How the Outer Hebrides built confidence to disagree well on community energy

Executive Summary

The Innovate UK Net Zero Living programme aims to help local and regional authorities accelerate the transition to net zero. The cohort of 52 funded places across the UK delivered projects to overcome the non-technological barriers to delivering net zero in a place.

Involve, Forum for the Future, Ipsos and Quantum Strategy & Technology were appointed to support 28 local authorities with their work on various climate-related projects.

In the Outer Hebrides, climate and community energy decisions are deeply relational shaped by long standing relationships within a tight-knit community. Attitudes are also shaped by costs, reliability, industrialisation, and relationships with the land. Working with Comhairle nan Eilean Siar and Community Energy Scotland, Involve supported people who run community engagement to build skills for navigating disagreement bravely and constructively.

Involve helped local practitioners feel less fearful of conflict and more confident surfacing different views – an essential step toward stronger, more inclusive climate decisions.

This case study sets out the approach, insights and lessons for policymakers considering similar programmes.

Objectives

The aims of the project were to:

• Identify the barriers that councils, community organisations and residents face when working together on climate and community energy
• Support people who work alongside communities to navigate difficult conversations and decisions, building confidence and skills to surface disagreement early without damaging relationships
• Provide independent advice to the Comhairle and Community Energy Scotland on how to better support community involvement in climate decisions 
• Identify the barriers and enablers to the Comhairle, Community Energy Scotland, and residents in the Outer Hebrides working together effectively on climate change. 

Approach and Methodology

Engagement Methods

This project focused on capacity building, rather than a single decision-making process. Involve worked closely with the Comhairle and Community Energy Scotland over several months to understand where decision-making was getting stuck and what kind of support was needed.

Through these conversations, it became clear that whilst community energy was often discussed in principle – such as support for wind turbines – there was less agreement on specifics – for instance where the turbines should be located. The challenge was not a lack of ideas, but how to work constructively together through the difference to make good decisions.

In response to this challenge, Involve designed and delivered a two-day Lewis Deep Democracy training for people who regularly convene or support community engagement. Deep Democracy enables community engagement to be more democratic, because it emphasises that every voice matters and that decisions are wisest when all views are heard and valued. It enables engagement with more depth because it goes far beyond cognitive engagement with ideas and instead surfaces the emotional issues that make conversations and decisions more honest, real, meaningful, and actionable.

Inclusive Practice

Training took place in accessible, local venues and in two locations simultaneously (Uist and Stornoway) instead of one, to support people to access training close to where they live. It was free to attend, and travel expenses were reimbursed to help remove any financial barriers to engagement. 

The training focused a lot on practicing how to use the tools and theories that people were learning, so that by the end of the two days people started to embody the skills and could take them forwards in their daily work lives. We also provided comprehensive training notes so that people could focus on being in the room and listening and learning from one another.

Innovations

Rather than trying to ‘fix’ disagreement, the training supported actors to see disagreement as a valuable source of information. They learned practical tools to notice resistance behaviours, work with tension, and surface minority views bravely. These are skills rarely prioritised in climate engagement, but are essential to making good decisions, especially in close-knit communities.

Key Outcomes

Community Reach

• 18 people working in communities across the Outer Hebrides completed the full two-day training; 7 from community organisations, 5 from community land trusts, 3 from Community Energy Scotland, 2 from the Comhairle and 1 from a community council.
• People included community organisations, community land trusts, community councils and officers from the Comhairle

Climate Impact

• The impact of the training will be long-term, as attendees put their skills into practice with community decision-making on climate adaptation.

Social Impact

• People reported feeling less afraid of conflict and more confident in bringing different perspectives into conversations
• People noted they gained a clearer understanding of why people disengage and how avoiding disagreement can undermine trust in the long term
• “I felt like I was learning new ways to think, listen and communicate. I found it really useful to think about why people behave in certain ways. I liked that the negative behaviours people can exhibit were presented in a way to make us think why we do some of these behaviours ourselves, so giving more insight and empathy to the behaviours of others, and not to take things personally.”
• “I enjoyed it and am not so worried about dealing with conflict in meetings now.”
• “Debate the problem and not the person”
• “There were practical solutions and it felt safe to question and ask for practical advice as to how this could work in real-life situations.”

Internal Impact

• The project surfaced a critical insight: community groups are often skilled at bringing people together, but receive less support to work with differences once people are in the room
• It highlighted the importance of those with formal power having skills in navigating differences and difficult conversations

Challenges & Lessons Learned

Challenges

• The Comhairle had limited capacity to engage consistently with the training
• Without a follow-up practice space, which fell outside the scope of the project, it was difficult to understand how widely the tools are being used by trainees
• Trainees were cautious about applying the tools in settings where others had not been trained

In-Project Solutions

• It took a long time to agree on the approach of capacity building. We allowed the space and time for things to emerge and this meant not jumping to the first potential solution.
• One of the adaptations that was made early on was switching from one central location to two separate locations for training. This made the training more accessible to more people, and also reduced travel time and cost. 
• We adapted our training dates to support a good number of sign ups

Lessons Learned

• Skills for disagreeing will take time to embed. One-off training can build awareness and initial skills, but building confidence looks different for everyone and will grow through practice and having people around you in the community willing to try something different. A few participants commented on their nervousness about using these skills on their own in the community. Some participants organised practice groups themselves where they came from the same areas, or worked in the same organisations. One person used the skills at a community meeting after the first practice group session and found them very useful.

Contact Information

Paul Hirmis at Involve – [email protected]