NLP Board Minutes - 13 September 06 (1)

Cllr Smith welcomed all to the meeting. He advised that Iain Hair, NHS Lanarkshire and Simon Carey, NLC are both moving on to new posts. The Board extended good wishes for the future to both Iain and Simon.

Apologies were noted as above.

These were agreed as an accurate record.

• North Lanarkshire Workforce Plus Proposals – Sandie Mackay reported that a meeting had been held with the Scottish Executive on Workforce Plus. The Partners will resubmit proposals and the outcome will be known by the end of October. The Board will be notified of the Executive's decision thereafter.

• Migrant Workers in North Lanarkshire – Simon Carey updated the Board. Research was continuing to look at the impact on economic, social and other services. This research will be complete by December 2006 and the Board will be advised of the outputs. It was agreed to postpone the proposed Partnership event until this work was completed.

S Mackay spoke to the paper, the purpose of which was to consider proposals for developing a Single Outcome Agreement. The Single Outcome Agreement will build on the current ROA which is in place until 2008.

An external consultant was contracted by Communities Scotland to research developments currently underway in England, particularly to look at public service agreements and local area agreements. A report has subsequently been produced. Conclusions from this have influenced the proposals for North Lanarkshire's Single Outcome Agreement.

This approach will allow us to collect information on the specific outcomes, indicators and targets for activities supported by various ring-fenced funding resources in order to measure their impact on both the most deprived neighbourhoods within North Lanarkshire and across North Lanarkshire as a whole.

The Board noted the content of the report and approved the proposal for a Single Outcome Agreement and agreed the outline process and timetable prepared.

Gavin Whitefield spoke to the report. It was previously agreed that a joint response be submitted, a draft of which had been circulated. Four key points in the draft response include – Engaging Communities, the role and engagement of agencies, integrating services and single outcome agreements and structures. He proposed that the following points should be added:

• reducing the scale of audit and regulation across the public sector
• establishing a common strategic and financial planning framework with aligned planning cycles

The Board agreed the above amendments and authorised its submission to the Scottish Executive.

S Carey spoke to the report. The Routes to Inclusion Community Budgeting pilot had now been completed. Recommendations from the pilot include –

• Continued action for customer consultations
• Routes to Inclusion to continue support to the Lanarkshire's Working initiative
• Introduction of data sharing and how we demonstrate benefits from this
• Production of a bi-annual labour market report
• Partnership information sharing

The Board noted the contents of the report and its conclusions and authorised its submission to the Scottish Executive.

The Big Lottery has written to Community Planning Partnerships requesting that they establish a Big Lottery Partnership Hub within their area. This would allow discussion with partners to ascertain the particular projects which agencies might submit and also for partners to gain an understanding of how the Big Lottery could meet their requirements. The hub would provide a point of contact through which local organisations could apply for funding and discuss lottery projects.

The hub would be a sub-group of the NLP Board and would also include representation from the voluntary and community sectors.

The Board agreed to establish a North Lanarkshire Big Lottery Partnership Hub, agreed to nominate a suitable officers from the partner agencies to participate in the partnership and authorised the Council's Chief Executive to inform the Big Lottery of the intention to establish the group.