PROPOSAL

Neighbourhood Flexibility and empowerment

Across the existing authorities local area working has been established in a range of formats and relationships developed with community groups and especially parish councils.

The new authorities will roll out their model of area and neighbourhood working and realign Area Committees to community boundaries building on natural links and common issues and concerns, for instance air quality, debt problems or rural issues. The aim will be to work on stronger socially, economically and environmentally cohesive community boundaries.

Devolved decision making and budgets through Area Committees will provide local councillors with a regular local forum to discuss services with residents, the VCS and other public service providers, ensure people will be involved in making decisions locally and deliver the improvements required.

Local governance mechanisms will provide leadership and local accountability through the Community Call for Action and through neighbourhood charters setting out public sector responsibilities.

We already have a model of such a charter in place with the Cheshire Association of Parish Councils. It sets out rights and responsibilities based on commitments by both parties.

Partner involvement in area based decision making will help deliver joined up solutions to local issues. The new authorities will build on the good practice of Area Committees, for instance in Chester where Police and Fire are part of a joint Community Safety approach with Public Space teams addressing locally identified priorities. A co-ordinated approach involving local councillors and residents will bring the authorities and other agencies together at the local level to deliver services more effectively.

Partners must be involved in area based decision making to deliver joined up solutions to local issues. Having one structure to consult and engage the community will make it easier for residents and agencies. Better outcomes for residents and more efficient use of resources will be achieved through unified mainstream budget spend, re-aligned services and targeted joint funding.

One robust structure with clear routes for accountability, enhanced by neighbourhood management responsive to locally distinctive issues, will empower and enable communities to improve local service delivery.

Cost savings from the new authorities and other public sector partners could be re-directed to locality budgets.

Traditional democratic processes do not reach all sections of society and while Area Committees will increase community participation, these may not help communities that are not geographically based. Therefore, to achieve better Equality Standards for Local Government, and go beyond just complying with legal duties, the new authorities will also need to take a range of steps such as regular BME focus groups, to reach groups which are under represented or even marginalised in regular consultation processes. The VCS will play an important role in helping this.

Ultimately the authorities could devolve responsibilities to community partnerships and voluntary sector bodies to address local issues. The councils can set the outcomes they want, recognising that the community partnerships are better placed to deliver the service in a locally responsive way.

Local working arrangements need to reflect the diversity of their areas and continue to find ways, as districts have done, of working with residents, voluntary and community groups as well, so as to create a variety of effective local arrangements that reflect what works best in each area.

The current extent and style of working with communities differs across the area. Whilst there is no common and consistent arrangement across the entire area there are networks already in place that will provide the basis of local working in the future.

Within the partnership framework the authorities will tackle the agenda for localism and neighbourhood working. We see neighbourhood working as the foundation on which strategy is built so it reflects the views of people in communities and not just the place where operational delivery happens. As part of that the authorities must see empowering and growing the capacity of people in communities as their mission, and they must support the work of members in their wards.

Summarised below are our expectations for neighbourhood working.

Providing Services locally

Responsive services delivered locally that centre on the needs of customers not providers and which reflect local priorities and outcomes.

Services that demonstrate an understanding that needs and impacts are different in different places, and therefore solutions will vary, especially in areas of deprivation (Table 1 & 2).

Enhanced local democracy

Ensuring communities can influence decisions, ideally taking them themselves. Local councillors supported in their work through area committees of a single, two or more wards.

A model exists already based on the current working arrangements by Chester City Council. But, it is essential that each authority develops its own approach in its formative years to secure ownership and embed this way of working in its culture.

Securing increased participation for communities and community groups to provide them with a fair and equitable voice and the opportunity to have their say and be listened to.

Local Community Ownership and involvement

The new authorities will transfer management and ultimately the ownership of assets to the community. This will build on work done in advance to invest in capacity building and provide skills to people in communities as part of area working.

This will help deliver the principles in the White Paper of “evolve and devolve”.

Place shaping will be at a local level, not just authority-wide. People live much of their lives in a local community, whether a village or a suburb, and it will be part of the authorities’ leadership role to work with partners to apply to these neighbourhoods a parallel process to that which is applied to the whole area in terms of community planning.

Decisions by partners and the authorities themselves must not be made in isolation from an understanding of the wider implications for, and needs of, each community they serve.

This requires the authorities to provide a strategic leadership and enabling role. The main elements will be:

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