At the first British-Irish Council Summit it was agreed that the Scottish Executive and the Welsh Assembly Government would progress work in the area of Social Inclusion.

Deprived communities, whether in an urban or rural context, across the British-Irish Council share many common challenges, one of these is poverty and in particular the lack of financial capacity, income and wealth within families and communities. Recognising this, BIC Member Administrations have agreed on the value for a future BIC strategy of exchanging data and sharing information and best practice on the promotion of Social Inclusion at community level.

As part of this work, a British-Irish Council Community Conference took place in Glasgow on the theme of Financial Inclusion, which brought together community activists and policy–makers across the BIC Member Administrations.  The Conference in turn contributed to shaping proposals for the Council’s work on Social Inclusion. http://www.british-irishcouncil.org/work/fininc.pdf

These proposals were presented to a Summit meeting of the British-Irish Council on 22 November 2002 which was hosted by the Scottish Executive at New Lanark. http://www.british-irishcouncil.org/documents/scotland_summit.htm

The BIC agreed that future work on financial inclusion would include promoting best practice by creating new opportunities for community practitioners to share ideas and information, including finding practical ways of promoting access to financial products and encouraging saving within communities, for example through credit unions. The Council agreed to explore best practice in the financial literacy and money advice world.  And given the important role played by intermediary organisations, many based in the community, it was also agreed that the BIC Member Administrations would exchange experience on how such organisations could best be supported.

Scotland and Wales will continue to develop work and areas for practical co-operation on this important issue in close consultation with other Member Administrations. BIC sectoral meetings on Social Inclusion took place in December 2002 and May 2003, to exchange information and review progress to date