--- type: summary title: Tay Bioregion Stocktake and Gap Analysis (2025) description: A joint stocktake of bioregional organising in the Tay Bioregion across 15 elements, naming the gaps to close before a Bioregional Financing Facility. status: draft confidence: medium validation: machine timestamp: 2026-10-09 licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 tags: [tayside, scotland, stocktake, gap-analysis, bioregional-organising, bff-readiness] sources: [] --- # Tay Bioregion Stocktake and Gap Analysis (2025) *A 35-page report by Bioregioning Tayside and Dark Matter Labs, covering September 2024 to January 2025. It draws on ten conversations between two directors of Bioregioning Tayside and a lead from Dark Matter Labs. The report has no separate method or recommendations chapter. Its method sits in the introduction, and its suggested next steps sit in margin comments beside each answer. Read for this page: the whole report in three passes, covering the contents, introduction, summary table, all 15 element sections with their margin comments, and the appendix.* ## What it argues The report asks whether the Tay Bioregion has the foundations a Bioregional Financing Facility (BFF) needs (raw/tayside-stocktake-gap-analysis-report-2025.pdf, p. 4). It tests 15 elements of bioregional organising, learning from what other bioregional teams do (raw/tayside-stocktake-gap-analysis-report-2025.pdf, p. 4). Its premise is that a BFF relies on a strong organisational base. Without one, existing financial interests could capture or misuse it (raw/tayside-stocktake-gap-analysis-report-2025.pdf, p. 4). The finding is that Bioregioning Tayside has deep local trust and a live project base, with few formal structures yet. It has no theory of change, no bioregion-wide vision, no regeneration strategy document and no integrated health metrics (raw/tayside-stocktake-gap-analysis-report-2025.pdf, pp. 5-6). Funding is the tightest limit, and the work is fully grant funded (raw/tayside-stocktake-gap-analysis-report-2025.pdf, p. 6). Even so, the report judges the Tayside team "miles ahead of many other teams" (raw/tayside-stocktake-gap-analysis-report-2025.pdf, p. 6). The report also offers itself as a tool for other teams to gauge their own maturity. It avoids a fixed method for ranking gaps, because each place needs its own judgement (raw/tayside-stocktake-gap-analysis-report-2025.pdf, p. 4). ## Key points - **Fifteen elements.** The appendix defines each of the 15 elements (raw/tayside-stocktake-gap-analysis-report-2025.pdf, p. 35). They run from the organising team and its theory of change to governance, finance, communication and links to other bioregions (raw/tayside-stocktake-gap-analysis-report-2025.pdf, p. 35). - **A small team carrying a lot.** The core team is small, and the directors do much of the work unpaid (raw/tayside-stocktake-gap-analysis-report-2025.pdf, p. 5). Key-person risk is named as the most significant internal risk (raw/tayside-stocktake-gap-analysis-report-2025.pdf, p. 10). - **Projects without a portfolio logic yet.** Four projects were live, including the River Ericht Catchment Restoration Initiative and Feeding Tayside Through the Climate Crisis (raw/tayside-stocktake-gap-analysis-report-2025.pdf, p. 18). Links between projects had not been mapped "in a strategic and systematic way" (raw/tayside-stocktake-gap-analysis-report-2025.pdf, p. 18). - **Funding and finance.** "Funding is the most significant constraint for BT at the moment." (raw/tayside-stocktake-gap-analysis-report-2025.pdf, p. 6). No dedicated financial instruments or institutions exist in the bioregion yet (raw/tayside-stocktake-gap-analysis-report-2025.pdf, p. 30). Nature finance in Scotland faces headwinds on verification standards, public policy and landowners' appetite for risk (raw/tayside-stocktake-gap-analysis-report-2025.pdf, p. 9). - **Weak bioregional identity.** People feel kinship at the scale of their community or their nation. The report notes that "Tayside as a place is not too much of a thing for people" (raw/tayside-stocktake-gap-analysis-report-2025.pdf, p. 15). It links low care for land partly to the concentration of land ownership in Scotland (raw/tayside-stocktake-gap-analysis-report-2025.pdf, p. 15). - **Measurement.** No bioregion-wide health measure exists, and current metrics stand alone (raw/tayside-stocktake-gap-analysis-report-2025.pdf, pp. 6, 24). The team prefers to bundle carbon, biodiversity and social benefits instead of trading them separately (raw/tayside-stocktake-gap-analysis-report-2025.pdf, p. 24). It wants restoration income to reach local people as well as landowners (raw/tayside-stocktake-gap-analysis-report-2025.pdf, p. 24). - **A distributed hub.** The team doubts the value of a single physical hub, which is costly to run (raw/tayside-stocktake-gap-analysis-report-2025.pdf, p. 23). It suggests smaller dispersed spaces and a learning curriculum run through existing partners might suit better (raw/tayside-stocktake-gap-analysis-report-2025.pdf, p. 23). - **Next steps in the margins.** One comment proposes a regeneration strategy document that would become "the investment thesis for any BFF to be developed" (raw/tayside-stocktake-gap-analysis-report-2025.pdf, p. 21). Others propose an integrated health framework for a BFF, and growing Bioregioning Tayside's re-granting role until a dedicated institution can take over (raw/tayside-stocktake-gap-analysis-report-2025.pdf, pp. 24, 30). ## Where it sits in this wiki - [[Bioregioning Tayside: the BFF page and interviews]]: the public account of the same project, which presents this stocktake as stage 1. - [[Bioregional Financing Facilities (book, 2024)]]: the stocktake's questions cite page numbers in a book on BFFs (raw/tayside-stocktake-gap-analysis-report-2025.pdf, pp. 13, 16). It appears to be this one (synthesis). - [[The Bioregional Health Framework]]: element 10 found no integrated health measure, and this framework offers one shared starting point (synthesis). - [[BFF Discovery Arc 1: Allocation Decision Governance]]: element 12 found thin participation in decisions, the ground any allocation governance would build on (synthesis).