Scottish expert advisory panel on the collaborative economy: evidence paper

Annex C: Good Practice Examples

Angus Council

Angus Council and Crowdfunder is an innovative partnership to help Angus community organisations, businesses, individuals and social enterprises ideas happen. Since its launch in August 2015 the Crowdfund Angus portal ^[43] has supported 40 local projects and has raised over £159,488 to the period August 2017.

Angus Council uses crowdfunding as a complementary service to the Angus Council Community Grant Scheme and also to national funders for communities and businesses to lever in the funding they require to deliver projects that matter.

Based on the projects funded to date, the benefits to Angus amount to more than money by showing validation and support of projects that will benefit a whole community. These range from lifesaving community defibrillators throughout Angus to youth sporting teams, community gardens and many more.

One of the many Crowdfund Angus success stories is the Bon Scott Statue and the impact of visitor numbers to Kirriemuir. Statistics provided by DD8 Music from the statue’s google maps page since launched in April 2016 shows a total of 38,835 unique visitors from 131 countries to Kirriemuir. The Bon Scott Statue is also number one in the top eighteen tourist attractions to visit in Kirriemuir and the surrounding area.

North Coast 500 ( NC500)

NC500 is the brand new touring route that aims to bring together the best of the Scottish Highlands. Dubbed Scotland’s own Route 66 the new scenic route is a chance to experience all that is great about the Scottish Highlands.

The NC500 route begins in Inverness and ends at Britain’s most northerly village, John O’Groats, completing the loop back in Inverness.

NC500’s additional impact in terms of visitor numbers to the North Highlands between 2015 and 2016 is in the region of 5 per cent to 15 per cent. Taking the 10 per cent midpoint, it is estimated that an additional 29,000 visitors have been attracted to and an additional £9 million visitor spend generated for the North Highlands in Year 1, 2016. This level of impact is significant given that the North Highlands has struggled historically to attract large volumes of visitors, even when Scotland and the Highlands as a whole have had good tourism years.

The positive impacts of the NC500 have been reported across all parts of the North Highlands and across different business types. This has included increased custom in cafes and restaurant along the NC500 route and at tourist attractions. The popularity of the route has also helped to increase occupancy levels across all accommodation types, which in turn has led to a reduced need for businesses to discount (so increasing turnover and profit).

“In some of the popular areas of Highland, notably those that have seen a rapid and significant surge in demand for visitor accommodation such as areas on the North Coast 500 touring route, the anecdotal evidence is that the peer to peer accommodation market has helped satisfy the level of demand. This is demonstrated by industry feedback such as “There is simply not enough formal B&B accommodation in the Black Isle and around the NC500 route in general and peer to peer accommodation such as AirBnB fills the gap.”

Liftshare - Jaguar Land Rover Liftshare

Liftshare is a platform that enables organised car sharing by connecting people travelling in the same direction so they can arrange to travel together and share the costs, whilst reducing congestion and pollution at the same time.

In 2015, Jaguar Land Rover ^[44] recruited the services of Liftshare to embed car sharing as a sustainable mode of transport for employees traveling to work. Since then, car sharing has not only contributed to lowering the carbon footprint of Jaguar Land Rover’s operations, but has also eased the demand for parking at its sites and reduced traffic in the local community.

Jaguar Land Rover operates on their private car sharing community software, the platform connects drivers with empty seats to passengers looking for a lift. The overall focus of their scheme has been to improve access to work for all their staff, local congestion and car park management.

Some of the business and environmental benefits to this for Jaguar Land Rover are:

• Manages demand for car parking spaces – saving the business in excess of £1.5 million annually in reduction of additional parking and maintenance costs*.
• Enhances the business’ ethos of encouraging a healthy and balanced lifestyle amongst staff.
• Enables employees to network and meet new colleagues.
• Saves employees money – cost saving £5,000,000*.
• Reduces levels of single occupancy vehicles on site reducing carbon emissions, pollution and noise.
• Contributes towards environmental and sustainability targets.
• Saves 3695.6 tonnes of CO2 emissions per annum*.

* based on a 12 month forecast from the confirmed journeys through the Liftshare system

TrustonTap – Changing the way we care

TrustonTap ^[45] has developed a collaborative marketplace platform to connect older people (and their families) directly with self-employed care workers, avoiding the need for traditional care agencies and enabling improved quality of care.

The platform enables customers to pay less for homecare and care workers to earn more than they would through agencies. Due to smart use of technology, the carers keep around 80 per cent of their client’s fee compared with around 40 per cent via a traditional care agency. TrustonTap feel that this means carers are better motivated and better able to deliver quality care to their clients and that the professional back-up of TrustonTap ensures consistency, reliability and peace of mind for both clients and carers.

Founder William Cotton comments:

“Over the last 18 months we have made significant progress in our desire to revolutionise the provision of care across the region. We have built a new type of care business that improves the way in which we look after the most vulnerable in our communities, whilst also ensuring that we are improving the rewards and motivation of the care workers that support them”

VisitScotland’s Quality Assurance Programme

VisitScotland operates an internationally recognised star graded quality assurance ( QA) scheme ^[46] for a wide variety of businesses operating in the accommodation, visitor attraction and food and drink sectors. The scheme provides an independent, authoritative and trusted source of advice, support and benchmarking for the industry and a high level of reassurance for visitors with 95 per cent saying the star grade met their expectations.

The assessment is made by a team of highly experienced advisors who provide a detailed, objective and impartial report on a range of factors affecting the quality of a visitor experience. Advice is also supplied on a range of other business related issues such as digital performance, sustainability, accessibility and signposting to other sources of more detailed support and information.

Results from the scheme show that QA stimulates a total additional annual investment in fabric improvements and people skills of £59 million a year.

QA’d businesses receive over 1 million referrals from the main consumer facing web site visitscotland.com, 30 per cent more than non- QA’d businesses.

Participants receive significant increases in customer satisfaction levels, turnover and occupancy rates. Businesses signing up to our digital surgeries on the back of a QA visit have recorded increases of up to 80 per cent in turnover.

VisitScotland has ‘exported’ its QA Scheme to Northern Ireland, Sweden, Flanders, Malta and Namibia in addition to supporting other destinations in Europe and Canada.