Agenda item
Ward Working May 2010 - May 2011
The report reviews the actions taken over the last year by Ward Working including some of the challenges the team have dealt with as well as positive achievements. It also identifies issues to be addressed over the coming year.
Minutes:
The Chair welcomed Councillor Jones, Lead Member for Customers and Citizens, to the meeting. Christine Collins, Neighbourhood Working Manager, presented a report to the committee detailing the work of the Ward Working Team for May 2010 to May 2011. The Ward Working Team operated across all 21 wards to support elected members in their contact with ward residents, helping to identify and respond to local concerns and secure long term improvements in the way services were delivered at neighbourhood level. The team worked with colleagues across the council as well as external partners to develop projects to tackle residents’ concerns and to develop strategic responses to issues of greater complexity. This was reflected in the Ward Working Steering group which comprised representatives from all Council departments. The team also reported direct to the Ward Working Member Reference Group (MRG) of which Councillor Jones was Chair and Councillors Colwill and Sneddon members. The report outlined expenditure, results of consultations, partnership activity, challenges faced by the team, positive achievements and issues to be addressed in the forthcoming year.
Christine Collins explained that the Ward Working Team had been affected by reductions in other council departments. These reductions could limit the options for the projects that the team might wish to develop. Despite this, the team had participated in 43 outreach events including ward walkabouts and attended tenant and resident groups meetings, police Safer Neighbourhood Team meetings and developed ‘ward breakouts’ at Area Consultative Forums. With regard to communications, the team had continued to produce the Neighbourhood bulletin, although had slightly changed the format to encourage greater levels of feedback, and had started using Twitter in a pilot scheme for Kilburn residents. There had been some significant interest in this pilot scheme but there required further work to encourage council departments to include more information.
Christine Collins further advised that a wide range of partnerships had been established and developed by the Ward Working Team and 17 of these were currently on-going, alongside more informal partnership working. Resident consultations had produced 597 responses, received via festivals and tear-off slips from the neighbourhood bulletin. These responses had been collated and analysed at Appendix 1 to the report. The information gathered was used to assist ward members to identify priorities for their ward and to aid decisions regarding project ideas. Of the £420,000 budget for all wards, there remained a small underspend of £7,530. At paragraph 9.2 of the report, a table was provided detailing the various categories of projects funded via the ward budgets. The greatest proportion of funds was directed towards projects aimed at engaging young people and in total £223,250 was spent on projects in the voluntary and community sector. A timetable had been implemented for the current financial year indicating when decisions regarding funding allocations should be made, in order to spread expenditure throughout the year and avoid difficulties caused by last minute allocations. It was highlighted to members that there had been many achievements and issues tackled for certain areas without direct funding, including the removal of graffiti, the introduction of traffic calming measures and improved security and lighting to deter antisocial behaviour.
Christine Collins concluded that the Ward Working Team had now become part of the Community Engagement Department, along with the Consultation and Diversity teams. It was felt that this would offer new opportunities for joint working, project development and cross-team learning.
Councillor Jones added that there had been a number of challenges for the past year, including the introduction of new elected members and a number of politically split wards; however, both Ward Members and the Ward Working Team had worked well and Councillor Jones expressed her hope that all of the ward working budget would be allocated in the current year. It was further highlighted that due to the significant cuts to public spending it was likely that there would be many projects and organisations seeking alternative funding options. Unfortunately, the criteria for the allocation of funds from the ward working budget stipulated that projects must be discrete and revenue funding must not be provided. Councillor Jones further advised that it was hoped that the ward working budget could be increased as it was felt to be very important in encouraging and facilitating engagement between ward members and residents.
During Members discussion several councillors expressed their thanks to the Ward Working Team and a number of queries were raised. Councillor Harrison sought further details regarding the opportunities that would be afforded by the Ward Working Team joining the Community Engagement Department, alongside the Consultation and Diversity teams. Christine Collins advised that the consultation team advised all council departments on how to conduct consultations; it was hoped therefore, that by working more closely with this team, the ward working team would be able to build on its current knowledge and seek to influence the way in which consultations are carried out to allow information to be broken down to a ward level. With regard to the Diversity team who provided advice to council departments on equality impact assessments, it was felt that greater knowledge of equality issues could only improve the work of the Ward Working Team. Councillor Harrison further commented that the meetings of the area consultative forums (ACFs) clashed with council committee meetings and Christine Collins assured the meeting that she understood that ACF meetings were scheduled to avoid clashes with council committee meetings as much as was possible. Further to this, Councillor Naheerathan queried why the Ward Working Team had changed departments. Councillor Jones advised that restructures had taken place across several departments as part of efficiency measures. Christine Collins confirmed that the number of neighbourhood co-ordinators and the function of the team remained as before.
With reference to the table at paragraph 9.2 of the report, Councillor Naheerathan further queried whether the street improvements which accounted for £76,835 of the expenditure from the ward working budget, should have been carried out and funded by the highways team. Christine Collins explained that the projects funded via the ward working budgets have to target works over and above what the council would provide. Included within the street improvements was a number of alley gating projects, which had been extremely successful.
Noting the Paan Spitting Steering group from amongst the list of partnerships included at Appendix 2 to the report, Councillor Naheerathan queried how successful this partnership had been. Christine Collins advised that the ward working team had contributed to the related campaign a few years previously. The campaign had gone through several stages including street cleaning, the erection of banners, work by trading standards with regard to Paan sellers and police actions on the street; however, none of these stages had proved particularly successful. The NHS had been going to run a campaign regarding the health effects of Paan spitting, unfortunately this had not yet taken place due to the significant changes affecting the health service. There had been no recent work by the Paan Spitting Steering group.
Councillor Patel queried what would happen to the £7,000 underspend, whether there would be any reductions to the Ward Working Team due to efficiency savings and sought further details regarding the alley gating schemes supported by the team. Councillor Jones advised that the Ward Working Team was currently working to capacity and asserted that there would be no reductions in the team. Christine Collins explained that the underspend in the budget would contribute to the council’s required savings. With regard to the alley gating scheme, she further explained that depending on the circumstances one or several gates of varying types might have been installed. Councillor Hirani queried how future repair issues regarding the gates would be resolved. Councillor Jones advised that Ward Working funding had to be for discrete projects only and Christine Collins added that when the alley gates were installed resident groups were established to maintain the gates. In order to take action with respect to the gates, those resident groups would be required to get agreement of all who use the gates.
The Chair sought further details regarding the impact of reductions to other departments on the work of the Ward Working Team. Christine Collins provided several examples to illustrate the impact of such reductions. The reduction or loss of some teams or functions represented a loss of expertise, or a loss of contacts with outside organisations. Councillor Jones highlighted that it might also lead to delays for the Ward Working Team as waiting times for information or services might increase; such delay’s, for example, had been evident in the process of obtaining quotes from the Parks Service.
The Chair, with reference to the Localism Bill, queried how ward working would progress in the future. Councillor Jones reiterated that it was intended to increase the Ward Working budget; however, this was only an aspiration at the current time due to the financial context of significant cuts to public spending. Further to this, the Chair queried whether Ward Working was organised differently in other local authorities. Christine Collins confirmed that different local authorities had individual arrangements and noted that some did not have an equviliant scheme. For example Budgets for ward working ranged considerably and arrangements for allocating the funds also varied, with some authorities having a shopping list that members could refer to or a requirement that a ward walkabout be completed by councillors before a bid for a monthly sum for use in that ward would be accepted. With regard to the responses received to the team’s consultations, the Chair noted that responses were low from certain groups within ward communities and asked whether members could assist with improving this. He added that it would be useful for members to be made aware for their wards where responses were low for certain ethnic or age groups.
RESOLVED: -
That the report be noted.
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