Forth Neighbourhood Partnership
Review Day
21 November 2012
NELO, 8 West Pilton Gardens
Present: Councillor Cammy Day (Convenor); Councillor Allan Jackson (Vice
Convenor); Richard Scott (Trinity Community Council), Roy Douglas
(Muirhouse Salveson Community Council); George Gordon (Granton &
District Community Council); Colin Douglas (WPWG Community Council),
Gena Wylie (Forth Voluntary Organisations Forum); Inspector Mark Rennie
(L&B Police) Peter Strong, Martina McChrystal, Henry Coyle and Jim Pattison
(Services for Communities).
Apologies: Councillor Steve Cardownie, Councillor Vicki Redpath, Christine
MacKay (Total Craigroyston); David White (NHS Lothian)
1. Cllr Day welcomed everyone to the meeting called to look at different
ways of conducting Partnership business with aim of ensuring greater
community involvement.
2. Cllr Day outlined the need for more outcomes, the steer from the new
Council administration which is developing further local involvement in
decision making. New governance arrangements include the new
Communities and Neighbourhood Committee. Neighbourhood
Partnerships are part of the second phase of the Council Governance
Review.
3. Peter Strong then gave a presentation on the background to the
current operating structures and highlighted some options for future
ways of working, including:
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Stay with current structure
Annual Community Priority Setting Event
Feedback events
Officers Group-delivery of the above
NP board monitor outcomes quarterly
Accountability/ Community Input
Themed public meetings
Annual report to NP board
4. During discussion the following points were made:
Need to link our activity to the Council’s Single Outcome Agreement
(SOA)
Need to look at a smaller number of achievable priorities.
Should focus on outcomes – how does what we do improve things –
showing clearly what added value NPs produce.
Future focus should include more specific activity around community
safety and dealing with anti- social behaviour – too often this has been
lost in Clean, Green & Safe meetings due to size of agenda.
Need to find a way to involve a wider spread of the community in
activities and better ways of ensuring service providers are
accountable for service they provide.
Focus has too often been on SFC and we need to involve other service
providers – ask them how they will contribute to NP priorities.
The community has to feel they can influence services otherwise they
won’t engage – need a sense that something is being achieved.
Noted the board must take responsibility for outcomes.
Peter’s team to draw up a proposal and timescale for implementing this
and bring back to NP business meeting in January.
5 Other points discussed included:
Look at possibility of using a participatory budgeting approach for
Community Grants and NEP. Richard suggested devolving some of
these budgets to Community Councils. To feed into next weeks
planned NEP review.
It was noted that there is still £5K left in Community Grants budget with
applications to value of £17K already received – it was agreed that
options for allocating this should be circulated to the Board.
When discussing priorities it may be worth looking at model used by
Trinity CC.
Partnership should look at how it feeds information back to the
community – report card approach could work.
Whatever structures are agreed we need to ensure Community
Councils and elected members have a key role.
Involve partners other than SFC more and look at how to make them
more accountable.
When outcomes agreed we need to be clear about who is responsible
for achieving them.
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Actions Agreed
Agreed current sub group activity to cease in December/early January.
All action groups to be briefed and final meetings could be used as part
of priority setting process.
Four key priority setting event in each CC area – events to be planned
with respective CCs and to involve RTOs, residents and community
groups.
In addition targeted events for communities of interest to include
young people and BME community.
These meetings to be held in first quarter of next year – January to
March 2013.
Get agreement from community on a smaller number of achievable
objectives which will then be refined and developed into a new Action
Plan by the Neighbourhood Partnership.
Once priorities are agreed the Partnership will then decide on what are
the best structures to take them forward, agree whether short life group
needed for any particular strand and agree how best to review
progress.
Agreed an Officers group could monitor outcomes via a series of
feedback events on each of the main identified priorities.