Transcript Community Planning - Department of Finance and Personnel

Community Planning in Omagh
A Pilot Process
Sonya McAnulla
Policy Officer
Omagh District Council
Presentation Overview
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Overview of Omagh District Council
Context
Process
Finalising the Plan
Experience/Learning to Date
Omagh – A Sub-Regional Centre
Introduction
• RPA final decisions Better Government for
Northern Ireland (March 2006) committed
to ‘developing a reinvigorated local
government sector, with the local council
at the heart of the community transforming
the social and economic life of the local
area’
Statutory Duty
• Government will place a statutory duty on
councils to prepare a community plan in
consultation with other service providers
who will be required to co-operate fully in
the planning process.
What is Community Planning?
• According to Task Force on Community
Planning:
• Community planning is any process through
which a council comes together with other
organisations to plan, provide for, or promote the
well-being of the communities they serve
• Task Force recommended pilots across NI
Context
• Positive ethos of Partnership Working
– LSP, CSP, DPP, Taskforce, OBF
• Experience of ILS development
• Commitment in Corporate Plan
• Opportunities afforded by RPA
Objective I
• To produce a pilot community plan for
Omagh District Council, within the
confines of its existing boundaries,
working with other statutory, private and
voluntary/community sector providers in
the area.
Objective II
• Facilitating Role
Local authorities, as democratically
elected bodies, have a community
leadership role which is pivotal to
facilitating (but not dominating) the
community planning process.
Process
• Appointment of University of Ulster and
SER Solutions
• Commenced early September 2006
• 3 Plenary Sessions
– ODC Members and Officers
– Statutory Partners
– Vol/Comm and Private Sectors
• Follow-Up Bi Lateral Discussions
Process (II)
• Separate workshops with councillors, statutory
organisations, and the private and voluntary and
community sectors to agree vision and priority
themes.
• Returned to statutory partners to agree a
detailed action plan and associated targets.
• Each theme in the action plan structured around
3 questions: what we will do, how will we do it,
and who will lead.
Elements of a Community Plan
1. An overall vision/mission statement for the
Omagh District Council area.
2. A small number of high-level cross-cutting
themes which require collaborative actions
across community planning partners with an
identified lead organisation.
3. An action plan linked to the cross-cutting
themes with measurable targets and outputs.
Elements of a Community Plan
4. A formal commitment to the community plan by
partners through their own internal planning
and decision making processes.
5. Monitoring and evaluation of progress in
meeting the targets/outputs outlined in the
community plan (through the Community
Planning Partnership).
Process (III)
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Created Quality of Life indicators
Indicative resource implications
Further Consultation
Adoption of Plan – January 2007
Creation of Community Planning P/ship
Share experience
VISION STATEMENT
•Omagh District
Councillors agree
vision and
priority themes
to improve the
Quality of Life
of its citizens
THEMES
•High level
•Cross-cutting
•Few in number
ACTION PLAN
•Multi-agency officials
agree the detailed
action plan and
associated targets in
the Community Plan
•Social partners
consider ways to assist
in its implementation
•Community Plan
endorsed by the
Council and the
wider community
•Aims of the
community plan
•Supplementary
principles
COMMITMENTS
MONITOR AND EVALUATE
•What will we do?
•How will we do it?
•Who will lead?
•Partner organisations
‘sign-up’ to community
plan
•Establish Community
Planning Partnership
•Monitor against
action plan targets
•Evaluate against
Quality of Life
Indicators
Emerging Themes
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(Economic) Prosperity & Well Being
Community Safety and Shared Future
Health and Well Being
Infrastructure
Education and Lifelong Learning
Environment
Community Plan ‘Proofing’
• High level commitments to ‘what we will
do’ – these must add value to the existing
work of planning partners.
• Limit the number of actions but make them
truly collaborative, realistic and achievable
– in other words, partners need to cooperate to make them happen (crosscutting, joined-up commitments).
Community Plan ‘Proofing’
• Aside from routine monitoring against
targets set within the plan, the ultimate test
of community planning is whether its
implementation improves the quality of
peoples’ lives in Omagh.
• We therefore need to begin with baseline
information in order to assess whether
improvements have happened.
Baseline QoL Information
Omagh relative to Northern Ireland
Worse than Northern Ireland
Better than Northern Ireland
C r i mi nal D amag e
B ur g l ar y
T hef t
O f f ences ag ai nst t he p er so n
R ent ed
Ho uses o w ned o ut r i g ht
O w ner O ccup i ed Ho uses
T eenag e p r eg nanci es
S t and ar d i sed mo r t al i t y r at i o
P eo p l e w i t h l o ng - t er m i l l ness
D eg r ee l evel o r hi g her q ual i f i cat i o n
S cho o l l eaver s i nt o hi g her ed ucat i o n
S cho o l Leaver s w i t h 5+ G C S E s
I ncap aci t y B enef i t s
I nco me S up p o r t
F r ee S cho o l M eal s
U nemp l o yed
E ar ni ng s
E co no mi cal l y act i ve
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0
Figure 8.1
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Experience/Learning to Date
• Positive Experience
• Keen interest from all participants
– Initial engagement
– Continuing Role in the process
• Collaboration with sectors vital
• Reinforces work (and future?) of other
partnerships
Experience/Learning to Date
• But…
– Misnomer of “Community” planning
– “Tension” re future role of CPP
– Power of Sanction – how powerful?
– Statutories, good on process but tentative on target
setting; grapple with intersecting lines of
accountability – vertical to Minister/Assembly;
horizontal to CP.
– Long lead in time required/Scale of pilots
– Resource implications – “budget neutral”
The Outcome
To make Omagh District an economically
prosperous, healthy, sustainable and
quality place in which to live and work and
to place the district at the heart
of the administration of the Tyrone and
Fermanagh region.
(Vision, Omagh Community Plan 2007 – 2010)