Community funds for 2017
At this time of year, we at MainStreet Consulting are always keen to support causes that mean something to us, particularly in the communities in which we work. So we’ve split our charity pot across our team and asked each…
The Learning Disability strategy launch at North Ayrshire
This morning I went along to the launch of North Ayrshire’s new Learning Disability strategy. MainStreet has had a role in facilitating that over the past six months, and it was great to see the outputs of that first bit…
Councils in Scotland have an opportunity to transfer assets to the community – why is it not happening?
This short paper suggests that as councils in Scotland now have an obligation to transfer assets to the community, they need to be more proactive. Are there practical steps they can take to not only overcome the barriers that exist…
Making procurement ‘local’ : spending money so that it helps communities
I spent a good chunk of time in November and December helping some housing associations with procurement reviews; really interesting bits of work with some great people. To a large extent, we were commissioned for good old fashioned ‘compliance’ reasons:…