This is a list of People’s Policies – alternative recommendations for the way the city is run, developed from the ground up by the people who live here! This is just the starting point, and this page will grow as our process unfolds. If your organisation has a vision for an alternative direction of policy in Glasgow, get in touch!
SUSTAINABILITY
Re-regulation of Glasgow’s bus system, as supported by Get Glasgow Moving, would bring the routes, schedules, management and ownership of Glasgow’s bus networks back under public control. Learn more about the history and process behind this here
The ‘RetroFirst’ campaign, supported by over 200 architecture practices, organisations and individuals, including Loco Home Retrofit Cooperative in Glasgow, advocates for prioritising retrofitting existing buildings over demolition and rebuilding. Find out more here!
Setting ambitious Zero-Carbon targets for the city is promoted in the SANE report Glasgow’s Greenwash as a means to sidestep the opportunity for insufficient and inadequate action presented by ‘net-zero’ policies. Read or download the report here!
HEALTH AND HOMES
The People’s Health Manifesto developed by the People’s Health Movement Scotland contains recommendations across a range of issues, including:
- Prioritising health in all policies
- Tackling poverty and socioeconomic inequalities
- Playing an active and leading role in tackling the climate emergency
- Protecting our NHS and improving social care services
- Improving democratic debate and accountability
- Acknowledging and addressing longstanding injustices and protecting diversity and equality
- Reducing exposure to health risks at work and at home
Read the full manifesto here!People’s Health Movement Scotland also make a series of recommendations following an inquiry into the effects of Covid:19 on health inequalities in Glasgow which found, unsurprisingly, that the pandemic exacerbated existing problems. Read the report here!
SOLIDARITY AND JUSTICE
Delivering principles designed to drive local action for a gender equal economy, as presented by the Scottish Womens Budget Group ahead of the 2022 local elections, aims to hardwire gender analysis into decision making, recognise the gendered nature of poverty, build local communities that put care and wellbeing at the centre, embrace participation and hear from a diverse range of women and understand the role of revenue raising in tackling inequality. Find out more here!
ECONOMIC THINKING
The SANE Collective report Glasgow’s Money recommends 10 proposals for deep and radical economic reform to escape the vicious cycle of cuts, sell-offs and dangerous debt in which Glasgow City Council is stuck. These are:
- Debt re-negotiation, cancellation and amnesty,
- New sources of debt financing
- A new strategy for capital investment and asset management
- A fair share of Scottish Government funding and more financial autonomy
- Scrapping the council tax and replacing it with a fair and proportionate property/land tax
- Reviewing and considering replacing Non-Domestic Rates with a more effective business tax
- Scrapping all ALEOs and bringing them in-house
- Introducing wage ratios to limit pay inequality in the council
- Reducing outsourcing
- Ending austerity
Read the full report here!
An alternative regional development strategy as recommended by the SANE Collective in their report Glasgow’s Alchemy, would seek to replace Glasgow’s big business-led, extractive model with a public-sector led investment plan, aimed at maintaining the wealth generated through development in Glasgow by anchoring it in the community. Read the report here!
POWER AND DEMOCRACY
Policies providing long-term protection to public spaces and venues are demanded by the Glasgow Against Closures Campaign, including making a commitment to keeping all venues under public ownership, rejecting community asset transfers, shelving the controversial “People Make Glasgow Communities” scheme, and creating a mechanism by which to bring the staff and assets of Glasgow back into direct Council management as has been done elsewhere with other failed Arm’s Length Organisations. Read more here!
Electoral Reform Scotland organised the Scottish Citizens Assembly in 2019, which found strong support for the motion that the Scottish Government and Parliament should set up a ‘House of Citizens’ to scrutinise government proposals and give assent to parliamentary bills”. Read the campaign briefing here!
EDUCATION AND LEARNING
Teach the Future Scotland have a list of four key ‘asks’ of the Scottish Government. These are:
- A government commissioned review into how the whole of the Scottish formal education system is preparing students for the climate emergency and ecological crisis.
- Inclusion of the climate emergency and ecological crisis in teacher education and a new professional teaching qualification
- Increased priority for sustainability in school inspections and publicly influencing educational rankings
- A Scottish Climate and Biodiversity Emergency Education Act