Birmingham Neigh Strategy - Final Consultation Draft - 21 ... · 5/21/2013 · Birmingham City...

Transforming Place Final Consultation Draft – 21 May 2013

Birmingham City Council May 2013 1

Transforming Place

A Neighbourhood Strategy for Birmingham

Draft For Consultation

Birmingham City Council

May 2013



1. Introduction and Purpose

One of the seven commitments made as a result of Birmingham’s recent Social Inclusion Process was to: ‘Empower people to shape their neighbourhood… by developing a neighbourhood strategy for the city, encouraging greater participation and strengthening relationships between different areas’.1 This commitment aligns strongly with the three key priorities in the City Council’s Leader’s Policy Statement 2012/13. Such a Neighbourhood Strategy would play a major role in delivering the priority of “involving local people and communities in the future of their local area and their public services.” It would also play a significant contributory role in delivering the two other priorities identified “tackling inequality and deprivation, promoting social cohesion and ensuring dignity; and “laying the foundations of a prosperous city and inclusive economy”.

1 See ‘Making Birmingham an inclusive city’ March

2013. This is summarised in Appendix I.

The potential for neighbourhood management to play a significant role in advancing improvements in “place” is based on Birmingham’s rich experience of neighbourhood working over the last decade through action taken forward by neighbourhood and community organisations in their own right as well as strategic interventions in place through a structured neighbourhood management programme. In both contexts involved and empowered local citizens can make a real difference to the quality of life in their neighbourhoods.

This strategy responds to the “call to arms” made through the Bishop of Birmingham’s Social Inclusion Process and the Green and White Papers that have set out its detailed proposals, including a coherent and sustainable approach to neighbourhood management building on best practice in this city and elsewhere. It has been taken forward through the Social Inclusion Steering Group, the Leaders Board, District Committees and a Neighbourhood Summit.

Purpose of the Neighbourhood

Strategy

The Neighbourhood Strategy is an enabling framework for Birmingham stakeholders to work together to deliver a better quality of life for all. It has been developed and agreed by both the citywide and local executives (Districts) of the Council as well as major partners, stakeholders and practitioners at neighbourhood and community level.

It outlines an overall enabling framework that will facilitate joint working between stakeholders to deliver neighbourhood improvement and identifies specific initiatives in three arenas in which services and programmes are delivered for, and sometimes by, local communities:

1 Local mainstream public services and public investment in neighbourhoods.

2. Initiatives planned and co-ordinated

at a city-wide level which have a direct impact on lives in neighbourhoods.

3. Activities and organisation in neighbourhoods and communities which are independent of the Council and the public sector.



The strategy seeks to outline a number of roles and responsibilities for neighbourhood improvements and how stakeholders will be engaged in this process. The idea is to create fertile ground for dialogue and joint action with local residents, businesses, investors and service providers on the needs, opportunities and priorities in each of the city’s neighbourhoods.

Building on past experience…

Between 2009 and 2011 partners in Birmingham delivered a neighbourhood programme, focussing on 31 Priority Neighbourhoods, which was widely seen as having made great strides in engaging and empowering local communities and in bringing together service providers and communities to make in-roads into some of the key issues identified by local people. Examples include reducing crime and anti-social behaviour and improving the quality and cleanliness of open and green spaces. (These issues are often referred to as the Clean, Green and Safe agenda.2)

In turn, these successes were based on years of experience of partnership working at a neighbourhood level using a variety of national regeneration and renewal funding. They were also based on the city’s many

2 See the Council’s and Be Birmingham’s ‘Laying

the Foundations of Localism’ for more details.

autonomous, bottom-up, community-based neighbourhood initiatives, many of which are still active today.

…in a new context

However, national funding for neighbourhood programmes ended in March 2011, with no significant replacement in sight. In addition, the context for neighbourhood working has changed dramatically since then: economic stagnation; huge reductions in public spending, especially for local authorities; fundamental restructuring of many public services; the Welfare Reforms; and legislation on ‘Localism’ which, amongst other matters, gives local communities powers to challenge public service provision.

Yet the issues that face people in their neighbourhoods remain much the same. The picture of deprivation in the city as painted by the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) hardly changed between 2004 and 2010 and there is a high risk that deprivation will grow over the coming years. Indeed, more recent, partial updates of the 2010 IMD data suggest that deprivation has been rising fastest in the most deprived neighbourhoods since the current financial crisis began.

Based on our community assets

On the other hand, many community assets built over the past years are still in place. These assets include buildings and other facilities owned or controlled by community organisations as well as ‘softer’ assets such as active community organisations and development trusts that have developed their capacity to provide needed, quality services and to attract investments into their neighbourhood. They also include valuable community engagement mechanisms such as neighbourhood forums, community associations and Housing Liaison Boards.

Then there are the staff of many public services, community organisations and local businesses who, despite job losses, retain a great deal of knowledge about specific neighbourhoods and the local communities that live and work in them. They have also accumulated valuable experience of how to work well together and what works in their neighbourhoods.

This new context, the urgency of the continuing challenges and the available community assets suggest that the Council and its partners need to re-examine the why and the how of neighbourhood working.

1. What can the Council still do at a neighbourhood level in view of



much more limited resources? Indeed, is it feasible and helpful to work at a neighbourhood level given the constraints on resources?

2. What should and can be maintained from previous ways of neighbourhood working and what needs to change?

3. How can the Council attract new or release untapped resources?

4. How can the Council, other public services, the private sector and local communities work together best to maximise the benefits for all of Birmingham’s citizens?

Why neighbourhoods?

These are the questions that this Neighbourhood Strategy seeks to answer. In response to 1 above, experience suggests at least four reasons for the Council to embed a neighbourhood approach in its work. These are:

1. Neighbourhoods are where people live most of their lives and access (or fail to access) many services they rely on.

2. Neighbourhoods are where many people construct a sense of place and identity.

3. Although communities coalesce around many interests and identities, geography (neighbourhood) is a major focus for community organisation and volunteering.

4. Community engagement in shaping services and their environment, and in developing local solutions to local problems, works well at a neighbourhood level.

It therefore makes sense to adopt a neighbourhood approach across all neighbourhoods in Birmingham. However, the scarcity of resources suggests that public sector resources for neighbourhood working should be focussed on areas with high levels of deprivation, that is, where need is greatest.

This has been the approach adopted in the past in Birmingham, as in other parts of the country, with the identification of Priority Neighbourhoods. This can, however, be combined with an enabling and empowering approach in all neighbourhoods, and an approach which responds to capacity, assets and opportunities in each neighbourhood.

But new ways of working

Reduced resources also mean that neighbourhood working and public services cannot be delivered in the same

way as before. No funds are available, for example, to employ neighbourhood managers as in the past despite their proven value.

Public services will need to be more targeted on identified priorities of local communities. They will need to work more effectively together, avoiding duplication, with greater clarity on who does what so that they don’t get in each other’s way, and finding ways to reinforce each other’s interventions so that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. They will also need to support independent community activity.

Communities will need to be less reliant on public services and do more for themselves if they are to protect and improve the quality of their lives. They will need to be even more enterprising, developing their capacity to deliver local services and thinking of new ways to attract resources into their neighbourhoods. Above all, they will need to be resilient with citizens supporting each other to overcome challenges, hardship and divisions.

And the public, private and community sectors will need to work more closely together to develop and deliver services and initiatives that improve neighbourhoods. That is, they will need to ‘co-design’ and co-produce’ local solutions



to local problems. ‘Integrated neighbourhood tasking’ in Birmingham has provided many small but highly appreciated examples of co-design and co-production such as litter picks, improvements to open space and friends of local parks groups.

All this means a renewed emphasis on bottom-up approaches with empowered communities. But the top down responsibilities of public service providers cannot be abdicated. Neighbourhood management was once described as ‘where top down meets bottom up’3, and this is still the case. But the meeting point will need to be more effective, efficient and economical at producing desired outcomes.

This also means a radical shift from a ‘deficit approach’, involving the presentation of all the problems in a neighbourhood and applying for funds on this basis, towards a ‘community assets approach’ which involves collaboratively building on these assets to design and deliver local solutions.

The next section describes the context of this Neighbourhood Strategy. It identifies lessons from past neighbourhood working and outlines what is happening in

3 Marilyn Taylor “Top Down meets Bottom Up’ for

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation

neighbourhoods now (with more details in Appendix II).

Section Three is about our vision, objectives and the principles and values that underpin our approach.

The final section is key, addressing how the Neighbourhood Strategy will be taken forward. It looks in turn at each of the service provision arenas outlined earlier. It describes the roles of different parts of the Council, and the new District Committees in particular, in making services respond to an individual neighbourhood’s needs and priorities. It describes some of the ways that services and investments in neighbourhoods could be influenced by and collaboratively planned with local communities.

It examines ways that local communities can access, influence and benefit from city-wide initiatives, and ways that the Council and its partners will respond to and support independent community activity.

A proposal to create an independent Neighbourhood Trust to attract investment in neighbourhood working and mechanisms for reviewing progress and learning lessons are outlined.

Finally, it provides an action plan: the next steps in delivering the Leader’s Policy

Statement priority of involving local people and communities in the future of their local area.



4. The Current Context

Lessons from past neighbourhood working

Birmingham is not starting from scratch with this Neighbourhood Strategy. It has a rich history of neighbourhood working led by the Council, housing associations and community organisations to draw on. These include the Council’s Neighbourhoods Programme funded by the Working Neighbourhoods Fund; earlier neighbourhood management initiatives funded by a variety of regeneration programmes; Guide Neighbourhoods; and autonomous neighbourhood management-type activity e.g. Witton Lodge, Balsall Heath Forum, and Bournville Village Trust. Lessons learnt include:

1. Neighbourhood management works, that is, the approach of jointly engaging residents, businesses and local service providers to identify needs, opportunities and priorities, and develop, deliver and monitor local solutions.

2. The key role played by local leadership

in success including the neighbourhood management function accountable to local partnership arrangements, and the individuals who organise and inspire

people to work together to improve their neighbourhoods.

3. Start from where a neighbourhood is at

in developing and delivering plans. Measure and celebrate distance travelled but be aspirational to enthuse.

4. Underpin neighbourhood working with

effective residents’ and businesses’ engagement.

5. Build on neighbourhood/community

assets, co-operation and co-ordination to deliver ‘different and better for less’.

6. City-wide support to neighbourhood

working unlocks support from reluctant partners and disseminates success.

Useful lessons have also been learnt from what did not work so well in the past, including:

1. Top down directives that had little resonance at a neighbourhood level;

2. Large scale geographical initiatives bypassing deprived neighbourhoods;

3. Weak business community engagement (though where it was strong, e.g. Washwood Heath, Witton Lodge, the benefits were real);

4. Over-reliance on national funding; and

5. Overemphasis on not very good quantitative indicators and targets.

What is happening in neighbourhoods now?

Despite funding for Birmingham’s Neighbourhoods Programme ending, neighbourhood working has continued in many parts of the city. These include:

• Those initiated and led by the Council or other public services such as the police-led community safety integrated tasking groups and the community and neighbourhood-based budgeting in three parts of the city; and

• Those initiatives led independently by local communities and other agencies such as Neighbourhood Forums, community development trusts, community-based neighbourhood management organisations such as at Castle Vale, Balsall Heath and Witton Lodge, Big Local partnerships, Community First Panels; and community and business associations in general.

• The three Neighbourhood Community Budget pilots in Balsall Heath, Castle Vale and Shard End which involve the Council, other public service providers



and local community-based organisations.

More details on these are available in Appendix II.



5. Our Vision, Objectives and Approach

Vision and objectives

The vision of our Neighbourhood Strategy is that the Birmingham becomes a city of distinctive but united neighbourhoods with active citizens, responsive service providers and businesses all dedicated to improving neighbourhoods, removing deprivation and reducing inequalities

We want to see a city where most residents feel they can influence decisions about the area they live in and where social inclusion replaces social exclusion.

A central aim of our Neighbourhood Strategy is to build bonding, bridging and braiding/linking social capital to improve capacity of neighbourhoods to generate and draw in resources.

• Bonding social capital refers to the supportive relations within relatively homogeneous groups such as residents of a small neighbourhood, a religious or an ethnically specific organisation;

• Bridging social capital refers to the supportive relations between heterogeneous groups within an area or between groups within and outside an area; and

• Linking or braiding social capital refers to the capacity to use these bridges to lever resources, ideas and information from institutions far from the community

Neighbourhood working principles

Our approach to neighbourhood working is underpinned by the following principles:

• Start where a neighbourhood is at for neighbourhood planning

• Recognise the points of community engagement

• Local ownership and leadership is needed for a neighbourhood delivery plan to succeed

• Be outcome focussed but understand the processes needed to deliver these outcomes

• Provide opportunities for neighbourhood capacity building and enable independent activity to improve the quality of life in a neighbourhood

• Maximise opportunities for personal development of individuals engaged in the process and link these into employability opportunities

• Celebrate diversity and promote working for common goals

• Promote networking and a unified neighbourhood conversation within each neighbourhood

• Promote sharing of experience and joint working across all neighbourhoods in the city.

Identifying neighbourhoods and priority neighbourhoods

Our Neighbourhood Strategy aims to identify all the city’s neighbourhoods and their distinctiveness. The Council will seek to reflect the differences between these neighbourhoods in making plans and delivering services and will encourage other service providers to do the same

However, there will also be neighbourhoods that are a priority for attention and investment because of the levels of deprivation they face. Priority Neighbourhoods will be identified at a city wide level based on deprivation information, not just the Index of Multiple Deprivation but also more up-to-date but less comprehensive economic, environmental and social indicators, drawn from the census.

It should be acknowledged that there is a risk that this will reproduce the outdated deficit model with neighbourhoods pursuing destructive competition to ‘prove’ that their neighbourhood is more deprived rather than focusing on joint action using



community assets to improve the quality of life in the neighbourhood.

On the other hand, without targeting the areas facing the greatest inequalities, there is a risk that these inequalities will persist. In addition, there is a preventative reason for focusing on the most deprived neighbourhoods as the issues they throw up may create greater costs that have to be met by public resources.

District Committees will also be asked to set out locally the neighbourhoods in their District which they will prioritise for local action based on local knowledge of the capacity of neighbourhoods to bring about change. This capacity is a function of the assets available locally and the experience and capabilities of local residents, voluntary and community organisations, businesses and service providers. In doing this, Districts may wish to take account of the agreed city wide Priority Neighbourhoods, making amendments where suggested by local knowledge.

The approach to identifying and working at a neighbourhood level will however be flexible. It will recognise that neighbourhoods have flexible boundaries as people have different perceptions of the geography of their neighbourhoods. The approach will be inclusive not exclusionary, for example, not turning away service users or volunteers because

they live on the wrong side of a street that is a neighbourhood boundary. Community assets and neighbourhoods

Defining and categorising neighbourhoods has, in the past, tended to be undertaken on the basis of a deficit model. The IMD was taken as the key indicator for defining priority neighbourhoods. While it will be important to continue analysing needs, focusing on the most deprived areas, with residents prioritising which of these needs should be acted on and how, it is important that there is a shift to a community asset based approach. Four broad categories have been suggested:

1. Neighbourhoods with little or no joint working and with weak or non-existent community engagement structures such as neighbourhood forums. These neighbourhoods are potentially the most vulnerable to resilience issues. Capacity building to raise awareness and participation will be really important.

2. Neighbourhoods with capacity to grow. They will have existing networks e.g. a neighbourhood forum, an awareness of needs, but require more capacity building. They will be able to create and work towards a one page neighbourhood plan.

3. Neighbourhoods ready to join the neighbourhood budgeting programme or equivalent and able to develop and monitor a neighbourhood plan.

4. Beacon neighbourhoods – having established neighbourhood budgets or similar mechanisms and delivering a range of projects to empower local people and address social inclusion issues. They know how to use local assets, resources and talent to make deep seated sustainable change (though they will also still be learning). They can act as mentor/role model for other neighbourhoods. These should be innovative neighbourhoods where new projects and programmes are started and lessons passed on to other neighbourhoods

Judging which category any neighbourhood is in requires qualitative, local knowledge and this is most likely to exist at a District level. This underlines the importance of recognising the dual role of city wide priority neighbourhoods based on deprivation and therefore requiring focussed attention and those neighbourhoods which will be locally identified for other reasons, understood at the local level.



6. Making it Happen

This section sets out a road map to stronger, more engaged and sustainable neighbourhoods for the Council, its public sector partners and residential and business communities. It is organised to outline what the Council intends to do in the three service delivery arenas referred to in the introduction, namely:

1. Local public services and public investment.

2. City-wide initiatives.

3. Independent community activity

It finishes with suggested mechanisms for monitoring progress, sharing learning and communicating success followed by an action plan, that is, the next steps the Council will take to make this happen.

Arena 1: Local public services and public investment

Neighbourhoods and devolution

The Council’s approach to neighbourhoods is integrated with its localisation and devolution arrangements which were agreed at the May 2012 full Council meeting. The key features of these arrangements are:

• Responsibility for the delivery of many Council services devolved to the ten District Committees which cover each of the city’s ten parliamentary constituencies.

• These Committees will consist of the Councillors elected for the Wards in that District, plus up to five cooptees including a representative from the District Housing Liaison Panel, the Police and the Fire Service.

• District Committees will hold an annual District Convention to agree District priorities with input from local communities and other stakeholders.

• Ward Committees will continue delivering their function of maintaining contact with local residents and community groups through regular public meetings. They will decide which projects to support with Community Chest funds based on District Plan priorities, and approve grants to support Neighbourhood Forums.

• Each Ward will have a senior Council Officer as their ‘champion’.

Identifying neighbourhoods

Clearly, if collaborative neighbourhood working is to work, there needs to be a

shared perception between public sector partners and local communities of the neighbourhoods in a District. The District Committees will need to lead a consultative process to identify the neighbourhoods in their Districts taking into account the views of:

• Ward Committees;

• Community organisations and neighbourhood organisations such as neighbourhood forums;

• Other public service providers and their target areas such as police priority areas.

To help with this process, a toolkit for identifying neighbourhoods is provided in Appendix IV.

District Committees will then need to determine, again in consultation with local stakeholders, which neighbourhoods are their priorities for early action. Priorities will be based on deprivation indicators and an analysis of the community assets available as outlined at the end of the previous Section. To aid this process, Appendix V provides details of deprivation indicators and shows city wide priority neighbourhoods based on this data.

The next step is for local partners to develop and agree Neighbourhood Action



Plans, particularly for the identified priority neighbourhoods. In some instances, this may have already been done by neighbourhood partnership bodies such as Neighbourhood Management Boards, Neighbourhood Forums or partners who have been working on neighbourhood budgets.

The Neighbourhood Action Plans could be the ‘community contracts’ recommended by the Social Inclusion Process and could be guided by the ‘Neighbourhood Service Standards’ outlined in Appendix III.

Given limited resources and the imperative for action, the neighbourhood identification and action planning processes should be kept simple and completed quickly. It will be more important for Neighbourhood Action Plans to contain two or three areas for immediate action rather than being comprehensive analyses of all the neighbourhood issues and their drivers. The operating principle should be ‘avoid paralysis by analysis’ as seeking perfection often leads to inaction.

Progress on neighbourhoods and their action plans will be reported at regular intervals to District Committees and at the annual District Conventions. Neighbourhood priorities will be integrated into District Plans and will also be useful to inform District Priorities for the allocation

of Ward Community Chest and other grant making decisions.

Co-ordinating public services

A key lesson from past neighbourhood working in Birmingham and elsewhere is that many local issues are dealt with better when public service providers work together and with local communities to deliver ‘local solutions to local problems’.

A good example of this is the police-led, integrated community safety tasking groups which tackle community safety issues (including anti-social behaviour). Some of these also initiated community litter picks and neighbourhood and estate walkabouts to identify environmental issues.

Many of these tasking groups are operating today, although organised on a ward rather than neighbourhood base.

District and Ward Committees will continue to support these tasking groups, publicising how people can become engaged in their activities and celebrating their successes. They will also encourage similar ways of working between local service providers and communities around other issues in response to priorities identified through neighbourhood action plans, perhaps around health, job creation, training or youth facilities

Leadership and neighbourhood management

A major lesson of past neighbourhood working is that is that leadership is critical to its success. Two leadership roles can be identified. First, there is the neighbourhood management role involving the co-ordination of local responses to jointly identified needs and opportunities. Secondly, there is the more general community leadership role of individuals who organise and inspire people to work together to improve their neighbourhoods.

In the current financial climate employing neighbourhood managers is, in general, a non-starter. Other creative ways need to be found to fill the leadership role of neighbourhood managers such as:

• Council staff may be able to contribute to this by taking on place-based champion roles.

• Ward Councillors, reporting to Ward and District Committees, could also play a key role in local neighbourhoods. They could be authorised by District Committees to bring stakeholders together to develop local solutions to local problems and then to champion these solutions so as to attract the resources and



commitment from other partners to make them happen.

• Other public service providers or large community organisations such as community development trusts may wish to take on a neighbourhood management leadership role using their own or external funding resources.

This last role will be encouraged by District Committees by issuing a Neighbourhood Management Prospectus, a draft of which is provided in Appendix VI. However, a lesson from the past is that such arrangements must be seen as legitimate in the eyes of local communities and service providers if they are going to secure their commitment to co-ordinated planning and action. Securing the necessary legitimacy requires their endorsement by the Council, other service providers and local community organisations. In addition, legitimacy can only be maintained through performance - demonstrating an ability to take action that makes a positive difference in the neighbourhood – and accountability to local partners.

The Council will also encourage the development of the second type of neighbourhood leadership: the capacity of local people and local organisations to organise and inspire people to work

together to improve their neighbourhoods. It will do this through training, events, mentoring, shadowing, visits to major city institutions and so on. In a city with the youngest population profile of any major European city, young people must be a focus for this activity. Through a young neighbourhood leaders’ programme, barriers will be removed and pathways created to help them play a larger role in the development of their neighbourhood and city.

Arena 2: City-wide initiatives

Many services that impact upon neighbourhood life can be organised to respond to specific neighbourhood needs and priorities. But many others, such as economic development, transport infrastructure, housing investments and public health, have to have a city-wide dimension to succeed. Yet in the past, the benefits of investments in these spheres have not ‘trickled down’ to residents of the most deprived neighbourhoods.

Two huge challenges for the Council and its partners are to ensure that neighbourhoods can influence such services and initiatives and to find ways for all residents to access the benefits these initiatives offer.

Employment

Two action learning opportunities for meeting these challenges in the field of employment will present themselves in the coming months. First, the proposals of Birmingham’s Youth Unemployment Commission to create 1,000 jobs for young people. Secondly, the Jobs and Skills Charter pledge by the three partners4 in the Grand Central shopping centre development above New Street Station to provide 1,000 jobs for Birmingham. District Committees with their partners, in particular community organisations, will need to develop routes by which residents of deprived neighbourhoods can hear about and access these job opportunities.

Public Health

The ability to link city-wide Public Health initiatives with neighbourhood needs has been improved by the transfer of the Public Health function to the local authority. Public Health and the Council’s Local services Division will work with District Committees and local community organisations to pilot public health work around a number of issues in neighbourhoods where need is greatest and where there are community organisations wanting to take a lead.

City-wide co-ordination

4 The Council, John Lewis and Network Rail



Linking the needs of neighbourhoods to city-wide initiatives will be helped by the Council’s new devolution arrangements. District Committee Chairs, also known as Executive Members for Local Services now attend Cabinet meetings, strengthening communication between the Council’s central Executive and its Districts.

A lesson of past neighbourhood working was that joint working to tackle local problems needed to be reinforced by city-wide backing for a neighbourhood strategy. Securing senior-level commitment for the focus on neighbourhoods helped deliver results on the ground in Priority Neighbourhoods and Clusters.

The Council will take this lesson on board by working with partners at a city-wide level through the Leader’s Advisory Board to secure backing for this Neighbourhood Strategy. City-wide priority neighbourhoods will be agreed to focus efforts on the important work to close the gap and improve social cohesion. These city-wide priorities will be complemented by additional neighbourhoods identified as priority at the local level through the work of District Committees. This will provide the backdrop for the following actions which will need to be backed by decisions of service providers at a city level:

• Continued support to the existing neighbourhood budget pilots in Balsall Heath, Castle Vale and Shard End and identification of areas where neighbourhood budget approaches could be extended;

• Identification of three Priority Neighbourhoods where a Total Place approach will be taken forward. This involves focusing on particular policy areas and the ways of co-ordinating and integrating service provision so that ‘different and better can be delivered for less’; and

• Development of a neighbourhood-based consultation strategy on the Council’s future budget (post- 2013/14)

Arena 3: Independent Community Activity

Whatever the Council does, communities will organise to improve their neighbourhoods. Examples currently operating in Birmingham include:

• Community based neighbourhood management organisations such as at Castle Vale, Balsall Heath and Witton Lodge;

• Local Community Development Trusts such as St. George’s Community Hub

in Aston, Moseley, St Paul’s and the emerging Trust in Lozells and Handsworth;

• Community First panels;

• Big Local partnerships;

• Local business organisations/ traders associations including Business Improvement Districts.

The Council can add value to their work by:

• supporting their funding bids;

• allocating officer time to listen, respond and co-produce services with them;

• recognising them as consultation forums where appropriate;

• working to create leadership capacity and building opportunities;

• contracting with them to deliver services where appropriate;

• opening up pathways and networks with other sources of support; and,

• (sometimes) simply getting out of the way.

Neighbourhood Forums



An important, enabling power the Council has with community organisations is formally acknowledging them as consultation and engagement vehicles. This is what the Council has done with Neighbourhood Forums via the Neighbourhood Forum Support Grant5. This also gives the Forums status and influence with other service providers and agencies.

A Neighbourhood Trust

A key community based initiative that the Council is backing is the development of a Birmingham Neighbourhood Trust as an independent investment vehicle. Discussions have taken place with a large number of neighbourhood-based organisations exploring the possibility of setting up a partnership-governed Trust of this sort. A primary function of such a Trust would be as a neighbourhood investment broker, raising, disbursing and managing funds on behalf of community-based neighbourhood partnerships.

The aim is for the Neighbourhood Trust to play a similar role in the neighbourhood investment field that the Birmingham Employment Skills and Training (BEST)

5 See ‘The know-how guide for Neighbourhood

Forums in Birmingham’ The Chamberlain Forum for

Birmingham City Council

consortium plays in its field. More information on this initiative is contained in Appendix VII.

Review, Learning and Communication

Social media networks and neighbourhood blogs were established in many of Birmingham’s 31 Priority Neighbourhoods and Clusters, many of which are still functioning. District Committees will support and feed into these. They will also enable new neighbourhood based learning and communication networks. In addition council has also supported the establishment of www.theneighbourhood.info - a website resource to connect Birmingham’s neighbourhoods.

There is also a need to develop mechanisms to review, share experience, learn and communicate between neighbourhoods across Birmingham and with stakeholders in neighbourhood working across the country. This is important for social cohesion across the city as well as for improving the effectiveness of neighbourhood working.

The City Council will enable the delivery of such mechanisms working with relevant community based organisations such as

BVSC, Urban Archive, the Chamberlain Forum and the Neighbourhood Trust when it comes into being. As well as organising events to share experiences and plan future activity, there is also a need to collate learning and facilitate training of stakeholders.

Next Steps

In order to to turn this Neighbourhood Strategy into action on the ground which will make a positive difference to citizens’ lives, the following table lists the next steps to which Birmingham City Council is committing itself:

• to establish the overall enabling framework that will facilitate joint working between stakeholders, in neighbourhood improvement, and

• to support initiatives in each of the three delivery arenas identified within this Strategy.

The table also shows the links of the proposed actions with the commitments in the White Paper produced through Birmingham’s Social Inclusion Process (SIP).



Next Steps

The introduction to this strategy highlights the three arenas in which the Neighbourhood Strategy will operate and the table below summarises next steps in each arena, including links to the Social Inclusion Process.

Operating Arena Action and Initiatives When Leadership and Partnership Working

Identify, prioritise and action plan in neighbourhoods:

• Agree city wide Priority Neighbourhoods

• Agree local neighbourhoods and priority neighbourhoods for local action

Asset mapping of neighbourhoods, encouraging neighbourhood action planning and identifying existing and new opportunities for the management of neighbourhood approaches which engage local service providers and communities

Continued support to Community Safety Tasking Groups

SIP Commitment 6 – 6.2

September 2013 – September 2014

• Cabinet agrees city-wide Priority Neighbourhoods.

• District Committees identify neighbourhoods and which should be local priorities in consultation with local service providers and with local communities.

• District and Ward Committees work with local neighbourhood partnerships and community organisations, including neighbourhood forums where they exist, to agree and act on neighbourhood action plans.

Enabling Framework for Neighbourhood Improvement

Establish Neighbourhood Learning Network

• City wide learning forum – exchange developing practice

• Establish programme to develop and train young neighbourhood leaders in ten Priority Neighbourhoods/wards.

December 2013

Programme being developed by the Birmingham Leadership Foundation in partnership with private sector, Birmingham City Council and community organisations.




Birmingham Neighbourhood Trust developed and launched

• Steering group to be formed to develop details and organise the launch.

December 2013 – December 2014

City Council in collaboration with appropriate partner organisations

Investigate potential for other organisations besides the Council taking a lead on the neighbourhood management function.

• Launch Neighbourhood Prospectus, seeking and agreeing submissions from a range of organisations.

SIP Commitment 6 – 6.2

December 2013

Neighbourhood Prospectus outline agreed through consultation on this Neighbourhood Strategy. District and Ward Committees work with local partnerships to scope and agree organisations to play this role.

Housing Management:

• Developing a neighbourhood working approach through newly introduced ward-based housing management teams

• Begin scoping in four key priority wards and neighbourhoods

September 2013 – December 2013

District Committees in collaboration with local community organisations and local service providers.

Local Public Services and Public Investment (Arena 1)

Integrated Neighbourhood Teams

• Exploring models of integrated neighbourhood delivery teams which coordinate front-line staff from services that operate at a neighbourhood

September 2013

District Committee in collaboration with local service providers




level. Youth Hubs

• Multi-agency teams providing cross-sector work with young people – youth outreach / connexions / initiatives recommended by Birmingham’s Youth Unemployment Commission

• Launch in May

May 2013

District Committees in collaboration with local community organisations and local service providers.

Public Health

• Identify priority wards / neighbourhoods for targeted public health community engagement in collaboration with local partners

October 2013

Public Health in collaboration with District Committees, local community organisations and local service providers.

Local Learning and Skills Partnerships

• Bring together partners at a local/neighbourhood level around creating pathways and supporting people into sustained employment, including pre-employment and post-employment support.

• Establish pilots - Kingstanding, Longbridge and Ladywood to include targeting the proposals of Birmingham’s Youth Unemployment Commission

SIP Commitment 1 – 1.2 and 1.3 / Commitment 5 – 5.1

May 2013

District Committees in collaboration with local community organisations, local businesses and local service providers.

City-wide initiatives (Arena 2)

Develop and launch of the Neighbourhood Service Standard

• Develop and launch the Neighbourhood Service Standard and scope how this can be implemented at local levels through ‘community contracts’

December 2013

Cabinet through delivery of Neighbourhood Strategy and the Social Inclusion Process




• Build on learning from Neighbourhood Community Budgets

SIP Commitment 6 – 6.1 Identify Whole Place / Total Place pilot (s) These will pilot ways of increasing efficiency and effectiveness of local services by better local co-ordination between different organisations and professions.

November 2013

Cabinet

Budget Consultation

• Scope budget consultation and potential neighbourhood engagement

October 2013

Cabinet, District and Ward Committees in collaboration with local community organisations and local service providers.

Enable city-wide neighbourhood learning network – online and face-to-face.

September 2013

Cabinet, District and Ward Committees in collaboration with local community organisations, local businesses and local service providers.

Neighbourhood Community Budgets

• Operationalise three pilot areas once the DCLG has approved funding for the submitted Pilot Operational Plans

• Action learning network to embed learning SIP Commitment 6 – 6.1

Summer 2013

Cabinet, District and Ward Committees in collaboration with local community organisations, local businesses and local service providers, in particular the three local pilots: Balsall Heath Forum, Castle Vale Neighbourhood Partnership Board and Shard End.

Support community initiatives such as local community development trusts e.g. the Lozells, Birchfield and Handsworth Community Trust

Ongoing – process has already started

This will be linked with the creation of the Birmingham Neighbourhood Trust

Independent community activity (Arena 3)

Engagement in city-wide Neighbourhood Learning Network

• City wide learning forum – exchange developing

June- September 2013 and

Sharing of experiences. Neighbourhood twinning.




practice

Establish programme to develop and train young neighbourhood leaders in ten Priority Neighbourhoods/wards.

ongoing September 2013

Programme being developed by the Birmingham Leadership Foundation in partnership with private sector, Birmingham City Council and community organisations.

Supporting Community Led Neighbourhood Management

• Long-standing initiatives

• Newly developing initiatives e.g. Big Local in Bromford

Ongoing

Continued support to Business Improvement Districts – existing and new.

Ongoing



Appendix I: Summary of ‘Making Birmingham an inclusive city’

Following an intensive and extensive process of research, consultation and sharing of experiences and views, the Birmingham Social Inclusion Process (SIP), Giving Hope Changing Lives, has produced a White Paper entitled ‘Making Birmingham an inclusive city’. The SIP, led by the Bishop of Birmingham and guided by a steering group of city leaders, held conversations with residents and organisations in neighbourhoods across the city to develop a collective city-wide response on what needs to be done to tackle poverty and deprivation and improve the life-chances and quality of all of Birmingham’s residents.

The White Paper sets out the challenges facing the city and seven social inclusion commitments to action by partners in the SIP. This Neighbourhood Strategy is the Council’s contribution to the sixth commitment to:

‘Empower people to shape their neighbourhood…by developing a neighbourhood strategy for the city, encouraging greater participation and strengthening relationships between different areas’.

The SIP conversations with local residents confirmed the issues and perceptions identified in previous neighbourhood working and that empowering local people to shape their neighbourhoods must be a key component of social inclusion in the city. Residents felt that poor design of roads and other infrastructure, neglected public spaces and disjointed local services needed to be changed. Critically, a large proportion of residents feel that they cannot influence decisions in their local areas although they had a vision of what they wanted their neighbourhood to be.

The conversations also revealed a strong desire to volunteer and work to improve neighbourhoods, often expressed in effective, local, self-help initiatives but also inadequately mobilised and therefore with much of the potential frustrated.

These views led to the sixth commitment which, in greater detail, includes commitments to:

• Develop ‘community contracts’ that outline the service standards that residents should receive and how they can engage with decision making.

• Collaborate to develop a neighbourhood strategy for the city.

• Encourage neighbourhood twinning to encourage supportive links between local areas of the city.

• Develop a Neighbourhoods Trust to provide a gateway for resources and funding to Birmingham’s priority neighbourhoods.

• Develop a network of ex-residents of neighbourhoods that face deprivation and unhelpful stigmas to promote the areas they came from.

The other six commitments in the White Paper will also be helped by effective neighbourhood working that is directed by local people. These are:

• Supporting families and children out of poverty;

• Embracing ‘super-diversity’ by understanding the huge variety of cultures, identities, faiths and languages in the city;

• Protecting the most vulnerable;

• Connecting people and places;

• Creating a city that values children and young people;

• Addressing safety, isolation and loneliness.



Appendix II: Current Neighbourhood Working

Neighbourhood working in the city did not finish when the Birmingham Neighbourhoods Programme came to an end. Many of the partnership working arrangements that had been built up continued in some form, neighbourhood structures that had existed autonomously before continued to operate, and new initiatives such as neighbourhood budgeting and neighbourhood planning gave a new impetus to collaborative working at a local level. A flavour of these is given below.

• Community based neighbourhood management organisations which existed before the Neighbourhoods Programme and have continued since such as at Castle Vale, Balsall Heath, Bournville Village Trust, and Witton Lodge

• Continuing Integrated Tasking Groups, led by the police, which currently tend to be organised on a Ward basis

• Neighbourhood Community Budgeting – in Shard End, Castle Vale and Balsall Heath – where research and mapping of resources, consultation on priorities, and partnership planning of actions have been taking place over

the past 12 months leading to Pilot Operational Plans being submitted recently to The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG).

• The Government’s Neighbourhood Planning initiative in Balsall Heath, Soho and Moseley. (These focus on land and property use as opposed to the wider policy remit of neighbourhood action planning though the latter does not have any status in planning law.)

• Neighbourhood Forums, tenant bodies and other citizen-led civil society groups across the city including a growing network of hyper-local neighbourhood websites, community organising activities and faith-based initiatives.

• Community networks and development trusts including the HEAT network in Hodge Hill; Spark Community Alliance; networks in Handsworth and Lozells, in particular the newly formed Lozells and Handsworth Community Development Trust; the Ward End and Pelham Network; the Moseley development Trust and the St Paul’s Development Trust; the Ladywood third sector network; and Near Neighbours and the Faithful Neighbourhoods Centre in Sparkhill.

• Community-owned asset-based organisations in the city including the Tenant Managed Organisations, existing local ‘neighbourhood trusts’ such as Moseley CDT and St George’s Community Hub and those organisations, including community sports hubs, that have been enabled to develop an asset base through the city’s Community Asset Transfer and Development programme.

• Neighbourhood initiatives using new sources funding such as the Big Local Partnerships (e.g. in Bromford and Firs and in Birchfield) which have received BIG Lottery grants, and the work of the Nehemiah Foundation.

• Experience of town centre management and the Business Improvement Districts in Northfield, Kings Heath, Erdington, Acocks Green and Sutton Coldfield

• Neighbourhood community investment undertaken by housing associations including Birmingham Family HA in Summerfield, Castle Vale CHA and Bromford HA in Kings Norton



Appendix III: Neighbourhood Service Standards

What makes a neighbourhood a good place to live? The answer is: it varies. Every neighbourhood is different. If one were to take all of Birmingham’s popular neighbourhoods, each would have its own distinct characteristics with particular features that residents identified as the reasons for wanting to live there. It could be proximity to a good school, a neighbourhood shopping centre with a wide range of shops, a place of worship, family friends and relatives, or a number of other factors.

Why then did many people during the Social Inclusion Process recommend the development of a common standard for neighbourhoods, that is a list of the assets and accessible services that neighbourhoods need to function well’? Why is the adoption of a list of such standards, and commitment to their delivery within available resources, a central part of this Neighbourhood Strategy?

First, because there are a number of features that come up regularly in surveys of residents’ satisfaction with their neighbourhood. Each feature does not come up in every neighbourhood but does appear amongst the top priorities in many

neighbourhood survey results. It is therefore possible to build a list of good neighbourhood features that most neighbourhoods would identify.

Secondly, in developing a neighbourhood improvement plan, a list of standards can help local stakeholders in the action prioritising and planning process. They can discuss which of the assets and services are most important for their neighbourhood, and which should be a priority for collaborative action because they are missing or need improving.

Finally, a commitment to delivering a standards list will be a great help in providing leadership and partnership working at a city-level for a neighbourhood strategy. There are always time and other resource pressures to focus on larger geographical areas than neighbourhoods and, as a consequence, the specific needs of deprived neighbourhoods may be missed, reinforcing social exclusion. A commitment to deliver a list of standards within available resources if they are a priority of residents in a neighbourhood will guard against reproducing social exclusion.

The list below contains both facilities and assets within a neighbourhood and services accessible from a neighbourhood.

1. Access, via affordable and safe transport

routes and services if outside a

neighbourhood, to:

• A range of jobs and training opportunities;

• Good schools;

• Good primary health care facilities;

• Leisure, sports and cultural facilities;

• Activities for young people;

• A range of shops;

• Community gathering and meeting spaces which could include places of worship;

• information and advice;

• Support services for children, the elderly and vulnerable residents.

2. A safe neighbourhood that feels safe as well.

3. An uplifting physical environment that residents can relate to including greenery and quality open spaces.

4. A sense of place and belonging including neighbourhood landmarks and positive neighbourhood identifiers.

5. Good neighbours.

6. Opportunities to volunteer.

7. Mechanisms to collaboratively influence services and developments in the neighbourhood



Appendix IV: Toolkit for

Identifying Neighbourhoods

Defining an neighbourhood is similar to defining an elephant: everyone has a different view of what it is but you know what it is when you see it. The Chamberlain Forum has estimated that there are between 130 and 150 neighbourhoods in Birmingham. If one were to take the ‘standard’ neighbourhood size of the National Neighbourhood Renewal Strategy of approximately 10,000 people, then one would expect there to be 10 to 12 neighbourhoods per District and two or three per Ward. The Super Output Areas of the Census are also sometimes regarded as neighbourhoods of sorts although they are technically designed rather than based on local residents’ perceptions. However, it is these perceptions, and those of front-line service providers and local businesses, that are the main reason for having a neighbourhood strategy with defined neighbourhoods. This is because the neighbourhood is seen as a powerful geographical focus for engaging citizens in service delivery and investment in order to tackle local issues. Yet local residents’ perceptions of the boundaries of the

neighbourhood they live in are likely to vary depending what they see as its most important feature: a local school, local park, particular types of housing or estate, neighbourhood shopping centre, where many of their family live and so on. So identifying neighbourhoods is not, and could never be, an exact science. The aim is to achieve broad agreement on neighbourhoods that most residents in an area would recognise. The identified neighbourhoods need to be workable definitions. This basic toolkit suggests five stages in agreeing a workable definition of the neighbourhoods in each District together with three dangers to avoid to prevent the process becoming unnecessarily lengthy and complicated. Stage One

District Committees, together with their Ward Committees establish a draft map of neighbourhoods in their District. Many of these will already be defined as a result of previous neighbourhood working or institutions such as a Neighbourhood Forum. Others can be broadly defined by looking at the existence of a neighbourhood shopping centre, the catchment area of a local school, the usage of a local park, community facility or faith building, a housing estate and so on.

Local Councillors knowledge of the areas they represent would be invaluable in the mapping process. There may be a need to cluster some neighbourhoods together to have a workable size of neighbourhood although this should be acknowledged in the next stage. Stage Two

For each neighbourhood, a short description containing some basic information should be put together. This information should include: socio-economic statistics; a short description of environmental factors including local infrastructure, community facilities and services; an outline of community organisations and engagement mechanisms. Again Councillors would have a great deal of this knowledge which could be supplemented by data provided by the Council’s data and policy analysis teams. Stage Three

The neighbourhoods map and accompanying descriptions should then be put out to consultation, circulating them to local community and business organisations and service providers. This process could usefully include local displays with a systematic method for collating feedback. It could also benefit by culminating in a local public meeting or



workshop to which residents, businesses and front-line workers would be invited. This could ‘piggy-back a District Conference or other meeting to save time and resources. Again, this would need to be accompanied with a systematic method for collating feedback. Stage Four

Ward Committees receive a report on the consultation and make recommendations to the District Committee based on this report. Stage Five

The District Committee agrees the map that they will use for their neighbourhood working. They could also agree on priority neighbourhoods at the same time based on deprivation indicators, a knowledge of work that was currently taking place that would benefit from a neighbourhood focus, and an assessment of community capacity in each neighbourhood. Avoiding pitfalls

Because of variation in perceptions of what a neighbourhood’s boundaries are, there is a risk that this process would be dragged out over too long a time period and also take up too many resources at a time of tight financial constraints. This would be self-defeating and it is vital that the process is completed over a month or

two, otherwise many of the benefits of neighbourhood working. Keeping the process simple and quick will be helped by the existence of earlier mapping activity and by making it clear that neighbourhood boundaries will be relatively flexible and will be capable of revision if they clearly aren’t working. These last two points refer to two other dangers that need to be avoided. First, that neighbourhood boundaries are applied too rigidly with local residents being denied access to services, resources or attendance at meetings and events because they live a couple of streets away. Neighbourhood working is supposed to help focus efforts and encourage co-operation, not create bitter rivalries. Secondly, the shape of neighbourhoods is likely to change over time as a result, for example, of, new facilities, infrastructure or housing developments or people moving home. Neighbourhood definitions by service delivery and community partners will therefore also have to be capable of revision.

Transforming Place Final Consultation Draft

Birmingham City Council May 2013

Appendix V: Priority Neighbourhoods mapped onto deprivation indicators from the 2011 Census

The map below shows the Priority Neighbourhoods and Clusters identified for the Neighbourhoods Programme using the 2007 Index of Multiple Deprivation and comparing these with deprivation measures taken from the 2011 Census. It can be seen that the previous Priority Neighbourhoods still include the most deprived areas of the city except for three Super Output Areas. At the same time the previous Priority Neighbourhoods do not include areas that do not face significant levels of deprivation. This suggests that the previous 31 Priority Neighbourhoods and Clusters should be retained but expanded to include these three Super Output Areas.



Appendix VI: The Neighbourhood Prospectus

The rationale behind the Neighbourhood Prospectus is that to maximise the potential for neighbourhood working in Birmingham at a time of financial constraints, the Council should enable other organisations to play a neighbourhood management role. To do this, they will need to have the necessary capacity and capabilities, use internal resources or secure the resources from elsewhere, and seek consent and support from other partners for their role.

The Prospectus lists the roles and responsibilities that another organisation, such as a housing association, community development trust or similar, could play in a particular neighbourhood. This would be written up as a compact between the Council and that organisation. Other local players would be encouraged to sign up their support for the organisation playing this role.

Legitimacy

Experience of this approach from neighbourhood management initiatives elsewhere in the country and feedback from local partners during the Birmingham Neighbourhood Programme is that key to the success will be acceptance by other local partners including local residents of

the legitimacy of another organisation playing this role.

The Council usually has such legitimacy because of its democratic accountability and role in a number of spheres of local life. For another organisation to be able to play this role it would be helpful to have:

• A reporting arrangement with the District Committee;

• Reporting accountability to a neighbourhood partnership;

• A link into widely-accepted community engagement mechanisms.

The Prospectus

The roles that an organisation would agree to undertake to have this role are:

1. Developing and updating through local consultation a Neighbourhood Action Plan with a clear indication of who is to do what and when.

2. Monitoring and reporting back progress on delivery of the Neighbourhood Action Plan in the context of an analysis of the development of the neighbourhood (socio-economic indicators etc.).

3. Support to and servicing of a local neighbourhood partnership.

4. Support to local consultation and engagement mechanisms.

5. Support to collaboration mechanisms between services and the local community which aim to co-design and co-produce local solutions to local problems.

6. Community capacity building support to local organisations and help in funding bids. (The extent of this work would have to be delineated clearly as the demand for this support is potentially well beyond the capacity of any one organisation.)

7. Advice to investors and service providers in the neighbourhood.



Appendix VII: Establishing a

Neighbourhood Trust

A key community based initiative that the Council is backing is the development of a Neighbourhood Trust as an independent social investment vehicle. Discussions have taken place with a large number of neighbourhood-based organisations, based on work commissioned by the Council from the Chamberlain Forum, exploring the possibility of setting up a partnership-governed Trust of this sort. A primary function of such a Trust would be as a neighbourhood investment broker, raising, disbursing and managing funds on behalf of community-based neighbourhood partnerships.

The reasons for establishing such a Trust, its potential roles, activities and governance structures and the next steps to make it happen are summarised here.

Why a Neighbourhood Trust?

• The approach to neighbourhood working in Birmingham is more likely to have a beneficial impact if it is enabling and encouraging of independent community action, in good times and especially in bad times.

• Neighbourhood-based organisations’ bargaining power and capacity to bring resources into the city for investment in neighbourhoods will be strengthened by working together.

• Not all problems faced by Birmingham people and businesses can be solved at a neighbourhood level. They need planning and action at a wider geographic level although the services and investment required may be accessed at a neighbourhood level. A Neighbourhoods Trust would enable a neighbourhood voice in this arena.

• Communities working to improve their neighbourhood could benefit from sharing and learning from each other’s experience.

Similar organisations to the proposed Neighbourhoods Trust have succeeded in drawing in investment into local areas. The Birmingham Employment Skills and Training (BEST) consortium has succeeded in attracting significant resources for employment and training initiatives delivered by its members.

A little further afield, the Wolverhampton Network Consortium has been operating for over a decade and continues to attract a great deal of European funding, now providing a service across the Black Country. It was established on the basis

of local groups of community organisations and service providers and has a small team co-ordinating bids for resources.

Role and Activities

The principal role and activities of the Neighbourhood Trust would be raising, disbursing and managing funds on behalf of community-based neighbourhood partnerships and reflecting their locally identified priorities.

A distinction needs to be made between:

• Investment in the delivery of services in neighbourhoods, that is day-to-day spending on services that local residents need and prioritise; and

• Investment in neighbourhood assets, both physical and social capital, which are a base for generating resources and service provision on a longer term basis. (This is what is meant by investment in economic terms.)

Discussions on the Neighbourhood Trust have also emphasised the importance of neighbourhood re-investment, which is making some part of the value added by neighbourhood working available to neighbourhoods to invest in further improvements.

The Neighbourhood Trust would also need to be a forum for neighbourhood-based



organisations to discuss the resources they need to attract into their neighbourhoods and how they could do this best collectively. In addition, it would contribute to a communication, experience sharing and learning network between neighbourhoods.

Structure and Governance

More work needs to be undertaken on the most effective structure and governance mechanisms for the Neighbourhood Trust. Should it be a Trust in a legal sense that is administered or managed by a group of Trustees on behalf of agreed beneficiaries? Should it be an unincorporated association, a company limited by guarantee, a community interest company, or a cooperative/friendly society? Should it seek registration as a charity? The legal structure chosen should be that which most helps the Trust deliver its agreed purpose.

Whatever structure is chosen, there would then need to be a decision on the organisations that would be its members, its decision making governance structures and how the members of these governance structures are appointed. It would need to be based on neighbourhood-based community organisations, but should it also include at least some of the following: the Council, other service providers, neighbourhood-

related ‘think tanks’ and business associations?

Next Steps

The consultation to date has resulted in broad agreement around the need to create a Neighbourhood Trust to promote investment in Birmingham’s neighbourhoods. The focus will now turn towards firming up the proposal and making it happen. The questions raised here need to be answered and consensus reached on the details of establishing the Trust. A core group that will take the proposal forward will be identified.

A firm proposal will be prepared for consultation and agreement on:

• The objectives and roles of the Neighbourhood Trust;

• Its structure, membership and governance mechanisms;

• Funding bids; and

• An Action Plan for establishing the Trust together with its first two or three years of activity.

Date post:	21-Aug-2020
Category:	Documents
Upload:	others
View:	0 times
Download:	0 times

Birmingham Neigh Strategy - Final Consultation Draft - 21 ... · 5/21/2013 · Birmingham City...

Documents