Community planning

Community Planning Structures

To help community planning work in practice, there are structures in place to ensure that the right people can come together to make decisions, discuss progress and share information.

Community Planning Partnership Board

Each of the Partner agencies has at least one representative on the Board – a senior officer from the organisation.  There are around four meetings of the Board each year, where Partners come together to discuss strategic issues, like the Community Plan or the Regeneration Plan, and agree on new ways of working together.

Policy Partnerships

The key role of the Policy Partnerships is to put community planning initiatives and projects into action.  There are four Policy Partnerships – one for each community planning theme:

• Enterprise, Employment and Lifelong Learning Partnership
• Community Health and Care Partnership
• Community Safety Partnership
• Environment Partnership

Each of the policy partnerships has key roles and responsibilities related to their theme of the community plan.   

How do we listen and talk to local people?

As well as structures for the partners to work together, there are special structures for community representatives to come together and have their say. The Community Planning Partnership engages with local people in a number of different ways.  Mostly, we try to use existing mechanisms – such as established community groups, youth groups and local area forums – rather than set up new ones.   We will seek the views of local people when we are developing a new strategy, such as the Community Plan or Regeneration Plan, or when setting up any new services.  And we involve community representatives in monitoring the progress of our community and regeneration plans.

East Renfrewshire Assembly

The East Renfrewshire Assembly sits at the centre of new community engagement arrangements. It has an East Renfrewshire-wide focus and will meet at least once a year to bring together local people and partner agencies from across the whole area.   The Assembly will provide a way for the Community Planning Partnership and the area forums to report on their achievements over the year.

Area forums

Four new area forums have been established and are currently having their first meetings. The area forums cover the following areas:

• Barrhead, Neilston and Uplawmoor
• Newton Mearns
• Giffnock and Thornliebank
• Netherlee to Eaglesham

Each area forum is chaired by a local councillor.  Each has control of a small budget to carry out small-scale projects locally, like dropped kerbs, improved lighting and additional play facilities.   They have a role to discuss non-council services such as police and health services.  As such the forums are an important vehicle for discussing views on community planning activities, and in particular they will have a role in monitoring the impact of the Community Plan and Regeneration Plan.

Community Councils, School Boards, Interest Forums and other groups

There are ten community councils operating in East Renfrewshire, with 132 elected community councillors.  The community councils act as a voice for the residents of the areas they serve.  They have a duty to ask local residents in their area what they think about council services and other issues and to then make these know to the local authority.  East Renfrewshire Council, in turn, has a duty to consult community councils on how local services delivered and other issues affecting the local neighbourhood. There are lots of other groups operating in East Renfrewshire that represent a wide range of interests, such as school boards, Black and Minority Ethnic Forums, older peoples’ forums and the volunteer sector.

Special one-off events

When the Partnership is developing a new strategy or introducing a new initiative it might be useful to have a special event dedicated to discussing it.  For example, a community conference was held in March 2005 to discuss local views of the draft Regeneration Plan.  The event was attended by almost 100 people.  This is just an example of other ways in which the Partnership will gather views on important local issues.