Counting takes place at Ingliston after the Scottish Parliament election (Picture: Lisa Ferguson) While the past two decades have seen powers transferred from Westminster to Holyrood, that’s precisely where they’ve stayed. Still far from the local communities where people live. Scotland has some of the least ‘local’ local councils in Europe and is lagging behind even England in terms of voter representation. Recent analysis done by ERS Scotland and the Our Democracy coalition found that the average local authority in Scotland has an area of 2,434.7 square kilometres – 50 times bigger than the EU average of just 50 square kilometres. In terms of representation this means that a councillor in Scotland has around 4,155 constituents on average – far more than the likes of Norway where that figure is 572 and even England where it is 2,814.