Partnership and International Links

A Commitment to Partnership

The City Council has a sense of the importance of its role and responsibilities as part of the North West Region and the UK as a whole.

It recognises the need to work not just for the community of 120,000 residents and their many and varied interests, but also to work with those interests to ensure that each is able to prosper in an environment of mutual support based on common aims.

To this end, Chester City Council has pioneered a highly successful partnership approach to meeting its aims and the needs of the District for the future on behalf of the communities it serves.

Within its own boundaries, the City Council has initiated several specific forums:

• The Economic Development Forum
• The Arts Forum
• The Environmental Forum 
• The Sports Forum
• Housing Forum
• Access and disability Forum
• Parish Partnership

These bring together a range of interests and stakeholders that are actively engaged in the development and implementation of a range of innovative measures to enhance services, improve facilities and generate new opportunities for the future of Chester.

The emphasis is on practical achievement. For example, among the Economic Development Forum's most recent successes have been the appointment of a City Centre Manager, jointly funded with the business community, to co-ordinate wide-ranging initiatives to keep the City Centre clean, safe and attractive. It has also launched the well known Chester Action Programme.

The Chester Action Programme provides a framework within which more than 300 member organisations are committed and enabled to develop an effective response of the pressing challenges which now face the area. The emphasis is on Partnership with projects being undertaken and funded by the voluntary sector and business community as well as the Local Authority.

The Council is also in the forefront of Councils in the North West in the production of an Environmental Charter in 1991 and establishing the Environmental Forum in 1992. It is also producing a local Environmental Action Programme.