Our Voices Matter

Our Voices Matter – Third Sector Response to HSCP Budget Proposals

The Context
Why This Matters
Our Position
A Different Way Forward
Join the Campaign
Case Studies

Protecting Prevention. Strengthening Communities. Securing Sustainable Health and Care in Argyll and Bute.

Argyll and Bute’s third and community sector has launched Our Voices Matter — a collective campaign to protect preventative services, defend community capacity and promote a sustainable, prevention-focused future for health and social care.

This campaign arises in response to the 2026/27 Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP) budget proposals and the wider financial context facing Integration Joint Boards (IJBs) across Scotland.

Further resources from the HSCP including details of online consultation events can be found on their consultation pages.

These cuts affect you, your family and your community so please add your support to the growing campaign. See our case studies and personas at the bottom of this page to understand how the cuts will affect people across our communities.

We recognise the scale of the financial challenge. We also believe that how financial decisions are made matters just as much as the scale of the gap. We are a campaign for all community organisations in Argyll and Bute and our remit follows two well attended campaign meetings in December 2025 and February 2026. Check back here regularly to review our campaign as it gathers momentum.

Health and social care budgets and governance arrangements are complex and we will add lots of information here to try to demystify the process. Ultimately though the key dates moving forward are:-

1. 25th February 2026 – Argyll and Bute Council’s contribution to the HSCP budget will be decided at their budget meeting which also sets our Council Tax
2. 12th March – Public consultation ends on the HSCP proposals
3. 25th March – the governing body of the HSCP (the IJB) meets to debate and approve the budget

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The Context: Significant Financial Pressures

The Argyll and Bute Health and Social Care Partnership’s 2026/27 budget proposals (items 7a and 7b in the link) identifies:

• An opening deficit of over £16 million
• Savings proposals of approximately £6 million
• A remaining funding gap requiring resolution

Alongside this, additional and emerging cost pressures have been identified of:

• Up to £8 million in-year, and
• Potentially £14–16 million in 2026/27

These relate to acute Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde. These pressures represent a material financial risk to the sustainability of services delivered locally in Argyll and Bute.

At the same time, the current savings proposals include reductions affecting:

• Carers’ centres
• Third sector contracts and grants
• Community transport
• Care and Repair
• Responder services
• Day services
• Children’s and adult social work capacity
• Community-based preventative provision

The budget papers themselves acknowledge that these reductions risk “significant adverse impacts” and may undermine preventative capacity.

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Why This Matters

Preventative and community-based services:

• Reduce hospital admissions
• Delay escalation of need
• Support unpaid carers
• Tackle loneliness and isolation
• Enable people to live independently
• Reduce delayed discharge
• Lower long-term system costs

Reducing prevention to meet short-term pressures risks increasing long-term demand, cost and harm elsewhere in the system.

This approach sits uneasily alongside:

• The Public Service Reform agenda
• The Population Health Framework
• The National Health and Wellbeing Outcomes
• Christie Commission principles on prevention and community empowerment
• Human rights commitments highlighted by the Scottish Human Rights Commission

Argyll and Bute has repeatedly committed to shifting from crisis response to early intervention. Our concern is that current savings proposals move us in the opposite direction.

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Our Position

The Our Voices Matter campaign calls for a reset in approach.

We are asking for:

1. Protection of Prevention

Preventative, early-intervention and community-based services must be explicitly protected within the 2026/27 budget.

2. A Pause on Harmful Reductions

Savings proposals that directly undermine community capacity should be paused pending fuller system-wide impact analysis.

3. Due Diligence on Acute Costs

Before reducing community provision, there must be urgent additional scrutiny and transparency regarding the scale, assumptions and value for money of the Greater Glasgow and Clyde acute SLAs.

4. Whole-System Transformation

Financial recovery should be grounded in a root-and-branch transformation programme examining care pathways from community to hospital and back again — not incremental reductions to frontline community support.

5. Equal Partnership

Third sector organisations, carers and communities must be engaged as equal partners in redesign and decision-making — not consulted once options are narrowed.

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A Different Way Forward

Alongside raising concerns, we have submitted a comprehensive contribution to the new Joint Strategic Plan (2026–2031).

Our shared vision is:

By 2031, Argyll and Bute will have a sustainable, prevention-focused system where communities, statutory partners and the third sector work as equals to enable healthier, more connected lives.

We believe Argyll and Bute can become a national exemplar for rural, prevention-led integration — but only if transformation protects community capacity rather than erodes it.

This Is Not Opposition for Its Own Sake

We recognise the statutory duty to balance the budget.
We recognise the financial constraints.
We recognise the complexity of integration governance.

But the HSCP also has a duty to:

• Unpaid carers
• Disabled people
• Older residents
• Children and families
• Volunteers
• Community organisations
• Rural and island communities

When decisions risk causing disproportionate harm to prevention and community resilience, we must speak.

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Join the Campaign

Our Voices Matter brings together third sector organisations, community groups, carers and citizens across Argyll and Bute.

We are:

• Advocating for prevention
• Promoting evidence-based alternatives
• Engaging with elected members and MSPs
• Calling for democratic and participative governance
• Seeking transparency and fairness in financial decision-making

If you believe that community capacity is essential to sustainable health and social care, we invite you to support the campaign.

Together, we can ensure that Argyll and Bute’s future is shaped by long-term wellbeing — not short-term retrenchment.

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