Communities mission

Changing our relationship with communities to make sure our residents have happy healthy lives. 

We need to change the way we work with our communities so they use their knowledge, skills and strengths to help them deliver positive outcomes for themselves. This will save money and ensure our residents are healthy, happy and feel like they belong.

We will empower communities and increase individual, family and community level activities by helping people and communities to be independent and have less reliance on council services.

Initial work has focused on developing baseline information to help us better understand our communities. Our recent residents survey and community conversations have allowed us to ask:

• what is good about the place you live?
• what would make it better?
• what could you do where you live to make it better?
• what do you need help with to make it better?

The responses are helping us to build an understanding of our communities and will allow us to further explore our communities strengths and what 'works well'. This will help us to inform a future vision for the Borough that is developed with, and jointly owned by communities. 

Colleagues from across the council are currently reviewing the existing activity which we are delivering. This includes gathering insight and intelligence from our current commissioned health and wellbeing services, including Adults and Health, Public Health, Children's Services and Housing. This will enable us to understand the impact and target future community development in the areas that need it most. It will inform our ways of working with partners to reduce inequalities and increase the amount of activity delivered in communities, by communities. Evidence shows that community-led activity improves local outcomes, as it is designed and delivered by those who know their communities and their best place.

In the future, the council will support strong and empowered communities, where wellbeing is improved. 

3 work streams have been identified to sit within this mission. Each work stream is led by a project sponsor and supported by a project delivery manager. 

Carolyn Nice, Director of Adults, Health and Wellbeing, will lead this mission.