorporate the savings within the council budget in February 2023 was predicated on the knowledge that a statutory consultation must take place and that approval for the change in criteria would be decided by the committee after the outcome of the consultation was known.”

As the officer adds, minutes from the Policy and Strategy Committee on June 8, 2023 show that the results of that consultation – which ran between March and April – were shared with councillors.

Of course, a consultation did take place. As the council explained, thousands of messages went out, and it hosted multiple public meetings.

Students and parents protested the bus cuts at the North Lanarkshire Council headquarters ahead of a full council meeting earlier this year. (Image: Lesley Guidici)

Regardless, parents don’t feel that it was effective. This is evidenced by the many parents who did not learn about the proposed changes until at least a year later and, parents would argue, the fact that the consultation was not launched until after the council had discussed the potential change in February.

Marissa Cloughley, leader of the Save NLC School Buses Campaign, said that the drop-in format of many public meetings left many parents hesitant to engage.  

“You had to make an appointment to go and see someone and some parents were really intimidated to go in on their own and speak up.

“The consultation apparently texted more than 50,000 parents, but I wasn’t one of them. This is something that I would have been all over, but I didn’t learn until January [2024] that the buses were being stopped.”

As the council communications have made clear, the February decision was always contingent on the outcome of the consultation process. But as parents make clear, and as has played out in other local authorities over the year, it is no simple task to reverse a budget decision – even a preliminary one – especially when money is tight.

Ms Cloughley said that when she finally learned about the changes, she felt the bus cuts were either inevitable or there would need to be a massive upsurge to get the council to reverse the decision entirely.

This felt like an uphill battle, but she said that if parents had been involved in discussions regularly from February 2023 until now, the situation might not have had to be so black-and-white.

Lesley Guidici of the Chryston High School Parent Council agreed.

“It is just exhausting being a parent in North Lanarkshire.

"You think you've sent your children to school and you are doing what you can in terms of making sure they wear school uniform and know how to behave; the teachers are doing their best to make sure they are providing a good education and experience for them; but it feels the council are actively working against us to make life difficult."

Ideally, she said, decisions over bus cuts could have been made on a community-by-community basis.

Even for families attending Chryston, not every community reacted to the changes the same way because not everyone has the same circumstances.

Public buses are more plentiful in some neighbourhoods, and the timings more or less in line with the school day, unlike in areas such as Millerston and Stepps, where the public bus schedule will put children at school too early or after the day has started.

Why couldn’t each route have been considered separately, she asked?

“Cutting some buses and not the blanket cut would have surely helped everyone, but they don't want to listen to alternatives or parents concerns.”

This is why, although parents have raised specific complaints about the council's business practices, they also call for a much more significant change.

If parents are going to feel more like stakeholders than bystanders, they say that policies need to change and accountability needs to be stronger. Despite their wide-ranging concerns and experiences, parents suggest the same solution: they must be in the room before decisions are made, not emailed afterwards.

Lorraine Kerr, chair of the Stepps Primary Parent Council, one of Chryston’s feeder schools, said she wants parents to sit on the Education, Children and Families Committee.

The suggestion isn’t unheard of. All education committees in Scotland have appointed religious representatives, and some have non-voting positions for parent or student representatives. 

North Lanarkshire Council has rejected previous proposals to add parents to the committee. Ms Kerr attended the meeting where it was discussed and was “disappointed” by the conversation.

“It was disheartening to see more discussion on other agenda items, including one related to Airdrie Football Club, than on this critical issue of parental involvement.

“I believe these issues highlight a broader problem of local democracy not working effectively and the need for significant changes to ensure parents have a voice in decisions impacting our children's education and services.” 

Barring committee representation, Ms Kerr has called on the council to strengthen its parental engagement strategy by appointing a new full-time parent engagement officer. 

When presented with parent complaints, a North Lanarkshire Council spokesperson reiterated that the council followed all necessary procedures and consulted on school transportation changes in compliance with the Schools (Consultation) (Scotland) Act 2010.

"The consultation on plans to bring the school transport policy in line with most other councils in Scotland took place in March and April 2023, when people could share their comments via email or through an online questionnaire.

“Information was available on the council website which contained full details of the proposals.

"More than 51,000 text messages were sent to parents highlighting the plans, with a reminder text sent on 23 March.

"Schools, parent councils, trade unions and church representatives were all informed along with nine public meetings in various locations for in-person discussions.”

But if 51,000 text messages, nine public meetings, a batch of reminder texts, and 3,828 responses aren’t enough to engage some of the council’s most engaged parents, maybe the two sides aren’t speaking the same language.