THE PUBLIC SEMINAR SERIES

A major part of the consultation process was a series of open seminars that took place in June in Inverness, Perth, Inverurie and Lockerbie. The purpose was to identify, at a fairly detailed level, the issues that could be included in the White Paper and the measures to address these effectively. Although it was made clear that a degree of realism was needed, radical ideas were encouraged. Each of the four seminars were widely advertised through direct mail leaflets and the press and radio. The seminars were attended by a total of 242 people, ranging from 91 in Inverness to 39 in Perth. Briefing for the seminars, given to partnerships, is contained in Annex A.

Each of the seminars followed the same programme with an official from the Scottish Office presenting the background to the Rural White Paper. This was followed by a short presentation drawing on Rural Forum's research into rural disadvantage and the questionnaire undertaken by the University of Dundee. The presentations were made by Professor Mark Shucksmith, Dr Stuart Black both of the University of Aberdeen, Allan Watt of the University of Dundee and Dermot Grimson of Rural Forum. The purpose of this presentation was to encourage the participants to consider the issues that had been raised by people living and working in rural Scotland.

The remainder of each seminar was devoted to a series of structured workshop sessions. The first session aimed to develop a future vision for rural Scotland with the second session focusing on current realities and the final session identifying the barriers between current realities and the future vision and ways in which these might be overcome. The result was a long and wide ranging list of ideas and the outcome of each of the workshop sessions for all the seminars is contained in Section 4.

At the end of each seminar each of the workshop groups were invited to report back on the three key measures that should be included in the Rural White Paper. This enabled some feedback to be given on the nature of the discussions at the different workshop sessions. Each of the workshop sessions had a facilitator and a scribe present to report back on the discussions.

THE WORKSHOP SERIES

The second element of the consultation programme was a series of four workshops that were organised by invitation. The workshops were organised on four distinct themes: Community Involvement, Sustainable Development, Effective Service Delivery and Integration. They were attended by a total of 51 people. Each session was organised to a similar pattern.

The workshops aimed to focus thinking on issues and measures that could realistically be addressed in the White Paper.

The first part of each of the four sessions was devoted to identifying issues and placing them on an axis of importance and feasibility. The second task was to examine how the issues identified as being important, but not feasible, could be made practically achievable. Having thus identified important issues which could be addressed a series of possible measures were then discussed which might be included in the White Paper.

The discussion took place under Chatham House Rules to enable free and frank discussion and reports of each of the sessions are summarised on the same basis in Section 4.

All the workshops were chaired by Deirdre Hutton, Chairman of Rural Forum and facilitated by Professor Greg Lloyd of the Centre for Planning Research at the University of Dundee. A Scottish Office official attended each of the workshops and a wide range of other participants were drawn from different backgrounds and interests.

WRITTEN RESPONSES

In March and April 1995, the University of Dundee Centre for Planning and Rural Forum organised a questionnaire survey to identify the key issues in rural Scotland from a wide range of perspectives.

The questionnaire was sent to 1400 individuals drawn from Rural Forum's membership and other contacts databases. This included local government officials, farmers, staff with environmental voluntary organisation sector, councillors, MPs, officials in government departments and agencies business people and many others. There was a 14% return and responses were analysed at the University of Dundee.

Written responses were also submitted by participants of the workshops. The results of these and the wider questionnaire are summarised in Section 5.

OTHER CONSULTATIONS

During the consultation period Rural Forum was involved in encouraging wider discussion on matters of concern for the Rural White Paper. In particular local Councils for Voluntary Service in the more remote parts of the country were invited to organise local workshops. Rural Forum also organised with the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations, a workshop on ethnic minorities in rural areas. A short report of this is included in Annex B.