WOULD you hire an unqualified local volunteer over an experienced staff member with certified skills and training? That’s what happened five years ago in one of Scotland’s most deprived areas – and the community has never looked back.

Bellsmyre is a housing estate with 3400 residents built after the war, just off the main road from Dumbarton to Bonhill. According to the local council’s website “the name comes from ‘Bell’s mire’, a piece of marshy land belonging to somebody whose surname was Bell”.

History hardly goes deep in the clutch of estates thrown up to cater for Glasgow’s overspill. And over the intervening 70 years, things have not gone well.

In 2011, Bellsmyre was West Dunbartonshire’s top priority area for regeneration. It was ranked in the lowest 10% by the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation and suffered from below average levels of employment, income, and quality housing with above average levels of crime, substance abuse and apathy.

But 2011 was the year the Big Lottery intervened.

Bellsmyre was chosen as one of five neighbourhoods in Scotland to benefit from “Our Place” money, because it had never received a penny of Big Lottery cash. Some £2 million would be spent over a five-year period on projects delivered by the community – but not the council.

Donnie Nicolson, who’s worked in community development for almost 30 years, is now manager of the Bellsmyre Development Trust (BDT). He recalls the first public meeting: “Apparently there were around 50 people present – the majority were council officials or councillors. When the Big Lottery made it absolutely clear they weren’t giving lottery cash to the council, their folk just vanished.” That reduced the danger of the community being micro-managed, but it also suggested community empowerment was a low priority for the council.

The BDT was set up in April 2012 and a mix of projects were worked up with lottery officials and rolled out – including the Cutty Sark Community Centre, an activities programme and a mountain bike trail. But after a couple of years, as lottery funding began to taper off, some staff members were planning to move in search of greater job security.

The trust board were also worried that somehow, despite all the cash spent, there was relatively little buy-in from the community.

That’s when Donnie Nicolson came up with a novel idea.

“We’d got a lot of community volunteers. Two in particular were exceptional folk in their early twenties with no qualifications in community development or anything else. But they had a genuine desire to improve things here. So the trust decided to take them on as replacements for the much more qualified but maybe less committed staff we were losing.”

Almost immediately, the effect was transformational. By giving local people front-line jobs, participation in trust events increased dramatically. “These young staff involved their families and friends and they knew folk in the heart of the community beyond the activists who tend to get involved in anything and everything. It was a real eye opener for the board.”

When the Big Lottery celebrated three years of funding at Bellsmyre, the board was sufficiently confident in its new approach to lay down two new rules of thumb.

Firstly, BDT would never do something for nothing in the belief that everyone should contribute to community services so they have some form of value.

The second rule – the trust would actively encourage recruitment from within the community for paid jobs.

Donnie said: “I’ve been in so many places where money is parachuted in, spent and then disappears – making next to no difference. So attitudes towards life don’t change. Take Bellsmyre. At the start, when canvassers asked locals what they’d like the £2 million to be spent on, at least eight folk said: “Just gies a cheque for four of five grand each and we’ll take it fae there.” That’s how little faith folk had in the community. We had to change that mentality. Lottery-funded projects had to become permanent and long term and that could only happen if local people made the projects their own.”

That has happened. A recent evaluation showed hundreds of people were volunteering at the end of five years and the lives of some local folk have been transformed by getting a second chance at paid employment courtesy of the trust.

Chris McClung, for example, was brought up in Bellsmyre and was a community volunteer while employed at the local Polaroid plant, until he left to become the trust’s activity officer in 2014. At that time, Chris had no formal qualifications except a community course the trust put him through as a volunteer.

Anne Devlin has four children – Harvey, 12, twins Carly and Cameron, 9, and Isla, 4 – and has been out of work for more than 10 years. During that time, Anne studied health and social care and volunteered for work experience at the BDT working at parent, toddler and youth clubs and other events.

“Being a volunteer helped me gain confidence and faith in myself, believing if I want to achieve something I can do it.

‘‘The trust helped me get back into paid employment by providing a positive reference, helping me make up a new CV and prepare for interviews.”

The preparations paid off – Ann recently started a part-time job as a cleaner and will soon start another as a carer – a big help for her family financially.

With this kind of tangible achievement, you might think West Dunbartonshire Council would be backing the Bellsmyre trust all the way.

Not quite. Since 2012, there’s been very little formal engagement. When objectors blocked the construction of a new Roman Catholic secondary school elsewhere in Dumbarton, the council opted for a site 50 yards from BDT offices – which was made vacant by the demolition of four tower blocks.

The trust hoped that the £25 million project would let the community use health and fitness facilities and maybe the school library as other new “campus” community schools have done.

But after years of effort, the community are still being denied access during evenings and weekends (apart from a recent exception to allow children access to a sports field).

So the trust has done it themselves – making a hall available for community sports and running dozens of classes there every week. They’ve also built a cafe on the edge of council land gifted to them by the local authority.

After discovering almost 500 pupils regularly left school to walk into Dumbarton town centre for takeaway meals at the previous site, the community-run Clipper Cafe offers a “realistic” combination of comfort and healthy food right opposite the school gate, which means kids at Our Lady and St Patrick’s High School aren’t crossing roads, paying over the odds or going near shops with the forbidden fruits of alcohol and tobacco on display every lunchtime.

Now 200 staff and 1000 kids – more than 70% coming from outside Dumbarton – are bussed into Bellsmyre every day.

According to Donnie: “We have a lot of visibility, a lot of turnover in the shop and a lot of visitors.

‘‘In terms of feel-good factor, there’s been a tangible difference. Bellsmyre has gone from possibly the number one deprived area, where the housing association and council couldn’t even let properties, to an area with new family-friendly units thanks to demolition of the worst housing. Bellsmyre is still not affluent but it’s certainly what folk from other Dumbarton estates want to be like.

After half a century stuck in the mire, that’s not bad.