Explore New Municipalism

An alternative Local Government structure, taking Scotland from 32 jumbo-sized Unitary Councils to 128 Municipalities in 10 Regions and 5 Unitary Authorities

Report

Read the full New Municipalism report on local government in Scotland

Principles

The basics of how the project works

Questions and Answers

Some things you might want answered without having to go through the whole report

Region Select

For detailed descriptions of each Region and Municipality

Interactive Map

Find how your local area would look under these proposals

Other Maps

Other useful New Municipalism maps, and maps of previous local government structures

Local Government in Scotland doesn’t work. Compared to our European neighbours, councils are too remote from they people they serve and too tightly controlled by the national government. Following a decade of budgetary pressures, the tide may turning on financial centralisation.

But no amount of devolution to the current 32 councils can truly empower local communities, or re-connect them with their elected representatives. 25 years after Scotland’s last Local Government re-organisation it’s time to recognise how flawed it was and undo the damage.

New Municipalism: A Refreshed Map for Local Government in Scotland is one outline for that re-organisation. Building on the basic principles of (now) Green MSP Andy Wightman’s 2014 report “Renewing Local Democracy“, it envisions a return to traditional two-tier local governance with 128 Municipalities and 10 Regional Councils.

Crucially, whilst this report includes specific examples of redrawn boundaries, it does so simply to serve as a useful example. Any genuine re-organisation process would need to involve and be informed by substantially more genuine democratic engagement than any of the preceding Local Government acts.

This website serves as both a home for and a companion to the report, and partly ties it to my other work at Ballot Box Scotland. If you have any questions about New Municipalism, you can email me at allan@newmunicipalism.ballotbox.scot.