Local Council Elections 2022

The 2022 Scottish local elections are due to take place on 5th May 2022. Local Councillors are responsible for making decisions on your behalf about local services across 32 local authorities.

In preparation for the elections, Together's members have made key calls within their manifestos to encourage Local Council candidates to make children's rights pledges.

Includem
Includem's Manifesto builds on the views of children, young people and families.

The ABCs of NEEDS NOW calls for Access to support, the Basics and Connections in communities.

These components are needed to secure and protect the wellbeing of individuals and communities as they face the cost of living crisis.
- Read Includem's Manifesto here.
Includem asks individuals and communities to share what their neighborhood #NeedsNow and calls on organisations across Scotland to share how they’ll work to support their community’s #NeedsNow.
Child Poverty Action Group
The Child Poverty Action Group's Manifesto outlines what action is needed from local authorities to ensure children can grow up in Scotland free from poverty. Some of the calls on prospective councillors include:
- Putting robust, time-bound plans in place to tackle child poverty at a local level.
- Using local powers to deliver more cash support to families.
- Adequately supplying affordable, secure, good quality family housing
- Better access to high quality, affordable, accessible and flexible funded childcare to enable parents, particularly mothers, to access the labour market and increase their working hours.
Read this Manifesto in full here or read a summary of the Manifesto here.
Children in Scotland
Children in Scotland's Manifesto features 13 calls from its original 2021-26 Manifesto document, adapted slightly for a local government audience.

The Manifesto calls on candidates to make commitments in relation to:
- Rights and democracy
- Poverty and inequality
- Early years
- Learning
- Health and wellbeing
- Place, space and community
- Protecting children and young people from harm
- Equalities
- Environment
- Planning, resources and approaches
Read Children in Scotland's Manifesto here.
Children 1st
Children 1st is asking council candidates to deliver three pledges to keep children and families safe, loved and well, by 2027:
- Develop highly visible, easy to access, family resource and wellbeing spaces in every local community to offer families non-stigmatising, immediate emotional, practical, and financial support, delivered in partnership with the third sector.
- Ensure that every GP, health visitor, and teacher can refer children and their families to support that strengthens their health and wellbeing without a waiting list.
- Eliminate poverty as an excuse for taking children into care, by putting the development and delivery of local child poverty action reports at the top of each council’s agenda.
The pledges have been shaped by the families that Children 1st work with across Scotland, who have told the charity that many services are unavailable, hard to find or difficult to engage with.
- Read the manifesto calls in full here.