Your organisation can endorse the National Standards for Community Engagement by completing our simple form, click here to download the form. 

Scroll down to see Scottish organisations that have endorsed the Standards. 

The Scottish Health Council
The Scottish Health Council welcomes the revised National Standards for Community Engagement.    With the recent introduction of health and social care integration, the standards will be a useful resource not only for benchmarking best practice in community engagement across the public sector but in ensuring consistency of approach and standards in participation, engagement and community empowerment in Scotland. The Scottish Health Council has a key role for taking forward the Our Voice framework.   This aims to strengthen public voices in different ways to support improvement and empower people and communities to be equal partners.   We will use the National Standards to complement Our Voice activities particularly in relation to our work around supporting local communities and building their capacity to be involved, promoting the benefits of engagement at an individual, local and national level, supporting the development of effective health and social care engagement approaches and monitoring the quality of the engagement process and practice. 

Glasgow Centre for Population Health
Glasgow Centre for Population Health welcomes and endorses the National Standards for Community Engagement. We are committed to using them in shaping our practice and view them as vital in promoting effective engagement with communities. We will do this across our work programmes: in the generation of insights and evidence, supporting new approaches, and informing and influencing action to improve health and tackle inequality. We retain a keen interest in understanding how community engagement is used to effect meaningful and beneficial change to improve health and reduce inequalities.

The spirit and values with which community engagement is undertaken is critical to success. Alongside the use of these revised standards must be opportunities for communities to exercise authentic power to participate in decisions affecting them. 

The revised standards are consistent with recent legislation such as the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act in recognising poverty and inequality as barriers to participation. The widespread use of the Standards has the potential to support communities overcoming these barriers when combined with attention given to wider social and economic factors shaping the experiences of people and communities. 

Talk Now (South Lanarkshire and the surrounding area) 
We endorese the National Standards for Community Engagement and are committed to using them to ensure effective engagement with our community. www.talknow.org.uk

Aberdeenshire Community Planning Partnership 
We welcome the new, revised, National Standards for Community Engagement and our partners commit to adhering to the National Standards when planning, conducting and reviewing our engagement processes.  The National Standards form a core part of our newly developed Community Engagement Framework in Aberdeenshire and we wholeheartedly support the principles and aspirations set out within the Standards.

The Alliance
The ALLIANCE welcomes the opportunity afforded through the revised National Standards for Community Engagement to provide a benchmark for supporting inclusive approaches to service design and delivery that makes the best use of the capacities of all stakeholders to create effective, sustainable solutions. Co-production in the design and delivery of services places a greater emphasis on a shift in relationship between people, public bodies and other organisations and stakeholders and effectively engaging communities is an essential mechanism for producing models, services and systems that are person centred and support people to enjoy their right to live well.

Audit Scotland
Engaging with communities and service users on the design and delivery of services is central to delivering best value and improving public services. Our audit judgments take account of how well public bodies are engaging based on recognised best practice. 

Loanhead Community Association (The Kabin)
We, at the Kabin endorse the National Standards for Community Engagement and are committed to using them to ensure effective engagement with our community.

Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA)
Cairngorms National Park Authority welcomes the reviewed and refreshed National Standards for Community Engagement. 

The Cairngorms National Park is a place where communities can take an active role in managing the issues that affect them. The National Standards have formed part of CNPA's approach to community engagement since 2008. CNPA uses the Standards to plan and monitor our community engagement activities, through a pro-forma for small-scale activity; and the use of VOiCE (Visioning Outcomes in Community Engagement) for more strategic work. The Standards are an excellent reference point for a everyone involved; they prompt users to ask themselves the right questions about the engagement process; and ensure that all aspects have been considered.  CNPA remains committed to using the Standards and would very strongly encourage others to do so.

Scottish Fire and Rescue Service
The Senior Leaderships team and Engagement committee have both endorsed the National Standards and are looking forward to working with SCDC as we apply them to our engagement efforts.

Community Links (South Lanarkshire)
Community Links have a long history of community engagement and involvement specifically within hard to reach and disadvantaged communities and It is with great pleasure that we endorse the newly revised National Standards of Engagement.
These standards are important not only to us but to all stakeholders that wish to engage in a meaningful way with their communities and clients.  Not only are they a clear and easy way of identifying crucial factors that need to be considered but they also promote equality of practice throughout public, voluntary and academic sector organisations.
They are suitable for everyone and promote not only the importance but also the genuine benefits of truly representative engagement practices.

COSLA
As COSLA spokesperson for Community Wellbeing I am pleased that my Executive Group recently endorsed the revised National Standards for Community Engagement.  COSLA was very supportive of the original version and welcomes the new approach. While I am one of many elected representatives in Scotland, I fully realise the need for and benefit of a participatory democracy too.  Whether MPs, MSPs or councillors we should all be mindful of the need for the changes in the way we do our work.  There clearly is a pressing need for public bodies without elected boards to bridge the gap between what they think and the local communities feel.  The revised standards will help fulfil this - they mark a significant change in that they apply to many public sector bodies as a result of the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015.  

I am sure all councils will be interested in working with Community Planning Partners to ensure consistent approaches are developed and delivered locally. The proof of the success of the standards will be the extent to which decision making is extended, beyond those we have worked with in the past, to include those who are in most need of services, and who have had difficulty in accessing them and influencing their design.  This needs to be done in a way that makes sense to our communities and affords them a solid way of engaging with public services in their areas. 
Harry McGuigan (COSLA Spokesperson for Community Wellbeing) 

Scottish Refugee Council
Scottish Refugee Council welcomes the revised National Standards for Community Engagement as an accessible and very helpful guide for agencies and organisations who engage with refugee communities.

Refugee communities are under-represented in local and national decision-making structures. They face the challenges of negotiating culturally unfamiliar institutions and systems and may have language or literacy barriers. Agencies seeking to engage must carefully consider which methods and communication approaches are appropriate for overcoming these challenges in order to establish working relationships based on trust and understanding.

Local authorities across Scotland are now welcoming new refugee communities. The new National Standards are therefore being introduced at a time when well-planned community engagement for working with refugee communities and host communities should become a priority for agencies and organisations across Scotland. We hope the new Standards can contribute towards effective engagement practice that will support refugees' experiences of integration in the long-term.

Poverty Alliance
Involvement in decision making processes, especially by people with experience of poverty, should be seen as a right. Not only is it a right, it makes practical sense too: involving people who will be affected by policies can help us reach better decisions. The National Standards for Community Engagement have in the past been an underused resource in helping to turn this right to participate into a reality. These revised Standards set out clearly how and why these should be used, and how sticking to the Standards can bring benefits for communities and policy makers alike.  We hope that the voluntary and community sector embrace the Standards and ensure that they become an essential tool to help empower communities across Scotland. 

East Ayrshire Council
The National Standards for Community Engagement underpin all that we do in East Ayrshire to empower and engage with the communities we serve.

Scottish Natural Heritage 
Working with communities and putting people in charge is a top priority within the new Programme for Government and is widely recognised as the way forward for delivering better public services.

We believe that efforts to improve the environment are strengthened when communities are empowered to look after the environment and generate benefits from it - the future of environmental management lies in engagement and action by local communities. The National Standards for Community Engagement will help promote how best we, and other bodies, can support that.

Scottish Natural Heritage already works with many local communities and supports a wide range of volunteering, outreach and community action projects. These include the ReRoute national advisory panel with Young Scot, a fund for new greenspace in Scotland's most deprived communities, and the Galloway and Southern Ayrshire biosphere reserve.

The National Standards provide us with a benchmark which will help us check the work we do and identify where we can improve on this, and will help deliver better outcomes for communities and for public bodies like SNH.

Edinburgh RSL Residents Network
The National Standards for Community Engagement helps to identify who should be involved, leading to better participation, better services and better outcomes for communities.

We support and endorse this revised new context especially as there are new links to a range of support materials and resources.

Lead Officer for Community Enagement - Moray Community Planning Partnership
I welcome the introduction of a revised set of National Standards for Community Engagement. The original set did much to raise the standard of community engagement by public sector bodies in Scotland, both by providing guidance on what characterises good community engagement and by enabling communities to demand improvements on how it is carried out. However, the original standards were ‘of their time' in expecting the purpose of community engagement to be largely limited to giving people "a greater say in how local services are planned and delivered". 

The new Standards are simplified and set within today's context, where they will do much to embed community engagement and participation as the foundation for the shared decision-making, shared action and community-led action required by recent developments in public policy and demanded by communities hungry for change. I look forward to using the revised Standards in all of my roles to help further develop community engagement and participation to meet the needs and aspirations of the people of Moray.

Fabio Villani - Lead Officer for Community Engagement 

Forest Enterprise Scotland
Forest Enterprise Scotland welcomes the National Standards for Community Engagement.  
The principles set out in the National Standards will support our staff  by providing a valuable benchmark to help shape our training and guidance in community engagement.   
Not only will the Standards help our staff, it will also be of great assistance for communities who wish to get more involved in our work and to use the National Forest Estate as a venue for projects and activities."

Police Scotland
Police Scotland have welcomed the opportunity to contribute to the development of the refreshed Community Engagement Standards for Scotland. Understanding the needs of Scotland's communities remains a top priority for policing in Scotland, and this can only be achieved through effective community engagement. The Scottish police service delivers its policing by consent, which means that we have the support of the public to carry out our duties. These Engagement Standards embrace this concept and allows us to deliver an appropriate and legitimate service in response to concerns identified. 

The Community Engagement Standards also highlight the need to ensure that fairness and equality are at the heart of all engagement activity, and this is concurrent with the core values of Police Scotland. It is important that the service we deliver is inclusive and takes cognisance of the changing landscape and demands facing Scotland in the future.  To achieve this, a long-term vision, strategy and organisational blueprint are being developed that will take Scottish policing into the next decade.  These National Standards for Community Engagement will provide a framework to ensure this happens and help us to deliver a fairer and equitable service for all Scottish communities.

Dundee City Council 
Dundee City Council we would like to support and endorse the revised Standards for Community Engagement. 

Dundee City Council implemented the previous Standards for Community Engagement to initiate Local Community Planning processes and Ward-based Community Engagement Plans and this has been recognised nationally as being a model of good practice. We shall look forward to implementing the new Standards.    

Convener of Neighbourhood Services within Dundee City Council

Scottish Communities for Health and Wellbeing
The National Standards provide an excellent reference tool for all types of community engagement.  They embed both common sense and good practice and they do more. They remind those involved about the processes which can make the difference between successful engagement which brings people together and approaches which can drive communities apart.  In particular reminders on barriers to involvement, effective joint working, communicating information and the provision of feedback are well presented and are very helpfully fleshed out through the associated indicators.  The Standards also remind us and support us in evaluating the impact and effectiveness of our engagement activities.  A great tool which helps embed high standards in community engagement across Scotland.

Brendan Rooney - Director

Western Isles Integration Joint Board
The revised National Standards for Community Engagement is a really important publication, which will ensure that the voice of our communities continues to sit at the heart of work undertaken by public sector bodies across Scotland. I know that the Western Isles Integration Joint Board has benefited from benchmarking our own engagement arrangements against the national standards: it helped us define what we do well, but it has also allowed us to identify where we can improve. I would commend these standards to any public body which is focused on working with the communities they serve. - Ron Culley, Chief Officer 

Highland TSI
At this incredibly exciting time when empowerment and localisation are so frequently forming a key part of discussion and policy development it is critical that the National Standards for Community Engagement have been reviewed and that through that our understanding and practice of them is likewise renewed. When we consider how damaging badly executed community engagement practices can be it is essential that everyone from communities, community groups and the public and private sectors, has something from which they can draw guidance, hold each other to account and supports the development of good practice. 

Quality community engagement is arguably the most effective way to ensure that individuals within a community, irrelevant of whether that is a community of interest or place, are given a meaningful and participatory voice in the decisions which have an impact on their lives.  It has a fundamental power to address the underlying causes of some of our greatest social inequalities, reversing decades of policy which has only addressed the symptoms.

The National Standards for Community Engagement underline how critical this activity is in address and developing social inclusion and community empowerment in the future political and public planning landscape.  I really welcome this review and look forward to talking about the implementation of it through our own work and with our cross-sector partners.

Mhairi Wylie - Chief Officer

Macmillan Cancer Support
As you know, Macmillan Cancer Support is fully committed to engaging with and involving people affected by cancer and the wider communities in the work we carry out across Scotland, and have recently co-designed an involvement structure to facilitate this, both at a national level with our Scottish Involvement Group and at a more local, level, the Macmillan Scottish Community of Influence.

This means that, in future, any service design or redesign, any investment that we make or within any influencing work, we will have engaged with and involved people affected by cancer in that work.

We welcome the National Standards for Community Engagement for Scotland as this will give us a framework for quality engagement and ensure that we can put measures in place which means that we meet the standards both our partners across the country and people affected by cancer can expect whenever, and wherever they get involved in shaping services, supports and policies into the future.
We commend and congratulate Scottish Community Development Centre on this excellent and worthwhile piece of work and commit to delivering on the standards in the future.

Janice Preston Head of Services for Scotland

NHS Grampian
Given recent work with partners and colleagues to develop a strategic approach to community engagement locally, the revised National Standards for Community Engagement strike me as a model of clarity, cohesion and concision. The six related standards collectively underpinning the seventh central impact standard brings the whole concept of engagement to life, through the clear articulation of requirements coupled with helpful case examples. It is easy to imagine how the standards could be used to inform, self-assess and audit our local engagement efforts over time. I am delighted, on behalf of NHS Grampian, to endorse these standards to all involved in taking community engagement forward in Scotland.

Christopher Littlejohn FRSPH FFPH, interim Deputy Director of Public Health, NHS Grampian

Fife National Standards for Community Engagement Network
The National Standards for Community Engagement Network in Fife is dedicated to promoting and developing good community engagement practice throughout Fife. The network fully supports and endorses the new refreshed National Standards for Community Engagement and we see the standards as an excellent tool to help us develop our good community engagement practice further.

David McGrath - Community Learning and Development Team Leader Levenmouth

Dr Peter Matthews - University of Stirling
The original National Standards for Community Engagement came out when I was studying for my MSc in Urban and Regional Planning. At the time the planning system was gearing up to the 2006 Planning Act and community engagement was centre-stage as the way to make the Scottish planning system better. The standards were an ambitious statement of what excellent community engagement might be, and also how far community engagement practices had to go. 

These refreshed Standards continue all that was excellent eleven years ago. They also reflect the changing world we live in - with greater awareness of equalities and diversity and barriers people face, and new ways of overcoming barriers to engagement through novel methods, including new technology. They also incorporate what we have learnt from over a decade's experience of doing community engagement and researching it. As we move into a period of "community empowerment" the Standards are relevant and ready to help support the delivery of meaningful community engagement in Scotland.

Dr Peter Matthews - Senior Lecturer in Social Policy - Faculty of Social Sciences University of Stirling